Για όλους εκείνους του Ελληναράδες που το μόνο που κάνουν είναι να κατηγορούν τους πραγματικούς Ελληνες που έχουν το θάρρος να αγαπούν την Ελλάδα .
Επειδή βάζουν την πατρίδα πάνω απο τον εαυτό τους και τις ιδέες τους, γιατί οι ίδιοι κινούνται αναλόγως τι τους έχει υπαγορεύσει το κόμμα που ανήκουν ή η ανικανότητα τους να παραδεχτούν ότι μέχρι τούδε έκαναν προδοτικές επιλογές ...
....ας μη μπουν στον κόπο να το διαβάσουν γιατί ούτως ή άλλως δεν θα το καταλάβουν.....
Για όλους εκείνους που ειναι έτοιμοι να πεθάνουν και ας είναι οι τελευταίοι, που δεν νοιαζονται για την επόμενη μερα αρκεί αυτή η πατρίδα να μείνει καθαρή και ελεύθεροι για τα παιδιά μας ...
Ας διαβάσουν τι πρόκειται να αντιμετωπίσουν και τι αντιμετωπίζουν όσοι αντιστέκονται....γιατι ο πόλεμος που μαίνεται ή κηρύσσεται με περιτύλιγμα την δικαιοσύνη και την ελευθερία γίνεται με σκοπό την υποδούλωση όσων ειναι ή σκέπτονται να συνεχίσουν να ειναι εκτός ''κουτιού''.
Τα γεγονότα της Συρίας και του Ιράν, της Υεμένης και γενικότερα όλα τα συμβάντα σήμερα και αύριο που υφίστανται στην Μ.Α είναι η αρχή του τέλους....ή θ απελευθερωθούμε ή εξαφανιστούμε.....ως άνθρωποι.
Birthplace: Holland, MI
Gender: Male
Religion: Born-Again Christian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Business, Military
Party Affiliation: Republican
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Founder of Blackwater Worldwide
Military service: US Navy (SEAL Team Officer, 1993-96; Bosnia, Haiti)
Erik Prince is a multi-millionaire fundamentalist Christian, who co-founded the security and mercenary firmBlackwater in 1997 with Gary Jackson, a former Navy SEAL. He is a major Republican campaign contributor, who interned in the White House of President George H.W. Bush and for conservative congressman Dana Rohrabacher, campaigned for Pat Buchanan in 1992.
His wealth came from his father, Edgar Prince, who headed Prince Automotive, an auto parts and machinery manufacturer. Prince's sister Betsy DeVos is a powerful conservative in her own right — married to the son ofRichard DeVos (Republican bankroller and co-founder of Amway), she served as chair of Michigan Republican Party in the 1990s.
Father: Edgar Prince (d. 1995, billionaire)
Mother: Elsa Prince Broekhuizen (financier)
Sister: Betsy DeVos (former chair, Michigan Republican Party, m. Dick DeVos, Amway scion)
Sister: Emilie Prince
Sister: Eileen Prince
Wife: Joan (four children, d. 2003, cancer)
Daughter: Sophia
High School: Holland Christian High School, Holland, MI
University: Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI
Blackwater Co-Founder and CEO (1997-2009)
Primary Association:
Resigned in March 2009 as Chairman and CEO of the Prince Group and of Xe Worldwide, formerly named Blackwater Worldwide and Blackwater USA
US Training Center North Carolina
PO Box 1029, Moyock, NC 27958
Ph: 252.435.2488
Secondary Associations:
Board member of Christian Freedom International
215 Ashmun Street
P.O. Box 560
Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783
info@christianfreedom.org
Ph: 1-800-323-2273
Vice president of the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, major donor to conservative religious and political causes.
190 River Ave., Suite 300
Holland, MI 49423
Blackwater
COMPANY
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 — Erik D. Prince, the crew-cut, square-jawed founder of Blackwater USA, the security contractor now at the center of a political storm in both Washington and Baghdad, is a man seemingly born to play a leading role in the private sector side of the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ίδρυση Blackwater USA
Κέντρο εκπαίδευσης
2010: Academi
Διατελέσαντες Διευθυντές
Red McCombs (Πρόεδρος)
John Ashcroft
Dean Bosacki
Jason DeYonker
Bobby Ray Inman
Jack Quinn
Russ Robinson
Ανάμιξη στο Πόλεμο του Ιράκ
Βαγδάτη
Περιστατικά και επιπτώσεις της Blackwater και Xe εποχής
Το Κογκρέσο των Η.Π.Α
Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy
Split Personality
Prince in the tactical-operations center at a company base
in Kabul. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.
Black Hawks and Zeppelins
Blackwater outpost near the Pakistan border,
used for training Afghan police. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.
Spies and Whispers
Clutch Cargo
Going “Low-Pro”
Exit Strategy
He insists, simply, “I’m through.”
10 Frightening Facts About Private Military Companies
10Discount Soldiers
9A Private Army Guards US Officials Abroad
8Rise Of The German Mercenaries
7Image Issues
6Academi
5Executive Outcomes
4The Case Of Jamie Leigh Jones
3Trophy Videos
2The Founder, David Stirling
1Sex Traffickin
+Sharp End International
Blackwater's World of Warcraft
TO FIND THEIR DISCOUNT SOLDIERS, Blackwater,
Blackwater founder: We could have fought ISIS if Obama hadn't 'crushed my old business'
Former Navy SEAL Prince then left for Abu Dhabi to contBlackwater founder: We could have fought ISIS if Obama hadn't 'crushed my old business'
Blackwater Chief Executive Erik Prince testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan
Founder of the controversial private security contractor Blackwater claimed Friday that the organization could have successfully combated militant group Islamic State if the Obama administration had not “crushed my old business.”
Erik Prince said in front of the conservative group Maverick PAC that his infamous private military firm - synonymous with the contracting bonanza that ensued after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 - would have effectively fought Islamic State (known as ISIS or ISIL), allowing the US to hold back its military in its offensive against the group’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
“It’s a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business, because as a private organization, we could’ve solved the boots-on-the-ground issue, we could have had contracts from people that want to go there as contractors; you don’t have the argument of US active duty going back in there,” Prince said during the discussion with retired four-star Gen. James Conway. “[They could have] gone in there and done it, and be done, and not have a long, protracted political mess that I predict will ensue.”
Nearly two weeks ago, President Obama said the US would conduct airstrikes and “hunt down” the fighters of the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq, Syria, and “wherever they exist.” Washington has promised $500 million to so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels for fighting both the Syrian government and Islamic State militants. While the US has also sent 1,600 “support force” troops to advise the Iraqi military in the fight against Islamic State, Obama has stressed - despite contradicting sentiments from Pentagon officials - that ground troops will not be necessary during the latest offensive.
Prince’s comments were made almost exactly seven years after Blackwater guards infamously shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007. The incident sparked outrage with American presence in Iraq among the local population. The US iscurrently trying to prosecute four of the five guards involved in the incident after a first failed attempt to do it in 2009. After 10 weeks of arguments and testimony, the case went to a jury earlier this month.
After the Nisour Square killings and other scandals, the Obama administration eventually severed most ties with Blackwater - now known as Academi after several rebranding attempts. Yet despite criticism for the organization from the administration, more than half a billion dollars has been set aside for the firm and its associated entities since President Obama took office in 2009.
According to The Huffington Post, more than $300 million of that total half billion-plus was awarded before Blackwater was sold by Prince in 2010. Since the sale, the US State Department has awarded Academi just over $500 million, as opposed to $784 million in the three years prior to his sale of the company. The firm merged with security contracting rival Triple Canopy in 2010.
Former Navy SEAL Prince then left for Abu Dhabi to continue security contracting work, vowing to never work for the US government after being spurned by the new presidential administration.
The Friday discussion veered into Republican Party politics. Prince, a Catholic conservative, claimed the Republican Party - which dominates the US House of Representatives and is poised to take the US Senate following mid-term elections this November - is “getting rolled” by the Democratic Party.
“I want you to tell your congressman that we pay them to fight,” Prince said, according to The Daily Beast. “They are hired to fight for our values, for what you sent them there to do… I am sick and tired of Republicans getting rolled—having a lousy, weak leadership that gets rolled every time by the Democratic Party. We’re like… Charlie Brown trying to kick the football every time and they keep taking it away… I encourage the Republican Party to get off their ass and fight like we pay them to.”
Prince also spoke of Iran, saying the young population simply seeks more freedom in a closely-guarded society.
“Most Iranians… are just like you guys,” he said. “They want to be able to drink a beer when they want, travel where they want, have their wife or girlfriend drive a car or wear a short shirt and wear high heels. I’m all in favor of it.”
Prince also said Blackwater, if around today, could have countered spread of the Ebola viruswith humanitarian missions using the NOAAS McArthur (S 330), an American survey ship once owned by Blackwater.
“Now, that’s the sort of thing that could help fight Ebola,” Prince told The Daily Beast.
GREYSTONE LIMITED MERCENARIES OPERATING IN UKRAINE
New Blackwater Iraq Scandal: Guns, Silencers and Dog
A federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food, ABCNews.com has learned.
BLACKWATER & CIA: Μισθοφόροι από ΗΠΑ στην Ουκρανία
Περίπου 400 ελίτ μισθοφόροι από την περιβόητη αμερικανική εταιρεία ιδιωτικής ασφάλειαςAcademi (πρώην Blackwater) παίρνουν μέρος στην ουκρανική στρατιωτική επιχείρηση εναντίον αντικυβερνητικών διαδηλωτών σε νοτιοανατολικές περιοχές της χώρας, αναφέρουν γερμανικά μέσα ενημέρωσης.
Blackwater’ footage: Who are the mercenaries in Ukraine?
VIOLATING THE U.S. CONSTITUTION ON A DAILY BASIS!
Russia Today
Subversive Mercenaries
Obama Forced U.S. Taxpayers to pay for Mafia Erik Prince Mercenaries!
AFTER REMOVING 800 FROM COLOMBIA MILITARY FORCE ~ WHAT DOES THAT SAY TO THE FOLLOWING LINKS?
Ένα μέγα σκάνδαλο περνάει απαρατήρητο; Blackwater και «Ελληνική Δημοκρατία» 2012
Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates
Οι μισθοφόροι της BLACKWATER θα επιβάλλουν τα μεταλλαγμένα της MONSANTO;
Ένας από αυτούς, ο Cofer Black, γνωστός για την κτηνωδία του ως ένας από τους διευθυντές της CIA, ήταν εκείνος που ήρθε σε επαφή με τη Monsanto το 2008, ως διευθυντής της Total Intelligence, συνάπτοντας σύμβαση με την εταιρεία για να κατασκοπεύσει τους και να διεισδύσει σε οργανώσεις ακτιβιστών για τα δικαιώματα των ζώων, οργανώσεις αντι-GM (κατά των μεταλλαγμένων) και άλλες βρώμικες δραστηριότητες του γίγαντα της βιοτεχνολογίας.
Κρατώντας το Κρυφό
COMPANY
Mercenary firm founded as Blackwater USA in 1996 by former Navy SEAL and fundamentalist ChristianErik Prince. Received no-bid contracts from the Bush administration in Iraq, Afghanistan, and post-Katrina New Orleans. In 2009, Prince resigned as CEO. Amid scandals over misbehavior by Blackwater employees in Iraq, the company renamed itself Blackwater Worldwide in 2007, Xe Services in 2009, and Academi in 2011. Subsidiaries include Paravant LLC.
Official Website:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 — Erik D. Prince, the crew-cut, square-jawed founder of Blackwater USA, the security contractor now at the center of a political storm in both Washington and Baghdad, is a man seemingly born to play a leading role in the private sector side of the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Erik D. Prince, the founder of Blackwater USA, testifying before Congress last Tuesday on the company’s Iraq performance.
He is both a former member of the Navy Seals and the scion of a fabulously wealthy, deeply religious family that is enmeshed in Republican Party politics. As a result, the 38-year-old Mr. Prince stands at the nexus between American Special Operations, which has played such a critical role in the war operations, and the nation’s political and business elite, who have won enormous government contracts as war operations have increasingly been outsourced.
Republican political connections ran deep in his family long before Mr. Prince founded Blackwater in 1997. When he was a teenager, religious conservative leaders like Gary Bauer, now the president of American Values, were house guests. James C. Dobson, the founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, gave the eulogy at his father’s funeral in 1995. “Dr. and Mrs. Dobson are friends with Erik Prince and his mother, Elsa Broekhuizen,” Focus on the Family said in a statement.
Mr. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, married into one of the most politically active conservative families in the Midwest. She has served as the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Michigan, and last year, her husband, Richard DeVos Jr., ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan as the Republican candidate. Mr. Prince and his family have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and other conservative and religious causes, records show. One favorite: the prison ministry of Charles Colson, the former Watergate felon turned Christian prison evangelist.
“They are conservative Christians, and they have very strong views on the sanctity of human life and the defense of marriage and the role of faith in the public square,” Mr. Bauer said of the Prince family. “Those are issues I’ve been associated with, and so it was a natural relationship,” he said of his ties to Mr. Prince’s parents.
Unlike many other young men who inherit great wealth, Mr. Prince also struck out on his own and joined the Navy Seals at a time when few other men of his economic class were willing to serve in the military. After his father died and left him a fortune, Mr. Prince’s experience in Special Operations led him to found Blackwater, and he has made a point of hiring other former members of the Navy Seals, including some who now play prominent management roles.
But now that Blackwater is under scrutiny for its involvement in the Sept. 16 shootings of as many as 17 Iraqis in downtown Baghdad, some critics are questioning whether Mr. Prince’s political connections have propelled the company’s sudden rise.
“He is an ideological foot soldier, not only in the war on terror, but also in the broader Bush agenda,” said Jeremy Scahill, the author of a new book called “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” (Nation). “He is a visionary when it comes to military technology and asymmetric warfare. But he is also a bankroller of Republican and right-wing religious causes.”
Yet supporters say the image of Mr. Prince as a Republican carpetbagger and war profiteer is nothing more than an inaccurate cartoon. “Republican connections have nothing to do with Blackwater,” said Chris Taylor, a former Blackwater vice president.
“In the senior positions at Blackwater, there are Democrats,” he added. “If Erik is a conservative, I never heard anybody say that you have to be a conservative to be here. People need to know just how exceptional a guy he is. He’s very generous, and greatly respected in the company.”
Mr. Prince did not respond to a request for an interview. But during his Congressional testimony last week, when asked about his political connections, he responded by saying that he did not think his political contributions were “germane” to the lawmakers’ inquiry into Blackwater’s operations in Iraq.
Others who know him suggest that there is a more complicated dynamic tension between Erik Prince, the aggressive, no-holds-barred Navy Seals veteran, and Erik Prince, the well-mannered wealthy son, that explains the man and the corporation he has built in his image.
“I think that he thinks he is like Bruce Wayne in Batman,” said Robert Young Pelton, the author of “Licensed to Kill” (Crown Publishing Group), a book on contractors in Iraq, who is one of the few journalists to have interviewed Mr. Prince extensively. “Bruce Wayne lives in a mansion and then at night he is out in the bat cave with the Batmobile. And that is Erik. I think he is conflicted.”
Mr. Prince grew up in Holland, Mich., where his father, Edgar Prince, had founded the Prince Corporation, an automotive parts supplier to the major car makers based in Detroit. According to Mr. Scahill’s book, the trauma of suffering a serious heart attack in the 1970s deepened Edgar Prince’s religious faith, and by the 1980s he was helping to finance conservative religious groups like the Family Research Council.
Erik entered the Naval Academy, but later transferred to Hillsdale College, a small, conservative school in southern Michigan. He also became politically active, working on campus for the presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan in 1992.
After college he made it into the Navy Seals following Officer Candidate School, and seemed eager to pursue a military career. But the death of his father, and the illness of Mr. Prince’s first wife, who later died of cancer, intervened, and he left the Navy. His family sold the Prince Corporation for more than $1 billion in 1996, a windfall that gave Erik Prince the financial freedom to create Blackwater.
Working with another former Seal, Al Clark, Mr. Prince sought to create a world-class training facility that could be used by American military and law enforcement personnel. They built their facility in 1997 on a rural site in North Carolina, just south of the Virginia border near Norfolk, which is home to a major Navy base and other military posts. But it was only after the Sept. 11 attacks that Blackwater began to emerge as a major security contractor in war zones.
Mr. Pelton said it would be wrong to assume that Mr. Prince’s political connections account for his success. “It is a mistake to characterize him as his father, or by the right-wing groups his father supported,” Mr. Pelton said. “Politically, I think he is more of a libertarian. He hates government sloth, even as his company gets most of its business from the government.”
Correction: October 29, 2007
An article on Oct. 8 about Erik D. Prince, the founder of Blackwater USA, a security contractor, misstated the location of Hillsdale College, which Mr. Prince attended. It is in southern Michigan, not western Michigan.
Academi
Η Academi είναι μια ιδιωτική αμερικανική εταιρία παροχής υπηρεσιών Ασφαλείας, που ιδρύθηκε το 1997 από τον Έρικ Πρινς (Erik Prince). Παλαιότερα ήταν γνωστή ως Μπλακγουότερ (Blackwater),] αργότερα η εταιρεία μετονομάστηκε σε Xe Services το 2009, και τελικά Academi το 2011. Σύμφωνα με δημοσίευμα του Spiegel η εταιρεία είναι εξουσιοδοτημένη από τη CIA για τη δολοφονία πολιτικών και στρατιωτικών αντιπάλων των ΗΠΑ και ενδεχομένως τη μεταφορά τους στο κολαστήριο του Γκουαντάναμομέσω θυγατρικών εταιρειών.
Η εταιρεία (Blackwater) αγοράστηκε στα τέλη του 2010 από μια ομάδα ιδιωτών επενδυτών οι οποίοι τη μετονόμασαν σε Academi, με σύσταση νέου Διοικητικού Συμβουλίου. Ο Πρινς διατήρησε τα δικαιώματα στο όνομα της Blackwater και δεν έχει καμία σχέση πια με την Academi. Η εταιρεία ήρθε στο φως της δημοσιότητας το 2007, όταν μια ομάδα υπαλλήλων της σκότωσαν 17 Ιρακινούς πολίτες και τραυμάτισαν άλλους 20 στην πλατεία Νισούρ, στη Βαγδάτη το Σεπτέμβριο του 2007.
Η Academi συνεχίζει να παρέχει υπηρεσίες ασφαλείας στην ομοσπονδιακή κυβέρνηση των ΗΠΑ, βάσει συμβολαίου. Η κυβέρνηση Ομπάμα έχει υπογράψει σύμβαση με την Academi για την παροχή υπηρεσιών προς τη CIA για 250.000.000 δολάρια. Το 2013, η θυγατρική της Academi η International Development Solutions υπέγραψε σύμβαση 92 εκατομμυρίων δολαρίων για την φύλαξη τουΣτέιτ Ντιπάρτμεντ.
Το 2014, η εταιρεία έγινε τμήμα της Constellis Holdings μαζί με την Triple Canopy, καθώς και άλλες εταιρείες ασφαλείας που ήταν μέρος του ομίλου Constellis, ως αποτέλεσμα εξαγοράς της.
Ίδρυση Blackwater USA
H Blackwater USA ιδρύθηκε το 1997, από τους Αλ Κλαρκ (Al Clark) και Έρικ Πρινς (Erik Prince) στη Βόρεια Καρολίνα, για παροχή στήριξης και κατάρτισης σε στελέχη υπηρεσιών επιβολής του νόμου. Εξηγώντας τον σκοπό της Blackwater, ο Πρινς δήλωσε: «Προσπαθούμε να κάνουμε για την εθνική ασφάλεια ο,τι κάνει η FedEx για τις Ταχυδρομικές Υπηρεσίες". Μετά τη συνεργασία της με τους SEALs και με ομάδες S.W.A.T., η Blackwater USA έλαβε την πρώτη σύμβαση από την κυβέρνηση των ΗΠΑ αμέσως μετά τον βομβαρδισμό του αντιτορπιλικού USS Cole στα ανοικτά των ακτών της Υεμένης, τον Οκτώβριο του 2000. Αφού κέρδισε την σύμβαση, ο Τζέιμι Σμιθ (Jamie Smith), ξεκίνησε το πρόγραμμα της Blackwater εκπαιδεύοντας πάνω 100.000 ναύτες του Αμερικανικού Πολεμικού Ναυτικού.
Κέντρο εκπαίδευσης
Ο Πρινς αγόρασε από τον Διευθυντή της Dow Jones Σων Τρότερ (Sean Trotter) μία έκταση περίπου 7.000 εκταρίων (28 km²), έναν τεράστιο βάλτο στα σύνορα της Βόρειας Καρολίνας και Βιρτζίνια, ο οποίος τώρα, ως επί το πλείστον, αποτελεί ένα εθνικό καταφύγιο άγριας ζωής. «Χρειαζόμασταν 3.000 εκτάρια ώστε να είναι ασφαλές», είπε ο Πρινς στον δημοσιογράφο Ρόμπερτ Γιανγκ Πέλτον (Robert Young Pelton). Εκεί, δημιούργησε τον ιδιωτικό φορέα εκπαίδευσης και της αναδόχου εταιρίας του, Blackwater, την οποία ονόμασε έτσι, από την λασπόχρωμη απόχρωση του νερού αυτού του βάλτου. Οι εγκαταστάσεις του κέντρου εκπαίδευσης (Lodge and Training Center) της Blackwater άνοιξαν επίσημα στις 15 Μαΐου του 1998 σε μια έκταση 6.000 εκταρίων και κόστισε 6.500.000 δολάρια.
Οι εγκαταστάσεις βασικής εκπαίδευσης της Blackwater, η οποία κινήθηκε από τον Τζόναθαν Έλιοτ (Jonathan Elliott) και Νικ Νόρμεντ (Nic Norment) το 2001, βρίσκονται σε 7.000 εκτάρια (28 km²), στην βορειοανατολική, Βόρεια Καρολίνα. Περιλαμβάνουν υποδομές για εκπαίδευση σε διάφορα πεδία, όπως εντός και εκτός αστικού περιβάλλοντος, μια τεχνητή λίμνη και έναν μεγάλο δρόμο για εκπαίδευση στην οδήγηση, ο οποίος συνδέει τις κομητείες Camden και Currituck. Η εταιρεία υποστηρίζει ότι είναι η μεγαλύτερη εγκατάσταση εκπαίδευσης στη χώρα και ότι η ιδέα δεν ήταν για μια οικονομική επιτυχία και κρατήθηκε οικονομικά με πωλήσεις από την αδελφή εταιρεία Blackwater Target Systems. Τον Νοέμβριο του 2006, Blackwater USA ανακοίνωσε ότι έχει αποκτήσει πρόσφατα μία 80-στρεμμάτων (32 εκτάρια) εγκατάσταση 150 μίλια (240 χιλιόμετρα) δυτικά του Σικάγο στο Mount Carroll, του Ιλινόις, που ονομάζεται Κέντρο Εκπαίδευσης Συγκρούσεων (Impact Training Center). Η εγκαταστάσεις αυτές είναι επίσης γνωστές ως "Το Μέρος" (The Site), ξεκίνησαν να λειτουργούν από τον Απρίλιο του 2007 και πολλές υπηρεσίες επιβολής του νόμου έχουν περάσει και εκπαιδευτεί από εκεί.
2002: Εταιρία Ασφαλείας BlackwaterΗ Εταιρία Ασφαλείας Blackwater (Blackwater Security Company - BSC) ήταν το πνευματικό τέκνο του Τζέϊμι Σμιθ (Jamie Smith), ενός πρώην αξιωματικού της CIA, ο οποίος έγινε Αντιπρόεδρος της Blackwater USA και διευθυντής της εταιρείας Blackwater Security, κρατώντας και τις δύο θέσεις ταυτόχρονα. Η πρώτη αποστολή της Blackwater ήταν να παράσχει 20 άνδρες με Άκρως Απόρρητη Εξουσιοδότηση για να προστατεύσει το αρχηγείο της CIA και μια άλλη βάση που ήταν υπεύθυνη για το κυνήγι του Οσάμα Μπιν Λάντεν. Η Blackwater ήταν μία από τις πολλές μισθοφορικές εταιρείες που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν μετά την εισβολή των ΗΠΑ στο Αφγανιστάν. Η Blackwater σχηματίστηκε αρχικά ωςDelaware LLC και ήταν μία από τις πάνω από 60 ιδιωτικές μισθοφορικές εταιρείες που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν κατά τη διάρκεια του πολέμου στο Ιράκ για τη φύλαξη των υπαλλήλων και των εγκαταστάσεων, την εκπαίδευση των νέων στρατιωτών και της αστυνομίας του Ιράκ, καθώς και την παροχή άλλων μορφών υποστήριξης για τις συμμαχικές δυνάμεις. Το 2003 ο Σμιθ έφυγε από Blackwater για να ξεκινήσει τη δική του εταιρεία, την SCG International Risk. Το 2005 η Blackwater είχε επίσης προσληφθεί για την διατήρηση της τάξης κατά τη διάρκεια του απόηχου του τυφώνα Κατρίνα από το αμερικανικό Υπουργείο Εσωτερικής Ασφάλειας, καθώς και από ιδιώτες πελάτες, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των εταιριών τηλεπικοινωνιών, πετροχημικών, καθώς και ασφαλιστικών εταιρειών.[ Συνολικά, η εταιρεία έλαβε πάνω από 1 δισεκατομμύρια δολάρια σε συμβόλαια κυβέρνηση των ΗΠΑ. Η εταιρεία απαρτίζεται από εννέα τμήματα και μια θυγατρική της, η οποία εφοδιάζει με οχήματα την Blackwater.
