Pubdate: Mon, 21 May 2001 Source: Miami Herald (FL) Copyright: 2001 The Miami Herald Contact: heralded@herald.com Website: http://www.herald.com/ Author: Carol Rosenberg

FROM KANSAS TO PERU: ODYSSEY OF A U.S. ANDEAN SPY JET

In September 1992, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole persuaded Congress to provide funding for a $35 million counternarcotics surveillance plane that benefited Cessna Corp., a company in his home state, Kansas.

Last month, CIA contractors operating a state-of-the-art Cessna jet plane bought with that money helped guide a Peruvian Air Force fighter that mistakenly shot down a small private airplane carrying American missionaries over the Amazon River.

A Herald inquiry into the origins of the U.S. aircraft involved in the tragedy has disclosed that the Cessna Citation V stuffed with sophisticated tracking equipment was part of a $10-million-a-year, five-plane secret tracker program that began with Dole's funding effort.

The Cessna project apparently evolved from an aboveboard bid to help a constituent, into a covert operation that has attracted government investigators and provoked an international incident.

The Cessnas are owned by the Department of Defense, according to Pentagon officials, but are on loan to the Central Intelligence Agency, a complication that makes it more difficult to determine responsibility and accountability.

More problematic for investigators who are supposed to deliver a report to President Bush is the apparent failure to coordinate the CIA flights with the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force, a Pentagon-led agency created to share intelligence and avert a tragedy like the one that occurred in the skies over the Amazon on April 20. The shoot-down killed Veronica Bowers, 35, and her daughter, Charity, 7 months old.

Spokesmen for the Miami-based Southern Command say the CIA contractors were not coordinating with their Inter-Agency Task Force war room in Key West the day of the shoot-down. The task force consists of representatives of various government agencies involved in the drug war and is led by the Southern Command.

According to numerous sources interviewed for this report, U.S. liability in potential cases of accidental shoot-downs, and possible violations of international law, have been concerns of U.S. officials since the program's inception -- but they were brushed aside as illicit drugs from South America flooded U.S. cities.

A joint U.S. and Peruvian investigating team led by Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers, which is responsible for narcotics control policy, is tackling at least some of the questions raised by the Peruvian shoot-down of the plane ferrying missionaries of the Pennsylvania-based Association of Baptists for Worldwide Evangelism.

Peruvian Attack

The Baptists' single-engine, Peruvian-registered four-seater was strafed by a Peruvian Air Force A37B -- allegedly over the objections of CIA contractors aboard the nearby Cessna that had initially identified the missionary plane as a suspected drug-smuggling target.

Pilot Kevin Donaldson, 41, was shot in both legs before ditching his aircraft into a jungle river. Besides him, other survivors included Veronica Bowers' husband, Jim, and their son.

Since then, U.S. intelligence officials have accused the Peruvians of breaching elaborate protocols for intercepting suspected drug runners, in which opening fire is a course of last resort; the Peruvians have said they followed procedures in the ``lamentable accident.''

Today, the U.S. airborne interdiction programs in Peru and Colombia are stalled while some in Congress question the wisdom and safety of providing Lima and Bogota with tracking data to help shoot down planes - -- a rerun of a 1994-95 policy debate that ended in a decision to resume assistance.

Program Evolved

The covert surveillance program -- designed to use aircraft over the Andes to acquire intelligence data for use by U.S. government agencies - -- was conceived before officials settled on a policy of shooting down drug planes. It stalled in the mid 1990s and was finally contracted out to the CIA by no later than 1998.

Dole has yet to respond to a series of questions submitted to his Washington law office. But, based on intelligence, military and congressional sources, here is what is known:

Dole set the program into motion on Sept. 22, 1992, by proposing to spend $35 million on modifying the planes with improved radars and sensors known as FLIRS, and then leasing up to 15 of the T-47s for use in drug interdiction and counternarcotics operations. FLIRS are ``forward looking infrared sensors'' -- a night-vision device to help planes spot smugglers trying to elude other radar scans in the dark of night.

Congress eventually approved the $35 million outlay for the Defense Department.

Cessna, which had earlier sold less sophisticated Citations to the U.S. Customs Service, is based in Wichita, Kan. Reached at Cessna headquarters, salesman Pat Sullivan refused to discuss the deal ``at the customer's request,'' calling it ``very sensitive.''

After the deal was approved, an accidental fire at the Topeka hangar where the old Cessnas were housed on July 20, 1993, destroyed them all, so on Sept. 26, 1994, Congress amended the budget to allow the Defense Department to buy five new Cessna Citations rather than retrofit old ones. It did not specify which part of the Defense Department would receive the aircraft.

A former intelligence officer who was aware of the program said Defense Department assumptions at first were that the planes would go to Customs, but they wound up with the CIA.

``The agency was better suited and more flexible in how they used the airplanes,'' the former intelligence official said. ``They could do the mission better and quieter than anyone else.''

No Explanation

Pentagon and CIA spokesmen have declined to explain the origins of the program, or who made the decision to turn the aircraft over to the CIA. Army Lt. Col. George Rhynedance referred all calls on the contract to the CIA, which refused to comment. Former CIA Director John Deutch, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did not return phone calls seeking information about the program's origins.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. George Close Jr., who supervised the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South in Panama, before it was closed and incorporated into the Key West operation, said the decision was made in Washington -- not Panama -- to exclude the Southern Command from running the program.

``It was a senior-level decision that the aircraft would be under agency control,'' Close said. ``We went, `OK, well, I'm not going to fall on my sword on this one.' ''

U.S. Alarm

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former commander of the Southern Command, recalls that a 1994-95 controversy erupted after first Peru and then Colombia announced their intention to shoot down civilian aircraft suspected of drug trafficking.

U.S. officials were alarmed -- at both the possibility of a mistake and possible U.S. liability if information provided by U.S. sources were used to pick a target.

``So we stood down the air interdiction program in Peru by something like six to eight months,'' McCaffrey said -- much to the consternation of Morris Busby, the ambassador to Colombia at the time - -- while lawyers at the State Department debated whether participation was in defiance of international law.

In the end, President Clinton declared a state of emergency in the counterdrug war and ambassadors from both Colombia and Peru agreed to a system that made a shoot-down the solution of last resort.

