DynCorp International

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DynCorp International is a United States-based private military contractor (PMC). The company, based in Irving, Texas, has provided "contract field teams" for the U.S. military in major theaters, such as Bosnia, Somalia, Angola, Haiti, Colombia, Kosovo and Kuwait. It is also active in the Chapare province of Bolivia conducting coca eradication. DynCorp International also provides much of the security for Afghan interim president Hamid Karzai's presidential guard and training Afghanistan's and Iraq's fledgling police force.

It has been one of the federal government's top twenty-five contractors. In March 2003 Dyncorp was acquired by an even larger government contractor, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) for approximately US$914 million. At the time of acquisition, DynCorp had 26,000 employees and 95% of DynCorp's revenues came from U.S. government contracts. From 2004 to 2005 alone, the company's revenue have reached over $1.9 billion.

In December 2004, CSC announced that it had agreed to sell its DynCorp International and DynMarine units and selected DynCorp Technical Services contracts to private equity investment firm Veritas Capital for $850 million. The business units included in this sale represented approximately 37% of total DynCorp revenue of about US$2.525 billion at the time of the DynCorp acquisition by CSC.

Among the agencies it has worked with include the Drug Enforcement Agency, Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Internal Revenue Service, Department Of Defense and the Treasury Department, among others.

On October 15, 2003, three DynCorp employees were killed in a bombing in the Gaza Strip. They were serving as security guards for American diplomats, supplementing the Diplomatic Security Service.

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Controversy

DynCorp has had its share of controversy, as private military contractors such as Halliburton have had increasing roles in U.S. military operations overseas. This has led to the question of whether PMCs can be held to the same standards of accountability as members of the U.S. military.

Critics accuse DynCorp of involvement in conflicts in Bolivia, where they are said to earn money with the smuggling of cocaine, which turned out to be unfounded during an extensive investigation.

In 1999, a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit was filed by a whistleblower against DynCorp employees stationed in Bosnia, which found that "a few employees and one supervisor from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior and were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and participating in other immoral acts." DynCorp fired the whistleblower at first, but then eventually settled the case. The employees involved in the case were transferred out of the country. Some were later fired, although none were ever criminally prosecuted.

The company was allegedly involved in the sex trade while working in Bosnia. A DynCorp employee, Kathryn Bolkovac, was fired after revealing that Dyncorp employees had frequented brothels where women had been imprisoned. After filing a lawsuit against Dyncorp, Bolkovac won £110,000 in damages after a UK Tribunal determined that her firing was not reasonable.[1] Another Dyncorp employee, Ben Johnson, was also fired after revealing Dyncorp's involvement in forced-prostitution rings in Bosnia. [2] At least 13 DynCorp employees have been sent home from Bosnia -- and at least seven of them fired -- for purchasing women or participating in other prostitution-related activities. [3] Despite these actions, Dyncorp continues to receive more than $2 Billion dollars in Dept. of Defense contracts to provide "post-conflict police training" around the world. [4]

According to Jeremy Scahill of The Nation magazine, in Afghanistan where DynCorp guards President Hamid Karzai, the company has a reputation for brutality and recklessness. DynCorp has even been rebuked by the U.S. State Department for its "aggressive behavior" in interactions with European diplomats, NATO forces and journalists. A BBC News correspondent even witnessed one of the guards slapping an Afghan government minister.

In early 2005 in Haiti, DynCorp bodyguards on the detail of interim President Boniface Alexandre beat at least two journalists trying to cover a presidential event. DynCorp has a history in Haiti where it trained the national police force after the original coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. ] The company is facing a major lawsuit by 10,000 Ecuadoreans who have been affected by toxic crop spraying. DynCorp is involved in many Latin American countries, like Colombia, as part of U.S. drug supply-side control strategies like Plan Colombia.

In September 2005, Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the Third Infantry Division in charge of sercurity in Baghdad after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, said this of DynCorp and other security firms in Iraq: "These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force... They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."

In March 2006, St. Bernard Parish, La. police revealed that they were considering hiring up to 100 Dyncorp security officers to patrol the hurricane-ravaged area near New Orleans. The firm has earned more than $14 million dollars in the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina, providing both security and non-security services. The company was hired shortly after Hurricane Katrina to guard New Orleans hospitals, in Dyncorp's first domestic security job within the United States. [5]

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