October 13th, 2002
By LESLIE WAYNE
The New York Times
WITH the war on terror already a year old and the possibility of war
against Iraq growing by the day, a modern version of an ancient practice
-- one as old as warfare itself -- is reasserting itself at the Pentagon.
Mercenaries, as they were once known, are thriving -- only this time they
are called private military contractors, and some are even subsidiaries
of Fortune 500 companies.
The Pentagon cannot go to war without them. Often run by retired military
officers, including three- and four-star generals, private military contractors
are the new business face of war. Blurring the line between military and
civilian, they provide stand-ins for active soldiers in everything from
logistical support to battlefield training and military advice at home
and abroad.
Some are helping to conduct training exercises using live ammunition
for American troops in Kuwait, under the code name Desert Spring. One has
just been hired to guard President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the target
of a recent assassination attempt. Another is helping to write the book
on airport security. Others have employees who don their old uniforms to
work under contract as military recruiters and instructors in R.O.T.C.
classes, selecting and training the next generation of soldiers.
In the darker recesses of the world, private contractors go where the
Pentagon would prefer not to be seen, carrying out military exercises for
the American government, far from Washington's view. In the last few years,
they have sent their employees to Bosnia, Nigeria, Macedonia, Colombia
and other global hot spots.
Motivated as much by profits as politics, these companies -- about 35
all told in the United States -- need the government's permission to be
in business. A few are somewhat familiar names, like Kellogg Brown &
Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company that operates for the government
in Cuba and Central Asia. Others have more cryptic names, like DynCorp;
Vinnell, a subsidiary of TRW; SAIC; ICI of Oregon; and Logicon, a unit
of Northrop Grumman. One of the best known, MPRI, boasts of having "more
generals per square foot than in the Pentagon."
During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, one of every 50 people on the battlefield
was an American civilian under contract; by the time of the peacekeeping
effort in Bosnia in 1996, the figure was one in 10. No one knows for sure
how big this secretive industry is, but some military experts estimate
the global market at $100 billion. As for the public companies that own
private military contractors, they say little if anything about them to
shareholders.
"Contractors are indispensible," said John J. Hamre, deputy secretary
of defense in the Clinton administration. "Will there be more in the future?
Yes, and they are not just running the soup kitchens."
That means even more business, and profits, for contractors who perform
tasks as mundane as maintaining barracks for overseas troops, as sophisticated
as operating weapon systems or as secretive as intelligence-gathering in
Africa. Many function near, or even at, the front lines, causing concern
among military strategists about their safety and commitment if bullets
start to fly.
THE use of military contractors raises other troubling questions as
well. In peace, they can act as a secret army outside of public view. In
war, while providing functions crucial to the combat effort, they are not
soldiers. Private contractors are not obligated to take orders or to follow
military codes of conduct. Their legal obligation is solely to an employment
contract, not to their country.
Private military contractors are flushing out drug traffickers in Colombia
and turning the rag-tag militias of African nations into fighting machines.
When a United Nations arms embargo restricted the American military in
the Balkans, private military contractors were sent instead to train the
local forces.
At times, the results have been disastrous.
In Bosnia, employees of DynCorp were found to be operating a sex-slave
ring of young women who were held for prostitution after their passports
were confiscated. In Croatia, local forces, trained by MPRI, used what
they learned to conduct one of the worst episodes of "ethnic cleansing,"
an event that left more than 100,000 homeless and hundreds dead and resulted
in war-crimes indictments. No employee of either firm has ever been charged
in these incidents.
In Peru last year, a plane carrying an American missionary and her infant
was accidentally shot down when a private military contractor misidentified
it as on a drug smuggling flight.
MPRI, formerly known as Military Professionals Resources Inc., may provide
the best example of how skilled retired soldiers cash in on their military
training. Its roster includes Gen. Carl E. Vuono, the former Army chief
of staff who led the gulf war and the Panama invasion; Gen. Crosbie E.
Saint, the former commander of the United States Army in Europe; and Gen.
Ron Griffith, the former Army vice chief of staff. There are also dozens
of retired top-ranked generals, an admiral and more than 10,000 former
military personnel, including elite special forces, on call and ready for
assignment.
"We can have 20 qualified people on the Serbian border within 24 hours,"
said Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, the company's spokesman and a former director
of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "The Army can't do that. But contractors
can."
