Private Military Contractors - Data Dump

[Ed Jewett]

Military Outsources Rescue Operations

January 21st, 2010 How much of the military can the CIA spin off into its cutouts?
Via: Wired:
In the American military, few missions are considered more important than rescuing missing or kidnapped troops. So it’s more than a little odd that U.S. forces in Iraq have decided to outsource that operation to a private company. The military’s Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan on Sunday handed out a one year, $11.3 million, no-bid contract to Blackbird Technologies Inc., declaring that the firm was “the only contractor that can currently provide the subject matter expertise needed” for personnel rescue operations.
It’s hardly the first military contract for Virginia-based Blackbird, originally founded in 1997 as an Internet security firm. In August, Blackbird won a massive, $450 million contract from the U.S. Navy to provide ”tagging, tracking and locating” gear and training to a wide swath of military units. In addition, Blackbird is currently assisting the armed forces in “locating people held captive or hostage under duress and assessing enemy vulnerabilities.” U.S. forces say they need the company to continue to “provid[e] staff and mission area expertise for PR [personnel recovery] operations, serve as a fusion nexus for intelligence operations to support PR, and operational oversight for subordinate operations.” In addition, the military expects Blackbird to provide everything from “crisis action planning” to “non-attributable internet research.”
“We’re not the guys that go out and kick down doors and bring out the Jessica Lynches of the world,” says retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Timur Eads, who serves as Blackbird’s vice president of government relations. “We’re the guys in the background, assembling the forensic information, bringing all the threads together.” Sometimes, Eads tells Danger Room, that entails online research “where you appear to be entering the Internet from somewhere else.”
Beyond that, Eads won’t say much. “I can’t give the specifics of what we do, because the work is classified. But the reason we got this contract is because we have people with very unique skillsets that we can quickly bring together.”
The company says they’ve already got a crack team assembled for their rescue operations. But Blackbird is openly recruiting for “personnel recovery mission officers,” apparently to service this contract. Only applicants with a very specific background need apply. Blackbird wants each of the eight officers to have 10 years of special operations missions and a clearance of “Top Secret/SSBI with SCI eligibility.” But despite the sensitivity of this mission, and despite the exclusive resumes applicants need to provide, these positions are only “part-time.”
Blackbird is headquartered in Herndon, VA, with five branch offices nationwide. Blackbird’s website states that the company is a “technology solutions provider whose mission is to solve challenging problems for customers in the Defense, Intelligence, and Law Enforcement Communities.” They also advertise that the majority of their staff hold high-level clearances and handle “the most sensitive government and commercial matters.”
Various arms of the Department of Defense have awarded at least six different contracts to the company since 2003. The biggest, and most sensitive, of these deals is the nearly half-billion contract for “tagging, tracking, and locating” — military jargon for keeping tabs on troops and their potential enemies through clandestine means.
Posted in Covert Operations, Outsourced, War

http://cryptogon.com/?p=13178

[Ed Jewett]

