Profiles in Military Contracting: Aegis Defense Services

In a list released by the Center for Corporate Policy, the number one war profiteer of 2004 was a company known as Aegis Defense Services, a private military company (PMC) based out of London. Established in 2004, Aegis, not even a year old at the time, was awarded a contract of $295 million by the Pentagon (to act as a managing hub for the numerous corporations involved in the reconstruction of Iraq); by May of 2005 the contract had risen to hefty sum of $430 million. In 2007, the DoD resigned the contract with Aegis for an additional $475 million. The company is parted of the corporate membership group known as the “Private Security Company Association of Iraq”, alongside fellow mercenary groups such as Blackwater USA (known known as ‘Xe’), DynCorp (accused of, among other things, sex trafficking in Bosnia and fraud in Iraq), Rubicon International Services (an organization formed mainly of former SAS soldiers that, as of 2005, has been acquired by Aegis) and Erinys International Ltd (which has contracted Rubicon to guard oil pipelines in Iraq).

But how does a company that wasn’t even a year old at the time rise to such prominence so quickly? The answer may lie in the prominence of several members of their Board of Directors. Take Robert MacFarlane, a non-Executive Director, for example. A National Security Adviser for Ronald Reagan, MacFarlane, like his successor John Poindexter, was deeply embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal: he strongly urged President Reagan to allow negotiations with the Iranians, and in 1986 he was the unofficial envoy for the delivery of two planes of weaponry to the country. Over a decade later, in early 2000, MacFarlane would return to the Middle East, this time on behalf of a group of speculators who were interested in organizing anti-Taliban guerrillas from Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Robert MacFarlane also sits on the advisory board of the so-called “bi-partisan center in American national security and foreign policy”, the Partnership for a Secure America, alongside former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, former Carter National Security Adviser (not to mention proponent of ‘geo-politics’ and organizer of Afghan militant groups to be used against the Soviets in the late 70s) Zbigniew Brzezinski, former H.W. Bush U.S. Trade Rep Carla Hills of AIG, AOL Time Warner and ChevronTexaco, former Clinton and Carter cabinet member/Special Representative for the Middle East for the Obama administration Richard Holbrooke (who also sits on the Board for AIG, AOL Time Warner, the CFR and the United Against a Nuclear Iran) and Frank Wisner Jr., vice chairman of AIG and former chairman of Enron.

Even more interesting is the first CEO of Aegis – and its founder – Tim Spicer, a notable anti-war hippie turned Scotts Guard and SAS soldier. By 1992 he was working alongside Simon Mann, the founder of the now defunct mercenary organization Executive Outcomes who was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2004 for his role the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. In 1995 Spicer left the military to create one of the first PMCs known as “Sandline International.” Sandline, in two years time, found itself entangled in what is now known as the “Sandline Affair”: in January of 1997 Prime Minister Julius Chan of Papua New Guinea entered negotiations with Spicer and his mercenary organization over the conflict in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. A deal was struck in exchange for $36 million, but before the operation to neutralize the Bougainville Resistance Army in time for the elections could take place, the story was leaked to an Australian newspaper. On March 17th, a revolt that led to the arrest of the Sandline mercenaries and a standoff between the military and police occurred, reaching a fever pitch until Prime Minister Chan resigned on March 25th.

A year after the events in Papua New Guinea, Sandline found itself involved in a civil war in Sierra Leone. Ousted from Presidency after attempting to organize a peace accord between the government and the Revolutionary United Front (which, in fact, occurred due to the IMF withdrawing their funding from the country because of the presence of Executive Outcomes, which had been contracted to keep peace during the elections), Ahmad Tejan Kabbah attempted to strike a deal with Sandline to sale arms to militias who were loyal to him. The problem was that arms deals with Sierra Leone was, and still is, banned by the United Nations and the United Kingdom, so when Spicer and Sandline delivered of Bulgarian-bought shipment of 1,000 Soviet assault rifles, machine guns, mortars and ammunition to the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown, the armament was confiscated by peace-keeping forces.

Following the political fall-out from the doomed operation, Spicer cut his losses and left Sandline, though the company lingered on until 2004, when it finally closed up with the following message: “The general lack of governmental support for Private Military Companies willing to help end armed conflicts in places like Africa, in the absence of effective international intervention, is the reason for this decision. Without such support the ability of Sandline to make a positive difference in countries where there is widespread brutality and genocidal behavior is materially diminished.”

Undaunted, Tim Spicer then founded Aegis Defense Services, and while the company has been granted millions upon millions of dollars by the Pentagon and the DoD, it has been no stranger to controversy. In 2005 a video appeared in the blogsphere, set to the Elvis Presley classic “Mystery Train”, showing an Aegis employee firing rounds into moving vehicles while driving down “Route Irish”, which is the notoriously dangerous stretch of highway the connects the Green Zone to the Baghdad airport.

Despite this and Spicer’s rap sheet of misdeeds and miscalculations, Aegis became a founding member of the British Association of Private Security Companies, the set goal of which is “to promote, enhance and regulate the interests and activities of UK based firms and companies that provide armed security services in countries outside the UK." Other BAPSC alumni are ArmorGroup International (contracted to provide protection for the Baghdad headquarters and protection of Bechtel and Kellogg, Brown & Root), Control Risks Group (an SAS based security company that has done business with Bechtel, Halliburton and UnoCal), and Saladin Security (allegedly aided the CIA in both the Iran-Contra debacle and with the funding the Mujahedeen in the war against the Soviet excursion into Afghanistan.)