[NYTr] Boys from Baghdad: Iraqi Commandos Trained by US "Contractor" USIS

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Corporate Watch - Sep 20, 2007
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14700


Failed Iraq Reconstruction, Part 3:

The Boys from Baghdad:
Iraqi Commandos Trained by US Contractor USIS

by Pratap Chatterjee
Special to CorpWatch

“Starting the month with a bang, the boys from Baghdad executed two
baited ambushes … and further confirmed the [Emergency Response Unit’s]
ability to conduct operations with stealth and violence of action,”
writes an unofficial historian for the ERU, in Unit History of 1st
Battalion, a report obtained by CorpWatch.(1)

The “boys” that the report praises are members of one of dozens of
elite Iraqi commandos units that function as a "third force” to augment
the Iraqi police and army, both of which are widely considered to be
failures. On this mission in early July 2005, the Emergency Response
Unit, backed by the First Battalion of the Fifth Infantry Regiment of
the U.S. Army, had detained “anti-Iraqi forces” and intercepted
roadside bombs.

Their tactics owed much to a secretive U.S. private contractor, U.S.
Investigations Services (USIS), which conducted ERU trainings on U.S.
military bases in Iraq -- including at Camp Dublin and Camp Solidarity.
The trainings began under General David Petreaus as an effort to
bolster security in Iraq, and soon evolved into a system for providing
support to the deeply sectarian Ministry of the Interior.

Beginning in May 2004, U.S. authorities contracted with USIS to create
the first ERU. The non-sectarian force is supposed “to respond to
national-level law enforcement emergencies. The four-week training runs
recruits through SWAT-type emergency response training focusing on
terrorist incidents, kidnappings, hostage negotiations, explosive
ordnance, high-risk searches, high-risk assets, weapons of mass
destruction, and other national-level law enforcement emergencies”
according to the Pentagon,

By April 2006, the ERUs had conducted 117 “Close Target Reconnaissance”
missions in Baghdad alone, completing 104 of them, and capturing 236
“suspects,” according to estimates by Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Voss,
military advisor in charge of the ERU program.

The ERUs are now officially controlled and paid by the Iraqi Ministry
of Interior and are accompanied by U.S. trainers or soldiers throughout
their training. But a high-level State Department report issued in 2005
explains that the Iraqi commandos were initially rejected by the very
Ministry of the Interior that they were intended to support when they
were created more than three years ago. Instead, U.S. officials and
contractors controlled the ERUs, which became an unofficial Iraqi face
to provide local cover for U.S. operations. With no support from the
Iraqi government at the time, the ERU had to rely on USIS for salaries,
thereby becoming a privately financed militia.

Michael John, a spokesperson for USIS, told CorpWatch that the company
is still under contract with the Pentagon for ERU training, but says
that the support is provided strictly as part of training. “We are in a
training and not in an operational capacity. The National Police
Support Team (NPST) operates under the jurisdiction of Iraq's Ministry
of Interior and the U.S. Department of Defense.”

Dozens of interviews conducted by CorpWatch with high-ranking military
and government officials over the past 12 months suggest that even at
the level of Petreaus’s staff, few appeared to know the specific role
and scope of ERU activity. What is clear is that the ERU is just one of
at least six different U.S. “security” training programs worth over $20
billion that a variety of U.S. agencies have provided to the many
factions in Iraq. (See accompanying boxes for examples of other
programs.)

It is becoming increasingly clear that such training programs may be
causing or at least exacerbating civil war. Part of the blame lies
within the complex failures of the U.S. occupation and part with the
loyalties and skills of the forces recruited into the myriad security
training programs that are associated with different ministries and
thus with different, and often rival, political factions.

“Of course, they are fucking things up,” Robert Young Pelton, author of
“Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror” told CorpWatch.
“Because the U.S. is arbitrarily putting weapons and power in the hands
of those who choose to fight, rather than those who are in the moral
right,”(2) explaining that few who sign up have any previous law
enforcement credentials.

