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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fitexcerpted from... ATRC Newswire: August 18, 2004 For personal, non-commercial use only The International Herald Tribune - August 13, 2004 Alaskan loophole for U.S. Army contracts By Leslie Wayne As the Pentagon shipped thousands of military police officers to Iraq over the past year, it had to move quickly to replace guards at important U.S. installations, including Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and West Point, New York. So it turned to the private sector and quietly awarded multimillion-dollar contracts without putting out competitive bids. The winners were from corporations in Alaska representing native tribal groups that are uniquely eligible to win Pentagon contracts in unlimited amounts without having to compete with other companies. But perhaps the main beneficiaries were their minority partners, the security firms Wackenhut Services and Vance International. The Pentagon has made no public announcements of these contracts, in which the joint ventures are being paid $194 million to protect 40 properties. If options to extend them are exercised, the contracts' value could reach $500 million, according to U.S. Army documents obtained by The New York Times from officials briefed on the arrangement. So far, there have been no complaints about the performance of the new private guards, who have been moving on to Army bases over the past year to protect gates and patrol grounds. But the prominent roles of Wackenhut, which is working with an Alaskan native corporation called Alutiiq, and Vance, a partner of Chenega, also an Alaska-based corporation, have raised a variety of concerns, from the way the contracts were awarded to questions about whether the large security companies that are doing much of the work are appropriate for the job. "The intent of the law is to help minority businesses, yet these are major corporations who wouldn't otherwise need help getting contracts," said Danielle Brian, executive director for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington nonprofit group that studies military spending. The law from which Wackenhut and Vance have benefited, Brian said, "was set up to benefit Native American companies." The urgency of the matter was clear: 4,100 military personnel were soon to be shipped overseas and would be replaced by 4,385 private security guards. Beginning in early 2003, the Army began to determine which bases would get the private guards and approached the Alaskan companies and their partners, which ultimately received the contract awards. Military officials have told Congress that the no-bid arrangement was made to get "boots on the ground" quickly in Iraq, according to one Army document. The document also said that given the Iraqi call-up, "contract security guards are a viable manpower option." "The reason for the privatization of gate guards is to free up the war-fighter from doing garrison support and do what they are trained to do, which is go and fight," said Jerome Kelly, a spokesman for the Installation Management Agency, a division of the Army that manages military bases. The Army began to let the contracts in late 2003. Besides the lack of competition, the awards have raised other concerns. Government investigators have cited Wackenhut for security lapses at other federal installations that it was hired to protect. And Wackenhut is a subsidiary of a non-U.S. company, Group 4 Securicor, based in London, which means it is prohibited from some sensitive security contracts like airport screening. Vance International has received a number of high-profile assignments, including the Athens Olympics, as well as having received $1.1 million so far to provide security for President George W. Bush's re-election campaign. The company was founded by a former son-in-law of President Gerald Ford, Chuck Vance, who has since left the company. "We have to be careful," said Representative Lane Evans, a Democrat from Illinois, who is investigating the arrangement. "This is a real vulnerable area. We are awarding contracts to one company that has a really bad track record, and now they are being handed out on a nonbid basis. We want to make sure no harm will be done." In January, the inspector general of the Energy Department cited Wackenhut for serious improprieties in conducting anti-terrorism drills at a weapons complex in Tennessee. It has been criticized in several other reports from the inspector general for other security lapses in the past three years. The company contends that those reports are misleading and inaccurate. Critics also say that the no-bid process lacks oversight and that the security companies are exploiting a loophole that allows them to avoid open competition in a crucial area of national security. Under the law, no Alaskan even has to be employed under these contracts. "The Army had a most severe problem," said James Long 3rd, chief executive of Wackenhut Services in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. "You literally had thousands of military police, national guardsman and reservists working as gate guards. The military had to do something. So private security companies can fill the void." As for the criticism of Wackenhut, Long said, some of the reports referred to parts of Wackenhut that were not handling the Army base contracts. Vance International, a subsidiary of the technology company SPX based in Charlotte, North Carolina, dismissed criticism of its ties to Republican political figures. Those ties, said Nicolle Watson, a spokeswoman, "probably had little or no relationship" to its success in landing the Pentagon contracts. Watson said Vance specialized in security for special events and had worked for both the Republican and Democratic national committees. "We're bipartisan," she said. * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================================= www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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