PMCS - 9/11 Encyclopedia

PMCs is short for private military companies. Most popular PMCs are the Carlyle Group, MPRI or Kellog Brown and Root. But the list is much longer than to concentrate only these three.

A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (->) has identified at least 90 such companies, operating worldwide in 110 countries. Their October 2002-report included stories on individual representatives like Victor Bout, who sold weapons to the Taliban (as Kevin Ingram stock traded on them at the same time), Leonid Minin (Ukrainian arms dealer) and Jacques Monsieur (Belgian arms dealer), two other "criminals", who all got arrested, and listed companies and their connections to CIA or Pentagon, which still act legally.

In September 2000, Monsieur, told a French judge of having been contacted in Brussels by the CIA and, with the blessing of the French civilian intelligence agency, of having sent tens of millions of dollars in weapons to Croatia. "...According to numerous court cases, statements by former officials and press exposés in France, the now-defunct French state oil (->) company, Elf Aquitaine, financing the purchase of weapons and hedging its bets in Congo-Brazzaville and Angola by supporting and helping arm both sides. Another private, Oregon-based company,

International Charter Incorporated of Oregon (ICI), managed in part by former U.S. Special Forces operatives. ICI is one of several companies contracted by the State Department to go into danger zones that are too risky or unsavory to commit conventional U.S. forces.

Since 1994, the U.S. Defense Department has entered into 3,061 contracts with 12 of the 24 U.S.-based PMCs identified by ICIJ, a review of government documents showed. Pentagon records valued those contracts was more than $300 billion. More than 2,700 of those contracts were held by just two companies: Kellogg Brown And Root and Booz Allen Hamilton. Virginia-based military construction company

Vinnell Corp once won a $77 million contract to train the Saudi Arabian National Guard to protect oil fields. In 1992, the Pentagon, then headed by Defense Secretary Cheney, Richard, paid Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones. Brown & Root (now called Kellogg Brown And Root, or KBR) is a subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation, which Cheney, the U.S. vice president, headed as CEO from 1995 to 1999. In December 2001 KBR received a 10-year contract to provide base-support work overseas under its Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP. Kellogg Brown & Root has built camps in Guantanamo Bay, based on a contract by the DoD, which already was signed in June 2000! Source: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2000/c06292000_ct373-00.html

Carlucci, Frank, who served as defense secretary in the waning years of the Reagan administration, was chairman of BDM when it acquired Vinnell; he is still chairman of the Carlyle Group, a merchant banking firm that owns BDM with ties to George Bush Sr. , James Baker, Richard Darman and even the Bin Ladin Family (->). L-3 Communications, which has nearly $2 billion in annual revenue, was formed in April 1997 with the purchase of business units that were spun off after Loral Corporation and Lockheed (client of Booz Allen Hamilton merged in 1996. L-3 Communications bought Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), which consulted for and trained armed forces around the world, in July 2000. MPRI (->) is located in northern Virginia, home to the Pentagon. Among MPRI's founders are President Carl Vuono, who served as army chief of staff from 1987 to 1991 and oversaw the U.S. invasion of Panama and the Gulf War; Harry E. "Ed" Soyster, who was the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); and Crosbie Saint, who was the former commander of U.S. Army Europe. MPRI was founded in 1988 as a military training consultancy and later responsible for training Bosnian soldiers. MPRI says it is supporting the Homeland Security in the United States and hopes to be hired to train the newly constituted Afghan army.

Other fastest growing PMCs since 1999, mentioned in that report are Wackenhut Corp or Armor Holdings, a Florida-based conglomerate. In August 2001, Armor Holdings acquired Kroll O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt Armoring Company (->), the world's largest armored transport provider. O'Gara was once home for Hauer, Jerome, bioterror specialist, who later organised the security chief job for ex-FBI terror specialist John ONeill. Kroll is led by Maurice Greenberg. Kissinger was once his representative at Greenbergs C.V. Starr/American International Group. In 1993, Greenberg's American International Group became co-owner of the private spy agency, Kroll Associates. In 1996 Greenberg became chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (Cfr). Since 1997, Frank G. Wisner, Jr., has been a board member on Kroll O'Gara, and is currently Greenberg's Deputy Chairman for External Affairs. Wisner's father was a founder of the CIA. Frank Wisner, Jr. was a director of Enron. Source: http://www.icij.org/dtaweb/icij_bow.asp

The Nevada-based Sayeret Group, who has tactical teams that can deploy to anywhere in the world in support of security, protection and direct action operations.

Pistris Inc., a Massachusetts-based maritime security company which maintains its own fleet of vessels, claims it can provide fully equipped, mobile protection teams to provide waterborne security of oil fields, ports and vessels throughout the world.

Trojan Securities International, a company established by former British military and American law enforcement, maintains training centers in Arkansas, where the company is based, as well in Ecuador to accommodate the company's work in Latin America.

