{"id":3780,"date":"2008-06-10T10:58:59","date_gmt":"2008-06-10T09:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/blackwater%e2%80%99s-private-spies\/3780\/"},"modified":"2008-06-10T10:58:59","modified_gmt":"2008-06-10T09:58:59","slug":"blackwater%e2%80%99s-private-spies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/blackwater%e2%80%99s-private-spies\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackwater\u2019s Private Spies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blackwater.jpg\"By Jeremy Scahill<\/a> | This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA found its name splashed across front pages throughout the world after the company\u2019s shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad\u2019s Nisour Square. But by early 2008, Blackwater had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman\u2019s ongoing investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for \u201cprotective services\u201d in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.<\/p>\n

Blackwater\u2019s Iraq contract was extended in April, but the company is by no means betting the house on its long-term presence there. While the firm is quietly maintaining its Iraq work, it is aggressively pursuing other business opportunities.<\/p>\n

In September it was revealed that Blackwater had been \u201ctapped\u201d by the Pentagon\u2019s Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a five-year, $15 billion budget \u201cto fight terrorists with drug-trade ties.\u201d According to the Army Times, the contract \u201ccould include antidrug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft, communications, security training, pilot training, geographic information systems and in-field support.\u201d A spokesperson for another company bidding for the work said that \u201c80 percent of the work will be overseas.\u201d As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, explained, \u201cThe fact is, we use Blackwater to do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan. I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such an arrangement could find Blackwater operating in an arena with the godfathers of the war industry, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. It could also see Blackwater expanding into Latin America, joining other private security companies well established in the region. The massive US security company DynCorp is already deployed in Colombia, Bolivia and other countries as part of the \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d In Colombia alone, US military contractors are receiving nearly half the $630 million in annual US military aid for the country. Just south of the US border, the United States has launched Plan Mexico, a $1.5 billion counternarcotics program. This and similar plans could provide lucrative business opportunities for Blackwater and other companies. \u201cBlackwater USA\u2019s enlistment in the drug war,\u201d observed journalist John Ross, would be \u201ca direct challenge to its stiffest competitor, DynCorp \u2013 up until now, the Dallas-based corporation has locked up 94 percent of all private drug war security contracts.\u201d The New York Times reported that the contract could be Blackwater\u2019s \u201cbiggest job ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

As populist movements grow stronger in Latin America, threatening US financial interests as well as the standing of right-wing US political allies in the region, the \u201cwar on drugs\u201d is becoming an increasingly central part of US counterinsurgency efforts. It allows for more training of foreign security forces through the private sector \u2013 away from Congressional oversight \u2013 and a deployment of personnel from US war corporations. With US forces stretched thin, sending private security companies to Latin America offers Washington a \u201csmall footprint\u201d alternative to the politically and militarily problematic deployment of active-duty US troops. In a January report by the United Nations working group on mercenaries, international investigators found that \u201can emerging trend in Latin America but also in other regions of the world indicates situations of private security companies protecting transnational extractive corporations whose employees are often involved in suppressing the legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and environmental organizations of the areas where these corporations operate.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there is one quality that is evident from examining Blackwater\u2019s business history, it is the company\u2019s ability to take advantage of emerging war and conflict markets. Throughout the decade of Blackwater\u2019s existence, its creator, Erik Prince, has aggressively built his empire into a structure paralleling the US national security apparatus. \u201cPrince 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,\u201d reported the Wall Street Journal shortly after Nisour Square. \u201cThe company wants to be a one-stop shop for the U.S. government on missions to which it won\u2019t commit American forces. This is a niche with few established competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to providing armed forces for war and conflict zones and a wide range of military and police training services, Blackwater does a robust, multimillion-dollar business through its aviation division. It also has a growing maritime division and other national and international initiatives. Among these, Blackwater is in Japan, where its forces protect the US ballistic missile defense system, which, according to Stars and Stripes, \u201cpoints high-powered radio waves westward toward mainland Asia to hunt for enemy missiles headed east toward America or its allies.\u201d Meanwhile, early this year, Defense News reported, \u201cBlackwater is training members of the Taiwanese National Security Bureau\u2019s (NSB\u2019s) special protection service, which guards the president. The NSB is responsible for the overall security of the country and was once an instrument of terrorism during the martial law period. Today, according to its Web site, the NSB is responsible for \u2018national intelligence work, special protective service and unified cryptography.\u2019\u201d Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto reportedly tried to hire Blackwater to protect her as she campaigned for the presidency in 2007. Conflicting reports indicated that either the US State Department or the Pakistani government vetoed the plan. She was assassinated in December.<\/p>\n

