Letter Never Sent

Today, half of all defense-related jobs are done by private sector contractors, an increase of about 25 percent since the 1970s. But taking on this type of business will bring CSC controversies it never faced doing systems integration. That the Pentagon outsources management of military bases and IT tasks is not, in itself, troublesome. “It makes a lot of sense,” says David Isenberg, a defense analyst who once worked for a DynCorp subsidiary. “You want the 101st Airborne training to kill people and destroy things, not figuring out how to create a Web site or link this database to that database.”

It’s the expansion of private firms into core functions of the military that is, for many, an alarming trend. A State Department spokesperson told me that DynCorp, with its “wide range of capabilities and experience,” is now crucial to many security functions. Some of these are basic, like piloting planes. But when the government hires DynCorp to oversee the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo or guard the Afghan president or spray crops in Colombia, critics say the motivation is less a need for technical expertise than a desire to conduct operations Congress won’t let the military do, and to keep potentially messy foreign entanglements at arm’s length. In other words, DynCorp and its brethren exist to do Washington’s dirty work.

In 1966, the Office of Management and Budget issued Circular A-76, a rousing call for government to outsource as many of its functions as possible. “The competitive enterprise system, characterized by individual freedom and initiative, is the primary source of national economic strength,” declared the OMB. “The Government should not compete with its citizens.” In 1983, President Reagan turned this policy into a mandate. By then, DynCorp had spent nearly 40 years working the halls of power, and contracts were raining down.

Deploying troops have always squared away their wills and other legal and financial affairs before going into harm’s way. But now, a small number of servicemen are choosing to make a stop at a sperm bank before heading out.

Is this further evidence that war is all about dicks and testosterone?

“I think you get renaissances of conspiracy theories during times of great political upheaval,” he says. The first, he observes, was during the Industrial Revolution, when suspicion centered on covert plotters in secret rooms (an update of the Middle Ages’ fear of Jews and moneymen). Then came the Cold War, and the plotters became Communists. Now conspiracy theorists have seized on globalization, and their bogeymen are industrialists.

Ironically, adds Ronson, to a large extent the world is out of conspiracy theorists’ control. After all, conspiracy theorists tend to be fearful, less educated, less tied in to the power structure. Meanwhile, the leaders of corporations and countries do meet as part of conferences sponsored by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group.

They may not be the cackling puppet masters the extremists imagine, as Ronson found out when he spoke to a Bilderberg invitee — “I don’t want to rule the world,” Ronson was told, “I like to do the gardening and play Scrabble and have sex” — but they do try to exercise influence, and hope their ideas become policy.