by Ken Silverstein, January 1997

from the book - The Celling of America

edited by Daniel Burton-Rose with editors of Prison Legal News Dan Pens and Paul Wright

Common Courage Press, 1998 [via third world traveller]

What is the most profitable industry in America? Weapons, oil and computer technology all offer high rates of return, but there is probably no sector of the economy so abloom with money as the privately-run prison industry.

Consider the growth of the Corrections Corporation of America, the industry leader whose stock price has climbed from $8 a share in 1992 to about $30 today and whose revenue rose by 81 percent in 1995 alone. Investors in Wackenhut Corrections Corporation have enjoyed an average return of 18 percent during the past five years and the company is rated by Forbes as one of the top 200 small businesses in the country. At Esmor, another big private prison contractor, revenues have soared from $4.6 million in 1990 to more than $25 million in 1995.

Ten years ago there were just five privately-run prisons in the country, housing a population of 2.000. Today nearly a score of private firms run more than 100 prisons with about 62,000 beds. That's still less than five percent of the total market, but the industry is expanding fast, with the number of private prison beds expected to grow to 360,000 during the next decade.

The exhilaration among leaders and observers of the private prison sector was cheerfully summed up by a recent headline in USA Today: "Everybody's Doin' the Jailhouse Stock". An equally upbeat mood imbued a conference on private prisons held in December 1996 at the Four Seasons Resort in Dallas. The brochure for the conference, organized by the World Research Group, a New York-based investment firm, called the corporate takeover of correctional facilities the "newest trend in the area of privatizing previously government-run programs... While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be made-profits from crime. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now!"

A hundred years ago private prisons were a familiar feature of American life, with disastrous consequences. Prisoners were farmed out as slave labor. They were routinely beaten and abused, fed slop and kept in horribly overcrowded cells. Conditions were so wretched that by the end of the nineteenth century private prisons were outlawed m most states.

During the past decade, private prisons have made a comeback. Already 28 states have passed legislation making it legal for private contractors to run correctional facilities and many more states are expected to follow suit.

The reasons for the rapid expansion include the post-1980s free market ideological fervor, large budget deficits for the federal and state governments and the discovery and creation of vast new reserves of "raw materials"-prisoners. The rate for most serious crimes has been dropping or stagnant for the past 15 years, but during the same period severe repeat offender provisions and a racist "get tough" policy on drugs have helped push the U.S. prison population up from 300,000 to around 1.5 million during the same period. This has produced a corresponding boom in prison construction and costs with the federal government's annual expenditures in the area now $17 billion. In California, passage of the infamous "three strikes" bill will result in the construction of an additional 20 prisons during the next few years.

The private prison business is most entrenched at the state level but is expanding into the federal prison system as well. Last year Attorney General Janet Reno announced that five of seven new federal prisons being built will be run by the private sector. Almost all of the prisons run by private firms are low or medium security but the companies are trying to break into the high security field as well. They have also begun taking charge of management at INS detention centers, boot camps for juvenile offenders and substance abuse programs.

Roughly half of the industry is controlled by the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, which runs 46 penal institutions in 11 states. It took ten years for the company to reach 10,000 beds; it is now growing by that same number every year.

CCA's chief competitor is Wackenhut, which was founded in 1954 by George Wackenhut, a former FBI official. Over the years its board and staff have included such veterans of the U.S. national security state as Frank Carlucci, Bobby Ray Inman and William Casey, as well as Jorge Mas Canosa, leader of the fanatic Cuban American National Foundation. The company also provides security services to private corporations. It has provided strikebreakers at the Pittston mine strike in Kentucky, hired unlicensed investigators to ferret out whistleblowers at Alyeska, the company that controls the Alaskan oil pipeline, and beaten anti-nuclear demonstrators at facilities it guards for the Department of Energy.

Wackenhut has a third of the private prison market with 24 contracts, nine of which were signed during the past two years. In a major coup, the company was chosen to run a 2,200 capacity prison in Hobbs, New Mexico, which will become the largest private prison in the U.S. when it opens late this year.

Esmor, the No. 3 firm in the field, was founded only a few years ago and already operates ten corrections or detention facilities. The company's board includes William Barrett, a director of Frederick's of Hollywood, and company CEO James Slattery, whose previous experience was investing in and managing hotels.

U.S. companies also have been expanding abroad. The big three have facilities in Australia, England and Puerto Rico and are now looking at opportunities in Europe, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and China.

The companies that dominate the private prison business claim that they offer the taxpayers a bargain because they operate far more cheaply than do state firms. As one industry report put it, "CEOs of privatized companies... are leaner and more motivated than their public-sector counterparts."

But even if privatization does save money-and the evidence here is contradictory-there is, in the words of Jenni Gainsborough of the ACLU's National Prison Project, "a basic philosophical problem when you begin turning over administration of prisons to people who have an interest in keeping people locked up."

To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a 90 to 95 per cent capacity rate is needed to guarantee the hefty rates of return needed to lure investors. Prudential Securities issued a wildly bullish report on CCA a few years ago but cautioned, "It takes time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits." Still, said the report, company earnings would be strong if CCA succeeded in "ramp[ing] up population levels in its new facilities at an acceptable rate".

A 1993 report from the State Department of Corrections in New Mexico found that CCA prisons issued more disciplinary reports- with harsher sanctions imposed, including the loss of time off for good behavior-than did those run by the state. A prisoner at a CCA prison said, "State-run facilities are overcrowded and there's no incentive to keep inmates as long as possible... CCA on the other hand reluctantly awards good time. They give it because they have to but they take it every opportunity they get... Parole packets are constantly getting lost or misfiled. Many of us are stuck here beyond our release dates."

Private prison companies have also begun to push, even if discreetly, for the type of get tough policies needed to ensure their continued growth. All the major firms in the field have hired big time lobbyists. When it was seeking a contract to run a halfway house in New York City, Esmor hired a onetime aide to state Rep. Edolphus Towns to lobby on its behalf. The aide succeeded in winning the contract and also the vote of his former boss, who had been an opponent of the project. In 1995, Wackenhut Chairman Tim Cole testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge support for amendments to the Violent Crime Control Act-which subsequently passed-that authorized the expenditure of $10 billion to construct and repair state prisons.