What could prove to be one of Blackwater\u2019s most profitable and enduring enterprises is one of the company\u2019s most secretive initiatives\u2014a move into the world of privatized intelligence services. In April 2006, Prince quietly began building Total Intelligence Solutions, which boasts that it \u201cbrings CIA-style\u201d services to the open market for Fortune 500 companies. Among its offerings are \u201csurveillance and countersurveillance, deployed intelligence collection, and rapid safeguarding of employees or other key assets.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the United States finds itself in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in its history, few areas have seen as dramatic a transformation to privatized services as the world of intelligence. \u201cThis is the magnet now. Everything is being attracted to these private companies in terms of individuals and expertise and functions that were normally done by the intelligence community,\u201d says former CIA division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman. \u201cMy major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control. It\u2019s outrageous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year R.J. Hillhouse, a blogger who investigates the clandestine world of private contractors and US intelligence, obtained documents from the office of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI) showing that Washington spends some $42 billion annually on private intelligence contractors, up from $17.5 billion in 2000. That means 70 percent of the US intelligence budget is going to private companies. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the head of DNI is Mike McConnell, the former chair of the board of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the private intelligence industry\u2019s trade association.<\/p>\n

Total Intelligence, which opened for business in February 2007, is a fusion of three entities bought up by Prince: the Terrorism Research Center, Technical Defense and The Black Group \u2013 Blackwater vice chair Cofer Black\u2019s consulting agency. The company\u2019s leadership reads like a Who\u2019s Who of the CIA\u2019s \u201cwar on terror\u201d operations after 9\/11. In addition to the twenty-eight-year CIA veteran Black, who is chair of Total Intelligence, the company\u2019s executives include CEO Robert Richer, the former associate deputy director of the agency\u2019s Directorate of Operations and the second-ranking official in charge of clandestine operations. From 1999 to 2004, Richer was head of the CIA\u2019s Near East and South Asia Division, where he ran clandestine operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia. As part of his duties, he was the CIA liaison with Jordan\u2019s King Abdullah, a key US ally and Blackwater client, and briefed George W. Bush on the burgeoning Iraqi resistance in its early stages.<\/p>\n

Total Intelligence\u2019s chief operating officer is Enrique \u201cRic\u201d Prado, a twenty-four-year CIA veteran and former senior executive officer in the Directorate of Operations. He spent more than a decade working in the CIA\u2019s Counterterrorist Center and ten years with the CIA\u2019s \u201cparamilitary\u201d Special Operations Group. Prado and Black worked closely at the CIA. Prado also served in Latin America with Jose Rodriguez, who gained infamy late last year after it was revealed that as director of the National Clandestine Service at the CIA he was allegedly responsible for destroying videotapes of interrogations of prisoners, during which \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques,\u201d including waterboarding, were reportedly used. Richer told the New York Times he recalled many conversations with Rodriguez, about the tapes. \u201cHe would always say, \u2018I\u2019m not going to let my people get nailed for something they were ordered to do,\u2019\u201d Richer said of his former boss. Before the scandal, there were reports that Blackwater had been \u201caggressively recruiting\u201d Rodriguez. He has since retired from the CIA.<\/p>\n

The leadership of Total Intelligence also includes Craig Johnson, a twenty-seven-year CIA officer who specialized in Central and South America, and Caleb \u201cCal\u201d Temple, who joined the company straight out of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served from 2004 to \u201806 as chief of the Office of Intelligence Operations in the Joint Intelligence Task Force \u2013 Combating Terrorism. According to his Total Intelligence bio, Temple directed the \u201cDIA\u2019s 24\/7 analytic terrorism target development and other counterterrorism intelligence activities in support of military operations worldwide. He also oversaw 24\/7 global counterterrorism indications and warning analysis for the U.S. Defense Department.\u201d The company also boasts officials drawn from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.<\/p>\n

Total Intelligence is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia. Its \u201cGlobal Fusion Center,\u201d complete with large-screen TVs broadcasting international news channels and computer stations staffed by analysts surfing the web, \u201coperates around the clock every day of the year\u201d and is modeled after the CIA\u2019s counterterrorist center, once run by Black. The firm employs at least sixty-five full-time staff \u2013 some estimates say it\u2019s closer to 100. \u201cTotal Intel brings the\u2026skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives directly to the board room,\u201d Black said when the company launched. \u201cWith a service like this, CEOs and their security personnel will be able to respond to threats quickly and confidently\u2014 whether it\u2019s determining which city is safest to open a new plant in or working to keep employees out of harm\u2019s way after a terrorist attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black insists, \u201cThis is a completely legal enterprise. We break no laws. We don\u2019t go anywhere near breaking laws. We don\u2019t have to.\u201d But what services Total Intelligence is providing, and to whom, is shrouded in secrecy. It is clear, though, that the company is leveraging the reputations and inside connections of its executives. \u201cCofer can open doors,\u201d Richer told the Washington Post in 2007. \u201cI can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see. We don\u2019t help pay bribes. We do everything within the law, but we can deal with the right minister or person.\u201d Black told the paper he and Richer spend a lot of their time traveling. \u201cI am discreet in where I go and who I see. I spend most of my time dealing with senior people in governments, making connections.\u201d But it is clear that the existing connections from the former spooks\u2019 time at the agency have brought business to Total Intelligence.<\/p>\n

