The Nation: State Outsources Secret War

JASON VEST published circa May 2001

Best known as a place where the Air Force shoots satellites into orbit, the Eastern Space and Missile Center – just south of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida’s Brevard County – would appear to focus solely on the wild blue yonder and beyond. Indeed, the 45th Space Wing’s web page is pretty clear about the mission of Patrick Air Force Base and the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: to enhance “national strength through assured access to space for Department of Defense, civil, and commercial users.”

But according to a closely held government document, in the corner of the base that’s occupied by the defense contractor Raytheon there’s an operation that has absolutely nothing to do with the 45th’s role as “premier gateway into space.” In fact, the 10,000-square-foot fenced-in yard isn’t used by Raytheon at all. Nor is the 62,000 square feet of office, storage and hangar space located at 1038 South Patrick Drive. Officially, it’s the province of the State Department, which maintains a dedicated high-speed data line linking its Foggy Bottom headquarters in Washington with Buildings 984-986.

What the State Department is doing here has little to do with the genteel art of diplomacy but everything to do with combat. For all intents and purposes, South Patrick Drive is the gateway to the US government’s private war in the South American Andes.

Building 985 at Patrick Air Force Base is occupied by at least two State Department officers and a handful of administrators from DynCorp, a giant contractor which does most of its $1.4 billion in business with the US government – particularly in the realms of defense and intelligence. Since 1991, the company has effectively – and quietly – served as the State Department’s private air force in the Andes, providing pilots and mechanics for US-owned aircraft. Both DynCorp and the State Department have been reticent about just what DynCorp does. A handful of media reports and public statements have shown that the company’s pilots are flying fumigation and search-and-rescue missions, primarily in Colombia.

There’s also been passing mention of DynCorp operating in Peru and Bolivia. But when reporters, activists and even members of Congress have asked for more details on what DynCorp does for the Aviation Division of State’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau, they’ve received nothing. Sometimes State simply doesn’t respond. “We’re hitting a stone wall here,” sighs Nadeam Elshami, an aide to Representative Jan Schakowsky, who recently introduced a bill banning the use of private military companies like DynCorp in the Andes. “We’ve asked State for information, and we haven’t received any yet.”

Other times State says it can’t say anything because to do so would compromise information proprietary to DynCorp that’s protected by the “trade secrets exemption” in the Freedom of Information Act. If DynCorp ever responds to queries, it says it won’t divulge any details because the State Department won’t let it. “We haven’t gotten any answers from them, either,” says Elshami, “though they did contact us after Veronica Bowers’s plane was shot down over Peru last month and told us they weren’t involved. I think they made sure everyone knew that, but about what they’re actually doing, no.”

The Nation has obtained a copy of State’s contract with DynCorp – a contract that requires all employees to have a “secret”-level clearance and “not communicate to any person any information known to them by reason of their performance of services.” Additionally, it instructs DynCorp to “not refer to this award in any public or private advertising” or in the news media.

Looking through it, it’s not hard to see why. The contract reveals DynCorp’s Andean aerial counternarcotics operations to be far more expansive and far-flung than previously reported. From its “Main Operating Base” at Patrick AFB, DynCorp oversees an aerial fleet of forty-six helicopters and twenty-three fixed-wing aircraft which can operate from twenty-three locations spread out over Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. In some cases, DynCorp’s operations are not limited to fumigation and search-and-rescue but, according to the contract, include maintenance and pilot training, aircraft ferrying, mat?el transport, reconnaissance and flying local troops in to destroy drug labs and coca or poppy fields.

According to Federation of American Scientists secrecy specialist Steven Aftergood, the State-DynCorp contract is a prime example of how the executive branch is unilaterally projecting power and implementing policy without leaving a trace. “The kind of routine oversight that official military activities would be subjected to are evaded by contractors as a matter of course,” he says. “This highlights how the whole phenomenon of privatizing military functions has enabled the government to evade oversight to a shocking degree.”

Politically, the contract’s specifics only reinforce concerns voiced by Representative Schakowsky and others that US taxpayers have been funding a secret war that has the potential to slowly but surely draw the United States further into a poorly understood counterinsurgency conflict. “What most people either forget or don’t know,” says Sanho Tree, director of the drug policy project at the Institute for Policy Studies, “is that conflict in Colombia is a civil war, and is not about drugs. But instead of doing things like infrastructure and economic development to connect with people who have been abandoned by their government, the first contact scores of peasants have with their government – and the United States, thanks to Plan Colombia – is with armed soldiers and herbicide-spraying aircraft, which only underscores the rebels’ case. If the American people don’t know the full extent of what’s being done in their name, how can they make informed decisions?”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the contract deals with Bolivia, a country where DynCorp’s activities have gone virtually unacknowledged and undocumented. Operating out of a main base at Santa Cruz and forward operating locations (FOLs) in Puerto Suarez, Chimore and Trinidad – as well as at staging areas in San Matia, Riberalta, San Ignaci and Via Montes – DynCorp’s contractors both train mechanics and do maintenance work themselves on twelve State Department UH-IH (“Huey”) helicopters, and another ten Hueys provided by the Pentagon.

Used to transport troops to coca laboratories – as well as to fly reconnaissance missions – some Hueys belong to the Red Devil Task Force (RDTF), a little-known special unit of the Bolivian Air Force funded by the US government. According to the contract, DynCorp is “responsible for the military support, aircraft maintenance quality control and standardization of flight training for the RDTF,” the latter including “some individual flight training” by DynCorp pilots. According to a recently retired DynCorp contractor, the company’s pilots work with Red Devil pilots “day in and day out, hand in hand, on everything from keeping the log book to refueling, and are still actively training those pilots.”