Report Faults State Department, DynCorp for Missing $1 Billion

By Josh Rogin

January 25, 2010 "FP" -- The State Department cannot account for more than $1 billion it paid out to contractor DynCorp to train police during the first years of the Iraq war, in just one example of management shortcomings that have put at risk $2.5 billion worth of money spent on training policemen around the world, according to a damning new report. The office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) especially laid into the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), known as the "Drugs and Thugs" bureau, in an audit released Monday, for mishandling DynCorp.
The report comes at an inconvenient time for DynCorp, which is also doing most of the police training in Afghanistan. The Defense Department, which is taking over that mission soon, will need contractor help, but sources tell The Cable that DOD is trying to exclude DynCorp from that contract competition over the company's vigorous protests.
Special Inspector Stuart Bowen told The Cable that since the problems at INL haven't been corrected in the years that SIGIR has been reporting on the bureau, his office is now working with Deputy Secretary Jack Lew, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's right-hand man on management issues in Foggy Bottom.
"Deputy Secretary Lew is a man who's very familiar and committed to financial management," Bowen said. "He committed to addressing them directly and ensuring that this time the promises of improvements occur."
"I'm concerned about INL's capacity to oversee large-scale projects," Bowen went on. "Whether the department [as a whole] has the capacity to ultimately do that still remains to be seen."
The SIGIR's report on INL contains many damning revelations, including the fact that the first $1 billion spent on the DynCorp contract was overseen by just one person, and that person simply approved the invoices without scrutiny. When challenged, INL couldn't produce the documentation on where that billion went, and is now trying to piece it together --a process that could take several years.
INL Assistant Secretary David Johnson declined to be interviewed about the report, but an INL spokesperson said that there are now three people in Iraq overseeing DynCorp's contract there, with four more on the way this year. The spokesperson said there is now a process in Washington to check invoices that had saved $9 million, but SIGIR isn't satisfied.
"INL continues to exhibit weak oversight of the DynCorp task orders for support of the Iraqi police training program," the report states. "INL lacks sufficient resources and controls to adequately manage the task orders with DynCorp. As a result, over $2.5 billion in U.S. funds are vulnerable to waste and fraud."
INL disputes that $2.5 billion of funds are "vulnerable."
The report also calls into question the relationship between INL and DynCorp in Iraq. Apparently, INL was involved in negotiating leases and building rentals for DynCorp in the Baghdad international zone that somehow resulted in exorbitant rates that kept going up every year. DynCorp then just put that all on INL's tab and charged the bureau 11 percent extra in fees to boot.
The report is filled with examples of abuse and waste by DynCorp that INL paid for. In one example, $450,000 was spent to rent two generators when there were already plenty of generators to go around.
The report also details at length how SIGIR raised staffing and contract management issues with INL several times since 2005. Although INL has tried to address the problem, the results are far from satisfactory, according to SIGIR.
Lawmakers too are getting fed up with DynCorp's handling of the police training mission and INL's lax oversight.
"[INL has]been managing this contract in Iraq since 2004 and, according to this report, they have no idea where any of the money went," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-MO. "What's even worse is that these are the same people responsible for police training in Afghanistan, so I don't have any confidence that they're doing a better job there."



http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e24507.htm

[Magda Hassan]

Report Faults State Department, DynCorp for Missing $1 Billion

They should check behind the cushions on the sofa. But just to make sure they should also check their Swiss bank accounts.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) especially laid into the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), known as the "Drugs and Thugs" bureau, in an audit released Monday, for mishandling DynCorp.

Oh that's just dandy.

One government quango blaming another government quango for not managing DynCorp's contract properly.

Proposed solution: presumably set up a new quango to oversee the next contract.

Meanwhile, DynCorp pockets the billion.

:evil:

I had no idea who the INL are, but here's wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_for_...nt_Affairs

The Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) is a part of the Department of State within the United States government that advises the President, Secretary of State, other bureaus in the Department of State, and other departments and agencies within the U.S. Government on the development of policies and programs to combat international narcotics and crime. The head of the bureau is the Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, who is currently David T. Johnson.

The bureau manages the Department of State’s Narcotics Rewards Program in close coordination with the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other interested U.S. agencies.

Which suggests that they are part of the narco/arms/money laundering deep political structure.

"Narcotics Rewards Program", eh? :bandit:

[Ed Jewett]

The office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) especially laid into the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), known as the "Drugs and Thugs" bureau, in an audit released Monday, for mishandling DynCorp.

Oh that's just dandy.

One government quango blaming another government quango for not managing DynCorp's contract properly.

Proposed solution: presumably set up a new quango to oversee the next contract.

Meanwhile, DynCorp pockets the billion.

:evil:

I had no idea who the INL are, but ... they are part of the narco/arms/money laundering deep political structure.

I think you nailed it: they are the new government quango.

