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Abu Ghraib
Management and
Training
October 28, 2005 Macon Telegraph
Abu Ghraib means different things to different people. For the people of
Iraq, it is where tens of thousands of family members died in Saddam Hussein's
death house or were tortured under his regime. Around the world, it is the scene
of the infamous prisoner abuse scandal that led to U.S. soldiers doing time for
war crimes. For retired Macon firefighter John Wood, it is now home. Before
beginning his role as a civilian firefighter working for Wackenhut Services LLC,
Wood spent two weeks at Camp Victory near Baghdad, Iraq, to get acclimated to
the heat. The prison-turned-military base is home now to some 5,000 detainees,
U.S. soldiers and a multinational force that operates a combat supply hospital,
Wood said. "It just blew me away," Wood said of his arrival at Abu
Ghraib. "I didn't know what to expect, and when I got there, it was beyond
my worst expectation."
May 22, 2004 Albuquerque
Journal
A senator has made a Department of Justice review critical of operations at the
Santa Fe County jail part of the ongoing controversy over America's management
of prisons in Iraq. A Department of Justice review in March 2003 had harsh
words for management of the Santa Fe County jail by Utah-based Management and
Training Corp., criticizing MTC's medical care for inmates and concluding some
conditions violated their constitutional rights. Former New Mexico
corrections secretary O. Lane McCotter is an MTC executive and was named by
Attorney General John Ashcroft to help rebuild Iraq prisons last year.
McCotter's role in Iraq prisons-- including at Abu Grhaib, where abuse of Iraqi
prisoners by U.S. military personnel has sparked a scandal-- has come under
congressional scrutiny. Senator Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., in particular,
is making an issue of McCotter's work in Iraq and why he was chosen to go there.
A statement provided by Schumer's office reviews McCotter's employment history,
including his resignation as Utah prison director in 1997 after a mentally ill
inmate died after spending 16 hours strapped to a chair. Schumer's news
release also calls attention to the Justice report criticizing MTC's management
of the Santa Fe County jail, and notes that the New Mexico Corrections
Department also raised concerns about the jail. "While McCotter's
company was under state and Department of Justice investigation, Attorney
General Ashcroft selected him to serve as one of four civilian advisers to
oversee the reconstitution of Iraqi prisons," Schumer noted.
"Why Attorney General Ashcroft would send someone with such a checkered
record to rebuild Iraq's corrections system is beyond me," Schumer
said.
May 21, 2004 Miami
Herald
Although several cases of prisoner abuse by civilians in Iraq have been referred
to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, the FBI has not yet been
asked to investigate any of them, Director Robert Mueller said Thursday.
What Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed to indicate that the
probe into whether independent contractors or CIA officers killed prisoners in
Iraq and Afghanistan is moving more slowly than on the military front, where one
soldier has already been court-martialed and others have been charged. While the
faces of military police have been splashed all over the news, the names of
almost all civilians involved -- employees of other government agencies and
civilian contractors -- were deleted from Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's report on
the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Mueller also said lawyers for the Justice
Department and Defense Department are wrestling with jurisdictional issues. Any
crimes at the prison would have been committed on foreign soil against foreign
citizens, creating complicated legal questions. Also Thursday, Sen.
Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for a Justice Department probe into two members
of a U.S. group sent to Iraq in May 2003 to help with the reconstruction of Abu
Ghraib. Lane McCotter, a former corrections chief in Utah, and John Armstrong,
who led the prison system in Connecticut, were part of a team picked by Attorney
General John Ashcroft and others in the Bush administration.
May
21, 2004 NY Times
The use of American corrections executives with abuse accusations in their past
to oversee American-run prisons in Iraq is prompting concerns in Congress about
how the officials were selected and screened. Senator Charles E. Schumer,
Democrat of New York, sent a letter yesterday to Attorney General John Ashcroft
questioning what he described as the "checkered record when it comes to
prisoners' rights" of John J. Armstrong, a former commissioner of
corrections in Connecticut. Mr. Armstrong resigned last year after Connecticut
settled lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the families
of two Connecticut inmates who died after being sent by Mr. Armstrong to a supermaximum
security prison in Virginia.
In his letter, Mr. Schumer requested that the Justice Department conduct an
investigation into the role of American civilians in the Iraqi prison system.