CCA has been especially adept at expansion via political payoffs. The first prison the company managed was the Silverdale Workhouse in Hamilton County, Tennessee. After Commissioner Bob Long voted to accept CCA's bid for the project, the company awarded Long's pest control firm a lucrative contract. When Long decided the time was right to quit public life, CCA hired him to lobby on its behalf. CCA head Massey has been a major financial supporter of Lamar Alexander, the former Tennessee governor and failed presidential candidate. In one of a number of sweetheart deals, Lamar's wife, Honey Alexander, made more than $130,000 on a $5,000 investment in CCA. Current Tennessee Governor Newt McWherter is another CCA stockholder and is quoted in the company's 1995 annual report as saying that "the federal government would be well served to privatize all of their corrections."

The prison industry has also made generous use of the junket as a public relations technique. Wackenhut recently flew a New York-based reporter from Switzerland-where the company is fishing for business-to Florida for a tour of one of its prisons. The reporter was driven around by limousine, had all her expenses covered and was otherwise treated royally.

In another ominous development, the revolving door between the public and private sector has led to the type of company boards that are typical of those found in the military-industrial complex. CCA co-founders were T. Don Hutto, a ex-corrections commissioner in Virginia, and Tom Beasley, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. A top company official is Michael Quinlan, once director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The board of Wackenhut is graced by a former Marine Corps commander, two retired Air Force generals and a former under secretary of the Air Force, as well as by James Thompson, ex-governor of Illinois, Stuart Gerson, a former assistant U.S. attorney general and Richard Staley, who previously worked with the INS.

Because they are private firms that answer to shareholders, prison companies have been predictably vigorous in seeking ways to cut costs. In 1985, a private firm tried to site a prison on a toxic waste dump in Pennsylvania, which it had bought at the bargain rate of $1. Fortunately, that plan was rejected.

Many states pay private contractors a per diem rate, as low as $31 per prisoner in Texas. A federal investigation traced a 1994 riot at an Esmor immigration detention center to the company's having skimped on food, building repairs and guard salaries. At an Esmorrun halfway house in Manhattan, inspectors turned up leaky plumbing, exposed electrical wires, vermin and inadequate food.

To ratchet up profit margins, companies have cut corners on drug rehabilitation, counseling and literacy programs. In 1995, Wackenhut was investigated for diverting $700,000 intended for drug treatment programs at a Texas prison. In Florida the U.S. Corrections Corporation was found to be in violation of a provision in its state contract that requires prisoners to be placed in meaningful work or educational assignments. The company had assigned 235 prisoners as dorm orderlies when no more than 48 were needed and enrollment in education programs was well below what the contract called for. Such incidents led a prisoner at a CCA facility in Tennessee to conclude, "There is something inherently sinister about making money from the incarceration of prisoners, and in putting CCA's bottom-line [money] before society's bottom line [rehabilitation]."

The companies try to cut costs by offering less training and pay to staff. Almost all workers at state prisons get union-scale pay but salaries for private prison guards range from about $7 to $10 per hour. Of course the companies are anti-union. When workers attempted to organize at Tennessee's South Central prison, CCA sent officials down from Nashville to quash the effort.

Poor pay and work conditions have led to huge turnover rates at private prisons. A report by the Florida auditor's office found that turnover at the Gadsden Correctional Facility for Women, run by the U.S. Corrections Corporation, was 200 percent, ten times the rate at state prisons. Minutes from an administrative meeting at a CCA prison in Tennessee have the "chief" recorded as saying, "We all know that we have lots of new staff and are constantly in the training mode... Many employees [are] totally lost and have never worked in corrections."

Private companies also try to nickel and dime prisoners in the effort to boost revenue. A prisoner at a Florida prison run by CCA has sued the company for charging a $2.50 fee per phone call and 50 cents per minute thereafter. The lawsuit also charges that it can take a prisoner more than a month to see a doctor.

A number of prisoners complain about exorbitant prices. "Canteen prices are outrageous," wrote a prisoner at the Gadsden facility in Florida. "[We] pay more for a pack of cigarettes than in the free world." Neither do private firms provide prisoners with soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes or writing paper. One female prisoner at a CCA prison in New Mexico said: "The state gives five free postage paid envelopes per month to prisoners, nothing at CCA. State provides new coats, jeans, shirts, underwear and replaces them as needed. CCA rarely buys new clothing and inmates are often issued tattered and stained clothing. Same goes for linens. Also ration toilet paper and paper towels. If you run out, too bad-3 rolls every two weeks."

General conditions at private prisons appear in some respects to be somewhat better than those found at state institutions, a fact possibly linked to the negative business impact that a prison disturbance can cause private firms. For example, the share price of stock in Esmor plunged from $20 to $7 after a 1994 revolt at the company's detention center for immigrants in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Nevertheless a number of serious problems at prisons run by private interests still exist. Back in the mid-1980s, a visiting group of professional guards from England toured the CCA's 360-bed state prison in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and reported that prisoners were "cruelly treated" and "problem" prisoners had been gagged with sticky tape. The warden regaled his guests with graphic descriptions of strip shows performed by female prisoners for male guards.

Investigators at a CCA jail in New Mexico found that guards had inflicted injuries on prisoners ranging from cuts and scrapes to broken bones. Riots have erupted at various private facilities. In one of the worst, guards at CCA's West Tennessee Detention Center fired pepper gas canisters into two dormitories to quell a riot after prisoners shipped from North Carolina revolted over being sent far from their families.

In addition to the companies that directly manage America's prisons, many other firms are getting a piece of the private prison action. American Express has invested millions of dollars in private prison construction in Oklahoma and General Electric has helped finance construction in Tennessee. Goldman Sachs & Co., Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, among other Wall Street firms, have made huge sums by underwriting prison construction with the sale of tax-exempt bonds, this now a thriving $2.3 billion industry.

Weapons manufacturers see both public and private prisons as a new outlet for "defense" technology, such as electronic bracelets and stun guns. Private transport companies have lucrative contracts to move prisoners within and across state lines; health care companies supply jails with doctors and nurses; food service firms provide prisoners with meals. High-tech firms are also moving into the field; the Que-Tel Corp hopes for vigorous sales of its new system whereby prisoners are bar-coded and guards carry scanners to monitor their movements. Phone companies such as AT&T chase after the enormously lucrative prison business.

