In case you've been living under a cave for the past decade, the African nation of Liberia is just now recovering from a vicious civil war, funded in part by
American televangelists. The fighting in Liberia was marked by the use of child soldiers and different groups amputating and beheading their opponents.
The good news is that the country is now on the path to peace and elections are scheduled for later this year. There may however be one big wrench left in the works.
As I reported this two days ago (on
Flogging the Simian), the United States has hired
Dyncorp to train Liberia's future army. You may wonder why the U.S. is choosing who gets to train Liberia's army - it's simply because the U.S. is providing the funding for it, not because anyone asked the people of Liberia.
Dyncorp will earn 35 million dollars to train 4,000 soldiers and will begin "within the next few weeks".
As such, I thought it was worthwhile to look back at the history of Dyncorp:
Dyncorp is a "private security company". They regularly hire police officers, military personnel, prison guards and others willing to do dangerous duty for much higher pay.
Dyncorp has been hired to perform a variety of duties from mercenary-type "bodyguards", maintaining prisons, guarding convoys, policing/peacekeeping duties as well as training police and military personnell in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo (Serbia), Colombia and now of course Liberia.
Dyncorp has less than a stellar past and we'll start with Bosnia:
Contracted as "peacekeepers", many Dyncorp employees were taking advantage of the impoverished population by paying girls as young as 12 for sex. They were also purchasing illegal weaponry, forging passports and buying women and children for sexual purposes. They were also ripping off the U.S. military by overcharging or doing unnecessary repairs to military equipment:
[Former Dyncorp employee who blew the whistle, Ben Johnston] laughs bitterly recalling the work habits of a DynCorp employee in Bosnia who "weighed 400 pounds and would stick cheeseburgers in his pockets and eat them while he worked. The problem was he would literally fall asleep every five minutes. One time he fell asleep with a torch in his hand and burned a hole through the plastic on an aircraft." This same man, according to Johnston, "owned a girl who couldn't have been more than 14 years old. It's a sick sight anyway to see any grown man [having sex] with a child, but to see some 45-year-old man who weighs 400 pounds with a little girl, it just makes you sick." It is precisely these allegations that Johnston believes got him fired.
Johnston reports that he had been in Bosnia only a few days when he became aware of misbehavior in which many of his DynCorp colleagues were involved. He tells INSIGHT, "I noticed there were problems as soon as I got there, and I tried to be covert because I knew it was a rougher crowd than I'd ever dealt with. It's not like I don't drink or anything, but DynCorp employees would come to work drunk. A DynCorp van would pick us up every morning and you could smell the alcohol on them. There were big-time drinking issues. I always told these guys what I thought of what they were doing, and I guess they just thought I was a self-righteous fool or something, but I didn't care what they thought."
Johnston also reported that Dyncorp was working with the Serbian mafia to import women and girls as sex slaves from Eastern Europe, including Romania.
The U.S. military attempted to prosecute Dyncorp employees for this behavior but found that they were exempt from American law. Most of the Dyncorp employees videotaped committing these heinous acts left Bosnia before they could be prosecuted by local authorities.
Dyncorp (and other private contractors) are still exempt from both U.S. law as well as the military code of conduct in all the countries they work in.
Johnston, who blew the whistle on the entire affair, was fired from Dyncorp for "bringing discredit" to the company.
A UN Police Force monitor, Kathryn Bolkovac, also sued Dyncorp when she was fired by the company about Dyncorp employees paying for prostitutes and buying women and children for sex.
Colombia - Dyncorp was hired by the Colombian government after receiving massive amounts of U.S. aid as part of "Plan Colombia". Dyncorp brought in 88 aircraft to "eradicate" coca fields as well as transport members of the Colombian military.
Dyncorp was sued by Ecuadorian farmers in 2001 because the herbicides Dyncorp was using were crossing over the border and killing legal crops and sickening thousands of people. The U.S. State Department intervened and said the lawsuit posed "a grave risk to US national security" and the case was subsequently dropped.
My old friend Al Giordano reported in 2002 that the Ecuadorian lawsuit charged Dyncorp with "terrorism" over the reckless spraying.
It is estimated that Dyncorp has been paid at least 600 million dollars (by the U.S. government) for their "services" in Colombia.
I should mention here that The Economist this week (no link) reports that the price of cocaine has actually gone down since Plan Colombia's inception and that cocaine production is as high as ever.
Kosovo - More of the same as reported for Bosnia. Dyncorp was contracted to run several prisons in Kosovo and the two Americans killed in a firefight with a Jordanian peacekeeper (in 2004) were both Dyncorp employees.