In 1997, after the program received the green light again, the Defense Department was seeking $10 million ``for operation of five specially configured tracker aircraft,'' according to a House Armed Services Committee report dated June 16, 1997.

Last Evidence

It was the last public legislative evidence of the secret program. After that, the committee reassigned the funding request to the ``Defense Intelligence Counterdrug Program of the Joint Military Intelligence Program'' -- a covert operation.

A Capitol Hill staffer put it this way: The $10 million annual expenditure simply disappeared into ``a giant slush fund,'' the not-for-public-viewing portions of the Pentagon's operation and maintenance budget, which requires no line items. In 1998, it amounted to $95.8 billion.

Pubdate: Tue, 22 May 2001 Source: Miami Herald (FL) Copyright: 2001 The Miami Herald Contact: heralded@herald.com Website: http://www.herald.com/ Author: Juan O. Tamayo

PRIVATE FIRMS TAKE ON JOBS, RISKS FOR U.S. MILITARY IN ANDES DRUG WAR

BOGOTA, Colombia -- As U.S. efforts to reduce drug trafficking out of the Andes escalate, more U.S.-supplied equipment is flowing into the region and more Americans are becoming involved -- and occasionally coming under fire. But because of the growing privatization of U.S. military efforts abroad, their presence is often unseen.

Increasingly, the U.S. government is contracting or licensing private American firms to carry out quasi-military functions in a practice known as ``outsourcing,'' a practice that critics brand as the hiring of mercenaries. It is largely the result of the shrinking size of the U.S. Army and a reluctance to risk the lives of U.S. servicemen in foreign conflicts.

``Congress and the American people don't want any servicemen killed overseas,'' said former U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette. ``So it makes sense that if contractors want to risk their lives, they get the job.''

Opponents emphasize the dangers of carrying out foreign policy through private firms, claiming it is fraught with waste and conducted largely outside Congressional supervision or the public's view.

``There is little or no accountability in this process of outsourcing,'' said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. ``This is a way of funding secret wars with taxpayers' money that could get us into a Vietnam-like conflict.''

A Herald review of the practice has found that at least four American companies are conducting some of the key operations that implement U.S. foreign policy in the Andean region, from tracking guerrillas from the sky and helping to interdict airborne drug runners to running risky search-and-rescue missions:

DynCorp, a Reston, Va., firm that handles much of the aviation side of U.S. drug eradication efforts in the Andean region, has some 80 pilots and mechanics in Colombia -- about half of them Americans and the rest Latin Americans -- running a $30 million to $40 million a year program to defoliate coca fields.

AirScan, of Rockledge, Fla., sends airplanes loaded with surveillance gear and manned by U.S. military veterans to search for guerrillas in the jungles of Colombia and Angola. U.S. officials in Bogota said AirScan's Cessna 337 Skymasters use infra-red and television cameras to spot guerrillas near the Cano Limon pipeline in eastern Colombia, bombed some 60 times in the past year by the leftist National Liberation Army, known as ELN.

MPRI, of Alexandria, Va., just finished a $6 million contract with the Pentagon under which a 14-man team headed by a former army general advised the Colombian military and police on logistics, planning and organization. Formerly known as Military Professional Resources Inc., the firm is headed by retired Gen. Carl Vuono, who commanded the Army during Desert Storm, and counts a dozen retired generals and admirals, as well as CIA officials and ambassadors on its staff.

Aviation Development Corp., a private company based at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama whose pilots were flying a Cessna Citation V over the Amazon on April 20 in a drug interdiction program when they mistakenly helped a Peruvian jet target a plane carrying U.S. missionaries. As a result of that incident, in which Veronica Bowers and her her seven-month-old daughter, Charity, died, outsourcing came under an unwelcomed spotlight. Now, some members of Congress look skeptically at the practice.

``There wasn't one person aboard that plane sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States,'' complained a veteran of counter-drug operations in Latin America, referring to the private contractors in lieu of U.S. military personnel. ``They were all . . . businessmen!''

Over the past few weeks, Congress has moved to limit the use of contractors in the counter-drug efforts in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. Schakowsky has proposed a total ban on contractors, while Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass, wants the contracts slowly shifted to local police forces.

But even before the incident in Peru, the debate over outsourcing had long been simmering in Washington, especially as U.S. counter-drug operations in the Andean region bloomed in the 1990s into a campaign that today costs about $1 billion a year.

DynCorp has been paid at least $270 million since 1991 to provide airplane and helicopter pilots and mechanics for the war on drugs in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala, according to a Government Accounting Office report to Congress in March.

Describing itself as a ``leading information technology and outsourcing services firm,'' the company has annual revenues of $1.4 billion, most of it from U.S. government contracts, and 20,000 employees around the world.

AirScan's Web page says it has provided the Colombian air force and the Angolan government with ``security surveillance services'' for oil pipelines, as well as leasing the Colombians one its sensor-packed airplanes and training three air crews and six maintenance teams.

PINPOINTING COCA

AirScan uses multi-spectrum cameras to pinpoint coca plantations in Colombia for later spraying by Dyncorp's pilots, according to officials in the State Department's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau.

AirScan declined comment on its work in Colombia or the value of its contracts. Florida state records shows the company, founded in 1989, is owned by John Mansur.

To the harshest critics of outsourcing, it is simply an attempt by the executive branch to escape Congressional supervision of the growing U.S. involvement in Colombia, where a civil war has claimed some 35,000 lives in the past decade.

``Privatization is a way of going around Congress and not telling the public. Foreign policy is made by default to private military consultants motivated by bottom-line profits,'' Army Col. Bruce Grant wrote in an essay while attending the Army War College in 1998.

Supporters of outsourcing say one of their top concerns is that the main U.S. actors in the counter-narcotics battle -- the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, INL and Defense Department -- have no expertise in the area.

``The State Department is embassies, cables and vouchers, not pilots,'' said Cresencio Arcos, former deputy assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics Matters. ``It has no core competence in spraying coca crops.''

And even when Congress allocates funds for counter-drug programs abroad, it's never certain that the agencies who have the job will have the means to carry it out.

``Congress gives you money, but money doesn't give you bodies or [equipment]. And if the bodies exist, can they teach, do they know the language, do they know the region?'' said Ana Maria Salazar, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Drug Enforcement Policy and Support.

