Did Blackwater sneak silencers into Iraq?

A Blackwater employee shows off a silencer-equipped rifle in Iraq in a photo obtained by NBC News. The picture has been digitally altered to protect the identity of the subject.

WASHINGTON – Federal agents are investigating allegations that the Blackwater USA security firm illegally exported dozens of firearms sound suppressors — commonly known as silencers — to Iraq and other countries for use by company operatives, sources close to the investigation tell NBC News.

Investigators from various federal agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the State Department and the Commerce Department, are digging into the allegations that the company exported the silencers without getting necessary export approval, according to law enforcement sources, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity. The sources said the investigation is part of a broader examination of potential firearms and export violations.

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Blackwater men ‘given immunity’

Yes, No, Yes,

Private US security contractors accused of shooting dead 17 innocent Iraqis may have been offered partial immunity by the US state department, say reports.

Unnamed officials said the offer was unauthorised and could make it much more difficult to prosecute the guards employed by the Blackwater firm.

If confirmed, the revelation may put further strain on US-Iraq relations.

The Iraqi government was furious at the 16 September deaths, and demanded the guards be handed over to face trial.

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The world of private ‘security’: Unleashed: the fat cats of war

The US is finally facing up to its failures to supervise the private armies operating on its behalf in Iraq. But the problem may be worse than it admits. Kim Sengupta reports on a booming industry

Published: 26 October 2007

 

The killings by Blackwater’s private security guards on Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday were brutal and unprovoked. Terrified men, women and children were mowed down as they tried to flee from the ferocious gunfire, cars were set on fire incinerating those inside.

I was in Nisour Square, in Mansour district, on the afternoon of 17 September when the massacre took place, and saw the outpouring of anger that followed from Iraqis vociferously demanding that Western, private armies acting violently, but immune from scrutiny or prosecution, should face justice.

But there was always the underlying feeling that this was, after all, Iraq, where violent deaths are hardly unusual. The scapegoat for America’s dependence on private armies appears to be a mid-ranking official who yesterday resigned as the State Department overseer of security contractors.

Richard Griffin made no mention of the Mansour killings or their aftermath in his resignation letter but it came just one day after a study commissioned by Condoleezza Rice found serious lapses in the department’s oversight of private guards. At the same time Congress is moving to put under military control all armed contractors operating in combat zones, an effort the State Department is strongly resisting.

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Dem: Blackwater Dodged Millions in Taxes

A controversial U.S. private security company under intense scrutiny for its aggressive use of force has a new problem: an allegation it illegally avoided paying millions of dollars in taxes.

In a letter to Blackwater security firm president Erik Prince, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., charged that the company illegally dodged “millions” in payroll taxes by misclassifying its security guards as “independent contractors” rather than employees.

That way, Blackwater guards were responsible for paying their own Medicare, Social Security and unemployment taxes — an “illegal scheme,” according to Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. If the firm had classified its armed guards as employees, which Waxman says it was required to do, it would have been responsible for covering those taxes.

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Blackwater and me: A love story it ain’t

By Lt col Robert Bateman 

I know something about Blackwater USA. This opinion is both intellectually driven as well as moderately emotional. You see, during my own yearlong tour in Iraq, the bad boys of Blackwater twice came closer to killing me than did any of the insurgents or Al Qaeda types. That sort of thing sticks with you. One story will suffice to make my point.

The first time it happened was in the spring of 2005. For various reasons, none of which bear repeating, I was moving through downtown Baghdad in an unmarked civilian sedan. I was with two other men, but they had the native look, while I was in my uniform, hunched in the back seat and partially covered by a blanket, hoping that the curtains on the window were enough to conceal my incongruous presence, not to mention my weapons. It was not the normal manner in which an Army infantry major moved around the city, but it was what the situation called for, so there I was. We were in normal Baghdad traffic, with the flow such as it was, in the hubbub of confusion that is generated when you suddenly introduce more than 1 million extra vehicles in the course of two years into a city that previously had only a few hundred thousand vehicles, and no real licensing authority

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Gates: Security contractors conflict with U.S. mission in Iraq

The Defense secretary says guards who protect clients at any cost are working ‘at cross-purposes’ with soldiers trying to gain Iraqis’ trust.

By Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 19, 2007

WASHINGTON — The behavior of private security contractors in Iraq is in direct conflict with the goals of the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday in an unusually frank critique, adding that the guards’ mistreatment of Iraqis is hindering Pentagon efforts at winning hearts and minds.

Gates said at a Pentagon news conference that he planned to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in coming days to iron out new regulations governing the conduct of the estimated 8,500 armed guards working for the Pentagon and State Department in Iraq.