[Ed Jewett]

The short:

[size=12][size=12]

[size=12]Breaking: 'My Jason Bournes:' US Mercenaries Hired to Track and Kill Suspected Militants --The officials say they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work. Roughly $15 million unaccounted for 14 Mar 2010 Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors mercenaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants, according to military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States. The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The mercenaries, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said. While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are attacking operatives of 'Al Qaeda' and others through unmanned, remote-controlled drone strikes, some American officials say they became troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy death squad operation.



The long:

[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants

From Left: United States Air Force; Robert Young Pelton; Mike Wintroath/Associated Press; Adam Berry/Bloomberg News
From left: Michael D. Furlong, the official who was said to have hired private contractors to track militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan; Robert Young Pelton, a contractor; Duane Clarridge, a former C.I.A. official; and Eason Jordan, a former television news executive.

By DEXTER FILKINS and MARK MAZZETTI

Published: March 14, 2010


KABUL, Afghanistan — Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants, according to military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States.
The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said.
While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are attacking operatives of Al Qaeda and others through unmanned, remote-controlled drone strikes, some American officials say they became troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. The officials say they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work.
It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. Officials said Mr. Furlong’s secret network might have been improperly financed by diverting money from a program designed to merely gather information about the region.
Moreover, in Pakistan, where Qaeda and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding, the secret use of private contractors may be seen as an attempt to get around the Pakistani government’s prohibition of American military personnel’s operating in the country.
Officials say Mr. Furlong’s operation seems to have been shut down, and he is now is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Defense Department for a number of possible offenses, including contract fraud.
Even in a region of the world known for intrigue, Mr. Furlong’s story stands out. At times, his operation featured a mysterious American company run by retired Special Operations officers and an iconic C.I.A. figure who had a role in some of the agency’s most famous episodes, including the Iran-Contra affair.
The allegations that he ran this network come as the American intelligence community confronts other instances in which private contractors may have been improperly used on delicate and questionable operations, including secret raids in Iraq and an assassinations program that was halted before it got off the ground.
“While no legitimate intelligence operations got screwed up, it’s generally a bad idea to have freelancers running around a war zone pretending to be James Bond,” one American government official said. But it is still murky whether Mr. Furlong had approval from top commanders or whether he might have been running a rogue operation.
This account of his activities is based on interviews with American military and intelligence officials and businessmen in the region. They insisted on anonymity in discussing a delicate case that is under investigation.
Col. Kathleen Cook, a spokeswoman for United States Strategic Command, which oversees Mr. Furlong’s work, declined to make him available for an interview. Military officials said Mr. Furlong, a retired Air Force officer, is now a senior civilian employee in the military, a full-time Defense Department employee based at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.
Network of Informants
Mr. Furlong has extensive experience in “psychological operations” — the military term for the use of information in warfare — and he plied his trade in a number of places, including Iraq and the Balkans. It is unclear exactly when Mr. Furlong’s operations began. But officials said they seemed to accelerate in the summer of 2009, and by the time they ended, he and his colleagues had established a network of informants in Afghanistan and Pakistan whose job it was to help locate people believed to be insurgents.
Government officials said they believed that Mr. Furlong might have channeled money away from a program intended to provide American commanders with information about Afghanistan’s social and tribal landscape, and toward secret efforts to hunt militants on both sides of the country’s porous border with Pakistan.
Some officials said it was unclear whether these operations actually resulted in the deaths of militants, though others involved in the operation said that they did.
Military officials said that Mr. Furlong would often boast about his network of informants in Afghanistan and Pakistan to senior military officers, and in one instance said a group of suspected militants carrying rockets by mule over the border had been singled out and killed as a result of his efforts.
In addition, at least one government contractor who worked with Mr. Furlong in Afghanistan last year maintains that he saw evidence that the information was used for attacking militants.
The contractor, Robert Young Pelton, an author who writes extensively about war zones, said that the government hired him to gather information about Afghanistan and that Mr. Furlong improperly used his work. “We were providing information so they could better understand the situation in Afghanistan, and it was being used to kill people,” Mr. Pelton said.
He said that he and Eason Jordan, a former television news executive, had been hired by the military to run a public Web site to help the government gain a better understanding of a region that bedeviled them. Recently, the top military intelligence official in Afghanistan publicly said that intelligence collection was skewed too heavily toward hunting terrorists, at the expense of gaining a deeper understanding of the country.
Instead, Mr. Pelton said, millions of dollars that were supposed to go to the Web site were redirected by Mr. Furlong toward intelligence gathering for the purpose of attacking militants.
In one example, Mr. Pelton said he had been told by Afghan colleagues that video images that he posted on the Web site had been used for an American strike in the South Waziristan region of Pakistan.
Among the contractors Mr. Furlong appears to have used to conduct intelligence gathering was International Media Ventures, a private “strategic communication” firm run by several former Special Operations officers. Another was American International Security Corporation, a Boston-based company run by Mike Taylor, a former Green Beret. In a phone interview, Mr. Taylor said that at one point he had employed Duane Clarridge, known as Dewey, a former top C.I.A. official who has been linked to a generation of C.I.A. adventures, including the Iran-Contra scandal.