For that, MPRI is paid well. Its revenue exceeds $100 million a year,
mainly from Pentagon and State Department contracts. Retired military personnel
working for MPRI receive two to three times their Pentagon salaries, in
addition to their retirement benefits and corporate benefits like stock
options and 401(k) plans. MPRI's founders became millionaires in July 2000,
when they and about 35 equity holders sold the company for $40 million
in cash to L-3 Communications, a military contractor traded on the New
York Stock Exchange.
Within the military, the use of contractors is Defense Department policy
for filling the gaps as the number of troops falls. At the time of the
gulf war, there were 780,000 Army troops; today there are 480,000. Over
the same period, overall military forces have fallen by 500,000.
Pentagon officials did not respond to many telephone calls and e-mail
messages requesting interviews, but they have maintained that contractors
are a cost-effective way of extending the military's reach when Congress
and the American public are reluctant to pay for more soldiers.
"The main reason for using a contractor is that it saves you from having
to use troops, so troops can focus on war fighting," said Col. Thomas W.
Sweeney, a professor of strategic logistics at the Army War College in
Carlisle, Pa. "It's cheaper because you only pay for contractors when you
use them."
But one person's cost-saving device can be another's "guns for hire,"
as David Hackworth, a former Army colonel and frequent critic of the military,
called them.
"These new mercenaries work for the Defense and State Department and
Congress looks the other way," Colonel Hackworth, a highly decorated Vietnam
veteran, said. "It's a very dangerous situation. It allows us to get into
fights where we would be reluctant to send the Defense Department or the
C.I.A. The American taxpayer is paying for our own mercenary army, which
violates what our founding fathers said."
They are not mercenaries in the classic sense. Most, but not all, private
military contractors are unarmed, even when they oversee others with guns.
They have even formed a trade group, the International Peace Operations
Association, to promote industry standards.
"We don't want to risk getting contracts by being called mercenaries,"
said Doug Brooks, president of the association. "But we can do things on
short notice and keep our mouths shut."
That, some critics say, is part of the problem. By using for-profit
soldiers, the government, especially the executive branch, can evade Congressional
limits on troop strength. For instance, in Bosnia, where a cap of 20,000
troops was imposed by Congress, the addition of 2,000 contractors helped
skirt that restriction.
Contractors also allow the administration to carry out foreign policy
goals in low-level skirmishes around the globe -- often fueled by ethnic
hatreds and a surplus of cold war weapons -- without having to fear the
media attention that comes if American soldiers are sent home in body bags.
At least five DynCorp employees have been killed in Latin America, with
no public outcry. Denial is easier for the government when those working
overseas do not wear uniforms -- they often wear fatigues or military-looking
clothes but not official uniforms.
"If you sent in troops, someone will know; if contractors, they may
not," said Deborah Avant, an associate professor of political science at
George Washington University and author of many studies on the subject.
Only a few members of Congress have expressed concern about the phenomenon.
"There are inherent difficulties with the increasing use of contactors
to carry out U.S. foreign policy," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat
of Vermont and the chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee. "This
is especially true when it involves 'private' soldiers who are not as accountable
as U.S. military personnel. Accountability is a serious issue when it comes
to carrying guns or flying helicopters in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy
goals."
In the House, Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, led
the battle against a Bush administration effort to remove the cap that
limits the number of American troops in Colombia to 500 and private contractors
to 300.
"American taxpayers already pay $300 billion a year to fund the world's
most powerful military," Ms. Schakowsky said. "Why should they have to
pay a second time in order to privatize our operations? 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?"
SUCH concerns are hardly slowing the pace across the Potomac, at MPRI
in Alexandria, Va. The company may look like hundreds of other white-collar
concerns that fill small office buildings in northern Virginia, but there
are telltale signs to the contrary: the sword that serves as the corporate
logo and conference rooms named the Infantry Room, the Cavalry Room and
the Artillery Room. Its art consists of paintings of celebrated battles,
largely from the Civil War.
It's hard to tell where the United States military ends and MPRI begins.
For the last four years, MPRI has run R.O.T.C. training programs at more
than 200 universities, under a contract that has allowed retired military
to put their uniforms back on. It recently lost the contract to a lower
bidder, but MPRI offset the loss with one to provide former soldiers to
run recruitment offices.