The Third Force

The fact that neither the Iraqi army nor the police were able to tackle
the growing insurgency became glaringly obvious in April 2004 when
violent uprisings exploded across the country. Iraqi soldiers assigned
to fight in Fallujah fled the field.(3) A group of Baghdad police, sent
to assist U.S. soldiers battling the Mahdi army in Najaf at the same
time, also refused to fight.(4)

U.S. planners in Iraq were suddenly forced to admit that the country
was on the verge of spreading insurrections and looming civil war.
Officials at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by Paul
Bremer, began earnest discussions about creating a “third force” (5) of
highly trained commando units that would be able to deal with hostage
situations and unforeseen criminal or political violence. (In a
monograph on the evolution of Iraq’s security forces, Andrew Rathmell
of the Rand Corporation, a think-tank closely affiliated with the
Pentagon, defined the third force as “constabulary forces that lie
somewhere between civilian police and armed forces.”)

Senior U.S. advisors at the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, notably State
Department official Steve Casteel, supported the creation of this third
force. A former senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official,
Casteel previously helped train government forces in Peru, Bolivia and
Colombia, where he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, head of
the Medellin cocaine cartel.(6)

Ministry of Interior advisors drew up plans for an Emergency Response
Unit consisting of three companies of 60 men each, plus a headquarters
unit to do high-risk search, arrest, hostage rescue, and crisis
response operations. Once trained, these units were to be integrated
into the regular Iraqi Police Service. The advisors also planned
similar elite units, Bureau of Dignitary Protection (BDP), to protect
high-ranking Iraqi officials who were under threat of kidnapping. A
total of 370 ERU and 395 BDU personnel were trained in the initial
phase and deployed in counter-insurgency operations in Baghdad.(7)

This early ERU training was conducted under a $64.5 million no-bid
contract issued in May 2004(10) to U.S. Investigations Services (USIS),
a former federal agency that  started out conducting background
investigations for civil service personnel.(11) At first, the CPA
officials who controlled the purse strings of the Iraqi Ministry of
Finance, used oil revenues to finance the contract. Today, the USIS
contract, which has been renewed twice, is paid for with Pentagon (and
thus U.S. taxpayer) funds.(12) Most of the trainers are retired
military personnel plus a few police officers and federal agents.

U.S. control was further enhanced by conducting the trainings at U.S.
military bases. At Camp Dublin, near the Baghdad International Airport,
new ERU recruits were expected to live alongside their USIS trainers.
The four- to eight-week trainings took place at a special facility
inside Dublin that was built on a bare plot of land by First Kuwaiti, a
contractor that later won the bid to build the U.S. embassy in
Baghdad.(13)

USIS also trains ERUs at Camp Solidarity (originally dubbed Camp
Gunslinger) in the Sunni neighborhood of Aadhamiya.(14)

Greg (not his real name) worked in a team of 45 USIS trainers based at
Camp Dublin  to teach ERU recruits skills such as weapons use,
close-quarter battle tactics, and forced entry into buildings through
doors and windows. "We want to develop a unit of the Iraqi military
that can take care of their own problems internally. It's not
publicized a lot for whatever reason, but it is true that we are doing
that,” he told the Detroit Metro Times newspaper.(15)

Once trained, the ERUs were quickly dispatched to “lead”
counter-insurgency operations beside U.S. forces, often in combat
zones. “They conduct their missions with us on the sidelines,”
Lieutenant Voss, the ERU program head, told The Advisor, a newspaper
published by the U.S. military security training program in Baghdad.(16)

USIS

U.S. Investigations Services traces its origins back to 1883 as a part
of the federal government’s Civil Service Commission (CSC). Tasked with
checking backgrounds of prospective government employees, CSC evolved
into the Investigations Service arm of the Office of Personnel
Management. In 1996, the Clinton administration privatized this office,
purportedly to save money, and sold it for $545 million to the Carlyle
Group and the New York investment firm of Welsh, Carson, Anderson, and
Stowe.(37) Ten years after the sale, USIS, a private company, has a
near monopoly on “screening transactions,” conducting some 20 million a
year, roughly 90 percent of the total.(38)

The contract to provide commando training in Iraq was a departure for
USIS, which had no previous involvement in security training. And it
was just the first of several government projects that USIS took over
from federal agencies. In September 2006, USIS won a contract to
provide the staffing for around-the-clock watch operations at towers
erected by Boeing in the Arizona desert to monitor the Mexican border
for the U.S. government. Its task is “to detect, identify, classify,
and respond to and resolve illegal entry attempts at our land borders
with Mexico and Canada."(39) Although USIS will not take the place of
the Border Patrol agents, who are federal employees, the Virginia-based
company plays a role in the selection of agents through its contract to
do background checks on them. (see “Fencing the Border: Boeing's
High-Tech Plan Falters”)