MPRI got the Colombia contract, Salazar added, because the Miami-based Southern Command, in charge of all U.S. military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, ``didn't have 14 guys it could spare for a year.''

The boom in the outsourcing business came in the 1990s, when the U.S. Army shrank from 790,000 soldiers to 480,000. The Department of Defense is now estimated to have 700,000 full and part-time contractors on its rolls.

MPRI now hires retired officers to staff ROTC programs in 217 universities and 29 military recruiting centers under contract with DOD, said Ed Soyster, a retired army general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency now with MPRI. ``We simply provide a product, like Coca-Cola.''

MPRI also hired and deployed a 20-member team for a U.S. contract as truce observers in Bosnia within two weeks, boasted Soyster, a move that he said would have taken the regular military months if not years.

RETIRED GENERALS

Founded in 1988 by retired American generals, the firm now has a database of 11,000 former military and law enforcement officers ``on call,'' has worked in Bosnia, Macedonia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Taiwan and is pitching Costa Rica on a contract to help develop its Coast Guard.

Critics of outsourcing said there's little real difference between risking the life of a U.S. serviceman or a contractor in places like Colombia, wracked by violence from leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.

``This is done primarily because we lack popular support at home to commit military forces for these kinds of things,'' said Sanho Tree, head of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

As for the firms' vaunted ability to move faster than the government bureaucracy, said Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., ``part of the bureaucracy's job is precisely to make sure we don't step in [it] like we did in Peru.''

Some of those involved in outsourcing said it is marred by occasional featherbedding and padding of bills sent to Washington, as well as back-scratching between firms and U.S. officials who supervise their contracts but hope to land a job with the firms after government retirement.

``There's a lot of taxpayers' money being wasted on counter-narcotics, and every contractor and bandit is trying to get at the trough,'' said a retired U.S. Army officer who worked in the Andean region.

Money, indeed, is what attracts the private companies, the sources said.

``There is just too much money coming down the pike to control this thing,'' said a former State Department official, recalling his own efforts to phase out DynCorp's work in Colombia and turn it over to the local police in 1995.

``I had an entire `nationalization' plan worked out to train the police,'' he said. ``But then our coca crop estimates began shooting up, Washington threw more money at the problem and the Colombians were back to being spectators because we had to ramp up a program quickly.''

Pubdate: Wed, 23 May 2001 Source: Nation, The (US) Website: http://www.thenation.com/ Address: 33 Irving Place, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003 Email: letters@thenation.com Copyright: 2001, The Nation Company Author: Jason Vest

STATE OUTSOURCES SECRET WAR

Special Report

Best known as a place where the Air Force shoots satellites into orbit, the Eastern Space and Missile Center--just south of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida's Brevard County--would appear to focus solely on the wild blue yonder and beyond.

Indeed, the 45th Space Wing's web page is pretty clear about the mission of Patrick Air Force Base and the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: to enhance "national strength through assured access to space for Department of Defense, civil, and commercial users."

But according to a closely held government document, in the corner of the base that's occupied by the defense contractor Raytheon there's an operation that has absolutely nothing to do with the 45th's role as "premier gateway into space." In fact, the 10,000-square-foot fenced-in yard isn't used by Raytheon at all. Nor is the 62,000 square feet of office, storage and hangar space located at 1038 South Patrick Drive. Officially, it's the province of the State Department, which maintains a dedicated high-speed data line linking its Foggy Bottom headquarters in Washington with Buildings 984-986.

What the State Department is doing here has little to do with the genteel art of diplomacy but everything to do with combat.

For all intents and purposes, South Patrick Drive is the gateway to the US government's private war in the South American Andes.

Building 985 at Patrick Air Force Base is occupied by at least two State Department officers and a handful of administrators from DynCorp, a giant contractor which does most of its $1.4 billion in business with the US government--particularly in the realms of defense and intelligence. Since 1991, the company has effectively--and quietly--served as the State Department's private air force in the Andes, providing pilots and mechanics for US-owned aircraft.

Both DynCorp and the State Department have been reticent about just what DynCorp does. A handful of media reports and public statements have shown that the company's pilots are flying fumigation and search-and-rescue missions, primarily in Colombia.

There's also been passing mention of DynCorp operating in Peru and Bolivia. But when reporters, activists and even members of Congress have asked for more details on what DynCorp does for the Aviation Division of State's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau, they've received nothing. Sometimes State simply doesn't respond. "We're hitting a stone wall here," sighs Nadeam Elshami, an aide to Representative Jan Schakowsky, who recently introduced a bill banning the use of private military companies like DynCorp in the Andes. "We've asked State for information, and we haven't received any yet."

Other times State says it can't say anything because to do so would compromise information proprietary to DynCorp that's protected by the "trade secrets exemption" in the Freedom of Information Act. If DynCorp ever responds to queries, it says it won't divulge any details because the State Department won't let it. "We haven't gotten any answers from them, either," says Elshami, "though they did contact us after Veronica Bowers's plane was shot down over Peru last month and told us they weren't involved. I think they made sure everyone knew that, but about what they're actually doing, no."

The Nation has obtained a copy of State's contract with DynCorp--a contract that requires all employees to have a "secret"-level clearance and "not communicate to any person any information known to them by reason of their performance of services." Additionally, it instructs DynCorp to "not refer to this award in any public or private advertising" or in the news media.

Looking through it, it's not hard to see why. The contract reveals DynCorp's Andean aerial counternarcotics operations to be far more expansive and far-flung than previously reported.

From its "Main Operating Base" at Patrick AFB, DynCorp oversees an aerial fleet of forty-six helicopters and twenty-three fixed-wing aircraft which can operate from twenty-three locations spread out over Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. In some cases, DynCorp's operations are not limited to fumigation and search-and-rescue but, according to the contract, include maintenance and pilot training, aircraft ferrying, mat?el transport, reconnaissance and flying local troops in to destroy drug labs and coca or poppy fields.

According to Federation of American Scientists secrecy specialist Steven Aftergood, the State-DynCorp contract is a prime example of how the executive branch is unilaterally projecting power and implementing policy without leaving a trace. "The kind of routine oversight that official military activities would be subjected to are evaded by contractors as a matter of course," he says. "This highlights how the whole phenomenon of privatizing military functions has enabled the government to evade oversight to a shocking degree."