“I think this confirms the general sense that we have too little information about the kind of counternarcotics contract operations being carried out in the Andean region,” says Gina Amatangelo, international narcotics fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America. Amatangelo says she’d be particularly interested to know if any DynCorp personnel working with the RDTF have flown for the government’s Umopar mobile eradication unit, which has a documented history of human rights abuses.

In Colombia, DynCorp is required to support Bell 212 helicopter operations “seven days a week, twelve hours a day, in day, night, and NVG [night vision goggles] conditions.” Operations include “search and rescue, host nation training, interdiction, command and control, and reconnaissance missions,” specifically at two FOLs.

And there is no shortage of FOLs: In addition to the main base at El Dorado International Airport, DynCorp’s personnel can apparently be found flitting between eight forward locations at La Remonta, Neiva, Apaiy Meta, Puerto Asis, San Jos?Tulua, Valledupar and Larandia. (According to the contract, there’s also a maintenance base in Guaymaral, a training base under construction in Mariquita and three more forward bases planned for Florencia, Tres Aquines and Turbo. ) The main mission continues to be “aerial opium poppy and coca reconnaissance and eradication” with fixed-wing T-65s and OV-10D Broncos – planes flown by both DynCorp pilots and their traineees, and maintained by DynCorp mechanics.

In Peru, as in Colombia and Bolivia, the State Department has instructed DynCorp to “collect, process, and disseminate aerial eradication flight path and spray data from ’Pathlink’ [and/or] ’SATLOC’” – two high-tech recording and mapping systems – “to facilitate planning and analysis of aerial eradication and reconnaissance operations on deployment.” This is

particularly interesting since last month, after the Bowers shootdown, DynCorp spokeswoman Charlene Wheeless told reporters via e-mail that she wanted to “assure you that DynCorp does not provide surveillance services” in its areas of operation, especially Peru. When contacted by The Nation, another DynCorp spokeswoman, Janet Wineriter, clarified the statement, saying “We were speaking strictly about tracking aircraft.” (When asked to comment on other aspects of the contract, Wineriter said that “I’ve never even seen the contract myself,” but added that she was sure if it had been obtained from the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act, “You would certainly get it redacted.”)

But in Peru, DynCorp does much, much more. In addition to having a presence at a large US government compound in Pucallpa, as a recent Washington Post reporter noted, DynCorp also operates at forward locations including Tingo Maria, Santa Lucia, Mazamari and Tarapoto. For herbicide spraying, DynCorp has to be able to have four T-65s or four OV-10s simultaneously airborne, and has to both maintain the aircraft, train mechanics and train pilots both individually and as a unit.

According to a recently retired DynCorp veteran, while the company’s people are “of the highest caliber – Delta guys, SEAL team guys, career military pilots and mechanics,” most of the knowledge and experience they have isn’t being passed on in training, insuring that the DynCorp contractors constantly operate in a very hands-on capacity. “It’s probably one of the hardest things to put up with, because there’s no perfect area or classroom to train people when they come in, and a lot of times they’re in and then they move out, so you start over with new people, and then they move out,” he says. “You always have the mission to adhere to first, and the mission is maintaining and flying those aircraft to spray and kill crops.”

The veteran also says that DynCorp personnel have been tasked with rescuing army personnel whose missions may not be counternarcotics related. Not, he says, that the contractors mind. “Most people stay until they’re ready to go, because they really like what they’re doing. The contract is constantly changing to fulfill new requirements, so there will always be work.” He pauses. “I haven’t been down there in awhile, but in the time I worked for ’em, we went from having 120 people to 450 people.”

For University of Wisconsin professor Alfred McCoy, the contract harks back to the days of his book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, originally published in 1972. “One of these days we may actually get all the records describing everything the CIA did in Laos, but we’ll never get the records of the Continental Air Service, their contractor who worked there,” he says. “The fact that this company is so large and is doing so much down there raises real questions of accountability. What’s the relationship between the nominal drug war and the realities of counterinsurgency? If it’s just the drug war, it raises questions about whether or not this is the best way to handle it, whether it’s cost effective, what the consequences are. But the

operations described here can very easily spill into involvement in counterinsurgency. And the worst-case scenario would be that we could become embroiled in a de facto counterinsurgency situation, because this is a privately held corporation for which there’s no particular restraint.”

DynCorp In Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug War

Jeremy Bigwood bigwood@erols.com
Investigative Report
Special to CorpWatch
May 23, 2001

A U. S. -made Huey II military helicopter manned by foreigners wearing U. S. Army fatigues crash lands after being pockmarked by sustained guerrilla fire from the jungle below. Its crew members, one of them wounded, are surrounded by enemy guerrillas. Another three helicopters, this time carrying American crews, cut through the hot muggy sky. While two of them circle, firing machine-guns at hidden enemy, one swoops down alongside the downed Huey, and the Americans jump through the wash of the blades into the firefight on the ground, successfully rescuing the downed crew members. It could be a scene from a soon-to-be-released Hollywood blockbuster based on the war in Vietnam or El Salvador. But, it happened in Colombia last February, as part of the U. S. $1.3 billion intervention called “Plan Colombia.” The Americans who braved the bullets were members of an armed “airmobile” Search and Rescue Team. However, they were not part of the U. S. Armed Forces, but civilian employees of a private company called DynCorp, the new “privateer mercenaries” of a U. S. policy that now “outsources” its wars.

Like the old English “privateer” pirates of the Caribbean five hundred years ago, sailing under no national flag - robbing and plundering Latin America’s riches for the English Crown, Washington now employs hundreds of contract employees through U. S. corporations to carry out its policies in Colombia and other countries. In the old days, the British maintained that because the pirate ships did not fly the English flag, the Crown was not responsible for their actions. While the new privateers are underwritten through U. S. taxes, they are technically “contract employees.” Like the sixteenth century pirates, if they get caught in an embarrassing crime, or are killed, the U. S. government can deny responsibility for their actions. What’s more only a select few in Congress know of their activities and their operations are not subject to public scrutiny, despite the fact that they are on the government payroll.