A year later, in July 2007, USIS won a contract to provide the data,
software and analysts to track the estimated 550,000 “fugitive aliens”
in the U.S.(40)

Disowned and Criticized

USIS’s ERU training program ran into problems from its first days in
Iraq during the caretaker government of Ayad Allawi, who took charge in
July 2004. Iraqi government officials refused to recognize the ERU
graduates or to pay them salaries on a regular basis. This stance led
to conflicts with U.S. government officials, who believed ERU trainees
should be integrated into the police force, according to a critical
July 2005 report from the Inspector General of the U.S. State
Department.(17)

Rejected by Baghdad, the ERU became an adjunct of the U.S. military,
relying on the U.S. Special Forces for operational intelligence. At one
point, when the ERU salaries were five months in arrears, USIS started
to pay its recruits a $75 monthly salary.(18) 

Another source of conflict between Baghdad and Washington centered
around how to define the pool of potential trainees. The State
Department report recommended that trainers should draw recruits from
within the existing police force, in order to make the ERUs more
palatable to the Iraqi government. When the first elected government
took over in May 2005, al-Jafaari’s administration agreed to integrate
the ERU and BDP units into the Ministry of the Interior.(19) However
the training continued to be conducted separately from the regular
police program contracted to Virginia-based DynCorp (see box).

The ERU initial training also came under fire for alleged human rights
abuses. In the spring of 2005, Colonel Ted Westhusing, a military
ethics expert from Oklahoma who was in charge of the USIS contract,
received an anonymous four-page letter accusing USIS of deliberately
reducing the number of trainers to increase its profit margin.
Westhusing was supervising the ERU program at the time. The letter,
which was eventually released to Texas journalist Robert Bryce earlier
this year under the Freedom of Information Act, detailed two incidents
in which USIS contractors allegedly witnessed or participated in
killing Iraqis during the assault on Fallujah in 2004. “ERU Mentors
[USIS contractors] are conducting real world ops [operations]. They
shot their weapons and killed Iraqis,” wrote the whistle-blower. “(Name
deleted) was telling me how many Iraqis he had killed until I told him
to shut the hell up. I was appalled by this. I have talked to the
Mentors and am told that if they don’t go with the Iraqis the Iraqis
won’t fight.”

Worried that “it would put his contract at risk," an unnamed USIS
manager did not report the accusations to the U.S. military supervisors
according to a November 2005 investigative article by T. Christian
Miller in the Los Angeles Times.(20)

On receipt of the letter, Westhusing reported the allegations to his
superiors, but told them that he believed USIS was complying with the
terms of its contract. U.S. officials investigated and found "no
contractual violations," and “these allegations to be unfounded.”

But over the next few months Westhusing became increasingly
dissatisfied with the company. In June 2005, he attended a meeting in
Iraq in which he angrily complained of "his dislike of the contractors,
[who] were paid too much money by the government," according to
Miller’s sources.

Shortly after Westhusing had left the meeting, a USIS employee
discovered the colonel lying on the floor in a trailer in a pool of
blood, a single gunshot wound to the head. A note discovered by the
body, in Westhusing's handwriting, pointed to suicide: "I cannot
support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse
and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel
dishonored. Death before being dishonored any more."

"Equipping Iraqis for Civil War”

USIS training continues today under a new contract issued earlier this
year, although few details have been made public. Occasionally the
Pentagon’s public affairs office publishes short descriptions of ERU
missions. A July 21, 2007 press release, for example, describes one
group, accompanied the previous day by U.S. military advisors, that
“detained three suspected members of a rogue Jaysh al-Mahdi militia
group.” Also known as the Mahdi Army, the militia is led by the
powerful and popular Shia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, and is based in Sadr
City, the poor Shia neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad.(30)

Such raids are fraught with problems: The perception that the U.S. or
the Iraqi government is backing raids on groups with popular support
and parliamentary representation, such as the Mahdi Army, could fuel
civil war.

