February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Aegis Defense Services secured the $292.5 million contract for security work in Iraq.
The contract, awarded in May, is one of the largest for such work in Iraq and was given to Aegis in the face of six initial rival bids, including one by a U.S. company, Dyncorp.
It was a protest brought by Dyncorp that put the Aegis contract on hold and resulted in an investigation and legal determination by the GAO, the congressional and federal government financial and legal watchdog, which, until recently, was known as the General Accounting Office.
Aegis is headed by former British army Lt. Col. Tim Spicer, who commanded the Scots Guards regiment in Belfast when teenager Peter McBride was shot dead in September 1992.
McBride was shot in the back and his death remains one of the most controversial of the troubles.
President Bush has been urged to cancel the Aegis contract because of the questions swirling around Spicer, not just in relation to his service in Northern Ireland, but as a result of later business ventures around the world involving so-called “private military companies,” a term widely viewed as merely a sanitized way of describing mercenaries.
The Rev. Sean McManus, president of the Irish National Caucus in Washington, D.C., urged Bush in a letter to intervene and scrap the contract.
McManus stated that the contract had “Irish blood on it.”
“U.S. dollars should not subsidize such a person as Lt. Col. Spicer. And long-suffering Iraq needs him no more than Northern Ireland needed him,” McManus wrote the president.
McManus has also described the contract, specifically awarded by the Department of the Army, as a “terrible insult” to the McBride family and Irish Americans.
Reacting to the GAO determination, McManus said that the INC would now step up its political campaign in an effort to have the Aegis deal scrapped.
“We will be getting more members of Congress on board,” McManus said.
The Iraq contract allows Aegis to supply “security services, anti-terrorism support and analyses, movement escort services, and close personal protection services” in Iraq.
When contacted by the Echo, a spokeswoman for the GAO referred the matter to the GAO’s Web site, which contained an explanation of the office’s determination.
According to the ruling, Dyncorp “contended that Aegis lacked the requisite responsibility to perform this contract due, in part, to certain alleged activities of Aegiss [sic] principal director and largest shareholder.
“We deny the protest,” the GAO determination stated.