Cheney's private army: The Privatization Of War And Peace

October 18, 2003
The Privatization Of War And Peace
BY RICHARD REEVES | Universal Press Syndicate

WASHINGTON -- "PMC" is about to become a household acronym. The letters stand for Private Military Company.

One PMC called DynCorp -- you can see their building and sign on the Virginia side of the Potomac River on the road out to Dulles Airport -- was the employer of the three security guards killed by a bomb as they guarded American diplomats in the Gaza Strip last Wednesday. When you call to ask questions about DynCorp, you are referred to the State Department, which does not discuss the trade secrets of private companies.

In other words, private companies doing the public's business are not accountable to the public. It is a big business now. DynCorps alone, with 23,000 employees, had at least $2 billion in Federal contracts last year. Two more facts: PMCs are a $100 billion industry, most of that money coming from taxpayers; one in ten Americans doing military work and occupation duty in Iraq are actually civilians working for PMCs. They are called contract employees now -- flying and maintaining military helicopters around the world -- once upon a time they would have been called mercenaries.

A month ago, a DynCorp pilot was shot down and killed by ground fire in Colombia. What was he doing? None of your business. More than a dozen of DynCorp's employees have been killed in Colombia and even their families can't find out what they were doing there. Employees of another PMC, Aviation Development Corporation, was involved in the accidental 2001 killing of a missionary and her infant daughter when the missionaries' plane was misidentified as belonging to cocaine traffickers. Three Northrop Grumman employees whose plane crashed or was shot down are being held hostage somewhere in Colombia. What were they doing? None of your business. But it must have been interesting stuff because our State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to their rescue.

And nine employees of another Virginia company, Vinnell Corp., training Saudi Arabian soldiers, were the people killed last May by a bomb in Riyadh.

PMCs are one face, a veiled one, of the accelerated privatizing of the government of the United States. The idea, of course, is to save money -- Dick Cheney was the first to push the idea when he was Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War -- and to avoid accountability. Corporate executives are not answerable to Congressional oversight committees or reporters babbling about the public's right to know. Under this system, the public has no rights.


Private Military Companies are a veiled face of the accelerated privatization of the government of the United States. Under this system, the public has no rights.

Another face of the new privatization was revealed briefly last week on the Maryland side of the Potomac. It was not page one news that the United States Navy, under a White House "competitive sourcing" program, was deciding whether a private contractor could take over the work of 21 kitchen workers at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

That was on page 21 of the Washington Post last Tuesday in a story by Christopher Lee.

The 21 people, some of whom have been there for more than twenty years are officially "disabled." They are mentally retarded. The United States government has given them a life. They live in group homes or have managed to buy their own homes, living with their parents or other relatives -- productive lives made possible by government policy. They are among 1,734 mentally retarded people making between $9.42 and $12.80 an hour under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Face it, most of them are not really employable in the private sector and it would be no surprise if a contractor could not hire fewer people making less money to clean the silverware and pick up kitchen trash.

But that's not the point is it? Lee put it this way after talking to the workers and their supporters: "The administration's requirement that they compete for their job misses the point that government employment has always been about more than the bottom line. Through various policies and laws, federal agencies for decades have gone out of their way to hire members of certain populations, from veterans to disabled people to welfare mothers and students."

In the Bethesda case, the Navy is literally following the classic conservative mandate of government only doing for people what they cannot do for themselves. Private business, in war and peace, is in it just for the money. Your money -- but what they do is still none of your business.
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RICHARD REEVES is the author of 12 books, including President Nixon: Alone in the White House. He has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, Esquire and dozens of other publications. E-mail him at [email protected].