In an interview, Mr. Clarridge denied that he had worked with Mr. Furlong in any operation in Afghanistan or Pakistan. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
Mr. Taylor, who is chief executive of A.I.S.C., said his company gathered information on both sides of the border to give military officials information about possible threats to American forces. He said his company was not specifically hired to provide information to kill insurgents.
Some American officials contend that Mr. Furlong’s efforts amounted to little. Nevertheless, they provoked the ire of the C.I.A.
Last fall, the spy agency’s station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, wrote a memorandum to the Defense Department’s top intelligence official detailing what officials said were serious offenses by Mr. Furlong. The officials would not specify the offenses, but the officer’s cable helped set off the Pentagon investigation.
Afghan Intelligence
In mid-2008, the military put Mr. Furlong in charge of a program to use private companies to gather information about the political and tribal culture of Afghanistan. Some of the approximately $22 million in government money allotted to this effort went to International Media Ventures, with offices in St. Petersburg, Fla., San Antonio and elsewhere. On its Web site, the company describes itself as a public relations company, “an industry leader in creating potent messaging content and interactive communications.”
The Web site also shows that several of its senior executives are former members of the military’s Special Operations forces, including former commandos from Delta Force, which has been used extensively since the Sept. 11 attacks to track and kill suspected terrorists.
Until recently, one of the members of International Media’s board of directors was Gen. Dell L. Dailey, former head of Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees the military’s covert units.
In an e-mail message, General Dailey said that he had resigned his post on the company’s board, but he did not say when. He did not give details about the company’s work with the American military, and other company executives declined to comment.
In an interview, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the top military spokesman in Afghanistan, said that the United States military was currently employing nine International Media Ventures civilian employees on routine jobs in guard work and information processing and analysis. Whatever else other International Media employees might be doing in Afghanistan, he said, he did not know and had no responsibility for their actions.
By Mr. Pelton’s account, Mr. Furlong, in conversations with him and his colleagues, referred to his stable of contractors as “my Jason Bournes,” a reference to the fictional American assassin created by the novelist Robert Ludlum and played in movies by Matt Damon.
Military officials said that Mr. Furlong would occasionally brag to his superiors about having Mr. Clarridge’s services at his disposal. Last summer, Mr. Furlong told colleagues that he was working with Mr. Clarridge to secure the release of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, a kidnapped soldier who American officials believe is being held by militants in Pakistan.
From December 2008 to mid-June 2009, both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Clarridge were hired to assist The New York Times in the case of David Rohde, the Times reporter who was kidnapped by militants in Afghanistan and held for seven months in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The reporter ultimately escaped on his own.
The idea for the government information program was thought up sometime in 2008 by Mr. Jordan, a former CNN news chief, and his partner Mr. Pelton, whose books include “The World’s Most Dangerous Places” and “Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror.”
Top General Approached
They approached Gen. David D. McKiernan, soon to become the top American commander in Afghanistan. Their proposal was to set up a reporting and research network in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the American military and private clients who were trying to understand a complex region that had become vital to Western interests. They already had a similar operation in Iraq — called “Iraq Slogger,” which employed local Iraqis to report and write news stories for their Web site. Mr. Jordan proposed setting up a similar Web site in Afghanistan and Pakistan — except that the operation would be largely financed by the American military. The name of the Web site was Afpax.
Mr. Jordan said that he had gone to the United States military because the business in Iraq was not profitable relying solely on private clients. He described his proposal as essentially a news gathering operation, involving only unclassified materials gathered openly by his employees. “It was all open-source,” he said.
When Mr. Jordan made the pitch to General McKiernan, Mr. Furlong was also present, according to Mr. Jordan. General McKiernan endorsed the proposal, and Mr. Furlong said that he could find financing for Afpax, both Mr. Jordan and Mr. Pelton said. “On that day, they told us to get to work,” Mr. Pelton said.
But Mr. Jordan said that the help from Mr. Furlong ended up being extremely limited. He said he was paid twice — once to help the company with start-up costs and another time for a report his group had written. Mr. Jordan declined to talk about exact figures, but said the amount of money was a “small fraction” of what he had proposed — and what it took to run his news gathering operation.
Whenever he asked for financing, Mr. Jordan said, Mr. Furlong told him that the money was being used for other things, and that the appetite for Mr. Jordan’s services was diminishing.
“He told us that there was less and less money for what we were doing, and less of an appreciation for what we were doing,” he said.
Admiral Smith, the military’s director for strategic communications in Afghanistan, said that when he arrived in Kabul a year later, in June 2009, he opposed financing Afpax. He said that he did not need what Mr. Pelton and Mr. Jordan were offering and that the service seemed uncomfortably close to crossing into intelligence gathering — which could have meant making targets of individuals.
“I took the air out of the balloon,” he said.
Admiral Smith said that the C.I.A. was against the proposal for the same reasons. Mr. Furlong persisted in pushing the project, he said.
“I finally had to tell him, ‘Read my lips,’ we’re not interested,’ ” Admiral Smith said.
What happened next is unclear.
Admiral Smith said that when he turned down the Afpax proposal, Mr. Furlong wanted to spend the leftover money elsewhere. That is when Mr. Furlong agreed to provide some of International Media Ventures’ employees to Admiral Smith’s strategic communications office.
But that still left roughly $15 million unaccounted for, he said.
“I have no idea where the rest of the money is going,” Admiral Smith said.
Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/...ctors.html

