Warning: The pictures you are about to see are graphic—and may result in you swearing off vodka (and other varieties of hard liquor) permanently. The Project on Government Oversight provided me with a series of photographs—a dozen in all—that depict the bacchanalian goings on at Camp Sullivan, home to the ArmorGroup personnel who guard the nearby US embassy compound in Kabul. On Tuesday, POGO sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton detailing a host of explosive charges relating to ArmorGroup’s management of the embassy contract, including evidence of “near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates.” According to POGO, “witnesses report that the highest levels of AGNA management in Kabul are aware of and have personally observed—or even engaged in—these activities, but have done nothing to stop them.”
As you’ll see below, POGO really wasn’t exaggerating when it spoke of the “Lord of the Flies environment.” Here’s the jaw-dropping proof:
The cover shot for a soon-to-be-released Contractors Gone Wild: The Asses of Afghanistan video?
Did these guys send away for coconut bikinis and grass skirts? I can imagine these items are readily available in a conservative Muslim country like Afghanistan.
Apparently this guy is urinating on himself, and smiling about it too.
And here’s the infamous butt-shot shot—wrong on so many levels.
If you can stomach more—and I don’t blame you if you’ve seen enough—you can find the rest of the photos here. So far ArmorGroup, North America’s parent comany, Wackenhut, is declining to comment. Wise, perhaps, since I can’t imagine there’s a good way to spin this. Meanwhile, the State Department, which has harbored internal concerns about ArmorGroup’s performance for years but still renewed its embassy contract this summer, says it is taking POGO’s allegations very seriously. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters yesterday that the matter has been referred to the agency’s inspector general. In the coming weeks, the agency is going to have some serious explaining to do. Not only concerning its contractor oversight, but about why a top State Department official told Congress in June that ArmorGroup’s “performance on the ground…has been and is sound.”
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