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Private Contractors

Time to Put Private Security Contractors Under the Gun

Amol Mehra | Posted 04.30.2013 | World
Amol Mehra

Using private security contractors has the potential to jeopardize the status of U.S. operations abroad, can put American lives at risk, and may cut against the very foreign policy goals our missions and embassies are seeking to achieve. They must be subject to oversight.

Zach Carter

10 Ways Obama, Congress Could Cut U.S. Budget Without Raising Income Taxes Or Slashing Entitlements

HuffingtonPost.com | Zach Carter | Posted 11.30.2012 | Politics

WASHINGTON -- Just about every policy lawmakers are considering for a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff would involve either raising individual...

Privatization and Patriotism: Defining the Boundary

David Isenberg | Posted 11.05.2012 | Business
David Isenberg

The most commonly presumed distinction between public servants and private military and security contractors is that the former are motivated by the i...

Contractors and the US Military Empire

David Isenberg | Posted 10.14.2012 | Business
David Isenberg

Outsourcing has become an integral part of modern DoD operations. For the Pentagon to better compete it must increasingly operate like a transnational corporation. To do so it has adopted the corporate strategies of rightsizing, outsourcing, and offshoring.

No Wonder It's Classified: The Effectiveness of Intelligence Outsourcing?

David Isenberg | Posted 09.23.2012 | Business
David Isenberg

Over the past decade, due to U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan the Pentagon has both proactively and often to external pressure from Con...

A Morally Reprehensible Problem

David Isenberg | Posted 07.03.2012 | Politics
David Isenberg

Trafficking in persons takes different forms. It might be forced labor, sex trafficking or bonded labor, to name a few examples. We now have people enslaved than at any time in human history, with estimates ranging from 12 to 27 million people.

A Covert Mystery, Wrapped in Classification, Inside a Contractual Black Hole

David Isenberg | Posted 05.26.2012 | Business
David Isenberg

When it comes to overseeing contractors, as the old saying goes, you ain't seen nothing yet. That's because we've barely begun to consider the use of private contractors in another critical national security realm: the intelligence community.

The DynCorp "See No Evil" Monkey

David Isenberg | Posted 04.11.2012 | Business
David Isenberg

The issue is not DynCorp; trafficking in and exploitation of people, whether for labor or sexual services, is the problem.

Privatizing the War on Terror: America's Military Contractors

John W. Whitehead | Posted 03.18.2012 | Politics
John W. Whitehead

America's troops may be returning home from Iraq, but we're far from done paying the costs of war. In fact, at the same time that Obama is reducing the number of troops in Iraq, he's replacing them with military contractors at far greater expense to the taxpayer.

New Year, Same Old Pentagon: Three Takeaways from Panetta's National Security Strategy Presser

Project On Government Oversight | Posted 03.14.2012 | Politics
Project On Government Oversight

Nothing changes on New Year's Day, including the Pentagon's budget strategy.

Paul Blumenthal

19 Words Could Mean Big Disclosure Of Secret Money

HuffingtonPost.com | Paul Blumenthal | Posted 12.16.2011 | Politics

WASHINGTON -- Hidden within the mammoth omnibus appropriations bill crafted by House, Senate and White House negotiators is a 19-word change to a ride...

Study Finds Gov. Workers Cheaper Than Contractors, As Politicians Tout Cutting Their Ranks

Posted 11.14.2011 | Business

The federal government could save billions of dollars by doing more work in-house instead of outsourcing to private contractors, a new study shows. ...

War and Private Contractors: Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them

David Isenberg | Posted 11.02.2011 | Business
David Isenberg

Anybody who was dreaming that that the military was going to divest itself of contractors can put that fantasy to rest. Now that the CWC has said the government is over-reliant on contractors, you can see that we have a bit of a contradiction.

Defense Department Employee Arrested On Bribery Charge

AP | By GREG BLUESTEIN | Posted 10.25.2011 | Politics

ATLANTA -- A high-ranking Department of Defense employee was charged Thursday with taking a bribe at an international conference in Atlanta to steer l...

Eliminating Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Defense Contracts

Rep. John F. Tierney | Posted 09.25.2011 | Politics
Rep. John F. Tierney

We cannot continue to ask the brave men and women of our Armed Forces to put their lives on the line while we jeopardize their safety by failing to ensure that Defense Department funds are not siphoned off to warlords in Afghanistan.

GIGO: The Perennial PMSC Unanswered Questions

David Isenberg | Posted 09.04.2011 | Politics
David Isenberg

To paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's famous 2003 memo on the war on terror, today we lack metrics to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of using PMSC.

Public Employees Offer Solutions. Examples.

Eric Lotke | Posted 08.01.2011 | Politics
Eric Lotke

Enough with blaming public employees for all of America's problems. Last week public employees in Oregon marched on the state Capitol with a billion d...

The Uncounted Contractor Casualties

David Isenberg | Posted 07.10.2011 | Business
David Isenberg

In the last two-to-three years, contractors have increasingly absorbed the most significant cost of our military actions. And contractor casualties are unlikely to decrease.

From 'Liberation' to Occupation: 10 Reasons Iraq Was No Cakewalk

Medea Benjamin | Posted 05.25.2011 | Politics
Medea Benjamin

March 19 marks the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. At the onset, Ken Adelman predicted that "liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Eight years on, it's time to look back at that "cakewalk."

Amanda Terkel

Pentagon Paid Billions To Contractors Suspended For Fraud

HuffingtonPost.com | Amanda Terkel | Posted 05.25.2011 | Politics

WASHINGTON -- The military paid a total of $285 billion to more than 100 contractors between 2007 and '09, even though those same companies were defra...

Afghan Taxman Targets U.S. Contractors

Posted 05.25.2011 | World

Afghanistan's government is on course for conflict over plans to tax foreign contractors operating in the country. The New York Times reports that t...

PMC: Past, Present, and Future

David Isenberg | Posted 05.25.2011 | Business
David Isenberg

Hmm, celebrate my birthday today or write the final PMC post for 2010? Hey, I'm a multitasking man; no reason I can't do both. It's been precisely a ...

Private Contractors In Afghanistan Behaving Badly

AP | RICHARD LARDNER | Posted 05.25.2011 | World

WASHINGTON — At two in the morning on Sept. 9, 2005, five DynCorp International security guards assigned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's prot...

Shadow Elite: WikiLeaks, FOIA and the Cultural Life of Government Secrecy

Michael G. Powell | Posted 05.25.2011 | World
Michael G. Powell

When we become aware of government secrecy -- as we do through redaction in WikiLeaks document dumps -- it raises our consciousness about the exercise of power and especially the potential abuse of that power.

Profit-Chasing Guns-for-Hire Are Killing Us in Iraq and Afghanistan

Robert Greenwald | Posted 05.25.2011 | World
Robert Greenwald

The use of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan makes a few people very, very rich, but it's making the rest of us -- Americans and local civilians alike -- much less safe.