nagl. >> i thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss whether private security companies are performing governmental functionsn support of u.s. milita operations overseas. clarifying the roles of armed securityersonnel and contingency operations is very much in our national security interest. i'm pleased to have the opportunity to discuss it with you today. as you know, when our nation goes to war, contractors go with it. in both iraq and afghanistan there are more private contractors than u.s. troops on the ground. now and for the foreseeable future the united states will be unable to engaging conflicts or reconstruction and stabilization operations of any significant size without private contractors. the system within which this contcting takes place, however, has not caught up with this new rlity. to adapt the u.s. government must embark on a path of ambitious reform. part of that reform has rules regarding tsrcing of functions related to the public interest, tha

nagl and i think dr.avant as well in terms of looking at the totality of the services, and then making a judgment based on that situation as opposed to making an all encompassing position across the board saying this is or is not inherently governmental. >> what about the specific area that dr. stranger raised in moving security in that specific circumstance, concerning all the circumstances, should that deemed to be inherently governmental? >> in my judgment in a war time set field goal you have the staff to be able to perform that function i think it would be advisable to use government employees to do that. again, you have to deal with the practical question about the ability to, in fact, have the people to do the job and somebody needs to perform the mission and i think stan soloway raised some of those concerns as well. >> just to close with you on that point, certainly there are two issue here's, one is whether there's the organic in house government capacity to provide private security contractors.