British mercenary with sordid past wins biggest Iraq security contract

[Robbien]

Jun 16 - The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has awarded a $293 million security contract to a British company led by a former commando who has been investigated for arms smuggling and has long been in favor of using private mercenaries to intervene in civil wars on behalf of mining, oil and gas interests. The contract is the largest of its type awarded by the CPA’s Program Management Office (PMO), effectively making Aegis Defense Services, a company run by former British commando Tim Spicer, the world’s largest private army. Aegis will provide armed bodyguards for PMO employees and high-level staff of companies that are running the oil and gas fields, electricity, and water services in Iraq. The "cost-plus" contract also calls on the company to coordinate security operations for the coalition throughout Iraq with thousands of other private contractors.

Spicer has a long history of leading private armies in civil wars, according to CorpWatch. In 1998, a company run by Spicer, was reportedly contracted to sell 30 tons of arms to the forces of the former leader of Sierra Leone, in violation of a UN arms embargo. The year before, Spicer was involved in a civil war in Papua New Guinea during which Sandline was reportedly paid $36 million to battle local citizens who had shut down a profitable copper mine to protest environmental damage it had caused and to assert their case for independence.

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=560

[struggle4progress]

1. kick

:kick:

[Matilda]

2. Oh, God, will it never end?

One vile person after another.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Questionable Track Record

seemslikeadream (1000+ posts) Thu Jun-10-04 08:25 AM
Original message
Controversial Commando Wins Iraq Contract

Edited on Thu Jun-10-04 08:34 AM by seemslikeadream
Thursday 10th June 2004 :
Controversial Commando Wins Iraq Contract
by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch

Occupation authorities in Iraq have awarded a $293 million contract effectively creating the world's largest private army to a company headed by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, a former officer with the SAS, an elite regiment of British commandos, who has been investigated for illegally smuggling arms and planning military offensives to support mining, oil, and gas operations around the world. On May 25, the Army Transportation command awarded Spicer's company, Aegis Defense Services, the contract to coordinate all the security for Iraqi reconstruction projects.


In Iraq, there are currently several dozen groups that provide private security to both the military and the private sector, with more than 20,000 employees altogether. The companies include Erinys, a South African business, that has more than 15,000 local employees charged with guarding the oil pipelines; Control Risks Group, a British company that provides security to Bechtel and Halliburton; and North Carolina-based Blackwater Consulting, which provides everything from back-up helicopters to bodyguards for Paul Bremer, the American ambassador in charge of the occupation.


Wanted: A Few Good Men for Very Good Salaries


"Our men can repair anything from a radio to a satellite phone, but the pay here in the UK is just 25,000 pounds ($46,000)," said Browne. "I posted the <A TITLE="Click for more information about job" STYLE="text-decoration: none; border-bottom: medium solid green;" HREF="http://search.targetwords.com/u.search?x=5977 |1||||job|AA1VDw">job</A> to the guys and now it's up to them to go get the jobs."

Tallman says that six companies bid for the coordination contract. According to other CorpWatch sources, three of the bidders were Dyncorp, a Virginia based company that is in charge of training the Iraqi police; Military Professionals Resources Incorporated (MPRI), which was working on training the Iraqi army; and a joint venture between Control Risks Group, Erinys, and Olive Security, three of the largest providers of private security in Iraq.
Industry insiders speculate that Aegis won the contract because of growing anger in Britain that UK-based companies have not been awarded large contracts in the reconstruction of Iraq, despite the leading role that the Tony Blair's government has played in the "coalition of the willing." The only other British bid for the contract, the Control Risks joint venture, was disqualified because one of the partners was under investigation for undisclosed reasons at the time the bids were evaluated.

Because of the politics in the decision, some groups are questioning the contracting process. "It's not evident why they they would run a rent-a-cop contract through an Army transportation division in Virginia except that maybe the staff there are more experienced and can write a professional contract that can withstand a bid protest better than the Heritage foundation interns that run contracting in Baghdad," said John Pike, a spokesman for the military watchdog group Globalsecurity.org. For the first 12 months, all contracts in Iraq were evaluated by a group of six men and women in their 20s who were hired on the basis of job resumes they posted at the right-wing foundation's website.


Questionable Track Record

But not everyone agrees with this assessment of Spicer's work. In Sierra Leone, Spicer's efforts have been heralded by the private military industry as the "work of angels." In 2002, Spicer was approached by Per Christiansen, a Norwegian shipping expert who was director of Hudson Maritime, a 16-year-old company that did emergency response to crises like the Exxon Valdez oil spill. New Jersey-based Hudson had just won a contract from the Department of Homeland Security to review security at ports around the country.

more
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=1300



British 'mercenary chief' faces execution in Zimbabwe


~SNIP~
By Basildon Peta in Johannesburg and Andrew Buncombe in Washington
11 March 2004


Zimbabwe was threatening to execute up to 60 suspected mercenaries last night - among them a former SAS officer - and accused Britain, Spain and the US of helping to orchestrate an attempted coup in the oil-rich African country of Equatorial Guinea.

