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.

Set up in 2008 after audits found rampant abuse in Iraq, the Commission on Wartime Contracting is charged by Congress with reviewing US contracting related to reconstruction, logistics for the military and security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This trip is an important part of carrying out our study mandate from Congress, and it?s especially important given that we?re intensifying our efforts in Afghanistan,” commission co-chair Michael Thibault said in a statement Friday.

“Among other things, we?ll be looking to see whether and how contracting lessons from the Iraq involvement are being applied to Afghanistan,” he said of the week-long trip.

The commission members will have a chance to share their findings from the Afghan visit at congressional hearings scheduled in September.

More than 200,000 contract employees work to support US military operations and reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan, performing a range of jobs from guarding diplomats to washing uniforms and building hospitals.

In their first appearance before Congress in June, panel members presented an initial report pointing out waste and serious “problems” in how the US government oversees its vast army of contractors.

The commission cited the construction of a 30-million-dollar dining hall at the Camp Delta military base southeast of Baghdad as an example of poor oversight. Replacing the existing mess hall with a larger facility was unnecessary as US troops have to leave the country by the end of 2011.

The commission’s visit to Afghanistan comes as US commanders weigh cutting back on desk jobs and other support staff to free up troops for combat, a move that could require more private contractors to fill the gap.

Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has warned the United States risks repeating the same mistakes in Afghanistan that have led to billions of dollars being squandered in Iraq on reconstruction.

Bowen told lawmakers in March that he estimates between three and five billion dollars have been wasted in the US effort to rebuild Iraq since 2003.

The panel’s final report is due in July 2010, but Congress could extend the bi-partisan commission’s mandate by another year.

Lawmakers, Critics Warn That Military, CIA May Rely Too Much on Private Firms

By Walter Pincus

The disclosure that the CIA once hired Blackwater USA for elements of an assassination program has brought back into focus the wide range of intelligence and military activities that are being contracted out to private firms.

Some lawmakers have balked at the shift of intelligence operations away from government employees. This week, Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said she has “believed for a long time that the intelligence community is overreliant on contractors to carry out its work.” She called it a particular problem “when contractors are used to carry out activities that are inherently governmental.”

That phrase, though, is subject to interpretation, and the Office of Management and Budget stipulates that agencies in the executive branch have a good deal of discretion. Moreover, there is no legal prohibition to contracting out what may appear to be a government function.

On Wednesday, after news reports surfaced about the CIA’s hiring of Blackwater, former agency director Michael V. Hayden noted that the definition of an “inherently government activity” is quite narrow.

“Actual intelligence analysis, actual intelligence collection are permissible activities for contractors under current OMB guidance,” Hayden said.

Hayden did not comment directly on the reports about Blackwater and the assassination program targeting suspected top members of al-Qaeda, but he and current CIA personnel have defended the use of contractors.

“The CIA views contractors as essential to the accomplishment of its mission, bringing unique skills that the agency may need only for limited periods of time,” spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in a statement.

He added that contractors provide additional capabilities to staff officers and provide “within the laws and regulations . . . the flexibility required by the changing priorities of intelligence.”

In the case of assassination operations, which officials say never passed the planning stage, the involvement of Blackwater has exacerbated the frustration of Democratic lawmakers and others critical of the use of contractors in intelligence work.

Of the scores of private security contractors that have worked for U.S. military and government agencies, Blackwater gained the most notoriety because of accusations its personnel used excessive force against civilians in Iraq. The Justice Department investigated the North Carolina company, now known as Xe Services LLC, for the alleged role of its employees in the slayings of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007. Five Blackwater guards were indicted last year in connection with those deaths.

The founder of the privately held firm, Erik Prince, is a major financial backer of Republican political candidates and causes. After the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, his company won numerous lucrative contracts to provide protection for U.S. personnel, including a $21 million no-bid contract to protect L. Paul Bremer, head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

The next year, Blackwater secured a $1 billion, five-year State Department contract to guard U.S. diplomats and other dignitaries worldwide.

The precise dollar amount of Xe’s business with other government agencies is difficult to determine. But “Master of War,” an investigative book on Blackwater by journalist Suzanne Simons published this year, put the sum at $2 billion since 1997 — not including the company’s classified contracts with the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer who has written several books on intelligence, on Friday criticized the choice of Blackwater in assassination operations.

“It’s one thing, albeit often misguided, for the agency to outsource certain tasks to contractors,” he wrote on Time magazine’s Web site. “It’s quite another to involve a company like Blackwater in even just the planning and training of targeted killings, akin to the CIA going to the Mafia to draw up a plan to kill Castro.”

