Baghdad Travel Suspended following Mercenary Killings
From the North County Times (San Diego/Riverside, CA)
Excerpt: Iraq's prime minister on Wednesday disputed Blackwater USA's version of a weekend shooting that left at least 11 people dead and declared he would not tolerate "the killing of our citizens in cold blood."

Land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials outside the fortified Green Zone remained suspended for a second day after Iraqi authorities ordered Blackwater to stop working as an investigation continues into the Sunday incident.

The Moyock, N.C.-based firm is the main provider of bodyguards and armed escorts for American government civilian employees in Iraq.


Americans and Iraqis have offered widely differing accounts of the Sunday incident, with Blackwater insisting that its guards returned fire against armed insurgents who were threatening American diplomats. ...

... Iraqis have long resented the presence of the estimated 48,000 private security contractors _ including about 1,000 Blackwater employees _ considering them a mercenary force that runs roughshod over civilians in their own country.

Blackwater, whose convoys of SUVs careen through the streets with weapons displayed, has been singled out for much of the criticism. "Blackwater has a reputation. If you want over-over-the-top, gun-toting security with high profile and all the bells and whistles, Blackwater are the people you are going to go with," said James Sammons, a former Australian Special Air Service commander who now works for British-based AKE Group that also provides security in Iraq.
Baghdad Travel Suspended following Mercenary Killings

Labels: contractors, iraq

Latin American hired guns shrug off Iraq War risks for payday
From the Miami Herald
Excerpt: LIMA -- Tired of subsisting by selling cigarettes on the street, Gregorio Calixto jumped at the chance last fall to earn $1,000 a month working for a U.S.-based security company in Iraq. ...

...The Latin Americans typically served in the military back home -- many fought leftist guerrillas in places like El Salvador and Colombia -- and were taught by U.S. instructors, making it easier for them to use U.S. weapons and work under American security procedures.

But after leaving their armed forces, these soldiers found themselves in low-paying jobs. So they agreed to risk injury or death in Iraq for $1,000 to $1,500 a month -- $5 to $7 an hour -- a good wage for them, but far below the $10,000 to $15,000 monthly pay for American contract employees.

Peruvians guard the outer perimeter of a U.S. installation in Basra. Chileans protect the governmental Green Zone in Baghdad. Hondurans have provided security within the terminal at Baghdad International Airport. Salvadorans once protected the Green Zone in Baghdad, but they and some Ecuadoreans reportedly have left the jobs after media in their home countries labeled them ``mercenaries.''
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Labels: contractors, iraq

Largest Iraq contract rife with errors
From USA Today
Excerpt: Government auditors discovered something odd last year when they reviewed KBR Inc.'s annual cost estimate to provide support services for U.S. troops in Iraq. The contractor proposed charging $110 million for housing, food, water, laundry and other services on bases that had been shut down.

KBR got a contract extension for $3.7 billion, but it agreed to drop the proposed $110 million spending on closed bases and an additional $50 million of duplicate charges and math errors, according to Defense Department records obtained by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act.

Linda Theis of the Army Sustainment Command, the agency that oversees KBR's troop-support contract, downplayed the errors. They amount to just 4.3% of the contract amount, she said. "This percentage does not indicate a systemic weakness in business systems."
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Labels: contractors, iraq, pentagon, spending

In Iraq, a Private Realm Of Intelligence-Gathering
From the Washington Post
Excerpt: 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. ...

... 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. ...

... 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."
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Labels: contractors, iraq

Former Officer Sentenced for Kickbacks
From AP via the Houston Chronicle
Excerpt: A former U.S. Army Reserve officer was sentenced to nearly two years in prison Monday for helping steer millions of dollars in Iraq-reconstruction contracts in exchange for jewelry, computers, cigars and sexual favors.

Lt. Col. Bruce D. Hopfengardner, 46, of Fredericksburg, Va., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud last year. He served as a special adviser to the U.S.-led occupation forces, recommending funding for projects on law enforcement facilities in Iraq.

Hopfengardner was sentenced to 21 months in prison, fined $144,500 and ordered to serve three years of probation.

He admitted conspiring with Philip H. Bloom, a U.S. citizen with businesses in Romania, and Robert J. Stein Jr., a former Defense Department contract official, to create a corrupt bidding process that included the theft of $2 million in reconstruction money.
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Labels: contractors, corruption, iraq

Ex-official's firm receiving VA fees
From the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
Excerpt: A California company headed by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi could get fees exceeding $1 billion from the Veterans Affairs, much of it on contracts approved and amended while he ran the agency, records show. ...
...During his tenure as VA secretary, Principi's past and future corporate home in Diamond Bar, Calif., collected about $246 million in fees, according to VA records. And Congressional Budget Office projections show that the VA contracts could be worth as much as $1.2 billion to QTC if fully funded by Congress through 2008.