Politically, the contract's specifics only reinforce concerns voiced by Representative Schakowsky and others that US taxpayers have been funding a secret war that has the potential to slowly but surely draw the United States further into a poorly understood counterinsurgency conflict. "What most people either forget or don't know," says Sanho Tree, director of the drug policy project at the Institute for Policy Studies, "is that conflict in Colombia is a civil war, and is not about drugs.

But instead of doing things like infrastructure and economic development to connect with people who have been abandoned by their government, the first contact scores of peasants have with their government--and the United States, thanks to Plan Colombia--is with armed soldiers and herbicide-spraying aircraft, which only underscores the rebels' case. If the American people don't know the full extent of what's being done in their name, how can they make informed decisions?"

Perhaps the most interesting part of the contract deals with Bolivia, a country where DynCorp's activities have gone virtually unacknowledged and undocumented. Operating out of a main base at Santa Cruz and forward operating locations ( FOLs ) in Puerto Suarez, Chimore and Trinidad--as well as at staging areas in San Matia, Riberalta, San Ignaci and Via Montes--DynCorp's contractors both train mechanics and do maintenance work themselves on twelve State Department UH-IH ( "Huey" ) helicopters, and another ten Hueys provided by the Pentagon.

Used to transport troops to coca laboratories--as well as to fly reconnaissance missions--some Hueys belong to the Red Devil Task Force ( RDTF ), a little-known special unit of the Bolivian Air Force funded by the US government. According to the contract, DynCorp is "responsible for the military support, aircraft maintenance quality control and standardization of flight training for the RDTF," the latter including "some individual flight training" by DynCorp pilots.

According to a recently retired DynCorp contractor, the company's pilots work with Red Devil pilots "day in and day out, hand in hand, on everything from keeping the log book to refueling, and are still actively training those pilots."

"I think this confirms the general sense that we have too little information about the kind of counternarcotics contract operations being carried out in the Andean region," says Gina Amatangelo, international narcotics fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America. Amatangelo says she'd be particularly interested to know if any DynCorp personnel working with the RDTF have flown for the government's Umopar mobile eradication unit, which has a documented history of human rights abuses.

In Colombia, DynCorp is required to support Bell 212 helicopter operations "seven days a week, twelve hours a day, in day, night, and NVG [night vision goggles] conditions." Operations include "search and rescue, host nation training, interdiction, command and control, and reconnaissance missions," specifically at two FOLs.

And there is no shortage of FOLs: In addition to the main base at El Dorado International Airport, DynCorp's personnel can apparently be found flitting between eight forward locations at La Remonta, Neiva, Apaiy Meta, Puerto Asis, San Jos?Tulua, Valledupar and Larandia. ( According to the contract, there's also a maintenance base in Guaymaral, a training base under construction in Mariquita and three more forward bases planned for Florencia, Tres Aquines and Turbo. ) The main mission continues to be "aerial opium poppy and coca reconnaissance and eradication" with fixed-wing T-65s and OV-10D Broncos--planes flown by both DynCorp pilots and their traineees, and maintained by DynCorp mechanics.

In Peru, as in Colombia and Bolivia, the State Department has instructed DynCorp to "collect, process, and disseminate aerial eradication flight path and spray data from 'Pathlink' [and/or] 'SATLOC'"--two high-tech recording and mapping systems--"to facilitate planning and analysis of aerial eradication and reconnaissance operations on deployment." This is particularly interesting since last month, after the Bowers shootdown, DynCorp spokeswoman Charlene Wheeless told reporters via e-mail that she wanted to "assure you that DynCorp does not provide surveillance services" in its areas of operation, especially Peru. When contacted by The Nation, another DynCorp spokeswoman, Janet Wineriter, clarified the statement, saying "We were speaking strictly about tracking aircraft." ( When asked to comment on other aspects of the contract, Wineriter said that "I've never even seen the contract myself," but added that she was sure if it had been obtained from the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act, "You would certainly get it redacted." )

But in Peru, DynCorp does much, much more. In addition to having a presence at a large US government compound in Pucallpa, as a recent Washington Post reporter noted, DynCorp also operates at forward locations including Tingo Maria, Santa Lucia, Mazamari and Tarapoto. For herbicide spraying, DynCorp has to be able to have four T-65s or four OV-10s simultaneously airborne, and has to both maintain the aircraft, train mechanics and train pilots both individually and as a unit.

According to a recently retired DynCorp veteran, while the company's people are "of the highest caliber--Delta guys, SEAL team guys, career military pilots and mechanics," most of the knowledge and experience they have isn't being passed on in training, insuring that the DynCorp contractors constantly operate in a very hands-on capacity. "It's probably one of the hardest things to put up with, because there's no perfect area or classroom to train people when they come in, and a lot of times they're in and then they move out, so you start over with new people, and then they move out," he says. "You always have the mission to adhere to first, and the mission is maintaining and flying those aircraft to spray and kill crops."

The veteran also says that DynCorp personnel have been tasked with rescuing army personnel whose missions may not be counternarcotics related.

Not, he says, that the contractors mind. "Most people stay until they're ready to go, because they really like what they're doing.

The contract is constantly changing to fulfill new requirements, so there will always be work." He pauses. "I haven't been down there in awhile, but in the time I worked for 'em, we went from having 120 people to 450 people."

For University of Wisconsin professor Alfred McCoy, the contract harks back to the days of his book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, originally published in 1972. "One of these days we may actually get all the records describing everything the CIA did in Laos, but we'll never get the records of the Continental Air Service, their contractor who worked there," he says. "The fact that this company is so large and is doing so much down there raises real questions of accountability. What's the relationship between the nominal drug war and the realities of counterinsurgency? If it's just the drug war, it raises questions about whether or not this is the best way to handle it, whether it's cost effective, what the consequences are. But the operations described here can very easily spill into involvement in counterinsurgency. And the worst-case scenario would be that we could become embroiled in a de facto counterinsurgency situation, because this is a privately held corporation for which there's no particular restraint."

STATE OUTSOURCES SECRET WAR

Special Report

What the State Department is doing here has little to do with the genteel art of diplomacy but everything to do with combat.

For all intents and purposes, South Patrick Drive is the gateway to the US government's private war in the South American Andes.