Indeed some fear that U.S.-trained militias, rather than adding
security, are already exacerbating sectarian strife. “We have been
going about pumping out so many individuals with weapons, with
uniforms, that my greatest fear is that in our effort to train and
equip the Iraqi security forces, what we have been doing is equipping
Iraqis for civil war,” Matt Sherman, a civilian advisor to Iraq’s
Interior ministry, told Frontline.(35)

"It is like raising a crocodile," Saad Yousef al-Muttalibi, told the
Washington Times when asked about the various “third force” training
schemes. The Al-Maliki cabinet member, who is in charge of negotiating
reconciliation agreements, continued: "It is fine when it is a baby,
but when it is big, you can't keep it in the house."(36)

Others point out that these trainings are a throwback to colonial
divide-and-conquer techniques. “The ERUs represent a return to not only
the old Special Forces/CIA counterinsurgency model [fighting fire with
fire], but the older British model of sepoys or local fighters paid
strictly to bolster foreign forces with little if any concern about the
local power balance. The same recipe was used in Afghanistan, Latin
America and other proxy wars,” Robert Young Pelton told CorpWatch.


"Anbar Awakening"

The term “Emergency Response Unit” has also been used for various
schemes that arm and equip local militias to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq
under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior. For example, some
2,500 men have been trained under such a scheme in Anbar province and
another 800 in Babil province in the past year.(9)

But Lieutenant Colonel Michael Meese, an advisor to General David
Petreaus, told CorpWatch that U.S. Special Forces were in charge of
these ERU training schemes around the country, noting that they were
different from the USIS training scheme at Camps Dublin and Solidarity.

Petraeus has personally lent his support by attending an ERU graduation
ceremony in Hilla this past June.

The most widely touted example of U.S. Special Forces-trained ERU
deployment has been in Anbar province, the vast western desert province
that borders Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, where Al Qaeda in Iraq and
various sectarian forces are currently attacking Maliki government and
occupation troops. In September 2006 Sheikh Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi,
head of the Anbar Salvation Front, joined hands with the U.S.(31) The
enemy-of-my-enemy alliance served al-Rishawi in various ways: It helped
him fight off Al Quaeda of Iraq's attempt to undermine his tribal
power, and it procured special training for his followers.

All told some 2,500 al-Rishawi supporters received U.S. Special
Forces-provided ERU training. Touting Anbar’s declining violence,
including carjackings and bombings, the U.S. military and even
Al-Maliki hailed the “Anbar Awakening” as a major step forward in
combating “terrorism.”

Al-Maliki made a much publicized trip to Ramadi, the provincial
capital, in a show of support and solidarity with Al-Rishawi in March.
Indeed it was his first trip to the city in 30 years and reporters were
invited along to witness the new militias.

Monte Morin, a military reporter with the Stars and Stripes described
an ERU he witnessed in Ramadi. “The units, which are armed but wear no
standardized uniforms, have been issued pickup trucks and, in some
cases, night-vision goggles. They draw pay from the Iraqi Ministry of
Interior.”

Like the USIS-trained ERU, these militias are backed up by the U.S.
military. Morin described how Colonel Mohammed Rashid (an ex-Baathist),
was put in charge of an ERU to patrol the 50-square-mile Jazeera
suburb, beside the 1st Battalion of the 36th Infantry Regiment and the
1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army.(32)

Some say that providing ERU training to groups such as the Anbar
Salvation Council is a dangerous game, given the council’s history and
the U.S. record of training groups such as the Afghan resistance that
later turn their weapons and skills back on the U.S.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Welch, a U.S. Army reserve officer in
Baghdad who specializes in tribal and religious affairs, told the
Washington Post that Al-Rishawi "made his living running a band of
thieves who kidnapped and stopped and robbed people on the road between
Baghdad and Jordan.”(34) (This may help explain why violent robberies
and bombings decreased when the Anbar Salvation Council took charge.)

Then there is the question of loyalty. "The question with a group like
[the Anbar Salvation Council] always is, does it stay bought?" Anthony
Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, told the Washington Post.

The Anbar success has been short-lived. In June, a suicide bomber blew
himself up inside the Mansour hotel in Baghdad, killing a number of the
sheikhs affiliated with the Anbar Salvation Council. In the last three
months support for the group has crumbled.(33) Al-Rishawi himself was
killed in a bomb attack on September 13, 2007, a week after meeting
with President George Bush.


SIDEBARS:

Who Owns USIS?