“It’s very handy to have an outfit not part of the U. S. armed forces, obviously. If somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it’s not a member of the armed forces,” former U. S. Ambassador to Colombia, Myles Frechette told reporters. Meanwhile, Former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey recently described himself as an “unabashed admirer of outsourcing.” And there is an economic consideration too. Deploying high ranking active duty military officers to staff Colombian operations is far more costly than hiring retired officers working privately. A U. S. government official, who asked not to be named, said that there were several reasons that the U. S. government outsources projects: “[Outsourcing] can be a flexible, cost-effective means of providing specific labor-intensive services on a short-term basis. Once we hire government workers, they are here forever. Some of these jobs are only short-term.”

Outsourcing belligerent activities on the part of the U. S. government is not new. It goes back to the Revolutionary War. Many such companies were involved in the Vietnam war, but they were only a minuscule presence compared to the major military effort by the U. S. there. What is new is that now contract employees are in the forefront of operations. In the Colombian war, private outsourced military men are out on the frontlines, while the real U. S. troops are hidden on bases as trainers. The exact number of contract employees in Colombia is not known. A recent State Department report states that there are only 200 U. S. military soldiers and about 170 American contractors working in Colombia. Historically, official counts of U. S. personnel and contractors tend to be underestimated in counter-insurgency operations.

DynCorp and Plan Colombia

By far the largest U. S. contractor company in Latin America is DynCorp, headquartered in Reston, Virginia near the CIA, and Pentagon. It hires and places many ex-military personnel, but is actually much more diverse and more high-tech than that. The company’s website promotes it as an Internet Technologies corporation. DynCorp describes its areas of expertise as “Information Systems, Information Technology/Outsourcing and Technical Services.” Once you dig a little deeper, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary high-tech start up.

According to its own literature, “DynCorp’s expertise spans more than five decades - encompassing events from the computer revolution, the Space Age, the Cold War and conflicts from Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm. Through these times, we have dedicated ourselves to providing customers with the best and most educated solutions. Our IT experience has evolved with this ever-changing industry, and we continue to offer our clients solid solutions based on this evolution.” DynCorp has “worked with domestic and foreign government agencies to provide successful information, engineering and aerospace technology solutions. As a result, few companies understand the public sector like DynCorp, or can boast a government client base with the depth and breadth of ours.”

Indeed, government contracts account for 98% of DynCorp’s business. It contracts with more than 30 U. S. government agencies, including the Department of Defense, State Department, FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Prisons, and the Office of National Drug Policy. About half of DynCorp’s revenue comes from the Pentagon and many of its employees are retired military men. The rest of the contracts are mostly with civilian government agencies. According to its website, last year it generated more than $1.8 billion in annual revenues, a $4.4 billion-dollar contract backlog and more than 20,000 employees in more than 550 locations. CEO Paul Lombardi recently boasted to the Washington Technology website that he projects 2001 revenue will top $2 billion. Like many transnational giants DynCorp has gobbled up some of the competition. In 1999 it acquired GTE Information Systems which has helped the company pursue government mega-contracts.

Since 1997, DynCorp has operated under a $600 million-dollar State Department contract in Latin America. But, according to its contract with the State Department, recently acquired by CorpWatch, “mission deployments may be made to any worldwide location, including, potentially, outside of Central and South America.” The company mainly “participates in eradication missions, training, and drug interdiction, but also participates in air transport, reconnaissance, search and rescue, airborne medical evacuation, ferrying equipment and personnel from one country to another, as well as aircraft maintenance,” according to the contract. DynCorp operates several State Department aircraft, including armed UH-1H Iroquois and Bell-212 Huey-type helicopters and T-65 Thrush crop dusters. DynCorp provides the pilots, technicians, and just about any kind of personnel required to carry out the war in Colombia, including administrative personnel. Some of its personnel in Colombia, such as its helicopter pilots are Colombians, Peruvians, and Guatemalans, but most are from the U. S. All must speak passable Spanish and English, and all must possess U. S. government “Secret” personnel security clearances, except in the cases of foreign contractors, where this requirement may be waived.

DynCorp is tight lipped when it comes to its clients. Company spokesperson Janet Wineriter refused to comment on the company’s overseas operations. Nor will the State Department make on-the-record statements about DynCorp’s operations. Company paramedic Michael Demons apparently recently died of a heart attack on a Colombian military base and the U. S. Embassy in Bogotá attempted to keep his death secret. Because Demons was not a military officer and didn’t work directly for the U. S. government, there was no official report and his death was treated as if he were a tourist. DynCorp has also lost three pilots in action. None of these deaths were reported in the news media.

DynCorp also operates in Bolivia and Peru, in conflict zones where indigenous coca growers feel U. S. drug operations encroach on their cultural use of coca and their economic livelihood. In Peru these areas also face renewed activity of Shining Path guerillas. But by far the largest DynCorp operations are in Colombia, and according to its contract with the State Department, it has a “command and control” function in the field, apparently outside any government oversight.

DynCorp is openly labeled “mercenary” by a hostile Colombian press, a charge they vigorously deny. A State Department official told CorpWatch that “mercenaries are used in war. This is counter-narcotics.” But in Colombia, the line between the counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics has been blurred for many years. While it is true that Colombia now produces much of the cocaine used in the United States making it a target for the “war on drugs,” Washington’s policy objectives may go beyond drugs. The U. S. is also concerned about Colombia’s more than 30-year long guerilla insurgency. Critics say that Plan Colombia is an expansion of Washington’s involvement in counter-insurgency.