Another official, Lane McCotter, who was forced to resign as director of the
Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an incident in which a mentally ill
inmate died after guards left him shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16
hours, was dispatched by Mr. Ashcroft to head a team of Americans to reopen
Iraq's prisons. After his resignation in Utah, Mr. McCotter became an executive
of a private prison company, the Management and Training Corporation, one of
whose jails was strongly criticized in a Justice Department report just a
month before the Justice Department sent him to Iraq.
May
12, 2004 The Nation
In
1997 a 29-year-old schizophrenic inmate named Michael Valent was stripped naked
and strapped to a restraining chair by Utah prison staff because he refused to
take a pillowcase off his head. Shortly after he was released some sixteen hours
later, Valent collapsed and died from a blood clot that blocked an artery to his
heart. The chilling incident made
national news not only because it happened to be videotaped but also because
Valent's family successfully sued the State of Utah and forced it to stop using
the device. Director of the Utah Department of Corrections, Lane McCotter, who
was named in the suit and defended use of the chair, resigned in the ensuing
firestorm. Some six years later, Lane McCotter was working in Abu Ghraib prison,
part of a four-man team of correctional advisers sent by the Justice Department
and charged with the sensitive mission of reconstructing Iraq's notorious
prisons, ravaged by decades of human rights abuse. While McCotter left Iraq
shortly before the current scandal at Abu Ghraib began and says he had nothing
to do with the MPs who committed the atrocities, his very presence there raises
serious questions about US handling of the Iraqi prison system. It's bad enough
that the Justice Department picked McCotter--whose reputation in Utah was at
best controversial and at worst disturbing. But further, the Justice Department
hired him less than three months after its own civil rights division released a
shocking thirty-six-page report documenting inhumane conditions at a New Mexico
jail, run by the company
where McCotter is an executive. Then,
on May 20, in a case of unfathomable irony, Attorney General John Ashcroft
announced that McCotter, along with three other corrections experts, had gone to
Iraq. The very same day, Justice Department lawyers began their first
negotiations with Santa Fe County officials over the extensive changes needed at
the jail to avoid legal action.
May
11, 2004 AP
A
former New Mexico corrections secretary helped to reopen an Iraqi prison that is
now the center of a prisoner abuse controversy. O.L.
"Lane" McCotter, who was corrections secretary from the late 1980s to
the end of 1990, was in Baghdad from May to September last year overseeing
the reconstruction of the Abu Ghraib prison. The
prison is where pictures were taken of naked Iraqi prisoners piled
on top of one another and positioned by American soldiers in pretend
sex acts. McCotter
said his primary duty in Iraq was to evaluate the structural
status of the prisons. McCotter's tenure
in this state ended with some controversy. In October 1988, a court-appointed
prison monitor accused state prison officials of erasing a portion of a
videotape of a prison disturbance to cover up acts of brutality against inmates.
McCotter left New Mexico to run the Utah Corrections Department. But he resigned
in 1997, two months after a mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours
strapped to a restraining chair. After
that incident, McCotter went to work for a Utah-based private prison company,
Management & Training Corp., which operates the Santa Fe County jail.
May 10, 2004 Salt
Lake Tribune
The Abu Ghraib prison, where U.S. military police were photographed abusing and
humiliating Iraqi prisoners, was rebuilt under the supervision of two former
Utah Department of Corrections directors. Gary DeLand and O. Lane McCotter
say they were told the project -- financed with money confiscated within Iraq --
would not be used to detain prisoners of war. McCotter has first-hand
experience with controversy over how prisoners are treated. He resigned as Utah
prison director in May 1997, within two months after a mentally ill inmate died
after spending 16 hours strapped naked to a restraining chair.
May 5, 2004 Seattle
Times
The reports of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners during interrogations are
both horrifying and depressing. Fortunately, there is a clear and proper legal
response. Those accused will be court-martialed and, if found guilty, they will
be punished. But the story, sadly, does not end there. It now appears that
this deeply disturbing episode — in which Iraqi prisoners were beaten,
sexually assaulted and forced to perform simulated sexual acts, among other
things — may have involved not only soldiers but also private contractors
hired as interrogators. That private contractors are interrogators in U.S.
prison camps in Iraq should be stunning enough. This is incredibly sensitive
work and takes our experiment with the boundaries of military outsourcing to
levels never anticipated. But even more outrageous is the fact that gaps in the
law may have given them a free pass so that it could be impossible to prosecute
them for alleged criminal behavior. To not only pay contractors more than
our soldiers but also give them a legal free pass is unconscionable. More
broadly, the United States must re-examine which military and intelligence roles
are appropriate for outsourcing and which are not. For the roles that we do
choose to outsource, we must close the gaps in the law.