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From the Contra Costa Times: A QTC hearing exam, for instance, averaged $495.55 compared to $89.80 for an in-house exam. Even with an adjustment for possible hidden VA costs, the difference exceeded 400 percent. For a general medical exam, QTC's average cost was $393.52 compared to a VA average of $225.58, the consultants found...
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Labels: agency, contractors, corruption, spending, veterans

Firms with Bush-Cheney ties clinching Katrina deals
From USA Today
Excerpt: Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton... More

Labels: bush, cheney, contractors, FEMA, katrina, spending

What happened to Iraq’s oil money?
From NBC Nightly News
Excerpt: Iraq's oil resources generate billions of dollars — money the United States promised to protect after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Now, Frank Willis, a former senior American official in Iraq, tells NBC News the United States failed to safeguard the oil money known as the Development Fund for Iraq. "There was, in my mind, pervasive leakage in assets of Iraq, and to some extent, those assets were squandered," says Willis. ...
...Iraq’s U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer, pledged last year to hire a certified public accounting firm to ensure proper controls. But the United States gave the contract not to an accounting firm but to a tiny consulting company, Northstar — which NBC News found is headquartered at a private home near San Diego...
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Labels: contractors, iraq, oil, reconstruction

American Contractors Involved in Chalabi Raid
From the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette
Excerpt: When Iraqi police raided the Baghdad home and offices of politician Ahmad Chalabi on May 20, U.S. officials hurried to distance themselves, saying the operation was an Iraqi affair and no U.S. government employees were involved.
But eight armed American contractors paid by a U.S. State Department program went on the raid, directing and encouraging the Iraqi policemen who eyewitnesses say ripped out computers, turned over furniture and smashed photographs.

Some of them helped themselves to baklava, apples and diet soda from Chalabi's refrigerator, sitting in a garden outside to enjoy the looted snacks, according to members of Chalabi's staff who were there.

The contractors work for Dyn-Corp, a subsidiary of California-based Computer Sciences Corp. and the company in charge of training and advising the Iraqi police on a State Department contract. A State Department official confirmed the DynCorp workers' presence during the raid. A DynCorp spokesman declined to comment.

Labels: contractors, iraq

Justice Department opens Bribery Probe of Halliburton
From the Houston Chronicle
Excerpt: The Justice Department is looking into allegations that a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. was involved in payment of $180 million in bribes to win a contract for a natural gas project in Nigeria, officials said Wednesday.

The $4 billion Nigerian liquefied natural gas plant was built in the 1990s by a consortium that included Kellogg, Brown & Root, now known as KBR, during a time when Vice President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton...

Labels: contractors, halliburton

The Two Faces of Rumsfeld
2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea
2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change
Guardian (UK)

Labels: contractors, rumsfeld

Cheney still being paid by Halliburton
Guardian

Halliburton wins bid to fight Iraqi oil fires
Forbes

Halliburton gets contract to help rebuild Iraq
Guardian

Radioactive device stolen from Halliburton
CNN

Labels: cheney, contractors, halliburton, September 11

Halliburton wins contract to build new cells in Guantanamo
From the Miami Herald
Excerpt: Halliburton Co. has been awarded a $9.7 million contract to build an additional 204-cell detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to hold additional suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, the Pentagon said on Friday. The move will expand the high-security prison on the base, where hundreds of such "detainees" from Afghanistan are already being held in 612 small cells.

Labels: cheney, contractors, halliburton

Defense Dept. seeks greater "latitude"
From the Los Angeles Times
Excerpt: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing a series of sweeping proposals that would weaken congressional oversight of the Pentagon and give the military more freedom to manage itself than ever before. The Pentagon has proposed eliminating requirements for filing hundreds of reports on its activities to Congress every year. Pentagon officials also are drafting proposals to ban strikes by contract workers, eliminate federal personnel rules protecting civilian workers at the Pentagon and bypass environmentalists in Congress...
Indeed, administration officials say it is part of a grander plan that is very much in play--to relieve the Pentagon, and later other executive branch agencies, from oversight that Rumsfeld calls burdensome and inefficient, but which critics say is a necessary inconvenience of democracy. The proposals, said a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity, are "the tip of the iceberg."

Labels: contractors

Under Cheney, Halliburton Altered Policy on Accounting
From the New York Times
During Vice President Dick Cheney's tenure as its chief executive, the Halliburton Corporation altered its accounting policies so it could report as revenue more than $100 million in disputed costs on big construction projects, public filings by the company show. Halliburton did not disclose the change to investors for over a year.
At the time of the change — which was approved by Arthur Andersen, the company's auditor at the time — Halliburton was suffering big losses on some of its long-term contracts, according to the filings. Its stock had slumped because of a recession in the oil industry. Two former executives of Dresser Industries, which merged with Halliburton in 1998, said that they concluded after the merger that Halliburton had instituted aggressive accounting practices to obscure its losses.

Labels: contractors