Τον Αύγουστο του 2003, η Blackwater έλαβε το πρώτο της συμβόλαιο στο Ιράκ, ένα συμβόλαιο ύψους 21 εκατομμυρίων δολαρίων, για ένα απόσπασμα προσωπικής ασφάλειας και δύο ελικόπτερα για τον Πολ Μπρέμερ (Paul Bremer), επικεφαλής της αμερικανικής κατοχής στο Ιράκ.
Τον Ιούλιο του 2004 η Blackwater είχε προσληφθεί από το υπουργείο Εξωτερικών των ΗΠΑ, κάτω από τη σύμβαση "ομπρέλα" του Γραφείου Διπλωματικής Ασφάλειας (Bureau of Diplomatic Security), μαζί με τις: DynCorp International και Triple Canopy, Inc. για παροχή υπηρεσίας προστασίας στο Ιράκ, το Αφγανιστάν, τη Βοσνία, και το Ισραήλ. Η παροχή ασφαλείας κράτησε για δύο χρόνια και έληξε στις 6 Ιουνίου, 2006. Με προσωπικό 482 ατόμων η Blackwater έλαβε $ 488 εκατομμύρια για το έργο της.
Την 1η Σεπτεμβρίου του 2005, μετά τον τυφώνα Κατρίνα, η Blackwater απέστειλε μια ομάδα διάσωσης και ελικόπτερο, δωρεάν, για να υποστηρίξει τις επιχειρήσεις παροχής βοήθειας. Μετά από αυτό, αναφέρθηκε ότι η εταιρεία δρούσε επίσης ως ομάδα επιβολής του νόμου στις κατεστραμμένες περιοχές που επλήγησαν από τον τυφώνα, διατηρώντας την τάξη γειτονιές αντιμετωπίζοντας εγκληματίες και πλιατσικολόγους. Η Blackwater μετακίνησε περίπου 200 άτομα προσωπικό στις περιοχές που επλήγησαν από τον τυφώνα Κατρίνα, οι περισσότεροι από τους οποίους (164 περίπου) εστάλησαν στο πλαίσιο σύμβασης με το Υπουργείο Εσωτερικής Ασφάλειας για την προστασία δημόσιων εγκαταστάσεων,[ , αλλά η Blackwater είχε συμβάσεις και με ιδιώτες πελάτες. Συνολικά, η Blackwater είχε μία οικονομικά προσοδοφόρα, παρουσία στον άμεσο απόηχο του τυφώνα Κατρίνα, η οποία κόστισε στους φορολογούμενους 240.000 δολάρια την ημέρα.
2007: Blackwater Παγκόσμια
Τον Οκτώβριο του 2007, η Blackwater USA άρχισε τη διαδικασία αλλαγής του ονόματός της σε Blackwater Worldwide και παρουσίασε ένα νέο λογότυπο. Η αλλαγή στο λογότυπο ήταν στο σημείο των σταυρονημάτων, το οποίο απλοποιήθηκε ελαφρώς.
2009: Xe Υπηρεσίες LLC
Το λογότυπο της Xe
Τον Φεβρουάριο του 2009, η Blackwater ανακοίνωσε ότι θα αλλάξει και πάλι το όνομά της, αυτή την φορά σε "Xe Services LLC", ως μέρος ενός σχεδίου αναδιάρθρωσης σε επίπεδο εταιρείας. Στη συνέχεια, αναδιοργάνωσε τις επιχειρησιακές μονάδες της, πρόσθεσε έναν τομέα εταιρικής διακυβέρνησης και δεοντολογίας, και δημιούργησε μια ανεξάρτητη επιτροπή εξωτερικών εμπειρογνωμόνων για την εποπτεία και έλεγχο των δομών της.
Ο Πρινς ανακοίνωσε την παραίτησή του από Διευθύνων Σύμβουλος στις 2 Μαρτίου του 2009, αλλά παρέμεινε ως πρόεδρος του διοικητικού συμβουλίου, χωρίς να συμμετέχει σε καθημερινές επιχειρήσεις. Ο Τζόζεφ Γιόριο (Joseph Yorio) ανέλαβε νέος πρόεδρος και διευθύνων σύμβουλος, αντικαθιστώντας τον Γκάρυ Τζάκσον (Gary Jackson) ως πρόεδρος και ο Πρινς ως Διευθύνων Σύμβουλος. Ο Γιόριο και η ομάδα του είχαν αναλάβει την αναδιάρθρωση της εταιρείας με την επίλυση σειράς νομικών ζητημάτων, εφαρμογή πολλών εσωτερικών ελέγχων και προγραμμάτων συμμόρφωσης, ενώ ο Ντανιέλ Εσποσίτο (Danielle Esposito) ανέλαβε ο νέος επικεφαλής αξιωματικός λειτουργίας και εκτελεστικός αντιπρόεδρος.
Τον Δεκέμβριο του 2009, ο Πρινς ανακοίνωσε ότι θα παραιτηθεί από τη συμμετοχή στις καθημερινές επιχειρήσεις και δραστηριότητες της εταιρείας, καθώς και από μερικά από τα δικαιώματα ιδιοκτησίας του. Είπε επίσης ότι σκέπτεται να γίνει δάσκαλος. Στα τέλη του 2010, ο Πρινς μετακόμισε στο Αμπού Ντάμπι, όπου στη συνέχεια ξεκίνησε μια άλλη εταιρεία παροχής υπηρεσιών ασφαλείας, την Reflex Responses.
2010: Academi
Το 2010, μια ομάδα ιδιωτών επενδυτών αγόρασε το κέντρο εκπαίδευσης της Xe, στο Μογιόκ της Β. Καρολίνα (Moyock, NC) και έχτισε μια νέα εταιρεία γύρω από αυτό που ονομάζεται Academi. Η νέα ιδιοκτησία σύστησε ένα διοικητικό συμβούλιο και ένα εντελώς νέο σύστημα διαχείρισης, συμπεριλαμβανομένου ενός πλήρους προγράμματος διακυβέρνησης και συμμόρφωσης. Το νέο Διοικητικό Συμβούλιο της Academi αποτελείται απο τον πρώην Γενικό Εισαγγελέα Τζων Άσκροφτ (John Ashcroft), τον πρώην Σύμβουλο του Λευκού Οίκου και επιτελάρχη της αντιπροεδρίας της κυβέρνησης των ΗΠΑ Τζακ Κουίν (Jack Quinn), τον Ναύαρχο ε.α. και πρώην Διοικητή της NSA Μπόμπι Ρέι Ίνμαν (Bobby Ray Inman) και τον Τεξανό επιχειρηματία Ρεντ ΜακΚομπς (Red McCombs), ο οποίος υπηρετεί ως Πρόεδρος του Διοικητικού Συμβουλίου. Οι Τζακ Κουίν και Τζων Ασκροφτ εργάζονται ως ανεξάρτητοι διευθυντές της Academi.
Τον Μάιο του 2011, αναλαμβάνει Διευθύνων Σύμβουλος της Academi ο Τεντ Ράϊτ (Ted Wright). O Ράϊτ προσέλαβε την Σούζαν Ριτς Φόλσομ (Suzanne Rich Folsom) ως επικεφαλής ρυθμιστικών θεμάτων, όργανο συμμόρφωσης και αναπληρωτή γενικό σύμβουλο. Η ομάδα Ρύθμισης και Συμμόρφωσης της Academi κέρδισε το βραβείο "Γραφείο Εταιρικής Συμμόρφωσης της χρονιάς, 2012", της εφημερίδας National Law Journal's.
Το 2012, ο Ταξίαρχος (ε.α.). Κρεγκ Νίξον (Craig Nixon) ανέλαβε νέος διευθύνων σύμβουλος της Academi.
2013: Blackwater στην Ελλάδα
Ο Έλληνας Πρέσβης κ. Λεωνίδας Χρυσανθόπουλος, ο οποίος σε συνέντευξή του σε καναδική εφημερίδα και ιστοσελίδα, υποστήριξε ότι η ελληνική κυβέρνηση συνήψε συμβόλαιο «προστασίας» του Ελληνικού Κοινοβουλίου με την «Academi» το 2013, υπό τον φόβο κοινωνικής αναταραχής, ακόμα και ενός εμφύλιου πόλεμου, λόγω των Μνημονίων και των σκληρών μέτρων λιτότητας που επέβαλε η τρικομματική κυβέρνηση, ώστε αυτές οι τυχόν εξεγέρσεις να κατασταλούν άμεσα από την Blackwater!
Σε ερώτηση των βουλευτών του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ Ειρήνης Δούρου, Θοδωρή Δρίτσα και Δημήτρη Τσουκαλά προς τον τότε υπουργό δημοσίας τάξης Νίκο Δένδια, οι οποίοι είχαν ζητήσει να ενημερωθούν αν υπήρξε ποτέ κάποια επαφή με ιδιωτική εταιρεία παροχής στρατιωτικών υπηρεσιών, την εταιρεία Academi, πρώην Blackwater, προκειμένου να αναλάβει τη φύλαξη του κοινοβουλίου ή άλλων δημόσιων χώρων ή να προσφέρει τεχνογνωσία ή εκπαίδευση, ο υπουργός δεν διέψευσε αλλά ούτε και επιβεβαίωσε το σχετικό δημοσίευμα του Αυγούστου.
Αν και το δημοσίευμα από το εξωτερικό αναφέρεται στην ύπαρξη και τη δράση της Blackwater στην Ελλάδα, με σκοπό την προστασία της κυβέρνησης και του κοινοβουλίου σε περίπτωση εξέγερσης λόγω της εξαθλίωσης των Ελλήνων, πολλοί κάνουν λόγο για οργανωμένο σχέδιο αποσταθεροποίησης της Ελλάδας διαμέσου εμφυλίου πολέμου, άποψη που ασπάζεται και αναλύει στο τελευταίο βιβλίο του και ο γνωστός ψυχίατρος Κλεάνθης Γρίβας και που θα έκανε βάσιμη την υποψία ύπαρξης της Blackwater στην Ελλάδα.
Ακόμα ένα δημοσίευμα, αυτή τη φορά από την Ινδία, αναφέρεται στην ύπαρξη και τη δράση της Blackwater στην Ελλάδα, με σκοπό την προστασία της κυβέρνησης και του κοινοβουλίου σε περίπτωση εξέγερσης λόγω της εξαθλίωσης των Ελλήνων.Το δημοσίευμα αναφέρει και τους φόβους της κυβέρνησης για πραξικόπημα δείχνοντας έτσι ότι η κυβέρνηση δεν εμπιστεύεται πλέον κανένα, ούτε τις Ένοπλες Δυνάμεις, ούτε την Αστυνομία, υπό τον φόβο ότι έχουν διεισδύσει πλήρως στους κόλπους τους μέλη της Χρυσής Αυγής, και θεωρώντας η κυβέρνηση ότι βρίσκεται υπό καθεστώς πολιορκίας, κρίνεται απαραίτητη η προστασία της από μισθοφόρους.
Το δημοσίευμα αναφέρει:
"Τους τελευταίους 12 μήνες η Ελλάδα έχει δει κύματα μαζικών διαδηλώσεων, ταραχών και συγκρούσεων μεταξύ αστυνομίας, και διαδηλωτών, ένοπλων επιθέσεων σε κυβερνητικούς στόχους, όπως επίσης την ολοκληρωτική κατάρρευση της οικονομίας".
Για αυτό το ερώτημα προς το Υπουργείο Προστασίας του Πολίτη, δεν υπήρξε διάψευση ή επιβεβαίωση από τον υπουργό Ν. Δένδια. Αντί αυτού τηρήθηκε σιγή "ιχθύος" σαν να μην έγινε ποτέ η δήλωση αυτή από τον Πρέσβη κ. Χρυσανθόπουλο.
2014: Επενδύσεις Constellis
Η συγχώνευση μεταξύ της Triple Canopy και της Academi, μαζί με άλλες εταιρείες που ήταν μέρος του πακέτου του Ομίλου Constellis, συγκεντρώθηκαν κάτω από την ομπρέλα, της Constellis Holdings, Inc. Η συναλλαγή αυτή ενώνει μια σειρά από εταιρείες ασφάλειας, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των: Triple Canopy, Constellis Ltd., Strategic Social, Tidewater Global Services, National Strategic Protective Services, ACADEMI Training Center and International Development Solution.
Διατελέσαντες Διευθυντές
Red McCombs (Πρόεδρος)
John Ashcroft
Dean Bosacki
Jason DeYonker
Bobby Ray Inman
Jack Quinn
Russ Robinson
Ανάμιξη στο Πόλεμο του Ιράκ
Η Blackwater Worldwide έχει παίξει σημαντικό ρόλο κατά τη διάρκεια του πολέμου στο Ιράκ ως ανάδοχος για λογαριασμό της κυβέρνησης των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών. Το 2003, η Blackwater πέτυχε την πρώτη σύμβαση υψηλού προφίλ της όταν έλαβε αποκλειστικό συμβόλαιο ύψους $ 27.700.000 για τη φύλαξη του επικεφαλής της Προσωρινής Συμμαχικής Αρχής, Λ. Πολ Μπρέμερ.
Από τον Ιούνιο του 2004, η Blackwater λάβει περισσότερα από 320.000.000 δολάρια από τον πενταετή προϋπολογισμό, ενός δισεκατομμυρίου δολαρίων, του Στέιτ Ντιπάρτμεντ, για την Παγκόσμια Υπηρεσία Μέσων Ατομικής Προστασίας, η οποία προστατεύει υπαλλήλους των ΗΠΑ και κάποιους ξένους αξιωματούχους σε ζώνες συγκρούσεων.
Στις 21 Απρλίου του 2005, έξι ανεξάρτητοι εργολάβοι της blackwater σκοτώθηκαν στο Ιράκ, όταν το ελικόπτερο τους, τύπου Mil Mi-8 Hip, καταρρίφθηκε. Επίσης, σε αυτούς που σκοτώθηκαν, ήταν 3 μέλη του πληρώματος βουλγαρικής καταγωγής και δύο οπλίτες απο τα νησιά Φίτζι. Οι αρχικές πληροφορίες ανέφεραν ότι το ελικόπτερο κατερρίφθη από RPG.
Το 2006, ένα αυτοκινητιστικό ατύχημα συνέβη στην Πράσινη Ζώνη της Βαγδάτης, όταν ένα SUV που οδηγούσαν άνδρες της Blackwater USA, συγκρούστηκε με ένα Humvee του Στρατού των ΗΠΑ.
Το ίδιο έτος, η Blackwater είχε συνάψει σύμβαση για την προστασία των διπλωματών της πρεσβείας των ΗΠΑ στο Ιράκ, τη μεγαλύτερη αμερικανική πρεσβεία στον κόσμο. Εκτιμάται από το Πεντάγωνο και τους εκπροσώπους της εταιρείας ότι υπάρχουν 20.000 έως 30.000 ένοπλοι άνδρες ασφαλείας που εργάζονται στο Ιράκ, και σύμφωνα με ορισμένες εκτιμήσεις ξεπερνούν τις 100.000, αν και δεν υπάρχουν επίσημα στοιχεία.
Για την εξάρτηση του State Department από ιδιώτες μισθοφόρους, όπως της Blackwater, για λόγους ασφαλείας, ο πρέσβης των ΗΠΑ στο Ιράκ Ράιαν Κρόκερ (Ryan Crocker) δήλωσε στην Γερουσία των ΗΠΑ: "Δεν υπάρχει κανένας άλλος τρόπος ώστε το Γραφείο Διπλωματικής Ασφάλειας του Στειτ Ντιπάρτμεντ να μπορούσε ποτέ να έχει αρκετό προσωπικό ασφαλείας, πλήρους απασχόλησης, για την παροχή ασφάλειας στο Ιράκ. δεν υπάρχει εναλλακτική λύση εκτός από τις συμβάσεις".
Για την αποστολή στο Ιράκ, η εταιρεία άντλησε μισθοφόρους από την "δεξαμενή" της με τους επαγγελματίες της, μια βάση δεδομένων που περιέχει συνολικά "21.000 άνδρες, πρώην στρατιωτών Ειδικών Δυνάμεων, έφεδρους στρατιώτες και απόστρατους, καθώς και πρώην όργανα επιβολής του νόμου". Για παράδειγμα, ο Γκάρυ Τζάκσον (Gary Jackson), πρόεδρος της εταιρείας, επιβεβαίωσε ότι Βόσνιοι, Φιλιππινέζοι, και Χιλιανοί "έχουν προσληφθεί για υπηρεσίες από την ασφάλεια του αεροδρομίου, για την προστασία του επικεφαλής της Προσωρινής Συμμαχικής Αρχής, Πολ Μπρέμερ. Στο διάστημα μεταξύ του 2005 και του Σεπτεμβρίου του 2007, το προσωπικό ασφαλείας της Blackwater ενεπλάκη σε 195 περιστατικά πυροβολισμών, εκ των οποίων τα 163 από αυτά, ήταν οι μισθοφόροι της Blackwater που πυροβόλησαν πρώτοι. Ο Έρικ Πρινς επισημαίνει ότι η εταιρεία ακολούθησε τις διαταγές των κυβερνητικών αξιωματούχων των ΗΠΑ, οι οποίοι συχνά βάζουν τους άντρες του σε επικίνδυνες καταστάσεις. Πολλές από τις εμπλοκές με πυροβολισμούς συνέβησαν μετά από μη συμμόρφωση των οδηγών οχημάτων, όταν τους διέταζαν οι φρουροί της Blackwater να σταματήσουν.
Το 2007, η κυβέρνηση των ΗΠΑ διερεύνησε κατά πόσον οι άνδρες της Blackwater διακινούσαν λαθραία όπλα στο Ιράκ. Δεν βρεθήκαν στοιχεία και δεν απαγγέλθηκαν κατηγορίες.
Φαλούτζα και Αν Νατζάφ
Ένα ελικόπτερο της εταιρείας Blackwater τύπου MD-530F παρέχει από αέρος βοήθεια για την ασφάλιση του χώρου έκρηξης βόμβας σε αυτοκίνητο στη Βαγδάτη, το Δεκέμβριο του 2004, κατά τη διάρκεια τουπολέμου στο Ιράκ.
Στις 31 Μαρτίου του 2004, οι ιρακινοί αντάρτες στη Φαλούτζα έστησαν ενέδρα σε δύο SUV, σκοτώνοντας τέσσερις μισθοφόρους της Blackwater που επέβαιναν σε αυτά. Οι κάτοικοι κρέμασαν τα απανθρακωμένα πτώματα πάνω από μια γέφυρα κατά μήκος του Ευφράτη. Σε απάντηση, Αμερικανοί πεζοναύτες επιτέθηκαν στην πόλη με την Επιχείρηση: Εγρήγορση Αποφασιστικότητα, η οποία έγινε ηΠρώτη μάχη της Φαλούτζα. Το φθινόπωρο του 2007, μια έκθεση του Κογκρέσου από την Επιτροπή Επίβλεψης της Βουλής διαπίστωσε ότι η Blackwater σκόπιμα "καθυστέρησε και παρεμπόδισε" έρευνες για τους θανάτους των μισθοφόρων της. Η έκθεση επιβεβαιώνει επίσης ότι τα μέλη του (τώρα σε αδράνεια) ιρακινού Σώματος Πολιτικής Άμυνας, οδήγησαν πρώτα την ομάδα στην ενέδρα διευκολύνοντάς την και μετά, μπλοκάροντας σημεία, εμπόδισαν την διαφυγή της, και στη συνέχεια εξαφανίστηκαν.
Τον Απρίλιο του 2004, στην έδρα της κυβέρνησης των ΗΠΑ στη Νατζάφ, εκατοντάδες Σιίτες παραστρατιωτικών δυνάμεων, έβαλαν με καταιγισμό πυρών εναντίων μισθοφόρων της Blackwater, τέσσερις στρατονόμοι και ένας πεζοναύτης με ρουκετοβόλα RPG και AK-47ανταπέδιδαν τα πυρά για ώρες, πριν καταφθάσουν οι ενισχύσεις των Ειδικών Δυνάμεων του στρατού των ΗΠΑ. Καθώς τελείωναν οι προμήθειες και πυρομαχικά, μια ομάδα μισθοφόρων της Blackwater που ήταν 70 μίλια (113km) μακριά, πέταξε μέχρι τις εγκαταστάσεις για να τις ανεφοδιάσει και έφερε τον τραυματισμένο πεζοναύτη των ΗΠΑ πίσω, σε ασφαλές μέρος έξω από την πόλη.
Βαγδάτη
Στις 16 Φεβρουαρίου του 2005, τέσσερις φρουροί της Blackwater συνοδεύοντας μία φάλαγγα του Στέϊτ Ντιπάρτμεντ στο Ιράκ, πυροβόλησαν 70 φορές σε ένα αυτοκίνητο. Οι φρουροί δήλωσαν ότι αισθάνθηκαν απειλή, όταν οδηγός αγνόησε τις υποδείξεις τους να σταματήσει καθώς πλησίαζε την αυτοκινητοπομπή. Η τύχη του οδηγού του αυτοκινήτου είναι άγνωστη επειδή η πομπή δεν σταμάτησε μετά τους πυροβολισμούς. Έρευνα από τη Διπλωματική Υπηρεσία Ασφαλείας του Υπουργείου Εξωτερικών των ΗΠΑ, κατέληξε στο συμπέρασμα ότι οι πυροβολισμοί δεν ήταν δικαιολογημένοι και ότι οι μισθοφόροι της Blackwater έδωσαν ψευδείς καταθέσεις στους ανακριτές. Στις καταθέσεις ισχυρίστηκαν ότι ένα από τα οχήματα της Blackwater είχε χτυπηθεί από πυροβολισμούς ανταρτών, αλλά η έρευνα κατέληξε στο συμπέρασμα ότι ένας από τους φρουρούς της Blackwater είχε πράγματι ανοίξει πυρ στο δικό του όχημα εκ παραδρομής. Ο Τζων Φριζ (John Frese), κορυφαίος αξιωματούχος των υπηρεσιών ασφαλείας στην πρεσβεία των ΗΠΑ στο Ιράκ, αρνήθηκε να τιμωρήσει την Blackwater ή τους φρουρούς ασφαλείας, διότι πίστευε ότι τυχόν πειθαρχικά μέτρα θα μειώσουν το ηθικό των μισθοφόρων της Blackwater.
Την παραμονή των Χριστουγέννων του 2006, ένας φρουρός ασφαλείας του ιρακινού αντιπροέδρου, Αντέλ Αμπντούλ Μαχντί, πυροβολήθηκε και σκοτώθηκε εν ώρα καθήκοντος έξω από την οικία του ιρακινού πρωθυπουργού. Η ιρακινή κυβέρνηση κατηγόρησε τον Άντριου Τζ. Μούνεν (Andrew J. Moonen), υπάλληλος της Blackwater εκείνη την περίοδο, ότι τον σκοτώσε ενώ ήταν μεθυσμένος. Ο Μούνεν στη συνέχεια απολύθηκε από την Blackwater για "παραβίαση κανονισμού περί αλκοόλ και όπλων", και επέστρεψε πίσω τις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες λίγες ημέρες μετά το περιστατικό. Η Εισαγγελία των ΗΠΑ που διερεύνησε την υπόθεση, ανακοίνωσε το 2010 ότι κλίνει το θέμα για τη δίωξη Μούνεν, επικαλούμενη πιθανή αυτοάμυνα και ότι δεν συντρέχει λόγος για την έναρξη μιας τέτοιας δίωξης. Το Υπουργείο Εξωτερικών των ΗΠΑ και η Blackwater είχαν προσπαθήσει να κρατήσουν μυστική την ταυτότητά του για λόγους ασφαλείας.
Πέντε μισθοφόροι της Blackwater σκοτώθηκαν όταν στις 23 Ιανουαρίου 2007, στο Ιράκ, το ελικόπτερο τύπου Hughes H-6 στο οποίο επέβαιναν, καταρρίφθηκε στην οδό Χάιφα της Βαγδάτης. Το σημείο της συντριβής ασφαλίστηκε από προσωπικό ασφάλειας με το διακριτικό "Jester" της 1ης Μεραρχίας Πεζικού. Υπεύθυνοι για την κατάρριψη του ελικοπτέρου φέρονται να είναι τρεις αντάρτες, αν και δεν έχει επιβεβαιωθεί από τις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες. Ο Αμερικανός αξιωματούχος άμυνας επιβεβαίωσε ότι οι τέσσερις από τους πέντε που σκοτώθηκαν πυροβολήθηκαν σε στυλ εκτέλεσης στο πίσω μέρος του κεφαλιού, αλλά δεν είναι γνωστό αν οι τέσσερις πρώτα επέζησαν της συντριβής.
Στα τέλη Μαΐου του 2007, μισθοφόροι της Blackwater άνοιξαν πυρ στους δρόμους της Βαγδάτης δύο φορές μέσα σε δύο ημέρες, εκ των οποίων η μια φορά ήταν προβοκατόρικη ενέργεια ώστε να προκληθεί μια έκρυθμη κατάσταση μεταξύ των μισθοφόρων και των καταδρομέων ασφαλείας του Υπουργείου Εσωτερικών του Ιράκ, σύμφωνα με Αμερικανούς και Ιρακινούς αξιωματούχους. Το πρώτο περιστατικό συνέβη όταν μία πομπή, φρουρούμενη απο την Blackwater, έπεσε σε ενέδρα στο κέντρο της Βαγδάτης. Το περιστατικό συνέβη όταν ένας Ιρακινός οδήγησε το όχημά του πολύ κοντά σε ένα κομβόι. Ωστόσο, σύμφωνα με μαρτυρία, οι φρουροί της Blackwater προσπάθησαν να απομακρύνουν τον οδηγό, φωνάζοντάς του και ρίχνοντας μια προειδοποιητική βολή στο ψυγείο του αυτοκινήτου, και τελικά ρίχνοντάς του στο παρμπρίζ. On May 30, 2007, Blackwater employees shot an Iraqi civilian said to have been "driving too close" to a State Department convoy that was being escorted by Blackwater contractors. Την 30η Μαΐου του 2007, οι μισθοφόροι της Blackwater πυροβόλησαν κατά ιρακινών αμάχων, λέγοντας ότι είχαν "οδηγήσει πολύ κοντά" σε μια πομπή του Στειτ Ντιπάρτμεντ που συνοδεύονταν από μισθοφόρους της Blackwater. Μετά το συμβάν, η ιρακινή κυβέρνηση επέτρεψε στην Blackwater να παρέχει ασφάλεια επιχειρώντας εντός των δρόμων του Ιράκ.
