Colext/Macondo
Cantina virtual de los COLombianos en el EXTerior
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Acerca de la pregunta sobre la DynCorp (copio de otro grupo):
The C.I.A. has long been known to set up front companies to mask its
activities, especially in aviation. At their peak in the mid-1960's,
companies that were wholly-owned subsidiaries of the agency and had such
names as the Civil Air Transport Company, Air America and Intermountain
Aviation employed as many as 20,000 people and operated about 200 planes,
rivaling the size of Trans World Airlines.
Yet in recent years, American military and intelligence agencies have
increasingly contracted workers from private companies. The practice allows
federal officials to reduce the visibility of sensitive operations by
substituting paid civilians for American troops or career intelligence
officers.
In Colombia, for instance, where Congress has strictly limited the number of
American troops and their activities, federal officials have hired DynCorp,
an
information technology and aviation giant, to conduct drug crop fumigation
runs and ferry Colombian troops into conflict zones.
Unlike American military advisers, the contract workers in Colombia are not
bound by lawmakers' orders to avoid combat.
The extent of the C.I.A.'s involvement with aviation companies became public
in the mid-1980's, when longtime employees of agency-owned airlines applied
for government pensions. The employees, who decades earlier had undertaken
perilous missions to air-drop agents into China or supply the French at Dien
Bien Phu, were dismayed when the government blocked their request on the
grounds that they never officially worked for the C.I.A.
Then, in 1987, Eugene Hasenfus, a pilot who was shot down over Nicaragua
while
flying supplies to the American-backed contra rebels, filed suit against two
airlines with C.I.A. connections: Corporate Air Services and Southern Air
Transport. Mr. Hasenfus, who had flown for Air America, a C.I.A. airline,
in
Southeast Asia, sued the companies for negligence and fraud, all the while
casting light on their ties to American intelligence.
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the C.I.A., today declined to discuss the
agency's relationship with Aviation Development. "We have no comment on the
company involved and the contractors in this case," he said.
When Aviation Development first settled at Maxwell in 1997, it was greeted
with considerable fanfare.
Mr. Thistlethwaite announced at the time that he had received a $10 million
Pentagon contract to test and evaluate several different airborne sensors,
according to a news release. The company would use five Cessna Citation V
twin-engine jet aircraft, he said.
Mr. Thistlethwaite, who said Aviation Development was his first company,
delighted local officials by joining the Chamber of Commerce and pledging to
employ about 45 people, with about a third hired locally.
Emory Folmar, the mayor of Montgomery at the time, said the completion of a
1,000-foot extension to Maxwell's runway had helped lure the company to the
base.
That runway extension, which cost $5.7 million, had been advocated by
Senator
Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who has since become the chairman
of
the Select Committee on Intelligence, and Representative Terry Everett, a
Republican who represents the Montgomery area.
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