For the first 11 years of its existence as a private company USIS was
owned by the Carlyle Group. In May 2007 USIS was sold again to
Providence Equity Partners (PEP) for $1.5 billion. The Rhode Island
private equity group specializes in media, entertainment and
communications companies. PEP’s most famous acquisition was the
purchase of Clear Channel’s television network.(41)

The top advisor to PEP is Michael Powell, a former policy advisor to
Dick Cheney, when Cheney was U.S. Secretary of Defense. But Powell is
better known for two other reasons: He is the son of Colin Powell, a
former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
the highest military position in the Department of Defense. Michael
Powell's other claim to fame was that when George W. Bush appointed
Colin Powell secretary of state, the president chose Michael to be
chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). There he
presided over the deregulation that allowed Clear Channel to acquire
the television stations in a way that would have been previously
illegal.(42)

Two years after Michael Powell resigned from the FCC, his client, PEP,
bought up the very same television stations.

                            ***

Special Police Commandos

The ERUs are not the only “third force” police commandos trained in
Iraq under the control of the Ministry of the Interior. The Special
Police Commandos, a SWAT team that has been often described as death
squads, also have unofficial U.S. “advisors.” (Unlike the Anbar
militias described below, the Special Police Commandos are not trained
by USIS, but are a separate force, albeit working for the same
ministry.) The commandos were first composed of veterans of Hussein's
special forces and Republican Guard, and headed up by Adnan Thabit, the
nephew of Falah al-Naqib, the interior minister under the interim
government of Ayad Allawi that followed Paul Bremer. The commandos
quickly became notorious after a nationally televised reality show
featured them brutally interrogating suspected “terrorists.”(21)

“In one show, a former policeman with two black eyes confessed to
killing two police officers in Samarra; A few days after the broadcast,
the former policeman’s family told reporters, his corpse was delivered
to them,” wrote Peter Maass, a New York Times journalist who first
detailed the role of the Special Police Commandos in May 2005. Maass
also documented several cases he personally encountered in which the
commandos abused prisoners.(22)

Maass also noted the potential for the commandos to become enmeshed in
sectarian killings, observing that Allawi, Naqib and Thabit are all
Sunni.

“Paramilitary forces have a tendency to become politicized … [and] used
for internal combat,” wrote Maass. “In a country as riven as Iraq --
with Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and Turkmen vying for power -- a
paramilitary force that is controlled by one faction can be a potent
weapon against others. That is why the commandos are a conundrum -- in
the country's unstable military and political landscape, it is
impossible to know where they are heading.”

Weeks after Maass’ article appeared, his words would seem prophetic. In
May 2005, Allawi was replaced by Jaafari, a conservative religious
Shiite from Islamic Dawa Party, in the first elected government. Bayan
Jabr, a former high-ranking member of the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade,
the military arm of the fundamentalist Shiite Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), took over as interior minister in
Iraq's transitional government.

Each commando unit had a nickname such as the Scorpions, Snakes and
Tigers. One particularly notorious group, led by General Gharrawi, was
the Wolf Brigade, later renamed the Volcanoes.(23) A U.S. Department of
State report recounts an August 2005 incident in which about 50 men
suspected of being Volcanoes raided the Al Huriya neighborhood in
northern Baghdad, kidnapped 36 Sunnis and killed them. Acid was used to
burn their faces before they were shot in the head.(24)

Under Jabr, the Special Police Commandos were taken over by two
generals, Rasheed Fleyah and Mahdi Sabeh, both Shiites. In November
2005, American troops discovered 169 beaten, whipped and starved
prisoners (most of whom were Sunni) at the Al-Jadiriyah bunker, a
secret detention center run by the country's Interior Ministry. One of
these victims, Jamal Hamdani, was left impotent and paralyzed on one
side of his body after repeated electrocution of his spine and genitals
during two months in detention in a secret prison in Kadhamiya,
Baghdad. An electric drill had been used on his chin.(25)

Six months later, in May 2006, a similar center was found in Hilla,
where some victims had holes drilled into their bodies. Then, as many
as 1,400 torture victims were discovered at Site Four in east Baghdad
under the control of the Wolf Brigade. Jabr later admitted that torture
had taken place in both Al-Jadiriyah and Site Four.

U.S. military officials declared themselves surprised. “I did not see
militia groups in the Special Police Commandos in the time I was
there,” General David Petraeus, the man in charge of security training
for Iraqis until September 2005, told a Frontline documentary team in
late 2006.(26) (Petraeus was appointed the commander in chief of all
U.S. troops in Iraq in January 2007.)

