Just a few noteworthy odds and ends today that have some relevance to Africa and the US Africa Command, the first is distinctly odd:
US Government Takeover of Human Terrain System,
HTS Program Managers Spared, Laugh On Way to Bank
On February 9, 2009, Human Terrain System (HTS) program manager Steve Fondacaro informed HTS employees that they were being converted to Term Government Employees. The catalyst for the drastic change was, according to Fondacaro, the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi Government. Yet, sources believe there is something fishy about the SOFA cover, particularly since their treatment by HTS program management (Steve Fondacaro, Steve Rotkoff-Deputy Program Manager, and Montgomery McFate-Sapone-Senior Social Scientist) over the past year has been anything but stellar. Further, BAE SYSTEMS was not notified by HTS program management but, according to sources, by HTS employees who had gotten word of the changes afoot through the HTS grapevine.
…
BAE SYSTEMS and the primes are scrambling right now to get to the bottom of what this is about since they were clueless until employees starting burning up the phone lines and email. Most of the employees are worried because if they are forced to covert (alternative is to quit) so really no choice, that they are not tied to their contractor but at the mercy of the TRADOC and they essentially become non-permanent government army employees.
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KBR has been convicted of bribing officials in Nigeria:
Kellogg Brown & Root LLC Pleads Guilty to Foreign Bribery Charges and Agrees to Pay $402 Million Criminal Fine Enforcement Actions by DOJ and SEC Result in Penalties of $579 Million for KBR’s Participation in a Scheme to Bribe Nigerian Government Officials to Obtain Contracts
WASHINGTON – Kellogg Brown & Root LLC (KBR), a global engineering, construction and services company based in Houston, pleaded guilty today to charges related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for its participation in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to obtain engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts, Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division announced. The EPC contracts to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities on Bonny Island, Nigeria, were valued at more than $6 billion.
KBR entered guilty pleas to a five-count criminal information in federal court in Houston before U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison. As part of the plea agreement, KBR agreed to pay a $402 million criminal fine.
According to court documents, KBR was part of a four-company joint venture that was awarded four EPC contracts by Nigeria LNG Ltd. (NLNG) between 1995 and 2004 to build LNG facilities on Bonny Island. The government-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was the largest shareholder of NLNG, owning 49 percent of the company.
KBR pleaded guilty to conspiring with its joint-venture partners and others to violate the FCPA by authorizing, promising and paying bribes to a range of Nigerian government officials, including officials of the executive branch of the Nigerian government, NNPC officials, and NLNG officials, to obtain the EPC contracts. KBR also pleaded guilty to four counts of violating the FCPA related to the joint venture’s payment of tens of millions of dollars in “consulting fees” to two agents for use in bribing Nigerian government officials.
KBR admitted that, at crucial junctures before the award of the EPC contracts, KBR’s former CEO, Albert “Jack” Stanley, and others met with three successive former holders of a top-level office in the executive branch of the Nigerian government to ask the office holder to designate a representative with whom the joint venture should negotiate bribes to Nigerian government officials. Stanley and others negotiated bribe amounts with the office holders’ representatives and agreed to hire the two agents to pay the bribes. According to court documents, the joint venture paid approximately $132 million to the first agent, a consulting company incorporated in Gibraltar, and more than $50 million to the second agent, a global trading company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, during the course of the bribery scheme. KBR admitted that it had intended for these agents’ fees to be used, in part, for bribes to Nigerian government officials.
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Possibly following advice from Wired’s Danger Room, Blackwater is rebranding, now calling itself Xe, pronounced zee.
They never picked up on our Hello Kitty-style logos. But finally, after a godawful year and a half, the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide is taking Danger Room’s advice, and changing its name to something opaque and hard-to-pronounce.
So, goodbye Blackwater. Hello, Xe. No, seriously. Xe — “pronounced like the letter ‘z,'” the Associated Press reports. …
For the last year or so,
lackwaterXe has been moving away from its core business of diplomat protection, and into — well, just about everything else, it seems. Firm CEO Erik Prince has put together teams of spies-for-hire. The company is pushing ahead with plans to protect commercial ships, traveling through pirate-packed seas. And in case that doesn’t work out, the company is making custom rifles, marketing spy blimps, assembling a fleet of light attack aicraft, and billing itself as experts in everything from cargo handling to dog training to construction management. It’s even training pro athletes.Firm president Gary Jackson says in a memo to employees that the new name (and the renaming of its firing range as “U.S. Training Center Inc.”) are just reflections of that diversification. (graphic h/t Danger Room)
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And especially noteworthy, WikiLeaks has published an archive of CRS, Congressional Research Service documents (h/t Koranteng) including the January 2009 report:
PDF: Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa
Most of the issues covered in the report have been discussed in this blog. It is interesting to see a number of my assumptions confirmed in this way. I’ll copy just a couple of quotes.
