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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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July 1st,
2007 - In Iraq, a Private Realm Of Intelligence-Gathering News article by the Washington Post |
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In Iraq, a Private Realm Of
Intelligence-Gathering Firm Extends U.S. Government’s Reach By Steve Fainaru and Alec Klein Washington Post July 1, 2007 Baghdad - On the first floor
of a tan building inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the full scope of Iraq's daily
carnage is condensed into a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation. Displayed on a 15-foot-wide
screen, the report is the most current intelligence on significant enemy
activity. Two men in khakis and tan polo shirts narrate from the back of the
room. One morning recently, their report covered 168 incidents: rocket
attacks in Tikrit, a cow-detonated bomb in Habbaniyah, seven bodies
discovered floating in the Diyala River. A quotation from Gen. David
H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, concluded the briefing:
"Hard is not hopeless." The intelligence was
compiled not by the U.S. military, as might be expected, but by a British
security firm, Aegis Defence Services Ltd. The Reconstruction Operations
Center is the hub of Aegis's sprawling presence in Iraq and the most visible
example of how intelligence collection is now among the responsibilities
handled by a network of private security companies that work in the shadows
of the U.S. military. Aegis won its three-year,
$293 million U.S. Army contract in 2004. The company is led by Tim Spicer, a
retired British lieutenant colonel who, before he founded Aegis, was hired in
the 1990s to help put down a rebellion in Papua New Guinea and reinstall an
elected government in Sierra Leone. Several British and American firms have
bid on the contract's renewal, which is worth up to $475 million and would
create a force of about 1,000 men to protect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
on reconstruction projects. Protests have held up the award, which is
expected soon. The contract is the largest
for private security work in Iraq. Tucked into the 774-page description is a
little-known provision to outsource intelligence operations that, in an
earlier time, might have been tightly controlled by the military or government
agencies such as the CIA. The government continues to gather its own
intelligence, but it also increasingly relies on private companies to collect
sensitive information. The deepening and largely
hidden involvement of security companies in the war has drawn the attention
of Congress, which is seeking to regulate the industry. The House
intelligence committee stated in a recent report that it is "concerned
that the Intelligence Community does not have a clear definition of what
functions are 'inherently governmental' and, as a result, whether there are
contractors performing inherently governmental functions." "There is simply not
the management and oversight in place to handle this properly, not only to
get the best of the market but to ensure that everything is being done,"
said Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who wrote a book
on private security and has been critical of the lack of government
oversight. "It leaves a lot of legal questions that are open or
dodged." The government has
outsourced a wide range of security functions to 20,000 to 30,000 contractors
in Iraq; the exact number has not been disclosed. Contractors protect U.S.
generals and key military installations and have served as prison guards and
interrogators in facilities holding suspected insurgents, among other
responsibilities. Aegis's intelligence
activities include battlefield threat assessments, the electronic tracking of
thousands of private contractors on Iraq's dangerous roads, and community
projects the company says are designed in part to win over "hearts and
minds." The new contract calls for the hiring of a team of seasoned
intelligence analysts with "NATO equivalent SECRET clearance."
According to a summary of their responsibilities, the analysts are to conduct
"analysis of foreign intelligence services, terrorist organizations, and
their surrogates targetting DoD personnel, resources and facilities." Much of this is already
being done by Aegis. "We're more of an intel company," said Kristi
Clemens, the company's Washington-based executive vice president. "We're
not guns for hire." Known internally as Project
Matrix, Aegis's U.S. Army contract has multiple aims. The company, for
example, runs more than a dozen Reconstruction Liaison Teams in which
contractors armed with assault rifles and traveling in armored SUVs visit
reconstruction projects to assess their progress and the levels of insurgent
activity. "Their mission is to provide 'ground truth' to the Army
Corps," Clemens said. Aegis has also spent about
$425,000 in company money and private donations on more than 100 small
charity projects such as soccer fields and vaccination programs. The projects
enable the company to build relationships in the communities in which it
operates and gather information at the same time. "It's not intelligence
as I understand it; it is understanding the water in which we swim,"
said David Cooper, who directs the program. The company, for instance,
spent $1,300 distributing tracksuits to girls' schools in an area of eastern
Iraq where residents routinely pelted Aegis security teams with rocks,
according to Justin Marozzi, Aegis's former director of civil affairs, who
now is a London-based consultant. Through relationships forged on the
project, the company learned of an insurgent cell that was working out of the
governor's office, he said. The military "acted on" the tip,
Marozzi said. He declined to elaborate. Aegis recently launched a
second charity to operate in Iraq and elsewhere called Hearts and Minds. The
charity project "goes back to basic counterinsurgency doctrine,"
Clemens said. "You need local people on your side." Aegis also provides
on-demand "threat assessments for the people that travel the
battlespace" throughout Iraq, said Robert Lewis, who directs Project
Matrix as the company's chief of staff in Baghdad. One intelligence
assessment, developed recently for the Army Corps of Engineers and provided
independently to The Washington Post, included a detailed map of previous
attacks and analyzed the intent and capabilities of Shiite militias and
criminal gangs operating in Basra province. "There has been collusion
with elements of the Basra" security forces, "which has increased
the capability of the militias," concluded the report, which was
compiled by Aegis's intelligence officer for the region. Aegis declined to make its
intelligence officials available for comment but said the information is
unclassified and is gathered from a variety of open sources, including
thousands of private security contractors who operate on Iraq's roads.