Last month, the Defense secretary sent a five-man team to Iraq to investigate contractor oversight after the high-profile killing of 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad shooting involving Blackwater USA, the private security contractor hired to protect U.S. diplomats.

Although Blackwater works for the State Department, the Pentagon employs the vast majority of such hired guns in Iraq — about 7,300 — and Gates within days ordered commanders in the country to be more aggressive in using military law to discipline contractors in their areas of responsibility.

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Talk by Naomi Wolf

An absolute must watch

And if you want to see the blueprint in print than here’s an exerpt by Naomi Wolf originally printed in the Guardian.
Or buy her book. I know I will.

Revolving Door to Blackwater Causes Alarm at CIA

Blackwater USA, the private security contractor that has operated in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and New Orleans, has been booming the past few years. Founded in December of 1996, the company spent its early years “paying staff with an executive’s credit card and begging for customers,” according to the Virginian-Pilot. But today, Blackwater reportedly has revenues of about $100 million annually, almost all of it from government contracts, and maintains “a compound half the size of Manhattan and 450 permanent employees,” according to the newspaper.

How did Blackwater rise so high, so fast? The “war on terrorism” got the ball rolling for the firm, but one suspects that political connections played a big part as well. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder, is a former SEAL who is deeply involved in Republican Party politics. Since 1998, he has funneled roughly $200,000 to GOP committees and candidates, including President Bush. In 2004, Blackwater retained the Alexander Strategy Group, the PR and lobbying firm that closed down earlier this year due to its embarrassing ties to Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. (Paul Behrends, a former national security adviser to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, handled the account for Alexander. After the firm shut down, Behrends moved on to a firm called C&M Capitolink, and took the Blackwater account with him.)

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Meet Jose A. Rodriguez Jr.

 Mr. Rodriques is the retiring head of the National Clandestine  Services. He oversaw the kidnapping, torture, rendition of alledged terrorists. How would you feel if his next job would be with Blackwater USA?
Well, that  might just happen if we are to believe the rumours.

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr

With little fanfare, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr, who heads the National Clandestine Service (NCS) — the spies, torturers, and terrorists of the CIA — had his cover lifted about a month ago. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the driving factor was his interest in publicly participating in minority recruitment events.  The real reason could be he is interested in spending some time at his expensive home in a housing development in the northeast corner of Loudoun County, VA, with his wife Millie.  He’s also retiring later this year after more than three decades with the agency.

Rodriguez is the most important man in the U.S. spy game whose name you probably never knew. When he was mentioned publicly before now, he was referred to only as “Jose.”  However, we published an article about him on Wikipedia over a year ago.

Rodriguez became head of the CIA’s clandestine service in November 2004.

Jose Rodriguez is a native of Puerto Rico.  Rodriguez apparently was a military attache — a MILGP or MILGRP (US Military Group) “commander” (supposedly an Army colonel) — at the US Embassy in Argentina from 1994-1996. Officially a Military Group officer advises the US ambassador on military matters and is a liason between the US Government and the host country’s security and military forces (actually, a funnel for money, arms, and intelligence). US diplomats, even military officers such as the US naval attache in Venezuela, Lt. Commander John Correa, ousted last year for espionage against Venezuela, often are CIA operatives. The CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames once posed as a military officer, and it’s likely that Rodriguez was doing so in Argentina. 

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Blackwater won’t allow arrests

The Iraqi justice system was good enough for Sadam but not for Blackwater’s “Guys”? 

“We will not let our people be taken by the Iraqis,” said Erik Prince, CEO and chairman of Blackwater USA.

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A defiant Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince said yesterday he will not allow Iraqi authorities to arrest his contractors and try them in Iraq’s faulty justice system.
“We will not let our people be taken by the Iraqis,” Mr. Prince told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. At least 17 of 20 Blackwater guards being investigated for their roles in a Sept. 16 shooting incident are still in a secure compound in Baghdad’s Green Zone and carrying out limited duties.

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US: Blackwater vies for jobs beyond security

If Blackwater USA was the one offering you humanitarian help when you are in a disaster zone I advise you to run. The last time they were doing that they were in New Orleans patroling the streets with bloody great guns. (See the header of this blog), and we all know what happens with Blackwater in combination with guns. Yet this is exactly what Erik Prince wants to do.

MOYOCK, N.C. — Even as Blackwater USA seeks to extricate itself from a firestorm over the conduct of its private-security forces in Iraq, company founder Erik Prince is laying plans for an expansion that would put his for-hire forces in hot spots around the world doing far more than guard duty.