… five factors that have shaped increased U.S. interest in Africa in the past decade: oil, global trade [China], armed conflicts, terror, and HIV/AIDS. …
A senior DOD official reportedly commented in 2003 that “a key mission for U.S. forces (in Africa) would be to ensure that Nigeria’s oil fields… are secure.” In spite of conflict in the Niger Delta and other oil producing areas, the potential for deep water drilling in the Gulf of Guinea is high, and analysts estimate that Africa may supply as much as 25% of all U.S. oil imports by 2015.
February 14, 2009 at 2:00 am
Thanks for the link to the January 2009 version of the CRS report.
However, your comments do risk selective use of facts. The full sentence that you partially quoted first says: “In 2004 an advisory panel of Africa experts authorized by Congress to propose new policy initiatives identified five factors that have shaped increased U.S. interest in Africa in the past decade: oil, global trade, armed conflicts, terror, and HIV/AIDS.(42)” Those are independent advisors to Congress, not U.S. government policy-makers. The cited footnote (42) adds a quote from a Defense Department official saying, “beyond the more conventional threats we traditionally address, I believe we must now also prepare to respond to the consequences of dramatic population migrations, pandemic health issues and significant food and water shortages due to the possibility of significant climate change.”
That discussion is all on Page 12 of the CRS report.
Page 1 of the report discusses motivations for creating the command. It says:
‘Although the precise wording of AFRICOM’s mission statement has evolved since the command was first announced, DOD officials have broadly suggested that the command’s mission is to promote U.S. strategic objectives by working with African partners to help strengthen stability and security in the region through improved security capability and military professionalization.
‘A key aspect of the command’s mission is its supporting role to other agencies’ and departments’ efforts on the continent. But like other combatant commands, AFRICOM will also be expected to oversee military operations, when directed, to deter aggression and respond to crises.
‘The Administration’s motivation for the creation of a new unified command for Africa evolved in part out of concerns about DOD’s division of responsibility for Africa among three geographic commands, which reportedly posed coordination challenges. Although some military officials have advocated the creation of an Africa Command for over a decade, recent crises highlighted the challenges created by “seams” between the COCOMs’ boundaries. One such seam was located between Sudan (then within CENTCOM’s AOR), Chad and the Central African Republic (then within EUCOM’s AOR), an area of increasing instability. The United States, acting first alone and later as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has provided airlift and training for African peacekeeping troops in the Darfur region of Sudan, and although CENTCOM had responsibility for Sudan, much of the airlift and training was done by EUCOM forces.
‘In addition, close observers say that EUCOM and CENTCOM had become overstretched particularly given the demands created by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Commander of EUCOM, whose AOR included 92 countries prior to AFRICOM’s creation, testified before Congress that:
‘”the increasing strategic significance of Africa will continue to pose the greatest security stability challenge in the EUCOM AOR. The large ungoverned area in Africa, HIV/AIDS epidemic, corruption, weak governance, and poverty that exist throughout the continent are challenges that are key factors in the security stability issues that affect every country in Africa.”
‘His predecessor, General James Jones, pointed out in 2006 that EUCOM’s staff were spending more than half their time on Africa issues, up from almost none three years prior.’
February 14, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Hi Vince, and welcome,
The quotes are selections, so of course they are selective. I selected those two quotations because I had mentioned Nigeria earlier in the post, and they seemed relevant to that country. If I were doing an overview of the post I would have handled it at greater length, and covered more of the variety of information there.
The report actually hedges its bets, there is lots of: on the one hand … on the other hand … these people say this … other people say that … , and lots of fashionable management speak about Africom’s role. The answer to most of the questions lies in how the money is appropriated and spent.
I think Steve Coll summed up the problem with Africom, and it is a serious problem for the American people as well as the people of Africa, when he wrote, and I wrote about here, that:
And the rest of the US government, the American people, and US foreign policy ARE starved, by comparison, for resources.
You didn’t mention your role, which as I recall is Chief of Public Information U.S. Africa Command. Usually I think you do mention it in comments, so I guess you were rushed or something. I have seen your byline in a number of places, but other readers of this post may not be familiar with your work.
I try to provide links to the original documents so people can read them for themselves and draw their own conclusions. I am a strong supporter of open government and an informed citizenry who can judge information for themselves. If I did you a favor by providing the link, I’m glad to be of service.
February 14, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Xcroc,
Thanks for posting my affiliation as a spokesman for Africa Command. You’re right that I was somewhat rushed.
Vince Crawley
spokesman
U.S. Africa Command
February 15, 2009 at 1:32 am
in case you missed it
goldwyn’s draft for Pursuing U.S. Energy Security Interests in Africa
A chapter in the forthcoming CSIS Africa Program report: Africa Policy in the George W. Bush Years: Recommendations for the Obama Administration
February 17, 2009 at 11:41 pm
b real, I know you will be a lot busier in the near future. When you find the time to visit, or to comment, you are always most welcome. Your comments and links provide much useful information, and much to think about. I find them invaluable. Thanks also for the link above, I had not seen that.