ASHINGTON, March 29 — Senior American commanders
and Pentagon officials are warning of an exodus of the military's
most seasoned members of Special Operations to higher-paying
civilian security jobs in places like Baghdad and Kabul, just as
they are playing an increasingly pivotal role in combating terror
and helping conduct nation-building operations worldwide.
Senior enlisted members of the Army Green Berets or Navy Seals
with 20 years or more experience now earn about $50,000 in base pay,
and can retire with a $23,000 pension. But private security
companies, whose services are in growing demand in Iraq and
Afghanistan, are offering salaries of $100,000 to nearly $200,000 a
year to the most experienced of them.
The Central Intelligence Agency is also dangling such enticing
offers before experienced Special Operations personnel that the
Pentagon's top official for special operations policy, Thomas W.
O'Connell, told a House panel this month that intergovernmental
poaching "is starting to become a significant problem."
Evidence of a drain of seasoned Special Operations members,
including elite Delta Force soldiers, is largely anecdotal right
now, but the head of the military's Special Operations Command, Gen.
Bryan D. Brown of the Army, is so concerned about what he is hearing
from troops in the field that he convened an unusual meeting of his
top commanders in Washington last week to discuss the matter. "The
retention of our special operating forces is a big issue," General
Brown said.
Last December, he gathered 20 senior members of the Navy Seals
and Army Green Berets and Air Force commandos and their spouses, at
his headquarters in Tampa, Fla., for a weeklong session to discuss
career-extending sweeteners, like special pay bonuses and
educational benefits. A special panel is now reviewing those
recommendations.
"The kind of people we're training today, that are culturally
aware, able to work overseas, experts with handguns and rifles,
physically fit, hand-selected guys that also speak a foreign
language," General Brown told the Senate Armed Services Committee
last Thursday, "these kind of people are very attractive to those
kind of civilian private industries that provide security services
both at home and abroad."
General Brown and other senior officials acknowledged that the
lucrative offers by outsiders presented a rare opportunity for
career soldiers to gain financial security.
"They're not leaving out of disloyalty," said Gen. Wayne Downing,
a retired head of the Special Operations Command who recently
returned from Iraq. "The money is just so good, if they're going to
be away from home that much, they may as well make top dollar."
One of those senior noncommissioned officers who chose to leave
the Army for a private security job in Baghdad paused for a few
moments on Monday to describe his decision, but requested that his
name be withheld. After enlisting just over two decades ago, he
received Airborne, Ranger and Special Forces training. At the end of
20 years of service, he received an offer to go to Iraq to guard
public officials and help train local Iraqis to do the same.
"It wasn't that I minded the op-tempo or the deployments, that's
why I joined," he said about the pace of operations. "But after
putting in my time, I had this chance to make three times the money,
and some of the guys are making even more than that."
Seasoned enlisted troops and officers have always offered skills
that make them attractive to civilian employers, including military
contractors, security companies and military consulting firms.
Military personnel experts are cautioning that longer and more
frequent deployments are threatening the ability of all the armed
services to retain many of their best and brightest.
Experienced Special Operations personnel have always been the
cream of the crop. The demand for their talents has grown steadily
since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"Any people with Special Operations backgrounds are in very high
demand right now," said the manager of the Baghdad office of a
British security company.
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