Στις 21 του Αυγούστου 2007 ο Διευθυντής της Blackwater Ντάνιελ Κάρολ (Daniel Carroll) απείλησε να σκοτώσει τον Ζαν Ρίχτερ (Jean Richter), εναν ερευνητή του Στειτ Ντιπαρτμεντ στο Ιράκ.
Ένας Ελεύθερος Σκοπευτής της Blackwater Worldwide άνοιξε πυρ από τη στέγη του Υπουργείου Δικαιοσύνης του Ιράκ, σκοτώνοντας τρεις φύλακες που εργάζονταν για το (χρηματοδοτούμενο από το κράτος του Ιράκ) Τηλεοπτικό Δίκτυο στις 6 Φεβρουαρίου του 2006. Πολλοί Ιρακινοί που ήταν παρόντες στο συμβάν είπαν ότι οι φρουροί δεν είχαν πυροβολήσει στο κτήριο του Υπουργείου Δικαιοσύνης. Το υπουργείο Εξωτερικών των ΗΠΑ δήλωσε, ωστόσο, ότι αυτή η ενέργεια "ήταν εντός των εγκεκριμένων κανόνων ασφαλείας που διέπουν τη χρήση βίας" με βάση τις πληροφορίες που έλαβε από τους φύλακες της Blackwater.
Τα έγγραφα του 2010 από το Πόλεμο στο Ιράκ που διέρρευσαν στο WikiLeaks, αναφέρουν ότι οι μισθοφόροι της Blackwater διέπραξαν σοβαρές παραβιάσεις στο Ιράκ, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της θανάτωσης πολιτών.
Η ιρακινή κυβέρνηση ανακάλεσε την άδεια της Blackwater να επιχειρεί στο Ιράκ, στις 17 Σεπτέμβρη του 2007, μετά από πυροβολισμούς μισθοφόρων της Blackwater εναντίων πολιτών, σκοτώνοντας δεκαεπτά Ιρακινούς αμάχους. Οι θάνατοι αυτοί συνέβησαν ενώ μια ομάδα Ιδιωτικής Ασφάλειας (PSD) της Blackwater συνόδευε μια φάλαγγα οχημάτων του Στέιτ Ντιπάρτμεντ καθ 'οδόν προς μια συνάντηση στη δυτική Βαγδάτη με στελέχη της Υπηρεσίας Διεθνούς Ανάπτυξης των ΗΠΑ. Η άδεια επανήλθε από την αμερικανική κυβέρνηση τον Απρίλιο του 2008, αλλά στις αρχές του 2009, οι Ιρακινοί ανακοίνωσαν ότι είχαν αρνηθεί να παρατείνουν την ισχύ της εν λόγω άδειας. Το 2009, ερευνητές του FBI δεν ήταν σε θέση να ταυτοποιήσουν αν οι σφαίρες αυτών των πυροβολισμών προήλθαν από τα όπλα που χειρίζονται οι μισθοφόροι της Blackwater, αφήνοντας ανοιχτό το ενδεχόμενο ότι οι πυροβολισμοί εναντίον των θυμάτων μπορεί να προέρχονταν και από τους αντάρτες.Σε μία συνέντευξή του το 2010, ο Έρικ Πρινς, ιδρυτής της εταιρείας, δήλωσε ότι η κυβέρνηση ψάχνει για "βρωμιές" για να υποστηρίξει κατηγορίες που ο ίδιος απέρριψε ως «αβάσιμες» και οι οποίες καλύπτουν ένα εύρος παρανομιών στο Ιρακ όπως αμέλεια, φυλετικές διακρίσεις, πορνεία, παράνομους θανάτους, δολοφονίες, και λαθρεμπόριο όπλων μέσα σε δοχεία σκυλοτροφών. Επεσήμανε ότι νυν και πρώην ηγετικά στελέχη της Blackwater έχουν καθαιρεθεί τακτικά από ομοσπονδιακές υπηρεσίες.
Ο Πρινς υποστήριξε επίσης τον Σεπτέμβριο του 2007 ότι υπήρξε μια «βιασύνη στην κρίση» για την Blackwater, λόγω «ανακριβών πληροφοριών».
Στις 2 Οκτωβρίου του 2007, ο Έρικ Πρινς, συμμετείχε σε ακρόαση του Κογκρέσου που διεξήγαγε η Επιτροπή της Εποπτείας Κυβερνητικών Μεταρρυθμίσεων, μετά τη αμφισβήτηση σχετικά με την συμπεριφορά της Blackwater στο Ιράκ και στο Αφγανιστάν. Η Blackwater προσέλαβε τους εταιρεία δημοσίων σχέσεων BKSH & Associates Worldwide (BKSH & Συνεργάτες), θυγατρική της Burson-Marsteller, για να βοηθήσει τον Πρινς να προετοιμάσει την κατάθεσή του στην ακροαματική διαδικασία. Ο Ρόμπερτ Τάππαν (Robert Tappan), ένας πρώην αξιωματούχος του Στέιτ Ντιπάρτμεντ που εργάστηκε για την Προσωρινή Συμμαχική Αρχή στη Βαγδάτη, και ήταν ένα από τα στελέχη που χειρίζονταν το λογαριασμό.Η Burson-Marsteller ήρθε στο προσκήνιο απο τα δικηγορικά γραφεία της Ουάσιγκτον που εκπροσωπούν την Blackwater - McDermott Will & Emery και Crowell & Moring. H BKSH, μια, αυτοαποκαλούμενη, "δικομματική" επιχείρηση (Η Χίλαρι Ρόνταμ Κλίντον, κατά την διεκδίκηση του χρίσματος των Δημοκρατικών για την υποψηφιότητα της Προεδρίας, ήταν επίσης πελάτης τους), είχε ως επικεφαλής τον Τσάρλι Μπλακ (Charlie Black), περίοπτος πολιτικός στρατηγικής του κόμματος των Ρεπουμπλικάνων και πρώην επικεφαλής εκπρόσωπος της Εθνικής Επιτροπής των Ρεπουμπλικάνων, και ο Σκοττ Πάστρικ (Scott Pastrick), πρώην ταμίας της Εθνικής Επιτροπής των Δημοκρατικών.
Στην κατάθεσή του ενώπιον του Κογκρέσου, ο Πρινς είπε πως εταιρεία του έχει έλλειψη διορθωτικών μέτρων για την αντιμετώπιση παραπτωμάτων των εργαζομένων της. Όταν ρωτήθηκε γιατί ο Άντριου Μούνεν (Andrew Moonen) "τα έτσουξε και έφυγε από τη χώρα" μετά το θάνατο του φρουρού του αντιπροέδρου του Ιράκ, ο ίδιος απάντησε: "Δεν μπορούμε να τον δείρουμε, δεν μπορούμε να τον φυλακίσουμε." Όταν ρωτήθηκε από ένα μέλος του Κογκρέσου για οικονομικές πληροφορίες σχετικά με την εταιρεία του, Πρινς αρνήθηκε να παράσχει τεκμηρίωση, λέγοντας ότι «είμαστε μια ιδιωτική εταιρεία, και υπάρχει μια λέξη κλειδί εκεί - Ιδιωτική» Αργότερα δήλωσε ότι η εταιρεία θα μπορούσε να παράσχει τεκμηρίωση σε μια μελλοντική ημερομηνία εάν οι ερωτήσεις υποβάλλονταν γραπτώς. Όταν χρησιμοποιήθηκε ο όρος «μισθοφόροι» για να περιγράψει τους υπαλλήλους της Blackwater, ο Πρινς ενίστατο χαρακτηρίζοντάς τους ως "πιστοί Αμερικανοί".
Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy
Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.
Iput myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky missions,” says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. “But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.” Prince—the founder of Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military contractor—is royally steamed. He wants to vent. And he wants you to hear him vent.
Erik Prince has an image problem—the kind that’s impervious to a Madison Avenue makeover. The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, and a former navy seal, he has had the distinction of being vilified recently both in life and in art. In Washington, Prince has become a scapegoat for some of the Bush administration’s misadventures in Iraq—though Blackwater’s own deeds have also come in for withering criticism. Congressmen and lawyers, human-rights groups and pundits, have described Prince as a war profiteer, one who has assembled a rogue fighting force capable of toppling governments. His employees have been repeatedly accused of using excessive, even deadly force in Iraq; many Iraqis, in fact, have died during encounters with Blackwater. And in November, as a North Carolina grand jury was considering a raft of charges against the company, as a half-dozen civil suits were brewing in Virginia, and as five former Blackwater staffers were preparing for trial for their roles in the deaths of 17 Iraqis, The New York Times reported in a page-one story that Prince’s firm, in the aftermath of the tragedy, had sought to bribe Iraqi officials for their compliance, charges which Prince calls “lies … undocumented, unsubstantiated [and] anonymous.” (So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in suicide bombings in Pakistan.)
In Hollywood, meanwhile, a town that loves nothing so much as a good villain, Prince, with his blond crop and Daniel Craig mien, has become the screenwriters’ darling. In the filmState of Play, a Blackwater clone (PointCorp.) uses its network of mercenaries for illegal surveillance and murder. On the Fox series 24, Jon Voight has played Jonas Hodges, a thinly veiled version of Prince, whose company (Starkwood) helps an African warlord procure nerve gas for use against U.S. targets.
But the truth about Prince may be orders of magnitude stranger than fiction. For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life. Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into “denied areas”—places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence. (Full disclosure: In the 1990s, before becoming a journalist for CBS and then NBC News, I was a C.I.A. attorney. My contract was not renewed, under contentious circumstances.)
But Prince, with a new administration in power, and foes closing in, is finally coming in from the cold. This past fall, though he infrequently grants interviews, he decided it was time to tell his side of the story—to respond to the array of accusations, to reveal exactly what he has been doing in the shadows of the U.S. government, and to present his rationale. He also hoped to convey why he’s going to walk away from it all.
To that end, he invited Vanity Fairto his training camp in North Carolina, to his Virginia offices, and to his Afghan outposts. It seemed like a propitious time to tag along.
Split Personality
Erik Prince can be a difficult man to wrap your mind around—an amalgam of contradictory caricatures. He has been branded a “Christian supremacist” who sanctions the murder of Iraqi civilians, yet he has built mosques at his overseas bases and supports a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan. He and his family have long backed conservative causes, funded right-wing political candidates, and befriended evangelicals, but he calls himself a libertarian and is a practicing Roman Catholic. Sometimes considered arrogant and reclusive—Howard Hughes without the O.C.D.—he nonetheless enters competitions that combine mountain-biking, beach running, ocean kayaking, and rappelling.
The common denominator is a relentless intensity that seems to have no Off switch. Seated in the back of a Boeing 777 en route to Afghanistan, Prince leafs through Defense News while the film Taken beams from the in-flight entertainment system. In the movie, Liam Neeson plays a retired C.I.A. officer who mounts an aggressive rescue effort after his daughter is kidnapped in Paris. Neeson’s character warns his daughter’s captors:
If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills … skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you [don’t] let my daughter go now … I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
Prince comments, “I used that movie as a teaching tool for my girls.” (The father of seven, Prince remarried after his first wife died of cancer in 2003.) “I wanted them to understand the dangers out there. And I wanted them to know how I would respond.”
You can’t escape the impression that Prince sees himself as somehow destined, his mission anointed. It comes out even in the most personal of stories. During the flight, he tells of being in Kabul in September 2008 and receiving a two a.m. call from his wife, Joanna. Prince’s son Charlie, one year old at the time, had fallen into the family swimming pool. Charlie’s brother Christian, then 12, pulled him out of the water, purple and motionless, and successfully performed CPR. Christian and three siblings, it turns out, had recently received Red Cross certification at the Blackwater training camp.
But there are intimations of a higher power at work as the story continues. Desperate to get home, Prince scrapped one itinerary, which called for a stay-over at the Marriott in Islamabad, and found a direct flight. That night, at the time Prince would have been checking in, terrorists struck the hotel with a truck bomb, killing more than 50. Prince says simply, “Christian saved Charlie’s life and Charlie saved mine.” At times, his sense of his own place in history can border on the evangelical. When pressed about suggestions that he’s a mercenary—a term he loathes—he rattles off the names of other freelance military figures, even citing Lafayette, the colonists’ ally during the Revolutionary War.
Prince’s default mode is one of readiness. He is clenched-jawed and tightly wound. He cannot stand down. Waiting in the security line at Dulles airport just hours before, Prince had delivered a little homily: “Every time an American goes through security, I want them to pause for a moment and think, What is my government doing to inconvenience the terrorists? Rendition teams, Predator drones, assassination squads. That’s all part of it.”
Such brazenness is not lost on a listener, nor is the fact that Prince himself is quite familiar with some of these tactics. In fact Prince, like other contractors, has drawn fire for running a company that some call a “body shop”—many of its staffers having departed military or intelligence posts to take similar jobs at much higher salaries, paid mainly by Uncle Sam. And to get those jobs done—protecting, defending, and killing, if required—Prince has had to employ the services of some decorated vets as well as some ruthless types, snipers and spies among them.
Erik Prince flies coach internationally. It’s not just economical (“Why should I pay for business? Fly coach, you arrive at the same time”) but also less likely to draw undue attention. He considers himself a marked man. Prince describes the diplomats and dignitaries Blackwater protects as “Al Jazeera–worthy,” meaning that, in his view, “bin Laden and his acolytes would love to kill them in a spectacular fashion and have it broadcast on televisions worldwide.”
Stepping off the plane at Kabul’s international airport, Prince is treated as if he, too, were Al Jazeera–worthy. He is immediately shuffled into a waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves, and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s tactical-operations center.
Prince in the tactical-operations center at a company base
in Kabul. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.
Once in the van, Prince’s team gives him a security briefing. Using satellite photos of the area, they review the route to Blackwater’s compound and point out where weapons and ammunition are stored inside the vehicle. The men warn him that in the event that they are incapacitated or killed in an ambush Prince should assume control of the weapons and push the red button near the emergency brake, which will send out a silent alarm and call in reinforcements.
Black Hawks and Zeppelins
Blackwater’s origins were humble, bordering on the primordial. The company took form in the dismal peat bogs of Moyock, North Carolina—not exactly a hotbed of the defense-contracting world.
In 1995, Prince’s father, Edgar, died of a heart attack (the Evangelical James C. Dobson, founder of the socially conservative Focus on the Family, delivered the eulogy at the funeral). Edgar Prince left behind a vibrant auto-parts manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, with 4,500 employees and a line of products ranging from a lighted sun visor to a programmable garage-door opener. At the time, 25-year-old Erik was serving as a navy seal (he saw service in Haiti, the Middle East, and Bosnia), and neither he nor his sisters were in a position to take over the business. They sold Prince Automotive for $1.35 billion.
Erik Prince and some of his navy friends, it so happens, had been kicking around the idea of opening a full-service training compound to replace the usual patchwork of such facilities. In 1996, Prince took an honorable discharge and began buying up land in North Carolina. “The idea was not to be a defense contractor per se,” Prince says, touring the grounds of what looks and feels like a Disneyland for alpha males. “I just wanted a first-rate training facility for law enforcement, the military, and, in particular, the special-operations community.”
Business was slow. The navy seals came early—January 1998—but they didn’t come often, and by the time the Blackwater Lodge and Training Center officially opened, that May, Prince’s friends and advisers thought he was throwing good money after bad. “A lot of people said, ‘This is a rich kid’s hunting lodge,’” Prince explains. “They could not figure out what I was doing.”
Blackwater outpost near the Pakistan border,
used for training Afghan police. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.
Today, the site is the flagship for a network of facilities that train some 30,000 attendees a year. Prince, who owns an unmanned, zeppelin-esque airship and spent $45 million to build a fleet of customized, bomb-proof armored personnel carriers, often commutes to the lodge by air, piloting a Cessna Caravan from his home in Virginia. The training center has a private landing strip. Its hangars shelter a petting zoo of aircraft: Bell 412 helicopters (used to tail or shuttle diplomats in Iraq), Black Hawk helicopters (currently being modified to accommodate the security requests of a Gulf State client), a Dash 8 airplane (the type that ferries troops in Afghanistan). Amid the 52 firing ranges are virtual villages designed for addressing every conceivable real-world threat: small town squares, littered with blown-up cars, are situated near railway crossings and maritime mock-ups. At one junction, swat teams fire handguns, sniper rifles, and shotguns; at another, police officers tear around the world’s longest tactical-driving track, dodging simulated roadside bombs.
In keeping with the company’s original name, the central complex, constructed of stone, glass, concrete, and logs, actually resembles a lodge, an REI store on steroids. Here and there are distinctive touches, such as door handles crafted from imitation gun barrels. Where other companies might have Us Weekly lying about the lobby, Blackwater has counterterror magazines with cover stories such as “How to Destroy Al Qaeda.”
In fact, it was al-Qaeda that put Blackwater on the map. In the aftermath of the group’s October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in Yemen, the navy turned to Prince, among others, for help in re-training its sailors to fend off attackers at close range. (To date, the company says, it has put some 125,000 navy personnel through its programs.) In addition to providing a cash infusion, the navy contract helped Blackwater build a database of retired military men—many of them special-forces veterans—who could be called upon to serve as instructors.
When al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. mainland on 9/11, Prince says, he was struck with the urge to either re-enlist or join the C.I.A. He says he actually applied. “I was rejected,” he admits, grinning at the irony of courting the very agency that would later woo him. “They said I didn’t have enough hard skills, enough time in the field.” Undeterred, he decided to turn his Rolodex into a roll call for what would in essence become a private army.
After the terror attacks, Prince’s company toiled, even reveled, in relative obscurity, taking on assignments in Afghanistan and, after the U.S. invasion, in Iraq. Then came March 31, 2004. That was the day insurgents ambushed four of its employees in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. The men were shot, their bodies set on fire by a mob. The charred, hacked-up remains of two of them were left hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates.
“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Prince recalls. “I had been in the military, and no one under my command had ever died. At Blackwater, we had never even had a firearms training accident. Now all of a sudden four of my guys aren’t just killed, but desecrated.” Three months later an edict from coalition authorities in Baghdad declared private contractors immune from Iraqi law.
Subsequently, the contractors’ families sued Blackwater, contending the company had failed to protect their loved ones. Blackwater countersued the families for breaching contracts that forbid the men or their estates from filing such lawsuits; the company also claimed that, because it operates as an extension of the military, it cannot be held responsible for deaths in a war zone. (After five years, the case remains unresolved.) In 2007, a congressional investigation into the incident concluded that the employees had been sent into an insurgent stronghold “without sufficient preparation, resources, and support.” Blackwater called the report a “one-sided” version of a “tragic incident.”
After Fallujah, Blackwater became a household name. Its primary mission in Iraq had been to protect American dignitaries, and it did so, in part, by projecting an image of invincibility, sending heavily armed men in armored Suburbans racing through the streets of Baghdad with sirens blaring. The show of swagger and firepower, which alienated both the locals and the U.S. military, helped contribute to the allegations of excessive force. As the war dragged on, charges against the firm mounted. In one case, a contractor shot and killed an Iraqi father of six who was standing along the roadside in Hillah. (Prince later told Congress that the contractor was fired for trying to cover up the incident.) In another, a Blackwater firearms technician was accused of drinking too much at a party in the Green Zone and killing a bodyguard assigned to protect Iraq’s vice president. The technician was fired but not prosecuted and later settled a wrongful-death suit with the man’s family.
Those episodes, however, paled in comparison with the events of September 16, 2007, when a phalanx of Blackwater bodyguards emerged from their four-car convoy at a Baghdad intersection called Nisour Square and opened fire. When the smoke cleared, 17 Iraqi civilians lay dead. After 15 months of investigation, the Justice Department charged six with voluntary manslaughter and other offenses, insisting that the use of force was not only unjustified but unprovoked. One guard pleaded guilty and, in a trial set for February, is expected to testify against the others, all of whom maintain their innocence. The New York Times recently reported that in the wake of the shootings the company’s top executives authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi higher-ups in order to buy their silence—a claim Prince dismisses as “false,” insisting “[there was] zero plan or discussion of bribing any officials.”
Nisour Square had disastrous repercussions for Blackwater. Its role in Iraq was curtailed, its revenue dropping 40 percent. Today, Prince claims, he is shelling out $2 million a month in legal fees to cope with a spate of civil lawsuits as well as what he calls a “giant proctological exam” by nearly a dozen federal agencies. “We used to spend money on R&D to develop better capabilities to serve the U.S. government,” says Prince. “Now we pay lawyers.”
Does he ever. In North Carolina, a federal grand jury is investigating various allegations, including the illegal transport of assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in dog-food sacks. (Blackwater denied this, but confirmed hiding weapons on pallets of dog food to protect against theft by “corrupt foreign customs agents.”) In Virginia, two ex-employees have filed affidavits claiming that Prince and Blackwater may have murdered or ordered the murder of people suspected of cooperating with U.S. authorities investigating the company—charges which Blackwater has characterized as “scandalous and baseless.” One of the men also asserted in filings that company employees ran a sex and wife-swapping ring, allegations which Blackwater has called “anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive.”
Meanwhile, last February, Prince mounted an expensive rebranding campaign. Following the infamous ValuJet crash, in 1996, ValuJet disappeared into AirTran, after a merger, and moved on to a happy new life. Prince, likewise, decided to retire the Blackwater name and replace it with the name Xe, short for Xenon—an inert, non-combustible gas that, in keeping with his political leanings, sits on the far right of the periodic table. Still, Prince and other top company officials continued to use the name Blackwater among themselves. And as events would soon prove, the company’s reputation would remain as combustible as ever.
Spies and Whispers
Last June, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta met in a closed session with the House and Senate intelligence committees to brief them on a covert-action program, which the agency had long concealed from Congress. Panetta explained that he had learned of the existence of the operation only the day before and had promptly shut it down. The reason, C.I.A. spokesman Paul Gimigliano now explains: “It hadn’t taken any terrorists off the street.” During the meeting, according to two attendees, Panetta named both Erik Prince and Blackwater as key participants in the program. (When asked to verify this account, Gimigliano notes that “Director Panetta treats as confidential discussions with Congress that take place behind closed doors.”) Soon thereafter, Prince says, he began fielding inquisitive calls from people he characterizes as far outside the circle of trust.
It took three weeks for details, however sketchy, to surface. In July, The Wall Street Journaldescribed the program as “an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.” The agency reportedly planned to accomplish this task by dispatching small hit teams overseas. Lawmakers, who couldn’t exactly quibble with the mission’s objective, were in high dudgeon over having been kept in the dark. (Former C.I.A. officials reportedly saw the matter differently, characterizing the program as “more aspirational than operational” and implying that it had never progressed far enough to justify briefing the Hill.)
On August 20, the gloves came off. The New York Times published a story headlined cia sought blackwater’s help to kill jihadists. The Washington Post concurred: cia hired firm for assassin program. Prince confesses to feeling betrayed. “I don’t understand how a program this sensitive leaks,” he says. “And to ‘out’ me on top of it?” The next day, the Times went further, revealing Blackwater’s role in the use of aerial drones to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders: “At hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan … the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Erik Prince, almost overnight, had undergone a second rebranding of sorts, this one not of his own making. The war profiteer had become a merchant of death, with a license to kill on the ground and in the air. “I’m an easy target,” he says. “I’m from a Republican family and I own this company outright. Our competitors have nameless, faceless management teams.”
Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there is a double standard at play. “The left complained about how [C.I.A. operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.” As in the Plame case, though, the leaks prompted C.I.A. attorneys to send a referral to the Justice Department, requesting that a criminal investigation be undertaken to identify those responsible for providing highly classified information to the media.
By focusing so intently on Blackwater, Congress and the press overlooked the elephant in the room. Prince wasn’t merely a contractor; he was, insiders say, a full-blown asset. Three sources with direct knowledge of the relationship say that the C.I.A.’s National Resources Division recruited Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special skills or unusual access to targets of interest. As assets go, Prince would have been quite a catch. He had more cash, transport, matériel, and personnel at his disposal than almost anyone Langley would have run in its 62-year history.
The C.I.A. won’t comment further on such assertions, but Prince himself is slightly more forthcoming. “I was looking at creating a small, focused capability,” he says, “just like Donovan did years ago”—the reference being to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who, in World War II, served as the head of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the modern C.I.A. (Prince’s youngest son, Charles Donovan—the one who fell into the pool—is named after Wild Bill.) Two sources familiar with the arrangement say that Prince’s handlers obtained provisional operational approval from senior management to recruit Prince and later generated a “201 file,” which would have put him on the agency’s books as a vetted asset. It’s not at all clear who was running whom, since Prince says that, unlike many other assets, he did much of his work on spec, claiming to have used personal funds to road-test the viability of certain operations. “I grew up around the auto industry,” Prince explains. “Customers would say to my dad, ‘We have this need.’ He would then use his own money to create prototypes to fulfill those needs. He took the ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach.”
According to two sources familiar with his work, Prince was developing unconventional means of penetrating “hard target” countries—where the C.I.A. has great difficulty working either because there are no stations from which to operate or because local intelligence services have the wherewithal to frustrate the agency’s designs. “I made no money whatsoever off this work,” Prince contends. He is unwilling to specify the exact nature of his forays. “I’m painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket.” (His pocket is deep: according to The Wall Street Journal, Blackwater had revenues of more than $600 million in 2008.)