About three-quarters of new admissions to American jails and prisons are now African-American and Hispanic men. This trend combined with an increasingly privatized and profitable prison system run largely by Whites, makes for what Jerome Miller, a former youth corrections officer in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts calls the emerging Gulag State.

Miller predicts that the Gulag State will be in place within 15 years. He expects three to five million people to be behind bars including an absolute majority of African-American men. It's comparable, he says, to the post-Civil War period, when authorities came to view the prison system as a cheaper, more efficient substitute for slavery. Of the state's current approach to crime and law enforcement, Miller says, "The race card has changed the whole playing field. Because the prison system doesn't affect a significant percentage of young White men we'll increasingly see prisoners treated as commodities. For now the situation is a bit more benign than it was back in the nineteenth century, but I'm not sure it will stay that way for long."

A top Department of Energy official is caught on tape worrying that security is lax at Rocky Flats weapons facility.

By Mark Hertsgaard

What if Timothy McVeigh had attacked Oklahoma City with nuclear rather than conventional explosives? What if the World Trade Center bombers had packed their truck with plutonium rather than the chemical cocktail they used?

Now, transplant those nightmare scenarios to Denver, and put yourself in the mind of Ed McCallum. The year is 1997. McCallum is the Department of Energy's top professional with hands-on responsibility for protecting the nation's vast stores of nuclear weapons-grade materials from theft or sabotage. McCallum has been reviewing the security performance at Rocky Flats, the nuclear site 17 miles northwest of Denver, and he sees the catastrophe of the century waiting to happen, on his watch.

"The workers at that plant, and the citizens of Colorado, are at extremely high risk" of a terrorist assault that could unleash "a little mushroom-shaped cloud" over Denver, McCallum confided in a phone call to a colleague that May. Such a blast would not only kill Denver's million-plus inhabitants, it would claim tens of millions of additional lives as its radioactive plume blew across the Midwest and on to the East Coast.

Not long after that phone call, Mark Graf, a security expert at Rocky Flats, agreed at McCallum's urging to blow the whistle on security lapses at the site. Now, in an ongoing legal wrangle about his whistle-blowing with his employer, Wackenhut Services, the company in charge of security at Rocky Flats, Graf and his attorneys have released a tape recording of the phone call in which Ed McCallum voiced his fears about security at Rocky Flats. It provides a disturbing window on the DOE's own worries about Rocky Flats.

The phone call was between McCallum and Jeff Peters, the former director of Protective Force Operations at Rocky Flats. As the man formerly in charge of the entire uniformed protective force on site, Peters had extensive firsthand knowledge of security deficiencies at Rocky Flats; indeed, he had butted heads about them for years with his bosses at Wackenhut before finally blowing the whistle to federal authorities himself and resigning under duress in 1996.

McCallum telephoned Peters because he wanted Peters' help bringing the problems at Rocky Flats into the open before tragedy struck. McCallum, as the director of DOE's Office of Safeguards and Security, had recently rated security at Rocky Flats as "unsatisfactory" in his confidential 1996 annual report to the president. (The DOE's security rating system has but three categories: satisfactory, marginal and unsatisfactory.)

In their phone call, which Peters taped, McCallum said he wanted Peters and Graf to start talking to the news media about the problems at the site. McCallum had been trying to warn superiors in the Clinton administration about the impending danger at Rocky Flats but with little success. If the media got interested in the story, though, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington would have to do something.

Peters shared McCallum's concerns, and the two men went on to discuss some specific problems at Rocky Flats. Recently conducted internal tests had shown that the facility was highly susceptible to terrorist attack. In the tests, the "bad guys" had succeeded 100 percent of the time in entering the complex and gaining access to the approximately 20 tons of nuclear weapons-grade materials stored inside. (It takes only a softball-sized chunk of plutonium to create an explosion equivalent to three or four Hiroshima blasts.)

Once inside of Rocky Flats, McCallum observed, terrorists would only need to slap some high explosives on the nuclear materials, light a fuse and voilà: "a little mushroom-shaped cloud" would soon be rising over Denver and heading across the United States. Of course, the terrorists could also steal the nuclear materials and detonate them elsewhere. The bad guys had succeeded 80 percent of the time with that scenario in the recent tests.

McCallum said he could not understand why people living near Rocky Flats had not "gone absolutely wacko" about the danger. Peters replied, "It's only because they don't know ... they're being fed a line of shit the whole time."

Indeed, the American people almost never hear such brutal candor from their public servants; government officials only talk this honestly among themselves (and rarely even then). McCallum plainly never intended his comments to reach the public's ears. In a brief conversation with Salon News, McCallum said, "I've been officially told by my agency [DOE] that I'm not allowed to comment." He did say, however, that he had not known that Peters was recording their May 1997 phone call, and that he considers the release of the tapes, and indeed the taping itself, illegal, though he does not disagree with the larger point Peters and Graf are making with the tapes. (Peters vigorously disputed that McCallum did not know about the taping, the legality of which was affirmed in advance, according to Peters, by both the FBI and the DOE's Office of General Counsel.)

In any case, the tapes became the smoking gun of a legal hearing just concluded in Denver that may determine whether the American public ever learns the full truth about Rocky Flats. The hearing, which has gone uncovered by the mainstream media, pits Mark Graf against his employer, Wackenhut Services.

In March 1998, Graf, by then a 16-year veteran of security work at Rocky Flats, sued Wackenhut for allegedly retaliating against him for speaking out about security flaws at the plant. Among other actions, Wackenhut suspended Graf from his position and ordered him to undergo psychological evaluation. Graf won his lawsuit when the Department of Labor ruled that Wackenhut's retaliation was illegal; the department ordered the company to reinstate Graf, purge all references to the incident from his record and pay him $10,000 in damages, plus attorney's fees.

At last week's hearing, Wackenhut sought to overturn that ruling by arguing that Graf did not come to Wackenhut's classification office for clearance before talking with the media. "Wackenhut feels the clear issue here is that there is a DOE rule requiring that people who work at DOE sites must first go through the classification office before talking to the news media in order to prevent the inadvertent disclosure of classified info," Dennis Brown, Wackenhut's attorney, told Salon News. "Wackenhut's position is that if you want to work at a DOE site, you've got to follow their rules, and furthermore, that Graf wasn't discriminated against, he was simply disciplined for refusing to follow this rule."