When the current government of Nouri al-Maliki took charge in April
2006, the Special Police Commandos were officially disbanded, merged
with the ERU, and renamed the National Police.(27) In October 2006 the
new Minister of the Interior, Jawad al-Bolani dismissed Fleyah and
Sabeh, but the rumors of death squads run out of the Interior Ministry
persist.(28)

It should be noted that as each new political group takes control of
the Interior Ministry and receive U.S. training, it creates new
fiefdoms inside the bureaucracy that never disappear but instead
support rival militias that exacerbate rather than resolve the
sectarian conflict. A recent Los Angeles Times article explains that
each floor of the 11-story headquarters of the ministry is now occupied
by a different faction (most of whom are Shiite) working under the U.S.
advisors stationed directly above them on the top floor.(29)

                             ***

DynCorp Police Training

The rank-and-file of Iraq’s police also undergo training and mentorship
from a private company -- some 700 trainers working for DynCorp, a
Virginia-based corporation.43 DynCorp also employs 377 people to train
police in Afghanistan.(44) For its training and security work in the
two countries in fiscal years 2004, 2005 and 2006, the company received
$1.6 billion, which accounted for roughly 30 percent of its revenue
during those years.(45)

The Iraq program was first issued to DynCorp as a no-bid contract in
April 2003 and renewed in September 2006.(46) The latest contract,
which expired at the end of May 2007, is currently up for bid. The
Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction, an independent U.S.
government agency, criticized DynCorp for overspending on the building
of training facilities -- such as $43.8 million for a residential camp
in Baghdad for trainers that has never been used.(47)

A 2006 Pentagon and State Department investigation into the police
training program in Afghanistan revealed that managers had no idea how
many police officers were actually on duty or what became of thousands
of trucks and other equipment issued to police units.(48) The report
concludes that the police were largely incapable of carrying out
routine law enforcement work. While the report investigators do not
blame DynCorp directly, Afghan officials have complained about the poor
quality of trainers and their high salaries.

Ali Jalali, a military historian who served as Afghanistan’s interior
minister from 2002 to 2005, told the New York Times: ''They were good
on patrols in Oklahoma City, Houston, or Miami. But not in a country
where you faced rebuilding the police force.''(49)

Others say the same -- that DynCorp's Iraq training has also been a
wasted effort. "It is my professional opinion that the police training
program in Iraq has been a complete failure," said Gerald Burke, a
retired Massachusetts police major who worked as an adviser to Iraq's
Ministry of Interior for two years, when he testified before the U.S.
Congress House of Representatives Armed Services Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations in April 2007. 


End Notes

1. Unit History of 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, Task Force
BobCat, 1 July 2005, Battalion Commander: LTC Todd McCaffrey

2.  Author interview, July 2007

3. Andrew Rathmell, "Developing Iraq's Security Sector," RAND
Corporation, December 2005

4. Author interview with police trainer who worked at the Ministry of
the Interior at the time. (Name withheld)

5. Rathmell, op. cit.

6. Peter Maass, The Way of the Commandos, New York Times, May 1, 2005

7.  "Interagency Assessment of Iraq Police Training," Report #
ISP-IQO-05-72 U.S. Department of State, Report # IE-2005-002, U.S.

Department of Defense, " July 15, 2005)

[There is no note #8 in the original. -NYTr]

9. North Babils ERU Graduates, Ready to Train, July 28, 2007, Press
Release from 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division Public
Affairs

10. The original contract issued for training and life support was #
DABV01-04-C-0083

11. See USIS history, http://www.usis.com/history_USIS.htm

12. The training and support contract #s obtained from FedBizOpps,
were: W914NS-04-R-9025, W91GY0-06-R-0001, and W91GY0-07-R-0008 See also
Specialized police training work in Iraq commended by Department of
Defense, USIS Press Release, September 20, 2006

13. Contract # W916QW-04-D-0012-0003. Recorded in Appendix H, Special
Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Report to the U.S. Congress,
July 2006

14. History of Camp Solidarity obtained from Global Security.org website

15. Sandra Svoboda, Soldiers of Fortune, Detroit Metro Times, May 9,
2007

16 John J. Pistone, Emergency Response Unit proves mentorship work, The
Advisor, April 1, 2006  Privatization of Federal Investigations,
Kennedy School of Government case study,
http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/awards.html?id=49041

17.  "Interagency Assessment of Iraq Police Training, op. cit.

