Eric Fair

Eric Fair was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in May 1972. He graduated from Liberty High School in 1990 and went to college to study History in New England. In 1995, he enlisted in the United States Army with the intention of becoming a police officer after his enlistment. The plan was to do his required five years and then go to work for the police force. He went in as a Private and was discharged as a Sergeant.

Fair found life in basic training to be what he expected: difficult, boring and mind numbing. He describes basic training as a simple process in which you keep your head down and follow orders. It was a pretty simple process so long as you did what you were told.

From 1995-2000 he was deployed briefly to Egypt with an organization called the Multinational Force and Observers whose purpose was to ensure that the Camp David treaty between the Egyptians and the Israelis was being enforced. The job was to stand watch and make sure neither side is amassing an army. The observation was done through counting vehicles.

Fair was next stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and was part of the 101st Airborne Division in the Infantry. His job was as a linguist. It was a job he was given after having shown an aptitude for languages on an aptitude test administered by the Army. He spent 1.5 years studying Arabic in Monterey, California in order to be an Arabic Linguist. Although the difficult coursework required studying 10-12 hours a day, it was a great assignment and he knew how lucky he was to have received it.

In 2000, his 5-year commitment was up and he took an honorable discharge. He figured that the language skills he learned were useless since he believed Arabic linguists would never be needed by the Army. He returned to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where he started working as a police officer. It was a great job for Fair and he enjoyed the fact that it was something new every day. About two years in, it was discovered that he had a heart condition. He then had the choice whether to sit at a desk for 20 years or find something else to do. As this was post September 11, 2001, he considered going back to the Army and putting his linguistic skills to use. However, he had a fiancée at the time and decided not to reenlist.

On the day of September 11, 2001, Fair was golfing with his father when he heard about the planes striking the towers at the clubhouse. He went home and proceeded to watch the rest of the events unfold on the television. Seeing those images contributed to his desire to want to get involved. He felt angry and wanted to lash out. He also felt that he had learned Arabic for no good reason and now there was a reason. These factors prompted him to look for a way to get involved. He found that opportunity via CACI [a contracting company with its corporate headquarters based in Arlington, Virginia].

At the time, the armed services were contracting out assignments. In retrospect, Fair’s opinion of this has changed. Contracting freelancers as a system has some merit but it is not black and white. While it saves the United States government billions, the people contracted out receive none of the benefits a soldier gets. Additionally, Fair believes that war should be fought by citizens and that everyone should experience war to understand it.

In 2003, Fair signed a contract with CACI. His contract began with a brief stay at Ft. Bliss, Texas in which he received inoculations but no job training. It was assumed by the contract that he would be ready to do interrogations. Because of the way the job description was worded, in which a person needed language skills and interrogation experience, the military knew it was largely hiring back its own people. There was some effort to coordinate between the Army and CACI but there was a gray area for those who were under outside contract. It was difficult to know where one stood in the chain of command and that was something a person had to figure out on his own.

Fair says that those who were there because of outside contractors thought of themselves as specialized American soldiers. While the popular perception of these individuals is of greedy people with no loyalty, Fair found this not to be the case. For many, the processes of reenlisting simply took too long as you had to reenlist, be paired with a unit, train with a unit and then there was no guarantee you’d deploy. At that point, no one knew how long the conflict would last and they were anxious to get to war quickly. When word came down that Saddam Hussein had been captured, Fair felt disappointed because he figured that it was done and he had missed it