(Sources: Ian Traynor, « The privatization of War », The Guardian, Dec.10, 2003; Catherine Fitts, "Enron, the anatomy of a cover-up"; Eric Leser, "L'armée américaine fait de plus en plus appel au secteur privé", Le Monde, Feb., 10, 2003)
4) COLOMBIA: War on Drugs?
Repeatedly, the United States have committed themselves to assist Latin American countries in the "War on Drugs", notably in Colombia, Peru or Bolivia. Paid $170 millions between 1996 and 2001 to destroy the coca fields? Answer: DynCorp, called by the pro mercenary magazine Soldiers of Fortune, "Colombia's Coke-Bustin' Broncos". Remark: DynCorp Aerospace Technology subcontracts the defoliation job to another company: Eagle Aviation Services and Technology (EAST). Other remark: EAST and its founder Richard Gadd worked closely with Colonel Oliver North to deliver weapons to the Nicaraguan Contra. In exchange, and to pay for the weapons, the plains flew cocaine into the United States... Yet, one last remark: Dick Cheney has always been a strong supporter of Oliver North and a donator for North's (failed) campaign for the Senate. On may 11, Oliver North attacked Nancy Pelosi for defending women and opposing the Iraq war by saying that "if Pelosi and her Democrat Party allies have their way -- 650 million women around the globe may well be abandoned to the most misogynistic abuse imaginable at the hands of radical Islamists" since, through the war in Iraq, the "principal protectors of Muslim women today [are]: the Armed Forces of the United States."
(Source: Ken Guggenheim, « Drug Fight in Colombia questioned », Associated Press, June 5, 2001.)
5) LIBERIA: Kidnappers for hire
In December 2003, a British PMC, Norhtbridge Services Group, said it had people ready to kidnap former Liberian president Charles Taylor, to claim a $2 million reward allegedly offered by the US Congress. Charles Taylor, who has been granted asylum in Nigeria, is wanted by the UN-backed court of Sierra Leone on war crimes charges and subject of an international arrest warrant by Interpol. In November 2003, George W. Bush signed a bill to provide funds totaling $87.5 billion for the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a small portion for the provision of $2 millions reward money for the capture of an indictee of the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal.
(Source: BBC, « Firm seeks Charles Taylor Bounty », Dec., 11, 2003)
6) EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Coup attempt
On March 2004, an airplane coming from South-Africa is blocked in Zimbabwe. On board, about a hundred men and their leaders: the British Simon Mann and the South-African Nick Du Toit, two former bosses of Executive Outcomes. Target: bring down the government of Equatorial Guinea, a country nicknamed "the Kuwait of Africa" for its oil and other mineral resources. Who gave the orders for the operation: Mark Thatcher, son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, equally arrested in South Africa on August 15, 2004. A Company related to Gary Hart, Mark Thatcher's business associate and co-conspirer, reportedly benefited from over €20 million from BAE Systems.
(Source: Philippe Leymarie, Le Monde Diplomatique, « En Afrique, une nouvelle génération de 'Chiens de guerre' », novembre 2004)
7) KATRINA : do you drink Blackwater ?
Some 150 men of Blackwater USA, carrying automatic assault weapons and guns strapped to their legs, flak jackets covered with pouches for extra ammunition, arrive in New Orleans shortly after hurricane Katrina to "join the humanitarian effort", billing the government $950 per man, per day, raking at one point the government more than $240.000 a day. "I worked the security detail of both Bremer and Negroponte" says one of them. Their mission consists in "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals". Other PMC's were ready to move in, such as the Israeli PMC Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) (sic). In Louisiana, in less than two weeks, the number of private security firms has increased from 185 to 235. Certain were acting for the Federal Government but many were just protecting private interests. If everybody paid his own security, taxes could be lowered?