Clutch Cargo
The Afghan countryside, from a speeding perch at 200 knots, whizzes by in a khaki haze. The terrain is rendered all the more nondescript by the fact that Erik Prince is riding less than 200 feet above it. The back of the airplane, a small, Spanish-built eads casa C-212, is open, revealing Prince in silhouette against a blue sky. Wearing Oakleys, tactical pants, and a white polo shirt, he looks strikingly boyish.
As the crew chief initiates a countdown sequence, Prince adjusts his harness and moves into position. When the “go” order comes, a young G.I. beside him cuts a tether, and Prince pushes a pallet out the tail chute. Black parachutes deploy and the aircraft lunges forward from the sudden weight differential. The cargo—provisions and munitions—drops inside the perimeter of a forward operating base (fob) belonging to an elite Special Forces squad.
Five days a week, Blackwater’s aviation arm—with its unabashedly 60s-spook name, Presidential Airways—flies low-altitude sorties to some of the most remote outposts in Afghanistan. Since 2006, Prince’s company has been conscripted to offer this “turnkey” service for U.S. troops, flying thousands of delivery runs. Blackwater also provides security for U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and his staff, and trains narcotics and Afghan special police units.
Once back on terra firma, Prince, a BlackBerry on one hip and a 9-mm. on the other, does a sweep around one of Blackwater’s bases in northeast Afghanistan, pointing out buildings recently hit by mortar fire. As a drone circles overhead, its camera presumably trained on the surroundings, Prince climbs a guard tower and peers down at a spot where two of his contractors were nearly killed last July by an improvised explosive device. “Not counting civilian checkpoints,” he says, “this is the closest base to the [Pakistani] border.” His voice takes on a melodramatic solemnity. “Who else has built a fob along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?” It doesn’t quite have the ring of Lawrence of Arabia’s “To Aqaba!,” but you get the picture.
Blackwater has been in Afghanistan since 2002. At the time, the C.I.A.’s executive director, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, responding to his operatives’ complaints of being “worried sick about the Afghans’ coming over the fence or opening the doors,” enlisted the company to offer protection for the agency’s Kabul station. Going “low-pro,” or low-profile, paid off: not a single C.I.A. employee, according to sources close to the company, died in Afghanistan while under Blackwater’s protection. (Talk about a tight-knit bunch. Krongard would later serve as an unpaid adviser to Blackwater’s board, until 2007. And his brother Howard “Cookie” Krongard—the State Department’s inspector general—had to recuse himself from Blackwater-related oversight matters after his brother’s involvement with the company surfaced. Buzzy, in response, stepped down.)
As the agency’s confidence in Blackwater grew, so did the company’s responsibilities, expanding from static protection to mobile security—shadowing agency personnel, ever wary of suicide bombers, ambushes, and roadside devices, as they moved about the country. By 2005, Blackwater, accustomed to guarding C.I.A. personnel, was starting to look a little bit like the C.I.A. itself. Enrique “Ric” Prado joined Blackwater after serving as chief of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). A short time later, Prado’s boss, J. Cofer Black, the head of the CTC, moved over to Blackwater, too. He was followed, in turn, by his superior, Rob Richer, second-in-command of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Of the three, Cofer Black had the outsize reputation. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book Bush at War, on September 13, 2001, Black had promised President Bush that when the C.I.A. was through with al-Qaeda “they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.” According to Woodward, “Black became known in Bush’s inner circle as the ‘flies-on-the-eyeballs guy.’” Richer and Black soon helped start a new company, Total Intelligence Solutions (which collects data to help businesses assess risks overseas), but in 2008 both men left Blackwater, as did company president Gary Jackson this year.
Off and on, Black and Richer’s onetime partner Ric Prado, first with the C.I.A., then as a Blackwater employee, worked quietly with Prince as his vice president of “special programs” to provide the agency with what every intelligence service wants: plausible deniability. Shortly after 9/11, President Bush had issued a “lethal finding,” giving the C.I.A. the go-ahead to kill or capture al-Qaeda members. (Under an executive order issued by President Gerald Ford, it had been illegal since 1976 for U.S. intelligence operatives to conduct assassinations.) As a seasoned case officer, Prado helped implement the order by putting together a small team of “blue-badgers,” as government agents are known. Their job was threefold: find, fix, and finish. Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off. When the time came to train the hit squad, the agency, insiders say, turned to Prince. Wary of attracting undue attention, the team practiced not at the company’s North Carolina compound but at Prince’s own domain, an hour outside Washington, D.C. The property looks like an outpost of the landed gentry, with pastures and horses, but also features less traditional accents, such as an indoor firing range. Once again, Prince has Wild Bill on his mind, observing that “the O.S.S. trained during World War II on a country estate.”
Among the team’s targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al-Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency’s radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The C.I.A. team supposedly went in “dark,” meaning they did not notify their own station—much less the German government—of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down. Another target, the source says, was A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who shared nuclear know-how with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The C.I.A. team supposedly tracked him in Dubai. In both cases, the source insists, the authorities in Washington chose not to pull the trigger. Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged. (Says agency spokesman Gimigliano, “[The] C.I.A. hasn’t discussed—despite some mischaracterizations that have appeared in the public domain—the substance of this effort or earlier ones.”)
The source familiar with the Darkazanli and Khan missions bristles at public comments that current and former C.I.A. officials have made: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”
When Prado left the C.I.A., in 2004, he effectively took the program with him, after a short hiatus. By that point, according to sources familiar with the plan, Prince was already an agency asset, and the pair had begun working to privatize matters by changing the team’s composition from blue-badgers to a combination of “green-badgers” (C.I.A. contractors) and third-country nationals (unaware of the C.I.A. connection). Blackwater officials insist that company resources and manpower were never directly utilized—these were supposedly off-the-books initiatives done on Prince’s own dime, for which he was later reimbursed—and that despite their close ties to the C.I.A. neither Cofer Black nor Rob Richer took part. As Prince puts it, “We were building a unilateral, unattributable capability. If it went bad, we weren’t expecting the chief of station, the ambassador, or anyone to bail us out.” He insists that, had the team deployed, the agency would have had full operational control. Instead, due to what he calls “institutional osteoporosis,” the second iteration of the assassination program lost steam.
Sometime after 2006, the C.I.A. would take another shot at the program, according to an insider who was familiar with the plan. “Everyone found some reason not to participate,” says the insider. “There was a sick-out. People would say to management, ‘I have a family, I have other obligations.’ This is the fucking C.I.A. They were supposed to lead the charge after al-Qaeda and they couldn’t find the people to do it.” Others with knowledge of the program are far more charitable and question why any right-thinking officer would sign up for an assassination program at a time when their colleagues—who had thought they had legal cover to engage in another sensitive effort, the “enhanced interrogations” program at secret C.I.A. sites in foreign countries—were finding themselves in legal limbo.
America and Erik Prince, it seems, have been slow to extract themselves from the assassination business. Beyond the killer drones flown with Blackwater’s help along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (President Obama has reportedly authorized more than three dozen such hits), Prince claims he and a team of foreign nationals helped find and fix a target in October 2008, then left the finishing to others. “In Syria,” he says, “we did the signals intelligence to geo-locate the bad guys in a very denied area.” Subsequently, a U.S. Special Forces team launched a helicopter-borne assault to hunt down al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah. Ghadiyah, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al-Mazidih, was said to have been killed along with six others—though doubts have emerged about whether Ghadiyah was even there that day, as detailed in a recent Vanity Fair Web story by Reese Ehrlich and Peter Coyote.
And up until two months ago—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug—he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their mission: non-disclosable.
Flying out of Kabul, Prince does a slow burn, returning to the topic of how exposed he has felt since press accounts revealed his role in the assassination program. The firestorm that began in August has continued to smolder and may indeed have his handlers wondering whether Prince himself is more of a liability than an asset. He says he can’t understand why they would shut down certain high-risk, high-payoff collection efforts against some of America’s most implacable enemies for fear that his involvement could, given the political climate, result in their compromise.
He is incredulous that U.S. officials seem willing, in effect, to cut off their nose to spite their face. “I’ve been overtly and covertly serving America since I started in the armed services,” Prince observes. After 12 years building the company, he says he intends to turn it over to its employees and a board, and exit defense contracting altogether. An internal power struggle is said to be under way among those seeking to define the direction and underlying mission of a post-Prince Blackwater.
In the past, Prince has entertained the idea of building a pre-positioning ship—complete with security personnel, doctors, helicopters, medicine, food, and fuel—and stationing it off the coast of Africa to provide “relief with teeth” to the continent’s trouble spots or to curb piracy off Somalia. At one point, he considered creating a rapidly deployable brigade that could be farmed out, for a fee, to a foreign government.
For the time being, however, Prince contends that his plans are far more modest. “I’m going to teach high school,” he says, straight-faced. “History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.
Private military companies are essentially armies that are controlled by no one but their shareholders and whoever pays them the most. They’re not about to go anywhere, either—on the contrary, as capitalism marches on, there are more and more of these private armies running around the globe.
Let’s take a look at what they do.
The thing about private military companies is that (like any other company) they can come from literally anywhere. Defion Internacional, for instance, hails from Peru, South America. This may not seem like the most obvious place for a frightening private army—that is, until you realize that Peru suffered a 20-year internal conflict that ended as recently as 2000 and is still trying to pick up the pieces.
The country is full of men who grew up in a state of constant conflict, and are now struggling to support their families in a poor economy. As such, Defion Internacional has been able to hire their personnel with as little as US$1000 per month. Of course, these men think it is a fairly good salary for them, as typical monthly wages in Peru (if they manage to get work) is only around $200 a month.
Defion Internacional specializes in dangerous security assignments in the Middle East, but also has other lines of business such as food and medical services, English teaching, and (most frighteningly) insurance. The company has been given missions in Iraq by the US Department of State, meaning that these underpaid Peruvians have actually worked with the US Military. They have also worked for a larger US private military company called Triple Canopy Inc., although these days the latter prefers to do their own hiring in Peru. Hey, speaking of Triple Canopy . . .
9A Private Army Guards US Officials Abroad
Triple Canopy, like Defion Internacional, is known to employ discount South American soldiers. However, that’s just a small fraction of their business. Founded by ex-members of the US Army Special Forces, Triple Canopy is a mercenary force that works mainly for the US government in Iraq. Their employees include former Navy SEALs, Rangers, Special Operations personnel and police officers.
Although it specializes in security and escort operations, Triple Canopy has been responsible for some of the toughest missions a mercenary company can undertake. After Saddam Hussein’s fall, the company found employment in Iraq, guarding and escorting US officials and performing other high-risk duties. As a company that works closely with the military, some have dubbed them the “other army” of the United States.
8Rise Of The German Mercenaries
For years, Germans (who for obvious reasons have tried to lead a conflict-free life since World War II) scoffed at the American private militaries that were causing trouble all over the world’s conflict zones. In 2007, they received some troubling news of their own: A former German officer called Thomas Kaltegärtner had founded a mercenary company of his own.
Kaltegärtner’s company, Asgaard German, then went on to cause further gray hairs to German politicians by signing a deal to provide security servicesfor Galadid Abdinur Ahmad Darman, the President of Somalia. Apparently, their mission is no less than restoring security in the war-ravaged area.
This may not sound like such a bad thing, except for one thing: Darman happens to be a self-appointed president—one of many Somali warlords who’ve claimed that title and refuse to recognize the authority of the official, United Nations-appointed transition government of the country. One can only imagine what “security services” for such a person might entail, and how he is planning to “restore peace in the area.”
And now he has a bunch of highly trained German soldiers to help him.
7Image Issues
These days, private military companies are very keen on maintaining a positive, professional reputation. After all, the Information Age has made sure that every single gaffe companies make eventually finds its way to the eyes of the world. A prime example of this new, shiny veneer is Sandline International, the now-defunct British company closely associated with Aegis Defence, whose mercenaries saw action in war-torn Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea, among other places.
Sandline had an advisor and public spokesman called Michael Grunberg, who smilingly fed the media the same kind of corporate buzzword talk that a tech company CEO might sprout: According to Grunberg, his company and its horde of privately paid soldiers are “established entities, have established sets of principles and employ professional people.” Sandline also handled bad publicity just as awkwardly as any other company: For instance, when a book that criticized the company came out (Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma) they responded by publishing a massive list of flaws in the writing, nitpicking the book’s details to death without really responding to any of the more serious accusations.
6Academi
Academi is probably the most harmless-sounding name on this list, but don’t be fooled: The company is actually none other than the infamous Blackwater. The company’s history of atrocities runs so far and deep that there are entire websites solely dedicated to listing their various shady activities: For a while, they were even involved in a CIA death squad.”
The name “Academi,” which has been in use since 2011, marks the second time the company has attempted to whitewash its name in five years. It’s first name change was to “XE Services,” which lasted only two years, until yet another “corporate restructuring” took place. So far, this strategy seems to work for them, as their new name is yet to be too tarnished. Then again, judging by the fact that they have already been forced to admit to at least 17federal criminal charges and pay millions of dollars in fines, it seems like it’s just a matter of time before they have to come up with an even less threatening name. Though with their reputation at this point, there probably is no name that could soften their public image.
5Executive Outcomes
In the other end of the sliding scale of terrifying private militaries, we haveExecutive Outcomes, known to their friends as EO (if they have any). This South African company has been sighted in most African war zones, where it is said to hold high influence. Executive Outcomes mercenaries have been seen in Sierra Leone, Angola, Uganda, Botswana, Zambia, Ethiopia, Namibia, Lesotho and, of course, South Africa. Although they officially state their only mission is bringing peace, they have been suspected of several shady activities ranging from Sierra Leone-based oil company shenanigans todiamond dealings with the jewel giant De Beers.
The company is notorious for targeting the client country’s mineral-rich regions, often regaining and securing control of gold, oil and diamond regions before paying attention to other matters. Some whisper they don’t always get around to returning these possessions to the country. Executive Outcomes is said to own gold mines in Uganda, oil drilling facilities in Ethiopia and a variety of other peacetime business ventures in the other countries it has fought for.
4The Case Of Jamie Leigh Jones
In 2007, Jamie Leigh Jones, an employee of private military contractor Halliburton/KBR, claimed she was gang-raped by several of her co-workers. This traumatic experience was just the beginning of her struggles with the private military company. Her employer then decided to cover up the incident by locking her in a shipping container with no food or water for 24 hours. This was followed with a warning: They’d immediately fire her if she left Iraq to seek medical treatment.
Unsurprisingly, Jones sued. However, the court proceedings proved problematic. KBR’s employee contract stipulated that Jones’s claims be heard without jury, judge, public record, or transcripts, which made it extremely difficult to prove whether or not anything had happened. Finally, after 15 months of much-publicized fighting, Jones was allowed to take KBR to court. When the case finally came to trial in 2011, KBR wheeled out evidence that had been completely ignored by the media. Jones had a history of manipulation and lying and had wildly changed her story multiple times. One of these changes included the claim that her pectoral muscle had been torn and her chest had been injured to the point of disfigurement, but she “could not produce a single witness from Iraq” who could confirm that she’d even claimed to have a chest injury. In fact, her flight out of Iraq required her to put on a very heavy bulletproof jacket, which doctors pointed out would have been literally impossible with the specific injuries she claimed to have. She eventually lost the case, despite maintaining to the end that her story was true.
Although we may never find out for sure what exactly happened to Jones and how it was initially dealt with by the company, it did bring to light KBR’s unethical employment contract, which banned employees from pressing sexual assault charges in court. Since the incident, the US governmentpassed an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill, which prevented the government from dealing with companies who have that clause in their employment contracts, and so KBR was forced to change it.
3Trophy Videos
In 2005, a “trophy video” featuring presumably Scottish or Irish menrandomly shooting Iraqi civilians was uploaded on a site that was unofficially affiliated with Aegis Defence Services—a private military company that incidentally employs both Scots and Irishmen. The incident caused considerable outcry in news media all over the world, and sparked dialogue about the state of Iraqi defense. At that point, over 25,000 private security contractors were stationed in the country. They were widely hated and had a reputation for abusing and even killing civilians at the slightest provocation. None of them had ever been brought to law, because the local law enforcement had been specifically forbidden to prosecute them.
Despite video footage, this case was not an exception. Upon carefully reviewing the available material, US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division eventually concluded that they are not going to press charges. Meanwhile, Aegis Defence is keeping its own internal investigations carefully under wraps. None of the incident’s investigative files have been released to the public.
2The Founder, David Stirling
Although mercenary armies have been around more or less since war was invented, the creation of the modern private military company is usually attributed to Colonel David Stirling. Stirling was a Scottish Laird and a skillful military man to the very core: Even before he started dabbling in the mercenary business, he had created a little something called the SAS, which you may know as one of the most elite special force units in the world.
After Stirling left the army following World War II, he moved to Africa and founded Capricorn Africa, a society for promoting racial harmony. However, destiny had chosen another path for him. Before long, he was running Watchguard International Ltd., a commercial company that helped train security units for several Arab and African countries. Watchguard, established in the 1960s, is usually attributed as the first modern private military company.
1Sex Traffickin
DynCorp is one of the most powerful private military companies in the world, with most of its several-billion dollar revenue coming directly from the US government. Sadly, allegations have been made that the company’s code of conduct leaves something to be desired—to say the least.
In the late 1990s, two whistleblowers (independently from each other) came forward and alleged that DynCorp employees stationed in Bosnia were routinely abusing civilians. According to their accusations, DynCorp people engaged in sex with minors, and had even sold civilians to each other as slaves.
The company immediately reacted to the terrifying news . . . by firing both of the whistleblowers. One of them in particular, Kathryn Bolkovac, had already been facing severe difficulties before the firing: Despite the fact that she had uncovered a network of brothels and bars at which kidnapped women were forced to entertain peacekeepers, her attempts to report the issue through the chain of command were constantly sabotaged and people even threatened her life.
However, Kathryn persevered. She, along with the other whistleblower, took DynCorp to court. The company lost both cases, and the antics of its employees were revealed to the world so hard that Hollywood even made amajor motion picture out of Bolkovac’s story.
+Sharp End International
Despite living in a continent that is mainly made of deadly spiders (or maybe because of it), Australians have an uncanny ability to bring their own peculiar sense of humor in almost any situation. Private military business is no different: With its joking name that is in sharp contrast with its no-nonsense webpage, it’s no surprise that Sharp End International hails from Australia. Another clue is that they actually have a Facebook fan page.
Sharp End is a relatively tiny company, as private military hordes go. This is because it’s a highly specialized organization: A private military force thattrains other military forces. Its special operatives are experts at providing training for government and corporate troops, which means that they actually show other private militaries how things are done. This makes them a potentially highly dangerous entity—luckily, they seem to have a fairly strict code of conduct and won’t train just anyone.
Blackwater's World of Warcraft
Need a private-label armored vehicle? A detachment of Chilean infantrymen? A special forces "engagement team"? Erik Prince's expanding global private army is at your service—and the war in Iraq was just the beginning.
IN ADDITION TO prospecting for international contracts, Greystone has become Prince's primary recruiter of foreign military muscle. On its website, the company says its operators are drawn "from the best militaries throughout the world" and represent "numerous nationalities." Its reliance on foreign recruits, it claims, is a matter of "cultural sensitivity" and "awareness." What the PR materials don't say is that Greystone, along with other security companies, likely outsources its work overseas for the same reason many other businesses do—it brings down costs and helps bypass bothersome regulations. "They're going to pay these people a lot less, and they're not going to respect the same type of employee and labor rights that U.S. nationals would require," says Erica Razook, an Amnesty International lawyer whose work focuses on private-security contractors.
Consider the case of Greystone subcontractor ID Systems. Incorporated in Panama and headquartered in a nondescript office complex in Bogotá, Colombia, the company in 2005 placed newspaper ads that drew men with military experience—a plentiful commodity in a country torn by civil war and terrorized by guerrillas and paramilitaries. According to one ID Systems recruit, a former Colombian army officer who asked to remain anonymous, he and at least 30 other men were promised $4,000 per month to do security work for Blackwater in Iraq. They went through a quick refresher course in firearms and hand-to-hand combat at the Colombian army's cavalry school in northern Bogotá, he said; among the instructors were several Americans, all ex-U.S. military working for Greystone. Afterward, the recruits returned home to wait for the call to Iraq.
It came late one evening in June 2006. The men assembled at ID Systems' offices, where they were met by Gonzalo Adolfo Guevara, a former Colombian army captain who had overseen their recruitment. He handed them contracts and told them to be at the airport in four hours. They were told they would be making not $4,000 but $2,700 per month—still not bad in Colombia, where some workers only earn that much in a year. But the actual contract, which some of them didn't read until after they were airborne, provided for just $1,000 per month, or $34 per day.
On arriving in Baghdad, the men were issued weapons and introduced to Blackwater and Greystone managers. Bitterness turned to anger when they discovered that their pay was about one-fourth that of the Romanians they were replacing. They composed a letter to managers at ID Systems, Greystone, and Blackwater demanding either a raise or a ticket back to Colombia. The companies stonewalled, and it wasn't until three months later, after reports of the dispute had appeared inSemana, Colombia's largest newsmagazine, that the men were finally sent home. (Chris Taylor says there was no impropriety: "Before every single one of those professionals were deployed, they understood there was a change in the contract. Those who went understood perfectly what they were signing.") According to the former recruit, ID Systems continues to supply personnel to Greystone. But Guevara, the man who deceived the recruits about their wages, is no longer involved—he was shot and left to die outside a Bogotá bakery last May.
IT WAS NEITHER GUEVARA nor Erik Prince who pioneered the idea of hiring foreign soldiers to do the business of the U.S. government. That took the imagination of a Chilean American businessman named José Miguel Pizarro. "Pizarro opened the door," says José Luis Gómez del Prado, a former diplomat who heads the UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries; it's thanks to Pizarro that recruiting ex-soldiers from Latin America has become "a big business."
Born in California and raised in Santiago, Pizarro served ten years as an officer in the Chilean army and another three as a Marine Corps translator attached to the U.S. Southern Command. By March 2003, he was heading a small defense-consulting firm in suburban Washington, D.C. Pizarro was connected and well spoken. He was also telegenic, and as the U.S. stormed toward Iraq he was hired as an on-air military analyst with CNN en Español, the network's Spanish-language affiliate. It was there, in the cafeteria between shows, that he befriended a former U.S. general, also working as an analyst, who helped him hatch the idea of renting former Chilean soldiers to American private security companies. "He explained to me how the opportunity to do business in the Middle East was growing, that there was a need for private, professional security forces in Iraq," Pizarro recalls. "I started showing up in the cafeteria with pen and paper, taking notes, taking names. It took me several weeks to form the idea."
Before long, Pizarro was cold-calling security contractors to pitch his commandos. It wasn't an easy sell. "No one in any of the firms would even return his calls," says one industry expert Pizarro turned to for advice. Pizarro recalls his first meeting with Blackwater president Gary Jackson: "He told me, 'This is a respectable company, and we're going into a war zone. I need professional commandos, not peasants with rifles.'"
Not easily discouraged, Pizarro scored an appointment with Prince, who signed on for an initial batch of recruits to add to Blackwater's security operations in Iraq. Pizarro left the meeting starstruck with his first paying customer. "He's my hero," Pizarro says. "He's a patriot, a great Christian, and has the balls that 250 million Americans would love to have."
Back in Santiago, Pizarro formed a new company called Grupo Táctico—incorporated in Uruguay to sidestep Chilean laws prohibiting paramilitary activity—and posted an ad in a Chilean newspaper offering recruits $3,000 per month. More than a thousand men sent résumés, including some active-duty Chilean soldiers. Blackwater reps traveled to Chile to review the applicants, and by February 2004, Pizarro and about 75 of his top recruits—most of them former Chilean special forces, marine commandos, and paratroopers—were brought to Blackwater's compound in Moyock for training. Within weeks, they flew to Iraq, where they found themselves working alongside a veritable United Nations of security contractors: Nepalese and Indian Gurkhas, South Africans, and Eastern Europeans, to name a few. They became known as the "Black Penguins" because of the distinctive figures they cut on foot patrol, weighed down by weapons and flak jackets. Pizarro took to the term and designed a shoulder patch for his recruits: a penguin with an M-4 carbine across its chest.
Greystone, and their competitors have built recruitment networks reaching deep into the paramilitary milieus of the Third World. It works like this: Blackwater, for example, will win a U.S. government contract; it will then subcontract with itself—that is, with Greystone—to do the job. From there, Greystone looks to its network of international affiliates, firms like Pizarro's Grupo Táctico in Chile or ID Systems in Colombia, which maintain informal relationships with what are known in the trade as "briefcase recruiters"—individuals with connections to the local paramilitary scene. These men find the recruits and funnel them back up the chain until, finally, they are deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq. The practice also serves as a convenient firewall, shielding U.S.-based companies from direct liability for the actions of their subcontractors. "If a court is looking at these issues, where the contract is signed is a factor," explains Amnesty's Razook. "There is a lot there that would take it out of a U.S. court's control."
Briefcase recruiting is a little-known niche of the private security business that has attracted some less-than-savory characters. Take Julio (a.k.a. "George") Nayor, a Cuban American currently serving an 11-year sentence at a federal prison in Miami for drug trafficking. A one-time associate of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, Nayor escaped arrest in the United States in the early 1990s and fled, by means of a fake passport and various false identities, to San Salvador. There he reportedly opened a gym and several restaurants including one he named Karaoke George, which was adjacent to an upscale shopping mall.
In late 2004, Nayor placed newspaper ads seeking men to work on contract in Iraq for an unspecified U.S. security firm; recruits were to meet him at the karaoke bar. According to a Washington Post reporter who witnessed the scene, men lined up outside for weeks. "This is the future of global security," Nayor bragged to the reporter, adding that he'd already accepted 300 Salvadorans and expected to sign up many more, including veterans of the 380-man contingent that the Salvadoran government had contributed to the Coalition of the Willing. As soldiers in Iraq, they had earned a monthly salary of $280; as hired guns, they expected to make as much as $2,400.
