By Jake Allen

Recent allegations of misconduct, failing to meet contractual obligations, (to say nothing of just general stupidity and juvenile antics) by Armor Group staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul raises serious questions about leadership both at Armor Group and at the U.S. State Department.

We’ve yet to hear anyone from Armor Group comment in detail on this case but I can just imagine the way it will sound when it comes out.

Armor Group guards at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul seen drinking vodka as it runs down the back of their colleagues.

We take this very seriously…

we are investigating…

it’s an isolated incident…

we are getting it fixed…

When questioned about allegations of misconduct at Blackwater, the founder, Erik Prince is often quoted as saying, “Listen, these guys are all patriots, military veterans and professionals.” As if being a patriot and a veteran meant no oversight is necessary.

History is full of idiots who were military veterans and who viewed themselves as patriots yet clearly took actions which were against the interests of the U.S. One prime example is Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted and later executed for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The point is that being a veteran does not mean you get a pass from being supervised or held to account for your actions.

Listen, I served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and I consider that organization to hold the highest standard in military professionalism.   But despite the the high level of professionalism found at all ranks of the Corps at no time was I or anyone else ever devoid of oversight or the possibility of prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) if we failed to follow the rules.

The command structure, the rules, regulations, policies, guidelines and standing operating procedures which are normal in any professional military organization do not exist to any meaningful degree within the private security/military industry.  At best you have a few companies who, relatively speaking, do better than most, but even that’s a pretty low standard to meet.

Furthermore, the consequences for breaking rules (that is…the few rules that actually exist) is virtually non-existent. In the U.S. military the UCMJ governs service personnel and all soldiers, airmen and Marines.  All servicemen know that failure to comply with any lawful order, law or rule or even policy or guideline runs the risk of prosecution non-judicial punishment (NJP), or court martial under the UCMJ.  Again, nothing even close to this exists within the world of private security. There really is no accountability comparable to the UCMJ and NJP amounts only to merely a dismissal from your current contract.  And we all know that this is, in reality, no punishment at all since the offender often simply pop-ups somewhere else for another firm in a matter of weeks or months.

So, in short…no rules to follow at the industry level, few rules at the company level and no consequences for failing to follow abide by either.

But this cannot be pinned solely on Armor Group.  What about the client side? Increasingly it is coming to light that government clients, in contrast with private clients, are systemically inept at managing the procurement, selection and oversight of security contracts. I have personally worked on contracts which have both private clients and government clients and though neither do a very good job, the government side and in particular the U.S. State Department are painfully ill equipped to do this work.

The reasons for this are puzzling, especially as at this stage, after 8 years of war in Afghanistan and 6+ years in Iraq there are literally hundreds of senior contractors with decades of military experience and multiple years of operational management experience for a PSC who could be hired by State in to sit on the ‘client side’ of the table during contract negotiations as well as during the later phases of contract execution.

For decades the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Services (DSS) program was a sleepy little backwater in the security world. It was, and to some degree still is, full of lifelong government civil servants who, despite their hard work and good intentions, have not been able to adapt to the pace and complexity that operating in a war-zone imposed on them.  Indeed many of them refused to take an assignment in Iraq.  The decision to go to war by the Bush Administration and the Pentagon pushed the DSS further and faster than they had the ability to adapt.

The DSS’s small staff of only a few thousand agents oversees (and I am using that term lightly) over 30′000 contract personnel in the protection of over 200 Embassies and consulates around the world.  But, the problem is that your standard, run-of-the-mill, contract and mission to protect the Embassy in Berlin or even Jakarta or Mumbai is still about three solar-systems away from what is required to protect an embassy in Kabul or Baghdad.  Iraq and Afghanistan are the big-leagues and the DSS has not demonstrated anything near the capability of playing at that level.  They certainly do not have a commanding position of respect or authority over the security firms they are supposed to supervise. At best they are perceived as an administrative nuisance which is avoided when possible and run over when necessary.

To some degree the State Department knows they are are in over their head.  They have relied, far too heavily, on the professionalism (I use that term lightly as well…) of the private security sector to pull their bacon out of the fire and do a job they themselves cannot do. But, as I have alluded to before the professionalism they desire and frankly rely on generally just does not exist.

The State Department needs to ‘grow up’ and on-board a wave of professional staff to oversee these programs. Preferably former senior military officers with combat experience. If these programs were run by recently retired Colonels who had on their staff retired Majors and recently separated Captains and a cadre of former Senior Staff NCOs with the know- and the authority to act this problem would largely disappear.

What State seems to be missing is the fact that everyone in this industry wants the U.S. government as a client. The State Department is in the drivers seat here. They can have anything they want. They can drive a hard bargain and they can run roughshod over any service provider because the line outside for the privilege of winning the contract is long.  State’s problem is they don’t know what to ask for, how to ask for it or know what it should look like when it gets delivered.

Tags: Afghanistan, ArmorG, Blackwater, contracting, contractors, Iraq, jobs, Kabul

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 9:02 AM and is filed under Commentary, Jake Allen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.