Looking through it, it's not hard to see why. The contract reveals DynCorp's Andean aerial counternarcotics operations to be far more expansive and far-flung than previously reported.

The veteran also says that DynCorp personnel have been tasked with rescuing army personnel whose missions may not be counternarcotics related.

Not, he says, that the contractors mind. "Most people stay until they're ready to go, because they really like what they're doing.

Pubdate: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 Source: Guardian, The (UK) Copyright: 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited Contact: letters@guardian.co.uk Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/ Authors: Julian Borger, Martin Hodgson

A PLANE IS SHOT DOWN AND THE US PROXY WAR ON DRUG BARONS UNRAVELS

When a small plane carrying US missionaries was shot down a few weeks ago in Peru, killing a young woman and her seven-month-old baby girl, it first seemed to be a tragic case of trigger-happy policing by the Peruvian air force.

But as more details emerge from the Andean jungle, it is clear this apparently isolated incident has a far greater significance. The deaths have helped yank the covers from the secret side of America's billion-dollar drug war in Latin America.

The missionaries' plane was shot down by a Peruvian military pilot, but it was first spotted and targeted by a US Cessna Citation surveillance plane patrolling the air routes between Peru and Colombia on the look out for cocaine traffickers.

The surveillance plane was piloted not by US military pilots but by private contractors who, according to US congressional officials, were hired by an Alabama-based company called Aviation Development Corporation ( ADC ). In the words of one outraged official: "There were just businessmen in that plane. They were accountable to no one but their bottom line."

A state department inquiry is still taking place into the deaths of Veronica and Charity Bowers, the victims of the April 20 shootdown. Administration sources quoted in the US press suggested that the American Cessna crew cautioned their Peruvian air force counterparts against shooting the plane down, but no one is denying it was the Cessna that wrongly identified the missionaries' plane as suspect.

Moreover, the involvement of a US firm operating for profit over the Peruvian and Colombian jungles has drawn attention to an important but little-noticed trend - the privatisation of the drug war.

Congress is now trying to investigate the role of the commercial contractors and two bills have been proposed to try to curb their influence. Their chances of success in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives are unclear, but their sponsors are determined to force the administration to at least explain its actions.

"We are hiring a private army," Janice Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman who authored one of the bills, told the Guardian. "We are engaging in a secret war, and the American people need to be told why."

A private corporation based in Virginia called DynCorp carries out much of the aerial spraying of coca plantations in Colombia. When a police helicopter was shot down in February by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, DynCorp sent in its own armed security men, in a search-and-rescue helicopter, who exchanged fire with the rebels and brought the policemen to safety. DynCorp pilots also ferry Colombian troops in and out of battle, and train Colombian helicopter and fixed-wing pilots.

Another US company, AirScan, based in Florida, works alongside ADC carrying out aerial surveillance in Colombia, using state-of-the-art imaging to pinpoint coca fields and guerrillas trying to bomb the Cano Limon oil pipeline.

Meanwhile, Military Professional Resources Inc, another Virginia-based consultancy group set up by former generals, has carried out officer training for the Colombian police and army.

The rise of the private contractor is arguably an inevitable outcome of US anti-drug policy under Bill Clinton and now President Bush. Last year, Congress approved $1.3bn expenditure on Plan Colombia, an ambitious programme of military aid to Bogota to try to stem the flow of drugs at the supply end.

But, concerned that Colombia could become a Vietnam-like quagmire, Congress imposed a cap on official US military involvement of 500 trainers and advisers. Into the gaping and lucrative gap stepped US commercial enterprise.

Richard White, a former ambassador to El Salvador, sees the trend towards privatisation as a symptom of Washington's failure to come to terms with its own military-based anti-drug strategy.

Mr White, now head of the Centre for International Policy, said: "I believe it's dishonourable for the US to resort to mercenaries to carry out its policy. If we are committed to intervening in Colombia in pursuit of US interests, then we should mobilise whatever military resources we need to accomplish this."

This is not the first time the US has resorted to mercenaries. The exploits of the pilots who flew in south-east Asia for the CIA front company, Air America, are legendary. As today in Colombia and Peru, Air America provided Washington with distance and deniability. But it was a CIA-run operation. Today's mercenaries in the drug war are provided by private companies selling a service and are used as a matter of course by both the state and defence.

In the Vietnam days, secrecy was justified by national security. In the current drug war, it is a matter of corporate confidentiality. Janet Wineriter, a spokeswoman at DynCorp's headquarters in Reston, near Washington's Dulles airport, said she could not discuss DynCorp's operations in Colombia because of its contractual obligations to its client, the state department.

Scott Harris, the spokesman for the state department's bureau for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said he could not comment because of the contractor's right to privacy.

Similarly, ADC diverts inquiries to its Alabama lawyer, Mike Waters, who refused comment on grounds of "normal client confidentiality".

Lynis Cox, a civilian public affairs officer at Maxwell air force base, from where ADC has operated since 1998, said: "I know they have a hangar out there on the base, but no one here seems to know much about them."

In Bogota, government officials are also tight-lipped about the increasingly unpopular privatisation of the conflict. A helicopter pilot in the Colombian anti-narcotics police said: "From Bush down, they want to cover up what they're doing. Not even the president wants to talk about private companies flying fumigation missions here in Colombia."

Members of US Congress are having similar problems getting information. Ms Schakowsky said the house sub-committee on government reform was being stonewalled by the state department and other federal agencies over the role of private contractors. "The CIA did not even show up," she said. "Why is this classified if taxpayers' money is being spent?"

A copy of DynCorp's five-year, $200m contract obtained by the Guardian is vague, with little about its rules of engagement. Under the heading "Search and Rescue", for example, it stipulates only: "This operation deals with downed aircraft or hostile action by narcotics producers or traffickers."

Major Andy Messing, who served as a US adviser in El Salvador and worked as a military consultant in Colombia, warned: "If there had been a US air force pilot in that plane in Peru, you can bet the Peruvians would have listened to him. The private guys have no authority. They are all potential hostages."

Three years ago a paper written at the Army War College by a Colonel Bruce Grant warned: "Foreign policy is [being] made by default [by] private military consultants motivated by bottom-line profits." Now, Major Messing argues, the warning is coming true: "DynCorp's guys are old geezers who've retired, and they're down there making $109,000 tax-free.

"Every time you have contractors this is what happens. They just prolong the whole mess."

