Corporate Mercenaries Spy on Americans and Seize their Assets

by Daniel Forbes, ALTERNET

Quoting a Government Accounting Office Report, The Miami Herald noted that DynCorp "has been paid at least $270 million since 1991 to provide airplane and helicopter pilots and mechanics for the war on drugs in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala." Jason 23 airplanes from an Air Force base in Florida. Vest reported in the Nation that DynCorp oversees a fleet of 46 helicopters.

The Nation obtained a copy of DynCorp's contract, which states that along with "fumigation and search-and-rescue," DynCorp's other responsibilities include "flying local troops in to destroy drug labs and coca or poppy fields." A nifty enabler, the guise of fighting drugs allows the U.S. to fly troops around in other countries' civil wars. This February DynCorp employees flew into the midst of a firefight to rescue Colombian police shot down by leftist guerillas. As to DynCorp's domestic drug-war boodle -- its five-year, $316 million contract helping the Department of Justice seize assets -- there's been little public notice of it outside National Defense magazine.

DynCorp told the magazine that most of the 1,000 staffers involved in the program, funded through 2003, hold "secret' clearances" and have been involved in more than 60,000 seizures in the United States. Among other things, they provide 'criminal-intelligence collection and analysis, forensic support and asset identification and tracking.' " So this band of retired military honchos has 1,000 operatives with some sort of "secret" mojo, spying on the American public at the feds' behest and helping to hoover up vast sums of money in over 60,000 seizures . . . According to the Chicago Sun-Times, "In 80 percent of forfeitures, in fact, charges never are filed." The paper put the total value of assets seized since 1985 by all levels of government at more than $7 billion. It's easy, when safeguards we take for granted in criminal proceedings are reversed: current law presumes that the property is guilty, and owners have to spend time and money proving that "it" wasn't involved in a crime.