Outsourcing Intelligence in Iraq: A CorpWatch Report on L-3/Titan

INTRODUCTION

When U.S. troops or embassy officials want to track and investigate Iraqis-such as interrogating those accused of terrorism, doing background checks on potential employees, or even to chat with ordinary citizens on the street-the principal
intermediary is a relatively obscure company named L-3, that is just over a decade old.

Although it is not as well known as companies such as Halliburton, it is now the ninth-largest private military and security company (PMSC) in the United States, and is a spin-off of defense industry giants Lockheed Martin and Loral. Based in Manhattan, it is headquartered on the upper floors of a skyscraper on Third Avenue, a few blocks from the United Nations. The bulk of this critical interrogation and translation work is done by a recently acquired L-3 subsidiary: Titan Corporation of San Diego. The company's principal role is to recruit, vet, hire, place, and pay these contract linguistic personnel. 

The U.S. military oversees and directs the day-to-day work, but L-3 and Titan play a key role in staffing and maintaining what was once considered an inherently governmental function: the acquisition and analysis of human intelligence during war. All told, L-3 and Titan are now being paid approximately $1 billion of U.S. taxpayer
money a year for this work, with a cumulative total approaching $3 billion since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.1

L-3/Titan is now probably the second largest employer in Iraq (after Kellogg, Brown & Root-now KBR-a former Halliburton subsidiary) with almost 7,000 translators
and more than 300 intelligence specialists.2 Unfortunately, a number of the personnel hired by L-3 and Titan -some barely competent, and several previously indicted
for criminal acts-has resulted in heightened risk of human rights abuses. These problems could be easily avoided through proper, thorough vetting and training practices.

The company also has the highest rate of casualties of any civilian contractor in the country (at least 280 have died so far3), with Titan personnel dying at a rate that is
far greater than that of the U.S. military itself. This toll is mostly because Titan's Iraqi personnel face threats of assassination for working with the military. Both Iraqi and
U.S. hires have also complained that Titan has failed to provide proper medical support to employees injured in the course of duty. Employees' basic labor right to a safe and healthful workplace is being violated when they are put in harm's way and not given adequate medical care. In recent months, L-3/Titan's work has been criticized harshly by the military for poor performance, and it has lost its biggest contract. Nonetheless, company executives cut a deal with the winning bidder and the U.S. military to keep part of the work. The failures in Iraq are the most public face of this contract; reports suggest that the company also provides intelligence services such as translation to lesser known agencies such as the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CFA) and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).4

In writing this report, CorpWatch has been fortunate to draw directly from the experiences of numerous military and civilian interrogators and translators who have
come forward as anonymous whistle-blowers. The U.S. military has responded to some information requests on the financial details of the contract, but over the last two
years, L-3 officials have failed to return repeated email and phone requests to discuss their work.

Military officials have refused to discuss actual implementation. "We're not going to talk about intelligence contracts," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, spokesman for the Multi-National Force Command in Baghdad, told CorpWatch.5

Our research indicates that there are significant problems with these contracts for the conduct what is known as human intellgence, or HUMINT, services, notably with
the hiring and vetting of contract interrogators and translators by PMSCs, many of whom are unqualified or poorly qualified for this critical and complex linguistic work. This failure has the potential to seriously compromise national security and human rights-as several examples cited in this report indicate.

The reasons that information on the performance of the contractor is hard to come by are two-fold: government rules on business confidentiality intended to protect a company's competitive edge, coupled with the blind belief that secrecy is the handmaiden of intelligence. CorpWatch believes that excessive secrecy on contractor
performance is neither necessary nor good practice because it leads to a lack of accountability and thus potentially to bad intelligence.

Instead, there should be transparency in the contracting process, and contracts should be made publicly available, with strictly limited exceptions for classified information. We recommend that the U.S. Congress investigate what oversight actually exists for the work of L-3/Titan (and its sub-contractors) and how effective this oversight is, precisely because these companies have acquired inherently governmental functions.

Finally, we urge the U.S. government to strengthen contracting rules and to crack down on human rights abuses immediately when there are credible reports and
allegations, and for the company to compensate the workers and their families for injury and death. This CorpWatch investigative report is interspersed with recommendations from Amnesty International to improve government and company respect for and protection of human rights in the context of outsourcing
government, military and military support functions, particularly in zones of armed conflict and weak governance.

• 24 Intelligence
• 176 War Profiteers Site