FRONTLINE TV Review 'Private Warriors': Non-Military Workers Take Serious Risks for Serious Money

In "Private Warriors," "Frontline" takes a full hour tonight to look at the street-level mayhem in Baghdad and the life-and-death stakes for private security firms, which the United States military employs as protectors and shuttlers in the war zone. The result is appropriately, engagingly upsetting.

True to the era of terror, wherever these guardians roam, the enemy does not make himself known until it's nearly too late. The scariest moments in the program occur when a convoy of tinted-window S.U.V.'s ferries "Frontline" journalists to the Green Zone, the government compound in Baghdad, and gets stuck in a mundane logjam on a city highway. Jumpy guards in sunglasses emerge from the S.U.V.'s and communicate through mini-mikes and earpieces. Will the rusted-out, cream-colored sedan prove to be a disabled vehicle amid idling traffic or a starting point for flying shrapnel?

What's certain enough is the catastrophic regularity of crossfire. The American presence in Iraq may be an exacerbating force or a mitigating one, depending on one's political perspective, but "Frontline" tries to make it clear to all partisans that there is a huge deployment of expensive, extra-military manpower over there.

The companies contracted to assist the allied effort include some Americans with military training. But this force is mainly made up of workers with a shared interest in making serious money for undertaking serious risk. Erinys, the South African company with $150 million in Iraq-based security contracts, is not, for instance, motivated by common nationality, as its ranks include guards from South Africa, Britain and Russia. The force also lacks the military's typically regimented style of hierarchy and accountability, with a chain of command that seems unclear and ungovernable.

"We are accountable to the coalition forces and we're a very, very professional and disciplined company," says an Erinys spokesman. Then a caught-on-camera morning meeting of such guards ends with this disturbing call: "As always, be safe, but if necessary, be lethal. Have a great day."

I'm having a hard time seeing anything wrong with that sentiment. Why would they carry guns, if not to provide lethal force when necessary?

Any commander on the scene of hostilities or at the focus of the logistical chain will tell you that he doesn't want civilians, especially armed, mercinary civilians, near his forces or operational site. We have made several serious mistakes in this operation. Among the most prominent would be the use of civilian contractors doing jobs that realistically should be done by GIs. Motor transport of critical supplies of POL, ammo, personnel and support equipment should not be assigned to companies like KBR or Haliburton. No matter how much these civilians are getting paid, they will bug-out on the on-scene commander at a citical time if the threat, in their subjective opinion, is serious. Whereas a GI in the same situation would not, his NCOs would see to that. GIs do not want to humiliate themselves or let down their buddies on the left or right. A civilian in the game only for the payday has no similar motivation to stay and complete his mission.

Support roles like food service, vehicle maintenance, personnel and finance in the far rear areas, like Kuwait, are marginally acceptable to be contracted out to civilians. Contrariwise, moving fuel, food, ammo trucks to the site of the fighting is not.

The only civilians I ever saw in the potentially hot spots of Europe or SEA were the tech reps. of engine and airframe manufacturers, and they were always more or less cloistered within the confines of a base like DaNang, Bien Hoa or Rhein-Main.

The misstep of having civilians on the scene where bullets are flying is only one of many made by Rumsfeld.

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