Blackwater faces criticism in the wake of a Sept. 16 shooting by the company’s guards that the Iraqi government says killed 17 civilians, a crisis that appears to threaten the company’s livelihood. Yet at Blackwater’s headquarters here, where the sound of gunfire and explosions is testament to the daily training of hundreds of law-enforcement and military personnel, Mr. Prince’s ambition is on display.

Mr. Prince wants to vault Blackwater into the major leagues of U.S. military contracting, taking advantage of the movement to privatize all kinds of government security. The company wants to be a one-stop shop for the U.S. government on missions to which it won’t commit American forces. This is a niche with few established competitors, but it is drawing more and more interest from big military firms.

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Blackwater Training US Police

Apparently the police forces trained by Blackwater have the worst record for violating civil rights and for violence. 

The mercenary firm Blackwater USA is well known for the controversy involving its “shoot first, ask no questions” policy in Iraq. It is also known that Louisiana’s Department of Homeland Security contracted with Blackwater to provide public law enforcement services in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina. Blackwater is also planning to establish regional training centers in Potrero, California and Mount Carroll, Illinois, billed as Blackwater West and Blackwater North, respectively.

These training centers, in addition to Blackwater’s Lodge and Training Center in Moyock, North Carolina — Blackwater East — and a possible fourth rumored to be slated for the Pacific Northwest — Blackwater Northwest — may result in the establishment of a network of Blackwater-trained police, sheriffs, and other police units around the country. Given Blackwater’s dismal record on human rights and brutality, this spells trouble for civilian control of police and paramilitary forces in the United States, from major metropolitan areas to small rural towns.

On October 14, the Washington Post ran a story, which included photographs from Blackwater’s Moyock training center. However, what was most intriguing was a photograph of a police and military patch board at Blackwater’s headquarters that indicated the police agencies that have sent their officers to Moyock for training.

See the list

Blackwater says lawsuit ‘politically motivated’

I wonder who BLackwater’s PR people are? Anybody has a  chance of finding out? Please let me know.

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) – Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince on Sunday dismissed as “politically motivated” a lawsuit filed against his security company by a wounded survivor and relatives of three Iraqis killed in Baghdad on Sept. 16.

In an interview with CNN’s “Late Edition,” Prince defended the work of the private company which has faced intense scrutiny after 17 people were killed when Blackwater employees opened fire on civilians.

The incident has created friction between Iraq and United States and prompted calls for tighter controls on private contractors working for the United States, who are immune from prosecution in Iraq.

U.S. military reports from the scene of the shooting indicated Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. The Iraqi government has accused Blackwater of deliberately killing the 17, and wants Blackwater to pay $8 million in compensation to each victim’s family.

The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, charged that Blackwater violated U.S. law by committing “extrajudicial killings and war crimes.

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America’s own unlawful combatants?

Marko Drobnjakovic / AP

OVER BAGHDAD: A Blackwater helicopter in Feburary. The amount of force being used by such firms has raised questions.

Using private guards in Iraq could expose the U.S. to accusations of treaty violations, some experts think.

By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 15, 2007

WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration deals with the fallout from the recent killings of civilians by private security firms in Iraq, some officials are asking whether the contractors could be considered unlawful combatants under international agreements.

The question is an outgrowth of federal reviews of the shootings, in part because the U.S. officials want to determine whether the administration could be accused of treaty violations that could fuel an international outcry.

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Private US military contractors move into Helmand

By Kim Sengupta in Kabul

Published: 14 October 2007

 

Large numbers of US private military personnel are expected to arrive in Helmand, the focal point of British involvement in Afghanistan, as part of a new effort to promote reconstruction and development in the war-torn province.

The US has contributed the largest sum to the new aid effort, over $200m. But British officials striving to win “hearts and minds” in the conflict against the Taliban have expressed concern over the potential influx of military contractors, amid a continuing furore over the shooting of civilians in Iraq by Blackwater.

As Nato troops reclaim territory from the Taliban, the movement has increasingly resorted to suicide attacks and roadside bombings. “The worry is that there will be a blast, and some contractors will panic and open fire, as happened with Blackwater in Baghdad. That is the very last thing that Helmand needs at the moment,” said a Western diplomat.

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New Evidence That Blackwater Guards Took No Fire

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — Fresh accounts of the Blackwater shooting last month, given by three rooftop witnesses and by American soldiers who arrived shortly after the gunfire ended, cast new doubt Friday on statements by Blackwater guards that they were responding to armed insurgents when Iraqi investigators say 17 Iraqis were killed at a Baghdad intersection.

