Perspective: Contractor's war role debated

DALLAS - DynCorp International runs its operational hub from a dark glass building bearing another firm's logo. The office complex, on the outskirts of Irving, Texas, gives no indication of the huge footprint the military services company is leaving around the world.

Using billions of taxpayer dollars, DynCorp is quietly doing the U.S. government's work in Iraq, Afghanistan and other world hotspots. Its paramilitary forces can kill or be killed in combat, but there's little public accounting of what DynCorp does or whether tax dollars are being well spent.

Many Americans probably think it's the government's job to train foreign security forces, eradicate drug crops or maintain Air Force One. But these and other sensitive Pentagon and State Department tasks are in the hands of a private company with such a secretive history that even members of Congress say they have a hard time getting information about it.

Those lawmakers, along with some military leaders, academics and human rights groups, are pressing to lift the cloak of confidentiality over DynCorp and other military contractors while asking whether their performance justifies the billions of dollars being spent for their services.

"Members of Congress have a hell of a time" getting information about DynCorp and other contractors, said Rep. Janice Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who has monitored DynCorp's activities for several years. "It's one of the biggest scandals - and least known - that we have."

Schakowsky complained that she has been repeatedly thwarted in efforts to review U.S. government audit reports of DynCorp's contracts because, according to the State Department, the need to protect DynCorp's commercial secrets supersedes the public's right to know.

"There seems to be no real interest in overseeing or reporting or holding accountable any of these contractors. And we're talking about billions of dollars of taxpayer money," she said.

Read the rest at the Miami Herald