Pentagon “Believes” It Has Accounted For “Most” of Its Private Security Contractors

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


“We believe these numbers include most subcontractors and service contractors hired by prime contractors under DoD contracts,” reads the fine print of the latest Pentagon report (.doc) on the number of armed private contractors currently working in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the Central Command’s area of responsibility. This should give us at least some pause about the sort of exact numbers presented in the report.

According to the Pentagon’s fuzzy math, as of December 31, 2008, it had 8,701 armed security contractors in Iraq, of which 727 were Americans, 6,909 were Third Country Nationals, and 1,065 were Iraqis. This represented a 12 percent decrease as compared with the same time last year. Afghanistan, on the other hand, saw a 1 percent increase in armed contractors over the same period to… about 3,184. It will be interesting to see how this number skyrockets over the coming year as the Pentagon steps up its presence there.

One thing to note: the numbers reflect only those armed security contractors working on Pentagon contracts. Blackwater’s gun-toating coterie is therefore absent from the figures. Very shortly, of course, they’ll be absent altogether thanks to the State Department’s decision not to renew Blackwater’s contract.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate