State Department Responds to ArmorGroup Allegations

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


When State Department spokesman Ian Kelly woke up this morning, he may have been anticipating some tough queries from reporters. But he probably wasn’t expecting to field questions about US embassy guards in Kabul engaging in what the Project on Government Oversight has described as “deviant hazing and humiliation,” acts that allegedly included “peeing on people, eating potato chips out of ass cracks, vodka shots out of ass cracks.”

“These are very serious allegations and we are treating them that way,” Kelly told reporters at a briefing this afternoon, after POGO sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton detailing a host of charges relating to ArmorGroup’s $189 million contract to provide security for the US embassy in Kabul. Kelly said Clinton had been informed of the allegations and noted that the matter had been referred to the State Department’s Inspector General. Kelly added that the State Department has “zero tolerance for the type of conduct that is alleged in these documents.”

Yet the State Department seems to have had quite a bit of tolerance for ArmorGroup’s lapses. As one reporter pointed out at the briefing, internal State Department documents, dating back to 2007, have raised serious concerns about ArmorGroup’s handling of the embassy contract. In July 2007, the State Department alerted the company that it had found “defincies” in its work that “endanger performance of the contract to such a degree that the security of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is in jeopardy.” In September 2008, the agency threatened to terminate the contract outright because the company had provided too few guards.

Despite ArmorGroup’s track record, deputy assistant secretary of state for logistics management William Moser told a Senate panel in June that “at no time was the security of American personnel at the US embassy compromised.” He claimed that “we worked with Armor Group” to correct the problems that had been identified. And he maintained that “the performance on the ground by ArmorGroup, North America has been and is sound.”

There’s surely nothing sound about the allegations POGO’s investigation turned up. And it’s not as if the watchdog group is relying on the claims of a few disgruntled employees, either. According to POGO, nearly a tenth of the company’s embassy 450-person security force individually contacted the group with a host of serious concerns. 

So why did Moser go out of his way to defend AmorGroup to Congress? “I’ll have to ask Mr. Moser,” Kelly told reporters. “I’m not exactly sure what he was basing his determination on.” I’m looking forward to finding out. I bet Secretary Clinton is too.

UPDATE: Here are the jaw-dropping photos. NSFW.

Follow Daniel Schulman on Twitter.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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