Carrie Johnson – The U.S. government has spent more than $770 billion on private contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq since the war began.
And the Justice Department is following the money — aggressively targeting corruption, and even sending investigators into the war zone to build criminal cases.
But the prosecutions are raising some practical difficulties.
Shackled, Handcuffed And Flown To Virginia
One story begins in April 2009, on a rainy day in Afghanistan. Contractor Raymond Azar waited in a cafeteria with a co-worker for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer to come discuss a project.
Instead, a group of federal agents came. Azar’s lawyer Jim Hibey described what happened next.
“So they shackle his feet, they handcuff him at the waist, with a chain around the waist,” Hibey said. “I should say before they do that, they do a full body strip search. Not only is he naked, but when I say full body I mean full body cavity search.”
Azar was charged with bribing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The feds hustled Azar onto a plane, where he set off, hooded, on a 17-hour flight to Virginia.
Hibey says that Azar, who’s from Lebanon, spoke little English at the time, surely not enough to understand a Miranda warning. “They claim that they advised him of his rights,” Hibey said. “The guy can’t speak English but they advised him of his rights? He doesn’t know a right from his left.”
The amount of the bribes? Not much more than $100,000.
Azar traveled on a chartered plane, was held for the next several months in U.S. custody, and eventually pleaded guilty late last year. So did his American-born co-worker and her sister, a retired contracting officer for the Army Corps in Afghanistan.
Azar returned home to his family a few months ago.



HOUSTON, May 12, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) —