US Embassy probes 'deviant' guards' conduct

After receiving a letter from the Project on Government Oversight detailing the Animal House-antics that have overrun the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ordered an investigation into the matter.

According to the report, private contractors in Kabul are regularly engaging in "deviant hazing," which includes "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls. …"

Several guards, concerned for their safety, blew the whistle, saying that the chain of command has broken down entirely.

In response to these allegations, the embassy released a statement, emphasizing its commitment to the security and "cultural and religious values of all Afghans."

The double-speak problem: The State Department had been told of questionable behavior by employees of this private contractor, Wackenhut, as far back as 2007. Apparently, not only did they do nothing about it, they extended the five-year, $189 million contract with Wackenhut for another year.

As one reader noted earlier, "If these people were in college this would simply be called 'Spring Break.' But as representatives of our country they should be fired immediately." Another wrote:

There is no "off duty" when American soldiers are on line. Every stupid and humiliating action that is posted on the web for all the world to see will be used against our people, by all enemies foreign and domestic. Fire them if you have any self-respect left.

This incident is the last straw on a long list of failures. I want the U-S Military to organize and lay the law down for these Security firms. I demand it!

This "incident" is no good for anyone involved. Remember who we are and that we are guest in a Muslim country.

This is totally unacceptable behavior and unbecoming of this particular security firm.

They would all be on the first train out of Dodge if I ran the show.

The author of that missive then cites an article in the UCMJ --the armed forces Uniform Code of Military Justice --all well and good, but the code applies only to enlisted service men and women, not contract "trigger pullers," and as the author points out, they ought to be disciplined, if only that were possible.

The State Department needs to terminate the contract and stop using taxpayer dollars to hire private mercenaries at far high salaries than we pay our military personnel. If these "soldiers" really want to be in Afghanistan, let them re-enlist, perhaps under a temporary provision rather than a full hitch, so that they're beholden to proper UCMJ standards.

Wackenhut's Florida headquarters

Who is Wackenhut?

This is not the first time Wackenhut has been in hot water.

They've been nailed for employing guards who slept on the job at a nuclear plant in Florida, they've been the subject of congressional hearings to "review flaws in federal contracting that allow contractors with poor performance records to either renew existing contracts or receive subsequent contracts with the same or different federal agencies."

A watchdog operation called EyeOnWackenhut is dedicated to one purpose. (Can you guess what it is?)

Wackenhut is a global security company that has guarded U-S embassies, nuclear power plants and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline as well as neighborhood malls and countless private homes. The now defunct Spy Magazine traced the firm's early days:

The firm was started in 1954 by former FBI agent George Wackenhut, who had close ties with all sorts of politicians which helped him secure multi-million-dollar contracts from the government, contracts which continue to this day.

The second thing that helped make George Wackenhut successful was that he was, and is, a hard-line right-winger. He was able to profit from his beliefs by building up dossiers on Americans suspected of being Communists or merely left-leaning—"subversives and sympathizers," as he put it—and selling the information to interested parties. According to Frank Donner, the author of Age of Surveillance, the Wackenhut Corporation maintained and updated its files even after the McCarthyite hysteria had ebbed, adding the names of antiwar protesters and civil-rights demonstrators to its list of "derogatory types." By 1965, Wackenhut was boasting to potential investors that the company maintained files on 2.5 million suspected dissidents—one in 46 American adults then living. In 1966, after acquiring the private files of Karl Barslaag, a former staff member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Wackenhut could confidently maintain that with more than 4 million names, it had the largest privately held file on suspected dissidents in America. In 1975, after Congress investigated companies that had private files, Wackenhut gave its files to the now-defunct anti-Communist Church League of America of Wheaton, Illinois. That organization had worked closely with the red squads of big-city police departments, particularly in New York and L.A., spying on suspected sympathizers; George Wackenhut was personal friends with the League's leaders, and was a major contributor to the group. To be sure, after giving the League its files, Wackenhut reserved the right to use them for its clients and friends.

Wackenhut had gone public in 1965; George Wackenhut retained 54 percent of the company. Between his salary and dividends, his annual compensation approaches $2 million a year, sufficient for him to live in a $$20 million castle in Coral Gables, Florida, complete with a moat and 18 full-time servants. Today the company is the third-largest investigative security firm in the country, with offices throughout the United States and in 39 foreign countries. [Wackenhut died in 2005 --ed.]

Elsewhere:

Wackenhut is known for providing muscle and force against organized labor and protesters. They provided strike breakers at the Pittston mine in Kentucky. Their armed guards have beaten protesters at nuclear sites for the Department of Energy.

Among nuclear weapons lab employees, Wackenhut was better known for "wacking" radiation whistleblowers like Karen Silkwood and attempting to run Dr. Rosalie Bertell off the road.

Two things are disheartening about all this:

In January of 2008, Wackenhut CEO Gary Sanders stepped down (or was fired) after the firm lost its contract protecting 10 nuclear power plants after guards at one plant were caught sleeping on the job. If you're in the private sector, you can make those decisions. Municipal governments can make and have made those decisions.

I have a hard time believing the federal government will cut this firm loose. The long history, thedeep government ties, the huge political contributions --you can see where this is going. No one in Washington is seriously going to cut ties with a big money gravy train like this. We'll get a dog and pony show for our troubles, a few people will be reprimanded, case closed.

We spend billions of taxpayer dollars to hire people from firms like this --far more than we would if military personnel were dispatched to do the job. Do we not pay the military enough? Did we ever? Maybe we ought to pay them a little more with the savings we'd have from not overpaying contracting firms like Wackenhut, Blackwater, KBR, Halliburton and the rest. How many are getting political favors while billing billions in cost overruns at the expense of the taxpayer?

That's an investigation I'd like to see take place.

The other disturbing thing is this:

By hiring these firms, be they for security, for soldiering, for construction --are we saying we don't have enough military personnel to do the job? Are we saying the United States is ill-equipped to do the kind of nation-building we like to boast that we do in places like Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, if we don't have the military manpower to do the job without the help of privateers who besmirch the reputation of the United States in a way that is far beyond measurable, then what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Whatever our mission is there, incidents like this do not make it easier to accomplish, and if the State Department and whoever else conducting an investigation doesn't crack the whip with equal public fervor (because propaganda is a two-way street), then any good will we're trying to achieve in this business of nation building is going to be lost upon the nations that are supposed to benefit by it.

Have we not already learned this lesson at least once before in the very recent past?