U.S.
Contractors Are Targets Overseas
As More Military Work Is
Farmed Out, More Civilians Are in Harm's Way
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 16, 2003; Page
A17
The deaths of three DynCorp employees in a bombing in the
Gaza Strip yesterday demonstrated the persistent danger faced by
U.S. contract employees working around the world.
The U.S. government increasingly relies on civilians to
perform jobs once reserved for the military, including feeding
soldiers, delivering mail, training Iraq's new armed forces and
providing security for foreign leaders.
"The more they accompany troops abroad, the more they are
likely to encounter dangerous situations," said Deborah Avant, a
political scientist at George Washington University and an expert on
private military companies. "To the extent that they are seen as
part of the U.S. military apparatus they would be more likely to be
viewed as legitimate targets."
The State Department identified the dead DynCorp employees
as John Branchizio, 36, Mark T. Parson, 31, and John Martin Linde
Jr., 30. The men provided security for the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv
and were escorting diplomats on their way to interview Palestinian
candidates for Fulbright scholarships. A bomb exploded near the
convoy after it entered Palestinian territory.
Reston-based DynCorp, which was bought by Computer Sciences
Corp. last year, declined to comment. Contractors have refused to
discuss security measures, saying that disclosures would put
employees in greater danger.
In the past decade, at least 13 DynCorp employees have been
killed while working in international hot spots, including 10 in
Colombia. In September, a DynCorp pilot, while on an anti-drug
mission for the U.S. government, was killed in Colombia when his
plane was hit by ground fire and crashed.
A pilot working for Northrop Grumman Corp. was killed in
Colombia in February while on a mission for the State Department.
Three Northrop employees were taken hostage when the single-engine
plane crashed, and they are still being held. The State Department
plans a $5 million reward for information leading to their rescue,
said Kurtis Cooper, a department spokesman.
Iraq is among the most dangerous environments contractors
have encountered. The Brookings Institution estimated that there is
one contractor in the country for every 10 soldiers.
Doug Brooks, president of the nonprofit International Peace
Operations Association, said he was recently told by a veteran
contractor, who has been stationed in other military zones, that
Iraq was "as hairy as he has ever seen." Contractors are adapting,
including upgrading to high-level body armor, Brooks said.
In August, an employee of Houston-based Kellogg Brown and
Root was killed while delivering mail to U.S. troops in Iraq when a
remote-controlled bomb exploded under his car.
The growth of private contracting personnel has raised
concerns about oversight. A General Accounting Office report in June
called the Pentagon's oversight of the thousands of private
contractors around the world "inconsistent and sometimes
incomplete." The study noted that the Pentagon does not track the
total number of contractors and hasn't developed a consistent policy
for their security.
Peter W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and
author of "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military
Industry," said the government's poor accountability made it
difficult to determine the effectiveness of privatizing some
military jobs.
"We don't know how many [contractors] are employed, the
number that have been killed, the number they themselves have
killed, what the retention rate is," Singer said. "To make good
policies, to run a smart business, we need to know those things."
DynCorp was an air cargo shipper, beginning in the 1940s,
before diversifying into government contracting and private
security. In November 2002, it began providing security to Afghan
President Hamid Karzai under a contract with the U.S. State
Department. In the early 1990s, it guarded President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide of Haiti.
Researcher Richard S. Drezen contributed to this
report.
© 2003 The Washington Post
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