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17out that the foreign operatives are contracted to perform strictly defensive missionsrather than offensive operations. 62PMC pay rates are far higher than those of national armed forces. During 2003, TierOne special forces operators (from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia)earned up to US$2000 a day, although this has gradually fallen to approximately $700a day. 63 Far lower rates—around $50 a day—were paid to employees from non-Westerncountries (known as ‘third country nationals’ or TCNs) and Iraqis.The functions performed by PMC include combat support such as intelligence.As a result, seventy per cent of the US Government’s intelligence budget is nowspent on outsourced contracts within all levels of the intelligence community. 64 Thisapplies particularly to the tactical level where contractors work as interrogators,linguists and intelligence analysts in roles that were previously regarded as ‘essentiallygovernmental’ (meaning that the work could previously only be performed bygovernment employees).Some PMC participating in military operations have experienced serious problemsand very negative publicity. Four operatives from the US PMC Blackwater weremurdered in Fallujah in 2004 and their bodies suspended from a bridge. Even moredisturbingly, in 2007, a group of Blackwater operatives opened fire in Nisour Square,Baghdad, killing seventeen Iraqi civilians. 65 Despite these setbacks, by the end of 2007,Blackwater had 2300 personnel deployed in nine countries including the US whereBlackwater armed guards formed part of the response to Hurricane Katrina in NewOrleans. Blackwater is also notable for creating a subsidiary known as ‘Greystone’, abrigade-sized combat force suitable for deployment on UN peace operations. 66Freelance mercenarism declined in significance during the GWOT, but has by nomeans completely disappeared. In 2004, a unit of sixty-four British and South African62 ‘Private Warriors’, Transcript, Frontline, 21 June 2005, . accessed 5 January 2010.63 S Fainaru, Big Boy Rules: America’s mercenaries fighting in Iraq, Da Capo Press, Philadelphia, 2008,p. 136.64 T Shorrock, Spies for Hire: The secret world of intelligence outsourcing, Simon and Shuster, NewYork, 2008, pp. 13, 19–20.65 For detail on these incidents see J Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most PowerfulMercenary Army, Nation Books, New York, 2007.66 S Armstrong, War PLC: The Rise of the New Corporate Mercenary, Faber and Faber, London, 2008,pp. 220–21; Scahill, Blackwater, pp. 43, 59–60, 433–37.