The company, which has 900 full-time employees, helps run the United
States Army Force Management School at Fort Belvoir. It also provides instructors
for advanced training classes at Fort Leavenworth, teaches the Civil Air
Patrol and designs courses at Fort Sill, Fort Knox, Fort Lee and other
military centers.
The Pentagon has even hired MPRI to help it write military doctrine
-- including the field manual called "Contractors Support on the Battlefield"
that sets rules for how the Army should interact with private contractors,
like itself.
Overseas, MPRI is, if anything, more active. Under a program it calls
"democracy transition," the company has offered countries like Nigeria,
Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Croatia and Macedonia training in
American-style warfare, including war games, military instruction and weapons
training.
In Croatia, MPRI was brought in to provide border monitors in the early
1990's. Then, in 1994, as the United States grew concerned about the poor
quality of the Croatian forces and their ability to maintain regional stability,
it turned to MPRI. A United Nations arms embargo in 1991, approved by the
United States, prohibited the sale of weapons or the providing of training
to any warring party in the Balkans. But the Pentagon referred MPRI to
Croatia's defense minister, who hired the company to train its forces.
In 1995, MPRI started doing so, teaching the fledgling army military
tactics that MPRI executives had developed while on active duty commanding
the gulf war invasion. Several months later, armed with this new training,
the Croatian army began Operation Storm, one of the bloodiest episodes
of "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, an event that also reshaped the military
balance in the region.
The operation drove more than 100,000 Serbs from their homes in a four-day
assault. Investigators for the international war crimes tribunal in the
Hague found that the Croatian army carried out summary executions and indiscriminately
shelled civilians. "In a widespread and systematic matter, Croatian troops
committed murder and other inhumane acts," investigators said in their
report. Several Croatian generals in charge of the operation have been
indicted for war crimes and are being sought for trial.
"No MPRI employee played a role in planning, monitoring or assisting
in Operation Storm," said Lieutenant General Soyster, the MPRI spokesman.
He did say that a few Croatian graduates of MPRI's training course participated
in the operation.
Yet what happened in Croatia gave MPRI international brand recognition
and more business in that region. When Bosnian Muslims balked in 1995 at
signing the Dayton peace accords out of fear that their army was ill-equipped
to provide sufficient protection, MPRI was called in.
"The Bosnians said they would not sign unless they had help building
their army," said Peter Singer, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings
Institution who is writing a book on contractors. "And they said they wanted
the same guys who helped the Croatians."
That is who they got. Under a plan worked out by American negotiators,
the Bosnian Muslims hired MPRI using money that was provided by a group
of Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei, the United
Arab Emirates and Malaysia. These nations deposited money in the United
States Treasury, which MPRI drew against.
"It was a brilliant move in that the U.S. government got someone else
to pay for what we wanted from a policy standpoint," Mr. Singer said.
At the moment, MPRI is advertising for special forces for antiterrorist
operations, is bulking up to train American forces in Kuwait and is looking
for people with special skills like basic-training instruction and counterintelligence.
Recently, however, it lost a $4.3 million contract to provide training
to the army in Colombia when officials there complained about what they
called the poor quality of MPRI's services.
In Africa, MPRI has conducted training programs on security issues for
about 120 African leaders and more than 5,500 African troops. Most recently,
it went toe to toe with the State Department, and won, gaining permission
to do business in Equatorial Guinea, a country with a deplorable human
rights record where the United States does not have an embassy.
After two years of lobbying at the State Department, and after being
turned down twice on human rights grounds, MPRI was finally given approval
last year to work with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, whom the State
Department describes as holding power through torture, fraud and a 98 percent
election mandate. MPRI advised President Obiang on building a coast guard
to protect the oil-rich waters being explored by Exxon Mobil off the coast.
More recently, when MPRI and President Obiang proposed that MPRI also
help the country build its police and military forces, the State Department
objected and the project is now dormant.
"We thought helping the coast guard would be pretty innocuous in terms
of human rights," Lieutenant General Soyster of MPRI said. But Ms. Avant
of George Washington University disagreed, saying any alliance with United
States military contractors would strengthen President Obiang's power.
MPRI is not the only company to have run into problems overseas. DynCorp,
a privately held company in Reston, Va., with nearly $2 billion in annual
sales, has been tapped to provide protection for Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan.
DynCorp also provides worldwide protective services for State Department
employees.
