Collateral Damage In Afghanistan Contracting Mess, St. Pete Firm Changed Focus, Name

Posted Sep 27, 2011 by Howard Altman

Updated Sep 27, 2011 at 04:58 PM

The Associated Press has an interesting story about a contracting mess in Afghanistan that has two local ties.

The first involves the subject of the story, Michael Furlong, accused of running an illegal contractor spy ring in Afghanistan.

Between August 2005 and February 2008, Furlong was deputy director of the Joint Military Information Support Command at MacDill. As head of the unit, Furlong was responsible for “military and civilian personnel whose mission is to plan, coordinate, integrate and execute transregional psychological operations to promote U.S. goals and objectives for overseas operations,” then-Maj. Wes Ticer, former spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, told me at the time.

Furlong’s command at MacDill served “as a key contributor” in the Defense Department’s “ongoing efforts to erode adversary power, will and influence,” according to the U.S. Special Operations Command fact book.

The other local connection to this story is a St. Petersburg company called International Media Ventures, which was one of the companies to have received part of the $22 million allotted to Furlong to run his spy network, according to a story broken last year by the New York Times.

The AP story, by their ace Pentagon reporter Kimberly Dozier, says that Furlong resigned from his position with the Air Force because he and his boss were going to be censured over the contracting mess. The story also says that International Media Ventures, tarred by its association with Furlong, “shut its doors, turned radioactive by association with the investigations, even as high-ranking Pentagon officials praised IMV’s work gathering social and civil data to map Afghan society — work that is now being carried out by another contractor.”

Having not seen the documents Dozier obtained, I cannot vouch for what’s happened to Furlong. She’s a great reporter, so no reason to doubt. But I do know this.

IMV did not shut its doors exactly. In November of 2010, the company changed its name to Stratcorp.

They are no longer doing information operations, but they are still providing “media, technology and training solutions for government and commercial clients” according to Stratcorp’s website - at the same 11300 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N. location.

They have the same board of directors, including Dick Pack, president of both companies, who has more than two decades of experience with the military, including many stints as a commander or operations officer, according to both companies’ Web sites. He was the ground planner for “Operation Rice Bowl,” the failed attempt to rescue hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1980.

But there was a big price to pay for the controversy, according to the company’s CEO, Dan Klaeren.

Klaeren says that IMV was going through a rebranding at around the same time the Capstone controversy broke, but that when it did, the company decided to get out of the information operations business completely and changed the name in November, 2010.

Not that they had much choice - despite garnering high praise for the work it did in Afghanistan, monitoring the political, cultural and security atmosphere.

“After the [New York Times] story broke, nobody wanted to do business with that side of the house,” says Klaeren.

That meant a loss of about 20 jobs in the information operations department, “the vast majority“ in the St. Petersburg office, he says.

“Like any small business, we are taking our lumps, but we are healing and moving forward,” he says.

Stratcorp is now focused on media and technology and has opened a technology training center in North Florida, says Klaeren

Last year, when I first profiled the local connections to this story, Pack denied that IMV – which received a good deal of praise, according to the AP story – did anything wrong.

IMV, he told me last year, is an information firm that does not perform military duties.

Tuesday afternoon, Klaeren reiterated that.

The Backstory:
The CIA alleged in late 2009 that Furlong’s private military contractors were running an illegal covert spying network in Afghanistan and Pakistan, managed by legendary ex-spymaster Duane R. Clarridge. The then-CIA station chief complained those contractors were helping target terrorists for capture and kill operations, and getting in the way of agency operations on the ground, according to multiple U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. All officials spoke anonymously to discuss intelligence matters.

Furlong and Clarridge maintained to investigators that they were operating a legal network of paid informants, gathering data on everything from gas prices and local clan disputes to enemy threats against coalition forces. The information was used for everything from mapping tribal loyalties to tracking Taliban bomb-building cells before they could strike, two defense officials said, describing the inquiries.