Graf was represented at the Denver hearing by the Government Accountability Project, a public interest law firm that specializes in defending corporate and government whistle-blowers. GAP attorney Tom Carpenter argued that Graf is a trained de-classifier whom Wackenhut had repeatedly relied upon for classification advice in numerous other instances, and that Graf therefore knew full well that the material he was sharing with the media did not violate classification restrictions. To require Graf to clear any outside statements with Wackenhut in advance, Carpenter contended, would effectively grant the company veto power over any whistle-blowing by any of its employees.

To punish Graf for speaking to the news media would be all the more unfair, argued Peters, when Graf was specifically urged to do so by DOE's McCallum. "I've sat on these tapes for years and tried to address these security issues through the system, so we didn't panic the public," Peters told Salon News. But without the release of the tapes, Wackenhut and DOE could get away with denying that Graf's concerns about Rocky Flats security had any validity.

"There have been various questions raised about the security posture at Rocky Flats," acknowledges Patrick Etchart, a spokesman for the Department of Energy at Rocky Flats. "There have been several reviews of this issue, and these reviews have consistently concluded that the plutonium and other special nuclear materials at Rocky Flats are not at risk." Asked whether the DOE disputed McCallum's 1997 statements about an "extremely high risk" of a "mushroom-shaped cloud" appearing over Denver, Etchart said, "I can only refer to the independent reviews I already mentioned ... We spend in excess of $60 million a year to make sure this material is safe, and none of the reviews have ever indicated the material was at immediate risk."

In particular, Etchart cites a review of Rocky Flats security initiated by former Denver-area Rep. David Skaggs in October 1998. The review, says Etchart, was conducted by four independent experts who were completely outside of DOE's control and it found that the site was "not at risk."

"The experts who visited Rocky Flats last year didn't give them a rosy report," counters GAP's Tom Carpenter. "It was a mixed review that found there were significant problems in some aspects of the facility and in other aspects not. But did those independent experts talk to key people like Mark Graf, Jeff Peters, David Ridenour and other whistle-blowers who had important information about security deficiencies at Rocky Flats? No."

Graf and Peters aren't the only whistle-blowers who've alleged security deficiencies exist at Rocky Flats. When David Ridenour came to Rocky Flats in February 1997 to serve as DOE's on-site director of security, he boasted 20 years of experience as an Air Force weapons officer and engineer. But after a mere three months, Ridenour resigned "in disgust," as he wrote in a letter to Secretary of Energy Federico Peña. Ridenour complained that Wackenhut Services was operating security with little or no government oversight, and he charged he had been told not to let security concerns interfere with the contractor's profits.

"Never before ... in my career have I ever been placed in a position where loyalty to my supervision and my requirement to protect the public health and safety were placed in direct opposition," wrote Ridenour, who added, "I feel that conflict today."

Ridenour's letter was Exhibit A in the evidence that Ed McCallum wanted Peters and Graf to leak to the news media in May 1997. By then, Graf and Peters had been working internally for years, trying to persuade Wackenhut to upgrade security at Rocky Flats. In 1996, Graf and Peters drafted an eight-page classified memo outlining numerous specific vulnerabilities at Rocky Flats that, if exploited, could result in catastrophic consequences. When Wackenhut management took no action about their memo, Graf and Peters notified the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. An internal review was undertaken by DOE, but McCallum warned Peters that the agency "was going to take a dodge on it."

Meanwhile, security readiness at Rocky Flats continued to deteriorate, according to McCallum. In his 1996 annual report to the president, McCallum had warned that budget cuts had diminished security at Rocky Flats to "a hollow force," making the site the least secure of all 12 of the nuclear weapons sites overseen by DOE. In his May 1997 phone call to Peters, McCallum said he had told Washington, "'We've lost 42 percent of our protective forces and 50 percent of our SWAT capability ... at a time when we've increased our holdings [of nuclear weapons-grade materials] by 70 metric tons. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure this one out.'"

In response to McCallum's entreaties, Graf and Peters agreed to talk to reporters about Rocky Flats, with the understanding that they would not divulge classified information in the process. Stories duly began appearing in the Denver Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and other major papers and on "The CBS Evening News." The flurry of news coverage got Wackenhut's attention. According to Graf's lawyer, Tom Carpenter, Graf became "a victim of harassment and intimidation by Wackenhut. He has been subjected to psychological evaluation; placed on administrative leave for over eight months; and threatened that any additional disclosures would result in his termination." Dennis Brown, Wackenhut's lawyer, concedes that Graf was sent for psychological evaluation and that the step may sound "Stalinistic" but says there were valid reasons. When Graf admitted he had not cleared his media appearances with the classification office despite knowing the DOE required him to do so, Brown explains, it made his boss "wonder whether he could trust Graf in the future ... [his boss was also] concerned about Graf's emotional state, because he felt Graf was demonstrating some disturbing behavior -- inability to sleep at night, anxiety and so forth -- and [the boss] wanted to make sure this guy was stable enough to hold the kind of security job he did."

Brown insists further that Graf is entirely wrong to suggest that Wackenhut did not take his security concerns seriously. "Graf's concerns have been reviewed no less than 10 or 20 times in the last couple years by various committees, and they have concluded Rocky Flats is not at risk," says Brown. "I don't doubt Graf's sincerity, or Ed McCallum's, but I believe these committees. Also, you've got to remember McCallum's remarks from the phone call of May 1997 are dated now. Since then, improvements have been made, to where the most recent report to the president lists Rocky Flats security as 'satisfactory.'"

In response, GAP lawyer Carpenter asks how the public can trust DOE's assurances that all is now well at the plant in light of DOE's reluctance to admit previous problems there and its ongoing efforts to silence employees or contractors like Graf. The DOE has provided financial support to Wackenhut for its legal appeal against Graf, and it refused to allow key witnesses like McCallum to testify at last week's hearing.

Jeff Peters, meanwhile, points out that, "the same problems we were discussing in 1997 -- of terrorists being able to get in and have extended access to the nuclear material -- still pertain. And now you have the guard force cut in half, to less than 250 guards, they still haven't upgraded their alarm system -- in fact, they've canceled the project -- and they have torn down the outer gates and fences around the facility to make access easier and quicker."

