Today’s Must ReadHow did Blackwater end up guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq? The answer’s becoming clearer.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the State Department, under the gun to create an embassy security staff after the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded in June 2004, decided to stick with the CPA’s Blackwater bodyguards, awarding the firm a no-bid contract. That much State Department logistics official William H. Moser told Congress earlier this month. But the Post supplies a wealth of detail about just how dependent State is on security contractors for conducting diplomacy in war zones.
State’s diplomatic security service (DS) is too small to protect the hundreds of U.S. embassy personnel in Baghdad: only 1400 agents exist to operate in over 300 diplomatic offices domestically and abroad. That’s just barely more than the 1000 or so Blackwater operatives in Iraq alone. Little wonder that last month, the company received another $112 million contract for Iraq security, which surges the number of Blackwater guards by over 200 and expands its helicopter fleet.
In previous conflicts — Vietnam, for instance — U.S. diplomats were guarded by U.S. soldiers. But the U.S. sent up to a half million troops during the Vietnam war, supplied by a draftee military. With the end of the draft and subsequent troop reductions, State had to turn to the dawning security-contractor industry, first hiring former industry leader DynCorp to protect Jean-Bertrand Aristide when the U.S. returned him to power in Haiti in 1994. Instead of expanding DS personnel or arguing that diplomatic security was a job for the U.S. military, State took the easier route of purchasing it on the (not always) open market. That was a choice that suited Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld well, as Rumsfeld believed the military had more important work to do. By 2002, Blackwater was on the ground in Afghanistan, guarding Hamid Karzai.
One lingering question is how Blackwater managed, in only 10 years of existence, to top former security-industry giants DynCorp and Triple Canopy in Iraq and elsewhere. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s CEO, insists that the company hasn’t benefited from his family’s deep GOP connections. The piece doesn’t exactly answer that question. But it does reveal that Blackwater has learned that sometimes it pays to get the competition on its side:
When the sole-source contract expired in the summer of 2005, State invited bids on a massive “worldwide personal protection services” contract to put its operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere under one umbrella. Blackwater formed a consortium with U.S. firms DynCorp and Triple Canopy, and the group won a multiyear, $1.2 billion agreement.
Under the individual task orders that only the three are eligible to bid on, DynCorp provides personal security in northern Iraq, and Triple Canopy in the south. Blackwater covers Baghdad and Hilla, and has by far the largest share of the $520 million that State spends annually on contract security in Iraq.
A DS official told the Post that Prince’s politics have nothing to do with the contract. The simpler explanation, another official told Congress, is that business is business: it’s simply cheaper to pay Blackwater than to train, equip, deploy and maintain a beefed-up DS staff. That may be difficult to believe, as a “protective security specialist” provided by Blackwater — which a 2005 audit found overbilled the State Department by millions of dollars — costs the department $1,221.62 per day. But it’s the line DS is sticking with. And at this point, even if Blackwater loses its contract after the Nisour Square shooting, the department shows little inclination to overhaul its reliance on security contractors.