London-based TASK International, which trains military and police forces, and holding an office in Miami and currently training special forces of the United Arab Emirates or the jamaican police.

Several other PMCs have received new, multimillion-dollar contracts from the U.S. government since Sept. 11:

Blackwater Lodge of North Carolina, Surgical Shooting Inc., of California and Automation Precision Training of Virginia were awarded contracts worth more than $60 million by the U.S. Navy in September 2002 for military training. Ground Zero U.S.A., based in Marion, Alabama, lists an international training schedule for 2002 that includes programs in England, Scotland, Ireland, Mexico, Canada and Norway, and Sayeret can provide a mobile training team to travel to any location in the world at the client's request, according to Sayeret Group President Duke Piper. In 2002, Ground Zero USA worked with Philippine law enforcement personnel. "PMCs can sell their services abroad through the Defense Department's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, which does not require any licensing by State. Under FMS, the Pentagon pays the contractor for services offered to a foreign government, which in turn reimburses the Pentagon. " In the Balkans, agencies responsible for PMC-contracts include the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Europe, Defense Contract Management Agency, Defense Contract Audit Agency and Army Task Force Commanders. In Quatar, which is an important military ally of the United States, US Military agencies hired Dyncorp to provide security guard services for U.S. Army installations. Dyncorp created another biochemistry-subsidiary Dynport (a joint venture with PortonDown, which former executive Fuad Al Hibri once founded BioPort in 1997, later contracted for 3 years by the DoD in 1998 to produce anthrax vaccines)

The list of PMCs might be longer by now, other global players in the meantime are:

Betac Corp., Logicon and Cubic Corp. Betac lobbied on Capitol Hill for intelligence authorization bills, Logicon on outsourcing of government programs and Armor Holdings on "foreign relations for export of products." In Afghanistan, contractors from Northrop Grumman (in 2002 mergered with TRW/Blackstone ->)were hired by the Air Force to man GlobalHawk, an unmanned surveillance plane. Even smaller companies like ICI of Oregon (with only 5 employees) are important. The company was incorporated in 1994 by Brian Boquist, a Special Forces lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. Boquist, is a former executive of a subsidiary of Evergreen International Aviation, a private air freight company based in Oregon that has taken on sensitive missions for the U.S. government. ICIs pilots fly in Russian helicopters and use Russian crew and developed a medical training program under U.S.-government auspices in southern Sudan. At the end of 2002 the Senate Armed Services Committee has begun a review of the oversight of defense contractors in deployment missions worldwide. That report is due out in mid-2003. (See Ingram, Kevin) (See Krongard, Wally) At the Center for Public Integrity one can use a database to search for individual companies or regions. I.e. at "colombia", you can find 10 PMCs, which are active there. Among them US originated companies like Eagle Aviation Services and Technology, Inc., AirScan, Inc., Aviation Development Corporation or DynCorp, Inc.

Active GlobalOptions, LLC Washington, United States Active AirScan, Inc. Rockledge, United States Active ArmorGroup Services, Ltd. London, United Kingdom Active Aviation Development Corporation Montgomery, United States Defunct Betac Corporation Alexandria, United States Defunct Booz Allen Hamilton McLean, United States Active Cubic Corporation San Diego, United States Active Dyncorp, Inc. Reston, United States Active Eagle Aviation Services & Technology, Inc. Patrick Air Force Base, United States Active Executive Outcome, Inc. Mt. Clemens, United States Active Global Studies Group, Inc. Huntington Beach, United States Gormly International Chula Vista, United States Active Hart Group, Ltd. Hamilton, Bermuda Active International Charter Incorporated of Oregon Salem, United States Active Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc. Houston, United States Active Logicon, Inc. Herndon, United States Active Military Professional Resources Incorporated Alexandria, United States Active Northbridge Services Group, Ltd. London, United Kingdom Active Pacific Architects & Engineers, Inc. Los Angeles, United States Active Pistris, Inc. Boston, United States Active Sakina Security Services, Ltd. United Kingdom Sayeret Group, Inc. Reno, United States Active Spearhead Ltd. Tel Aviv, Israel Undetermined Special Ops Associates Deerfield Beach, United States Active The Golan Group Israel Active THULE Global Security International London, United Kingdom Active Trojan Securities International Fayetteville, United States Active U.S. Defense Systems, Inc. Washington, United States Active Vinnell Corporation Fairfax, United States Active Wackenhut Corporation Palm Beach Gardens, United States Active

"...Motivated as much by profits as politics, these companies -- about 35 all told in the United States -- need the government's permission to be in business. A few are somewhat familiar names, like Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company that operates for the government in Cuba and Central Asia. Others have more cryptic names, like Dyncorp; Vinnell, a subsidiary of TRW; Saic; ICI of Oregon; and Logicon, a unit of Northrop Grumman. One of the best known, MPRI, boasts of having "more generals per square foot than in the Pentagon."