In late September, DynCorp settled charges -- for an undisclosed sum
-- brought by a whistle-blower the company had fired after he complained
of a sex ring run by DynCorp employees in Bosnia. In August, a British
court, meanwhile, ruled in favor of another former DynCorp employee in
a separate whistle-blower case. DynCorp is appealing.
The two employees made similar accusations: that while working in Bosnia,
where DynCorp was providing military equipment maintenance services, DynCorp
employees kept underaged women as sex slaves, even videotaping a rape.
Among the charges was that while the DynCorp employees trafficked in women
-- including buying one for $1,000 -- the company turned a blind eye. Since
the DynCorp employees involved were not soldiers, their actions were not
subject to military discipline. Nor did they face local justice; they were
simply fired and sent home.
In both cases, after complaining, the two employees who blew the whistle
were fired. Ben Johnston, one of them, said last April in Congressional
testimony: "DynCorp employees were living off post and owning these children
and these women and girls as slaves. Well, that makes all Americans look
bad. I believe DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want
overseas."
A DynCorp spokesman, Chuck Taylor, said the company "felt horrible"
and held its own internal investigation before firing the employees who
operated the ring.
DynCorp also handles aerial anti-narcotics efforts for the United States
government in the skies over Colombia and nearby countries -- where several
employees have been killed. Because of Congressional caps on the use of
private military contractors, DynCorp has hired local citizens; two were
recently killed.
Still, in its recruiting material, the company plays up the excitement
of this type of work: "Being the best is never easy and when your office
is the cockpit of a twin-engine plane swooping low over the Colombian jungle,
the challenges can often be enormous."
Incidents like these -- sex rings, deals with dictators, misused military
training and tragic accidents -- raise questions about the use of contractors.
To whom are they accountable: the United States government or their contract?
When such incidents occur, who bears the responsibility?
Moreover, while the general mantra about military privatization is that
it saves money, there are few studies to prove the case -- and in fact,
reports exist to the contrary.
For instance, Kellogg Brown & Root, which was paid $2.2 billion
to provide logistics support to American troops in the Balkans, was the
subject of a General Accounting Office report entitled, "Army Should Do
More to Control Contract Costs in the Balkans." The office found that the
Army was not exercising enough oversight on Kellogg Brown & Root as
contract costs rose, to the benefit of the company. Still, the company
continues to pick up new business.
Questions about security and control are even more basic. In the battlefield,
a commander cannot give orders to a contractor as he can a soldier. Contractors
are not compelled by an oath of office, as soldiers are, but instead by
an employment contract that provides little flexibility. Nor are contractors
subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Contractors cannot arm themselves -- they risk losing their status as
noncombatants if they do and, in the extreme, could be declared mercenaries
and subject to execution if captured. Yet in the gulf war, contractors
were in the thick of battle, providing maintenance to tanks and biological
and chemical vehicles as well as flying air support.
Should there be a war in Iraq, the line could be even blurrier.
"There are no rear areas anymore," Colonel Sweeney of the Army War College
said. With chemical and biological weapons, "no place is safe," he said.
"You can't draw a map and say 'no contractors forward of this line,'
" he added. "The American concept of combat is to take the battle to the
rear areas and be as disruptive as possible. The other guy is thinking
the same thing."
One tenet of warfare is that soldiers handling support functions can
grab a gun and hit the front lines if needed. While this is often dismissed
as a quaint World War II concept, it happened in Somalia in 1993 when Army
rangers were in trouble and military supply clerks came to their rescue.
When the support staff is filled with contractors, would they do the same?
Or would commanders in the field become responsible for the safety of the
growing number of contractor employees at the expense of advancing the
battle?
The issue is just beginning to generate some attention in military circles.
"We sort of blur the lines," Col. Steven J. Zamparelli of the Air Force
said in an interview. In an article in 1999 for the Air Force Journal of
Logistics, Colonel Zamaparelli said: "The Department of Defense is gambling
future military victory on contractors' performing operational functions
in the battlefield."
Others in the military are more blunt about the effect on soldiers.
"Are we ultimately trading their blood to save a relatively insignificant
amount in the national budget?" said Lt. Col. Lourdes A. Castillo of the
Air Force, a logistics expert, in a 2000 article in Aerospace Power Journal.
"If this grand experiment undertaken by our national leadership fails during
wartime, the results will be unthinkable."
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