The loss of those barriers, Peters says, means a truck could force its way into Rocky Flats, get to within 75 yards of a building containing tons of nuclear weapons-grade material and then be detonated, "just like that van of Timothy McVeigh's was detonated in Oklahoma City. That kind of explosion would wipe out the building and the nuclear material inside would vent into the atmosphere. And that would make Chernobyl look like a picnic."

salon.com | April 12, 1999

By Compiled from Times staff and wire reports © St. Petersburg Times, published May 9, 1998

ORLANDO -- A Tampa bank guard is among three people linked Friday to a white supremacist bombmaker and a conspiracy to plant pipe bombs across Orlando as diversions for bank holdups, federal agents said Friday.

"Central Florida avoided a major disaster," said Patricia Galupo, chief of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms for Florida. "This thing would have gone down as planned if not for a bit of divine intervention."

Fourteen bombs were to be planted along two major routes in Florida's tourist capital: Interstate 4, the major access highway to Walt Disney World, and U.S. Highway 441, ATF investigators said.

"Several of the bombs had been fully assembled. Some have been prepared with timing devices, batteries, timers and clocks," said Edward Halley, ATF spokesman in Orlando.

Brian D. Pickett, a 38-year-old Temple Terrace resident and Wackenhut security guard, was charged with bank robbery and conspiracy. Deena Wanzie, 46, of Orlando, was charged with conspiracy and destruction of property.

Christopher Norris, 25, was charged with conspiracy and possessing and making unregistered pipe bombs. He turned himself in to authorities Friday.

The three are linked to Todd Vanbiber, 29, a white supremacist injured in an April 23, 1997, accidental blast as he was assembling a pipe bomb at a rental warehouse near Winter Park. Wanzie was identified as Vanbiber's girlfriend.

Galupo said authorities believe the group would have carried out the plot if not for the 8-inch-long bomb, capped at both ends, which blew up in Vanbiber's face, sending shrapnel into an eye.

Vanbiber was supposed to meet that night with Pickett, Norris and a man cooperating with investigators to finalize their plot, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court Thursday.

Vanbiber, who is serving 61/2 years in federal prison on a guilty plea to possession of explosives, initially claimed he was building bombs as a hobby. But a cellmate told investigators that Vanbiber also wanted to target blacks by planting bombs at a Fourth of July celebration in Orlando and at Independence Day parties involving federal employees.

A search of Vanbiber's storage unit turned up several weapons, ammunition, munitions manufacturing guides, Nazi memorabilia and correspondence stating membership fees were due for the National Alliance.

Vanbiber and Pickett were members of the National Alliance, described by civil rights groups as a racist, neo-Nazi organization, the criminal complaint said.

Its leader, William Pierce of Hillsboro, W.Va., wrote The Turner Diaries, which prosecutors have called a blueprint used by Timothy McVeigh in plotting the Oklahoma City federal building bombing.

Vanbiber, who is now cooperating with authorities, originally planned the robberies for April 19, 1997, the second anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, but changed his mind, a witness said in the criminal complaint.

"Timothy McVeigh built bombs; William Pierce in effect, built bombmakers," Mark Potok, editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center's intelligence report, which tracks radical right-wing group, told the Associated Press. "These are very significant arrests with implications far beyond the immediate Orlando area," said Art Teitelbaum, southern area director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. "The National Alliance is one of the most violence-prone extremist groups in the country."

Vanbiber and Pickett robbed the Barnett Bank branch at 12098 N Anderson Road in Tampa of $4,400 in January 1996, and robbed the New Milford Savings and Loan in Danbury, Conn., a month later, ATF agent William Crummett wrote in a court affidavit. Pickett also was linked to a $2,000 robbery at a SunTrust Bank branch at 7553 Waters Ave. in Tampa in December 1995. Vanbiber told investigators that he and Pickett stopped at National Alliance headquarters after the Connecticut holdup, "donated $1,000 to the cause and purchased $700 worth of books from William Pierce" during a two-hour meeting, the affidavit said.

When he was arrested Thursday, the ATF said, Pickett was guarding a NationsBank office at 9393 N. Florida Ave. in Tampa. Lettering next to the entrance describes the building as "Barnett Technologies Human Resources." Employees there declined comment Friday.

While working as a Wackenhut guard two years ago at Countryside Mall in Clearwater, an arrest report said, Pickett allowed Vanbiber to steal $20,000 worth of sunglasses and collectible baseball cards while the mall was closed.

A spokesman for Palm Beach Gardens-based Wackenhut Corp., Pat Cannan, said Friday that Pickett had worked for the company for about three years. "We have 50,000 employees worldwide," Cannan said. "Every once in a while, we have an incident like this."

Pickett lives at 7104 Lynwood Drive, a residential oak-lined street in Temple Terrace, about a block from the river, with his wife and two children, neighbors said. Pickett's wife, Loretta, declined comment Friday. A neighbor, Allison Rhodes, said Pickett and his family have lived across the street from her house for about 15 years. "He's a pretty good neighbor -- he's very security-minded," Rhodes said. "He's talked to my father about weapons."

Pickett was being held in the Seminole County Jail pending a detention hearing. Ms. Wanzie was released Friday on a $50,000 unsecured bond, meaning she doesn't have to put up the money unless she fails to appear at her next court appearance.

If convicted, Pickett and Norris each could receive up to 10 years in prison and be fined $10,000 for each count of manufacturing or possessing destructive devices.

Pickett, if convicted, also could get 20 years in prison and a $5,000 fine for each bank robbery and another 30-year sentence for possessing a destructive weapon during the commission of a bank robbery. Each count for. Wanzie carries a possible sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. -- Times reporter Larry Dougherty and researcher John Martin contributed to this report, which contains information from the Associated Press. sptimes.com

by JEREMY SCAHILL [from the October 10, 2005 issue - The Nation]

The men from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Katrina hit. The company known for its private security work guarding senior US diplomats in Iraq beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene in another devastated Gulf. About 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. Officially, the company boasted of its forces "join[ing] the hurricane relief effort." But its men on the ground told a different story.

