By Spencer Ackerman October 4, 2010 | 12:45 pm | Categories: Mercs
As if a Blackwater front group wasn’t enough. The State Department is also giving a slice of its $10 billion security contract to Aegis Defense Services, a company run by a notorious “mercenary king” who’s violated international arms embargoes and tried to overthrow at least two African governments.
Aegis is a private-security giant. Since 2004, it’s held a contract to oversee reconstruction security in Iraq, one of the largest that the Defense Department has ever awarded. And despite much skepticism, government watchdogs have given its performance a thumbs-up. But Aegis’ work has been overshadowed in the public eye by its picaresque, Aston Martin-driving founder, who turns up in an conspicuous number of third-world coup attempts.
If it wasn’t for Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Spicer might be the most colorful (and most notorious) person in the private security field. A former British commando and self-identified “Unorthodox Soldier,” Spicer served in the Falklands, the Gulf war, Bosnia and Northern Ireland. But his infamy came as a private-security pioneer in the 1990s.
Spicer’s first company, Sandline International, got a $36 million deal in 1997 to guard a copper mine for the government of Papua New Guinea before an incensed Army launched a coup and briefly arrested him. Undeterred, the next year Spicer ran 30 tons of weapons to Sierra Leone’s “government in exile” in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. He’s also been connected to a 2004 coup attempt against the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, as Vanity Fair recounted.
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/u-s-hires-gun-runner-coup-plotter-to-guard-diplos/
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