Nayor disappeared as quickly as he had emerged, but nine months later many of the men who had interviewed with him were contacted by CAPROS, a new company headed by two high-ranking Salvadoran military officers that, according to a Salvadoran newspaper, was recruiting for Greystone. In December 2005, Greystone representatives visited El Salvador to review the recruits, although it's unclear whether they were ever sent to Iraq. Some of the men later told the Salvadoran press that the company had encouraged them to rack up credit-card purchases in preparation for their deployment, then failed to reimburse them.
Nayor's own career as a briefcase recruiter was cut short in September 2006 by his arrest for allegedly plotting to assassinate El Salvador's president by shooting down his helicopter with a shoulder-fired missile. He was subsequently extradited to the United States to face some of his old drug charges.
By then, Greystone's search for contractors had expanded far beyond Latin America. In 2005, a Croatian newspaper reported that Greystone had dispatched a man named Marko Radielovic, who once worked for the aid group Mercy Corps, to perform a "feasibility study" on hiring former Croatian soldiers and police. The following year, the Filipino press reported that a company called Satelles Solutions had applied to lease land (about 25 acres) within the former U.S. Navy base at Subic Bay. Satelles was a Greystone front; its Filipino "owners" included a former high-ranking general and an attorney at a major law firm that specialized in advising foreign investors. Each held a few pennies' worth of Satelles stock, while Greystone controlled the rest.
The firm had been courting the Filipino government for some time; seven of its embassy employees were invited to Greystone's unveiling ceremony in Washington, the largest contingent by far of any foreign embassy. Greystone, according to Filipino news reports, hoped to build a jungle-survival training facility capable of processing up to 1,000 trainees a week. "It was merely a place to be able to provide training to customers in that part of the world," says Chris Taylor; it wasn't about creating a "third-country-national offensive force." Nevertheless, after Filipino legislators called for an investigation, the company withdrew its application.
FOR A WHILE, it seemed to José Miguel Pizarro as if the private security boom might never end. Following Erik Prince's example, he began to diversify—launching a Chilean business intelligence firm catering to the defense industry, and a security company that, like Blackwater, could provide guards, police and military trainers, and even bomb-sniffing dogs. He also took on a new client, Virginia-based Triple Canopy. But then, as quickly as his star had risen, it fell as both Greystone and Triple Canopy canceled his contracts. Pizarro blames corporate intrigue—Blackwater didn't like his doing business with the competition, he claims—but the true reason may be far simpler. At the height of his operation, Pizarro charged a monthly fee of $4,500 per recruit, of which his men received $3,200. Recruits from other Latin American countries, meanwhile, were willing to deploy to Iraq for as little as $700 per month. "You can get five Colombian rifles for one Chilean," Pizarro says. "Do the math."
In January 2006, the last of his 1,157 Chilean commandos left Iraq. By the time Erik Prince testified before the House oversight committee last October, he acted as though he didn't remember Pizarro: "He might have been a vendor to us," he ventured when Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) asked him point-blank.
But if Prince has lost all memory of the Chilean recruiter, Pizarro hasn't forgotten his role model. Having focused of late on the strategic-consulting side of his business, he says he remains prepared to muster more than 1,200 Chilean commandos for deployment anywhere in the world. "Privatization of certain security services is a long-term trend with historical consequences," he says. "The entire future of private military companies is being redesigned as we speak."
Indeed, the private security industry could be heading toward a shake-up—though not necessarily in the way Pizarro would like. Many of the new players could suffer the fate of any startup, disappearing or being swallowed by larger firms. "The problem these guys have is that they're not very profitable," says Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who works as a consultant for Special Forces. Johnson, who's part of an investment group that was offered a crack at purchasing Triple Canopy when it went up for sale last year, says the firm clears, at most, 5 percent on about $170 million in annual revenue. "They're like a dollar wind machine," he says. "Dollars come in and dollars go out, but I don't see how they stay in business doing that."
Prince and his diversified group of companies, though, are positioned to endure. The Greystone model doesn't depend on America's wars: Whether the future of the business lies in what the industry calls "peace and stability" work or in providing "proactive" strike forces to private clients, some element of the Prince network is in a position to deliver. "They're soldiers of fortune," says the security director of a well-known humanitarian NGO. "Today they are willing to do the bidding of the United States, because the United States is willing to pay them. Who are they willing to work for tomorrow?"
Blackwater founder: We could have fought ISIS if Obama hadn't 'crushed my old business'
Founder of the controversial private security contractor Blackwater claimed Friday that the organization could have successfully combated militant group Islamic State if the Obama administration had not “crushed my old business.”
Erik Prince said in front of the conservative group Maverick PAC that his infamous private military firm - synonymous with the contracting bonanza that ensued after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 - would have effectively fought Islamic State (known as ISIS or ISIL), allowing the US to hold back its military in its offensive against the group’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
“It’s a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business, because as a private organization, we could’ve solved the boots-on-the-ground issue, we could have had contracts from people that want to go there as contractors; you don’t have the argument of US active duty going back in there,” Prince said during the discussion with retired four-star Gen. James Conway. “[They could have] gone in there and done it, and be done, and not have a long, protracted political mess that I predict will ensue.”
Nearly two weeks ago, President Obama said the US would conduct airstrikes and “hunt down” the fighters of the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq, Syria, and “wherever they exist.” Washington has promised $500 million to so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels for fighting both the Syrian government and Islamic State militants. While the US has also sent 1,600 “support force” troops to advise the Iraqi military in the fight against Islamic State, Obama has stressed - despite contradicting sentiments from Pentagon officials - that ground troops will not be necessary during the latest offensive.
Prince’s comments were made almost exactly seven years after Blackwater guards infamously shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007. The incident sparked outrage with American presence in Iraq among the local population. The US iscurrently trying to prosecute four of the five guards involved in the incident after a first failed attempt to do it in 2009. After 10 weeks of arguments and testimony, the case went to a jury earlier this month.
After the Nisour Square killings and other scandals, the Obama administration eventually severed most ties with Blackwater - now known as Academi after several rebranding attempts. Yet despite criticism for the organization from the administration, more than half a billion dollars has been set aside for the firm and its associated entities since President Obama took office in 2009.
According to The Huffington Post, more than $300 million of that total half billion-plus was awarded before Blackwater was sold by Prince in 2010. Since the sale, the US State Department has awarded Academi just over $500 million, as opposed to $784 million in the three years prior to his sale of the company. The firm merged with security contracting rival Triple Canopy in 2010.
Former Navy SEAL Prince then left for Abu Dhabi to contBlackwater founder: We could have fought ISIS if Obama hadn't 'crushed my old business'
Blackwater Chief Executive Erik Prince testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan
Founder of the controversial private security contractor Blackwater claimed Friday that the organization could have successfully combated militant group Islamic State if the Obama administration had not “crushed my old business.”
Erik Prince said in front of the conservative group Maverick PAC that his infamous private military firm - synonymous with the contracting bonanza that ensued after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 - would have effectively fought Islamic State (known as ISIS or ISIL), allowing the US to hold back its military in its offensive against the group’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
“It’s a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business, because as a private organization, we could’ve solved the boots-on-the-ground issue, we could have had contracts from people that want to go there as contractors; you don’t have the argument of US active duty going back in there,” Prince said during the discussion with retired four-star Gen. James Conway. “[They could have] gone in there and done it, and be done, and not have a long, protracted political mess that I predict will ensue.”
Nearly two weeks ago, President Obama said the US would conduct airstrikes and “hunt down” the fighters of the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq, Syria, and “wherever they exist.” Washington has promised $500 million to so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels for fighting both the Syrian government and Islamic State militants. While the US has also sent 1,600 “support force” troops to advise the Iraqi military in the fight against Islamic State, Obama has stressed - despite contradicting sentiments from Pentagon officials - that ground troops will not be necessary during the latest offensive.
Prince’s comments were made almost exactly seven years after Blackwater guards infamously shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007. The incident sparked outrage with American presence in Iraq among the local population. The US iscurrently trying to prosecute four of the five guards involved in the incident after a first failed attempt to do it in 2009. After 10 weeks of arguments and testimony, the case went to a jury earlier this month.
After the Nisour Square killings and other scandals, the Obama administration eventually severed most ties with Blackwater - now known as Academi after several rebranding attempts. Yet despite criticism for the organization from the administration, more than half a billion dollars has been set aside for the firm and its associated entities since President Obama took office in 2009.
According to The Huffington Post, more than $300 million of that total half billion-plus was awarded before Blackwater was sold by Prince in 2010. Since the sale, the US State Department has awarded Academi just over $500 million, as opposed to $784 million in the three years prior to his sale of the company. The firm merged with security contracting rival Triple Canopy in 2010.
Former Navy SEAL Prince then left for Abu Dhabi to continue security contracting work, vowing to never work for the US government after being spurned by the new presidential administration.
The Friday discussion veered into Republican Party politics. Prince, a Catholic conservative, claimed the Republican Party - which dominates the US House of Representatives and is poised to take the US Senate following mid-term elections this November - is “getting rolled” by the Democratic Party.
“I want you to tell your congressman that we pay them to fight,” Prince said, according to The Daily Beast. “They are hired to fight for our values, for what you sent them there to do… I am sick and tired of Republicans getting rolled—having a lousy, weak leadership that gets rolled every time by the Democratic Party. We’re like… Charlie Brown trying to kick the football every time and they keep taking it away… I encourage the Republican Party to get off their ass and fight like we pay them to.”
Prince also spoke of Iran, saying the young population simply seeks more freedom in a closely-guarded society.
“Most Iranians… are just like you guys,” he said. “They want to be able to drink a beer when they want, travel where they want, have their wife or girlfriend drive a car or wear a short shirt and wear high heels. I’m all in favor of it.”
Prince also said Blackwater, if around today, could have countered spread of the Ebola viruswith humanitarian missions using the NOAAS McArthur (S 330), an American survey ship once owned by Blackwater.
“Now, that’s the sort of thing that could help fight Ebola,” Prince told The Daily Beast.
inue security contracting work, vowing to never work for the US government after being spurned by the new presidential administration.
The Friday discussion veered into Republican Party politics. Prince, a Catholic conservative, claimed the Republican Party - which dominates the US House of Representatives and is poised to take the US Senate following mid-term elections this November - is “getting rolled” by the Democratic Party.
“I want you to tell your congressman that we pay them to fight,” Prince said, according to The Daily Beast. “They are hired to fight for our values, for what you sent them there to do… I am sick and tired of Republicans getting rolled—having a lousy, weak leadership that gets rolled every time by the Democratic Party. We’re like… Charlie Brown trying to kick the football every time and they keep taking it away… I encourage the Republican Party to get off their ass and fight like we pay them to.”
Prince also spoke of Iran, saying the young population simply seeks more freedom in a closely-guarded society.
“Most Iranians… are just like you guys,” he said. “They want to be able to drink a beer when they want, travel where they want, have their wife or girlfriend drive a car or wear a short shirt and wear high heels. I’m all in favor of it.”
Prince also said Blackwater, if around today, could have countered spread of the Ebola viruswith humanitarian missions using the NOAAS McArthur (S 330), an American survey ship once owned by Blackwater.
“Now, that’s the sort of thing that could help fight Ebola,” Prince told The Daily Beast.
GREYSTONE LIMITED MERCENARIES OPERATING IN UKRAINE
Website politikus.ru reported, on the night of 2-3, the flight landed at the airport Borispol and Zhuliany , Ukraine carrying many men in civilian clothes but carrying large bags (similar to type bag that the U.S. military used to store equipment).
All these people were identified as employees of private security companies Greystone Limited. It is a subsidiary of Vehicle Services Company LLC (which is a private security company Blackwater USA’s notorious was renamed in 2009). Currently, the number of employees of this company in Ukraine is said to be up to 300 people.
The presence of the security personnel are specially trained in Ukraine this will enhance protection for the new administration in the area east and southeast, where the anti-government protests erupted powerful new .
The only question now is how many private security personnel of foreign countries in Ukraine real and who is paying them (the cost to hire a private company like that is very expensive and government Ukraine’s new budget clearly not sufficient to cover these costs).
While the number 300 is not a large army and these employees do not carry heavy weapons, but with the highly trained and mastered many fighting skills, then this may be staff conduct minor damage as a sniper or cause explosions, … similar to what they used to do in Africa and elsewhere.
Some suggested that there was a collusion between the new government of Kiev and the U.S. Embassy in the use of private security companies in Ukraine. In the near future, they may become subject to destabilize the situation in the country.
New Blackwater Iraq Scandal: Guns, Silencers and Dog
A federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food, ABCNews.com has learned.
Under State Department rules, Blackwater is prohibited from using certain assault weapons and silencers in Iraq because they are considered "offensive" weapons inappropriate for Blackwater's role as a private security firm protecting US diplomatic missions.
"The only reason you need a silencer is if you want to assassinate someone," said former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou, an ABC News consultant.
Six Blackwater employees are under investigation by another federal grand jury, in Washington, D.C., in connection with the shooting deaths of at least 17 civilians in September 2007 at a Baghdad traffic circle. Prosecutors are expected to return indictments in the next few weeks, according to people familiar with the case.
The investigation of the alleged dog food smuggling scheme began last year after two Blackwater employees were caught trying to sell stolen weapons in North Carolina. The two, Kenneth Cashwell and William "Max" Grumiaux pleaded guilty in February and became government witnesses, according to court documents.
Two other former employees tell ABCNews.com they also witnessed the dog food smuggling operation. They say the weapons were actually hidden inside large sacks of dog food, packaged at company headquarters in North Carolina and sent to Iraq for the company's 20 bomb-sniffing dogs.
Larger items, including M-4 assault weapons, were secreted on shipping pallets surrounded by stacks of dog food bags, the former employees said. The entire pallet would be wrapped in cellophane shrink wrap, the former employees said, making it less likely US Customs inspectors would look too closely.
In a statement, Blackwater did not address directly the allegations involving silencers but says "all firearms shipped to Iraq by Blackwater were given proper US government license." The statement denied Blackwater owned or possessed any M4 weapons in Iraq.
US Army officials told ABCNews.com earlier this year, at least one Blackwater M4 weapon was discovered during a raid on an suspected insurgent location in Iraq.
Last year, a US Department of Commerce inspector at JFK airport in New York discovered a two-way radio hidden in a dog food sack being shipped by Blackwater to Iraq, according to people familiar with the incident.
Blackwater says the radio did not need a license and was hidden among the dog food sacks, not inside the dog food.
The company says it is a common practice "to prevent corrupt foreign customs agents and shipping workers from stealing the valuables."
In addition to the grand jury investigation, Blackwater sources say the company is facing a multi-million dollar fine for some 900 instances in which it violated State Department licensing requirements for the export of certain weapons and technical know-how.
Blackwater acknowledged in its statements "numerous mistakes in complex and demanding area of export compliance," saying most of the violations were failures of paperwork not "nefarious smuggling."
Of the 900 cases, about 100 of them have been referred to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution, according to lawyers briefed on the case.
Last month, Blackwater hired a team of former federal law enforcement officials and defense experts that it said would review the company's compliance with export laws.
Andrew Howell, Blackwater's general counsel, said, "Ongoing reviews by the Department of Justice, State and Commerce have highlighted the need for a significant and systems-wide initiative."
Another former Blackwater insider who talked with ABCNews.com said company executives made the decision to smuggle the weapons and silencers in the dog food "because it's a war over there and our guys need them."
Despite four separate federal grand jury investigations of its operations, Blackwater's contract to provide security services for the US State Department was renewed earlier this year. The contract pays Blackwater $250 million a year and runs for five years.
BLACKWATER & CIA: Μισθοφόροι από ΗΠΑ στην Ουκρανία
Περίπου 400 ελίτ μισθοφόροι από την περιβόητη αμερικανική εταιρεία ιδιωτικής ασφάλειαςAcademi (πρώην Blackwater) παίρνουν μέρος στην ουκρανική στρατιωτική επιχείρηση εναντίον αντικυβερνητικών διαδηλωτών σε νοτιοανατολικές περιοχές της χώρας, αναφέρουν γερμανικά μέσα ενημέρωσης.
1. “Mercenaries from United States are taking part to military operation in Ukraine,” Army Recognition (11.05.2014). 2. (Video) “Kämpfen US-Söldner in der Ukraine?,” Bild.de (09.03.2014).
Περίπου 400 ελίτ μισθοφόροι από την περιβόητη αμερικανική εταιρεία ιδιωτικής ασφάλειαςAcademi (πρώην Blackwater) παίρνουν μέρος στην ουκρανική στρατιωτική επιχείρηση εναντίον αντικυβερνητικών διαδηλωτών σε νοτιοανατολικές περιοχές της χώρας, αναφέρουν γερμανικά μέσα ενημέρωσης.
Η εφημερίδα Bild am Sonntag, επικαλούμενη πηγή σε κύκλους των μυστικών υπηρεσιών, έγραψε την Κυριακή ότι υπάλληλοι της Academi συμμετέχουν στην στρατιωτική καταστολή του Κιέβου εναντίον ακτιβιστών υπέρ της αυτονομίας κοντά στην πόλη του Slavyansk, στην περιοχή του Ντόνετσκ.
Στις 29 Απριλίου, η γερμανική Υπηρεσία Πληροφοριών (BND) ενημέρωσε την κυβέρνηση της Καγκελαρίου Angela Merkel για τη συμμετοχή των μισθοφόρων στη επιχείρηση, ανέφερε η εφημερίδα, σύμφωνα με το RIA Novosti. Εντούτοις, δεν είναι σαφές ποιος διατάζει τις ιδιωτικές στρατιωτικές εταιρείες και πληρώνει για τις υπηρεσίες τους.
Αναφορές των μέσων ενημέρωσης, που υποστηρίζουν ότι η ουκρανική ηγεσία θέλει να προσλάβει προσωπικό από ιδιωτικές ξένες στρατιωτικές εταιρείες «για τη διατήρηση του νόμου και της τάξης» μπορεί να υποδηλώνει ότι το καθεστώς του Κιέβου θέλει να καταστείλει την αστική διαμαρτυρία και δυσαρέσκεια, δήλωσε το ρωσικό υπουργείο Εξωτερικών.
Σύμφωνα με τις διαθέσιμες στο κοινό πληροφορίες η Greystone Limited είναι δομικό τμήμα τηςBlackwater, που αργότερα μετονομάστηκε σε Academi. Σύμφωνα με στρατιωτικούς εμπειρογνώμονες, η εταιρεία συνδέεται με τη CIAκαι το Υπουργείο Άμυνας των ΗΠΑ. Οι υπαλλήλοι της συμμετείχαν στον πόλεμο στο Αφγανιστάν μετά την πτώση του καθεστώτος του Σαντάμ Χουσεΐν το 2003, η εταιρεία έχει εμφανιστεί στο Ιράκ και άρχισε να συμμετέχει στην εκπαίδευση των νέων ιρακινών ενόπλων δυνάμεων και της αστυνομίας, καθώς και τη στήριξη των δυνάμεων κατοχής.
Videos have sprung on YouTube alleging that the US private security service formerly known as Blackwater is operating in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Western press is hitting back, accusing Russia of fabricating reports to justify “aggression.”
The authenticity of videos allegedly made in downtown Donetsk on March 5 is hard to verify. In the footage, unidentified armed men in military outfits equipped with Russian AK assault rifles and American М4А1 carbines are securing the protection of some pro-Kiev activists amidst anti-government popular protests.
The regional administration building in Donetsk has changed hands many times, with either pro-Russian protesters or pro-Kiev forces declaring capture of the authority headquarters. In the logic of the tape, at some point the new officials appointed by revolutionary Kiev managed to occupy the administration, but then – as the building was surrounded by angry protesters – demanded to secure a safe evacuation.
This is where the armed professionals come in. The protesters, after several moments of shock, start shouting, “Blackwater!,” and “Mercenaries!,” as well as “Faggots!,” and “Who are you going to shoot at?!” But the armed men drive off in the blink of an eye without saying a word.
Surely these men were not Blackwater – simply because such a company does not exist anymore. It has changed its name twice in recent years and is now called Academi.
The latest article on the case, published by the Daily Mail, claims that though these people did look like professional mercenaries, they conducted the operation too openly.
“On the face of it, the uniforms of the people in the videos are consistent with US mercs - they don't look like Russian soldiers mercs. On the other hand, why run around in public making a show of it?” said DM Dr Nafeez Ahmed, a security expert with the Institute for Policy Research & Development.
“I think the question is whether the evidence available warrants at least reasonable speculation.”
Ahmed also added that “Of course the other possibility is it's all Russian propaganda.”
Why would Russia need to make such provocation? The Daily Mail explained that “any suggestion that a US mercenary outfit like Blackwater, known now as Academi, had begun operating in east Ukraine could give Russian President Vladimir Putin the pretext for a military invasion.”
Other western media outlets are maintaining that a “Russian invasion” has already began, because the heavily armed military personnel now controlling all major infrastructure in Crimea are “obviously” Russians.
Armed men march outside an Ukrainian military base in the village of Perevalnoye near the Crimean city of Simferopol March 9, 2014.(Reuters / Thomas Peter )
The Daily Beast media outlet went even further. On the last day of February, it published an articlealleging that “polite Russians” in Crimea are actually...employees of Russian security service providers.
While there are indeed several military-oriented security service providers in Russia, it however appears highly unlikely that all of them combined could provide personnel for such a wide-scale operation.
At the beginning of the week, Russian state TV reported that several hundred armed men with military-looking bags arrived to the international airport of Kiev.
It was reported that the tough guys are employees of Greystone Limited, a subsidiary of Vehicle Services Company LLC belonging to Blackwater/XE/Academi.
Greystone Limited mercenaries are part of what is called ‘America’s Secret Army,’ providing non-state military support not constrained by any interstate agreements, The Voice of Russia reported.
But they are not the only ones. A Russian national that took part in clashes in Kiev was arrested in Russia’s Bryansk region this week. He made a statement on record that he met a large number of foreigners taking active part in the fighting with police.
He claimed he saw dozens of military-clad people from Germany, Poland, and Turkey, as well as English speakers who were possibly from the US, Russkaya Gazeta reported earlier this week.
Obama’s Taxpayer Hired 400 – 800 Blackwater Killer Mercenaries ‘deployed on ground’ In Ukraine!
International Banker’s Gunmen Hired By Obama ~ Using U.S. Taxpayer’s Income.
VIOLATING THE U.S. CONSTITUTION ON A DAILY BASIS!
Colombia’s defense ministry is alarmed about an exodus of top soldiers to the Ukraine to join a highly paid U.S.-led mercenary force organized by NWO Erik Prince, billionaire founder of the infamous security firm Blackwater.
Academi (formerly known under the names Xe Services LLC, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide), is a U.S. private military company that [hies behind[ providing security services.
It was founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark MaxXC former Vympel ceo. The headquarters is located in North Carolina, which have a specialized tactical training complex. The company trains more than 40,000 people every year from different branches of the Armed Forces and other security agencies in several countries. Violating the U.S. Constitution while killing foreign civilians at the behest of the usurped U.S. Government.
Xe is currently the largest private contractor of the Department of State of the United States. About 90% of their current profits of U.S. government contracts. Violating The U.S. Constitution.
On April 29, German Intelligence Service (BND) informed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government about the [NWO Obama Hired] mercenaries’ participation in the [illegal] operation, the paper said, RIA Novosti reported. It is not clear who commands the [NWO Obama Hired] private military contractors and pays for their [U.S. Tax Paid] services, however.
In March, media reports appeared suggesting that the coup-imposed government in Kiev could have employed up to 300 [European Union/Obama] mercenaries.That was before the new [Illegal] government launched a military operation against anti-Maidan activists, or “terrorists” as Kiev [E.U.] put it, in southeast Ukraine.
At the time, the Russian Foreign Ministry said then that reports claiming Kiev [European Union] was planning to involve “involve staff from foreign military companies to ‘ensure the rule of law,’” could suggest that it wanted “to suppress civil protests and dissatisfaction.”
Blackwater Killer Mercenaries were shipped to UAE near Iraq on June 14, 2013 in preparation for the northern overthrow of Kiev, Ukraine in 2014! This was 1 month before the people of Egypt imprisoned Obama’s Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi for crimes against humanity.
In particular, Greystone Limited, which is currently registered in Barbados and is a part of Academi Corporation, is a candidate for such a gendarme role. It is a similar and probably an affiliated structure of the Blackwater private army, whose staff have been accused of cruel and systematic violations of human rights in various trouble spots on many occasions.
“Among the candidates for the role of gendarme is the Barbados-registered company Greystone Limited, which is integrated with the Academi corporation,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “It is an analogue, and, probably and affiliated body of the Blackwater private army, whose employees have repeatedly been accused of committing grievous and systematic human rights abuses in different troubled regions.”
Allegations increased further after unverified videos appeared on YouTube of unidentified armed men in the streets of Donetsk, the capital of the country’s industrial and coalmining region. In those videos, onlookers can be heard shouting “Mercenaries!”“Blackwater!,” and “Who are you going to shoot at?”
[In An Attempt To Escape Transparency And Responsibility For Upholding The Law.] In recent years it has changed its name twice – in 2009 it was renamed Xe Services and in 2011 it got its current name, Academi.
The American [NWO Mafia Murderers] security company Blackwater gained worldwide notoriety for the substantial role it played in the Iraq war as a contractor for the US government. [Violating International And U.S. Laws.]
The firm became infamous for the alleged September 16, 2007 killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. The attack, which saw 20 others wounded, was allegedly without justification and in violation of deadly-force rules that pertained to American security contractors in Iraq at the time. Between 2005 and September 2007, Blackwater security guards were involved in at least 195 shooting incidents in Iraq and fired first in 163 of those cases, a Congressional report said at the time.