Dashboard transponders enable Aegis to track dozens of private security
companies that register with the Reconstruction Operations Center. The system
helps to alert the military to armed contractors on the battlefield,
preventing potential "friendly fire" incidents, and to mobilize an
emergency response when contractors come under attack. Aegis operates five remote
command centers on coalition bases throughout Iraq. Col. Timothy Clapp, who
until recently oversaw the system for the military, said Aegis is integrated
into the Army Corps of Engineers' intelligence and operations chains of
command. The military relies on
private contractors to offset chronic troop shortages. "If we had a 2
million-man army, we wouldn't be having this conversation," said Ed
Soyster, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. But the scope of the
contractors' responsibilities is sometimes unclear, particularly in the area
of intelligence-gathering. Singer, of the Brookings Institution, said
intelligence contracting is growing "in a major, major way" with
little government oversight. Paul Cox, press secretary
for Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), asked: "Who's overseeing this, and has
Congress been informed to the extent that contractors are involved in intelligence
activities? ... We at least need to get an accurate picture of what's being
contracted." Price has requested a Government Accountability Office
investigation of private security contractors in Iraq, including Aegis. Rep.
Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a member of the House Appropriations defense
subcommittee, has requested an audit of Aegis by the special inspector
general for Iraq reconstruction. Clapp said the Army Corps of
Engineers had a small role in running the Reconstruction Operations Center.
He said it was difficult for the military to ensure that security companies
follow regulations to report all shooting incidents through Aegis. "You
have to take it with a grain of salt," he said. "Some of the
companies clearly underreport." In addition, Blackwater USA
and DynCorp International, two of the largest security firms in Iraq and both
American companies, refuse to participate in the Reconstruction Operations
Center, essentially making their movements invisible to other private
security firms. (Blackwater bid on the new contract, then filed a protest
with the GAO when it was eliminated from the competition.) Blackwater said
that its movements are tracked by the military under separate U.S. government
contracts and that it thus does not need to participate. DynCorp said it also
is monitored separately. The idea for the center
originated after four Blackwater employees were ambushed in the city of
Fallujah in March 2004; their charred remains were strung from a bridge
overlooking the Euphrates River. The U.S. military was unaware at the time
that the security contractors were traveling in the area. Jack Holly, a retired Marine
colonel who heads the Army Corps of Engineers' logistics directorate, said
the center was originally envisioned as "a fusion organization for all
of the information gathered among the private security companies." The
information would be useful to both the military and thousands of private
security contractors who operate on Iraq's supply routes and face the same
insurgent threats. But Holly said the
usefulness of the center has been limited because each time a company
provides intelligence, it is classified secret by the military and not
distributed. This has deterred the private security contractors from
participating, since they don't benefit from intelligence collected by the
center. "Our perception was that the military would have a huge
repository of added intel, which they could then pass on," Holly said.
"But they prevented anyone from wanting to participate, and so it's
never happened." Holly said the center has
been reduced to "a great display board of tracking. It's like, 'Come
watch the lights move.' " Aegis's Lewis acknowledged,
"We can't disseminate classified information, so that is problematic for
us." He said he is not certain how the military uses the information
compiled through the center. "All that stuff is shoveled to" the
Army Corps of Engineers, he said. "It's literally: 'Here it is. Do what
you can.' Whatever happens to it after that is their business." Three years ago, Aegis was
an unlikely choice to run the center. The company had been co-founded in 2002
by Spicer, who commanded the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, a British army unit,
and served in Northern Ireland, the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf War
and Bosnia. Spicer titled his autobiography "An Unorthodox Soldier." Spicer's experiences in
Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone are documented in multiple accounts,
including Spicer's autobiography and Aegis's Web site. In 1997, the government of
Papua New Guinea hired Spicer and his former private military company,
Sandline International, for $36 million to train and equip forces to put down
a rebel movement that had closed a major copper mine. Rather than quelling
the rebellion, Sandline's presence sparked civil unrest; Spicer was briefly
jailed on a weapons charge that was subsequently dropped. The prime minister
of the government that hired him soon fell. Spicer said he was supporting a
legitimately elected government. The following year, Sandline
was contacted by an international businessman, Rakesh Saxena, to reinstate
the elected government of Sierra Leone, which Saxena hoped would grant him
diamond and mineral concessions. The operation was successful, but
allegations that Spicer violated a U.N. weapons embargo caused a scandal that
came to be known in Britain as the "Sandline Affair." Spicer says
he conducted the operation with the British government's knowledge. "Tim Spicer is a
mercenary," said Robert Young Pelton, an adventure writer whose book
"Licensed to Kill" is about the private security industry.
"Didn't anyone Google him?" Spicer declined to be
interviewed. After winning the U.S. Army
contract, Aegis almost immediately ran into problems. A special inspector
audit found that the company failed to perform adequate background checks on
some Iraqi employees. The company said it had just won the contract and immediately
addressed the issue. Then, in October 2005, a video surfaced on the Internet,
showing a security contractor allegedly employed by Aegis firing near
civilian vehicles to the Elvis Presley song "Mystery Train." Aegis
said that it investigated the incident and found that the video was posted by
a disgruntled employee who was let go. But criticism of the company
has since subsided. Aegis said it has conducted more than 21,000 private
security details without any casualties to Army Corps of Engineers personnel.
Holly, who has been in Iraq for 3 1/2 years, said Aegis "came in and it
was like: 'We're gonna do this. Were gonna do that. Don't tell us how to do
this.' It was almost like they were saying: 'We're here, her majesty's
representative. Screw you and the colonies.' It's hard to embrace that. "But when we sit here
today, and I look at how Aegis has matured and evolved as a company and as a
private security organization, I'd say they are pretty damn good. They have
created an architecture" of security and intelligence. Klein reported from
Washington. Staff researchers Julie Tate in Washington and Richard Drezen in
New York contributed to this report. External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/30/AR2007063001075.html |