Chinook helicopters fly over U.S. forces in Afghanistan (U.S. Army photo)

Former employees of ArmorGroup, the private security company that holds a State Department contract to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, unveiled new allegations against the besieged contractor a week after photographic evidence emerged of its guards engaged in physical and sexual harassment. In a press conference revolving around an unlawful-termination lawsuit filed against ArmorGroup, former senior company officials said ArmorGroup was aware of widespread fraud; intentional use of non-English speaking guards to save money at the expense of embassy security; operations of a shell corporation in order to win contracts intended only for American companies; and even involvement in prostitution — and that the State Department knew about at least some of the company’s illicit practices.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

The allegations came from John Gorman, a former manager of ArmorGroup’s Kabul contract, and James Gordon, the former director of operation’s at ArmorGroup’s North American branch, headquartered in McLean, Va. Gordon, who yesterday sued the company for wrongful firing in federal court, spoke by teleconference from Kabul, where he said he was employed by an unspecified security company. Gorman and Gordon’s revelations come after the Project on Government Oversight wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last week detailing accusations of fraud in ArmorGroup’s $189 million contract; and a year after their former colleagues and fellow whistleblowers, James Sauer and Peter Martino, filed a similar lawsuit.

Both Gorman and Gordon said ArmorGroup intentionally misrepresented its cost requirements to the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security in order to win the contract to protect the embassy when it was initially put up for bid in 2006. Gordon’s lawsuit alleges that Michael O’Connell, ArmorGroup North America’s vice president of operations, emailed Sauer on March 11, 2007, “AGNA bid this at a very low price and a very low margin,” adding the next day that the timelines and resources given to State in its proposal “don’t match up,” but it wasn’t “a big deal unless” the State Department contracting officer’s representative “calls us on it.”

One immediate consequence of the emphasis on hiding fraud, Gordon said, was hiring Nepalese guards, known as Gurkhas, who did not speak adequate English to guard the embassy. “It was impossible to safeguard the embassy with a guard force that couldn’t communicate with one another,” he said. “I was told that no language test had ever been given. I immediately reported this violation to the Department of State. To this day, AGNA has not corrected the problem.”

The Washington Independent reported on Friday that ArmorGroup’s predecessor on the embassy security contract, MVM Inc., lost its contract in 2007 precisely because the Gurkhas it hired spoke inadequate English. Gordon said it was “common knowledge” within ArmorGroup why MVM had lost its contract, but persisted with the inadequate guards anyway. Gorman added that ArmorGroup also misled the State Department about hiring male and female interpreters familiar with all Afghan and coalition languages, but “no such people existed.”

Gorman, a retired Marine who now works as an addiction counselor in Connecticut, was fired from ArmorGroup’s Kabul office on June 13, 2007, after he, Sauer and Martino prepared a formal report for the Regional Security Officer of the embassy, Nick Pietrowicz, detailing numerous breaches of contract that he said compromised the security of the embassy. Among them: recruiting people who had inadequate military records and other identification, and “one individual who had been fired from a previous project for pulling a pistol on another employee while drunk.” Gorman said that he felt personally endangered, as he was jeopardizing a $187 million contract in Afghanistan and another security contract with State worth $500 million in Iraq. “Not popular” was how he described himself with his ArmorGroup colleagues. Pietrowicz, a State Department officer, found the prospect of violent retaliation against the whistleblowers so acute that he “asked if we wanted to stay in his apartment on the embassy compound,” Gorman said.

Gordon, a citizen of New Zealand and a military veteran, issued a variety of new allegations against ArmorGroup. He said ArmorGroup’s logistics manager spent contract funds to purchase “counterfeit North Face jackets and Altama boots” for the guards from his wife’s company in Lebanon, which “could never keep the men warm during the cold winters in Afghanistan,” and the company ignored a State Department order to fire the manager after Gordon informed State of the abuse. Similarly, ArmorGroup succeeded in getting money released from the State Department to uphold a fleet of beat-up vehicles used to transport guards that were colloquially known as “white coffins.” But “the money was immediately transformed to ArmorGroup International [and] the escort vehicles were never bought,” Gordon said.