Russia Today
Getting NWO Interests On The Ground To Overthrow Kiev, Ukraine Began In June 2013. Ukraine Rejected the Blood Sucking European Union And the NWO Could Not Allow That To Be tolerated ~ they needed another country to under their debt slavery.
Obama Forced U.S. Taxpayers to pay for Mafia Erik Prince Mercenaries!
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, June 7 (UPI) — Colombia’s defense ministry is alarmed about an exodus of top soldiers to the United Arab Emirates to join a highly paid U.S.-led mercenary force organized by Erik Prince, billionaire founder of the security firm Blackwater.
Prince, who sold Blackwater in 2010 after it was involved in killings and scandals in Iraq, went to Abu Dhabi, capital of the Persian Gulf federation, in 2011.
He signed on to form an 800-man battalion of mercenaries for what emirati officials termed “anti-terrorism operations” inside and outside the country.
But it’s widely believed in Gulf security circles the force, being assembled under considerable secrecy by Prince’s Reflex Responses registered in the emirates, will be used for undisclosed special operations for the seven desert emirates that make up the federation.
That’s expected to include putting down “internal unrest” that might challenge the ruling families, as happened in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, and which is growing in Kuwait and Bahrain.
The Reflex Responses force, which is officially described in a contract leaked to the New York Times in 2011 as “independent of formal command and support structures throughout the United Arab Emirates,” will have its own air wing, with fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, plus its own private navy.
The naval wing’s tasks will primarily be “small boat operations … maritime interdiction operations and securing oil delivery platforms.”
The mercenaries have a custom-built high-security base in the desert where troops live and train.
Prince is also heard on recordings responding to a question about the Geneva Conventions, saying: “You know, people ask me that all the time, ‘Aren’t you concerned that you folks aren’t covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, ‘Absolutely not,’ because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD mentality. They’re barbarians. They don’t know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there.” Right Web
U.S. military analyst Spencer Ackerman says Prince’s new project “might run afoul of U.S. laws prohibiting citizens from training foreign militaries,” which requires a government license. The State Department has not said whether Reflex Responses has one.
But it’s unlikely that Prince, who sold off Blackwater amid a blizzard of adverse publicity over his men’s excesses in Iraq where the company was accused of wantonly killing civilians, would embark on this new project without making sure he wasn’t open to legal action, particularly if he found himself having to send troops to fight Muslims seeking sweeping democratic reform from rulers who are U.S. allies.
The Sunni Muslim Arab monarchies of the gulf are increasingly concerned about their future amid the political upheaval and conflict sweeping the Arab world, fueled, they claim, by Shiite Iran.
The emirates currently are trying 94 citizens for sedition and seeking to overthrow the political system. The defendants, including two prominent human rights lawyers, face a possible 15 years in prison.
But the over-riding security threat is widely perceived to be Iran, 100 miles across the gulf and which occupies several islands claimed by the Emirates.
AFTER REMOVING 800 FROM COLOMBIA MILITARY FORCE ~ WHAT DOES THAT SAY TO THE FOLLOWING LINKS?
Prince’s mercenary force is made up largely of Colombian soldiers, including senior officers and men with a Special Forces background
There are also many veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African security firm that became notorious in the 1990s for suppressing rebellions in mineral-rich African dictatorships and staging coups to gain control of such assets.
EO personnel included many veterans of Britain’s Special Air Service and special operations units in South Africa’s apartheid-era military.
Prince, an ex-U.S. Navy SEAL, is setting up his new force under a reputed $529 million contract with the royal family of oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the emirates’ leader and economic powerhouse. The contract expires in 2015.
Analysts say soldiers from Colombia’s 450,000-strong U.S.-trained military are held in high regard in the emirates and other gulf states because of their combat experience fighting leftist guerrillas and because they’re not as expensive as Western veterans.
Ένα μέγα σκάνδαλο περνάει απαρατήρητο; Blackwater και «Ελληνική Δημοκρατία» 2012
.jpg)
«Η τρικομματική κυβέρνηση υπέγραψε συμβόλαιο με την πρώην Blackwater (κατόπιν Xe Services και τώρα Academi) η οποία θα παρέχει προσωπικό για συγκρότηση περιπόλων με βαριά οχήματα και βαρύ οπλισμό σε αστικά κέντρα για φύλαξη έννομης τάξης.* Η ελληνική κυβέρνηση έχει ήδη παραγγείλει θωρακισμένα οχήματα και οπλισμό που θα παρασχεθεί στην εταιρεία, ο ιδιωτικός στρατός της οποίας θα αναλάβει υπηρεσία στις αρχές του 2013.
* Πόσο τυχαία μπορεί να είναι το λουκέτο στις αστυνομικές σχολές για τα επόμενα 2 χρόνια και η μείωση των εισακτέων στις στρατιωτικές σχολές κατά 30%; Η έντεχνη «πάλη» ανάμεσα στους «δεξιούς» και τους «αριστερούς» θα δώσει αφορμή για την επέμβαση του ιδιωτικού στρατού!»
* Είναι πλέον ξεκάθαρο ότι το Παγκόσμιο Σύστημα επιθυμεί να χυθεί αίμα. Το ίδιο επιθυμεί και η δωσίλογη τρικομματική ελληνική κυβέρνηση.
Θυμηθείτε πόσες φορές έχουμε γράψει από το ιστολόγιο μας, ότι η Νέα Τάξη Πραγμάτων επιθυμεί κοινωνική και πολιτική αποσταθεροποίηση σε ολόκληρο τον κόσμο για την εγκαθίδρυση Παγκόσμιας Διακυβέρνησης.
Θυμηθείτε πόσες φορές έχουμε πει πως όσο δεν ξεσηκώνεται ο ελληνικός πληθυσμός, κάτι το οποίο επιθυμούν, θα λαμβάνουν όλο και πιοδυσβάσταχτα μέτρα. Καθώς αυτό που επιθυμούν είναι το αίμα, που θα οδηγήσει σε χάος και εν συνεχεία σε κοινωνική και ευρύτερη πολιτική αποσταθεροποίηση στην περιοχή….!
* Τώρα λοιπόν έρχεται να επιβεβαιώσει αυτή τη θεωρία ο κ. Καζάκης. Σε απόσπασμα από την πρόσφατη ΕΚΠΟΜΠΗ Α.Ε ο Δ.Καζάκης αναφέρεται σε κάποια investment reports. Ένα από αυτά προειδοποιούσε για άμεση αγορά μετοχών εταιρειών οι οποίες παρέχουν ιδιωτικούς στρατούς σε κυβερνήσεις…!
* Συγκεκριμένα ανέφερε ότι πρόκειται για μια νέα βιομηχανία με τζίρο 100 δις δολάρια. H συγκεκριμένη αναφορά έκανε λόγο για συμβόλαιο το οποίο έχει υπογραφεί με την Ελληνική κυβέρνηση. Χαρακτηριστικά αναφέρεται πως η Ελληνική κυβέρνηση έχει παραγγείλει τεθωρακισμένα οχήματα και βαρύ οπλισμό που θα παρασχεθούν στο στρατό της εταιρείας ο οποίος θα διενεργεί περιπολίες. Πιθανότατα η εταιρεία αυτή θα είναι σε θέση να αναλάβει υπηρεσίες στις αρχές του 2013.
* Το ακόμα πιο σοβαρό της υπόθεσης είναι πως η σημερινή τρικομματική κυβέρνηση φέρεται να έχει υπογράψει τις συμβάσεις αυτές και να έχει παραγγείλει τον οπλισμό. Ναι ναι….οι σημερινοί τρεις «ηγέτες» που τόσο κόπτονται για το καλό μας, παπαγαλίζοντας την καραμέλα της ανάπτυξης (ξεπούλημα) της Ελλάδας…!
* Ο γενικότερος εξοπλισμός περιλαμβάνει θωρακισμένα οχήματα όπως αυτά της Κ4, τα οποία θα φέρουν βαρύ οπλισμό και θα συνοδεύονται από μοτοσικλετιστές. Αυτό το μοντέλο οργάνωσης είναι μοντέλο στρατοχωροφυλακής.»
Σε μια αναφορά του ο συγγραφέας Jeremy Scahill στο περιοδικό The Nation με το άρθρο του (Blackwater’s Black Ops, 9/15/2010) αποκάλυψε ότι ο μεγαλύτερος μισθοφορικός στρατός του κόσμου που έχει και δικιά του αεροπορία η Blackwater (τώρα ονομάζεται Xe Services) πούλησε τις παράνομες υπηρεσίες πληροφοριών της στην πολυεθνική Monsanto. Η Blackwater άλλαξε το όνομα της το 2009 όταν έγινε διάσημη στον κόσμο από τις πολλές αναφορές για σφαγές αμάχων στο Ιράκ.
Η Blackwater Παραμένει ο μεγαλύτερος ιδιωτικός εργολάβος του Υπουργείου Εξωτερικών των ΗΠΑ, για «υπηρεσίες ασφαλείας», που ασκεί κρατική τρομοκρατία, δίνοντας στην κυβέρνηση την δυνατότητα να το αρνηθεί.
Πολλοί πρώην στρατιωτικοί και αξιωματικοί της CIA εργάζονται στην Blackwater η σε παρεμφερείς εταιρείες που δημιουργήθηκαν για να τραβούν την προσοχή από την κακή φήμη τους και να βγάζουν κέρδη πουλώντας τις άνομες υπηρεσίες τους που κυμαίνονται από πληροφορίες και πληροφοριακή διείσδυση, πολιτικές δραστηριότητες των ομάδων συμφερόντων και παραστρατιωτική εκπαίδευση – για ξένες κυβερνήσεις, τράπεζες και πολυεθνικές εταιρείες.
Σύμφωνα με τον Scahill, επιχειρήσεις με πολυεθνικές όπως η Monsanto, η Chevron, και οικονομικοί γίγαντες όπως η Barclays και η Deutsche Bank, «εξυπηρετούνται» μέσω εταιριών που ανήκουν στον μέγα και τρανό επικυρίαρχο Erik Prince, τον ιδιοκτήτη της Blackwater.»
Πολλοί πρώην στρατιωτικοί και αξιωματικοί της CIA εργάζονται στην Blackwater η σε παρεμφερείς εταιρείες που δημιουργήθηκαν για να τραβούν την προσοχή από την κακή φήμη τους και να βγάζουν κέρδη πουλώντας τις άνομες υπηρεσίες τους που κυμαίνονται από πληροφορίες και πληροφοριακή διείσδυση, πολιτικές δραστηριότητες των ομάδων συμφερόντων και παραστρατιωτική εκπαίδευση – για ξένες κυβερνήσεις, τράπεζες και πολυεθνικές εταιρείες.
Σύμφωνα με τον Scahill, επιχειρήσεις με πολυεθνικές όπως η Monsanto, η Chevron, και οικονομικοί γίγαντες όπως η Barclays και η Deutsche Bank, «εξυπηρετούνται» μέσω εταιριών που ανήκουν στον Erik Prince, τον ιδιοκτήτη της Blackwater. Αυτοί οι αξιωματούχοι και διευθυντές μοιράζονται την Blackwater.
Ένας από αυτούς ο Cofer Black, γνωστός για την βαρβαρότητα του είναι ένας από τους διευθυντές της CIA, που έκανε την επαφή με την Monsanto το 2008 σαν διευθυντής της Total Intelligence, βάζοντας στο συμβόλαιο με την εταιρεία την υποχρέωση να κατασκοπεύει και να διεισδύει στις οργανώσεις των ακτιβιστών των δικαιωμάτων των ζώων, όσων είναι εναντίον των Γενετικά Τροποποιημένων Τροφών και άλλων βρώμικων δραστηριοτήτων του Βιοτεχνολογικού γίγαντα.
Ο Scahill έκανε επαφή με τον αξιωματούχο Kevin Wilson της Monsanto, ο οποίος αρνήθηκε να σχολιάσει, αλλά αργότερα επιβεβαίωσε στο περιοδικό The Nation, ότι είχαν νοικιάσει την Total Intelligence από το 2008 έως το 2009, για να παρακολουθούν τις «δημόσιες αποκαλύψεις» των αντιπάλων τους. Επίσης είπε ότι η Total Intelligence είναι τελείως ξεχωριστή οντότητα από την Blackwater.
Πάντως ο Scahill έχει αντίτυπα των emails του Cofer Black μετά την συνάντηση του με τον Wilson της Monsanto, όπου εξηγεί σε πρώην πράκτορες της CIA , χρησιμοποιώντας τα email της Blackwater, ότι η συζήτηση με τον Wilson αφορούσε το ότι η Total Intelligence είχε γίνει το πληροφοριακό χέρι της Monsanto, κατασκοπεύοντας τους ακτιβιστές και άλλους , περιλαμβάνοντας την νόμιμη ενσωμάτωση ανθρώπων τους σε αυτά τα γκρουπ.
Δεν είναι απορίας άξιον που μια εταιρεία αφοσιωμένη στην «επιστήμη του θανάτου» όπως η Monsanto, η οποία έχει αφιερωθεί εξαρχής στο να παράγει τοξικά δηλητήρια, από το Agent Orange (χρησιμοποιήθηκε στο Βιετνάμ) τα PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), τα εντομοκτόνα, τις ορμόνες και γενετικά τροποποιημένοι σπόροι, να συνδέεται με μια άλλη εταιρεία κακοποιών.
Σχεδόν ταυτόχρονα με την δημοσίευση του άρθρου του Scahill στο περιοδικό The Nation, η Via Campesina (παγκόσμιο κίνημα αγροτών) ανακοίνωσε την αγορά 500.000 μετοχών της Monsanto από το ίδρυμα Bill και Melinda Gates για πάνω από 23 εκατομμύρια δολάρια. Με αυτό τον τρόπο πέταξαν την μάσκα της φιλανθρωπίας οι Gates. Μια άλλη ακόμη διασύνδεση που δεν μας εκπλήττει. Είναι ένα γάμος μεταξύ των δυο πιο βάρβαρων μονοπωλίων στην βιομηχανική ιστορία.
Ο Bill Gates ελέγχει το 90% της αγοράς του πληρωμένου λογισμικού και η Monsanto το 90% της παγκόσμιας αγοράς των διαγονιδιακών (γενετικά τροποποιημένων) σπόρων και το μεγαλύτερο μερίδιο όλων των σπόρων του πλανήτη.
Πουθενά σε κανένα βιομηχανικό τομέα δεν υπάρχουν τόσο τεράστια μονοπώλια, που η ύπαρξη τους και μόνο είναι η άρνησης της βασικής αρχής του καπιταλισμού της ανταγωνιστικής αγοράς. Και ο Gates και η Monsanto είναι πολύ επιθετικοί στην υπεράσπιση των παράνομων μονοπωλίων τους. Αν και ο Bill Gates προσπαθεί να μας πει ψελλίζοντας, ότι το Ίδρυμα του δεν συνδέεται με τις επιχειρήσεις του, όλα δείχνουν το αντίθετο.
Οι περισσότερες από τις δωρεές του καταλήγουν να ευνοούν τις εμπορικές επενδύσεις του μεγιστάνα. Στην πραγματικότητα δεν δωρίζει τίποτα, αλλά αντί να πληρώνει φόρους, επενδύει τα κέρδη του όπου τον βολεύει οικονομικά, κάνοντας και προπαγάνδα για τους υποτιθέμενους καλούς σκοπούς του. Αντιθέτως, οι «δωρεές» του χρηματοδοτούν προγράμματα καταστροφικά όπως η Γεωμηχανική ή η αντικατάσταση των φυσικών φαρμάκων με υψηλής τεχνολογίας πατενταρισμένα φάρμακα στις φτωχότερες περιοχές του πλανήτη. Τι σύμπτωσης, ο πρώην υπουργός υγείας Julio Frenk και ο Ernesto Zedillo είναι σύμβουλοι στο Ίδρυμα.
Όπως και η Monsanto, ο Gates έχει εμπλακεί στην καταστροφή της γεωργίας παγκοσμίως .. κυρίως μέσω της «Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa» (AGRA), δηλαδή της Συμμαχίας για την Πράσινη Επανάσταση στην Αφρική. Δουλεύει σαν Δούρειος ίππος για να στερήσει από τους φτωχούς Αφρικανούς αγρότες τους παραδοσιακούς τους σπόρους με Γενετικά Τροποποιημένους Σπόρους. Για αυτό προσέλαβε τον Robert Horsch το 2006, τον διευθυντή της Monsanto.
H Blackwater, η Monsanto και ο Gates είναι τρείς πλευρές της ίδιας φιγούρας. Της πολεμικής μηχανής στον πλανήτη που επιδιώκει την εξόντωση των αγροτών, των αυτοχθόνων κοινοτήτων, των ανθρώπων μοιράζονται την γνώση και όλων όσων δεν θέλουν να υποταθούν στην αιγίδα του κέρδους και της καταστροφής του πλανήτη από τους επικυρίαρχους.
Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates
A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater's Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State "security services," that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.
Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training - for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.
One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.
Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of "public disclosure" of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a"totally separate entity from Blackwater."
However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become "Monsanto's intelligence arm," spying on activists and other actions, including "our people to legally integrate these groups." Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.
No wonder that a company engaged in the "science of death" as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.
Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of "philanthropy." Another association that is not surprising.
It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of "market competition" of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.
Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really "donating" anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their "donations" finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.
Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the "Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa" (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.
Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.
Οι μισθοφόροι της BLACKWATER θα επιβάλλουν τα μεταλλαγμένα της MONSANTO;
Ένα ρεπορτάζ του Jeremy Scahill στο The Nation αποκάλυψε ότι ο μεγαλύτερος μισθοφορικός στρατός στον κόσμο, η μυστική υπηρεσία πληροφοριών Blackwater (αργότερα ονομάστηκε Xe Services και πιο πρόσφατα “Academi”) πωλήθηκε στην πολυεθνική Monsanto. Η Blackwater μετονομάστηκε το 2009 αφού έγινε γνωστή στον κόσμο με τις πάμπολλες αναφορές για βάναυσες πρακτικές στο Ιράκ, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των σφαγών αμάχων. Παραμένει η μεγαλύτερη ιδιωτική ανάδοχος «υπηρεσιών ασφαλείας» του Υπουργείου Εξωτερικών των ΗΠΑ που ασκεί κρατική τρομοκρατία, δίνοντας στην κυβέρνηση τη δυνατότητα να το αρνηθεί.
Πολλοί στρατιωτικοί και πρώην αξιωματικοί της CIA εργάζονται για την Blackwater ή σχετικές εταιρείες που δημιουργήθηκαν για να αποσπάσουν την προσοχή από την κακή φήμη τους και να αυξήσουν τα κέρδη πωλώντας φαύλες υπηρεσίες – που κυμαίνονται από συλλογή πληροφοριών και παράνομη διείσδυση έως πολιτικές δραστηριότητες ομάδων συμφερόντων και παραστρατιωτική εκπαίδευση – για άλλες κυβερνήσεις, τράπεζες και πολυεθνικές εταιρείες. Σύμφωνα με τον Scahill, επιχειρηματικές δραστηριότητες με πολυεθνικές εταιρείες, όπως η Monsanto, η Chevron, και οικονομικούς κολοσσούς, όπως η Barclays και η Deutsche Bank, διενεργούνται μέσω δύο εταιρειών που ανήκουν στον Erik Prince, ιδιοκτήτη της Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. Αυτά τα στελέχη και οι διευθυντές μοιράζονται την Blackwater.
Ένας από αυτούς, ο Cofer Black, γνωστός για την κτηνωδία του ως ένας από τους διευθυντές της CIA, ήταν εκείνος που ήρθε σε επαφή με τη Monsanto το 2008, ως διευθυντής της Total Intelligence, συνάπτοντας σύμβαση με την εταιρεία για να κατασκοπεύσει τους και να διεισδύσει σε οργανώσεις ακτιβιστών για τα δικαιώματα των ζώων, οργανώσεις αντι-GM (κατά των μεταλλαγμένων) και άλλες βρώμικες δραστηριότητες του γίγαντα της βιοτεχνολογίας.
Ερχόμενος σε επαφή με τον Scahill, το στέλεχος της Monsanto Kevin Wilson αρνήθηκε να σχολιάσει, αλλά αργότερα επιβεβαίωσε στη The Nation ότι είχαν προσλάβει την Total Intelligence, το 2008 και το 2009, σύμφωνα με την Monsanto μόνο για να παρακολουθούνται οι «δημόσιες αποκαλύψεις» των αντιπάλων του. Είπε επίσης ότι η Total Intelligence ήταν μια «εντελώς ξεχωριστή οντότητα από την Blackwater».
Ωστόσο, ο Scahill έχει αντίγραφα των μηνυμάτων ηλεκτρονικού ταχυδρομείου από Cofer Black, μετά τη συνάντηση με τον Wilson της Monsanto, όπου εξηγεί σε άλλους πρώην πράκτορες της CIA, χρησιμοποιώντας τα mail τους της Blackwater, ότι η συζήτηση με τον Wilson ήταν πως η Total Intelligence είχε γίνει ο «κλάδος πληροφοριών της Monsanto», κατασκοπεύοντας ακτιβιστές και άλλες δράσεις, όπως “οι άνθρωποί μας να ενταχθούν νόμιμα σε αυτές τις ομάδες.” Η Total Intelligence Monsanto κατέβαλε $ 127.000 το 2008 και 105.000 δολάρια το 2009.
Δεν είναι απορίας άξιο που μια εταιρεία η οποία ασχολείται με την «επιστήμη του θανάτου», όπως η Monsanto, η οποία έχει αφιερωθεί εξαρχής στο να παράγει τοξικά δηλητήρια σκορπίζοντας από Agent Orange ως PCBs (πολυχλωριωμένα διφαινύλια), τα φυτοφάρμακα, ορμόνες και γενετικά τροποποιημένους σπόρους, συνδέεται με μια άλλη εταιρία κακοποιών.
Σχεδόν ταυτόχρονα με τη δημοσίευση του παρόντος άρθρου στο The Nation, η Via Campesina ανέφερε την αγορά 500.000 μετοχών της Monsanto, για περισσότερα από 23 εκατομμύρια δολάρια από το ίδρυμα Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, πράξη που της αφαίρεσε εντελώς τη μάσκα της «φιλανθρωπίας». Άλλος ένας συσχετισμός που δεν αποτελεί έκπληξη.
Είναι ένας γάμος μεταξύ των δύο πιο βάναυσων μονοπωλίων στην ιστορία της βιομηχανοποίησης: ο Bill Gates ελέγχει περισσότερο από το 90 τοις εκατό των μετοχών της αγοράς των ιδιόκτητων υπολογιστών και η Monsanto περίπου το 90 τοις εκατό της παγκόσμιας αγοράς διαγονιδιακών (μεταλλαγμένων) σπόρων και των παγκόσμια πιο εμπορικών σπόρων. Δεν υπάρχουν σε οποιονδήποτε άλλο βιομηχανικό τομέα μονοπώλια τόσο μεγάλα, η ύπαρξη των οποίων αποτελεί άρνηση (ακύρωση) της περιβόητης αρχής του καπιταλισμού, του «ανταγωνισμού στην αγορά». Τόσο ο Gates όσο και η Monsanto είναι πολύ επιθετικοί στην προάσπιση των παράνομα αποκτηθέντων μονοπωλίων τους.
Παρά το γεγονός ότι ο Bill Gates μπορεί να προσπαθήσει να πει ότι το Ίδρυμα δεν συνδέεται με την επιχείρησή του, το μόνο που αποδεικνύεται είναι το αντίθετο: οι περισσότερες από τις δωρεές τους, καταλήγουν να ευνοούν τις εμπορικές επενδύσεις του μεγιστάνα, που στην πραγματικότητα δεν «δωρίζει» τίποτα, αλλά αντί να πληρώνει φόρους στα ταμεία του κράτους, επενδύει τα κέρδη του εκεί πού ο ίδιος ευνοείται πιο πολύ οικονομικά, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της προπαγάνδας, από τις υποτιθέμενες καλές τους προθέσεις. Αντιθέτως, οι “δωρεές” τους χρηματοδοτούν έργα τα οποία είναι εξίσου καταστρεπτικά, όπως η γεωμηχανική ή η αντικατάσταση των φυσικών φαρμάκων με υψηλής τεχνολογίας πατενταρισμένων φαρμάκων στις φτωχότερες περιοχές του κόσμου. Κατά σύμπτωση, οι πρώην υπουργοί Υγείας Julio Frenk και Ernesto Zedillo είναι σύμβουλοι του Ιδρύματος.
Μαζί με την Monsanto και ο Gates συμμετέχει επίσης στην προσπάθεια να καταστρέψει την αγροτική γεωργία σε όλο τον κόσμο, κυρίως μέσω της “Συμμαχίας για μια Πράσινη Επανάσταση στην Αφρική» (ΑΓΡΑ). Λειτουργεί ως δούρειος ίππος για να στερήσει από φτωχούς Αφρικανούς αγρότες τους παραδοσιακούς τους σπόρους για αρχή αντικαθιστώντας τους με τους σπόρους των εταιρειών τους αρχικά και τέλος από τους γενετικά τροποποιημένους (ΓΤ). Για το σκοπό αυτό, το Ίδρυμα προσέλαβε το 2006 τον διευθυντή της Monsanto, Robert Horsch. Τώρα o Gates, για απολαβή σημαντικών κερδών, πήγε κατευθείαν στην πηγή.