[David Guyatt]

Why do I find it unlikely that this is the full extent of the story. Perhaps someone should be putting more effort into knowing exactly who in DoD was responsible for supervising this guy, because it sounds awfully like he is being hung out to twist in the wind to me.

[Ed Jewett]

Blackwater Clone Embedded in FATA, Allegedly Fighting Opium Production

8 04 2010 DynCorp to stay on for anti-narcotics Ops in Pakistan: US

* Assistant secretary David Johnson appreciates Pakistani authorities’ measures to combat drug trafficking
By Irfan Ghauri
ISLAMABAD: DynCorp International will continue to provide maintenance facilities at the Interior Ministry’s Air Wing in Balochistan and does not plan to terminate its contract with the organisation, said David T Johnson, assistant secretary of the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
Johnson told reporters on Wednesday that under an agreement, an anti-narcotics chopper surveillance squad was set up in Quetta in 2002 by the Interior Ministry with US assistance, which includes 14 Huey II helicopters and three Cessna Caravan aircraft. To a question, he disclosed that the Pakistan and US governments had agreed to carry out the maintenance of these helicopters for which Washington had engaged DynCorp.
Regarding Islamabad’s reservations over the presence of DynCorp officials, Johnson clarified that Washington was not considering changing them in the near future.
Drug trafficking: He appreciated the efforts of Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies for taking effective measures against drug-trafficking and poppy cultivation, saying poppy still continues to be cultivated at a small scale in FATA due to the poor law and order situation there.
“There are some very small areas in Pakistan where poppy is still being cultivated, but these are relatively very small,” he added.
Johnson said the US is working on a $150-million programme against drug trafficking with the cooperation of Pakistan’s anti-narcotics forces.
He said over 93 percent of the poppy used around the world was being supplied from Afghanistan, adding that Pakistan’s share in the drug’s supply was very low.
On achieving a “poppy-free” status for Pakistan, Johnson said it depended on how soon the law enforcement agencies could regain control of the areas where an anti-terror operation was going on.
The US assistant secretary said political will could play an important role in achieving a “poppy-free” status for Pakistan. He agreed that money earned through drug trafficking was being used to fund terrorist activities, adding that there was a need to keep a check on this type of income.
Acknowledging the processing of cases against drug traffickers, he said the rate of conviction in drug cases in Pakistan is very high. He, however, emphasised the need for scientific methods and explanations to examine evidence in drug cases to punish those responsible.
Highlighting other features of Pak-US cooperation against narcotics, Johnson said it had resulted in completion of 200 outposts in the NWFP and FATA, benefiting the Frontier Corps, Frontier Constabulary and Levies Force. He said the US had also been providing assistance and cooperation to Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies to cope with drug trafficking.