Some patrolled the streets in SUVs with tinted windows and the Blackwater logo splashed on the back; others sped around the French Quarter in an unmarked car with no license plates. They congregated on the corner of St. James and Bourbon in front of a bar called 711, where Blackwater was establishing a makeshift headquarters. From the balcony above the bar, several Blackwater guys cleared out what had apparently been someone's apartment. They threw mattresses, clothes, shoes and other household items from the balcony to the street below. They draped an American flag from the balcony's railing. More than a dozen troops from the 82nd Airborne Division stood in formation on the street watching the action.

Armed men shuffled in and out of the building as a handful told stories of their past experiences in Iraq. "I worked the security detail of both Bremer and Negroponte," said one of the Blackwater guys, referring to the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer, and former US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. Another complained, while talking on his cell phone, that he was getting only $350 a day plus his per diem. "When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?'" he said. He wore his company ID around his neck in a case with the phrase Operation Iraqi Freedom printed on it.

In an hourlong conversation I had with four Blackwater men, they characterized their work in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals." They all carried automatic assault weapons and had guns strapped to their legs. Their flak jackets were covered with pouches for extra ammunition.

When asked what authority they were operating under, one guy said, "We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security." Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, "He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary." The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck. Blackwater spokesperson Anne Duke also said the company has a letter from Louisiana officials authorizing its forces to carry loaded weapons.

"This vigilantism demonstrates the utter breakdown of the government," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "These private security forces have behaved brutally, with impunity, in Iraq. To have them now on the streets of New Orleans is frightening and possibly illegal."

Blackwater is not alone. As business leaders and government officials talk openly of changing the demographics of what was one of the most culturally vibrant of America's cities, mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, Intercon, American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) are fanning out to guard private businesses and homes, as well as government projects and institutions. Within two weeks of the hurricane, the number of private security companies registered in Louisiana jumped from 185 to 235. Some, like Blackwater, are under federal contract. Others have been hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III, who brought in private security to guard his $3 million private estate and his luxury hotels, which are under consideration for a lucrative federal contract to house FEMA workers.

A possibly deadly incident involving Quinn's hired guns underscores the dangers of private forces policing American streets. On his second night in New Orleans, Quinn's security chief, Michael Montgomery, who said he worked for an Alabama company called Bodyguard and Tactical Security (BATS), was with a heavily armed security detail en route to pick up one of Quinn's associates and escort him through the chaotic city. Montgomery told me they came under fire from "black gangbangers" on an overpass near the poor Ninth Ward neighborhood. "At the time, I was on the phone with my business partner," he recalls. "I dropped the phone and returned fire."

Montgomery says he and his men were armed with AR-15s and Glocks and that they unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. "After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said."

Then, Montgomery says, "the Army showed up, yelling at us and thinking we were the enemy. We explained to them that we were security. I told them what had happened and they didn't even care. They just left." Five minutes later, Montgomery says, Louisiana state troopers arrived on the scene, inquired about the incident and then asked him for directions on "how they could get out of the city." Montgomery says that no one ever asked him for any details of the incident and no report was ever made. "One thing about security," Montgomery says, "is that we all coordinate with each other--one family." That co-ordination doesn't include the offices of the Secretaries of State in Louisiana and Alabama, which have no record of a BATS company.

A few miles away from the French Quarter, another wealthy New Orleans businessman, James Reiss, who serves in Mayor Ray Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority, brought in some heavy guns to guard the elite gated community of Audubon Place: Israeli mercenaries dressed in black and armed with M-16s. Two Israelis patrolling the gates outside Audubon told me they had served as professional soldiers in the Israeli military, and one boasted of having participated in the invasion of Lebanon. "We have been fighting the Palestinians all day, every day, our whole lives," one of them tells me. "Here in New Orleans, we are not guarding from terrorists." Then, tapping on his machine gun, he says, "Most Americans, when they see these things, that's enough to scare them."

The men work for ISI, which describes its employees as "veterans of the Israeli special task forces from the following Israeli government bodies: Israel Defense Force (IDF), Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, Instructors of Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, General Security Service (GSS or 'Shin Beit'), Other restricted intelligence agencies." The company was formed in 1993. Its website profile says: "Our up-to-date services meet the challenging needs for Homeland Security preparedness and overseas combat procedures and readiness. ISI is currently an approved vendor by the US Government to supply Homeland Security services."

Unlike ISI or BATS, Blackwater is operating under a federal contract to provide 164 armed guards for FEMA reconstruction projects in Louisiana. That contract was announced just days after Homeland Security Department spokesperson Russ Knocke told the Washington Post he knew of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security firms. "We believe we've got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety," he said. Before the contract was announced, the Blackwater men told me, they were already on contract with DHS and that they were sleeping in camps organized by the federal agency.

One might ask, given the enormous presence in New Orleans of National Guard, US Army, US Border Patrol, local police from around the country and practically every other government agency with badges, why private security companies are needed, particularly to guard federal projects. "It strikes me...that that may not be the best use of money," said Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

Blackwater's success in procuring federal contracts could well be explained by major-league contributions and family connections to the GOP. According to election records, Blackwater's CEO and co-founder, billionaire Erik Prince, has given tens of thousands to Republicans, including more than $80,000 to the Republican National Committee the month before Bush's victory in 2000. This past June, he gave $2,100 to Senator Rick Santorum's re-election campaign. He has also given to House majority leader Tom DeLay and a slew of other Republican candidates, including Bush/Cheney in 2004. As a young man, Prince interned with President George H.W. Bush, though he complained at the time that he "saw a lot of things I didn't agree with--homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the Administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns."

Prince, a staunch right-wing Christian, comes from a powerful Michigan Republican family, and his father, Edgar, was a close friend of former Republican presidential candidate and antichoice leader Gary Bauer. In 1988 the elder Prince helped Bauer start the Family Research Council. Erik Prince's sister, Betsy, once chaired the Michigan Republican Party and is married to Dick DeVos, whose father, billionaire Richard DeVos, is co-founder of the major Republican benefactor Amway. Dick DeVos is also a big-time contributor to the Republican Party and will likely be the GOP candidate for Michigan governor in 2006. Another Blackwater founder, president Gary Jackson, is also a major contributor to Republican campaigns.

