1893 Anti Pinkerton Act floors Spicer , and the hired thugs of Aegis

Ho.Ho.Ho. Brian X. Scott, a 53-year-old Colorado man, brought a complaint in early April, to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, that a US Federal law of 1893 the Anti-Pinkerton Act prohibited the government from hiring quasi-military forces would be violated. His complaint has been upheld.

Originally enacted to thwart businesses that had hired mercenaries to disrupt labor groups, the immediate effect is a massive blow to Aegis the UK supplier of hired thugs run by Colonel Tim Spicer with his numerous and well connected , and well fed, (eg Right Hon Fatty Soames MP.PC) friends of the Lady Dame Jane Patricia Neville Jones Fan Club and their claqueurs at RUSI won the initial US$293 million, Iraqi security contract in 2004. The continuing contract is said to be worth US$475. Tom Griffin has recently written in Counterpunch (23/5/07) about the complexities and intrigue behind the various contracts for hired thugs in Iraq .. he also provides fascinating detail how easy it was to crack their confidential sites with reports of about patterns of insurgent activity from the "Reconstruction Operation Center."( ROC) reports .

The complainant , Scott has served nearly 13 years on active duty in the U.S. Army and worked for 6 years at the Interior Department on contracting issues. He is now fully employed trying to obtain government contracts and protesting about the the use of private security contractors.
He has previously filed about a dozen protests against the use of the contractors in Iraq. All were filed with the GAO, and all were dismissed.


Scott's succesful legal challenge prompted the Government Accountability Office to immediately dismiss protests brought by two major private security contractors the Army had removed as potential bidders (basically they were too small to handle the size of contract) -- Erinys Iraq, a British firm, and Blackwater USA of North Carolina.

Michael Golden, the GAO's managing associate general counsel for procurement law, said the agency dropped the matter because Scott's court complaint may force the Army to revise the lucrative contract.

The GAO's dismissal of the two protests on Thursday freed the Army to award the contract at any time. UK based Erinys (already a supplier in Iraq, motivated no doubt by greed but under the cloak of legal fairness and constitional correctness) tried to seek a temporary restraining order to prevent the US Army from awarding the contract.

Blackwater who of course may benefit from this change explained through Anne Tyrrell, their spokeswoman for Blackwater, that they do not intend to join Erinys's efforts to obtain a restraining order. "We're leaving it to the process, and we're not going to take it any further," she said. Although DynCorp, the hawkers of prostitutes may well yet get a good chunk of business.

The pic is of our friend Tim "Soldier of Fortune" Spicer , then President of Sandline Int. being arrested in Papua New Guinea March, 1997. he was of course invloved in suplying arms from Bulgaria to supporters (like Rakesh Saxena) who wished to re-install President Kabbah in Sierra Leone - the source of the money for the arms (although denied) being the so called "blood diamonds" smuggled out of that desperately poor country.

It is always worth noting that one of the Directors of Aegis is General Sir Roger Wheeler GCB CBE, Roger had a long and distinguished military career. As Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, a member of the Advisory Board of Thales UK and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Poacher turned gamekeeper or set a thief to catch a thief ?

His chum and chairman is of course the fully paid up founder and member of Lady Dame Jane Patricia Neville Jones Fan Club ... My Lord Field Marshal the Lord Inge KG GCB DL