[Ed Jewett]

A Dangerous Reliance on Defense Contractors

8 04 2010 A Dangerous Reliance on Defense Contractors

Has the Obama Administration Failed to Learn from Its Predecessor’s Mistakes?

Blackwater security contractors are seen inside a helicopter above central Baghdad, Iraq.

SOURCE: AP/Khalid Mohammed


By Sean Duggan

The Bush administration spent the better part of a decade refusing to face up to the manpower implications of its open-ended commitment of forces—particularly in Iraq. And because they didn’t have the courage of their convictions to reinstitute the draft, they were forced to take three disastrous steps: active duty forces have been deployed and redeployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan without sufficient dwell time; the National Guard and Reserve have been transformed from a strategic to an operational reserve, alternating deployments with active forces; and private contractors have been tasked with filling in the gaps, often taking on missions traditionally reserved for uniformed forces.
The disastrous consequences of this final step—the widespread use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan—are already widely known. Indeed, the incidents that were arguably the most detrimental to the U.S. mission in both countries involved contractors, from the torture at Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base to the indiscriminate shootings at Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration has not fully learned from its predecessor’s mistakes. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced late last month that the Pentagon will begin an internal investigation into the Defense Department’s broader efforts to fund information operations. The inquiry was prompted by a contract funded by the Defense Department that allegedly set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan to help track and kill suspected militants.
Revelations of similar contracts under the Bush administration have not been uncommon, but these new allegations demonstrate the Obama administration’s disconcerting willingness (or acquiescence) to continue its predecessor’s reliance on private contractors to execute wartime operations traditionally carried out only by U.S. special forces, intelligence agencies, and the State Department. Equally troubling is the clear lack of oversight over the ballooning DOD-wide information operations budget despite numerous instances of flagrant contractor abuse in the recent past.
The scale of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan require the United States to employ contractors in logistical and on-base functions such as supply and equipment delivery or food preparation services. But the Obama administration must make a clean break from the Bush administration’s overreliance on private contractors to conduct security and intelligence missions in combat zones.
The New York Times broke the story in mid-March that a senior civilian Defense Department employee, Michael Furlong, had inappropriately used $25 million “from the Pentagon’s program against roadside bombs to hire private contractors to gather information on suspected insurgents in Afghanistan—activities that Furlong says were authorized by top U.S. military commanders.” Furlong allegedly hired former Special Forces and intelligence personnel to undertake surveillance on potential targets in both countries—an act that is generally considered illegal when carried out by civilian personnel.
Perhaps such instances of abuse were inevitable given the dramatic increase in funding for Department of Defense-wide information operations in the past several years, particularly within the Central Command area of operations. Funding for such operations in that theater (which includes Iraq and Afghanistan) increased from $40 million in 2008 to $110 million in 2009 to a requested $244 million in 2010. And overall information operations throughout DOD in fiscal year 2010 amounted to over $528 million. Funds under this broad category have been used to finance news articles, billboards, radio and television programs, and even public opinion polls in several countries.
The high-level priority that the Pentagon’s civilian and military leaders have placed on such operations has created an atmosphere of virtually unconstrained funding in which abuses were bound to occur. In fact, when Congress pressed the Pentagon to report the total amount budgeted for information operations—or strategic communications as they are frequently called—across all services and commands late last year, Secretary Gates “found that no one could say because there was no central coordination.” This realization prompted “multiple studies” in late 2009 that were aimed at getting a better understanding of individual services’ plans for strategic communications this year. It is unclear whether the Furlong program was discovered under one of these studies or through other avenues.
The current administration is wisely following Obama’s campaign commitment to redeploy out of Iraq, which will ease the enormous strain placed on the men and women of our armed forces over the last seven years. But this latest episode reveals that it has yet to fully reverse the dangerous U.S. dependence on private contractors.
Sean E. Duggan is a research associate at the Center for American Progress.