May 2, 2004 The
Observer
Photographs of American and British troops humiliating prisoners could change
the public mood across the world. But the coalition has brushed aside similar
complaints for six months. Also pictured is Staff Sergeant Ivan 'Chip'
Frederick, a tall, muscular man, a corrections officer in a Virginia prison.
Frederick, a reservist, occupies a unique position in the scandal as - in his
ever more vocal justification of his behaviour - he has provided the most
coherent insight into how soldiers turned to abusers in a country they went to
liberate. Frederick blames the US army for its lack of direction from
above and says that he will plead not guilty to any charges made against him.
'We had no support, no training whatsoever,' he told CBS's 60 Minutes. 'I kept
asking my chain of command for certain things ... like rules and regulations.
And it just wasn't happening.' Frederick makes clear that the abuse was
not only for pleasure but was regarded as part of interrogations led by US
intelligence and private contractors in the prison.
October 16, 2003 AP
A remote-controlled bomb tore apart an armored vehicle in a U.S. diplomatic
convoy Wednesday, killing three American security guards and wounding a fourth
in the first deadly attack on a U.S. target in the Palestinian territories. The
attack, on a convoy of U.S. Embassy diplomats entering Gaza to interview
Palestinian candidates for a Fulbright scholarship, was a dramatic departure
from typical militant operations, which usually target Israeli soldiers and
civilians. It was almost certain to lead to greater U.S. pressure for a
Palestinian crackdown on militant groups. The State Department identified
the slain Americans as John Branchizio, 36; Mark T. Parson, 31; and John Martin
Linde Jr., 30 -- all employees of DynCorp, a Virginia-based security firm. The
wounded American was initially treated at a Gaza hospital before being
transferred to a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
Private Security
Aegis, Blackwater, DynCorp, Global Strategies, Group
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January 7, 2007 Chicagoist
On Wednesday it was discovered that an Orland Park firefighter was arrested
for felony theft for falsely claiming he was fighting for the military in Iraq.
Lawrence Masa was actually working for a private security firm in Iraq and was
being paid quite well. During this time Masa made approximately $190,000 as a
firefighter and $200,000 as a private security worker. Yesterday, Steven
Slawinski, a Lemont Firefighter, was accused of the same crime. Slawinski, a
friend of Masa, is charged with Felony theft for falsely claiming he was
fighting for the military in Iraq. Slawinski too was working at a private
security firm, getting paid $27,000 from the Fire Department while in Iraq.
Officials looked into Slawinksi's claims after they realized the relationship
between the two and the timing of both men's return to work. Slawinski was
making $63/hour as a trainer in Iraq. Since the start of the Iraq war tens of
thousands of private security workers have entered the country. With the ease
these two had at falsely producing documents stating they were serving in the
military, we assume this is much more of a widespread problem. This is just
another addition to the slew of problems we face with private military
contractors in Iraq. The U.S. Department of State currently recognizes 28
Security Companies doing business in Iraq, it is not known which company Masa
and Slawinski were working for, but our look into the companies shows two which
specialize in both fire and security. Baghdad Fire and Security is described as
providing the following services, "Fire protection and security equipment
supply. Install, maintain and commission these systems. Physical security and
demining." The second, Group 4 Falck A/S, provides, "Cashing sorting. Ambulance
services (vehicles and professional staff). Firefighting services (vehicles,
products and professional staff). Prisons and prison management. Global
solutions. Facility management and training services." The State Department's
disclaimer regarding these companies is, "The U.S. government assumes no
responsibility for the professional ability or integrity of the persons or firms
whose names appear on the list." The other problems we mentioned above, include
abuse at Abu Ghraib (following these allegations the companies involved were
awarded additional Pentagon contracts) and a video of firms shooting at Iraqi
citizens. Needless to say, previously these firms were acting without any regard
for, and any repercussions from, the law. With five words slipped into the most
recent Pentagon Budget, however, this should change. Previously, if Congress had
not declared war the Military had no jurisdiction over security contractors.