A hint of other U. S. policy aims is visible to anyone taking a commercial flight from Houston to Bogotá. Amongst the U. S. passengers, the embassy types, the businessmen and older ex-military types are easily recognizable. But those who stand out most are the young gringos with cocker-spaniel hairdos wearing blue jeans and sweatshirts with oil company logos inscribed on them. Increasing oil supplies is at the heart of Bush administration energy policy. And both U. S. presidential candidates during the 2000 elections had ties to major oil investments in Colombia. Al Gore’s family owns shares in Occidental Petroleum and now-President George Bush has ties to Harken Energy Inc., of Houston, Texas.

According to Fernando Caicedo, a middle-aged, mustached, but sprightly guerilla commander interviewed in southern Colombia: “the gringos want to exploit the whole upper Amazon region, an area that includes parts of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, known for its richness in black gold – oil.”

DynCorp’s day to day operations are overseen by a secretive clique of officials in the State Department’s Narcotic Affairs Section (NAS) and the State Department’s Air Wing, a group that includes unreformed cold warriors and leftovers from the Central American wars of the 1980’s. Working hand-in-hand with U. S. military officials, Narcotic Affairs is supposed to be part of the drug war only, running the fumigation operations against drug crops. But there are indications that it is also involved in the counter-insurgency. In areas that are targeted for fumigation by Narcotic Affairs, Colombian right-wing paramilitaries arrive, sometimes by military helicopter, according to a human rights worker living in the Putumayo who asked for anonymity. Members of these paramilitaries “clear the ground” so that the planes spraying herbicides, often piloted by Americans, are not shot at by angry farmers or insurgents.

“If we did not take control of zones ahead of the army, the guerrillas would shoot down their planes” said southern Colombia paramilitary leader, “Comando Wilson” last April. Many of these paramilitary forces have benefited from U. S. -financed military training in the Colombian Army. Their frequent apparent coordination with the Narcotic Affairs Section and their DynCorp employees, as well as with the Colombian Armed forces, raises the question of U. S. collaboration with “outsourced” death squads, a charge vehemently denied by U. S. officials.

Questions on Capitol Hill

The growing death toll around the use of contractors like DynCorp has caught the attention of U. S. lawmakers. In April, private forces under a CIA contract in Peru identified U. S. missionaries flying in a plane as suspected drug dealers. They notified the Peruvian Air Force which shot them down, killing a woman and her seven month old daughter. While there was speculation that DynCorp might be involved, the company vehemently denied the allegations. “DynCorp does not provide surveillance services under this program and was not involved in any manner in the incident that occurred in Peru,” according to spokesperson Charlene A. Wheeless. The New York Times reports another company, Aviation Development, was responsible for the downing of the plane. Aviation Development works in the same areas of Colombia as DynCorp, mainly as an airborne intelligence gatherer under contract to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Moved to action by the incident, Rep. Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill, submitted the Andean Region Contractor Accountability Act H. R.1591, “legislation that would prohibit U. S. funds from being used to contract with private military companies in the Andean region.”

“U. S. taxpayers are unwittingly funding a private war with private soldiers,” Schakowsky recently testified in Congress. “American taxpayers already pay $300 billion per year to fund the world’s most powerful military. Why should they have to pay a second time in order to privatize our operations? How is the public to know what their tax dollars are being used for? If there is a potential for a privatized Gulf of Tonkin incident, then the American people deserve to have a full and open debate before this policy goes any farther.”

“Are we outsourcing in order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment? Is it to hide body bags from the media and thus shield them from public opinion?” she asked. “Or is it to provide deniability because these private contractors are not covered by the same rules as active duty U. S. service persons.”

As Schakowsky’s bill winds its way through the bureaucracy on Capitol Hill, DynCorp continues to operate in Latin America free from public scrutiny or accountability.

From: Colombian Labor Monitor xx738@prairienet.org

Mercenary, Inc.?

Ken Silverstein
Washington Business Forward
April 26, 2001

Ed Soyster is a retired three-star general and the former director of the super-secret Defense Intelligence Agency, but in his conservative brown business suit, he looks more like Willy Loman than James Bond. It’s a chilly Tuesday morning in February, and Soyster has just greeted me at the door of Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), a rapidly growing firm based in Alexandria, VA, for which he is the spokesperson. MPRI’s headquarters - located in a five-story office building next to a

Best Western motel off the George Washington Parkway - appears as nondescript as Soyster. The reception-area coffee table is covered with old issues of Vanity Fair, CondeNast Traveler, Food & Wine and other standard fare. The firm’s name and corporate logo, a golden sword, are embossed on the front door. Aside from the vaguely martial insignia, nothing otherwise distinguishes MPRI from the thousands of beltway bandit firms that ring Greater Washington.

Given the nature of its business, MPRI’s low profile probably is not a coincidence. Despite this bland facade, MPRI has emerged as the leading player in a controversial field that critics call “Mercenary, Inc.” Defenders prefer the more innocuous “military service provider,” arguing that these 21st-century exporters of war strategy are a far cry from the soldiers of fortune of the past. The firm’s mission is to discreetly train foreign armies - often ones with atrocious human rights records - that are allied with the United States. The industry, though still in its infancy, is booming. So much so that last year MPRI was bought, on undisclosed terms, by L-3 Communications [ticker: LLL], a nearly $3-billion per year New York-based company that manufactures high-tech goods, primarily for the Pentagon.