After the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries in Falluja in March 2004, Erik Prince hired the Alexander Strategy Group, a PR firm with close ties to GOPers like DeLay. By mid-November the company was reporting 600 percent growth. In February 2005 the company hired Ambassador Cofer Black, former coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department and former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, as vice chairman. Just as the hurricane was hitting, Blackwater's parent company, the Prince Group, named Joseph Schmitz, who had just resigned as the Pentagon's Inspector General, as the group's chief operating officer and general counsel.

While juicing up the firm's political connections, Prince has been advocating greater use of private security in international operations, arguing at a symposium at the National Defense Industrial Association earlier this year that firms like his are more efficient than the military. In May Blackwater's Jackson testified before Congress in an effort to gain lucrative Homeland Security contracts to train 2,000 new Border Patrol agents, saying Blackwater understands "the value to the government of one-stop shopping." With President Bush using the Katrina disaster to try to repeal Posse Comitatus (the ban on using US troops in domestic law enforcement) and Blackwater and other security firms clearly initiating a push to install their paramilitaries on US soil, the war is coming home in yet another ominous way. As one Blackwater mercenary said, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations." - the nation.com

by Jeremy Scahill Published on Tuesday, November 1, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Note: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, journalist Jeremy Scahill investigated the role of private security companies like Blackwater USA, infamous for their work in Iraq, that deployed on the streets of New Orleans. His reports were broadcast on the national radio and TV show Democracy Now! and on hundreds of sites across the internet. In response to Scahill's recent cover story in The Nation magazine "Blackwater Down," the President and CEO of DynCorp, one of the largest private security companies in the world, wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation. Dyncorp CEO Stephen J. Cannon's letter is reprinted below, followed by Scahill's response.

Falls Church, Va. -- In "Blackwater Down" [Oct. 10] Jeremy Scahill wrote that "mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, Intercon, American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) are fanning out to guard private businesses and homes, as well as government projects and institutions."

For the record, employees of DynCorp International did not "fan out" in New Orleans or any other area affected by Hurricane Katrina. DynCorp International (DI) did not send anyone to the area to provide security services until we had made specific arrangements with clients and knew exactly what our responsibilities would be.

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Tenet Health Organization Group engaged DI to help protect its facilities, patients and employees. In the course of our work with Tenet, we have evacuated scores of employees and dozens of animals who had taken refuge in at least two of its hospitals, escorted company officials while they assessed damages, and even transported Tenet officials to a local bank to arrange payroll for their employees.

The people who are performing this security work are all fully certified police officers--either retired or on leave from their jobs--who were deputized by and work under the supervision of the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Department. They are not mercenaries, as Scahill disparagingly described them.

Security is only one of many service areas in which DynCorp International works. In the area affected by Katrina and Rita, DI helicopters are providing transportation, DI aviation technicians at several military bases are servicing aircraft that have been deployed for the relief effort, Marine Spill Response Corporation ships with DI crews are repairing oil platforms and cleaning spills, and DI logistics experts are installing temporary housing and office facilities for local officials and relief in St. Bernard Parish.

Scahill Replies

To hear Stephen Cannon tell it, DynCorp has been reincarnated as the Red Cross. He objects to the term "mercenary." The primary quality of a mercenary is that his main motivation is money. That is why DynCorp forces, paid much more than regular US military forces, are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Africa, the Balkans--it is profitable. DynCorp itself is a mercenary, making a killing for its services. In the past two years alone, the company's revenues have doubled to more than $1.9 billion. Not bad for not being mercenaries.

As a journalist, I'm afraid I have to judge DynCorp not on the spin of its CEO but on its record. Here are just a few of the reasons for serious concern about DynCorp forces operating on US soil:

- DynCorp employees in Bosnia, where the company plays a major policing role, have engaged in organized sex-slave trading with girls as young as 12, and DynCorp's Bosnia site supervisor was filmed raping a woman. A subsequent lawsuit, filed by a company whistleblower, alleged that "employees and supervisors from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in] other immoral acts." The whisteblower, with whom DynCorp eventually settled, "witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased." The company's initial response was to fire the whistleblowers. The employees involved in the sex ring were transferred out of the country. Some were eventually fired, although none were ever criminally prosecuted. One of the whistleblowers told Congress, "DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas.''

- In Afghanistan, where DynCorp guards President Hamid Karzai, the company has a reputation for brutality and recklessness, including serious complaints from internationals of intimidation. It has even been rebuked by the State Department for its "aggressive behavior" in interactions with European diplomats, NATO forces and journalists. A BBC correspondent also witnessed one of the guards slapping an Afghan government minister.

- In Haiti earlier this year DynCorp bodyguards on the detail of interim president Boniface Alexandre beat at least two journalists trying to cover a presidential event. DynCorp has had a checkered past in Haiti, where it "trained" the national police force after the original coup against President Aristide, bringing several feared Tonton Macoutes leaders back into prominence.

- The company is facing a major lawsuit filed by 10,000 Ecuadoreans forced to live (and die) with the impact of DynCorp's toxic crop spraying, which it does in several Latin American countries, including Colombia, as part of Plan Colombia. Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, charges that "DynCorp's employees have a history of behaving like cowboys." A leading Colombian newsweekly called them "lawless Rambos."

As DynCorp swallows up more lucrative government contracts by the week, some in Congress are raising questions. "Is it [the] policy of the US government to reward companies that traffic in women and little girls?" Representative Cynthia McKinney asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in March.

Using private military contractors like DynCorp in places like Afghanistan and Iraq allows the government greater secrecy and less transparency and accountability. The real question is: Why are these particular firms needed in the United States for what should be relief and reconstruction operations? The answer is that they are not, but their road to the lucrative contracts is paved with political connections and the offer to their employers of plausible deniability. Unfortunately, if recent history is any indicator, the damage from this cronyism could extend well beyond the taxpayers' pockets to the safety and security of the people of New Orleans and other cities unfortunate enough to encounter these private security forces.

Take the words of Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, deputy commander of the Third Infantry Division in charge of security in Baghdad. In September he said this of DynCorp and other security firms in Iraq: "These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force.... They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."

Jeremy Scahill

Blackwater USA runs a 6,000-acre operation in Moyock, N.C. Its Web site states: "We are not simply a 'private security company.' We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping and stability operations firm who provides turnkey solutions."

By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot - March 30, 2006

Stepping into a potential political minefield, Blackwater USA is offering itself up as an army for hire to police the world's trouble spots.