The firms fighting America's drug war

DynCorp

Based Reston, Virginia

Description A huge corporation that supplies electronics and a range of contract services to the US government, which provides most of DynCorp's $1.4bn in business. It is also under scrutiny for its role in training US members of the UN police force in Bosnia

Role in drug war It has a five-year, $200m contract to provide crop-dusting pilots for eradication of coca plantations and helicopter pilots to ferry Colombian troops and DynCorp's own "security" personnel

Aviation Development Corporation

Based Maxwell air force base, Alabama

Description A secretive company set up in 1998 to test aerial electronic sensors

Role in drug war It flies Cessna spotter planes for the CIA in Peru and possibly Colombia to help target aircraft used by drug smugglers

AirScan

Based Rockledge, Florida

Description Provides state-of-the-art air surveillance, also used in Angola

Role in the drug war Patrols the Colombian jungle in Cessna Skymaster electronic surveillance planes, seeking out coca plantations and guerrilla threats to the Cano Limon oil pipeline

Military Professional Resources Inc

Based Alexandria, Virginia

Description A consultancy set up by former US generals. Its biggest previous mission was the training of the Croatian army before its successful 1995 offensive against the Serbs

Role in drug war It has just completed a $6m year-long contract providing a 14-man training team for Colombian army and police officers. The effectiveness of the training was questioned by Bogota

Pubdate: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 Source: The Nation Online Copyright: 2001, The Nation Company Website: http://www.thenation.com/

DYNCORP'S DRUG PROBLEM

Could the State Department's antidrug contractors in South America possibly be dabbling in narcotics trafficking? A key part of the US's $1.3 billion contribution to Plan Colombia--the scheme that will supposedly expedite the end of Colombia's civil war--calls for the use of private contractors ( as opposed to actual US military assets ) to fly airborne missions against both the fields that grow coca and poppy and the labs that process them. While some contractors, like Aviation Development Corporation of Montgomery, Alabama, fly surveillance missions for the CIA, those that fly on retainer for other US government agencies are a bit more expansive in their missions.

Consulting giant DynCorp's private pilots in the Andes fly everything from fixed-wing fumigation runs to helicopter-borne interdiction missions ferrying troops into hot spots. If you take DynCorp's word for it, any notion of the organization's being involved in drug trafficking is ludicrous. "Whether or not you believe this, we are a very ethical company," said a senior DynCorp official, who insisted on being quoted off the record. "We take steps to make sure the people we hire are ethical."

Yet the existence of a document that The Nation recently obtained ( under the Freedom of Information Act ) from the Drug Enforcement Administration--combined with the unwillingness of virtually any US or Colombian government agency to elaborate on the document--has some in Washington and elsewhere wondering if, like virtually every other entity charged with fighting the drug war, DynCorp might have a bad apple or two in its barrel. According to a monthly DEA intelligence report from last year, officers of Colombia's National Police force intercepted and opened, on May 12, 2000, a US-bound Federal Express package at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport. The parcel "contained two ( 2 ) small bottles of a thick liquid" that "had the same consistency as motor oil." The communiqu goes on to report that the liquid substance "tested positive for heroin" and that the "alleged heroin laced liquid weighed approximately 250 grams." ( Freebase heroin, it bears noting, is soluble in motor oil, and can therefore be extracted without much trouble. )

But perhaps the most intriguing piece of information in the DEA document is the individual to whom it reports that the package belonged:an unnamed employee of DynCorp, who was sending the parcel to the company's Andean operations headquarters at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. More interesting still is the reluctance of DynCorp and the government to provide substantial details in support of their contention that this situation isn't really what it seems. According to DynCorp spokeswoman Janet Wineriter,the viscous liquid that the Colombians tested was not, in fact, laced with heroin; it was simply "oil samples of major aircraft components" that DynCorp technicians are required to take and send to the US "on a periodic basis." Explaining that the drug test was conducted "with apparently faulty equipment" that produced "an incorrect reading," Wineriter could not specify what testing procedures or equipment were used. She identified her source for the explanation as Charlene A. Wheeless, DynCorp's Vice President for Corporate Communications.

Unable to cite any source other than Wheeless ( "I'm assuming when someone passes along this information that it's accurate" ), Wineriter told The Nation to call the Colombian National Police and the State Department for further details. The State Department liaison with DynCorp did not return phone calls, and when the Colombian National Police in Bogota were contacted, an official informed The Nation that the CNP would not comment on the matter, referring all queries to the DEA. A DEA spokesman in Washington said the matter was not a DEA case, and referred calls to the US Embassy in Bogota.

It took six days for the embassy to produce a terse, 143-word response to The Nation's queries--a response that echoed, but did not mirror,DynCorp's account. The embassy did confirm that the vials of oil are "routinely shipped to DynCorp facilities at Patrick AFB for analysis related to proper maintenance" of aircraft, and confirmed that "several aircraft motor oil samples" were confiscated by Colombian police who used "NARCOTEX equipment [and] detected the presence of heroin in unspecified amounts." Unlike Dyncorp, the embassy did not blame the test results on a false positive caused by faulty equipment; what's odd is that the embassy has no idea what ultimately became of the seized oil. "The samples seized at the airport were sent to the CNP's Forensic Institute for further analysis, but the CNP did not subsequently pursue the matter with the U.S. Embassy or DynCorp personnel in Colombia," the embassy said, adding that the embassy has "asked the CNP to clarify the status of any investigation of this matter."

Many questions remain about the CNP interception of the DynCorp package in Bogota last year. While there's nothing unusual about sending aircraft oil samples to DynCorp's main base in the US, DynCorp's assertion thatpoorly calibrated drug testing equipment caused a false positive has experts scratching their heads--as does the US Embassy's description of the testing itself.

When asked to specify what, exactly, "NARCOTEX equipment" is and what testing methodologies it uses, an embassy official responded that he had "no idea." A veteran DEA agent said he had "never heard of anything called NARCOTEX," and after a hard round of research, staffers at the International Association of Chiefs of Police's Drug Recognition Experts Section told The Nation they couldn't find evidence of any drug testing technology with the name. And according to a number of scientists with backgrounds in chemical testing and opiate research, the information provided by DynCorp and the US Embassy in Bogota isn't nearly enough to ascertain independently just what was in those bottles seized by the Colombian police.