[Ed Jewett]

#1)
DynCorp Owner Cashes Out Of Wartime Investment

April 12, 2010 - 3:23 pm

Nathan Vardi

Robert McKeon, chief of New York private equity firm Veritas Capital, is on the verge of exiting the most lucrative deal of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For all the talk about Blackwater and Houston oil industry firms connected to Dick Cheney, it took a Wall Street player to truly figure out how to play the war game.
DynCorp International, the Falls Church, Va., provider of services to the U.S. military, announced Monday that it has reached a $1.5 billion deal to be acquired by funds managed by Cerberus Capital Management. If the deal goes through, McKeon will have turned a $48 million personal investment in DynCorp into some $320 million for himself. McKeon’s performance has apparently inspired Stephen Feinberg, chief of Cerberus, to also venture into this sector.
DynCorp has been a defining transaction for McKeon, a Bronx-born son of a Drake's cakes deliveryman who once headed private equity at Wasserstein Perella & Co. But the DynCorp deal has not been without controversy. As I reported last year, the deal became the subject of a fierce confrontation between McKeon and his former partner and close friend, Thomas Campbell. The duo spent years together building Veritas, focusing on the defense sector with help from retired generals like Barry R. McCaffrey and Anthony C. Zinni. Now McKeon and Campbell are locked in litigation, accusing each other in dueling lawsuits of deceit and betrayal. Campbell has moved on to start DC Capital Partners, a private equity shop that recently scored its own big exit by selling a company to IBM....


More here:

http://blogs.forbes.com/streettalk/2010/04/12/dyncorp-owner-cashes-out-of-wartime-investment/

#2)

Kendall Law Group Begins Investigation of DynCorp International Inc. for Shareholders

DALLAS, Apr 12, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Kendall Law Group is investigating DynCorp International Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!dcp/quotes/nls/dcp (DCP 17.41, +5.66, +48.17%) for shareholders concerning the proposed buyout of DynCorp by Cerberus Capital Management LP. The national securities litigation firm seeks to determine if a fair process was used in shopping the company prior to entering into the agreement and whether the Board of Directors of DynCorp breached their fiduciary duties by not seeking a deal that would provide better value of the company.....

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/kendall..._news_stmp

#3)

Wolf Haldenstein Investigating DynCorp International, Inc. Board



NEW YORK, Apr 12, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Attorney Advertising. The law firm of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty by the Board of Directors of DynCorp International, Inc. ("DynCorp" or the "Company") /quotes/comstock/13*!dyn/quotes/nls/dyn (DYN 1.22, +0.02, +1.67%) arising out of the proposed acquisition of DynCorp by Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. ("Cerberus").
On Monday, April 12, 2010, DynCorp announced that Cerberus will acquire it pursuant to an all cash offer. Under the terms of the agreement, DynCorp stockholders will receive cash of $17.55 in exchange for each share of DynCorp common stock. Cerberus may be underpaying for DynCorp, thus unlawfully harming DynCorp shareholders....


More here:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wolf-ha..._news_stmp