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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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December 10th,
2009 - Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids |
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Blackwater
Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids By James Risen & Mark Mazzetti New York Times December 10, 2009 Washington - Private
security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s
most sensitive activities - clandestine raids with agency officers against
people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the
transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and
intelligence officials. The raids against suspects
occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency
from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what
company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees
and current and former intelligence officers said. Several former Blackwater
guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that
the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military
and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for
C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in
missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice
that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield. Separately, former
Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on some C.I.A. flights
transporting detainees in the years after the 2001 terror attacks in the
United States. The secret missions
illuminate a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private
security company than government officials had acknowledged. Blackwater’s
partnership with the C.I.A. has been enormously profitable for the North
Carolina-based company, and became even closer after several top agency
officials joined Blackwater. “It became a very brotherly
relationship,” said one former top C.I.A. officer. “There was a feeling that
Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency.” George Little, a C.I.A.
spokesman, would not comment on Blackwater’s ties to the agency. But he said
the C.I.A. employs contractors to “enhance the skills of our own work force,
just as American law permits.” “Contractors give you
flexibility in shaping and managing your talent mix - especially in the short
term - but the accountability’s still yours,” he said. Mark Corallo, a spokesman
for Blackwater, said Thursday that it was never under contract to participate
in clandestine raids with the C.I.A. or with Special Operations personnel in
Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. Blackwater’s role in the
secret operations raises concerns about the extent to which private security
companies, hired for defensive guard duty, have joined in offensive military
and intelligence operations. Representative Rush D. Holt,
a New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the House Select Intelligence
Oversight Panel, said in an interview that “the use of contractors in
intelligence and paramilitary operations is a scandal waiting to be
examined.” While he declined to comment on specific operations, Mr. Holt said
that the use of contractors in such operations “got way out of hand.” He
added, “It’s been very troubling to a lot of people.” Blackwater, now known as Xe
Services, has come under intense criticism for what Iraqis have described as
reckless conduct by its security guards, and the company lost its lucrative
State Department contract to provide diplomatic security for the United States
Embassy in Baghdad earlier this year after a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqi
civilians dead. Blackwater’s ties to the
C.I.A. have emerged in recent months, beginning with disclosures in The New
York Times that the agency had hired the company as part of a program to
assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and to assist in the C.I.A.’s Predator drone
program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.
director, recently initiated an internal review examining all Blackwater
contracts with the agency to ensure that the company was performing no
missions that were “operational in nature,” according to one government
official. Five former Blackwater
employees and four current and former American intelligence officials
interviewed for this article would speak only on condition of anonymity
because Blackwater’s activities for the agency were secret and former
employees feared repercussions from the company. The Blackwater employees
said they participated in the raids or had direct knowledge of them. Along with the former
officials, they provided few details about the targets of the raids in Iraq
and Afghanistan, although they said that many of the Iraq raids were directed
against members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. To corroborate the claims of the
company’s involvement, a former Blackwater security guard provided
photographs to The Times that he said he took during the raids. They showed
detainees and armed men whom he and a former company official identified as
Blackwater employees. The former intelligence officials said that
Blackwater’s work with the C.I.A. in Iraq and Afghanistan had grown out of
its early contracts with the spy agency to provide security for the C.I.A.
stations in both countries. In the spring of 2002, Erik
Prince, the founder of Blackwater, offered to help the spy agency guard its
makeshift Afghan station in the Ariana Hotel in Kabul. Not long after Mr.
Prince signed the security contract with Alvin B. Krongard, then the C.I.A.’s
third-ranking official, dozens of Blackwater personnel - many of them former
members of units of the Navy Seals or Army Delta Force - were sent to provide
perimeter security for the C.I.A. station. But the company’s role soon
changed as Blackwater operatives began accompanying C.I.A. case officers on
missions, according to former employees and intelligence officials. A similar progression
happened in Iraq, where Blackwater was first hired for “static security” of
the Baghdad station. In addition, Blackwater was charged with providing
personal security for C.I.A. officers wherever they traveled in the two
countries. That meant that Blackwater personnel accompanied the officers even
on offensive operations sometimes begun in conjunction with Delta Force or
Navy Seals teams. A former senior C.I.A.
official said that Blackwater’s role expanded in 2005 as the Iraqi insurgency
intensified. Fearful of the death or capture of one of its officers, the
agency banned officers from leaving the Green Zone in Baghdad without
security escorts, the official said. That gave Blackwater greater
influence over C.I.A. clandestine operations, since company personnel helped
decide the safest way to conduct the missions. The former American
intelligence officials said that Blackwater guards were supposed to only
provide perimeter security during raids, leaving it up to C.I.A. officers and
Special Operations military personnel to capture or kill suspected insurgents
or other targets. “They were supposed to be
the outer layer of the onion, out on the perimeter,” said one former
Blackwater official of the security guards. Instead, “they were the drivers
and the gunslingers,” said one former intelligence official. But in the chaos of the
operations, the roles of Blackwater, C.I.A., and military personnel sometimes
merged. Former C.I.A. officials said that Blackwater guards often appeared
eager to get directly involved in the operations. Experts said that the
C.I.A.’s use of contractors in clandestine operations falls into a legal gray
area because of the vagueness of language laying out what tasks only
government employees may perform. P.W. Singer, an expert in
contracting at the Brookings Institution, said that the types of jobs that
have been outsourced in recent years make a mockery of regulations about
“inherently governmental” functions. “We keep finding functions
that have been outsourced that common sense, let alone U.S. government
policy, would argue should not have been handed over to a private company,”
he said. “And yet we do it again, and again, and again.” According to one former
Blackwater manager, the company’s involvement with the C.I.A. raids was
“widely known” by Blackwater executives. “It was virtually continuous, and
hundreds of guys were involved, rotating in and out,” over a period of
several years, the former Blackwater manager said. One former Blackwater guard
recalled a meeting in Baghdad in 2004 in which Erik Prince addressed a group
of Blackwater guards working with the C.I.A. At the meeting in an air hangar
used by Blackwater, the guard said, Mr. Prince encouraged the Blackwater
personnel “to do whatever it takes” to help the C.I.A. with the intensifying
insurgency, the former guard recalled. But it is not clear whether
top C.I.A. officials in Washington knew or approved of the involvement by
Blackwater officials in raids or whether only lower-level officials in
Baghdad were aware of what happened on the ground. The new details of
Blackwater’s involvement in Iraq come at a time when the House Intelligence
Committee is investigating the company’s role in the C.I.A.’s assassination
program, and a federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating a wide
range of allegations of illegal activity by Blackwater and its personnel,
including gun running to Iraq. Several former Blackwater
personnel said that Blackwater guards involved in the C.I.A. raids used
weapons, including sawed-off M-4 automatic weapons with silencers, that were
not approved for use by private contractors. In separate interviews, former
Blackwater security personnel also said they were handpicked by senior
Blackwater officials on several occasions to participate in secret flights
transporting detainees around war zones. They said that during the
flights, teams of about 10 Blackwater personnel provided security over the
detainees. “A group of individuals were
selected who could manage detainees without the use of lethal force,” said
one former Blackwater guard who participated in one of the flights. Intelligence officials deny
that the agency has ever used Blackwater to fly high-value detainees in and
out of secret C.I.A. prisons that were shut down earlier this year. Mr.
Corallo, the Blackwater spokesman, said that company personnel were never
involved in C.I.A. “rendition flights,” which transferred terrorism suspects
to other countries for interrogation. Barclay Walsh contributed
research. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/us/politics/11blackwater.html |