Reining in Military Contractors

It's unlikely that many Americans know Stewart W. Bowen Jr. They should. As the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), Mr. Bowen has helped save taxpayers billions of dollars. His audits of reconstruction contracts have turned up waste, mismanagement and fraud; and his investigations led to four criminal convictions and embarrassed excuses from the U.S. government's biggest military contractors.

Yet, for all his good work, some in Congress are not terribly appreciative. On the eve of recent mid-term elections, an amendment, buried deep within a military authorization bill, closed down Bowen's office. After media outrage, congressional leaders scurried to give his job back. But, the symbolism of this surreptitious effort is rich -- after three and half years of abdicating its oversight responsibility of the U.S. military, Congress finally reasserted itself. It's about time, because when it comes to supervising military contracting, there is long overdue work to be done.

Over the past five years, the use of private groups has exploded with an estimated 40 cents out of every discretionary federal dollar going to contractors. While certainly private contractors are sometimes more capable of providing efficient, customized solutions, congressional scrutiny of this growing privatization, particularly in the realm of national security, continues to lag.

In few places is the growth in contracting being felt more acutely than the U.S. military. A recently released Pentagon census of civilians working in Iraq shows that an astounding 100,000 private contractors are supporting the U.S. military effort in Iraq. That's four times greater than the Pentagon's previous working estimate and only 40,000 less than the number of U.S. military troops in Iraq. It's a virtual army of largely unregulated individuals working on behalf of U.S. national interests. To date, more than 650 private contractors have been killed in Iraq -- more than all non-U.S. coalition fatalities combined.

Today private contractors have become an essential element of U.S. military strategy -- with little to no congressional oversight or investigation. Not only are contractors training police, cooking meals, and transporting weapons they are being asked to provide security services that were once the sole purview of the military, including convoy protection and at times, even engaging the enemy. In a 2004 incident, eight Blackwater contractors fought off an attack on the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Najaf. They did so without support from the U.S. military.

And as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the cost of this "private security" has skyrocketed. At the start of U.S. involvement, 7 to 10 percent of total project costs were estimated for security expenses. Today, that figure has doubled, making some essential infrastructure projects prohibitively expensive.

There is real question as to the level of savings that taxpayers are receiving from these groups. A recent investigation of a three-year, $1.1 billion police training program in Afghanistan, headed by the private contractor DynCorp, found that the effort had been an abject failure as police trainees were unable to carry out even basic law enforcement functions. Not surprisingly, the report also found serious deficiencies in U.S. government contracting procedures. Without able management and vigilant monitoring, outsourcing can not only waste money, it can actually endanger U.S. national interests.

But the need for oversight goes well beyond the financial.

The privatization of national security blurs the once clear line where public authority ends and private initiative begins. Many firms continue to operate in a legal gray zone. Contractors are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and while some international human rights conventions apply to armed civilians, enforcement of these rules in Iraq has been virtually non-existent. Civilian contracting also creates operational challenges as private security contractors operate separately from the U.S. military yet are still seen as part of the nation's military force. Finally, without proper congressional oversight contractors can become a political tool of the executive branch, further marginalizing the role of the Congress in national security; these private groups allow policymakers to deploy force without incurring the political costs of sending troops -- or necessarily congressional authorization.

Both the State Departments and Pentagon have been developing ideas for clarifying the role of private contractors. Industry initiatives are also afoot. But Congress needs to engage in this process by not only ensuring that it is gathering input from a wide group of stakeholders, but also confirming that its mandates are being implemented. In the age of an all-volunteer military, the use of private military contractors is likely here to stay. The challenge for legislators and policy-makers is to carve out appropriate spheres of activity for private contractors and military personnel in intelligence gathering, law enforcement, security and criminal justice functions. More than ever, the American public, and their representatives in Congress, must have a say.