Inside the Headquarters

In our continuing series Post Cards from Guantanamo, “Inside the Headquarters” again checks in on our GITMO friends.

Running a prison is challenging and serious work, and contraband must be dealt with for the safety and welfare of all. With that said, it has come to our attention that Guantanamo Bay officials are concerned about briefs. Legal briefs?

Uh … underwear.

Not just any underwear. It seems two GITMO detainees were found to be wearing — get this — Under Armour briefs, the brand of choice for a number of military personnel. One of the detainees also was sporting a Speedo, though it’s anyone’s guess what he’d do with a bathing suit. These garments were neither issued nor authorized. Bottom line: Contraband! In a “brief” letter dated Aug, 12, one GITMO official confronted the attorney of one of the Under Armour detainees. The lawyer’s response called the accusation “absurd.” (He had not seen the detainee in question in a year, as shown, he maintained, by the prison’s own records.) He surmised the “lingerie” (his word, not ours) came from a more likely military source. …

GITMO interrogators.

According to one detainee defense counsel: “The interrogators have their own rules. In the end, the administration wants progress and really doesn’t care how it is done. Yes, interrogators are not supposed to give out contraband, and yes, they are not supposed to abuse a detainee, but both happen. Always have. Always will.” He stated inspections have been tight for the last year or so. The lawyers are searched making it impossible to smuggle anything into a “client.” Just to be sure, detainees are searched before and after a visit. The defense guys might be feeling a little persecuted themselves. “We get blamed for everything,” sighed our source.
The incident is under investigation.

“Inside the Headquarters” from time to time chronicles the world of the uberjoint: Marine Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis has been tapped to head U.S. Joint Forces Command. Yes, that General Mattis.

Flashback to 2005: Mattis made several comments during a panel discussion in San Diego. Though not in context here, he was speaking on recent combat operations.

As reported:

“Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot.”

“It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.”

“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. … You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”

It seems few will refute that Mattis is one of the most qualified warfighting flags serving today. And he’d have to be to have survived what could have spelled the end of a career for a lesser talent. The Corps’ commandant and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs stood by their man — probably with good reason, according to one senior officer. Superb combat vet and leader are only part of the story, he says. Mattis is known as the “warrior monk.” (More on that later.) Adding to the aura: Reportedly an Iraqi wanted to know when he (Mattis) was leaving. As Mattis tells it, “I said I am never going to leave. I told him I had found a little piece of property down on the Euphrates River and I was going to have a retirement home built there. I did that because I wanted to disabuse him of any sense that he could wait me out.”

Legend? It has been reported actor Harrison Ford will portray Mattis in “No True Glory: Battle for Fallujah” due out in 2008. Few can lay claim to that. Mattis is expected to appear before the Senate Armed Services committee for a confirmation hearing in coming weeks, according to sources. Will the “Ford factor” give him an edge? Sounds like he might not need any help.

So who IS checking those ID cards? Well, back in 2005 it might have been a convicted felon.

A 2006 Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation found that the Army had awarded two sole-source contracts totaling $495 million for the majority of the contract guards for its installations. Chenega Integrated Systems and Alutiiq Security and Technology were considered small, disadvantage businesses, Alaska Native Corporation firms. Interestingly, they subbed much of the work to considerably larger companies.

Forty-six of 57 Army installations received sole source guards, and despite a two-part, Army-mandated screening process, it seems one contractor allowed guards to attend firearms training and start working even though their screening was incomplete. It gets better: In 2005, the Army itself discovered 61 guards at one installation alone had criminal records, and 25 or so of those had been involved domestic violence and abuse and assorted felonies. (These guys were armed AND checking your ID.) At another installation (different contractor) the Army found 28 of the guards in its own Crime Records Center with records from assault to drug possession to forgery.

It should also be noted the contractors were paid 18 million above their contract awards as of February 2006 for meeting basic contractual requirements — another sore point with the GAO.

GAO officials state there has been no follow-up investigation. The Army is reportedly complying with GAO recommendations, though the Army thought its contractors were in compliance. The GAO focused on the Army, because it used the waiver authority granted by Congress in FY 2006 more extensively than the other services.

Who’s at your gate?

Are base decals a thing of the past? Maybe. It seems the Air Force already has done away with them, and the other services might not be far behind. First developed in the 1970s for traffic management, the sticker system was necessary to get people on base in a reasonable amount of time, predating today’s standards of a nationwide registration database and mandatory insurance.

Added security? Au contraire, according to Air Force officials. They say the decal serves to identify military and civilian workers as possible targets for terrorists and could contribute to gate guard complacency. Officials say current ID checks — certifying occupants and not so much the vehicle — go a long way to better security. Officials note that a vehicle with a sticker might have been sold by the owner, could belong to someone who has left the service, or could have been stolen, or the decal could have been duplicated. Though it has been reported that some commanders disagree with the change, citing the continuing need to expedite installation entry, it seems base decals might someday be history — literally.