Essentially leaving Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan as playgrounds for the
firms. We don't discredit the risk the workers of these firms take, but it only
makes sense they have some sort of moral authority guiding them. The amendment
included in the budget bill simply took the word "war" and replaced it with
"declared war or a contingency operation." The Defense Tech article suggests
that Journalists embedded in contingency operation zones could also be subject
to the change, but this will most likely not remain true as embedded journalists
are unarmed and not considered contractors.
November 27, 2005 Telegraph UK
A "trophy" video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly
shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on
the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal. The video has sparked concern
that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation
either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of
innocent Iraqis. The video, which first appeared on a website that has been
linked unofficially to Aegis Defence Services, contained four separate clips, in
which security guards open fire with automatic rifles at civilian cars. All of
the shooting incidents apparently took place on "route Irish", a road
that links the airport to Baghdad. Last night a spokesman for defence firm Aegis
Defence Services - set up in 2002 by Lt Col Tim Spicer, a former Scots Guards
officer - confirmed that the company was carrying out an internal investigation
to see if any of their employees were involved. The Foreign Office has also
confirmed that it is investigating the contents of the video in conjunction with
Aegis, one of the biggest security companies operating in Iraq. The company was
recently awarded a £220 million security contract in Iraq by the United States
government. Aegis conducts a number of security duties and helped with the
collection of ballot papers in the country's recent referendum. Lt Col Spicer,
53, rose to public prominence in 1998 when his private military company
Sandlines International was accused of breaking United Nations sanctions by
selling arms to Sierra Leone. Capt Adnan Tawfiq of the Iraqi Interior Ministry
which deals with compensation issues, has told the Sunday Telegraph that he has
received numerous claims from families who allege that their relatives have been
shot by private security contractors travelling in road convoys. He said:
"When the security companies kill people they just drive away and nothing
is done. Sometimes we ring the companies concerned and they deny everything. The
families don't get any money or compensation. I would say we have had about
50-60 incidents of this kind."
September 10, 2005 NY
Times
The private security company that guards Baghdad International Airport shut down
the airport on Friday, saying it had not been paid for the past six months. But
the company, Global Strategies Group, announced early Saturday that it had
agreed to reopen the airport on Saturday morning after a promise by the Iraqi
government to pay half the amount owed. The shutdown on Friday nearly led to a
standoff between American military forces and Iraqi soldiers when United States
forces rushed to the airport to prevent Iraqi troops from taking it over,
according to Iraqi officials and the security company. After Global Strategies
closed the airport at dawn on Friday, infuriated Iraqi ministry officials
dispatched their own troops to secure the airport. But the Iraqis turned back to
avoid a confrontation with American soldiers who had already hurried to the
airport from their nearby base, according to Iraqi officials and Global
Strategies. Global Strategies has offices in London; Dubai, in the United Arab
Emirates; and Washington. The
company shut down the airport for 48 hours in June over the nonpayment, he said,
but went back on the job after assurances of a resolution. He said the airport
could be reopened for civilian passengers by 8 a.m. Saturday.
