This is cool. Every once in awhile, the CEO’s of some of the big companies like to communicate with the public in one way or the other. In the case of Triple Canopy, Mr. Balderas is rallying support for CEJA. For Mission Essential Personnel’s CEO, Mr. Taylor was given the chance to speak at a high school graduation ceremony. (please check out both articles below)
I will not comment much about the CEJA. Contractors must be held accountable, and the CEJA could be one tool used to make contractors accountable. On top of the UCMJ and whatever else laws that congress wants to throw in there, I support anything that makes the client happy. My only caveat is that any and all laws implemented must not hinder the strategic value of contractors. National security comes first in my book, and any laws should be viewed with this filter. But yes, stuff like this helps to legitimize contractors and make us an asset and not a liability in the war.
The other thing that jumped up at me was the quote Mr. Taylor made about his interpreters:
“Every patrol working in Afghanistan has got a Mission Essential interpreter walking with them,”.
That is pretty remarkable, and it also brings some attention to what that actually means. That there are ‘contractors’ assisting every combat patrol out there, and those contract interpreters are the only connection between the troops and the locals. That is offensive operations, and without those contractors, there is no way the troops would be effective in that endeavor. Much like how interpreters and civilian scouts were hired by the US Army during the Indian Wars, we are doing the same thing in these current wars.
The other quote that is stunning, is the amount of contract interpreters being used:
“There are 7,700 Pashto speakers in the United States. [About] 3,300 would be eligible to serve in the capacity we need,” Taylor said. “Of them, we employ 1,800 to 1,900. And we know where the rest of them live.”
That is a lot of American contractors putting their lives at risk by walking side by side with the troops in the war. According to T. Christine Miller’s casualty graph, MEP has had 36 KIA over the course of the war. (although the DoL does not show any deaths–so these could be local national deaths or other) Triple Canopy has lost 15 guys as well.
Both companies have sacrificed in this war, and we should not forget these sacrifices or any of the contractor sacrifices during this Memorial Day. I also salute both CEO’s for getting the word out. Perhaps you guys should look into blogging, to further along your strategic communications goals? –Matt
Laying Down the Rules for Private Security Contractors
By Ignacio “Iggy” Balderas
CEO, Triple Canopy
05/24/11
The failure to establish effective accountability over private security contractors (PSCs) hasn’t just obscured important truths about how our nation secures its foreign policy — it has allowed some reckless actors to repeatedly endanger this goal.
We now have a chance to firmly lay down the rules, punish violators and allow the professional PSCs who make me proud every day do the jobs they’re trained to do. This is why I support The Civilian Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (CEJA), which will be reintroduced soon by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT. The bill was originally introduced last year and goes further than the current law in holding contractors accountable and plugs potential legal loopholes that bad actors may take advantage of.
The truth is our nation and our allies depend on PSCs to meet their goals. Without PSCs and the mission flexibility we provide, crucial military personnel and assets would have to be pulled from the front lines to perform tasks such as guarding an embassy gate or checking IDs. This is not why we send our highly-trained soldiers overseas. Private security companies allow soldiers to do what only soldiers can do. And, already strained by repeated deployments, our troops would face even less time at home with their families amid more grueling rotations. Another benefit is that, despite the claims otherwise, PSCs in most cases save the government money, a fact established by a 2008 Congressional Budget Office analysis and a comprehensive 2010 Government Accountability Office report. With federal budgets tight, this fact should not be ignored.
There is no argument that a number of serious incidents involving PSCs have occurred. The lack of an effective legal framework for accountability only adds to the alarm and outrage these incidents cause. Bad actors put lives and critical work at risk and are then allowed to perform more government work, further straining the nation’s difficult missions overseas. Those of us who take this work seriously know what’s at stake, for ourselves, for those we protect, and most of all, for our country.
While Triple Canopy has been working diligently alongside U.S. Government officials performing critical work in distant war zones, I’ve committed us to fighting the good fight on behalf of regulators too. We were proud to help launch the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers, unveiled in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2010, establishing a global set of standards and launching efforts to create effective mechanisms for governance and oversight.
