This article was written by Nathan Hodge at Wired’s Danger Room.

After a string of disasters involving their guns-for-hire, the State Department went looking for some folks who could help supervise their protective details in Iraq, Afghanistan and Afghanistan. Somehow, after eight months, Foggy Bottom has only managed to hire a grand total of four of these new security agents.

Back in February, the State Department posted a help-wanted ad for Security Protective Specialists to serve on one-year, renewable contracts with the Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The idea was to provide temporary hires to augment its 1,500-strong force of DS agents, who have been stretched thin by the requirements for post-9/11 security and a push for more muddy-boots diplomacy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

So how many have stepped forward to volunteer for the job? According to the Government Accountability Office, exactly four.

In a footnote to a newly released report on diplomatic security, GAO said the program was still “under development.”  The first four hires entered duty on July 29, and it looks like the State Department might have to cancel the program altogether.

“Diplomatic Security has had difficulty recruiting and hiring a sufficient number of SPS candidates,” GAO dryly noted. “Diplomatic Security originally intended to hire and train 25 SPSs and later add 20 more positions. Diplomatic Security officials reported having difficulty filling the positions because they compete with private security contractors for new hires and, at the end of September 2009, only 10 positions had been filled. According to senior Diplomatic Security officials, the bureau may cancel the program if they can not recruit enough qualified candidates.”

And that’s a crying shame — because these new agents are supposed to provide critically needed oversight and supervision of protective details in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Over the past few years, diplomatic security in high-threat areas has become heavily outsourced: In July 2005, State selected three companies – Blackwater, DynCorp and Triple Canopy — to compete for task orders under the Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) II contract, worth a potential USD1.2 billion to each contractor over a period of five years; the main WPPS II task orders are in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel.

The results have been nothing short of disastrous, from the antics of Phi Cracka Snacka in Kabul to the deadly Nisour Square incident in Baghdad. These new agents could help provide a desperately needed layer of accountability.

So why can’t State find willing recruits? It’s basically competing against itself. Base pay for a Security Protective Specialist would be $52,221 per year. Even with overseas allowances and pay differentials, that’s a hell of a lot less than the six-figure pay a U.S. operator for a company like Triple Canopy, DynCorp or Blackwater would expect to receive. Note to DS: You need to try a bit harder.

By David Isenberg

In the aftermath of the report by the Project on Government Oversight regarding drunken antics by ArmorGroup contractors in Kabul, who had the responsibility of guarding the American embassy, the Commission on Wartime Contracting held a hearing on Sep. 14 focused on the U.S. State Department’s selection, management, and oversight of security and other contractors in support of the Kabul Embassy.

One of the witnesses at the hearing was Doug Brooks, founder and head of IPOA, the Association of the Stability Operations Industry, formerly known as the International Peace Operations Association, which is a leading trade group for private military and security contractors.

During the course of the hearing Mr. Brooks had this exchange with Mr. Henke, one of the commissioners.

Commissioner Henke.  Okay.  I am trying to understand if your organization is really, my sense is, a Good Housekeeping Stamp of Approval without the good housekeeping, and I am not being facetious there.  I really want to understand what teeth are in your code of conduct. You go to great lengths in your statement to talk about your standards of conduct committee and how anyone can file a complaint.  That is anyone, right?  Any member company?  Any journalist?  Any NGO?

Mr. Brooks.  You can file a complaint based on our code of the conduct.

Commissioner Henke.  Has anyone yet?  Since September 1st, since POGO went public with this gross misconduct, has any complaint been filed against ArmorGroup, WSI or Wackenhut?

Mr. Brooks.  At this point, we do not reveal those complaints until later in the process.

Commissioner Henke.  You will not tell us here today if anyone has filed a complaint?

Mr. Brooks.  I would rather not.  Yes.

Commissioner Henke.  You will not tell us or you would rather not?

Mr. Brooks.  I would rather not, to be quite frank.  We try and keep the system–

Commissioner Henke.  Have you filed a complaint as the head of the organization?

Mr. Brooks.  I do not file complaints.  As the head of the organization, I will not.

Commissioner Henke.  Okay.  I am filing a complaint now.

Mr. Brooks.  Okay.  I will send you information on filing, on the filing process.

Commissioner Henke.  Now I am in your system, and I want to see what happens with this code of conduct.

Mr. Brooks.  When you are in the system, you will be informed as the complaint moves forward.

Commissioner Henke.  I am filing a complaint against ArmorGroup for their gross misconduct and the violation of your organization’s code of conduct.

Commissioner Ervin.  Bob, can I just interject just quickly? I would like you to answer the question for the record.  I understand if you do not want to do it.  I would like you to answer whether there is presently on file a complaint against either ArmorGroup, WSI or Wackenhut.

Mr. Brooks.  To be honest, I would have to actually check the policy on that, but I would prefer–

Commissioner Ervin.  Check the policy on whether there is a complaint?

Mr. Brooks.  No, no, on the revealing of the complaint if there is a complaint because–

Commissioner Ervin.  I would like for you to just take a minute before we end this hearing, check the policy and get back to us.