MPRI’s corporate ranks are filled with dozens of retired officers. In fact, outside of the Pentagon, which is conveniently located just 10 minutes away, there are few places where you’ll find such a gathering of high-powered military men. As we head back to his office, Soyster points out the office of MPRI’s president, retired General Carl Vuono, U. S. Army chief of staff during the Gulf War, and introduces me to another retired general, Ron Griffiths, an executive vice president and a former Army vice chief of staff. Though he’s not in on the day I arrive, Vuono’s reputation precedes him: He’s a meat-and-potatoes military man and former combat arms officer who commanded two battalions in Vietnam.

To hear it from Soyster, MPRI sells a product that’s utterly conventional. In fact, he jokes during my brief tour of the office, the parent firm L-3 is a publicly traded corporation, “so anyone with a 401(k) retirement plan is probably an investor in our company.” Of course, most companies don’t go looking for business in countries rife with war and conflict.

During the past few years, MPRI has worked with a group of countries that sounds like a casting call for next year’s edition of Fielding’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places: Bosnia, Colombia, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.

The incentive to join up with MPRI, industry watchers say, is money. Though the firm does not disclose the pay of its top officers, analysts say they expect all ranks make more than their U. S. military equivalents. But Soyster resists the notion that MPRI employees are rolling in cash - he says a colonel actually makes less if he teaches an ROTC course for MPRI than he made before retiring, but could make more than his U. S. Army counterparts if he is posted overseas for the firm. In any case, Soyster says, there’s not much incentive for servicemen and women to quit and join MPRI, since the bump in pay is not dramatic, and because, like any contracting business, the work can be uncertain.

The Pentagon and the CIA have long used private contractors for a variety of tasks, from building base infrastructure to assisting with covert operations. But today’s scenario differs greatly from past practice. MPRI and other private military companies (PMCs) are not CIA cutouts but huge corporations with diverse interests. Their work is implemented not by CIA-trained foreign locals, but by high-ranking U. S. military officers fresh out of the armed forces.

Driving the proliferation of PMCs are the huge cutbacks in the number of U. S. armed forces personnel following the end of the Cold War. Between 1985 - the height of the Reagan-era military buildup - and 1999, troop levels have fallen by an average of 30 percent, thereby stretching the Pentagon’s ability to carry out certain tasks. “Private companies augment our ability to provide foreign training,” explains retired Lieutenant General Larry Skibbie, now at the National Defense Industrial Association. “We’ll see more and more of this as we continue to cut back on our uniformed forces.”

Indeed, PMCs are effectively an arm of foreign policy. Before offering military assistance to foreign governments, PMCs must apply for a license from the State Department’s Office of Defense Trade Controls, which oversees the emerging field. “License requests are very carefully reviewed,” says an official at SAIC, a San Diego-based firm (with 14,000 employees in Greater Washington and 41,000 worldwide) that dabbles in PMC work. “Even when you’re just at the talking stage, there is a very high level of scrutiny.” SAIC, by the way, also spawned a historically significant technology company: Network Solutions, the firm that once held exclusive rights to Internet domain name registration.

Critics charge that the use of private military contractors allows the United States to pursue its geopolitical interests without deploying its own army, this being especially useful in cases where training is provided to regimes with dubious human rights records. And if a contractor’s employee gets killed overseas, it doesn’t provoke nearly as much political uproar as does the death of an American soldier. “It’s foreign policy by proxy,” Dan Nelson, a professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany, and a former visiting scholar at the U. S. Department of State and the Department of Defense, says of the use of PMCs. “Corporate entities are used to perform tasks that the government, for budgetary reasons or political sensitivities, cannot carry out.”

Multinational corporations, particularly those operating in countries where governments exert little control over their territory, are also turning to private contractors for help. In Africa, a number of U. S. and European PMCs stand guard at mining sites, oil fields and other economic installations. (Unlike some PMCs, MPRI does not perform guard duty for corporate clients, but only works for governments). “Companies need to protect their assets and shareholder value,” says Michael Grunberg, an official with Sandline, a prominent British PMC. “It’s like posting a guard at the bank.”

There are just a few dozen American PMCs, and few of those dominate the business. In Saudi Arabia, a subsidiary of TRW called Vinnell trains the National Guard, which is deemed to be more reliable than the army and protects the royal family and strategic facilities such as oil installations. Vinnell has about 1,000 employees in Saudi Arabia - many of them U. S. Army Special Forces veterans - who are based at five National Guard sites. During the Gulf War, Vinnell employees were deployed along with Saudi units and got bonus pay for hazardous duty.

AirScan, a firm based in Titusville, FL, works for the Pentagon, the Air Force and a variety of multinational corporations. The company’s promotional literature says that its “experienced crews, effective systems, and complete integration with ground forces” allow AirScan to “accurately direct ground personnel to the threat [and provide] observation and communication required for successful security operations.” AirScan has worked for Chevron in Angola, where it served with the local military in seeking to protect the oil company’s operations against a guerrilla threat. More recently, AirScan surfaced in Colombia, where it helps the army and Occidental Petroleum protect pipelines from leftist guerrillas who have been fighting the government there for nearly four decades.

DynCorp, a company based in Reston, VA, with annual revenues that top $1 billion, does business with a host of government agencies and has interests that range from environmental cleanup and information technology to the more murky areas of national security. In Colombia, the company works under contract with the State Department in providing pilots, trainers and maintenance workers for the Colombian government’s vast aerial eradication program to destroy drug crops. PMCs aren’t supposed to be engaged in combat - but in late February, several DynCorp workers flew into the middle of a firefight, landing their helicopter to rescue the crew of a police chopper brought down by leftist guerrillas.