Η Blackwater, η Monsanto και ο Gates είναι τρεις όψεις του ίδιου νομίσματος: η πολεμική μηχανή του πλανήτη και οι περισσότεροι άνθρωποι οι οποίοι τον κατοικούν, είναι αγρότες, κοινότητες ιθαγενών, άνθρωποι που θέλουν να μοιραστούν τις πληροφορίες και τις γνώσεις ή οποιοσδήποτε άλλος που δεν θέλει να είναι υπό την αιγίδα του κέρδους και της καταστροφικότητας του καπιταλισμού
Επομένως, γιατί ήταν τόσα πολλά τα μέσα ενημέρωσης, οι συντάκτες και οι bloggers που ορύονταν σε μία προσπάθεια να πούνε ότι η αγορά ήταν μια “φάρσα”;
Αυτό είναι μια καλή ερώτηση. Οι πιο κυνικοί ανάμεσα μας ίσως υποψιάζονται ένα οικονομικό κίνητρο από την Monsanto, σε τέτοιους “δημοσιογράφους”. Η Monsanto έχει πράγματι προσλάβει μια ομάδα δημοσίων σχέσεων σε αναζήτηση σοβαρών blog και ιστοσελίδων τα οποία υποβάλουν εκθέσεις, για τα εγκλήματά της κατά της φύσης και της ανθρωπότητας. Πράγμα που το έχουμε δει από πρώτο χέρι, σε σχετικά σχόλια πάνω σε άρθρα του PoliticalBlindSpot.com που αφορούν την συγκεκριμένη εταιρεία. Δεν είναι καθόλου απίθανο να έχουν δημιουργήσει blogs, όπου φαινομενικά “νόμιμοι” συγγραφείς γράφουν σκέψεις για οργανικά ζητήματα, μαζί με παρατηρήσεις και ενστάσεις τους. Το κοινό δε, από την πλευρά του υποθέτει πως αυτοί οι άνθρωποι υπάρχουν στον πραγματικό κόσμο, ενώ στην πραγματικότητα εργάζονται στις δημόσιες σχέσεις για την ίδια την εταιρεία.
Αλλά το βασικό επιχείρημα εκείνων που ισχυρίζονται ότι η αγορά της Blackwater από την Monsanto δεν είναι αλήθεια, έγκειται στο γεγονός ότι μπορούμε μόνο με επίσημα στοιχεία να καταλήξουμε στο ότι η Blackwater έχει προσληφθεί από την Monsanto για χρόνια. Αμέσως μετά από την εκτεταμένη δουλειά που η Blackwater έκανε για λογαριασμό της Monsanto, η εταιρεία πουλήθηκε. Λόγω του τρόπου με τον οποίο αποκαλύφθηκε η πώληση, είναι αδύνατο να τεκμηριωθεί ποιος ήταν πίσω από αυτήν. Το προφανές και λογικό συμπέρασμα σε γνώστες εκ των έσω (ιδίως στον ιδιωτικό τομέα της ασφάλειας), είναι ότι η πώληση ήταν στην πραγματικότητα στην ίδια τη Monsanto που είχε απασχολήσει την συγκεκριμένη ομάδα.
Η Xe (τώρα μετονομασμένη σε Academi) (που δεν είναι άλλη απο την Blackwater), πράγματι είχε αγορασθεί, και ενώ δεν υπάρχει κανένας τρόπος που να τεκμηριώνει κάτι τέτοιο μέχρι στιγμής για το ποιοι πραγματικά είναι οι νέοι ιδιοκτήτες, το λογικό συμπέρασμα που προκύπτει παρουσιάζει την Monsanto ως τη νέα ιδιοκτήτρια, η οποία και τους είχε απασχολήσει πριν από την πώληση. Αυτό μάλιστα εξηγεί και τη μυστικότητα που περιβάλλει τη συμφωνία και την ταυτότητα των νέων ιδιοκτητών. Η εταιρεία αγοράστηκε από ιδιώτες επενδυτές, μέσω εταιρειών ιδιωτικών επενδυτικών κεφαλαίων που δεν υποχρεούνται να δώσουν στοιχεία για κάποια από τις συναλλαγές τους, σε συνεργασία με την Bank of America να παρέχει ένα μεγάλο τμήμα των 200 εκατομμυρίων δολαρίων ως χρηματοδότηση για τη συμφωνία.
Η USTC Holdings στη Νέα Υόρκη ανακοίνωσε ότι θα αποκτήσει την Xe και την βασική θυγατρική της, αλλά σε δήλωση της δεν αποκάλυψε την τιμή ή τους όρους της συμφωνίας.
Η USTC Holdings είναι μια κοινοπραξία επενδυτών με επικεφαλής τις ιδιωτικές εταιρείες Forte Capital Advisors και την Manhattan Partners.
Διάφοροι ερευνητές ωστόσο έχουν προσπαθήσει να τεκμηριώσουν την αγορά μέσω ενός έστω στοιχείου, αλλά μέχρι στιγμής δεν το έχουν κάνει με μεγάλη επιτυχία. Αυτό, βέβαια, είναι το θέμα…
Ένα πράγμα που είναι γνωστό είναι ότι η εταιρεία Forte Capital Advisors είναι το “μωρό” του για πολύ καιρό συμμάχου της Blackwater, Jason De Yonker.
Ο DeYonker έχει μοναδική εμπειρία με την εταιρεία που χρονολογείται από την ίδρυσή της στα τέλη του 1990. Αυτός συμβούλευε την Εταιρεία με την ανάπτυξη του πρώιμου επιχειρηματικού της σχεδίου και την επέκταση στις εγκαταστάσεις εκπαίδευσης Moyock καθώς και την υποστήριξη των διαπραγματεύσεων των πρώτων συμβάσεων κατάρτισης με τις αμερικανικές κυβερνητικές υπηρεσίες. Μεταξύ του 1998 και του 2002, ο κ. DeYonker είναι συνδιαχειριστής του γραφείου της οικογενείας του κ. Erik Prince, ιδρυτή της Xe, πράγμα που περιελάμβανε και τη διαχείριση των εταιρειών του χαρτοφυλακίου του κ. Prince.
Τι σημαίνει αυτό; Ο τύπος είναι ένα δοξασμένος λογιστής.
Πριν την ένταξή του στη Forte, ο Jason ήταν συν-διαχειριστής στην οικογενειακή επιχείρηση μιας εταιρίας των + 100 εκατομμυρίων δολαρίων . Εκτός από την ενεργό διαχείριση των διαφόρων εταιρειών, ο Jason ανήκε στην ομάδα διευθυντικών στελεχών υπεύθυνη για τη διαχείριση της περιουσίας της οικογένειας.
Ο ίδιος τα τελευταία 18 χρόνια παρέχει συμβουλές σχετικά με διάφορες συγχωνεύσεις, εξαγορές και εκποιήσεις, με συνολική αξία συναλλαγών μεγαλύτερη από 1 δισ. δολάρια. Τον τομέα εμπειρίας του Jason περιλαμβάνουν: συμβουλές πάνω σε θέματα συναλλαγών, διαχείριση χαρτοφυλακίου, ανάπτυξη ακινήτων, επιχειρηματικών κεφαλαίων και διασυνοριακές συμφωνίες. Ο Jason ξεκίνησε την καριέρα του με την Arthur Andersen Corporate Group Finance, και ήταν διευθυντής στην Corporate Group Finance της Deloitte & Touche. Ήταν επίσης ο Διευθυντής Οικονομικών της West Family Trust, μια ομάδας επιχειρηματικών κεφαλαίων η οποία επικεντρώνεται στις διασυνοριακές συναλλαγές.
Ο Jason έχει λάβει Bachelor στη Διοίκηση Επιχειρήσεων, με εξειδίκευση στα οικονομικά και λογιστικά, από το Πανεπιστήμιο του Michigan.
Ποιός είναι όμως ο άλλος επενδυτής; Φαίνεται ότι είναι ο πολύ μικρός εταίρος με το όνομα Manhattan Partners, μια εταιρεία ιδιωτικών επενδυτικών κεφαλαίων που συγκεντρώνει χρήματα από ανώνυμους πλούσιους επενδυτές και χρησιμοποιεί την «δεξαμενή» μετρητών για μόχλευση της εξαγοράς με δανεικά κεφάλαια μεγάλων εταιρειών, τις οποίες σε άλλη περίπτωση δεν θα ήταν σε θέση να αναλάβουν μόνοι τους.
Η Manhattan Partners επενδύει σε κλίμα “αναγκαστικής ανάπτυξης και ειδικών συναλλαγών”, αλλά αυτή θα είναι η πρώτη γνωστή εξόρμησή τους στην αμυντική βιομηχανία, αυτό φαίνεται μέσω εκθέσεων από τον Spencer Ackerman μέσω της ιστοσελίδας WarIsBusiness.com
Η Manhattan Growth Partners έχει ως επικεφαλής της τους Dean Bosacki και Patrick McBride. Ο Bosacki βρίσκεται στο διοικητικό συμβούλιο της μεγαλύτερης εταιρίας φωτογράφησης τελετών αποφοίτησης, μεταξύ άλλων εταιρειών. Όσον για την Manhattan Partners, η οποία αυτοχαρακτηρίζεται ως «μια εταιρεία με προοδευτική σκέψη όσον αφορά τα ιδιωτικά επενδυτικά κεφάλαια”, κατέχει επίσης και την πλειοψηφία των μετοχών της Hugo Naturals, μια σειρά από οργανικά προϊόντα, φιλικά στο περιβάλλον σαπούνια, λοσιόν, αρώματα και κεριά σόγιας τα οποία πωλούνται σε καταστήματα υγιεινής διατροφής και οικολογικών προϊόντων.
Τελικά, το λογικό συμπέρασμα που προκύπτει από όλα αυτά είναι ότι, παρά τα περί του αντιθέτου επιχειρήματα, η Monsanto στην πραγματικότητα αγόρασε τους μισθοφόρους της Blackwater … ή τουλάχιστον τις Υπηρεσίες του Ομίλου Blackwater που μετονομάστηκε σε Xe (τώρα Academi) . Το μεγάλο ερώτημα που προκύπτει τώρα είναι γιατί;
Ισόβια σε στελέχη της Blackwater!
Ποινές που φθάνουν μέχρι και στα ισόβια επιβλήθηκαν σε στελέχη της περιβόητης εταιρεία Blackwater που είχε δράσει στο Ιράκ έχοντας υπογράψει τεράστια συμβόλαια με το το αμερικανικό Πεντάγωνο. Ο ιδρυτής της εταιρίας, Έρικ Πρινς,όμως , εξακολουθεί να κινείται ελεύθερος μεταξύ Σιγκαπούρης, Μέσης Ανατολής και Αφρικής, έχοντας ιδρύσει άλλες εταιρίες.
Όπως αναφέρει το Αθηναϊκό Πρακτορείο (ΑΠΕ) επικαλούμενο το Reuters, ποινή ισόβιας κάθειρξης επιβλήθηκε σήμερα από δικαστήριο της Ουάσινγκτον σε έναν συνεργάτη της εταιρείας Blackwater και ποινές τριακονταετούς κάθειρξης σε τρεις άλλους για τους φόνους 17 άοπλων ιρακινών πολιτών στην πλατεία Νισούρ της Βαγδάτης το 2007.
Ο Νίκολας Α. Σλάτεν, πρώην ελεύθερος σκοπευτής του αμερικανικού Στρατού, κρίθηκε ένοχος για φόνο και ήταν εκείνος που άρχισε να πυροβολεί πρώτος. Οι τρεις άλλοι, ο Ντάστιν Χερντ, ο Ιβαν Λίμπερτι και ο Πολ Σλάφ, κρίθηκαν ένοχοι για ανθρωποκτονία, απόπειρα ανθρωποκτονίας και χρήση πολυβόλου σε βίαιο έγκλημα. Οι κατηγορούμενοι ισχυρίσθηκαν, ότι μαχητές τούς είχαν στήσει ενέδρα και ότι οι πολίτες ήσαν ατυχή θύματα πολέμου, παράπλευρες απώλειες. Ωστόσο, ο εισαγγελέας περιέγραψε το γεγονός ως σφαγή αθώων ανθρώπων.
Τα όσα κατέθεσαν ιρακινοί μάρτυρες και συνεργάτες της εταιρείας ασφαλείας Blackwater ήταν αποκαλυποτικά . Παραδέχτηκαν ότι άνοιξαν απρόκλητα πυρ εναντίον άοπλων πολιτών που περνούσαν από την πολυσύχναστη πλατεία της Βαγδάτης στις 16 Σεπτεμβρίου 2007.
Ο Μοχάμεντ Χάφεντχ Αμπντουλραζάκ Κινάνι, ο 9χρονος γιος του οποίου σκοτώθηκε εκείνη τη μέρα, δήλωσε ότι στο Ιράκ υπήρχε η αντίληψη ότι η Blackwater είναι τόσο ισχυρή που οι υπάλληλοί της μπορούσαν να σκοτώσουν οποιονδήποτε και να τη γλιτώσουν.
ΟΥΚΡΑΝΙΑ
ΑΠΟΚΛΕΙΣΤΙΚΟ : ΤΑ ΑΜΕΡΙΚΑΝΙΚΑ «ΣΚΥΛΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΥ» ΤΩΡΑ ΚΑΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ
Στην Ουκρανία, επιχειρείται μια ωμή επέμβαση στα εσωτερικά της χώρας από αμερικανούς μισθοφόρους (ένας εξ αυτών συνελήφθη από τους Ρώσους), της παραστρατιωτικής οργάνωσης Greystone Limited η οποία έχει ως «βιτρίνα» την ιδιότητα της εταιρίας παροχών υπηρεσιών security.
Στα τελευταία γεγονότα της Κριμαίας και πίσω από την δολοφονία δεκάδων πολιτών και διαδηλωτών από ελεύθερους σκοπευτές, υπήρξαν σοβαρότατες καταγγελίες (ακόμα και από αστυνομικούς), ότι οι εν ψυχρώ εκτελέσεις δεν γινόντουσαν από Ουκρανούς, αλλά από αμερικανούς μισθοφόρους επαγγελματίες εκτελεστές παραστρατιωτικής οργάνωσης.
Οι μισθοφόροι εκτελεστές είχαν εισχωρήσει στα Ουκρανικά εδάφη ντυμένοι με ρωσικές στρατιωτικές και αστυνομικές στολές, και κατόπιν είχαν ακροβολισθεί σε διάφορα υψηλά κτίρια της Κριμαίας.
Τότε ήταν που είχε κυκλοφορήσει για πρώτη φορά η φήμη για τους μισθοφόρους της Blackwater – Academi, οι οποίοι είχαν σαν σκοπό την αποσταθεροποίηση της πολιτικής κατάστασης με εν ψυχρώ εκτελέσεις πολιτών.
Η Greystone Limited δεν είναι τίποτε άλλο παρά ένα ακόμη «παρακλάδι» της Blackwater, η οποία ονομαζόταν έτσι μέχρι το 2009, πριν αλλάξει το όνομα της σε «Academi».
Πολύ λίγα πράγματα είναι γνωστά για την ιδρυτική σύσταση της εταιρίας, η οποία έχει αλλάξει πολλά ονόματα, και διαθέτει δεκάδες «θυγατρικές».
Η Blackwater (που ιδρύθηκε πριν από περίπου 50 χρόνια) έχει σαν έδρα τα νησιά Barbados της Καραϊβικής, ενώ τα κέντρα εκπαίδευσης της οργάνωσης βρίσκονται στην Βόρεια Καρολίνα στα σύνορα με τη Βιρτζίνια σε μια έκταση 7.000 στρεμμάτων, αλλά προσφάτως και στο Σαν Ντιέγκο της Καλιφόρνια.
Εικάζεται, ότι ιδρυτές της Blackwater ήταν κάποιοι βετεράνοι των βρετανικών ειδικών δυνάμεων SAS (Special Air Service).
Η πρώτη ονομασία της εταιρίας ήταν Watch Guard. Η Watch Guard είχε ακουστεί για πρώτη φορά το 1971 μετά την αποτυχημένη επιχείρησή της να δολοφονήσει τον Λίβυο ηγέτη Καντάφι!
Στην συνέχεια η Watch Guard ως Blackwater πλέον είχε αναλάβει, στρατολογώντας και κάποια μέλη των ειδικών δυνάμεων SEAL (Sea Air Land) του αμερικανικού πολεμικού ναυτικού, τις «βρώμικες» επιχειρήσεις των ΗΠΑ στην Σερβία το 1998, και στο Ιράκ μεταξύ των ετών 2003-2011.
Τα Σκυλιά του Πολέμου
Η Blackwater – Academi, επισήμως είναι μια ιδιωτική αμερικανική εταιρία παροχής υπηρεσιών Security.
Στην πραγματικότητα πρόκειται για έναν μισθοφορικό στρατό «ευρέως φάσματος», μια παραστρατιωτική οργάνωση από εκπαιδευμένους επαγγελματίες δολοφόνους.
Η Academi προσλαμβάνει συνήθως πρώην στρατιωτικούς και αστυνομικούς (αλλά και πρώην κατάδικους) από διαφορετικές χώρες μέσω της θυγατρικής της Satelles Solutions Inc.
Αυτοί που γνωρίζουν περισσότερα υποστηρίζουν ότι η Blackwater – Academi δεν είναι τίποτε άλλο από το πιο «σκοτεινό» δολοφονικό πολεμικό και όχι μόνον «παρακλάδι» της CIA και της MI6.
Η εταιρία αναλαμβάνει επιχειρήσεις και εκκαθαρίσεις οπουδήποτε δεν θέλει να «φανεί» ο επίσημος στρατός των ΗΠΑ (ή και άλλων χωρών), και υπόσχεται στους «πελάτες» της ότι μπορεί να εκπληρώσει αποστολές και να εξουδετερώσει στόχους σε οποιοδήποτε μέρος του κόσμου με μεγάλης κλίμακας πολεμικού τύπου «επιχειρήσεις».
Η Greystone Limited (όπως είναι ένα από τα τελευταία ονόματα της), έχει ως βασικό πελάτη τις μυστικές υπηρεσίες των ΗΠΑ και Μεγάλης Βρετανίας, ενώ αλλάζει συνεχώς το όνομά της, ώστε να μην μπορεί να εντοπιστεί εύκολα.
Η ίδια εταιρία έχει αναλάβει και ανατροπές νομίμων πολιτικών καθεστώτων σε χώρες της υποσαχάριας Αφρικής, αλλά και «εκκαθαριστικές» επιχειρήσεις σε Αφγανιστάν και Συρία. Στην Συρία μισθοφόρους της Academi είχαν αναλάβει την εκπαίδευση των Σύρων «ανταρτών», αλλά… και ποικίλες άλλες πολιτιστικές «δράσεις», με τα μέλη της κρυμμένα πίσω από τις τοπικές παραδοσιακές στολές των μουσουλμάνων «μουτζαχεντίν».
Κανείς δεν γνωρίζει ποιος είναι στην πραγματικότητα πρόεδρος της Blackwater, η οποία στις ΗΠΑ φέρει και το κωδικό όνομα… οι «μισθοφόροι της σκιάς»!
Ο μέχρι το 2009 φερόμενος σαν «αντιπρόεδρος» της εταιρίας Jamie Smith (πρώην ανώτατος υπάλληλος της CIA) σύμφωνα με αυτούς που γνωρίζουν περισσότερα, δεν ήταν τίποτε περισσότερο από μια «βιτρίνα», ενώ ο άλλος «αντιπρόεδρος» υπεύθυνος του τομέα πληροφοριών της Blackwater Robert Richer ήταν επίσης ανώτατος αξιωματικός της CIA μέχρι το 2003. Από τότε έχουν παρελάσει περισσότεροι από 10 πρόεδροι και αντιπρόεδροι «βιτρίνες» μεταξύ των οποίων και ο πρώην υπεύθυνος ασφαλείας του Λευκού Οίκου Jack Quinn!
Ένα ενδεικτικό στοιχείο του επιπέδου εκπαίδευσης τους, είναι το γεγονός ότι κατά το διάστημα 2006 – 2009, είχαν αναλάβει την εκπαίδευση των ελευθέρων σκοπευτών (sniper) του αμερικανικού στρατού για λογαριασμό του Πενταγώνου!
Όπως καταλαβαίνουμε, η σύνδεση της Blackwater – Academi με την CIA και την NSA είναι κοινό μυστικό.
Η εταιρία πέρα από τους άρτια εκπαιδευμένους μισθοφόρους εκτελεστές της, διαθέτει και βαρύτατο οπλισμό που περιλαμβάνει από άρματα μάχης, μέχρι ελικόπτερα, αλλά και μαχητικά αεροσκάφη!
Erik Prince, the reclusive owner of the Blackwater empire, rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban journalists from attending and forbids recording or videotaping of his remarks. On May 5, that is exactly what Prince is trying to do when he speaks at DeVos Fieldhouse as the keynote speaker for the "Tulip Time Festival" in his hometown of Holland, Michigan. He told the event's organizers no news reporting could be done on his speech and they consented to the ban. Journalists and media associations in Michigan are protesting this attempt to bar reporting on his remarks.
Despite Prince's attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and reveals details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater. The people of the United States have a right to media coverage of events featuring the owner of a company that generates 90% of its revenue from the United States government.
In the speech, Prince proposed that the US government deploy armed private contractors to fight "terrorists" in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, specifically to target Iranian influence. He expressed disdain for the Geneva Convention and described Blackwater's secretive operations at four Forward Operating Bases he controls in Afghanistan. He called those fighting the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan "barbarians" who "crawled out of the sewer." Prince also revealed details of a July 2009 operation he claims Blackwater forces coordinated in Afghanistan to take down a narcotrafficking facility, saying that Blackwater "call[ed] in multiple air strikes," blowing up the facility. Prince boasted that his forces had carried out the "largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history." He characterized the work of some NATO countries' forces in Afghanistan as ineffectual, suggesting that some coalition nations "should just pack it in and go home." Prince spoke of Blackwater working in Pakistan, which appears to contradict the official, public Blackwater and US government line that Blackwater is not in Pakistan.
Prince also claimed that a Blackwater operative took down the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W Bush in Baghdad and criticized the Secret Service for being "flat-footed." He bragged that Blackwater forces "beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene" during Katrina and claimed that lawsuits, "tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills" and political attacks prevented him from deploying a humanitarian ship that could have responded to the earthquake in Haiti or the tsunami that hit Indonesia.
Several times during the speech, Prince appeared to demean Afghans his company is training in Afghanistan, saying Blackwater had to teach them "Intro to Toilet Use" and to do jumping jacks. At the same time, he bragged that US generals told him the Afghans Blackwater trains "are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan." Prince also revealed that he is writing a book, scheduled to be released this fall.
The speech was delivered January 14 at the University of Michigan in front of an audience of entrepreneurs, ROTC commanders and cadets, businesspeople and military veterans. The speech was titled "Overcoming Adversity: Leadership at the Tip of the Spear" and was sponsored by the Young Presidents' Association (YPO), a business networking association primarily made up of corporate executives. "Ripped from the headlines and described by Vanity Fair magazine, as a Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier and Spy, Erik Prince brings all that and more to our exclusive YPO speaking engagement," read the event's program, also obtained by The Nation. It proclaimed that Prince's speech was an "amazing don't miss opportunity from a man who has 'been there and done that' with a group of Cadets and Midshipmen who are months away from serving on the 'tip of the spear.'" Here are some of the highlights from Erik Prince's speech:
Send the Mercs into Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria
Prince painted a global picture in which Iran is "at the absolute dead center... of badness." The Iranians, he said, "want that nuke so that it is again a Persian Gulf and they very much have an attitude of when Darius ran most of the Middle East back in 1000 BC. That's very much what the Iranians are after." [NOTE: Darius of Persia actually ruled from 522 BC-486 BC]. Iran, Prince charged, has a "master plan to stir up and organize a Shia revolt through the whole region." Prince proposed that armed private soldiers from companies like Blackwater be deployed in countries throughout the region to target Iranian influence, specifically in Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. "The Iranians have a very sinister hand in these places," Prince said. "You're not going to solve it by putting a lot of uniformed soldiers in all these countries. It's way too politically sensitive. The private sector can operate there with a very, very small, very light footprint." In addition to concerns of political expediency, Prince suggested that using private contractors to conduct such operations would be cost-effective. "The overall defense budget is going to have to be cut and they're going to look for ways, they're going to have to have ways to become more efficient," he said. "And there's a lot of ways that the private sector can operate with a much smaller, much lighter footprint."
Prince also proposed using private armed contractors in the oil-rich African nation of Nigeria. Prince said that guerilla groups in the country are dramatically slowing oil production and extraction and stealing oil. "There's more than a half million barrels a day stolen there, which is stolen and organized by very large criminal syndicates. There's even some evidence it's going to fund terrorist organizations," Prince alleged. "These guerilla groups attack the pipeline, attack the pump house to knock it offline, which makes the pressure of the pipeline go soft. they cut that pipeline and they weld in their own patch with their own valves and they back a barge up into it. Ten thousand barrels at a time, take that oil, drive that 10,000 barrels out to sea and at $80 a barrel, that's $800,000. That's not a bad take for organized crime." Prince made no mention of the nonviolent indigenous opposition to oil extraction and pollution, nor did he mention the notorious human rights abuses connected to multinational oil corporations in Nigeria that have sparked much of the resistance.
Blackwater and the Geneva Convention
Prince scornfully dismissed the debate on whether armed individuals working for Blackwater could be classified as "unlawful combatants" who are ineligible for protection under the Geneva Convention. "You know, people ask me that all the time, 'Aren't you concerned that you folks aren't covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, 'Absolutely not,' because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD mentality. They're barbarians. They don't know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there."
It is significant that Prince mentioned his company operating in Pakistan given that Blackwater, the US government and the Pakistan government have all denied Blackwater works in Pakistan.