Dyncorp was hired by the U.S. government in lieu of providing soldiers so there would be no political repercussions. You have to remember at the time that stationing American troops in Bosnia was a political issue but paid mercenaries did not carry the same weight:
"We have extensive experience of doing business for the military," said Spence Wickham, a retired US Air Force officer who is director ofinternational operations in the division of DynCorp which is handling theKosovo mission. He said the men were flying from Texas yesterday and would arrive in the region today . They include weapons inspectors, verification experts, and drivers and technicians to operate the standard US infantry vehicle, the Humvee.
Mr Wickham believed it was the first time American private contractors had sent people to substitute for normal servicemen in combat areas where there is no formal ceasefire agreement. "But we've worked in Bosnia for over three years by contributing former military and police officers to the international police task force there," he said.
Once again, a Dyncorp employee was fired after criticizing Dyncorp for overcharging the U.S. military:
On Sept. 9, he said, he went to Sarajevo, Bosnia, and found out that's where a DynCorp site manager bought the United Nations civilian police badges to resell to UN officers. On the day he was in Sarajevo, Gocaj said, a DynCorp manager bought the badges for about $13 and sold them to a DynCorp manager in Kosovo for $26. That manager then sold the badges to U.S. officers for $50, Gocaj said.
Afghanistan - Among its other contracts, Dyncorp provides the bodyguards for president Hamid Karzai, with the American taxpayer paying the bill. Karzai has faced several assassination attempts after being installed as the "interim president" of the country.
Dyncorp has also been hired to train Afghan police in "counter-narcotics" methods. Three Dyncorp employees were killed when a car bomb exploded near their compound in Kabul.
Dyncorp has been paid at least 82 million dollars by the U.S. State Department for various services in Afghanistan.
According to Dyncorp's website, you too can be a police officer in Afghanistan. Salary is 100,000 U.S. dollars and if you complete the entire term you will be exempt from all state and federal taxes.
Haiti - In 1994, the United States invaded Haiti and disbanded the military. The U.S. State Department then hired Dyncorp to provide "technical advice" on restructuring the Haitian police. In 2004, Guy Philippe, the former Haitian police chief, and an organization known as the FRAPH led a revolution which eventually led to the forced resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Dyncorp has long had connections with the CIA. It was the CIA who organized and paid the leaders of the FRAPH. When Aristide was forced to resign, it was Dyncorp who flew him and his family out of the country.
Dyncorp also won contracts in 2004 to help "rebuild" Haiti after it was subcontracted by Kellogg, Brown, Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton). KBR received 141 million dollars in reconstruction money from the U.S. government.
Iraq - Dyncorp has been awarded a number of contracts in Iraq, including ones to "advise" the Iraqi "government" on law enforcement and "correctional" issues. Dyncorp provided approximately 1,000 "law enforcement advisors" in Iraq as part of that contract.
Several Dyncorp employees have been killed in Iraq and there are numerous websites which state that morale is quite low there as the work is more dangerous than the company has advertised despite the 153,000 per year salary (tax free).
Israel - Dyncorp and not the State Department's Diplomatic Security force, provides security for American diplomats in this country. Three Dyncorp employees were killed in the Gaza Strip when their convoy was hit by a bomb in 2003.
East Timor - Dyncorp was hired to provide training for East Timorese police officers. As per the agreement between the U.S. government and East Timor, Dyncorp employees were given immunity from Timorese laws.
Dyncorp also makes money maintaining US bases in Saudi Arabia, providing security for UN convoys in Sierra Leone, and providing security in Macedonia and Slovenia. It also "stores" landmines ("Gator" and "Claymore" types) on behalf of the U.S. military, the said mines being illegal by international treaty.
Dyncorp also "manages" some areas of the U.S.-Mexican border. Dyncorp also maintains Air Force one and all the aircraft (including helicopters) the President uses.
It's worth noting here that Dyncorp is a major federal contractor for a slew of agencies and is implicated in money laundering and other criminal activities in the United States. Dyncorp has also won several contracts for implementing computer systems for key agencies such as the DOJ, HUD, DEA, Treasury and the FBI. Dyncorp is behind the FBI's failed "PROMIS" software system as well.
I conclude this piece by letting you know Dyncor's website is hiring police officers to train the Liberians. Salary is 118,000 dollars and it's free from both federal and state taxes. Come join the fun!
This article was posted on my blog two days ago
Pax