DynCorp is also involved on the frontlines of various other Latin American drug wars. In the early 1990s, the State Department hired the company for the ostensible purpose of maintaining helicopters then on loan to Peruvian police. In 1992, three DynCorp employees died when one of those helicopters was hit by fire from Shining Path guerrillas while flying over a major coca-growing region. Two of the casualties turned out to be former covert-ops specialists, including Robert Hitchman, a former Marine Corps fighter pilot who worked for Air America (the CIA’s airline and covert operations front in Indochina during the 1960s). Another of DynCorp’s near- casualties, though in a far different context, was CEO Dan Bannister. He was scheduled to be on the 1996 military flight in the Balkans that crashed and killed all aboard, including then- Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, but decided at the last minute to skip it. “I am the luckiest man alive,” Bannister said in press accounts after the crash.

In business terms, MPRI has shot up through the ranks. When retired General Vernon Lewis founded the firm in 1988, MPRI had just three full-time employees. Its payroll climbed to 40 in 1992 and 850 today, plus a database of some 12,000 retired military personnel who can be called upon to handle contract work. Revenues have also soared, from $4 million in 1995 to $70 million last year.

It was that sort of growth that led L-3 Communications - founded in 1997 as a spin-off of 10 electronics manufacturing divisions of Lockheed Martin - to swoop in and purchase MPRI. L-3 hasn’t done so badly, either: Its tripled in size since its founding, and the company’s stock price has roughly doubled during the past 12 months. The deal was unusual in that L-3 primarily sells hardware, including flight recorders, control systems for satellites and the controlled momentum gyroscope that keeps the International Space Station in its orbit, whereas MPRI sells services.

(Founder Vernon Lewis stepped down as CEO two years ago and became chairman of the board. When L-3 bought the company, the MPRI board was phased out, and Lewis has had no role with the firm since. He was, of course, a shareholder at the time L-3 purchased the company. )

Frank Lanza, L-3’s chairman and CEO, believes privatization of military services will continue to expand and sees MPRI as a hot property with “competitive advantages” that no other training business can match. “It’s a well-managed company with double-digit profit margins,” he says in a phone conversation from his New York office. Lanza acknowledges MPRI’s military training programs are controversial and says that’s made him view its overseas ventures with caution. “They can’t go anywhere without government approval, but there could still be negative public opinion,” he says. “We’re sensitive to that and watching it very closely so we don’t get involved in a situation by accident.”

Lanza’s upbeat assessment is shared by industry-watcher Deborah Avant, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University who is working on a book about PMCs. “Technically, MPRI has competitors, but it’s got a unique mix of personnel and connections,” she says. “They pretty much have a corner on their piece of the market.”

During its early years, MPRI maintained a cool, if not downright suspicious, relationship with the press. There are still some areas that Soyster prefers not to discuss, but the firm has become increasingly accessible to the media. Indeed, given some of the things I’ve written about MPRI in the past - “mercenary” is one of the more polite appellations I’ve used to describe the company - Soyster’s very consent to an interview was somewhat unexpected. The company makes every effort to be seen as just another business entity - its website www. mpri. com is filled with lingo that could be pulled off almost any corporate site. It’s just that this site’s “job opportunities” section includes headings like: “Kuwait - Infantry.”

As he explains in his office (Soyster apologizes that he can’t give me a full slideshow presentation in the nearby conference room, as it is being used to host the new ambassador to Nigeria, a company client), MPRI has three distinct divisions. The National Group, headed by retired Lieutenant General Jerry Bates, develops curriculum for the Pentagon’s War Colleges, tests new military equipment and trains troops to use it, and runs ROTC programs at more than 200 universities. Joe Wolfinger, a former deputy director of the FBI, runs the Alexandria Group, which was introduced last year. It handles training for law enforcement agencies, offers seminars in leader development, and conducts background investigations for government and corporate clients. The International Group, headed by former General Crosbie Saint, who commanded the U. S. Army in Europe between 1988 and 1992, handles foreign training programs. Though it generates just 40 percent of MPRI’s revenues, the International Group has attracted by far the most public scrutiny.

Soyster vehemently objects to the description of MPRI as a “mercenary” firm, saying that the work of the International Group is restricted to training, education on the military’s role in a democracy, leader development and strategic planning. “We’ve all carried guns and used them, but we don’t do so for MPRI,” he states emphatically, adding that company employees on assignment overseas dress in business suits, not military uniforms. MPRI has even turned down contracts - for example, guarding overseas embassies - which would require its staff to carry weapons, for fear of bad publicity. “The scenario we’re afraid of is that a situation gets out of hand and one of our guys has to shoot someone,” he tells me as he fingers the black gemstone on his 1957 class ring from West Point. “You just know that it’s not gonna be the head of the group who gets shot, but a 21-year-old pregnant woman. It’s not worth the risk.”

With his straight-shooting bonhomie, Soyster is easy to like. He’s great fun to shoot the breeze with - after all, he’s led an interesting career and has the stories to back it up.

That’s probably a key reason why he’s the go-to guy to tell the firm’s story. Soyster says MPRI got its first big overseas contract in 1994, when Croatia hired the firm to advise its military forces. The company dispatched a team to Zagreb that arrived during a period of particularly intense fighting between Croat and Serb forces. “The Croatians saw their future with the West, not the East,” says Soyster, who says MPRI’s role was limited to classroom instruction on tactics and did not include training in battlefield tactics. “They wanted to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, and we helped them achieve that.”

Yet just months after MPRI’s arrival, Croatia’s army - which until MPRI came on the scene had been viewed as bumbling and inept - launched a series of bloody and highly successful offensives against Serb forces.

Most important was Operation Lightning Storm, the assault on the Krajina region during which Serbian villages were sacked and burned, hundreds of civilians were killed and some 170,000 people were driven from their homes. Soyster says that MPRI, like the U. S. government, knew the attack on the Krajina would take place and that perhaps half a dozen officers who graduated from its training seminars took part in the operation.