The three witnesses, Kurds on a rooftop overlooking the scene, said they had observed no gunfire that could have provoked the shooting by Blackwater guards. American soldiers who arrived minutes later found shell casings from guns used normally by American contractors, as well as by the American military.

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Good neighbor?

Apart from the fact that no reasonable human being would want Blackwater anywhere near were they live, why does a private mercenary firm need three bases spread all over the country? Why is a private mercenary firm accused of war crimes, who has withdrawn from their lobbying organisation for fear of an investigation into their professional conduct allowed to train American police officers? There are only a thousand Blackwater mercenaries in Iran, so what else do they do on those bases? And let’s not forget that they also have a fourth base in the Philippines.(Travellerev)

Blackwater keeps its eye on a tiny East County enclave.

By Pat Sherman 10/09/2007

Blackwater USA Vice President Brian Bonfiglio flashed a self-satisfied smile, gazing east across Round Potrero Road where, on Sunday, more than 200 Potrero residents and antiwar activists streamed onto an adjacent parcel of land. They had come-some from as far as Ventura-to protest the 824-acre paramilitary training facility the company hopes to open a mile down the snaky dirt road.”I don’t think the war profiteering signs are appropriate, quite frankly,” Bonfiglio said. “At the end of the day, this will be determined as a land-use project by the [San Diego County] Board of Supervisors.”

As the public face of the project-dubbed Blackwater West-it’s Bonfiglio’s job to sell the facility as a non-invasive windfall to the residents of Potrero, a rural hamlet 45 miles east of San Diego. Given his employer’s image as a supplier of trigger-happy mercenary armies, unaccountable to neither the Iraqi nor American governments, wooing Potrero’s 850 residents has been a dicey game. Five members of the Potrero Planning Board who voted in December to support the project are facing a recall election. Some 320 residents signed a petition opposing the project that was sent to the county Board of Supervisors and Congressman Bob Filner, the Democrat whose district includes Potrero.

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Internal Review of Blackwater Prompted Firm to Leave Lobbying Assoc.

We have received notification from Blackwater USA that they are formally withdrawing from the membership of the International Peace Operations Association, effective October 10, 2007.

Blackwater USA joined IPOA in August 2004 and was a member in good standing.

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Blackwater faces war crimes inquiry after killings in Iraq

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor

Published: 12 October 2007

 

The American firm Blackwater USA has been served notice that it faces investigations for war crimes after 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed in a hail of bullets by its security guards in Baghdad.

The killings last month put the spotlight on the private security firms whose employees are immune from prosecution, unlike professional soldiers who are subject to courts martial. In the second such incident in less than a month, involving the Australian contractor Unity Resources Group this week, two Armenian Christian women were shot dead after their car approached a protected convoy. Their car was riddled with 40 bullets.

Ivana Vuco, the most senior UN human rights officer in Iraq, spoke yesterday about the shootings by private security guards, which have provoked outrage among Iraqis. “For us, it’s a human rights issue,” she said. “We will monitor the allegations of killings by security contractors and look into whether or not crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed.”

An Iraqi who was wounded in the 16 September shooting, and the relatives of three people killed in the attack, filed a court case in Washington yesterday accusing Blackwater of violating American law by committing “extrajudicial killings and war crimes.”

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AZERBAIJAN: IS IRAN THE REASON FOR THE CIA DIRECTOR’S RECENT VISIT TO BAKU?

Political analysts in Baku are debating the reasons for an unannounced late September trip to Azerbaijan by Central Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Hayden. US diplomats remain tight-lipped about the visit. Many local experts, however, contend that Hayden’s talks with Azerbaijani leaders likely concerned Iran, Azerbaijan’s neighbor to the south.

Gen. Hayden’s one-day visit on September 28, which included a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Minister of National Security Eldar Makhmudov, was not publicized in advance, and few details have since been provided. According to informed sources, the CIA director arrived in Baku late on the night of September 27. The Turan news agency has cited “unofficial sources” as saying Hayden stayed in a private downtown hotel at which special security measures were taken. He left Baku in the early evening on September 28.

US Embassy spokesperson Jonathan Henick told EurasiaNet that Hayden’s visit was part of a trip to several countries in the region. Henick would confirm only that Hayden discussed issues related to regional security and international terrorism with President Aliyev and National Security Minister Makhmudov. Azerbaijani officials likewise declined to elaborate on the nature or specifics of the discussions.

Some Azerbaijani analysts, however, see “the Iranian issue” as the most pressing reason for the CIA director’s trip. The trip came five days before an October 3 statement by US President George W. Bush that Washington was prepared, under certain conditions, to negotiate with Tehran on the nuclear issue.

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