(Source: Jeremy Scahill, « Blackwater Down », The Nation, Oct.10, 2005)
8) SOUDAN: Genocide for Oil
In 1983, John Garang launched his rebellion in the oil rich Southern Sudan. In 2001, his movement, the SPLA signs a contract with DynCorp for $3 million and becomes a co-governing factor of the semi-autonomous government of Southern Sudan. As a reward, the SPLA will reattribute the oil concession of "Bloc B", legally attributed to the French oil giant Total, to the British oil Company White Nile UK. In 2006, DynCorp renews it contract to transform the SPLA into a regular army. Several sources affirm that, through SPLA channels, DynCorp funnels weaponry to the myriad of rebellions in Southern Darfur, where other oilfields are waiting. In Darfur, when the 4,500 Nigerian and Rwandan soldiers of the African Union arrived, the US State Department signed a $20.6 million contract with two SMP's: DynCorp and Pacific Architects & Engineers (PAE), another PMC known for overcharging its services in Democratic Republic of Congo. Note here that the African Union's budget for 2004 was $43 million, the miserable equivalent of half the price of an Airbus A320 airplane...
In 2005, DynCorp got a contract to arrange housing and transportation to the rebels who meet in Nairobi, Kenya to end the 21-year civil war between the Government of Sudan and the SPLM. A special staff was set up in Washington DC for the job. "Why are we using private contractors to do peace negotiations in Sudan? The answer is simple," says a senior United States government official, "We are not allowed to fund a political party or agenda under United States law, so by using private contractors, we can get around those provisions. Think of this as somewhere between a covert program run by the CIA and an overt program run by the United States Agency for International Development. It is a way to avoid oversight by Congress."
(Source: Pratap Chatterjee, « Darfur diplomacy: Enter the Contractors », Oct., 21, 2004, CorpWatch)
9) USA: get ready to go to a Halliburton jail
Halliburton and DynCorp represent since years heavy weights on the largest market of the U.S.: private prisons. But on Jan. 24, 2006, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component awarded Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a Halliburton Subsidiary an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinete Quantity $385 million contract to support ICE facilities "in the event of an emergency." The building of immigrant detention facilities is part of a ten-year Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists." In the 1980's Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld discussed similar emergency detention powers as part of a super-secret program of planning for what was euphemistically called "Continuity of Government" (COG) in the event of a nuclear disaster. The plan included the suspension of the Constitution, not just after nuclear attack, but for any "national security emergency," which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States." Clearly 9/11 met such a definition and COG was instituted on that day. As the Washington Post explained on March 1, 2002, the order "dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans" under the direction of Dick Cheney in charge of "ensure federal survival". ENDGAME's goal of a capacious detention capability is remarkably similar to Oliver North's controversial Rex-84 "readiness exercise" for COG in 1984. It called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary "refugees," in the context of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States.
10) IRAQ: "Gold mine" for PMC's
Long time before the invasion of Iraq, PMC vultures were circling the about to be corps of Iraq. The case of the Texan oil and construction company Halliburton, which employs over 20,000 persons in more than 20 countries often reached the media. In effect, Dick Cheney, for five year the CEO of the company before becoming vice-president remains the largest individual stockholder shareholder detaining $45.5 million. When the "war was in the making", Halliburton employed 1,800 persons to set up tent villages in Kuwait, while DynCorp body guards patrolled the area to keep away angry villagers and MPRI instructors trained soldiers. Miles from the front, in California, two other PMC's prepared more secretive operations: Titan Corporation recruited spies and Kurdish translators, the infamous "cultural advisors" that gave great fame to the Abou Graib prison. Intelligence agencies subcontracted their activities, notably interrogations. If private "soldiers" are not subject of military discipline, their contracts are renewed on a pro rata basis, according to how much information is obtained... In the meantime, Science Applications International Corp was paid to set up an emergency government with exiled Iraqis, and Richard Perle advised clients of Goldman Sachs on the future reconstruction contracts in Iraq...
