by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
April 9th, 2003
A major military contractor - already underfire for alleged human rights violations and fraud - may get a multi-million dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq.
| AFGHANISTAN: The Reach of War; U.S. Report Finds Dismal Training of Afghan Police by James Glantz and David Rohde; Carlotta Gall, The New York Times December 4th, 2006 Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone. |
| IRAQ: How Iraq Police Reform Became Casualty of War
by Michael Moss, with David Rohde and Kirk Semple, The New York Times May 22nd, 2006 So was much of the rest of Iraq. An initial effort by American civilians to rebuild the police, slow to get started and undermanned, had become overwhelmed by corruption, political vengeance and lawlessness unleashed by the toppling of Saddam Hussein. |
| IRAQ: Misjudgments Marred U.S. Plans for Iraqi Police by Michael Moss and David Rohde, The New York Times Company May 21st, 2006 Field training of the Iraqi police, the most critical element of the effort, was left to DynCorp International, a company based in Irving, Tex., that received $750 million in contracts. The advisers, many of them retired officers from small towns, said they arrived in Iraq and quickly found themselves caught between poorly staffed American government agencies, company officials focused on the bottom line and thousands of Iraqi officers clamoring for help. |
| US: Tender Mercenaries: DynCorp and Me by Jeremy Scahill, Common Dreams November 1st, 2005 In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, journalist Jeremy Scahill investigated the role of private security companies like Blackwater USA, infamous for their work in Iraq, that deployed on the streets of New Orleans. His reports were broadcast on the national radio and TV show Democracy Now! and on hundreds of sites across the internet. In response to Scahill's recent cover story in The Nation magazine "Blackwater Down," the President and CEO of DynCorp, one of the largest private security companies in the world, wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation. Dyncorp CEO Stephen J. Cannon's letter is reprinted below, followed by Scahill's response. |
| IRAQ: Contractor Charged in Baghdad Badge Scam by Jerry Markon and Josh White, The Washington Post September 21st, 2005 A military contractor returning from Iraq was charged yesterday with distributing identity badges that control access to Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone to people not allowed to receive them, including an Iraqi woman he was dating. |
| AFGHANISTAN: Dyncorp Guards Chastised by U.S. State Department BBC News October 14th, 2004 The U.S. State Department has rebuked a private security firm, Dyncorp, over the "aggressive behavior" of guards hired to protect Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. |
| Iraq: Security Firms Form World's Largest Private 'Army' by Dana Priest and Mary Pat Flaherty, Washington Post April 8th, 2004 Under assault by insurgents and unable to rely on U.S. and coalition troops for intelligence or help under duress, private security firms in Iraq have begun to band together in the past 48 hours, organizing what may effectively be the largest private army in the world, with its own rescue teams and pooled, sensitive intelligence. |
| Iraq: Global Security Firms Fill in as Private Armies by Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle March 28th, 2004 The shootout was just one more example of the behind-the-scenes role played in Iraq by an estimated 15,000 private security agents from the United States, Britain and countries as varied as Nepal, Chile, Ukraine, Israel, South Africa and Fiji. They are employed by about 25 different firms that are playing their part in Iraq's highly dangerous postwar environment by performing tasks ranging from training the country's new police and army to protecting government leaders to providing logistics for the U.S. military. 15,000 agents patrol the violent streets of Iraq. |
| US: Computer Technicians Sue CSC to Seek Overtime Pay
by Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times November 13th, 2003 Computer Sciences Corp. was accused Wednesday of cheating thousands of computer technicians out of overtime pay in a lawsuit that could open the technology industry to the same class-action litigation that has forced millions of dollars in back wages from fast-food chains and retail outlets. |
| Iraq: The Pentagon's Private Corps by Julian Brookes, MotherJones.com October 22nd, 2003 Washington has long outsourced work to private firms. What's new is the size and variety of contracts being doled out, particularly by the Pentagon. Private military companies now do more than simply build airplanes -- they maintain those planes on the battlefield and even fly them; construct detention camps in Guantanamo Bay, pilot armed reconnaissance planes and helicopter gunships to eradicate coca crops in Colombia; and operate the intelligence and communications systems at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado -- work that brings the various companies an estimated $100 billion a year. |
| Iraq: Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows by David Wood, Newhouse News Service July 31st, 2003 U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said. |
| Dyncorp Rent-a-Cops May Head to Post-Saddam Iraq by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch April 9th, 2003 A major military contractor - already underfire for alleged human rights violations and fraud - may get a multi-million dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq. |
| IRAQ: Thousands of Private Contractors Support U.S. Forces in Persian Gulf by Kenneth Bredemeier, Washington Post March 3rd, 2003 Private contractors are sending thousands of technical experts to the Persian Gulf region. They operate communications systems, repair helicopters, fix weapons systems and link the computers with the troops to command centers. |
| US: Sex scandal still haunts DynCorp
by John Crewdson, Tribune May 13th, 2002 Hoping to avoid a repeat of a sex scandal that marred the presence of American police officers in Bosnia, U.S. law-enforcement personnel recruited to help reorganize Iraq's shattered police forces must acknowledge in writing that human trafficking and involvement with prostitution "are considered illegal by the international community and are immoral, unethical and strictly prohibited." |
| ECUADOR: Farmers Fight DynCorp's Chemwar on the Amazon by Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch February 27th, 2002 The International Labor Rights Fund has filed suit in US federal court on behalf of 10,000 Ecuadorian peasant farmers and Amazonian Indians charging DynCorp with torture, infanticide and wrongful death for its role in the aerial spraying of highly toxic pesticides in the Amazonian jungle, along the border of Ecuador and Colombia. |
| US: DynCorp Disgrace by Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Insight Magazine January 14th, 2002 Middle-aged men having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds was too much for Ben Johnston, a hulking 6-foot-5-inch Texan, and more than a year ago he blew the whistle on his employer, DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing business in Bosnia. |
| US: Company Seeks to Reassure NSA on Groundbreaker by Patience Wait, Washington Technology August 13th, 2001 For Computer Sciences Corp., winning the National Security Agency's huge Groundbreaker outsourcing contract has been like catching a tiger by the tail. |
| DynCorp-State Department Contract CorpWatch May 23rd, 2001 Corpwatch has acquired a copy of a $600 million dollar contract between DynCorp and the U.S. State Department. The company carries crop fumigation and eradication against coca farmers in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. In Colombia it is also involved in drug interdiction, transport, reconnaissance, search and rescue missions, medical evacuation and aircraft maintenance, among other operations. |
| DynCorp in Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug War by Jeremy Bigwood, Special to CorpWatch May 23rd, 2001 A U.S.-made Huey II military helicopter manned by foreigners wearing U.S. Army fatigues crash lands after being pockmarked by sustained guerrilla fire from the jungle below. Its crew members, one of them wounded, are surrounded by enemy guerrillas. Another three helicopters, this time carrying American crews, cut through the hot muggy sky. |
| Colombia: Private Firms Take on U.S. Military Role in Drug War by Juan O. Tamayo, Miami Herald May 22nd, 2001 As U.S. efforts to reduce drug trafficking out of the Andes escalate, more U.S.-supplied equipment is flowing into the region and more Americans are becoming involved -- and occasionally coming under fire. But because of the growing privatization of U.S. military efforts abroad, their presence is often unseen. |