black is the new pink

At the end of the 19th Century, in the blood-red aftermath of the Homestead Strike, Congress passed a law that came to be known as the Anti-Pinkerton Act. That name probably wasn’t a stretch, since the text of the law specifically prohibits the Federal Government from contracting with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency or a “similar organization” offering “mercenary or quasi-military forces” for hire.

Yup. I know what you’re thinking.

Alas, because of a series of GAO findings and court rulings, things are not as cut on the bias as it would seem (seam?). Though I feel like common sense would dictate finding the Bush Administration, the State Department, the Pentagon, et al. guilty of violating the Anti-Pinkerton Act (though not all in the same way), the fact is that a variety of judges and comptrollers general have hemmed in this law to the point where two over-long nights of reading on my part have left me pretty sure that a) you’ll get nowhere with the current executive branch challenging the use of private security contractors under Pinkerton, b) if you’re lucky enough to have the standing to get to a finding of fact in the courts, it’s going to take a judge with a big-picture view and a lot of time on his/her hands to make the APA a ready-to-wear tool in stopping the Bush Administration’s extensive use of mercenary or quasi-military forces, and c) we really need a new-look Anti-Pinkerton-style law to cut through all this crap.

Of course, given the deep pockets of firms like Aegis, DynCorp, and the current bête noire, Blackwater—and all the lobbying that that would buy—I am deathly afraid to tug on a thread, lest the few protections the law still affords completely unravel.

But, given the overuse of private contractors for security, intelligence, and aggressive action, given the ever-growing list of revelations about PSC crimes, given that those crimes, committed in the name of security, are actually making us less secure—in and out of Iraq—and given that people are actually getting killed by these paid-in-the-USA cowboys, it is absolutely time to pull that thread and write a modern law in the spirit of the Anti-Pinkerton Act. And that spirit would include strict prohibitions on the government hiring private firms to provide military or quasi-military duties (in addition to intelligence work and that old chestnut, the always fashionable “strikebreaking”).

Call it the Anti-Pinkerton Act for all seasons. I mean, the way things have gone lately, hadn’t we best tell those private summer soldiers that it’s now fall?


Further reading
Here are some of the articles that helped me fashion this post:

Some WikiHistory

A blog, probably a little to my right, but filled with Pinkerton Act info (don’t know what all the pictures are about)

An article from last summer

And one from this

The comment that got me thinking about all of this in the first place


AND, though it is a little tangential (only a little), I can’t let this go un-remarked upon. . .

The initial State Department report on last month’s Blackwater instigated massacre? State outsourced the writing of that report to. . . wait for it. . . Blackwater.



(cross-posted to The Seminal and Daily Kos)

war is a force that gives republicans meaning

Chris Hedges, writing in Sunday’s Philadelphia Enquirer (re-posted to truthout), describes in stark terms one of the most absolutely terrifying possible legacies of the Bush/Cheney war on and occupation of Iraq: the building and empowering of “America’s first modern mercenary army.”

In his piece, Hedges describes how billions of federal dollars have been funneled to private firms with strong ties to the Bush administration and to the Christian right—not just for the 100,000 or so that provide logistical support to government forces, but for 20,000 to 30,000 armed security “contractors.”

American taxpayers have so far handed a staggering $4 billion to "armed security" companies in Iraq such as Blackwater, according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.). Tens of billions more have been paid to companies that provide logistical support. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.) of the House Intelligence Committee estimates that 40 cents of every dollar spent on the occupation has gone to war contractors. It is unlikely that any of these corporations will push for an early withdrawal. The profits are too lucrative.

Hedges goes into chilling detail about the implications of the rapid growth of this modern-day Praetorian Guard—this armed, extra-legal force—and I strongly recommend you click on over for the full read (though maybe not right before bedtime), but here, let me just couple that article with recent statements by President Bush, his Defense Secretary, a chief military commander in Iraq, and his Ambassador to Iraq, all seemingly designed to ease American opinion toward a place where we accept a more or less permanent occupation of Iraq.

I do not doubt for a minute that many inside the administration know that continued occupation means continued billions to the private contractors. I only wonder if they fully realize what that money will buy.

(My apologies to Hedges for the riff on the title of his 2002 book. I’m thinking he may not mind so very much.)


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)