November 5, 2004 Mother
Jones
WHEN
THE BUSH administration turned over much of its Iraqi security operations to the
private sector last year, one of the companies that stood to profit was the
London-based Hart Group. Hart Group needed to hire 170 English-speaking guards
with military experience -- and it had to do it fast. “We had to recruit
people in very, very short order,” says Simon Falkner, the company’s chief
of operations. But Falkner knew exactly where to find many of his recruits: in
South Africa, where soldiers trained under that country’s apartheid regime now
often find themselves unemployable. Hart’s hiring practices might have passed
entirely unnoticed had one of the company’s employees not died in a firefight
with Iraqi insurgents last spring. The victim was 55-year-old Gray Branfield, a
former covert-operations specialist in South Africa’s fight to preserve white
minority rule. In the early 1980s, the apartheid government decided to
assassinate the top 50 African National Congress (ANC) officials living beyond
the country’s borders, and Branfield was charged with tracking down apartheid
opponents in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia. In July 1981, Branfield’s team
was assigned to hunt down Joe Gqabi, the ANC’s chief representative in
Zimbabwe and the operations chief of its militant wing there. After two weeks
searching for their quarry, Branfield’s team located Gqabi at a house in a
working-class suburb of Harare. With Uzis and Berettas beneath their coats, they
climbed over a fence and waited until the anti-apartheid activist emerged from
the house. Then the soldiers jumped from the bushes and pumped 19 bullets into
Gqabi at close range. How did a political assassin
end up working for the U.S. government in Iraq? The answer illuminates an
ominous aspect of what can happen when the business of war is handed over to the
private sector. To
an unprecedented degree, the United States and its allies have turned to private
companies to fill tens of thousands of jobs once performed only by soldiers,
from prison interrogators to bodyguards for high-ranking officials. The Pentagon
says it is not in the business of policing contractors’ hiring practices --
and that concerns military watchdogs, who believe this creates a climate where
human rights are seen as secondary. “The point is not lost on people working
in the private security market that the United States has hired companies with
cowboy reputations,” says Deborah Avant, director of the Institute for Global
and International Studies at George Washington University. Yet
even as the Iraq war was gearing up, observers warned that replacing soldiers
with contractors could cause accountability problems. “We have individuals who
are not obligated to follow orders or follow the Military Code of Conduct,”
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, told Mother Jones last year. “Their
main obligation is to their employer, not to their country.” Schakowsky’s
fears were realized at Abu Ghraib. Long before the infamous prison became a
household name, the U.S. Justice Department awarded the research and engineering
company SAIC a contract to help reconstruct the Iraqi prison system. SAIC in
turn hired four former corrections officials from the United States who had been
involved in prisoner-abuse cases. One of them, Gary DeLand, once ran a Utah jail
where a mentally ill inmate arrested for nonviolent disorderly conduct was held
naked and alone for 56 days without lights, recreation, windows, bedding, or a
toilet -- and without a hearing. Both SAIC and officials at the Justice
Department have declined to comment.
October 28, 2004 New
& Observer
Jerry Zovko’s contract with Blackwater USA looked straightforward: He would
earn $600 a day guarding convoys that carried food for U.S. troops in Iraq. But
that cost – $180,000 a year – was just the first installment of what
taxpayers were asked to pay for Mr. Zovko’s work. Blackwater, based in Moyock,
N.C., and three other companies would add to the bill, and to their profits.
Several Blackwater contracts obtained by The News & Observer open a small
window into the multibillion-dollar world of private military contractors in
Iraq. The contracts show how costs can add up when the government uses private
military contractors to perform tasks once handled by the Army. "There
is no question the taxpayer is getting screwed," said Mr. Bunting,
who was an Army staff sergeant in Vietnam. "There is no incentive for KBR
or their subs to try to reduce costs. No matter what it costs, KBR gets 100
percent back, plus overhead, plus their profit.
October 9, 2004 LA
Times
One of the highest-profile security companies in Iraq has been suspended
from doing business with the U.S. government after being accused of overbilling
millions of dollars through a series of sham companies. Custer Battles, a
security firm based in Virginia, sent fake bills to the U.S.-led Coalition
Provisional Authority that had run Iraq during the U.S. occupation, according to
an Air Force memo obtained by The Times. The
company, which provided all security at the Baghdad airport, is also the target
of a lawsuit unsealed Friday that accuses employees of systematically bilking
U.S. taxpayers and threatening one worker and his 14-year-old son at gunpoint.
The firm, which has a former Republican candidate for Congress as one of its
principals, is the latest in a string of companies linked to Republicans that
have been accused of wrongdoing in Iraq. The
company is also under investigation by the FBI and the Pentagon inspector
general's Defense Criminal Investigative Services, the memo said. The suspension
means that no government agency can issue further contracts to Custer Battles,
which had grown from a handful of employees to more than 700 during its time in
Iraq. In the lawsuit, known as a false claims action, former employee William
Baldwin and a Custer Battles subcontractor named Robert Isakson repeated some of
the accusations found in the Air Force memo. The false claims complaint said
that after Isakson complained about Custer Battles practices, he and his
14-year-old son were held at gunpoint by company employees. The employees then
kicked Isakson and his son off the airport base, leaving him to take a taxi
through war-torn Fallouja to return to Jordan.
September 27, 2004 Government
Executive
The Government Accountability Office has denied a protest from American security
services firm DynCorp International LLC of the Army's controversial award of a
$293 million contract in March to British firm Aegis Defense Services Ltd. to
coordinate and manage the activities of security contractors operating in Iraq.