Our work on these issues has allowed us to pursue common goals with groups such as Human Rights First, a leading non-governmental organization committed to the rule of law and human dignity, and another supporter of Sen. Leahy’s legislation. In matters as important as CEJA, we stand side-by-side with Human Rights First in its call for clear standards of accountability. ??By establishing accountability, we can move on to culpability. We can be sure that safeguards are in place and that contractors who break the rules are punished while those that honor the rules are not. Ultimately, how we decide to address questions of accountability and culpability for these incidents must reflect the ideals that America offers: we must be fair, respect the rights of all parties, and seek only justice, free from the influence of politics. And I hope we’ll move past the confusion and politicization when it comes to PSCs and begin to realize that one does not need to be a member of the military in order to serve our country.
If we do not take these steps, we’ll get more of the same: more misunderstandings about what PSCs do, more contracts awarded to the rule-breakers, and more politicization in the vacuum of facts. In the absence of proper accountability, we put our country’s ability to achieve our goals at risk, from the country’s foreign policy to the lives of those on the ground.
Story here.—————————————————————-
Speaking of success, …
Timon grads to hear CEO of language-personnel company
By Samantha Maziarz Christmann
May 26, 2011
Chris Taylor graduated from what is now Bishop Timon St. Jude High School in 1983. Today, as the CEO of a $1 billion global corporation in the nation’s capital, he returns to give the school’s commencement address.
Taylor is chief executive and part owner of Mission Essential Personnel, a specialized employment agency that provides highly trained workers to government and corporate clients around the world.
The company searches out those fluent in some of the world’s most obscure languages and dialects. It screens them, trains them and puts them to work as interpreters, translators, trainers and military intelligence support personnel.
The company, which started in 2000 with two people and a $1,400 investment, employs nearly 8,300 people in 16 countries.
Roughly 90 percent of its business consists of government and military contracts. Early on, it landed a beefy contract and kept building from there.
A large portion of work is generated by the war in Afghanistan.
“Every patrol working in Afghanistan has got a Mission Essential interpreter walking with them,” Taylor said.
Mission Essential competes with multibillion-dollar companies to employ speakers of languages such as Baluchi (spoken in Pakistan), Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan), Tamil (spoken in India and parts of Asia) and Tajik (spoken in Uzbekistan).
“For us, the challenge comes as a matter of degrees. I can find a zillion Arabic speakers, but do they speak Levantine Arabic? Palestinian Arabic?” Taylor said. “If they don’t have that particular ear or that native understanding, they’re not going to fit.”
Mission Essential does extensive research to find possible employees in the United States and abroad, dialing in on those who have just the right skill sets and qualifications to be of value to the company.
“There are 7,700 Pashto speakers in the United States. [About] 3,300 would be eligible to serve in the capacity we need,” Taylor said. “Of them, we employ 1,800 to 1,900. And we know where the rest of them live.”
The company’s intelligence work branched out of its language services. Those working in intelligence are typically foreign-born U.S. citizens, established here for decades. Because they gain some access to sensitive information, they must undergo a rigorous security clearance to determine — among other things — their discretion and loyalty to the country.
That takes an already narrow pool of candidates and trims it to the bone.
“There might be 20 skilled speakers of a certain language, but the amount of people who can be cleared through security might be five,” Taylor said.
While Taylor said his company will continue to support the country’s military in such a capacity, it hopes to expand more into commercial projects and domestic government work that is not conflict-related. Much of that growth will come from the company’s training and technical portfolio.
Taylor was 6 years old when he moved to South Buffalo from Virginia after his father’s death. He attended Holy Family School; Calasanctius, a school for the gifted; St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Joseph’s Collegiate Academy Institute in addition to Bishop Timon.
He later spent 14 years in the Marine Corps and earned a master’s degree in business administration from the College of William & Mary, as well as a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
About 30 minutes into his interview at Mission Essential in 2008, he realized the vice president of human resources he was speaking to was Rob Bogart, a 1986 Bishop Timon grad. Later, he recruited Sunil Ramchand — a 1991 Canisius grad he met at Harvard — from the White House Military Office.
“We were talking over a couple of beers at Harvard, and I mentioned I used to do children’s theater at Niagara University when I was a teenager. Turns out he was at the same show as a 10-year-old in the audience,” Taylor said. “It is such a small world.”
Story here.