U.S. FIRMS AIDING COLOMBIA'S WAR ON DRUGS

For a price, American military retirees lend their services. Concerns have
been voiced about safety and accountability.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Former Green Beret? Retired CIA? Military helicopter
pilot or mechanic? If Uncle Sam doesn't want you any more, maybe DynCorp does.

As $1.3 billion in mostly military U.S. aid pours into Colombia for an
assault on its drug traffickers, firms such as DynCorp are providing
security forces here with everything from coat-and-tie logistics
consultants to helicopter gunship pilots.

A team that included several U.S. contract workers landed a helicopter in
the middle of a firefight earlier this month to rescue the crew of a police
copter downed by leftist guerrillas in southern Colombia.

With the U.S. military's manpower plummeting by 40 percent since the late
1980s, Washington has been increasingly turning to private firms to carry
out quasi-military missions in foreign trouble spots.

U.S. officials call it "outsourcing," making it sound as innocuous as
contracting a computer adviser. The firms contracted bill themselves as
"consultants" or "service companies" - not "mercenaries."

If privatization is the trend these days, the argument goes, why not
privatize war, too?

Firms such as DynCorp have been around for decades. Founded in 1946 to
handle post-World War II airplane surpluses, DynCorp is the biggest, with
sales of $1.2 billion a year - 95 percent from contracts with the U.S.
government.

Many missions for firm

It runs everything from one of the computer centers that handled the 2000
census to the maintenance of the Kuwaiti air force, the administration of a
U.S. military air base in the Honduran town of Palmerola, and the sale of
military surplus from former U.S. bases in Panama.

Other such firms have trained police in Haiti, armies in the former
Yugoslavia, military logistics officers in El Salvador, and handled
logistics for the ill-fated U.S. military involvement in Somalia.

But with Washington pumping huge amounts of money into Colombia, the roles
of firms such as DynCorp have come under increasing scrutiny - and aroused
concerns about the safety and accountability of its employees here.

They are not bound by the orders to avoid combat that apply to the 200
regular U.S. military trainers here, and it is unclear whether they are
covered by U.S. congressional restrictions on contacts with Colombian
security units alleged to have links with right-wing paramilitary squads.

As civilians, their work and fate come under less scrutiny. When a DynCorp
paramedic died of an apparent heart attack in Colombia in October, the U.S.
Embassy handled his case like the death of any American abroad, declining
to release information on his background.

Six working with Colombia

At least six U.S. firms now work with Colombian security forces, either
hired directly by the government here or under contracts with the U.S.
Departments of State and Defense, said one knowledgeable U.S. official.
Israeli Defense Industries also has several contracts here, mostly in the
communications and electronics area.

Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), of Alexandria, Va., has a
contract with the Defense Department to provide a dozen advisers, mostly
retired U.S. generals, to Colombia's Joint Chiefs of Staff on mostly
administrative and logistics issues.

MPRI's Web site touts the firm, with reported annual revenues of $12
million, as "the greatest corporate assemblage of military expertise in the
world," with 2,000 retired generals, admirals and other officers on call.

Northrop Grumman of Los Angeles provides an unknown number of U.S. citizens
that operate and maintain five radar stations in eastern and southern
Colombia that track suspected drug-smuggling flights.

Tracking data are beamed to Key West, Fla., home of the drug-fighting Joint
Interagency Task Force-East, under the 1998 contract administered by the
Defense Department's Air Combat Command in Hampton, Va.

But by far the largest firm operating in Colombia is DynCorp, hired by the
State Department's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau six
years ago under a reported $600 million contract to support
coca-eradication programs in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

DynCorp provides American pilots for herbicide planes and helicopter
gunships that protect the spraying missions, aircraft mechanics, and search
and rescue teams such as the one that recently pulled a downed helicopter
crew from the middle of a firefight in southern Colombia.

Police officials said about 30 American DynCorp employees were in Colombia,
although the company has also contracted with about 30 Colombian and
several Peruvians and Guatemalans to fly and maintain aircraft.

American pilots earn about $90,000 a year, while mechanics earn about
$60,000, but they must live on remote bases, sometimes working 45 days,
then taking 15 days off.

DynCorp employees are under strict orders to avoid journalists, but
congressional aides who have had access to them say many are hardboiled,
hard-drinking veterans of the U.S. military.

"Your best introduction to them is a case of beer," said one former U.S.
military adviser.

Leftist guerrillas last year kidnapped one American helicopter mechanic who
stayed in Colombia after his DynCorp contract ended because of a love
affair, but freed him after a few weeks "because he was so crazy," the
former adviser said.

DynCorp and MPRI officials said they could not comment on their operations
in Colombia under the terms of their contracts with the U.S. government.

But there have been U.S. media reports that some of their missions extend
beyond drug fighting and into the Colombian military's war against about
23,000 leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
known as FARC, and National Liberation Army, known as ELN.