Take the case of Jordan. For years, Richer worked closely with King Abdullah, as his CIA liaison. As journalist Ken Silverstein reported, \u201cThe CIA has lavishly subsidized Jordan\u2019s intelligence service, and has sent millions of dollars in recent years for intelligence training. After Richer retired, sources say, he helped Blackwater land a lucrative deal with the Jordanian government to provide the same sort of training offered by the CIA. Millions of dollars that the CIA \u2018invested\u2019 in Jordan walked out the door with Richer \u2013 if this were a movie, it would be a cross between Jerry Maguire and Syriana. \u2018People [at the agency] are pissed off,\u2019 said one source. \u2018Abdullah still speaks with Richer regularly, and he thinks that\u2019s the same thing as talking to us. He thinks Richer is still the man.\u2019 Except in this case it\u2019s Richer, not his client, yelling \u2019show me the money.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 2007 interview on the cable business network CNBC, Black was brought on as an analyst to discuss \u201cinvesting in Jordan.\u201d At no point in the interview was Black identified as working for the Jordanian government. Total Intelligence was described as \u201ca corporate consulting firm that includes investment strategy,\u201d while \u201cAmbassador Black\u201d was introduced as \u201ca twenty-eight-year veteran of the CIA,\u201d the \u201ctop counterterror guy\u201d and \u201ca key planner for the breathtakingly rapid victory of American forces that toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan.\u201d Black heaped lavish praise on Jordan and its monarchy. \u201cYou have leadership, King Abdullah, His Majesty King Abdullah, who is certainly kind towards investors, very protective,\u201d Black said. \u201cJordan is, in our view, a very good investment. There are some exceptional values there.\u201d He said Jordan is in a region where there are \u201cnumerous commodities that are being produced and doing well.\u201d<\/p>\n

With no hint of the brutality behind the exodus, Black argued that the flood of Iraqi refugees fleeing the violence of the US occupation was good for potential investors in Jordan. \u201cWe get something like 600, 700,000 Iraqis that have moved from Iraq into Jordan that require cement, furniture, housing and the like. So it is a\u2014it is an island of growth and potential, certainly in that immediate area. So it looks good,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are opportunities for investment. It is not all bad. Sometimes Americans need to watch a little less TV\u2026. But there is \u2013 there is opportunity in everything. That\u2019s why you need situation awareness, and that\u2019s one of the things that our company does. It provides the kinds of intelligence and insight to provide situational awareness so you can make the best investments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black and other Total Intelligence executives have turned their CIA careers, reputations, contacts and connections into business opportunities. What they once did for the US government, they now do for private interests. It is not difficult to imagine clients feeling as though they are essentially hiring the US government to serve their own interests. In 2007 Richer told the Post that now that he is in the private sector, foreign military officials and others are more willing to give him information than they were when he was with the CIA. Richer recalled a conversation with a foreign general during which he was surprised at the potentially \u201cclassified\u201d information the general revealed. When Richer asked why the general was giving him the information, he said the general responded, \u201cIf I tell it to an embassy official I\u2019ve created espionage. You\u2019re a business partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

In May, Erik Prince gave a speech in front of his family and supporters in his home state of Michigan. Security was extremely tight, and Blackwater barred cameras and tape recorders from the event. \u201cThe idea that we are a secretive facility, and nefarious, is just ridiculous,\u201d Prince told the friendly crowd of 750 gathered at the Amway Grand Plaza. In Iraq, Blackwater has banked on the idea that it is a sort of American Express card for the occupation. But for the future, Prince has a different corporate model, as he indicated in his speech. \u201cWhen you send something overseas, do you use FedEx or the postal service?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

There are serious problems with this analogy. When you send something by FedEx, you can track your package and account for its whereabouts at all times. You can have your package insured against loss or damage. That has not been the case with Blackwater. The people who foot the sizable bill for its \u201cservices\u201d almost never know, until it is too late, what Blackwater is doing, and there are apparently no consequences for Blackwater when things go lethally wrong. \u201cWe are essentially a robust temp agency,\u201d Prince told his fans in Michigan. He\u2019s right about that one. A temp agency serving the most radical privatization agenda in history.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World\u2019s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2008 The Nation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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