Zimbabwe's Foreign Minister, Stan Mudenge, said the men were on their way to Equatorial Guinea where they were plotting to overthrow the government and seize the head of state. "They are going to face the severest punishment available in our statutes, including capital punishment," he said.

Mr Mudenge claimed his information had been provided by Simon Mann, an Old Etonian and a one-time member of the SAS, who, he said, was waiting for the suspected mercenaries when they were arrested in Harare at the weekend. Mr Mann has a long association with the private military business and was a senior figure in Sandline, the mercenary group headed by a former British Army lieutenant-colonel, Tim Spicer.

Zimbabwe, which has frostty relations with much of the Western world, said the plot had been elaborate. "Apparently, this was not one mission ... after the diversion in Equatorial Guinea, they were going to the DRC ," said Mr Mudenge.

... more ...

link: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=500019

[bobthedrummer]

4. What a POS rising in the toilet bowl of The War President's failed policy.

:grr::puke::argh:

[saigon68]

5. I agree it reeks to HIGH HEAVEN

The sheep however are only interested in how the Scott Peterson trial is progressing.

[leftchick]

6. and all of that money MJ shelled out....

15 years ago. Sleep tight ameriKa....

[seemslikeadream]

8. Tim Spicer -convert 40,000 militia into an effective fighting force

Toilet brushes;
so are workers
of the world;

Extensions of
the wills of others.

Scrubbing
where their hands
would never touch.

The task is oft defined,
but we must
touch the porcelain.

The drain is clogged;
my future's stuck.
Like bilge water
it sits and waits
for something to act upon it
and leaves a slimy
residue when at last
it finds its way.



August 21, 1997
In April 1995 Sierra Rutile teamed up with a British company named Branch Energy, which is now controlled by Diamond Works, to bring in a South African mercenary outfit called Executive Outcomes to the country with the blessing of Valentine Strasser, the military ruler of Sierra Leone.
Once in country, Executive Outcomes employed traditional Sierra Leonian witchcraft hunters as scouts and brought in two of South Africa's most highly decorated air force pilots. The pilots initially had difficulty distinguishing between the rebels and civilians camped under the impenetrable canopy of vines and trees, but when the Sierra Leone military commander told them to ''kill everybody'' they obeyed orders according to accounts of the operation published in Harper's magazine. About a year later the new Sierra Leonian government terminated the Executive Outcomes contract, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, and was promptly overthrown in a coup. Reports indicate that a third intervention is now being planned. Last month Tim Spicer of Sandline International met with investors in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss ''strategy, logistics and training'' to ''convert 40,000 militia into an effective fighting force'' in Sierra Leone.
Sandline is controlled by minerals speculators Robert Friedland and Anthony Buckingham, the two principal investors in Diamond Works, a mining company with extensive interests in Sierra Leone, who were also instrumental in the 1995 mercenary interventions. Sandline were also responsible for the botched attempt to retake Bougainville, in the South Pacific, by mercenaries earlier this year.
http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/970821/97082102.html

[rooboy]

7. This SOB was caught scouting hospitals in Australia...

because the Papua New Guinea govt was going to hire his old company (Sandline International) to fight rebels in Bougainville. Once word leaked out that they were asking pointed questions about emergency facilities in Australian hospitals the whole plan was cancelled.

[seemslikeadream]

9. a new, unaccountable and potentially destabilising component

Dick Cheney, George W. Bush's running mate, is a far cry from the "aw, shucks" kind of Wyoming cowboy-politician painted by Republican strategists. When he was at the helm of the Dallas-based oil services giant Halliburton, Inc., from 1995 until his nomination, the company and its subsidiaries--Brown & Root and Dresser Industries--were deeply enmeshed in the military-intelligence complex.
<snip>
What's more, Halliburton has been involved with so-called private military companies. Brown & Root has acted in concert with U.S. mercenary companies like AirScan and MPRI (recently acquired by L-3 Communications) from Angola to Croatia.
http://www.progressive.org/wm0900.htm

The growing influence of private corporations in the war business is likely to continue, according US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In an interview last year he said the Pentagon ‘will pursue additional opportunities to outsource and privatise’ and defence analysts are predicting the loss of a further 200,000 jobs in the US armed forces over the next few years.
The growing privatisation and contracting out of military activities is an ominous development and a serious challenge for the international peace movement. It is a new, unaccountable and potentially destabilising component of the global strategy of the major military states - the United States, the UK, France and Israel - and at its present rate of growth, could soon rival and surpass the size of conventional armed forces, transforming the way in which modern war and foreign policy will be conducted. It is a development that we ignore at our peril.
http://www.banthebomb.org/magazine/nfs0402/private.shtml

Meanwhile, concentration camps are being built and activated WITHIN the US.
Got civilians?