Perhaps most seriously, Gordon said that he found out that both guards and even ArmorGroup program manager Nick Du Plessis were regularly frequenting brothels in Kabul. “Many of the prostitutes in Kabul are young Chinese girls who were taken against their will to Kabul for sexual exploitation,” Gordon said. Federal contracting regulations designed to support the Trafficking in Victims Protection Act prevents contractors from “procuring commercial sex acts during the period of performance of the contract,” meaning that ArmorGroup could lose its contract if State learned of the violation. Yet Gordon’s lawsuit alleges he was shut out of an investigation into the solicitation of prostitutes at the behest of Armor Group’s London-based parent company, despite recurring evidence that ArmorGroup employees continued to solicit prostitutes and perhaps even run their own prostitution services. A trainee boasted to Gordon “that he could purchase a girl for $20,000 and turn a profit after a month.”

Gordon said that he “immediately notified the State Department” and ArmorGroup North America’s president, but “to my knowledge, neither AGNA nor the State Department conducted a follow up investigation.” In July 2008, despite repeated formal warnings from the State Department about inadequate fulfillment of contract responsibilities, the State Department re-awarded the embassy security contract to ArmorGroup. The State Department’s inspector general, Howard Geisel, opened an investigation into the ArmorGroup contract last week.

Neither ArmorGroup nor the State Department responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit or the allegations made by Gordon and Gorman by press time, but The Washington Independent will print whatever responses it eventually receives.

A lawyer for Gordon, Janet Goldstein, said the pattern of ArmorGroup International squelching inquiries from employees of ArmorGroup North America, alleged in the lawsuit, suggested that ArmorGroup North America is “essentially a shell company” existing to “acquire, bid on and award contracts that have to be awarded to a U.S. company.”

Gordon alleges in the lawsuit that while he was not formally fired, he was pushed out of the company in February 2008 after leaving him “with nothing to do but sit in my office and play solitaire.” He is not suing for any specific dollar figure, and his lawyers said his lawsuit was an attempt to get the State Department to redress concerns about ArmorGroup’s embassy security contract that still exist.

Gorman said that he disbelieves that ArmorGroup is adequately protecting the Kabul embassy today, despite both company and State Department assurances that it is in no danger. “They need to say that because if they say the embassy is insecure, they give a green light to the Taliban,” he said.

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This smells more like crisis management than accountability. For one thing, as the Project on Government Oversight and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) have disclosed, the embassy’s security staff — that is, the State Department employees who interface with ArmorGroup — have known about this sort of behavior for years, and yet ArmorGroup’s contract was renewed last year. The State Department’s spokesman Ian Kelly put forward that knowledge like it was exculpatory. It’s one thing to note that the State Department senior leadership just found out about ArmorGroup’s problematic track record a few days ago. The embassy in Kabul can claim no such ignorance.

But the Project on Government Oversight, the good-government watchdog nonprofit that exposed the latest abuses, confirms that it was contacted yesterday by the Office of the Inspector General for the State Department and was told it could “neither confirm nor deny” that it was investigating the organization’s allegations. Which is, uh, bizarre, given Kelly confirmed it yesterday afternoon. POGO ran into this wall of silence just shortly after 4 p.m. yesterday. But Kelly’s briefing ended, according to the official transcript, an hour earlier. Clearly these are some diligent investigators we’re dealing with.

What’s more, POGO informed the inspector general’s office that it will not turn over any of the whistleblowers whose accounts formed the basis for the allegations, according to executive director Danielle Brian. Already, the organization says, at least one whistleblower has been fired in an act of retaliation.

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Well, except…

QUESTION: Just the discrepancy between what I think some folks from OIG were saying that they were only notified yesterday. You said that they were notified ten days ago. Can you just clarify that? I mean, are you sure it was ten days ago that OIG was first – that they –
MR. KELLY: Oh, you might be right. You might be right on that.
QUESTION: Well, can you –
QUESTION: Can you –
QUESTION: — get that for sure?
MR. KELLY: Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I may have misspoke on that one.