After the "victory" of the coalition, General Jay Garner is promoted overlord in Baghdad. He proposes to use former combat units of the former Iraqi army for security missions in a new "free" country. The report of the General Accounting Office of June 2005 reports that the reconstruction companies "had planned minimal security in their contracts, limited at guards in charge of preventing people to steal on their wharfs." The Pentagon rejected Garners proposal and nominates Paul Bremer as his successor on May 6, 2003. Bremer was a former assistant to Alexander Haig and a managing director of Kissinger Associates. His decision plunges Iraq into chaos and insecurity. Error or deliberate policy, this tragic decision will transform the country into what the PMC's proudly called their "gold mine". Unsurprisingly, Bremer was himself heading Marsh MCLellan, a company that owns Kroll Inc., a PMC that subcontracts with the U.S. government and defense industry. Unsurprisingly also, the fact that one of Bremer's first decision was to make the PMC's unaccountable to Iraqi law! Even if, since April 5, 2007, Halliburton brook its links with Kellogs, Brown & Roots (KBR), KBR has an overriding share of all logistics for the U.S. Army in Iraq. A $200 million contract pays KBR to house, feed and maintain about 100,000 soldiers, a contract signed in December 2001, barely a few weeks after 9/11. KBR also has to repair the oil facilities ($28.2 millions) and build detention centers. It got a $40,8 millions contract for the accommodations of the Iraqi Survey Group, the unit deployed to find the weapons of mass destruction. Noteworthy is the fact that during the Gulf war, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney paid $8.9 million to Brown & Root services to study how PMC's coud support American combat in war zones. It is unnecessary to read the report to know its conclusions. In 2003, KBR got from the US Army Corps of Engineers a $7 BILLION contract to extinguish burning oil wells and restore petroleum production, since Iraq oil revenues have to pay for the "reconstruction of Iraq", i.e. the PMC business. A short look on one of Bremers "advisors" tells it all: Philip J. Carroll was named by Bremer to head the advisory committee on oil. Carroll is a Texas oil man, former head of Shell Oil and Fluor (another mainly republican campaign contributor), and currently a director of BAE Systems. Paul Bremer also signed a $7.1 million contract for bodyguard missions with Blackwater USA. Together with DynCorp, Blackwater guarded many high personalities of the afghan Kharzai government. French Defense Minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie denounced the guards « aggressive attitude » when visiting Afghanistan. Blackwater USA was founded in 1997 by former navy SEAL and conservative "Christian" multimillionaire Erik Prince, whose phone started "ringing off the hook" after 9/11. Blackwater got a contract for "securizing" the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater also trains Iraq police and army forces. A documentary film has pointed its responsibility in the Abou Graib torture scandal. According to a former Blackwater official, three providers, Blackwater, Regency and ESS, were engaged in a classic war-profiteering scheme. The News and Observer of North Carolina tells us that Blackwater was paying its men $600 a day but billing Regency $815. In addition, Blackwater billed Regency separately for all its overhead costs in Iraq. Regency would quote ESS a price, say $1,500 per man per day, and then tell Blackwater that it had quoted ESS $1,200. ESS then contracted with Halliburton subsidiary KBR which in turn billed the government an unknown amount for the same security services. But there is worse. In March 2004, a new contingent of U.S. Marines went into the Falludja area with the idea of having some kind of an active presence in the city, concentrated on "soft-patrolling" and out to reach hearts and minds by building cooperative relations with the population. On March 31, four logistical contractors got lost and drove through Falludja where their convoy gets ambushed. Several armed men approach the two vehicles and open fire from behind, repeatedly shooting the men at point-blank range. Within moments, their bodies are dragged from the vehicles and a crowd descends upon them, tearing them to pieces. Their corpses are chopped and burned. The remains of two of the men are strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River left to dangle. The gruesome image is soon beamed across the globe. The incident immediately builds huge pressure on the Marines whose strategy is was shelved before it even had a chance to begin. The incident kicked Blackwater into high gear in Washington, and the day after the ambush, Prince hires the Alexander Strategy Group, a K Street lobbying group, run by former staffers of then majority leader Tom Delay before he went down with the Jack Abramoff scandal. After a series of meetings with powerful republicans overseeing military contracts such as Tom Delay and Porter Gross, and hardly a week to the day after the ambush, Erik Prince sat down with at least four senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including its chair. Two months later, Blackwater got one of the government's valuable security contracts, worth more than $300 million. Unsurprisingly, Blackwater USA gave $2.4 million of donations to republican candidates, in particular to Tom Delay and Rick Santorum, two republican big wigs in charge of selecting the army's military subcontractors... No wonder Fast Company magazine puts Blackwater USA on its list of the 50 companies offering the best growth perspectives. From 2002 to 2005, it had a cumulated growth of 600%. Wow!
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