Aegis Defence Services

Also known as Aegis Specialist Risk Management.

Based in London, the company was founded by former Scots Guard Tim Spicer who made headlines with the Sandline affair when he was caught shipping 30 tons of arms to Sierra Leone in apparent violation of a UN weapons embargo and arrested in the 1997 abortive coup in Papua New Guinea. His friend and former Sandline business partner, the ex-SAS officer Simon Mann, also later made headlines for his role as manager of a thwarted coup plot in Equatorial Guinea in 2004. Frederick Forsyth, the author of 'Dogs of War', is an Aegis shareholder.

The firm recently signed a new contract with the Pentagon worth $145m (£79m) over protests from its American competitors. This is an extension of the earlier $293 million 'cost plus' contract that it had signed with the Pentagon in May 2003.

According to Naomi Klein, the CPA's Project Management Office contracted with the firm to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and "embarrassment." In a separate contract, the firm also provides security for employees working on the Iraqi Oil-for-Food corruption inquiry.

The firm employs a total of 930 people in Iraq and besides co-ordinating communications between coalition forces, civilian contractors working on reconstruction projects, and their private security firms, it also provides bodyguards for senior American and Iraqi officials. It operates one national and six regional command-centres and acts as a link between coalition forces and civilian contractors on security issues, relaying information on rebel activity.

In November 2005 Aegis tried to join the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), the only trade organization for security contractors. Aegis' membership bid comes just as the IPOA is trying to reposition the industry as for-profit providers of armed men as peace keepers. In a vote several months ago, IPOA rejected Spicer's company. Spicer was 'surprised' by IPOA's initial rejection 'especially since we were invited to apply,' he said in a recent telephone interview with Corporate Watch.

Employing ex military bullies from Deepcut

Sergeant Michael Dauscha was dismissed from the army after being caught stealing from a supermarket. He stands accused of being involved in systematic cruelty at the Deepcut barracks. He ended up working for a private army in Iraq. In March’s official report into four deaths at the Deepcut army base he was identified only as Sergeant BB and slammed for his “foul abuse” of recruits. The ex-staff sergeant was at Deepcut for 13 months between 1998 and 1999.

Last month’s report by QC Nicholas Blake accused Sergeant BB of hitting male and female recruits, making crude sexual taunts at women and humiliating others at Deepcut in Surrey. He once rode a bike over three squaddies. Dauscha was not at Deepcut when four teenage recruits died between 1995 and 2002 and the report did not implicate him. But the military police recommended he face 11 abuse charges from his time there.

Dauscha ended up working in Iraq for security firm Aegis. Aegis has a $293 million Pentagon contract to coordinate the dozens of private security forces operating in Iraq as well as providing its own teams of bodyguards to the Pentagon. There are 50 private security companies in Iraq, with an estimated 20,000 hired guns working for them. Aegis is supposed to coordinate them all.

Aegis Defence Services had profits of £62 million last year. Rt Hon Field Marshal Lord Inge, the former head of the British army, is a non excutive director of Aegis. Inge sat as part of the team that cleared the government over its claims of weapons of mass destruction in the Butler report. Right wing novelist Frederick Forsyth is also a major shareholder.

Despite now being sacked from his £80,000 a year Baghdad post with Aegis, Dauscha said, “They’ve been very supportive. I’ll probably be going back to Iraq shortly.” Aegis is run by Tim Spicer, a former army lieutenant colonel. Two soldiers in a British military unit under Spicer’s command shot and killed a Catholic teenager, Peter McBride, in Northern Ireland in 1992. The soldiers were subsequently convicted of murder, yet Spicer has steadfastly defended them.

Trophy videos in Iraq

Rod Stoner, a former British army officer and Aegis employee, who worked for the company between 2004 and 2005, posted videos on the internet implicating Aegis in shooting civilians in Iraq. According to a statement from Stoner, “We don’t know whether it was an innocent civilian or whether that was an insurgent—we don’t know, because we never stop.”

The series of “trophy” videos appear to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians. All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on “Route Irish”, a road that links the airport to Baghdad.

In one of the videos, a car is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes into a taxi. In another, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the car before it comes to a slow stop.

Despite denying that the videos had anything to do with Aegis employees, the security company got a high court injunction last Friday against Stoner. This closed down the website and prohibited him from speaking to the press.

PR and Lobbying Firms

Aegis are clients of The S.P.A. Way. a London-based PR firm run by Sara Pearson. The company claims that it does not charge a fee unless its coverage meets three strict criteria, that it should:

1. Be an original piece set up by the Agency
2. Be in the agreed media
3. Carry a minimum of 2 of the 3 agreed messages

A great deal of coverage of Aegis in the UK media could arguably be seen as fitting these requirements.

Pearson's association with Aegis boss Tim Spicer goes back to 1997 when the two were introduced through Michael Grunberg. Pearson hosted the press conference that took place on Spicer's return to Britain following the Sandline Affair in Papua New Guinea.

People

Directors at 26 March 2010

• Dominic Armstrong
• Paul Boateng
• James Ellery
• Sir Graeme Lamb
• [[Jonathan Newman]
• Nicholas Soames

Former Directors

• Field Marshal the Lord Inge KG GCB DL: Former Chairman (Non-executive)
• Keith Henry: Former Deputy Chairman (Non-executive)
• Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer OBE: Chief Executive
• Mark Bullough: Former Director
• Jeffrey Day: Former Director
• David Miller: Former Finance Director
• General Sir Roger Wheeler: GCB CBE: Former Director (Non-executive)
• Sir John Birch KCVO CMG: Former Director (Non-executive)
• Robert McFarlane: Former Director (Non-executive)
• John Davidson: Former Director, Operations
• Richard Slowe: Former Director (Non-executive)

Affiliations

• British Association of Private Security Companies
• Defence Manufacturers' Association
• British Expertise
• Private Security Company Association of Iraq

References, Resources and Contact

Resources

• Robert Baer, Iraq's Mercenary King, Vanity Fair, April 2007
• Max Hastings, We must fight our instinctive distaste for mercenaries, The Guardian, 2 August 2006.
• War on Want Corporations and Conflict: Corporate Mercenaries General press release: 'CURB PRIVATE MILITARY FIRMS' CALL TO BLAIR' EMBARGO: 00.01 hrs, Monday 30 October 2006.
• Alec Klein, For Security in Iraq, a Turn to British Know-How, Washington Post, 24 August 2007.
• Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor, Iraq's hired hands under fire as the pot of gold starts to run low, Guardian, 22 September 2007.