But even that discrepancy is relatively minor. Kelly said that the State Department sent ArmorGroup nine letters since 2007 complaining about its fulfillment of contract responsibilities. And he meant this as an exculpation, not a concession that State has faced systemic problems in exercising oversight of its security contractors. For instance:

MR. KELLY: Starting in June 2007, all the way through April 30, 2008, and then actually there was a ninth [letter to ArmorGroup from State], and this was the most serious one. It’s called a show cause notice. A decision to issue a show cause notice is a serious matter and was not taken lightly. The issuance of a show cause notice was necessary due to repeated staffing shortages, which had been brought to the attention of the contracting officer. The show cause notice was the first step towards considering termination of the contract and was carefully considered by all concerned parties. … This was September 21^st, 2008.

But according to Project on Government Oversight Executive Director Danielle Brian, that “most serious” show-cause notice may have been first issued on Sept. 21, 2008, but it had a rather serious predecessor:

[I]n July 2007, State issued a “cure notice,” a formal advisory that AGNA’s deficiencies were endangering the performance of the contract. In the cure notice, State identified 14 performance deficiencies, including the failure of AGNA to provide an adequate number of guards, relief personnel, and armored vehicles. The contracting official stated “I consider the contract deficiencies addressed below to endanger performance of the contract to such a degree that the security of the US Embassy in Kabul is in jeopardy….”

A follow-on cure notice was issued in April 2008, for, among other things, “failing to correct many of the deficiencies identified in the July 2007 cure notice.” And then State re-awarded ArmorGroup its $189 million contract the following July.

In addition to the potential for more pre-election attacks by the Taliban, speculation abounds about the possibility for post-election political violence between different factions. The presidential elections would go to a second round if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of votes cast. If a second round happens, the top two candidates would face off in early October. Some observers worry that if there are signs of widespread fraud or voter intimidation; a losing candidate may not accept the legitimacy of the results and might turn to violence to settle scores.

Some worries exist about possible post-election violence over provincial election results too. In meetings DI election observers had in Jalalabad over the last few days, for example, residents expressed worries about possible post-election violence between three main tribal families running different candidates.

The legitimacy question is is a crucial one. At Wednesday’s event at the St. Regis, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan special envoy, said that very little of the administration’s plans for aiding Afghan governance and economic development could proceed before the election of a government widely seen as legitimate. The point holds just as true after the Aug. 20 election as before.

[Update: Sorry, Aug. 20 is  Thursday, not Wednesday.]

It’s not just State Department employees who come with their own security details outfitted with huge SUVs and pointed weapons. Afghan government officials now travel in similar fashion, leaving drivers flummoxed about what to do to get out of the way. Some convoys pull up to sedans and point guns at the drivers, others set up checkpoints with varying rules on how not to get shot and still others simply close off roads that Afghans once traveled freely on.

When there’s foreign dignitaries coming through the capital city of a war-torn country, there’s going to be contracted security. And those security contractors do not typically feel any need to make nice with the locals. Instead, to keep the locals at a safe distance — safe for the dignitaries, that is — from the officials they guard, the contractors use fear, intimidation and, on occasion, violence. Already we’re seeing Blackwater Xe affiliates firing on unarmed civilians for the crime of driving too closing to them while the contractors had been drinking. More security contractors in Kabul raises the awful prospect of another Nisour Square.

Relatedly, in a few weeks, the State Department’s security contract, known as the Worldwide Personal Protective Services deal, gets re-awarded. I’ll be paying close attention to whether State looks to switch over contractors from the Xe-DynCorp-Triple Canopy triad it currently employs.

“Mullah Omar has given the green light to talks,” said one of the mediators, Abdullah Anas, a former friend of Osama bin Laden who used to fight in Afghanistan but now lives in London.

