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U.S. ignores protest over Spicer contract

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

However, it appeared unlikely that the U.S. would back out of the deal.
President Bush has been urged to cancel the contract that involves a onetime British army officer linked to the death of a teenager in Northern Ireland.
The death of Peter McBride, shot dead by two members of the Scots Guards regiment, remains one of the most controversial during the troubles.
The regiment was commanded at the time by Lt. Col. Tim Spicer.
Spicer, since retired from the British military, now heads a private security company, Aegis Defense Services, which was recently awarded a $293 million contract in Iraq, the largest given out by the U.S. government to date for security work in that country.
Fr. Sean McManus, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Irish National Caucus, wants President Bush to scrap the deal.
“I hope this contract will be torn up. And that’s not just being said from an Irish or Irish-American point of view,” McManus said. “This company almost brought down the Tony Blair government in Britain as a result of false allegations.” McManus has previously described the contract between the Pentagon and Aegis as having “Irish blood on it.” He warned President Bush in a letter that it could undo any credit he had gained from Irish-Americans for his support of the Irish peace-process
“U.S. dollars should not subsidize such a person as Lt. Col. Spicer,” he wrote. “And long-suffering Iraq needs him no more than Northern Ireland needed him.”
McManus, in a separate statement, said that the INC was “determined” not to accept what he described as a “terrible insult” to the McBride family and Irish Americans.
McManus raised the issue of the contract during a recent meeting in Washington between representatives of Irish American groups and Ambassador Mitchell Reiss, the Bush administration’s envoy to the North peace process.
The Washington Post reported that after the issue was raised, the State Department passed on the concerns raised by McManus to the Defense Department.
Peter McBride, who was 18, was shot twice in the back by Scots Guards soldiers as he ran from a checkpoint in Belfast on Sept. 4, 1992. McBride was unarmed. Two soldiers were jailed for McBride’s murder in early 1995 but were released in August 1998.
In a letter to the Times newspaper of London, Spicer defended the actions of his men, stating that they had been involved in a terrorist incident and had acted in accordance with the law and their military training.
However, despite the questions surrounding Spicer, and a controversy that stretches into other parts of the world including Asia and Africa, the contract looked this week as if it will be carried to fruition.
U.S. officials and Washington sources have indicated to the Echo that the Defense Department is firmly committed to the Aegis deal and is not considering a replacement for the company, which was awarded the contract in May.
The contract allows Aegis to provide security teams for the Project and Contracting Office, which is responsible for overseeing $18.4 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds for Iraq.
The contract is proceeding despite reports in the Washington Post and Boston Globe referring to the involvement of Tim Spicer in a scandal that erupted in Britain in 1999.
The scandal was linked to problems surrounding Sandline International, a company Spicer also ran and which was involved in defense-related work in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone.
A British parliamentary inquiry found that Sandline had shipped arms to Sierra Leone in contravention of a UN embargo.
Sandline claimed it had acted with British government approval. The accusation had serious implications for the Blair government but the inquiry cleared British ministers of any culpability.
Separately, Sandline’s involvement in efforts to quash rebels in Papua New Guinea in 1997 was followed by an army coup.
“When that country’s army learned that he had received a $36 million contract from the government to brutally suppress a rebellion, the army toppled the sitting government and arrested Spicer, later releasing him,” the Boston Globe reported shortly after Aegis secured the Iraq contract.
Spicer, Sandline’s chief executive officer, quit the company in September 2000 and Sandline went out of business in April of this year, just a few weeks before Aegis secured the Pentagon contract.
Meanwhile, according to the Washington Post, DynCorp, a Texas-based security company, and one of six original bidders for the Iraq contract, has filed a protest with the U.S. government contesting the grounds on which the contract was awarded to Aegis.
Also, the INC’s Fr. McManus vowed to continue his efforts to have Aegis removed from the Pentagon’s list of contractors.
“I will continue to urge the U.S. to scuttle this contract,” he said.
(Susan Falvella-Garraty in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.)

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