Peter Facchini, a University of Calgary biochemist and leading expert on opiates, notes that any number of several types of tests may or may not have been conducted, and without knowing specifics or lab protocols, it's impossible to render a scientific conclusion. But, he and others add,it's unlikely that any testing apparatus would errantly identify something as heroin in motor oil. Drug tests for coca and opiates look for the presence of alkaloids--and alkaloids, says Facchini, aren't naturally present in fuel oils. "I can't imagine any reason there should be even a trace of an alkaloid in aircraft oil or motor oil--that doesn't make any sense at all," he says.

Thomas Tullius, chair of Boston University's chemistry department ( and author of the study refuting the US government's claim of possessing reliable evidence that the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was producing nerve gas ), also finds DynCorp's explanation curious. "Maybe there is something in motor oil that might cross-react, but I would be surprised to find that true," says Tullius. "This is like the al-Shifa thing--people aren't telling you precise methods used or numbers found."

And according to Adam Isacson, senior associate and Latin America specialist at the Center for International Policy, DynCorp and State's handling of the situation doesn't exactly inspire confidence. "It sounds like they have no idea what the outcome of this case was, and it doesn't look like they have much of a burning desire to find out what happened," observes Isacson. "They have an interest in sweeping this under the rug. They don't want anything to derail Plan Colombia, and key to that is the willingness to let contractors operate in almost complete secrecy. Anything that raises questions is to be avoided like the plague--they don't want people to think about DynCorp, because then people might actually look at the whole policy."

Which is what critics of Plan Colombia are hoping will happen over the next few weeks. On June 27, the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee began crafting next year's overseas budget package, which includes funding for the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, a measure that essentially expands Plan Colombia to neighboring Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil and Panama. While the Bush Administration has requested more money for development assistance, the bulk of the money still goes to military assistance ( 71 percent, in Colombia's case ), and there is continued financing for the fumigation and manual eradication of coca and poppy crops that DynCorp carries out under contract for State.

A number of amendments have been offered to the appropriations bill that would do everything from imposing a moratorium on fumigation to reining in US military spending in the Andes, and activists are hopeful that some of these amendments may actually pass. While the Republican ranks are full of proud drug warriors, even some conservatives--such as House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton--are growing increasingly leery of DynCorp's operations; Burton is reportedly so irked by what he sees as lack of the contractor accountability that he's considering taking legislative action himself. Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky, meanwhile, is championing a bill that would impose a ban on the use of private military contractors like DynCorp, citing everything from State's intransigence in answering Congressional queries to the possibility of the US's getting more involved in a foreign war that is conducted largely out of the public eye.

"All these concerns reinforce my views that the US should immediately terminate its contract with DynCorp and all other private companies conducting sensitive, military-like operations in the Andean Region,"says Schakowsky."Reports that DynCorp employees have been implicated in drug trafficking, the very thing they are paid to help prevent, only strengthens my conviction that outsourcing is the wrong policy. It's frustrating for reporters, but outrageous for members of Congress not to have access to information about US involvement in the Andean region and how taxpayer dollars are being spent--most of the information we have is from investigative news reports that raise more questions than answers."

Pubdate: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 Source: Guardian Weekly, The (UK) Copyright: Guardian Publications 2001 Contact: weekly@guardian.co.uk Website: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/GWeekly/front/

PRIVATE FIRMS SEEK PROFIT IN DRUGS WAR

The trend towards reducing the size of government by farming out its operations is now almost universal in the industrialised democracies. It is supposed to save money and impose some market discipline on bureaucracy's natural tendency to swell.

The problem is that by "downsizing" government and "outsourcing" its work, the profit motive begins to take the place of public policy.

When the issue is delivering the post or cleaning the streets, the government can set standards and monitor the work of its private contractors. But what happens when an administration starts "outsourcing" its conduct of foreign and defence policy, and the contractors deal not in stamps, postcards, brushes and brooms but lethal force?

Those are the questions now being asked in the United States Congress after the shooting down of a small plane carrying American missionaries in Peru. The plane was strafed by a Peruvian air force jet on April 20 in the belief that it carried drug smugglers. A young American, Veronica Bowers, and her seven-month-old daughter were killed.

The incident initially appeared to be the over-zealous act of a Peruvian pilot, but the missionaries' plane had first been spotted and wrongly identified by a US surveillance aircraft, which carried Americans working for the CIA and a Peruvian liaison officer. Moreover the Americans were not CIA staff, but employees of a private firm with a CIA contract. As one congressional official put it: "There were just businessmen in that plane."

A state department inquiry into the incident is under way, and the sequence of events is unclear. US government officials have suggested that the private contractors cautioned the Peruvians against opening fire, but no one is denying that the US plane initially spotted the missionaries' plane and labelled it suspect.

The incident has cast light on the creeping privatisation of the drug war. Of the $1.3bn set aside by congress last year for Plan Colombia - the programme of military and development aid by which Washington hopes to stem the supply of narcotics to the US at their source - a great deal is going to commercial ventures.

The biggest of the companies involved is DynCorp, a huge conglomerate based in northern Virginia near the CIA's Langley headquarters.

DynCorp's five-year $200m contract with the state department requires it to fly crop-dusters over the Colombian jungle dropping pesticide on coca plantations. When crop-dusters come under fire, it is up to DynCorp helicopter pilots to provide support. In February a DynCorp chopper flew into the middle of a firefight with the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ( Farc ) to rescue some Colombian policemen. DynCorp employees also ferry US-trained Colombian troops into battle.

Other US companies have different slices of the Plan Colombia pie. AirScan conducts aerial surveillance, and Military Professional Resources Inc ( MPRI ) until recently provided training for Colombian officers.

The rise of private contractors was made inevitable by the counter-narcotics policies of both Bill Clinton and George Bush. They depend on a largely military solution to a complex problem in a decade in which manpower in the US armed forces has been cut by more than a third.

Ed Soyster, a retired general and former head of the Defence Intelligence Agency who works for MPRI, pointed out that pulling eight full colonels out of the already streamlined US forces for a Plan Colombia assignment would seriously affect combat readiness. "That's why they come to the contractors," he said.

