The company has dispatched 14 employees to Bogota under the direction of a retired Army major general. Administration officials say MPRI personnel are doing precisely what uniformed American soldiers have traditionally done. They say MPRI was hired not because it has any special expertise, but because U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees American military operations in Latin America, cannot spare 14 men to send to Colombia. Nevertheless, U.S.-Colombia policy experts say the use of firms like MPRI is intended primarily to limit the risk of American military casualties there. If somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it's not a member of the armed forces.
Nobody wants to see American military men killed.
It also raises the question of the privatization of American foreign policy. The Congress has little choice but to rely on the Pentagon to supervise the contractors, but the Pentagon too often does not pay close attention. We have no way of knowing if the contractors are training these Colombian soldiers in ways that are fully consistent with U.S. policy, laws and procedures. MPRI and the Pentagon both denied requests by the Times to review the MPRI contract, which is renewable each year. MPRI spokesman Ed Soyster, a retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Department's Defense Intelligence Agency, compared the need for secrecy in Colombia with the need for secrecy in Vietnam.