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DynCorp is no Blackwater, says chief executive
By BOB COX
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
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Herb Lanese would like to get one thing perfectly clear: DynCorp International is not Blackwater USA. Please stop comparing the two.
"Every time The New York Times does a story on Blackwater, we get listed. It drives me crazy," DynCorp's chief executive told investors at a conference recently.
DynCorp and its 14,000-plus employees, Lanese says, provide vital services to the U.S. government by taking on tough, often dangerous jobs in some of the world's roughest neighborhoods.
"The world is a tough place. We are a company that does tough things," Lanese says.
Some of those tough things are run out of the company's offices at Fort Worth Alliance Airport, where DynCorp has about 400 employees. Its big aviation maintenance and foreign police training divisions are based there.
Supporting the military
Comparisons to Blackwater are probably inevitable, but certainly not exact.
DynCorp, like Blackwater, is a for-profit corporation whose profile has risen along with its role supporting U.S. military and diplomatic efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has capitalized on the U.S. military's growing reliance on private contractors to fill noncombat support roles, a trend that some observers say is dangerous and undermines public support at home and abroad.
"Our military outsourcing has become an addiction that is quickly spiraling to a breakdown," says P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution analyst and author of the book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.
In the Persian Gulf War, the ratio of U.S. service personnel to private contractors was 100-to-1, Singer says. This time, there's at least one contractor on the ground for every uniformed member of the military.
Private employees often aren't held to the same standards of behavior as the military, Singer says, and cannot be held accountable for their actions.
Lanese says he is mandating higher ethical and behavior standards for DynCorp employees, but Singer says actions sometimes fall short of expectations.
$2 billion global business
Blackwater for the most part provides security guards and other paramilitary personnel to protect U.S. State Department personnel and other VIPs and facilities in the two war zones. It has become notorious for the actions of its personnel, largely contractors, and has come under intense criticism and scrutiny after Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in September.
DynCorp is a larger, multifaceted company that performs various services for the State and Defense departments. Security guards, Lanese says, account for 2 percent of the company's business.
It's a $2-billion-a-year business with operations around the globe.
It maintains military aircraft at bases in the U.S. and foreign countries, is training civilian police in Afghanistan and Iraq, and works to eradicate coca crops, the raw material for cocaine, in Colombia.
But DynCorp has had its share of public black eyes. Last month, a DynCorp guard fatally shot an unarmed Iraqi citizen in Baghdad.
DynCorp has been repeatedly criticized by government auditors, investigators and members of Congress for its business practices. A recent report by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction was highly critical of the company's documentation of the work it performed for the State Department training police in Iraq and Afghanistan.
DynCorp officials originally acknowledged "some problems" with billing and other documentation but said there was no intent to deceive or overbill the government. Lanese told the Star-Telegram that the inspector general's report "is beyond awful. It's inaccurate, indefensible [and] unjustified."
The Washington Post reported this month that the inspector general's Iraq investigations office was itself under investigation for allegations of mismanagement and overspending.[/b]
Q&A: Herb Lanese, CEO of DynCorp International
'We really make the world a better, safer place'
Q & A HERE