Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon comptroller, made the comment at a hearing Monday held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting on allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct by employees of ArmorGroup North America, the company hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Zakheim said the photos are circulating heavily on the Internet and give Muslims in Afghanistan a negative image of the United States and make the jobs of American officials there all the more difficult.

Patrick Kennedy, under secretary of state for management, acknowledged the department should have been paying closer attention to the activities of the ArmorGroup guards at their living quarters near the embassy.

ArmorGroup’s owner, Wackenhut Services, said it erred by not immediately telling the State Department about an alcohol-related incident involving its guards that proved far more serious than company officials first believed.

“I am not here to defend the indefensible,” said Samuel Brinkley, a Wackenhut vice president.

A manager for ArmorGroup counseled nine guards after they got drunk at a bar near their living quarters in Kabul on August 10, according to Brinkley. But after photos surfaced showing the guards had been at a party where ArmorGroup employees engaged in lewd and inappropriate behavior, they realized they made a mistake by not alerting U.S. officials. Photos showed guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol.

Brinkley said the manager’s response, which included a temporary ban on alcohol, seemed adequate at the time.

“In retrospect, we were wrong in not notifying the State Department,” Brinkley said in testimony.

Kennedy told the commission the State Department is very concerned about ArmorGroup’s delays in reporting its knowledge of any misconduct by its employees.

The State Department has been sharply criticized for its management and oversight of the security contract at one of the country’s most important diplomatic outposts. In addition to the allegations of misconduct, other problems have included a shortage of guards and inferior equipment.

As the department’s top management officer, Kennedy said he takes full responsibility for having failed to prevent the problems that reportedly ranged from out-of-control parties to ArmorGroup supervisors frequenting brothels in Kabul.

The State Department has launched an investigation into ArmorGroup’s handling of the $189 million contract embassy security contract. So far, at least 16 ArmorGroup guards and supervisors have been fired or resigned and alcohol has been banned from the guard’s camp.

Kennedy said no decision will be made on whether to terminate the contract with ArmorGroup until the investigation is complete.

Members of the commission pressed Kennedy to be more aggressive, saying the evidence already available is enough to warrant firing ArmorGroup, which was awarded the contract to protect the embassy in March 2007.

“To me, it’s just totally out of control and it’s been going on for a long time,” said Michael Thibault, co-chairman of the commission.

Commissioner Clark Ervin asked Kennedy to pledge to terminate the contract if the investigation proves all the allegations prove to be true.

Kennedy refused to commit, saying the inquiry needs to run its course. However, Kennedy added, “We are seeing a very, very serious case being made for termination.”

Kennedy insisted the safety of department personnel working at the embassy has never been compromised because of ArmorGroup’s failures.

Brinkley told the commission that he is “personally embarrassed” by the incidents that have become public in the last two weeks. In addition to the August 10 incident, Brinkley cited two other others in which ArmorGroup guards acted inappropriately.

Brinkley said he and other company executives were unaware of a June 15 party at Camp Sullivan, the guards’ living quarters near the embassy, until an independent watchdog group in Washington issued a report with photos detailing ArmorGroup’s problems in Afghanistan.

ArmorGroup was awarded the Kabul embassy security contract in March 2007. Wackenhut acquired ArmorGroup in May 2008.

Scandal Involving Civilian Security Detail Highlights U.S. Government’s Often-Tense Relationships With Contractors

By AUGUST COLE

The State Department said Friday that several managers and eight guards at a security firm hired to protect the U.S. embassy in Kabul had been removed after lurid party photos and new alleged oversight lapses emerged this week.

Two other guards for the firm, ArmorGroup North America, a unit of Wackenhut Services Inc., also have resigned, the State Department said in a statement Friday. It wasn’t clear how many managers were being replaced. The 10 guards are leaving Afghanistan.

The dismissals are the latest embarrassment in the U.S.’s struggle to manage its security contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq. The timing is particularly sensitive, coming just as the U.S. ramps up the Afghan military campaign, an effort that will require adding tens of thousands of military support and security contractors. Almost 74,000 contractors are already working for the Defense Department alone in Afghanistan, a record amount, and thousands more work for the State Department.

Earlier this week, the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog group, released documents, photos and videos detailing drunken behavior and hazing among unclothed ArmorGroup guards at their base in Kabul. The watchdog group said Friday that it was pleased the State Department was taking action. But the group also wanted “to hear that the supervisors who were responsible for this debacle are being held fully accountable and not simply allowed to resign and go to another contractor,” according to a statement.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that if the allegations were true, “those activities are not just offensive to Afghans and Muslims; they’re offensive to us, and inexcusable.”

ArmorGroup referred questions to the State Department, citing the terms of its contract. The State Department said Friday investigators from the inspector general’s office have been dispatched to Kabul, along with other officials looking into the matter.

A Senate investigation this summer found lapses ranging from insufficient English skills among guards to poor training that left the U.S. embassy in Kabul vulnerable to a possible attack. State Department officials disputed that assessment in testimony before Congress.

ArmorGroup North America took over the contract to guard the Kabul embassy in 2007.

David Berteau, director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said many of the problems the government has with contractors stem from government contracts that are poorly written and not managed well.

“The fix is way bigger than just replacing one group of people with another,” he said.

The government is heavily dependent on the services these companies provide — which range from doing laundry to protecting diplomats — and this looks to continue to be the case in Afghanistan.

A September 2007 shooting in Baghdad involving a State Department security detail of Blackwater Worldwide guards left 17 Iraqi civilians dead and prompted the U.S. to pledge to drop the contractor.

Earlier this year, the State Department hired DynCorp International Inc. to take over part of Blackwater’s contract in Iraq to fly helicopters for department personnel.

While the department has moved away from using Blackwater security guards who for years protected convoys of diplomats, this related contract, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, remains with the company’s air wing, Presidential Airways.

The U.S. continues to use Presidential Airways because DynCorp International has been unable to get its specially modified aircraft properly certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, according to people familiar with the situation.

A DynCorp spokesman declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Blackwater’s parent company, Xe Services LLC did not return a call seeking comment.

—Yochi J. Dreazen contributed to this article.

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.

Daily briefing from the U.S. State Department regarding allegations of misconduct, incompetence and dereliction of duty by ArmorGroup at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.  At around the 25 minute mark the discussion moves on to the Blackwater/Dyncorp transition in Iraq which has been granted a temporary extension.

UPDATE:  This video seems to have been removed from the State Department’s website.  Given that the briefing was a complete fiasco for State perhaps they made a determination that removing it was in their best interest?