Cofer Black, vice chairman of the Moyock, N.C.-based private military company, told an international conference in Amman, Jordan, this week that Blackwater stands ready to help keep or restore the peace anywhere it is needed.Such a role would be a quantum leap for Blackwater and raises a host of policy questions. Until now, the eight-year-old company has confined itself to training military and police personnel and providing security guards for government and private clients. Under Black's proposal, it would take on an overt combat role.

"We're low-cost and fast," Black was quoted as saying. "The issue is, who's going to let us play on their team?"

Unlike national and multinational armies, which tend to get bogged down by political and logistical limitations, Black said, Blackwater could have a small, nimble, brigade-size force ready to move into a troubled region on short notice.

Black's remarks were reported by Defense News, a military publisher that sponsored the conference where he spoke, the Special Operations Forces Exhibition.

Chris Taylor, a vice president at Blackwater's Moyock headquarters, confirmed the account. "A year ago or so, we realized that we could have a significant positive impact with a small, professional force in stability operations and peacekeeping operations," Taylor said.

Blackwater is no stranger to volatile situations. As a security subcontractor escorting a convoy in Iraq in 2004, the company attracted worldwide attention when four of its workers were killed, mutilated and hung from a bridge in Fallujah. Blackwater, most of whose workers are former members of elite military units such as the Navy SEALs, now provides security for the U.S. ambassador to Iraq under a contract with the State Department. The reconstruction of Iraq has been hampered by insurgent activity, Taylor said, and Blackwater has the expertise to quell insurgent attacks if invited by the Iraqi government.

"We clearly couldn't go into the whole country of Iraq," Taylor said. "But we might be able to go into a region or a city."

Another place where Blackwater could help restore order, Taylor said, is the Darfur region of Sudan, where millions have been killed or displaced by civil strife. The company could send troops under the control of the United Nations, NATO or the African Union, he said.

Taylor and Black said the company would undertake such a mission only with the approval of the U.S. government.

Peter Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has written a book on private military companies, said the concept of private armies engaging in counter-insurgency missions raises myriad questions about staffing standards, rules of engagement and accountability.

"No matter how you slice it, it's a private entity making decisions of a political nature," he said. "It gets dicey." - hamptonroads.com

By Gordon Opiyo

With the shocking allegations of Government protection of suspected mercenaries, the big question is: What dealings does the State have with such characters?

The Armenian Government has denied any link with either Artur Sargsyan or Artur Margaryan. The two had earlier claimed that they are related to the Armenian leader.

But the biggest worry is that the region the two come from is known in international circles for producing specialised private military consultants, better known as mercenaries.

During the Eritrea-Ethiopia war in the late 1990s there were allegations that a former Russian Army colonel, who had been hired as a mercenary, was ejected from an Ethiopian SU-27 fighter jet. Russia disputed the claim.

During the Balkan war, Slobodan Milosevic is alleged to have used mercenaries from former Soviet Union republics kontraktniki (contract soldiers) to perform several atrocities. The kontraktniki issue came up during the hearing at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague before the sudden death of Milosevic, two week ago.

The tribunal heard that in May 1995, a group of kontraktniki arrived in the Gacko-Avtovac region in Serbia, at the invitation of the command of the Herzegovina Corps, which intended to organise an international brigade. The members of this 'brigade' (which actually numbered around 150 troops) wore one-piece, overall type black Russian uniforms with black berets or flight caps. Most of their members were officers above the rank of captain from the special units of the Russian Ministry of Defence, who had deserted the Russian military.

The kontraktniki also featured during the war in Afghanistan, and a number of them were involved in the transportation of cocaine.

In Africa, the use of specialised mercenaries is common in areas that have a breakdown in law and order, yet has massive resources.

It is of great interest that the Artur brothers claimed to have great interest in diamond business in the Congo - a rich country alien to law and order.

Jeremy Harding, an editor with the London Review of Books, investigated the role of mercenaries in the diamond and gold business in Africa over a decade ago and came up with shocking revelations. He discovered that many multinational corporations in gold and diamond producing areas invested in private armies. The biggest private army defending corporations in Africa was called Executive Outcomes. Many of their recruits were former members of the 32nd Battalion of the South African Army, the so-called Buffalo Battalion.

Executive Outcomes transformed itself into a big corporation doing business with many African countries. They had a CEO Nick van der Burgh who always defended their actions. Burgh always insisted that EO, as they are known, only worked with legitimate governments to provide specialised security and intelligence services. EO was involved in protecting a number of diamond mines in Sierra Leone and Congo. In August 1998 EO's intelligence officer Rico Visser told South African journalists that the Congolese President Laurent Kabila had hired them to defend the strategic Inga Dam, south west of Kinshasa, the capital city of Congo. Electricity from the dam not only powers Kinshasa but is also key to the mining region of Shaba (Katanga) in the south of the country.

Mercenaries have been doing booming business in war-torn southern Sudan. There were claims three years ago that hundreds of professional soldiers for hire were working for Arakis, a Canadian oil company. Arakis had signed a billion dollar agreement to exploit the Al-Muglad Rift Basin on the seam line between Sudan's Arab north and the black African south. Due to the security concerns, the company was forced to hire professional soldiers to protect its investment.

The instability of post-war Iraq has also turned private military services into a booming cottage industry. Private military companies have found a lucrative market in post-war Afghanistan.

Now with the saga surrounding the alleged Armenian mercenaries getting more complex - with one of them literally scoffing at Kenyan authorities - it is difficult to get the exact connection of their presence and whether they are mercenaries or business people as they claim.

Kenya has one of the most disciplined and respected military force in Africa. Before the raid on the Standard Group premises, the police force was known for its discipline. The defiance that the CID boss has shown the Police Commissioner has tainted the image of the force.

LDP leaders, Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka have claimed that mercenaries were brought in to assassinate key political leaders. The Government spokesman, Alfred Mutua has denied the claims saying that the matter is still being investigated. But Internal Security minister John Michuki still has a lot of explaining to do, given that the hand of the Government is evident in the protection and confidence of the Artur brothers. If the minister could order an illegal raid on the Standard Group in the name of state security, why is it so difficult for him to explain the defiant presence of dubious foreigners openly breaking the law he is supposed to safeguard? - eastandard.net