Mr. Brooks.  No.  You know what? I will tell you right now at the risk of annoying my membership, but there has been no complaint to date on ArmorGroup or Wackenhut.

Commissioner Henke.  No complaint to date at all?

Mr. Brooks.  No, but these complaints usually take some time before they actually do come in.  On our side, it is an ethics complaint rather than–

Commissioner Henke.  It has been 13 days, and no one, much less a member company, has said, there is something wrong here, I am going to complain?

Mr. Brooks.  That is correct, sir.

Commissioner Henke.  How many members do you have?

Mr. Brooks.  We have 64 members, sir.

Commissioner Henke.  Sixty-four member companies, no one has said a word?

Mr. Brooks.  Well, they have said a word.  There have been lots of discussions about it.

Commissioner Henke.  Well, I am sure they are talking about it.

Mr. Brooks.  Nobody has filed a formal complaint.

Commissioner Henke.  Nobody has filed a complaint.  I just think that is egregious.  I mean this distinction of–

Mr. Brooks.  Keep in mind, most of the complaints come from outside the association.

Commissioner Henke.  As mine just did.

Mr. Brooks.  Yes.

Commissioner Henke.  Thank you.

Mr. Brooks.  And, I am going to send you information so you can make a formal filing, and we will address that as we would any other complaint.

It is now nearly three months since Mr. Henke filed his complaint. What has IPOA done to address it? Not much apparently. In response to my query Clark Irwin, Director of Communications at the Commission, replied via email on Dec. 8 that “Commissioner Henke says he has had no contact from IPOA except for an acknowledgment that they had received his complaint.”

By Jake Allen

As I noted earlier this week there has been a significant reduction in the coverage of private security in the mainstream media of late. This is most likely due to the fact that in the U.S. at least it’s all-hands-on-deck to cover the impending health care reform legislation. But, the lack of negative headlines can also be attributed in part to the general lack of incidents worthy of reporting as well. For that, everyone across the industry can take a piece of the credit. Well done.

An interesting story has developed recently outside of San Diego, California where a local college has decided to end their contract to utilize a local training facility owned by U.S. Training Center, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide.
The college’s governing board voted unanimously to stop using the ‘Blackwater facility’ in direct response to public criticism, presumably of the facilities affiliation to Blackwater, now Xe. Local activists have protested at Southwestern College board meetings for months in an effort to halt the college’s arrangement with U.S. Training Center and it now appears that those efforts were successful in changing the minds of the governing board of directors.

Earlier this year Southwestern College had entered into an agreement which allowed U.S. Training Center to use rooms on their campus in exchange for time at the U.S. Training Center’s firearms ranges which are only a short distance away.
The question remains is the decision to cancel the agreement just politics and are the cadets of the police academy which Southwestern runs getting short shrift because of it? In other words what is best for the cadets who later go out into the world to enforce our laws?

I see this as a prime example of how a company’s brand is affected widely across sectors. Anyone in-the-know understands that Blackwater Worldwide’s international operations in support of the WPPS contract for the U.S. Department of State has nothing to do with their domestic firearms range businesses outside of their Moyock, North Carolina facility.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then an uninformed sound-byte must be worth ten-thousand in today’s culture. It’s a shame that the governing body has caved to political pressure instead of standing their ground on the merits of the original question and decision making processes which must have been: What facilities best prepare our cadets for a future in law enforcement? Unless a better location has magically materialized in recent months it now appears that cadets will receive inferior preparations all because the facility is ‘owned by’ Xe.

The lessons to be learned here for all PSCs is the importance of protecting your brand at all costs. What you do in one aspect of your business can easily negatively affect the public’s perception of you in other parts of your portfolio of services.

By Jake Allen

Is it just me or has there been very few security contractor related news stories over these past few weeks? I am not complaining mind you, actually it’s quite nice to have the industry off the front pages, the blogs, C-SPAN and the nightly news. It makes you wonder how long we can keep it that way.

Matt at Feral Jundi is often talking about the application of quality systems in a manufacturing environment and how they can be useful in our own industry. This got me to thinking about a tool called Mean Time Between Failures or MTBF. Basically it’s a way of measuring the time that transpires between a system failure. It’s useful when looking at machinery for example to measure how many hours, days or months transpire between breakdowns. An low MTBF is indicative of a system which is not functioning properly. Conversely, a high MTBF is good because it illustrates that you can have long runs between breakdowns.

Here’s how the calculation works: If for example you have a system that runs for 15 days then fails, runs again for 10 days…fails, 5 days…fails. Then you would have a mean (average) time between failures of 10 days. (15 + 10 + 5 = 30 divided by 3 =10).

It might be useful to see how long our industry can go without a significant event which draws a lot of negative attention. Of course we don’t live or work in isolation, and there is an active insurgency bent on attacking and killing our members, that of course we have little control over. But we do have control over our own self inflicted wounds such as the Danny Fitzsimons case.

Bottom line gang is keep up the good work, take it one day at a time and police each other. It only takes one stupid event to bring the heat down on everyone. Focus on the mission, provide a quality service and avoid you are likely to avoid any headlines. This is the recipe for longevity in this business.