18. "Interagency Assessment of Iraq Police Training, op. cit.

19.  U.S. Department of Defense, Section 9010 Report, October 2005

20.  T. Christian Miller, A Journey That Ended in Anguish, Los Angeles
Times, November 27, 2005

21.  Maass, op. cit.

22.  Maass, op. cit.

23. Michael Moss and David Rohde, How Iraq Police Reform Became
Casualty of War, New York Times, May 22, 2006

24. Iraq Country Report on Human Rights Practices  - 2005 State
department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor March 8, 2006

25. Ibid. Catherine Philp, State Denial Adds Insult to Torture Victims
Injuries, Times (UK) November 18, 2005

26.  Gangs of Iraq, Frontline documentary, PBS television. Original
interview recorded by Martin Smith on October 11, 2006

27. Stand Up and Be Counted: The Continuing Challenge of Building the
Iraqi Security Forces Report prepared by the staff of the U.S. House of
Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Sub-Committee on
Oversight and Investigations for a hearing held on May 24, 2007

28. Sabrina Tavernise, Iraq Removes Leaders of Special Police, The New
York Times, October 18, 2006

29.  Ned Parker, Interior Ministry mirrors chaos of a fractured Iraq,
Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2007

30. Coalition Forces, Iraqi Emergency Response Unit detain three rogue
JAM, Multi-National Corps Iraq Press Release, Public Affairs Office,
Camp Victory, July 21, 2007

31. Todd Pitman, Sunni sheiks join troops to fight insurgency, The
Associated Press, March 26, 2007

32.  Monte Morin, Iraqi's promise highlights ambition of Ramadi
Emergency Response Unit, Stars and Stripes, March 3, 2007

33.  Joshua Partlow and John Ward Anderson, Tribal Coalition in Anbar
Said to Be Crumbling, Washington Post, June 11, 200735  Frontline, Op.
Cit.

34.  Ibid.

36. David Enders, "Iraqi tribes reach security accord, Washington
Times, July 23, 2007

[There is no note #35 in the original -NYTr]

37. Shane Harris, Former federal employees benefit from buyout,
Government Executive, April 21, 2003 See USIS website:
http://www.usis.com/ourinvestors.htm, and
http://www.usis.com/history_USIS.htm

38.  See http://www.usis.com/commercialservices/overview.htm, Shane
Harris, Op. Cit.

39. USIS to provide staffing for operation centers, USIS Press Release,
September 21, 2006

40.  USIS Investigative Services wins contract from U.S. Customs and
Border Protection, USIS Press Release, May 9, 2007. USIS awarded $21
million Department of Homeland Security contract, USIS Press Release,
July 23, 2007

41.  USIS Announces Agreement to be Acquired by Providence Equity
Partners, USIS Press Release, May 11, 2007, by Providence Equity
Partners website lists the management team at
http://www.provequity.com/team/index.asp?Employee_Type_ID=All&Section=0,1,1
&, Clear Channel Agrees to Sell Television Station Group to Providence
Equity Partners, Clear Channel Press Release, April 20, 2007

42. Michael Powell biography on Providence Equity Partners website, By
Robert Kuttner, Deregulation: Why Michael Powell Is Wrong, April 14,
2003

43. Renae Merle , Coming Under Fire: DynCorp Defends Its Work in
Training Foreign Police Forces, Washington Post, March 19, 2007

44. James Glanz and David Rohde, Report Faults Training of Afghan
Police, New York Times, December 4, 2006. Interagency Assessment of
Afghanistan Police Training and Readiness, State department and Defense
Inspector Generals, November 2006

45.  Glanz and Rohde, Op. Cit.

46. Andrew Higgins, As It Wields Power Abroad, U.S. Outsources Law and
Order Work, Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2004. Tod Robberson,
Contractor with Texas ties operates with secrecy, arouses suspicion,
Dallas Morning News, December 24, 2006

47.  Review of DynCorp International, LLC, Contract Number S
LMAQM-04-C-0030, Task Order 0338, for the Iraqi Police Training Program
Support, Special Inspector Gneral for Iraq Reconstruction, #06-029,
January 30, 2007

48.  Interagency Assessment, Op. Cit.

49.  Glanz and Rohde, Op. Cit.

50. Testimony of Gerald Burke, before the U.S. Congress House of
Representatives Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations on April 25, 2007


[This article was made possible by a generous grant from the Hurd
Foundation.]