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Blackwater’s CIA Connection

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Posted on Dec 11, 2009

Reports are coming out that mercenaries from Blackwater Worldwide played central roles in some of the CIA’s most sensitive missions, including clandestine raids and the transport of detainees. Many guards claimed that Blackwater’s participation was so routine that the lines between military and contractor were blurred.  —JCL

The New York Times:

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.

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Tony Wicher's avatar

By Tony Wicher, December 12, 2009 at 10:31 am Link to this comment

Re ChaoticGood

This is not surprising.  Bush and Cheney are monsters
and they hired junior monsters to do their bidding. 
Good riddance to the whole bunch of them.  It’s just
too bad that they will never be prosecuted for war
crimes.”

ChaoticGood,

Don’t be so naive. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are
gone, but what you call the “junior monsters” which
really means people who have been running our
national security state for decades are still there
and still committing war crimes at an undiminished
rate. Obama has caved into them at every step so far.

Report this

By Jim Yell, December 12, 2009 at 9:45 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

The entire idea of the government abdicating its responsibilities to unregulated private enterprise has already proved itself bogus. It does not lower the cost of doing things and it sets the stage for pre-emption of the public safety and interests by corporations and mobsters.

The CIA has been allowed too much freedom and too much latitude to break laws, sneak around and mis-direct government monies to gather power to themselves. It is a shadow government with no accountability and may well be where the power center is in this country. All paid for by the people they abuse. It can not be fixed. It must be closed down and a new intellegence system constructed that can not go off the rails, can not hide their crimes behind state secrets. Every nasty thing our country has gotten into from the inception of this organization has had the CIA behind the crimes.

No punishment, no control, no future for the country.

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Purple Girl's avatar

By Purple Girl, December 12, 2009 at 5:13 am Link to this comment

And what Top Secret Intell was shared with this Non Clearanced organization during these co-oped missions?
Who broke this National Security protocol by sharing Intell or highly classified information?
Beyond the leak of Valarie Plame, the Bushies may be facing far more charges of jeporadizing national security- If not Treason, if that info was used to Blackwaters advantage instead of Ours.

Report this

By jean Gerard, December 11, 2009 at 6:03 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

What does it say when the country that has by far the largest,  most formidable
fighting forces in the world, including the most intricate intelligence systems
and the most sophisticated weapons and communication systems in the world,
is fighting a small, poor, disorganized country far away and yet has to hire a
private company of militant mercenaries to “help” them do their dirty work?

Smells like there’s a lot of loose money floating around just waiting to kill some
people somewhere and it doesn’t much matter who, where or why—or how. 
And if, because it’s private, what that coompany does and how it does it can be
sort of—well, you know—kept under the table, maybe it can provide a sort
of paramilitary service consisting of methods that would otherwise be illegal,
and at any rate “not our fault.”  So what if we have to pay them a lot more than
we pay those sweet young guys in the regular forces? 

Don’t like it?  Well eat it anyway!  All’s fair in love and war, you know.  That is,
until somebody wakes up to the complicity of it and says “STOP!”

Report this

By ChaoticGood, December 11, 2009 at 2:31 pm Link to this comment

This is not surprising.  Bush and Cheney are monsters and they hired junior monsters to do their bidding.  Good riddance to the whole bunch of them.  It’s just too bad that they will never be prosecuted for war crimes.

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