Otherwise, he insists, the company played no role in the Krajina campaign. “It’s impossible, no matter how good you are, to turn around an army in a few months,” he says. “But it’s a great myth. It’s good for our business.”

MPRI’s contract with Croatia has been renewed several times, and it still has a team in Zagreb today, though its presence there no longer attracts much attention. The firm is also at work in neighboring Bosnia, which picked MPRI to train its new armed forces after winning independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1996. As part of that program - which is overseen by the U. S. government but paid for by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei and Malaysia - MPRI has designed a combat-training center, set up the Ministry of Defense, and helped establish an army that Soyster says is designed to handle defensive tasks. At the program’s peak, MPRI had 230 former officers in Bosnia. “We had about 30 colonels over there, five divisions’ worth,” Soyster boasts. “The U. S. Army can’t send those kind of numbers.”

MPRI is also expanding in Africa, where it is helping implement the Pentagon’s African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), a program designed to strengthen U. S. ties to African nations and create an indigenous “peace- keeping” force on the continent. Seven nations are participating in ACRI - Benin, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Malawi, Mali, Senegal and Uganda - with MPRI’s role being to provide leadership training. None of those nations has a stellar human rights record.

Elsewhere in Africa, MPRI has a $7-million contract with the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to instruct the Nigerian military, which ruled the country for almost 15 years before turning power over to civilians in 1999. MPRI is also training the new Coast Guard in Equatorial Guinea, which recently uncovered huge offshore oil deposits. That country is headed by a government that the conservative human rights group Freedom

House rates, along with countries like Burma, North Korea and Iraq, as having one of the world’s worst records on political and civil liberties.

Soyster traveled to Equatorial Guinea last year to kick off MPRI’s work and has met on five occasions with the president of the country, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

On other continents, MPRI’s clients have ranged from the benign - such as Sweden, where the armed forces were briefed on the Gulf War - to the questionable. In Colombia, for example, MPRI helped the Ministry of Defense, in Soyster’s words, “reorganize and orient itself toward counter-drug operations” on a contract paid for by the Pentagon. Soyster concedes that MPRI’s clients frequently aren’t poster children for political freedom, but he says that’s exactly the point of working with them. “There’s no point in training the Queen’s Islanders,” he says. “To control human rights violations you need a well-trained, efficient army. Wringing your hands is not going to solve the problem.”

He walks over to a bookshelf and pulls out a three-ring binder with seminar materials that the company has used to instruct African military officers. “Let us all be clear on this point,” reads a section of text he points to. “The establishment and maintenance of civilian control and oversight of the military form the foundation upon which the stability of democracy is built.” Looking up from the page, Soyster says that he and his colleagues at MPRI have devoted 30 years of their lives to a system in which the military is subordinate to elected leadership. “That guy over there on the wall” - here he points to a picture of former General Douglas

McArthur that accompanies a framed newspaper story from the 1950s - “had a problem with President Truman. As you may recall, the president won.” But not all of the firm’s clients have learned the lesson: In the Ivory Coast, the military seized power less than a week after MPRI concluded its instruction, though no one suggests there was a link between the coursework and the coup.

For better or for worse, PMCs are here to stay. According to Soyster, MPRI has potential deals brewing across the globe, from Poland in Europe to Argentina in South America to Bahrain in the Middle East. “You’re probably not gonna hear people say they’re going to MPRI-ize their country the way you Hoover your apartment in England,” he says while walking me back to the front door and heading out to an appointment,“but we are developing a pretty good brand name.”

From: Adam Isacson isacson@ciponline.org

State Department Fact Sheet: Civilian Contractors and U. S. Military Personnel Supporting Plan Colombia

When it approved funding in support of the programs of the Colombian Government (known as Plan Colombia) in July 2000, the United States Congress also placed limits on the number of U. S. military personnel and U. S. citizen civilian contractors to support Plan Colombia: 500 permanent and temporary duty U. S. military personnel and 300 U. S. citizen civilian contractors (see note 1). The U. S. Embassy in Bogota closely monitors those limits. Although personnel levels vary as projects are begun, implemented and then completed, the Embassy carefully ensures that the ceilings are not exceeded. Reports are provided by the Executive Branch to the Congress on a regular basis covering the numbers and activities of all U. S. military and contractor personnel in Colombia.

U. S. programs in support of Plan Colombia are undertaken by U. S. civilian government employees, U. S. military personnel, and non-U. S. civilian contractors. (note 2).

CIVILIAN CONTRACT PERSONNEL

Activities encompass a broad range of programs (note 3), some of which have been underway for many years, while others have been initiated or expanded to support Plan Colombia. Three agencies (State, USAID and DOD) account for the overwhelming majority of U. S. government activities in Colombia using civilian contractors.

State Department

U. S. anti-narcotics programs in Colombia seek to eliminate the cultivation of opium poppy and coca leaf, as well as the trafficking of illicit drugs and their chemical precursors. Toward these objectives, U. S. assistance is provided to the Government of Colombia to strengthen its capabilities to disrupt and dismantle drug trafficking organizations, destroy the cocaine and heroin processing industries, and prevent the diversion of licit chemicals into illicit channels. Many of these activities, including aerial spraying, pre-date Plan Colombia.

The aerial spraying program in Colombia is conducted by the Colombian National Police (CNP) with support from the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), the American Embassy’s Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS) and United States citizen, third country national and Colombian personnel contracted by the State Department with DynCorp Aerospace Technologies.

As of late March 2001, there were just over 100 U. S. citizen civilian contractors with Dyncorp in Colombia, the majority of whom were in place well before the legislation in support of Plan Colombia was enacted. An approximately equal number of third country nationals and Colombian citizens are also employed under this contract. These contractors work on counternarcotics projects with the Antinarcotics Directorate (DIRAN) and air wing of the Colombian National Police, and also support the Aviation Brigade of the Colombian Army.

