The Obama administration has awarded $220m (£146m) in new contracts to the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater to provide security in Afghanistan. This is despite accusations against the company of murder and indiscriminate killings of civilians in Iraq and investigations into alleged corruption and sanctions busting. The contracts have drawn stinging criticism in Congress [...]
State Department officials struggled to explain Monday why they have awarded a new $120 million contract to a private security firm that was kicked out of Iraq four months ago amid charges that its personnel gunned down unarmed civilians. Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, was awarded an 18-month contract to provide security at [...]
Last week, the Justice Department announced that a federal grand jury had returned a fifteen-count indictment against five current and former Blackwater officials, charging them with conspiracy to violate a series of federal gun laws, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Among those indicted were Blackwater [...]
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Also tagged Arms Trafficking, BATF, Blackwater PTC, Blackwater SELECT, CIA, Covert Ops, DOJ, Erik Prince, Indictments, JSOC, Xe Services, XPG
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America has spent more than $6 billion since 2002 in an effort to create an effective Afghan police force, buying weapons, building police academies, and hiring defense contractors to train the recruits—but the program has been a disaster. More than $322 million worth of invoices for police training were approved even though the funds were [...]
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Also tagged Accountability, Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Audit, Contractors, Department of State, DynCorp, Education, Military, Police, Poverty, Training, Xe Services
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The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has issued a strong warning to the Defense Department over plans to award $1 billion in new contracts to the firm formerly known as Blackwater, accusing managers of the private security company of lying to win lucrative jobs in Afghanistan. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) also cited a history [...]
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Wow, the corruption is/was worse than even my imagination is capable of thinking up… and the DoJ isn’t taking action? WTF? The former employees who filed the lawsuit, a married couple named Brad and Melan Davis, said there was little financial oversight of the money. Last year, an audit by the special inspector general for [...]
Thursday, January 28, 2010
After Ali’s death, some of Mohammed’s friends came to him and asked him if the death had changed his attitude toward the Americans. It hadn’t, he told them. “I honestly separate distinctly between Blackwater and the American people and the American government,” he says. “I honestly love America and the American people. What happened to [...]
Saturday, January 23, 2010
In Baghdad, Vice President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater guards involved in a 2007 Baghdad shooting that killed 17 people including women and children. (Jan. 23) via YouTube – Associated Press – Biden: U.S. to Appeal Blackwater Dismissal. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amGSJuwszC8[/youtube]
Thursday, January 21, 2010
US House Rep. Ron Paul says the CIA has in effect carried out a “coup” against the US government, and the intelligence agency needs to be “taken out.” via Ron Paul: After ‘CIA coup,’ agency ‘runs military’ | Raw Story. Way to risk your own life, Mr. Paul. The Establishment notices shit like that, yanno? [...]
Thursday, January 21, 2010
In an interview with the Pakistani TV station Express TV, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the private security firms Blackwater and DynCorp are operating inside Pakistan. “They’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” Gates said, according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting [...]
Three private security guards working for Blackwater Worldwide who witnessed a 2007 episode in Baghdad in which at least 17 Iraqi civilians were killed by other Blackwater guards told a federal grand jury that they believed the shootings were unjustified, according to newly unsealed court documents. Two senior United States military officers who arrived at [...]
Still, the government has failed to hold armed contractors accountable. When its formal occupation of Iraq ended in 2004, the Bush administration demanded that Baghdad grant legal immunity to private contractors. Congress has tried to cover such crimes with American law. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act extends civilian law to contractors supporting military operations overseas, [...]
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Also tagged Abu Ghraib, Accountability, Congress, Contractors, Crime, ICC, Iraq War, Law, MEJA, Mercenaries, PMCs, Privatization, UCMJ, War Crimes
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Several victims of a 2007 shooting involving American private security guards employed by the firm formerly known as Blackwater alleged Sunday that they were coerced into reaching settlements, and they demanded that the Iraqi government intervene to have the agreements nullified. The Iraqis said they were pressured by their own attorneys into accepting what they [...]
A judge in America threw out charges against members of the Blackwater security company yesterday who were accused of killing Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in one of the most notorious incidents since the 2003 invasion. The ruling will be met with anger in Iraq, where feelings ran high at the time. Fourteen to 17 people [...]
Friday, December 11, 2009
The CIA and the military special forces have quietly expanded the role of private contractors, including Blackwater, to include their involvement in raids and secret paramilitary operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, four current and former U.S. military and intelligence officers tell ABC News. American law specifically prohibits the use of private soldiers or mercenaries [...]
“We need to view this sober reality,” Scahill told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday. “The war is in Pakistan right now. There’s no question about it. The question, though, is how much it’s going to expand. … These are actions that are going to destabilize Pakistan and are going to create new enemies for the United [...]
Thursday, December 3, 2009
If this account is correct, it raises a host of questions. Among them is whether CIA director Leon Panetta, who reportedly shut down the program immediately after learning of it and promptly briefed Congress, misinformed lawmakers about the nature of this effort, its targets, and just how operational it actually was. If, as Prince claims, [...]
Saturday, November 28, 2009
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAeE4SUdshs[/youtube] Jeremy Scahill talks with Keith Olbermann about Erik Prince and Xe Services / Blackwater. There are far more non-Christians than there are Christians in the world, and the kind of atrocity these people commit only alienates people from Christianity. I would consider Blackwater to be a terrorist organization, the Christian equivalent of Al Qaeda, [...]
Friday, November 27, 2009
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value [...]
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Also tagged Al Qaeda, Assassinations, CIA, Covert Ops, Drones, Frontier Corp, Jeremy Scahill, JSOC, Military, Pakistan, Roger Noriega, Taliban, USAID, Xe Services
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide [now known as Xe] authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials. [...] Four former [...]
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Also tagged Bribery, Cofer Black, Contractors, Corruption, Crime, Erik Prince, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Gary Jackson, Iraq War, Manslaughter, Nisour Square, Weapons Smuggling, Xe
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