DynCorp, a heavyweight in the global security services market, also had bid on
the contract. The firm is owned by Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif.
The award to Aegis surprised many because the company had no experience in the
Middle East, and its main shareholder, Tim Spicer, a former lieutenant colonel
in the Scots Guards, has been at the center of a number of controversial
business deals, including a 1998 arms-smuggling operation in Sierra Leone in
violation of a United Nations arms embargo.
September 2, 2004 Government
Executive
The president and chief executive officer of CACI International Inc., whose
employees were hired by the Army to perform interrogations in Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison, defended his employees' qualifications and took issue with some specific
findings of a recent Army report on alleged prison abuses. In an interview, J.P.
"Jack" London called the investigation "a very complicated
topic." But he sought to clarify a number of points concerning the CACI
interrogators' experience and training, as well as their work at Abu Ghraib.
According to London, no more than 10 CACI interrogators worked at the prison
complex at any given time. "The language in that report is a bit
unfortunate," London said of the investigation recently completed by Maj.
Gen. George Fay. "It gives the impression that [CACI interrogators] were
sent over there and didn't know what the hell they were doing, which is patently
not the facts of the matter." The Fay report recommended that the Army's
general counsel consider referring three CACI employees to the Justice
Department for prosecution, alleging that they abused detainees. London
said all his employees met the requirements in the contract's statement of work.
CACI received more than 1,600 résumés from prospective interrogators, he said,
and winnowed the pool to fewer than 50. "We had quite a massive effort to
find people," he said. London said all employees had levels of
training that met military standards. "The statement of work did not
require explicit and solely military training," London said. It permitted
"an equivalency category that would come from other sources of similar
training. Other agencies have those kinds of skills that they pass on."
London cited the FBI and the CIA as examples, but he didn't specify where CACI
interrogators were trained. The Fay report cited some interrogators' lack
of formal military training as a cause for concern. The Army inspector general
has found that about 35 percent of the CACI interrogators had not received
military training, a figure that London didn't dispute. The Fay report also
cited "numerous statements" from military and civilian employees at
Abu Ghraib indicating the contractors received "little, if any,
training" on the Geneva conventions, which governs treatment of detainees
in war zones. "It needs to be made clear that contractor employees are
bound by the requirements of the Geneva conventions," the report said.
Before interrogators went to Iraq, London said, they received briefings from
military officials on the rules of interrogation. He said some interrogators
also received training while working in Abu Ghraib. For example, Army mobile
training teams instructed a number of CACI interrogators in Iraq on the
interrogation process. The teams came from Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., home of the
Army's intelligence training school, and from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, site of
another detention and interrogation facility. The Fay report noted that several
military personnel "expressed some concerns about what appeared to them to
be a lack of experience with some of the civilian contracted CACI interrogators,
and the fact that the [mobile training teams] did not have the opportunity to
train and work with some newly arriving contractors." London also
countered the Fay report's assertion that some CACI employees may have been
supervising military personnel. The report states that, "Several people
indicated . . . that contractor personnel were 'supervising' government
personnel, or vice versa." An Army sergeant "indicated that CACI
employees were in positions of authority, and appeared to be supervising
government personnel." One contractor was "listed as being in charge
of screening" of detainees on an organization chart, "with military
personnel listed as subordinates." The Fay investigation also
found that a CACI employee helped a military officer write the contract's
requirements, potentially a violation of federal acquisition regulations. CACI's
legal counsel, William Koegel, said, "We are confident that no one
associated with CACI crossed any lines in connection with the preparation of the
statement of work."
April 21, 2003 The Times
A subsidiary of El Segundo-based Computer Sciences Corp. is among a handful of
U.S. defense contractors secretly invited to submit bids for a long-term
contract to rebuild Iraq's national police force, prisons and judiciary,
according to State Department officials. The CSC subsidiary, DynCorp of Reston,
Va., already is recruiting 150 current and former U.S. law enforcement offices
for Iraq under an International Police Missions contract first award in 1996 for
work in the Balkans, State Department officials said. CSC acquired DynCorp last
month. The new contract DynCorp is seeking would be far more extensive,
providing as many as 1,00 advisors to recruit, retrain and reequip Iraq's
national police and prison staffs, State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher
said Thursday. The police, prisons and judiciary contract is one in a series
exempted from the U.S. government's usual requirement for "full and open
competition."
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