http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=269
Nieman Watchdog: Questions the press should ask, by Tara McKelvey
Why have troops been held accountable for crimes but contractors have not?
There are 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq – and 100,000 contractors. More than 269 soldiers and officers have faced disciplinary action for detainee-related incidents since October 2001. Only one contractor has.
a senior editor at The American Prospect and a research fellow at NYU School of Law’s Center on Law and Security, is author of an upcoming book, Monstering: Inside America’s Policy on Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War (Carroll & Graf, June 12)
Have there been investigations of contractors accused of committing crimes in Iraq?
Yes. More than 15 contractors, including at least two who were working at Abu Ghraib, have been placed under Justice Department investigations.
John Sifton, who has met with Justice Department officials and spoken with them about the contractors under investigation, tells me he doesn’t think much has been done. “Maybe they’re about to indict everybody tomorrow, but I doubt it,” he says. “My feeling is they’re just running up the clock and nothing will ever happen.” New York Times reporter David Johnston seemed to confirm Sifton’s view in a December 19, 2006, article (“U.S. Inquiry Falters on Civilians Accused of Abuse”). “Lawyers who have been briefed on the work of the Justice Department unit, initially made up of six federal prosecutors, said problems with evidence and the fragmentary nature of some of the accusations had proved so daunting that prosecutors never even reached the point of grappling with difficult legal issues involving permissive interrogation guidelines,” wrote Johnston.
Who was the one contractor who was sentenced to prison? His name is David A. Passaro, a CIA contract interrogator. He was indicted for assault on detainee Abdul Wali, who died in Afghanistan in June 2003. On February 14, 2007, Passaro was sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison.
It is difficult to prosecute contractors for criminal misconduct, including the mistreatment of detainees. As civilians, contractors aren’t bound by military law. Contractors accused of a crime in the United States are tried in a criminal court in this country. But if the crime is committed overseas, U.S. courts no longer have jurisdiction, with rare exceptions, so contractors are tried in the country where the offenses occurred. In Iraq, however, they are not prosecuted. Guidelines set up by the 2003 Coalition Provisional Authority, a temporary governing body of Iraq, shielded contractors and troops from being tried in local courts. Contractors can, theoretically, be held liable under federal laws like the 2000 Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, according to Charles A. Allen, a deputy general counsel of international affairs in the Defense Department. This law allows prosecutors to go after Americans who have committed crimes on overseas military bases, but it can be used only in certain types of cases. So far, it has been applied just once.
“It’s very, very clear that the Office of the Secretary of Defense thought it would be very advantageous to bring people into the intelligence-gathering process – a contractor – who is outside the chain of command,” says Scott Horton, who has served as chairman of the human-rights committee of the City Bar Association in New York. “One of the things they had was a back-door form of communications with the DoD.” Three soldiers who were at Abu Ghraib, says Horton, told him Defense Department officials spoke directly with interrogators through secured telephone lines – ostensibly to provide “logistical support.” In fact, says Horton, “They were involved in intelligence gathering.”
Legal roadblocks and red tape have protected civilian contractors in abuse cases, even in Abu Ghraib. Administration critics say the contractors are sometimes encouraged by the military or the CIA to use harsh interrogation techniques, knowing they won’t be prosecuted.
Tara,
Nice job in questioning the obvious.
As a journalist covering contractors in Iraq, a light bulb flashed when I saw your piece.
It makes me think of all the hundreds of alleged shootings of Iraqi civilians by private security contractors. That includes the Christmas Eve shooting in the Green Zone by a Blackwater guard. The guard was whisked away to the states immediately and now, all is quiet, uh, I mean “under investigation.”
http://www.warprofiteers.com/article.php?id=12829&printsafe=1
http://www.newsobserver.com/511/story/540721.html
I am also concerned that no contractor has been suspended fro US contracts because of labor trafficking in low-wage laborers.
http://www.davidphinney.com/pages/2007/03/human_trafficki_1.php
http://www.counterpunch.org/phinney10242006.html
While I understand your focus may be mostly on interrogators and other spooky contracting, I do differ with your numbers. I believe that about a half-dozen or more contractors have been sentenced for contract fraud and bribery, i.e., Phil Bloom, et al.
DynCorp is the same company whose employees hired child prostitutes while working in Bosnia a few years ago, until some people started complaining. Rather than face local justice or courts-martial, the perpetrators were simply sent home.
One of the whistleblowers, a DynCorp employee named Ben Johnston, lost his job for speaking out. He later told Congress, ”DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas.”
Texas-based DynCorp’s parent, CSC, declined to comment on any of these incidents, saying that it is ”constrained” from doing so by its contracts with the State Department.