A source negotiating for the Afghan Government confirmed: “It’s extremely sensitive but we have been in contact both with Mullah Omar’s direct representatives and commanders from the front line.”…

“A big, big step has happened,” Mr Anas said yesterday. “For the first time, there is a language of … peace on both sides.”

While stranger things have happened, representatives from the Afghan government told reporters in Washington a few weeks ago that they don’t seek reconciliation with Omar and his al-Qaeda-aligned Quetta Shura Taliban council. Instead they seek defeat. Assuming that line is the true government line, Omar would have to swear allegiance to the post-Taliban constitution before the government would think about dealing with him instead of arresting him. Which they might not even consider at all, since they said his crew was guilty of terrible crimes. (As they are.)

But who knows. Positions change, especially if there might be a reasonable prospect to end the war. Still, that’s doubtful. The Taliban are in possibly the best position they’ve been in since they were driven out of Kabul in 2001. Why would they seek peace now, particularly a peace on the Kabul government’s terms?

“Taliban are in a strong position now but that doesn’t mean they can control the state,” [Anas] said. “They are well aware that it’s a different situation to 1996 when they swept to power because Afghans saw them as bringing peace.”

Again, consider that unverified until further reporting emerges.

Now I know what he meant.

It takes about an hour and a half to fly southeast on a Chinook helicopter from Bagram to Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost Province. (I gave up on the prospect of a C-130.) During the flight. you unspool about 5,000 years’ worth of progress on the highlight reel of human civilization. The terrain is an almost endless chain of mountains, with virtually no greenery jutting out from the mountainface — just an ashy, arid, bleached tan color stretching out over the horizon.

Mostly that surface is uninhabited, even in the valleys. The population centers that do exist feature maze-like structures that cut into the hills with frail strips of single-story construction that wind around each other and stop abruptly.

I counted exactly three high-rise buildings in 90 minutes. The first time I saw a building with any color – a sharp blue – it jarred me into noticing how monochromatic the landscape is. That building, it turned out, was attached to a military outpost where we briefly stopped.

A Chinook is loud, tight and uncomfortable. About 25 soldiers, contractors and reporters — along with one stately bomb-sniffing German shepherd — strapped into either side of the helicopter’s belly. Our legs were bent into unnatural positions, thanks to the baggage stacked up in the center of the bird. Two other passengers were seated between me and Sgt. Clark — one of the Chinook’s gunners.

Before we left, I overheard a crew member tell Sgt. Schon, her counterpart on the other side of the helicopter, that there was a rocket-propelled grenade threat on the flight route. I looked at the German shepherd, Cinco, and considered his panting face to be good luck.

About a half-hour into the flight, I craned my neck, stiff as it was from my body armor, to look out the window behind me. I saw a mountain, swept almost entirely by a silky tan sand, its peaks maybe 20 yards away from us. It jutted up and down like a vital sign measured on hospital equipment — no subtle inclines, just sharp heights and severe drops. Yet the mountain looked smooth, as if a footprint was the most absurd thing it could encounter. I thought I was watching a scene that would be unthinkable to witness from the earth’s surface.

That thought evaporated when Clark opened fire. She let out three bursts, the second the shortest: da-rrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck; duck-duck; drrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck.

I jutted my head around, trying to see who she was firing at from the different available windows, but I couldn’t see anyone. A few seconds later Schon joined in: duck-duck-duck; da-rrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck.

Whether the mountain hid our RPG threat I’ll never know.

Then there’s a contingent that’s out of uniform and wearing neither contractor lanyards nor carrying Defense Dept. civilian badges. They’ve got beards – thick, grody ones – and tattoos, their heads covered with baseball caps, outfitted in jeans and t-shirts. In other words, they look like me, if I was less of a weakling.

Chances are they’re Special Operations Forces, the guys that go after the high-value jihadist targets and whom I’m not really supposed to write about. Interviews without a public-affairs officer are a no-no.

So I pay for my coffee and they pay for theirs — and we go our separate ways.