All Roads Lead to Blackwater

by: Richard Allen Smith

Fri Aug 21, 2009 at 12:33:05 PM EDT


This is getting redundant. For all the national security scandals of the Bush Administration, and we all know they are numerous, it's seeming lately that there will ultimately be a Blackwater connection unearthed in all of them if we only wait long enough. Such is the case with the undisclosed CIA assassinations program.  You'll recall this story from July:

The CIA ran a secret program for nearly eight years that aspired to kill top al-Qaeda leaders with specially trained assassins, but the agency declined to tell Congress because the initiative never came close to bringing Osama bin Laden and his deputies into U.S. cross hairs, U.S. intelligence and congressional officials said yesterday.

The plan to deploy teams of assassins to kill senior terrorists was legally authorized by the administration of George W. Bush, but it never became fully operational, according to sources briefed on the matter. The sources confirmed that then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney had urged the CIA to delay notifying Congress about the diplomatically sensitive plan -- a bid for secrecy that congressional Democrats now say thwarted proper oversight.

True to form, the Blackwater connection has been unearthed:

A secret CIA program to kill top al-Qaeda leaders with assassination teams was outsourced in 2004 to Blackwater USA, the private security contractor whose operations in Iraq prompted intense scrutiny, according to two former intelligence officials familiar with the events.

The North Carolina-based company was given operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders and was awarded millions of dollars for training and weaponry, but the program was canceled before any missions were conducted, the two officials said.

I'm going to borrow significantly from Spencer's analysis here, but here goes:  Say you wanted to conduct a secret assassination program, wanted to use the CIA to do it, and wanted to keep the program's existence secret from Congress and thereby congressional oversight.  Easy enough, right? Well, suppose you wanted to make sure that even if the program were brought to light, you wouldn't have any problems with that pesky Executive Order 12333 banning assassinations. Maybe you'd want to use a contractor with an undescernable legal status, not being subject to local national law, and also claiming to not be subject to MEJA. You'd then be operating an executive assassinations program with no oversight and no criminal jurisdiction for those involved; essentially, mercenaries with no consequences to however they chose to carry out their contracted mission. Scary thought.
Richard Allen Smith :: All Roads Lead to Blackwater
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All Roads Lead to Blackwater | 8 comments
Links to the Scahill piece in The Nation that Spencer refers to: (0.00 / 0)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/2...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/2...

Scahill confirms the assassin story and verifies Xe is still in Iraq.

Beyond Iraq, we now have the story about Blackwater taking care of bombs/drones in Afghan/Pak. Blackwater has been charged with smuggling weapons in Iraq, these guys are mercenaties flat out, and we are trusting them with this tech in a fairly unsupervised no-man's land known for drugs/guns smuggling.  Pardon my OMG thinking about Iran-Contra.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08...

It was just released that Latvia had one of the Secret Prisons used for the EXTRAordinary rendition program that came to light in 04-05 when CIA fights were tracked to other such sites. Will we next learn that Blackwater is now running such prisons and transporting 'high priority' captures to them?    

CNN Situation Room is now picking up this story... (0.00 / 0)
... the CIA let slip a couple of years ago that 70% of its budget goes to contractors. [CIA budget is classified]

Quoting a  long-time career CIA agent: When I started contractors parked our cars, now they do everything.

[ Parent ]
This site is amazing, Richard, thank you (0.00 / 0)

Richard Smith, you have made this an amazingly brilliant website; it was good, very good, before, but now BRILLIANT.  The graphics,
and the organization makes it so much more accessible.  Thank you from a vet's mom.

I have to believe that something extraordinary is possible. (Mrs. John Nash)
Blast Walls: Baghdad Iraq (0.00 / 0)
August 22 2009

AP - Workers place concrete blast walls in front of the Iraqi foreign ministry in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday

Iraqis begin restoring concrete walls in Baghdad

Workers used giant cranes to raise concrete walls around the blast-scarred Foreign Ministry and other government buildings on Saturday, as Iraqi authorities sought to bolster security after suicide truck bombings that killed scores in Baghdad.

The decision to reinforce vital institutions is a sharp reversal of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's desire to remove the barriers as part of his efforts to make life more normal for war-weary Iraqis before January's national elections............

Occupied and Controlled by Us now being Occupied and Controlled by their own, and We Tore That Lid Off The Pandora's Box!!

'Hearts and Minds, "The ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live there." -- President Lyndon Johnson

Wow (0.00 / 0)
unlike certain other policies regarding Blackwater/Xe, this is an absolutely great idea. Targeted assassinations on AQ and the gang is an absolutely wonderful idea and using a private company actually makes even more sense. Sadly, this idea is a bit impractical. I think it would be even better to contract Russians, Shiites, Serbs, etc to handle this.  
Really? (0.00 / 0)
You think an executive assassination squad with no oversight that doesn't fall under any criminal jurisdiction is a good idea? What if the current President operated an assassination unit that could kill anyone in the world the executive branch chose without fear of any repercussion? Would you still think it was a good idea?

I'm on twitter.
[ Parent ]
Given the current circumstances (0.00 / 0)
yeah, I think it is a very good idea. I mean Congress doesn't exactly seem to be concerned with our national security and the average salary of the CIA is hardly in line with the truly dangerous nature of such a program. Our current foreign policy is absolutely pathetic as well, but that's a completely different animal.

Of course practicality would be an issue here, but that's why I suggested we use Shia, Serbs, Russians, etc.  

[ Parent ]
Eric Prince (0.00 / 0)
is Blackwater's owner and is a "Christian" who firmly believes in killing all Muslems and rewards his mercenaries when they do. I really wish we weren't spending tax dollars to fund his mercenary assassins.

If all the contractor funding had been spent supplying and building up our military ground-forces these past 7 years, I think we would have been in a much better situation today.

All Roads Lead to Blackwater | 8 comments
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