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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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September 3rd,
2010 - Blackwater Won Contracts Through a Web of Companies |
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Blackwater Won Contracts
Through a Web of Companies By James Risen & Mark Mazzetti New York Times September 3, 2010 Washington - Blackwater
Worldwide created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in
part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the
security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq,
according to Congressional investigators and former Blackwater officials. While it is not clear how
many of those businesses won contracts, at least three had deals with the
United States military or the Central Intelligence Agency, according to
former government and company officials. Since 2001, the intelligence agency
has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its
affiliates, according to a United States government official. The Senate Armed Services
Committee this week released a chart that identified 31 affiliates of
Blackwater, now known as Xe Services. The network was disclosed as part of a
committee’s investigation into government contracting. The investigation
revealed the lengths to which Blackwater went to continue winning contracts
after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September
2007. That episode and other reports of abuses led to criminal and
Congressional investigations, and cost the company its lucrative security
contract with the State Department in Iraq. The network of companies -
which includes several businesses located in offshore tax havens - allowed
Blackwater to obscure its involvement in government work from contracting
officials or the public, and to assure a low profile for any of its
classified activities, said former Blackwater officials, who, like the
government officials, spoke only on condition of anonymity. Senator Carl Levin, the
Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a
statement that it was worth “looking into why Blackwater would need to create
the dozens of other names” and said he had requested that the Justice
Department investigate whether Blackwater officers misled the government when
using subsidiaries to solicit contracts. The C.I.A.’s continuing
relationship with the company, which recently was awarded a $100 million
contract to provide security at agency bases in Afghanistan, has drawn harsh
criticism from some members of Congress, who argue that the company’s
tarnished record should preclude it from such work. At least two of the
Blackwater-affiliated companies, XPG and Greystone, obtained secret contracts
from the agency, according to interviews with a half dozen former Blackwater
officials. A C.I.A. spokesman, Paul
Gimigliano, said that Xe’s current duties for the agency were to provide
security for agency operatives. Contractors “do the tasks we ask them to do
in strict accord with the law; they are supervised by C.I.A. staff officers;
and they are held to the highest standards of conduct” he said. “As for Xe
specifically, they help provide security in tough environments, an assignment
at which their people have shown both skill and courage.” Congress began to
investigate the affiliated companies last year, after the shooting deaths of
two Afghans by Blackwater security personnel working for a subsidiary named
Paravant, which had obtained Pentagon contracts in Afghanistan. In a Senate
hearing earlier this year, Army officials said that when they awarded the
contract to Paravant for training of the Afghan Army, they had no idea that
the business was part of Blackwater. While Congressional
investigators have identified other Blackwater-linked businesses, it was not
the focus of their inquiry to determine how much money from government
contracts flowed through the web of corporations, especially money earmarked
for clandestine programs. The former company officials say that Greystone did
extensive work for the intelligence community, though they did not describe
the nature of the activities. The firm was incorporated in Barbados for tax
purposes, but had executives who worked at Blackwater’s headquarters in North
Carolina. The former company officials
say that Erik Prince, the business’s founder, was eager to find ways to
continue to handle secret work after the 2007 shootings in Baghdad’s Nisour
Square and set up a special office to handle classified work at his farm in
Middleburg, Va. Enrique Prado, a former top
C.I.A. official who joined the contractor, worked closely with Mr. Prince to
develop Blackwater’s clandestine abilities, according to several former
officials. In an internal e-mail obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Prado
claimed that he had created a Blackwater spy network that could be hired by
the American government. “We have a rapidly growing,
worldwide network of folks that can do everything from surveillance to ground
truth to disruption operations,” Mr. Prado wrote in the October 2007 message,
in which he asked another Blackwater official whether the Drug Enforcement
Administration might be interested in using the spy network. “These are all
foreign nationals,” he added, “so deniability is built in and should be a big
plus.” It is not clear whether Mr.
Prado’s secret spy service ever conducted any operations for the government.
From 2004 to 2006, both Mr. Prado and Mr. Prince were involved in a C.I.A.
program to hunt senior leaders of Al Qaeda that had been outsourced to
Blackwater, though current and former American officials said that the
assassination program did not carry out any operations. Company employees
also loaded bombs and missiles onto Predator drones in Pakistan, work that
was terminated last year by the C.I.A. Both Mr. Prince and Mr.
Prado declined to be interviewed for this article. The company is facing a
string of legal problems, including the indictment in April of five former
Blackwater officials on weapons and obstruction charges, and civil suits
stemming from the 2007 shootings in Iraq. The business is up for sale
by Mr. Prince, who colleagues say is embittered by the public criticism and
scrutiny that Blackwater has faced. He has not been implicated in the
criminal charges against his former subordinates, but he has recently moved
his family to Abu Dhabi, where he hopes to focus on obtaining contracts from
governments in Africa and the Middle East, according to colleagues and former
company officials. After awarding Blackwater
the new security contract in June, the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta,
publicly defended the decision, saying Blackwater had “cleaned up its act.” But Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an
Illinois Democrat and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she
could not understand why the intelligence community had been unwilling to cut
ties to Blackwater. “I am continually and increasingly mystified by this
relationship,” she said. “To engage with a company that is such a chronic,
repeat offender, it’s reckless.” It is unclear how much of
Blackwater’s relationship with the C.I.A. will become public during the criminal
proceedings in North Carolina because the Obama administration won a court
order limiting the use of classified information. Among other things, company
executives are accused of obtaining large numbers of AK-47s and M-4 automatic
weapons, but arranging to make it appear as if they had been bought by the
sheriff’s department in Camden County, N.C. Such purchases were legal only if
made by law enforcement agencies. But defense lawyers say they
hope to argue that Blackwater had a classified contract with the C.I.A. and
wanted at least some of the guns for weapons training for agency officers. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/world/middleeast/04blackwater.html |