Generally, twelve of the pilots in the aerial spraying program, flying OV-10 aircraft, are U. S. civilian contractors, approximately six of whom are in Colombia on any given day. The pilots of the other spray aircraft (T-65 single engine airplanes) are employed by the Colombian National Police and are not U. S. citizens.

Spray aircraft are accompanied by escort helicopters that carry combined U. S. contractor and Colombian National Police crews, and by search and rescue helicopters which also carry combined crews. On a typical mission U. S. civilian contractors accompany the spray operation in these helicopters as pilots and medics, but not as gunners. These contractors provide support for Colombian National Police counternarcotics and law enforcement operations and do not have a counterinsurgency role. Currently, there are four U. S. civilian contractors in Colombia working as helicopter pilots. There is one contractor pilot in each escort aircraft and two DynCorp contractor pilots and two SAR personnel in the search and rescue aircraft. The co-pilots and gunners are members of the Colombian National Police.

All U. S. contractor support to the Colombian aerial spraying program contains an integral training component with a goal of completely nationalizing the program. Deliveries in late 2001/early 2002 of nine new T-65 spray aircraft will require additional training and logistical assistance from civilian contractors. The current goal is to phase out U. S. support for the aerial spraying mission two years after arrival of these additional aircraft.

The State Department contract with DynCorp also supports the 33 UH-1N helicopters supplied to the Colombian Army to provide airmobility for the three counternarcotics battalions. Approximately 25 U. S. citizen contractors provide training and logistical support to the UH-1Ns, but they do not fly in counternarcotics missions.

United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

The U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) currently has eleven U. S. civilian contractors based in Bogota working on social and economic development and administration of justice programs in support of Plan Colombia. These numbers have been as high as 16 and are expected to reach 35 by the end of 2001. The contractors are engaged in alternative development, democracy building, including expanded administration of justice and human rights activities, and managing the displaced persons program, as well as providing internal administrative support. As these grow and new programs in local governance, anti-corruption and support for the peace process are implemented, USAID will make greater use of contractors, primarily through Colombian, U. S. and international NGOs.

Department of Defense (DOD)

DOD employs U. S. citizen civilian contractors to carry out several programs in support of Plan Colombia. DOD requires these contractors due to shortages of military personnel in specific technical areas or where specialized expertise is needed.

Approximately thirteen U. S. citizen civilian contractors provide technical support to the Colombian army at several radar sites and another sixteen U. S. civilian contractors provide information for force protection and counterdrug operations.

Four civilian contractors are now in Colombia to provide advance support for the first delivery of UH-60L (Blackhawk) helicopters. These contractors will provide logistical support, training and maintenance for the 14 Blackhawks being supplied to the Colombian Army’s counternarcotics battalions. The number of these contractors will increase in the coming year to support these helicopters as they are delivered.

The average number of U. S. citizen civilian contractors working on State Department, USAID and DOD programs supporting Plan Colombia on any given day has been in the range of 160-180 persons.

U. S. MILITARY PERSONNEL

The primary focus of Department of Defense activities in Colombia, through the United States Military Group (MILGP), is counternarcotics with the provision of training, equipment, infrastructure development, intelligence support, detection, and monitoring information to Colombian armed forces units engaged in counterdrug operations. This assistance is to increase the capabilities of Colombian land, sea, and air security forces to detect and interdict narcotrafficking operations and to assist the Colombian National Police (CNP) in its eradication and law enforcement mission. These military personnel (as well as civilian contractors described above) are supervised by the MILGP at the U. S. Embassy in Bogota.

The most significant recent activities for U. S. military personnel have been training and equipping the second and third counternarcotics battalions of the Colombian Army; completing training and equipping the Colombian counternarcotics brigade headquarters; and providing design, contract, and oversight services for a variety of Colombian Army aviation infrastructure projects to support the UN-1N, Huey-II, and UH-60 helicopter programs.

The largest single category of U. S. military personnel now in Colombia are approximately 90 Special Forces trainers. Their training of the third counternarcotics battalion is planned to be completed in late-May 2001, after which they will depart. Other short-term U. S. military training teams are in Colombia to work with the military and police. One U. S. military Staff Judge Advocate officer was assigned to the Milgroup for six months to support human rights training, develop rules of engagement and assist in the professionalization of the Colombian military legal corps. MILGP staffing also includes administrative and support personnel.

The total number of U. S. military trainers has typically been between 60 to 100 persons for variable periods of time depending on the assignment. The average number of all U. S. military personnel on any given day (both permanent and temporary duty military personnel) in Colombia to support Plan Colombia has been in the range of 200. In mid-March 2001, for example, there were 183 permanent and temporary U. S. military personnel in support of Plan Colombia.

Notes:

(1) Title III, Chapter 2, of the Emergency Supplemental Act,2000, as enacted in the Military Constructions Appropriations Act,2001, P. L.106-246.

(2) Plan Colombia is defined by Section 3204(h) in the legislation as “. . . the plan of the Government of Colombia instituted by the administration of President Pastrana to combat drug production and trafficking, foster peace, increase the rule of law, improve human rights, expand economic development, and institute justice reform.”

(3) U. S. programs include the provision of training, equipment, infrastructure development, funding, aviation support and expertise to the Government of Colombia and Colombian civil society in the areas of alternative development, interdiction, eradication, law enforcement, institutional strengthening, judicial reform, human rights, humanitarian assistance for displaced persons, local governance, anti-corruption, conflict management and peace, the rehabilitation of child soldiers, and preservation of the environment.