A Marine Corps Special Operations company — one of the first of its kind in this world of the uber-joint — was tossed out of Afghanistan following an incident in which 10-12 civilians reportedly were killed. According to a handful of news outlets and sources familiar with the incident, it seems one platoon (along with company’s commander) was ambushed March 4 and engaged the enemy “too aggressively,” as one source put it. In a curious move, the entire company was sent packing to Kuwait by then-head of Special Operations Forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, Maj. Gen. Francis H. Kearney III. A spokesperson was quoted as saying Kearney had decided the Marines (all of them?) “could no longer effectively conduct counterinsurgency operations.” “Inside the Headquarters” asked for clarification from Kearney, now wearing a third star as deputy commander of Special Operations Command but was referred back to his old headquarters. Though there are conflicting reports, some sources seem to indicate that no Marine Special Operations unit has been back in Afghanistan until very recently. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation into the incident has been completed and is under review by Marine Corps Forces Central Command lawyers. It is unclear when or if the report will be made public.

Interservice rivalry? It wouldn’t be the first time. The Marines’ chief historian noted that during the Spanish-American War the Army did not want the Marines in Cuba, nor did it want them in Europe during World War I. Apparently Army chief Gen. George C. Marshall worked to keep Marine units out of Europe in World War II.

So maybe this not-so-friendly rivalry continues. The Special Operations land domain traditionally has been Army Green-Beret territory. During this shift from green to purple, sources speculate this recent incident might have provided an opportunity to run off any perceived competition.

In the old fuel/fire tradition (probable political realities aside), it seems an Army colonel (brigade commander, no less) apologized to family members of those killed or injured in the incident saying he was “deeply ashamed.” Surprise: Marines outraged! Surprise: reportedly the Corps’ commandant did not agree with Army colonel.

Did we mention the incident occurred while Gen. Pete [Peter J.] Schoomaker was still Army chief? Schoomaker spent much of his career in Army Special Forces and was a former head of Special Operations Command.

The House version of the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill (H.R. 1585), Section 806, abolishes contracts for lead system integrators (LSIs) commencing Oct. 1, 2011. An LSI is “a prime contractor for the development or production of a major system,” and they have figured prominently on large projects such as the Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) and the Navy’s littoral combat ship. The argument is that the services have had and can rebuild a cadre of acquisition professionals who can provide program oversight and system integration. Not so, challenges one retired senior officer familiar with the issue. He says the LSI came from the “demonstrated lack of ability of the government to effectively manage increasingly complex weapons programs.” He notes that DoD learned this from the space program. He also says it is unlikely the government will ever “possess the numbers of skilled technical personnel of the caliber required to effectively manage” such complex and costly programs. No such language appears in the Senate mark-up. Sources say current LSI contracts, such as the one for FCS, should not be affected.

For decades, contractors outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. could fall under the military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) but only following a formal declaration of war by Congress. (The last one? 1942.) Not any longer.

Legislation was enacted in the 2007 Defense Authorization Act that placed contractors and others who go to the field with the military under the UCMJ. This “new” law simply changed existing language, replacing the word “war” with “declared war or contingency operation.” The new language potentially places tens of thousands of contractors under the same set of laws governing the military. The clause was added by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is also an Air Force Reserve colonel and JAG officer.

Prior to this change, parties relied on the civilian Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) to go after bad actors. Opinions on MEJA seem divided, but bringing all contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, under the UCMJ might not be such a good thing, according to one former prosecutor. It is his experience that it is better for the commander to have problem contractors removed from theater. The responsibilities for pretrial confinement, convening a court marital, and detailing personnel for a court martial can be burdensome, inefficient, and costly. The one exception: oversight of the civilian “gunslingers,” he notes.

As DoD, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development continue to contract out security functions, it seems Congress has taken notice and is making efforts to regulate these guns-for-hire. The 2008 Defense Authorization Act, H.R. 1585, and its Senate counterpart, S. 1548, seek to “increase accountability,” as one legislator’s press release puts it. Provisions include a “process for registering, processing, and accounting for personnel performing private security functions in an area of combat operations, a process for authorizing and accounting for weapons to be carried by, or available to be used by these contractors, and processes for reporting and investigating incidents of death or injury to the military contractor and allegations of misconduct.”

One of the most interesting is the requirement for a process to report and investigate all incidents where a contractor discharges a firearm — in a combat zone. The list is long, and the bulk of the work seems to fall to DoD, though a source close to the matter says much of the language codifies what commanders already are doing in theater. The final bill is expected in late September.

It now seems that DoD’s Office of Military Commissions, specifically those JAG officers who prosecute and defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, might be but an afterthought. Although a case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court as recently as last year (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld), the office’s director, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, has retired, and no successor has been named as of this writing. Most of the active duty officers are gone, replaced by reservists who cycle through every year or so. Six of the 13 full-time counselors on the defense staff will leave before November, according to the director of that office. It appears that Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the lawyer in the Hamdan case, will retire and most likely pass the case to a not-yet-named replacement. Currently there are only two active cases, though in two separate rulings in early June, judges dismissed all charges against the two terrorist suspects.

DoD and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will step up their collaborative efforts — DoD announced its strategy in early May for information sharing with “domestic and international partners.” Over at DHS, the director for interagency coordination for the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, Randel Zeller, recently discussed his plans to work more closely with departments outside his agency to share information and technology on common programs such as chemical detectors. DHS is providing some funding to DoD for unmanned aerial vehicle testing and development. According to a source close to the program, these collaborations might mean increased funding, larger requirements, and expanded capabilities to meet a greater range of requirements.