All this is not entirely new. Air America used to fly for the CIA in southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. But that was under the direct control of Langley. The new mercenaries are independent firms with their own bottom line. Soyster says the government can exert tighter control on private contractors than it can on its own employees because the guidelines and limits for actions are precisely laid out in the contracts.

That may be true of the MPRI contract, which dealt solely with classes for officers, but it is not necessarily the case for the companies operating in the Colombian jungle. The DynCorp contract is a study in vagueness. The section dealing with search and rescue says: "This operation deals with downed aircraft or hostile action by narcotics producers or traffickers." It gives no further details.

Information about mercenaries was once draped with a thick blanket of secrecy labelled "national security". Nowadays the blanket has a new brand name: "corporate confidentiality". Thus, members of Congress have not even been officially told which company was flying the surveillance plane on April 20 over Peru. Their own researchers traced the charter to a mysterious company called Aviation Development Corporation ( ADC ), operating out of Alabama. But no one at ADC has been willing to talk. Neither has the CIA, the state department or the White House.

Janice Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman from Illinois, has been amazed at the secrecy surrounding companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. "We are hiring a secret army," she said. "We are engaging in a secret war, and the American people need to be told why."

The danger inherent in the obsessive confidentiality is the implied lack of control. If Congress is not even being told the names of the companies involved, it cannot determine whether US funds are being used to aid rightwing paramilitaries or being drawn into the conflict with Farc. There is no dividing line between the guerrilla war and the counter-narcotics war, because many guerrilla leaders are also drug lords.

Meanwhile the companies and their employees have a vested interest in prolonging and deepening US involvement in Colombia. They are taking risks, but making good money. No one has thought through what happens when a group of private contractors are killed or taken hostage. What would their status be, and would the US intervene on their behalf? As Soyster put it: "That's something that has got to be figured out."

How Long???....Not Long!!!

Pubdate: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 Source: Associated Press (Wire) Copyright: 2001 Associated Press Author: Ken Guggenheim

COMPANY INVOLVED IN COLOMBIAN DRUG MISSIONS HAS IRAN-CONTRA PAST

WASHINGTON ( AP ) -- U.S. drug eradication flights in Colombia are being flown by the same private company that Oliver North used to secretly run guns to Nicaraguan rebels during the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

Eagle Aviation Services and Technology Inc. has flown State Department planes on dangerous missions in Colombia for 10 years. Three of its pilots have been killed in two crashes.

But its work has received little attention, even as lawmakers scrutinize the use of contractors in the Latin American drug fight.

EAST doesn't work directly for the State Department. It is a subcontractor of Dyncorp Aerospace Technology, the military company hired by State to fly and maintain aircraft for counterdrug missions in Colombia.

EAST pilots spray herbicide on coca, the raw material for cocaine. They frequently face gunfire, sometimes from leftist guerrillas protecting drug traffickers.

Current and former State Department officials said EAST's Iran-Contra past has nothing to do with its Colombia work. "That was 15 years ago. The issue is what they're doing, not what they did," said Jonathan Winer, a former State counterdrug official.

But one lawmaker who wants to ban the use of private contractors for antidrug missions in the Andean region said EAST's work in Colombia merits scrutiny.

"I think this kind of questionable background of being involved in covert, unapproved missions does add another level of questioning: Who are these people and who is holding them accountable?" said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.

Concerns in Congress about contractors have escalated since Peru's military fired on a plane of U.S. missionaries April 20. Contractors aboard a CIA-operated surveillance plane identified the plane as a possible drug flight. An American woman and her infant died.

EAST's president, retired Air Force Col. Thomas Fabyanic, declined to discuss the company's work. "EAST is a privately held company and therefore we are not obligated to release any information in that regard," he said in a telephone interview.

In the 1980s, EAST and its founder, Richard Gadd, helped North, then a National Security Council official, secretly supply weapons and ammunition to Nicaragua's Contra rebels at a time that Congress had banned the government from providing lethal aid.

North also arranged for another of Gadd's companies to win a State Department contract to deliver legal, humanitarian aid. That created what Iran-Contra Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh called "a rare occasion that a U.S. government program unwittingly provided cover to a private covert operation."

Revelations of the Contra arms operation and that it had been partly funded by weapons sales to Iran led to convictions of top Reagan administration officials.

Gadd testified in the Iran-Contra case under a grant of immunity from prosecution, and neither he nor EAST was accused of illegalities.

The company kept working for the government.

In 1999 and 2000, EAST received more than $30 million under several Defense Department contracts, which included providing engineering, supplies, and other services for Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, according to Pentagon records.

Dyncorp declined to say how much it pays EAST as part of its five-year, $170 million contract with the State Department for antidrug operations.

Fabyanic said his company was prohibited from discussing its Colombia operations under the terms of the contract with Dyncorp.

Asked if EAST's role in Iran-Contra should be considered significant to its Colombia work, Fabyanic answered: "Why would it be?"

Dyncorp spokeswoman Charlene A. Wheeless said her company checked out EAST's background before contracting it and found no wrongdoing.

"We feel strongly that EAST is a reputable company," she said. "They do a great job for us as a subcontractor. We feel that they act responsibly."

In his Iran-Contra testimony, Gadd said EAST was one of several companies he formed after retiring in 1982 as a lieutenant colonel from the Air Force, where he specialized in covert operations.

In the 1980s, the Contra rebels were trying to topple Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. The Reagan administration backed the Contras, viewing the Sandinistas as a Marxist threat to Central America. Democrats who controlled Congress believed the United States should stay out of the conflict and barred U.S. officials from providing lethal aid.

North turned to retired Gen. Richard Secord to set up a private arms pipeline to the Contras. Secord hired Gadd in 1985 to oversee the weapons delivery.

Through EAST, Gadd helped acquire planes to carry arms and ammunition from Portugal to Central America, and to make airdrops directly to Contra fighters. EAST also built an airstrip in Costa Rica near the Nicaraguan border.

EAST received $550,000 for its covert work, according to Walsh's final report.

"If you view the whole operation as somehow illegitimate and illicit, then anybody who participated in it could, you might say, have been involved in doing something wrong," former Iran-Contra prosecutor Michael Bromwich said.

But Gadd and his associates "thought they were working for the White House," Bromwich added.

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On the Net:

Federation of American Scientists link to Iran-Contra report: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/

Asa Hutchinson - Arkansas Past - Iran Contra

Mercenary Inc.