Hayden said that about 30 percent of CIA employees are contractors, down from a much higher percentage several years ago. But contracting in the intelligence community remains widespread.

L-3, the giant military contractor, says on its Web site that its Intelligence Solutions Division has 2,300 employees at more than 28 sites worldwide. It is advertising this month to hire personnel for eight military intelligence jobs in Afghanistan, including a senior intelligence analyst with 10 years of Defense Department or other government agency experience and a Top Secret clearance.

Meanwhile, Raytheon, the corporation that supplies many technical elements of the Predator drones, is advertising for a technician to help “troubleshoot” the surveillance camera used on the unmanned vehicles.

A senior Senate staff aide familiar with defense matters said yesterday that such technicians are needed “because the equipment is so advanced” that the best workers are those from the companies that helped build the drones and not from the military.

Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.

Paratrooper turned security guard Daniel Fitzsimons tells of night in Baghdad that left him accused of shooting dead two men

By Martin Chulov

The British security guard facing the death penalty in Baghdad says he can remember little about the night he is accused of shooting dead two colleagues, except that things “went really, really bad, really quickly”.

Former paratrooper Daniel Fitzsimons, 33, says he is haunted by the faces of Briton Paul McGuigan, and Australian Darren Hoare, who were both shot dead near a bar inside the compound of the British security company ArmorGroup in the early hours of 9 August.

“I have sat here trying to think through the whys and the wherefores,” Fitzsimons told the Guardian in his first interview since then. “I see Paul and Darren’s faces every night before I sleep and every morning when I wake up.”

Fitzsimons is the first foreign national charged under Iraqi law since the 2003 invasion. “The only two people who can tell me what happened that night are both dead. All I know is that it went really, really bad, really quickly,” he said.

From his prison cell in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Fitzsimons said he had been given a job with ArmorGroup after being unemployed for 13 months from the time he left prison in England where he had served a seven-month sentence.

“This was to be a new start for me,” he said. “For the week before I came out here I hadn’t touched a drop of drink. I was on the dole and I wanted my life back. I had my bags packed four weeks early.

“When I landed in Baghdad I was over the moon. I was buzzing.”

Fitzsimons had returned to Iraq for a fifth tour as a security contractor in three years, a job he says was more gruelling and traumatic than the eight years he served with 2 Parachute Regiment.

The incident has again cast the spotlight on the private security industry in Iraq – an industry that continues to thrive despite the unease of the government and widespread distrust among Iraqi people who have traditionally viewed contractors as an unaccountable adjunct to the occupying military.

Leading security providers have recently been accused of lowering employment standards for prospective guards and in some cases barely vetting them at all.

Fitzsimons paints a disturbing picture of life as a contractor in Baghdad, saying it has left him mentally scarred. Claiming to be aggrieved by media coverage, which he said portrayed him as unbalanced, he said: “I saw more contacts in eight weeks at one point than I had during eight years with the army.

“We were ambushed in south Baghdad once by small arms and we made it through. I won’t lie to you, I did enjoy it though. There’s nothing nice about seeing limbs blown off. The smell of flesh stayed with me all the time and I couldn’t taste my food for a couple of weeks, but the buzz was unreal. There is nothing else like that.

“We were doing the Basra to Mosul run weekly and we were all around the bad areas north of Baghdad, like Taji and Samara. I lost three different team leaders to injury. Guys were getting malleted all the time.”

Fitzsimons said he had spiralled out of control after returning to Baghdad. “Things just went absolutely pear-shaped and I don’t know why. My heart goes out to both their families. All our lives are ruined. It’s an absolute tragedy.”

Fitzsimons refused to discuss the specifics of his case, which could see him face the death penalty or life imprisonment. Iraqi authorities have not yet decided under which law they will charge him. They are expected to make a decision imminently on whether they will accuse him of premeditated murder – a conviction would likely mean the death penalty.

To proceed with any murder charges, the Iraqi legal system must first receive a complaint from either of the two victims’ families.

An Iraqi whom Fitzsimons is accused of shooting and severely wounding at the same time is planning to register a complaint in a Baghdad court on Sunday, meaning Fitzsimons will face an attempted murder charge at least.

Fitzsimons’s British lawyers, John Tipple and Nick Wrack, are due to return to London today after instructing local counsel. They will step up efforts to have him extradited to the UK under an unused extradition provision in the Iraqi legal code that dates back to the 1930s.

“We are not going to let the British government hang him out to dry,” said Tipple. “He is a British national and the right place for him to be tried, if at all, is at home.”