Under fire: Hired hands training foreign police

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — A dozen civilians were sitting in a classroom, listening intently to a Marine in combat boots tell them how to survive on the streets of Afghanistan or Iraq.

Violence will happen, no matter what, they are told. Their job is to be prepared.

Rodney Harvey, a former Georgia cop who retired after injuring his knee chasing a drug dealer, fidgeted in his chair. "I never did any SWAT thing, combat training," he says later.

Harvey — like the 42-year-old former firefighter from Mississippi and the Texas beat cop in bifocals training alongside him — was preparing to move to the front lines of U.S. foreign policy.

Hired by DynCorp International, of Falls Church, Va., they will join the contractors who are the mainstay of the U.S. government's attempt to help Iraq and Afghanistan establish functional police forces.

Operating under a $1.75 billion contract — the largest the State Department has managed — DynCorp trains more police officers than any other U.S. company in these countries.

The firm says it has 700 trainers in Iraq, where it helped train 198,000 Iraqis, and more than 500 in Afghanistan, where it helped train 93,000 Afghans.

But large regions of both countries face widespread, continuing violence. "If you look at the results, in neither country [are] the police functional," said Robert Perito, a senior program officer at the U.S. Institute for Peace and a consultant to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

In Afghanistan, a November 2006 U.S. government report said the police force was plagued by pervasive corruption. In Iraq, members of the overwhelmingly Shiite police force have been involved in sectarian violence and embroiled in several scandals.

"The Iraqi forces still suffer from deficiencies of leadership, logistics, intelligence and, in some cases, loyalty," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the U.S. military's spokesman in Baghdad, said last month.

U.S. officials are beginning to turn their eyes to DynCorp and companies like it and consider whether the job of constituting a foreign police force is one for a hired hand.

DynCorp says many concerns about its performance are related to the officers recruited for the Iraqi or Afghan police forces, and that is not the company's responsibility.

"We don't control the political situation, the political loyalties of the people," said spokesman Greg Lagana. The company has hired a public-relations firm to help deal with the attention.

Perito said one of the knocks on DynCorp, which recruits online and at police conventions and depends heavily on word-of-mouth referrals, has been the wide variety in the quality of people it hires to be trainers.

Program troubles

Last year, for example, a DynCorp trainer was called back to the United States from Iraq after being accused of destroying evidence while he was a Vermont state trooper.

Having the Justice Department manage the program or using an auxiliary force of police officers that works directly for the government would be a "more professional and proficient approach," Perito said.

DynCorp defends its recruitment process. Sixty percent of applicants are selected, the company says, and some of those fail to make it through either the two weeks of training or the psychological testing. The company also attempts to weed out debt-ridden applicants who may be motivated too much by the salary, which can top $100,000 a year.

The salary reflects the danger. The company says 21 trainers have been killed in the two countries since the program began in 2003.

Although the company tries to hire law-enforcement officers and others who understand dangerous situations, recruiting manager Lynn Holland said, the reality in Iraq or Afghanistan is outside the experience of almost any U.S. police officer.

"You really don't understand this job unless you can see it, because it's so foreign to anything we do in law enforcement," Holland said.

In December, the Iraq Study Group expressed concern about how the program is run, and in January the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction found that oversight was lax, leading to unnecessary costs. The special inspector found that the lone officer supervising the Iraq program, who had been overseeing DynCorp's police contracts for more than 10 years, had not received proper training.

The agency has since established a contracting office that could employ 47 people by the end of the year.

The State Department has begun an extensive review of all DynCorp contracts. "We are making every effort to recover any overpayments or any payments that are inconsistent with contract terms and conditions," said spokeswoman Susan Pittman.

DynCorp has had to pay the U.S. government $600,000 after a subcontractor in 2003 siphoned fuel from a DynCorp police-training academy in Jordan.

Meanwhile, the House Armed Services oversight and investigations subcommittee is investigating DynCorp's performance as part of its examination of Iraq's security forces. "Private contractors playing a role in reconstruction and in training needs to be evaluated. We need data on what works and what doesn't," said Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., subcommittee chairman.

DynCorp said it is eager to answer all the questions raised by the inspector general and has acted responsibly in carrying out the contract. The company also said it has improved training and recruitment.

For instance, after the trainer was called back from Iraq last year, DynCorp began requiring applicants to release their personnel files. "We had to ask ourselves, 'How did we miss this?' " Lagana said.

Training days

Training the trainers begins at a facility in wooded areas of Fredericksburg, where lessons in self-defense and combat maneuvers are accompanied by the almost-constant noise of gunfire.

For two weeks trainers-to-be live together, getting sub sandwiches for lunch and taking classes and tests. Dressed in tan uniforms, they practice the "combat shuffle," arms braced to maneuver though hostile crowds.

They learn how to fire the M4 carbine they will carry and how not to lose the weapon in a fight. They get convoy training, studying how to drive aggressively through traffic to avoid being a target for roadside attacks. "Weakness is perceived," said Reggie Ray, 42, a former North Carolina sheriff. "We have to look like we're prepared over there."

They also have to find their way out of the woods, literally.

On a recent afternoon, Keith Carson, 46, of Haslett, Texas, looked quizzically at the handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) unit he had been issued.

As his colleagues peeled away in search of home base, represented by an orange stick hidden in the brush, Carson studied the gadget and adjusted his glasses: "Come on, baby, take me home." He was among the last to finish.

Those who make it through the Fredericksburg session are sent to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, for three days of cultural and other studies. On arrival in Iraq and Afghanistan, they get a week of orientation and briefings from the military and DynCorp. On the job, DynCorp employees are teamed with U.S. troops for field training of Iraqi police officers.

The situation on the ground has required adjustments. For example, trainers initially were deployed to Iraq without weapons, Lagana said. And to bring them in line with the Iraqis they work alongside every day, last year the company banned alcohol.

Washington Post reporter Ernesto Londono contributed to this report.