Prince noted several high-profile attacks on world leaders in the past year, specifically a woman pushing the Pope at Christmas mass and the attack on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, saying there has been a pattern of "some pretty questionable security lately." He then proceeded to describe the feats of his Blackwater forces in protecting dignitaries and diplomats, claiming that one of his men took down the Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at President Bush in Baghdad in December 2008. Prince referred to al-Zaidi as the "shoe bomber:"
"A little known fact, you know when the shoe bomber in Iraq was throwing his shoes at President Bush, in December 08, we provided diplomatic security, but we had no responsibility for the president's security--that's always the Secret Service that does that. We happened to have a guy in the back of the room and he saw that first shoe go and he drew his weapon, got a sight picture, saw that it was only a shoe, he re-holstered, went forward and took that guy down while the Secret Service was still standing there flat-footed. I have a picture of that--I'm publishing a book, so watch for that later this fall--in which you'll see all the reporters looking, there's my guy taking the shoe thrower down. He didn't shoot him, he just tackled him, even though the guy was committing assault and battery on the president of the United States. I asked a friend of mine who used to run the Secret Service if they had a written report of that and he said the debrief was so bad they did not put it in writing."
While the Secret Service was widely criticized at the time for its apparent inaction during the incident, video of the event clearly showed another Iraqi journalist, not security guards, initially pulling al-Zaidi to the floor. Almost instantly thereafter, al-Zaidi was swarmed by a gang of various, unidentified security agents.
Blackwater's Forward Operating Bases
Prince went into detail about his company's operations in Afghanistan. Blackwater has been in the country since at least April 2002, when the company was hired by the CIA on a covert contract to provide the Agency with security. Since then, Blackwater has won hundreds of millions of dollars in security, counter-narcotics and training contracts for the State Department, Defense Department and the CIA. The company protects US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and other senior US officials, guards CIA personnel and trains the Afghan border police. "We built four bases and we staffed them and we run them," Prince said, referring to them as Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). He described them as being in the north, south, east and west of Afghanistan. "Spin Boldak in the south, which is the major drug trans-shipment area, in the east at a place called FOB Lonestar, which is right at the foothills of Tora Bora mountain. In fact if you ski off Tora Bora mountain, you can ski down to our firebase," Prince said, adding that Blackwater also has a base near Herat and another location. FOB Lonestar is approximately 15 miles from the Pakistan border. "Who else has built a [Forward Operating Base] along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?" Prince said earlier this year.
Blackwater's War on Drugs
Prince described a Narcotics Interdiction Unit Blackwater started in Afghanistan five years ago that remains active. "It is about a 200 person strike force to go after the big narcotics traffickers, the big cache sites," Prince said. "That unit's had great success. They've taken more than $3.5 billion worth of heroin out of circulation. We're not going after the farmers, but we're going after the traffickers." He described an operation in July 2009 where Blackwater forces actually called in NATO air strikes on a target during a mission:
"A year ago, July, they did the largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history, down in the south-east. They went down, they hit five targets that our intel guys put together and they wound up with about 12,000 pounds of heroin. While they were down there, they said, 'You know, these other three sites look good, we should go check them out.' Sure enough they did and they found a cache--262,000 kilograms of hash, which equates to more than a billion dollars street value. And it was an industrialized hash operation, it was much of the hash crop in Helmand province. It was palletized, they'd dug ditches out in the desert, covered it with tarps and the bags of powder were big bags with a brand name on it for the hash brand, palletized, ready to go into containers down to Karachi [Pakistan] and then out to Europe or elsewhere in the world. That raid alone took about $60 million out of the Taliban's coffers. So, those were good days. When the guys found it, they didn't have enough ammo, enough explosives, to blow it, they couldn't burn it all, so they had to call in multiple air strikes. Of course, you know, each of the NATO countries that came and did the air strikes took credit for finding and destroying the cache."
December 30, 2009 CIA Bombing in Khost
Prince also addressed the deadly suicide bombing on December 30 at the CIA station at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. Eight CIA personnel, including two Blackwater operatives, were killed in the bombing, which was carried out by a Jordanian double-agent. Prince was asked by an audience member about the "failure" to prevent that attack. The questioner did not mention that Blackwater was responsible for the security of the CIA officials that day, nor did Prince discuss Blackwater's role that day. Here is what Prince said:
"You know what? It is a tragedy that those guys were killed but if you put it in perspective, the CIA has lost extremely few people since 9/11. We've lost two or three in Afghanistan, before that two or three in Iraq and, I believe, one guy in Somalia--a landmine. So when you compare what Bill Donovan and the OSS did to the Germans and the Japanese, the Italians during World War II--and they lost hundreds and hundreds of people doing very difficult, very dangerous work--it is a tragedy when you lose people, but it is a cost of doing that work. It is essential, you've got to take risks. In that case, they had what appeared to be a very hot asset who had very relevant, very actionable intelligence and he turned out to be a bad guy... That's what the intelligence business is, you can't be assured success all the time. You've got to be willing to take risks. Those are calculated risks but sometimes it goes badly. I hope the Agency doesn't draw back and say, 'Oh, we have to retrench and not do that anymore,' all the rest. No. We need you to double down, go after them harder. That is a cost of doing business. They are there to kill us."
Prince to Some NATO Countries in Afghanistan: 'Go Home'
Prince spoke disparagingly of some unnamed NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan, saying they do not have the will for the fight. "Some of them do and a lot of them don't," he said. "It is such a patchwork of different international commitments as to what some can do and what some can't. A lot of them should just pack it in and go home." Canada, however, received praise from Prince. "The Canadians have lost per capita more than America has in Afghanistan. They are fighting and they are doing it and so if you see a Canadian thank them for that. The politicians at home take heavies for doing that," Prince said. He did not mention the fact that his company was hired by the Canadian government to train its forces.
Prince also described how his private air force (which he recently sold) bailed out a US military unit in trouble in Afghanistan. According to Prince, the unit was fighting the Taliban and was running out of ammo and needed an emergency re-supply. "Because of, probably some procedure written by a lawyer back in Washington, the Air Force was not permitted to drop in an uncertified drop zone... even to the unit that was running out of ammo," Prince said. "So they called and asked if our guys would do it and, of course, they said, 'Yes.' And the cool part of the story is the Army guys put their DZ mark in the drop zone, a big orange panel, on the hood of their hummer and our guys put the first bundle on the hood of that hummer. We don't always get that close, but that time a little too close."
Blackwater: Teaching Afghans to Use Toilets
Prince said his forces train 1300 Afghans every six weeks and described his pride in attending "graduations" of Blackwater-trained Afghans, saying that in six weeks they radically transform the trainees. "You take these officers, these Afghans and it's the first time in their life they've ever been part of something that's first class, that works. The instructors know what they're talking about, they're fed, the water works, there's ammunition for their guns. Everything works," Prince said. "The first few days of training, we have to do 'Intro to Toilet Use' because a lot of these guys have never even seen a flushed toilet before." Prince boasted: "We manage to take folks with a tribal mentality and, just like the Marine Corps does more effectively than anyone else, they take kids from disparate lifestyles across the United States and you throw them into Parris Island and you make them Marines. We try that same mentality there by pushing these guys very hard and, it's funny, I wish I had video to show you of the hilarious jumping jacks. If you take someone that's 25 years old and they've never done a jumping jack in their life--some of the convoluted motions they do it's comical. But the transformation from day one to the end of that program, they're very proud and they're very capable." Prince said that when he was in Afghanistan late last year, "I met with a bunch of generals and they said the Afghans that we train are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan."
Prince also discussed the Afghan women he says work with Blackwater. "Some of the women we've had, it's amazing," Prince said. "They come in in the morning and they have the burqa on and they transition to their cammies (camouflage uniforms) and I think they enjoy the baton work," he said, adding, "They've been hand-cuffing a little too much on the men."
Hurricane Katrina and Humanitarian Mercenaries
Erik Prince spoke at length about Blackwater's deployment in 2005 in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, bragging that his forces "rescued 128 people, sent thousands of meals in there and it worked." Prince boasted of his company's rapid response, saying, "We surged 145 guys in 36 hours from our facility five states away and we beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene." What Prince failed to mention was that at the time of the disaster, at least 35% of the Louisiana National Guard was deployed in Iraq. One National Guard soldier in New Orleans at the time spoke to Reuters, saying, "They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here... We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq." Much of the National Guard's equipment was in Iraq at the time, including high water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators.
Prince also said that he had a plan to create a massive humanitarian vessel that, with the generous support of major corporations, could have responded to natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis across the globe. "I thought, man, the military has perfected how to move men and equipment into combat, why can't we do that for the humanitarian side?" Prince said. The ship Prince wanted to use for these missions was an 800 foot container vessel capable of shipping "1700 containers, which would have lined up six and a half miles of humanitarian assistance with another 250 vehicles" onboard. "We could have gotten almost all those boxes donated. It would have been boxes that would have had generator sets from Caterpillar, grain from ADM [Archer Daniels Midland], anti-biotics from pharmaceutical companies, all the stuff you need to do massive humanitarian assistance," Prince said, adding that it "would have had turnkey fuel support, food, surgical, portable surgical hospitals, beds cots, blankets, all the above." Prince says he was going to do the work for free, "on spec," but "instead we got attacked politically and ended up paying tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills the last few years. It's an unfortunate misuse of resources because a boat like that sure would have been handy for the Haitian people right now."
Prince also addressed what he described as his outing as a CIA asset working on sensitive US government programs. He has previously blamed Congressional Democrats and the news media for naming him as working on the US assassination program. The US intelligence apparatus "depends heavily on Americans that are not employed by the government to facilitate greater success and access for the intelligence community," Prince said. "It's unprecedented to have people outed by name, especially ones that were running highly classified programs. And as much as the left got animated about Valerie Plame, outing people by name for other very very sensitive programs was unprecedented and definitely threw me under the bus."
ΝΥΤ: Η Blackwater είχε απειλήσει να σκοτώσει ερευνητή
Ο διευθυντής της Blackwater στο Ιράκ είχε απειλήσει να σκοτώσει τον επικεφαλής των ερευνητών του State Department που διεξήγαγε έρευνες για την διαβόητη ιδιωτική εταιρία προσφοράς υπηρεσιών ασφαλείας, πριν ακόμη οι φρουροί της ανοίξουν πυρ αδιακρίτως εναντίον ιρακινών αμάχων, γράφει σήμερα η εφημερίδα New York Times.
Με σημείωμά του που χρονολογείται δύο εβδομάδες πριν από το μακελειό στην πλατεία Νισούρ της Βαγδάτης, με 17 άμαχους νεκρούς στις 16 Σεπτεμβρίου του 2007, ο επικεφαλής της έρευνας Τζον Ρίχτερ είχε προειδοποιήσει ότι η Blackwater θεωρείτο στο Ιράκ "υπεράνω του νόμου".
Η αμερικανική εφημερίδα, που επικαλείται εσωτερικό υπόμνημα του State Department, αναφέρει ότι η θανατική απειλή διατυπώθηκε μόλις λίγες εβδομάδες πριν από το μακελειό.
Τέσσερις πρώην υπάλληλοι της Blackwater δικάζονται την περίοδο αυτή στις ΗΠΑ στο πλαίσιο μιας δίκης που άρχισε στα μέσα Ιουνίου και μπορεί να διαρκέσει μήνες.
Οι δολοφονίες Ιρακινών αμάχων έδειξαν κατά τραγικό τρόπο την ατιμωρησία που απολάμβαναν οι ιδιωτικές εταιρίες ασφαλείας στο Ιράκ και συνέβαλαν στην εχθρότητα του πληθυσμού για τη αμερικανική παρουσία στη χώρα.
Στην πλατεία Νισούρ της Βαγδάτης, 17 ιρακινοί πολίτες άοπλοι, σύμφωνα με την ιρακινή έρευνα, 14 σύμφωνα με την έρευνα των ΗΠΑ, σκοτώθηκαν από τα πυρά φρουρών της Blackwater που προστάτευαν αυτοκινητοπομπή του αμερικανικού υπουργείου Εξωτερικών στο πλαίσιο ενός συμβολαίου ύψους ενός δισεκατομμυρίου ευρώ.
Επιστρέφοντας στην Ουάσιγκτον, ο ερευνητής του State Department Τζον Ρίχτερ προειδοποίησε με σημείωμα που έφερε ημερομηνία της 31ης Αυγούστου 2007, δύο εβδομάδες πριν από το μακελειό, ότι η έλλειψη ελέγχου επί των ενεργειών της εταιρίας είχε δημιουργήσει ένα "πλήρως παραβατικό περιβάλλον".
Οι φρουροί της Blackwater "φέρονται να θεωρούν τους εαυτούς τους υπεράνω του νόμου", έγραψε ο Ρίχτερ, το σημείωμα του οποίου έχει αναρτηθεί από τους New York Times στη διεύθυνση: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/30/us/30blackwater-documents.html.
Σύμφωνα με το υπόμνημα, ο Ντάνιελ Κάρολ, ο διευθυντής του προγράμματος της Blackwater στο Ιράκ, είπε στον Ρίχτερ, έπειτα από διαπληκτισμό, ότι "θα μπορούσε να τον σκοτώσει επί τόπου και ότι κανείς δεν θα μπορούσε να κάνει τίποτε 'αφού είμαστε στο Ιράκ' ".
"Πήρα στα σοβαρά την απειλή του κ. Κάρολ. Ήμασταν σε εμπόλεμη ζώνη, όπου πολλά μπορούν να συμβούν χωρίς προειδοποίηση και, κυρίως όταν πρόκειται για θέματα που μπορεί να έχουν αρνητικές συνέπειες σε ένα προσοδοφόρο συμβόλαιο παροχής υπηρεσιών ασφάλειας".
Ένας συνάδελφος του Ρίχτερ στο State Department επιβεβαίωσε ότι άκουσε τις απειλές αυτές.
Οι αξιωματούχοι της πρεσβείας των ΗΠΑ είχαν ταχθεί με το μέρος της Blackwater και είχαν ζητήσει από τους ερευνητές του State Department να φύγουν, σύμφωνα με την New York Times.
Η Βαγδάτη ανακάλεσε την άδεια λειτουργίας της Blackwater, που μετονομάστηκε σε Xe Services, το 2009, και σε Academi, το 2011, μετά το μακελειό και στον απόηχο του τρόμου που είχε προκαλέσει η εταιρία στον ιρακινό λαό.
Με την άνοδό της στην εξουσία το 2009, η κυβέρνηση Ομπάμα έλυσε το συμβόλαιο συνεργασίας της εταιρίας με το υπουργείο Εξωτερικών.
BLACK WATER ΚΑΙ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ
Η «Academi» και στην Ελλάδα
Όσο απίστευτο και αν ακούγεται, η Blackwater – Academi βρίσκεται στην Ελλάδα εδώ και περίπου δύο χρόνια.
Για να είμαστε απόλυτα ακριβείς, στις 15 – 2 – 2013 ήρθαν στο φως για πρώτη φορά κάποια δημοσιεύματα από το εξωτερικό τα οποία ανέφεραν ότι: «Η Blackwater βρίσκεται στην Ελλάδα για την προστασία της κυβέρνησης – Φοβούνται εξέγερση»!
Τότε δεν είχε δοθεί ιδιαίτερη σημασία, μέχρι όλα αυτά να επιβεβαιωθούν με επίσημη καταγγελία από τον Έλληνα Πρέσβη Λεωνίδα Χρυσανθόπουλο, η οποία ουδέποτε διεψεύσθη από την κυβέρνηση.
Στο δημοσίευμα αναφερόταν «η ύπαρξη και η δράση της Blackwater στην Ελλάδα, με σκοπό την προστασία της κυβέρνησης και του κοινοβουλίου σε περίπτωση εξέγερσης λόγω της εξαθλίωσης των Ελλήνων από την οικονομική κρίση»!
Το δημοσίευμα τόνιζε τους προς τα «έξω» φόβους της κυβέρνησης για «λαϊκή εξέγερση» λέγοντας ότι: «Η κυβέρνηση δεν εμπιστεύεται πλέον κανένα. Βρίσκεται υπό καθεστώς «πολιορκίας» και έτσι κρίνεται απαραίτητη η προστασία της από μισθοφόρους! Τους τελευταίους 12 μήνες η Ελλάδα έχει δει κύματα μαζικών διαδηλώσεων, ταραχών και συγκρούσεων μεταξύ αστυνομίας και διαδηλωτών, ένοπλων επιθέσεων σε κυβερνητικούς στόχους, όπως επίσης την ολοκληρωτική κατάρρευση της οικονομίας».
Όλα αυτά ήρθε να επιβεβαιώσει με μια δήλωση βόμβα και ο πρέσβης Λεωνίδας Χρυσανθόπουλος ο οποίος δήλωσε ότι: «Η ελληνική κυβέρνηση ανέθεσε σε ιδιωτική εταιρεία παροχής στρατιωτικών υπηρεσιών την προστασία της Βουλής. Πρόκειται για την εταιρεία «Academi», γνωστή ως «Blackwater», η οποία έχει αναλάβει αποστολές, μεταξύ άλλων στο Ιράκ.»
Η αποκάλυψη του διπλωμάτη σε εφημερίδα του Καναδά, ήγειρε ζητήματα μείζονος σημασίας που έχουν να κάνουν με την ασφάλεια των Ελλήνων πολιτών και την παραβίαση θεμελιωδών αρχών και Συντάγματος.
«Πρόσφατα η ελληνική κυβέρνηση ήλθε σε συμφωνία με τη διάδοχη εταιρεία της «Blackwater», προκειμένου να προσλάβει μισθοφόρους για την προστασία του Κοινοβουλίου. Στις δημοκρατίες ωστόσο, το Κοινοβούλιο δεν χρειάζεται προστασία», φέρεται να δήλωσε ο κ. Χρυσανθόπουλος.
Διπλωμάτης καριέρας ο κ. Χρυσανθόπουλος, με πολύ καλές επαφές στις ΗΠΑ, διατελεί στις μόνιμες αντιπροσωπείες στον ΟΗΕ στην Νέα Υόρκη, στις Βρυξέλλες, στο Τορόντο, στο Πεκίνο, ενώ διορίστηκε το 1993 ως πρώτος Έλληνας πρέσβης στην ανεξάρτητη Αρμενία.
Πολλά δημοσιεύματα ακολούθησαν από το εξωτερικό έκτοτε για να τον επιβεβαιώσουν.
Με λίγα λόγια και σε απλά Ελληνικά, όλοι αυτοί που κατηγορούν την Χρυσή Αυγή για «πιθανή βίαιη κατάλυση του πολιτεύματος» με φανταστικά οπλοστάσια, φέρεται ότι έχουν προσλάβει τους επαγγελματίες μισθοφόρους δολοφόνους της πιο άρτια εκπαιδευμένης οπλισμένης και οργανωμένης παραστρατιωτικής οργάνωσης, η οποία σε πολλές χώρες του πλανήτη έχει ανατρέψει δια της βίας και των όπλων νόμιμα καθεστώτα, δολοφονώντας εν ψυχρώ χιλιάδες πολίτες, στρατιωτικούς, ακόμα και πολιτικούς.
Από εκεί και πέρα, (και εφόσον αληθεύουν τα ξένα δημοσιεύματα αλλά και οι καταγγελίες του Έλληνα Πρέσβη), ο καθένας μπορεί να βγάλει μόνος τα συμπεράσματα του για την «ποιότητα» αυτών που κυβερνάνε αυτή την στιγμή την Ελλάδα.
«Διεθνείς μισθοφόροι θα φυλάνε τις Σκουριές»
Σεκιουριτάδες της «Ελληνικός Χρυσός» καταγγέλλουν την ανάθεση της φύλαξης στην εταιρεία «Blackwater»
Εντονη ανησυχία γεννούν οι καταγγελίες των σεκιουριτάδων της «Ελληνικός Χρυσός» και της «Eldorado Gold», που χάνουν τη δουλειά τους στο τέλος του μήνα, ότι τη φύλαξη των εγκαταστάσεων χρυσού στη Χαλκιδική αναλαμβάνει από την 1η Γενάρη 2014 η γνωστή και ως ιδιωτικός στρατός εταιρεία «Blackwater».
Εκεί άλλωστε παρέπεμπαν και με το πανό που είχαν αναρτήσει στη προχθεσινή διαμαρτυρία τους έξω από τα γραφεία της εταιρείας στο Στρατώνι Χαλκιδικής, στο οποίο έγραφαν «Εξω οι φονιάδες των λαών».
Η εταιρεία έχει μετονομαστεί πλέον σε «Academi», αλλά συνεχίζει να αποτελεί μια ιδιωτική ομάδα ένοπλων μισθοφόρων, που πουλάει προστασία σε εταιρείες που δραστηριοποιούνται κυρίως σε εμπόλεμες περιοχές, όπως το Ιράκ. Από τους κυριότερους πελάτες της είναι η γνωστή εταιρεία τροφίμων «Monsanto».
Τα σενάρια για την παρουσία της «Blackwater» στην Ελλάδα είχαν ξεκινήσει την 1η Φεβρουαρίου 2013, έπειτα από αποκάλυψη του Ελληνα πρέσβη, Λεωνίδα Χρυσανθόπουλου, σε καναδική εφημερίδα, για ανάθεση της φύλαξης της Βουλής από την ελληνική κυβέρνηση στη συγκεκριμένη εταιρεία.
Λίγο αργότερα, και καθώς η ελληνική κυβέρνηση δεν διέψευδε τις δηλώσεις του Λ. Χρυσανθόπουλου, αλλά και σχετικά δημοσιεύματα, τρεις βουλευτές του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, οι Ρένα Δούρου, Θοδωρής Δρίτσας και Δημήτρης Τσουκαλάς, κατέθεσαν ερώτηση στη Βουλή προς τον υπουργό Προστασίας του Πολίτη, Νίκο Δένδια, με την οποία ζητούσαν να μάθουν αν υπήρξε ποτέ κάποια επαφή με ιδιωτική εταιρεία παροχής στρατιωτικών υπηρεσιών, προκειμένου να αναλάβει τη φύλαξη του Κοινοβουλίου ή άλλων δημόσιων χώρων ή να προσφέρει τεχνογνωσία ή εκπαίδευση ή κάποιο συνδυασμό των παραπάνω, και αν υπήρξε, ποια ήταν η κατάληξή της.
Η απάντηση του Ν. Δένδια, η οποία ουσιαστικά ήταν μη απάντηση, ήταν περισσότερο ανησυχητική παρά καθησυχαστική. Ο υπουργός απάντησε ότι για θέματα φύλαξης της Βουλής αρμόδιος δεν είναι ο εκάστοτε υπουργός Προστασίας του Πολίτη, αλλά ο πρόεδρος της Βουλής.
Την ίδια περίοδο ξεκίνησαν και τα σενάρια της παρουσίας της «Blackwater» στη Χαλκιδική με σκοπό τη φύλαξη των εγκαταστάσεων εξόρυξης χρυσού της «Ελληνικός Χρυσός» και της «Eldorado Gold». Τα σενάρια είχε επιβεβαιώσει σε ραδιοφωνική του συνέντευξη ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων, Πάνος Καμμένος, επικαλούμενος ενημέρωση που είχε από συνδικαλιστές αστυνομικούς.
Τις πληροφορίες αυτές είχε ανακοινώσει μάλιστα ο πρόεδρος των ΑΝΕΛ σε συνάντηση που είχε με απόστρατους στρατιωτικούς στα τέλη Φεβρουαρίου. Τότε, ο Π. Καμμένος είχε δηλώσει ότι η συμφωνία της ελληνικής κυβέρνησης με την «Blackwater» είχε ήδη υπογραφεί, ότι η μονάδα που θα επιχειρήσει στην Ελλάδα είναι ήδη έτοιμη και ότι ο πρώτος χώρος στον οποίο θα αναλάβει δράση ο συγκεκριμένος ιδιωτικός στρατός θα είναι οι Σκουριές. «Από τη στιγμή που βλέπετε το βρικόλακα της ελληνικής πολιτικής σκηνής να αναδεικνύει το ζήτημα των Σκουριών τόσο πολύ, να ξέρετε ότι εκεί θα είναι και η πρώτη ειδική οικονομική ζώνη. Και θα έχει ως φρουρά τη συγκεκριμένη μονάδα».
Τις καταγγελίες των σεκιουριτάδων εντείνει η παρουσία των Καναδών-στελεχών της «Eldorado Gold» στη Χαλκιδική, το τελευταίο διάστημα, οι οποίοι έχουν επιδοθεί σε προσπάθεια μείωσης του κόστους, στην οποία περιλαμβάνεται και η απόλυση των φυλάκων της εταιρείας. Αλλά και ο συνδυασμός αυτού, με το ότι ο καναδικός στρατός περιλαμβάνεται μεταξύ των στρατών χωρών στις οποίες η «Blackwater» παρέχει «τεχνική υποστήριξη».
Η διαβόητη μισθοφορική εταιρεία «Blackwater» μετονομάστηκε σε ιδιωτική εταιρεία ασφάλειας «Xe» και πρόσφατα σε «Academi». Είναι αναγκασμένοι να καταβάλουν πρόστιμο ύψους 42 εκατ. δολαρίων για την ωμή δολοφονία 17 Ιρακινών πολιτών στην πλατεία Νισούρ της Βαγδάτης τον Σεπτέμβριο του 2007 -σύμφωνα με την εφημερίδα «The New York Times», διώκονται για εκατοντάδες παραβιάσεις, περιλαμβανομένων της εξαγωγής όπλων που δεν επιτρέπονται στο Αφγανιστάν, την παροχή εκπαίδευσης ελεύθερων σκοπευτών σε αστυνομικούς στην Ταϊβάν και τη μη «εξουσιοδοτημένη» παροχή εκπαίδευσης σε στρατεύματα στο νότιο Σουδάν.
Πέντε στελέχη της εταιρείας αντιμετωπίζουν διώξεις για παράνομο οπλισμό, ενώ δύο πρώην εργαζόμενοί της διώκονται για τις δολοφονίες δύο Αφγανών στην Καμπούλ τον Μάιο του 2009. Η συγκεκριμένη εταιρεία φέρεται να είχε αναλάβει και μέρος της εκπαίδευσης ειδικών δυνάμεων στην Ελλάδα για την περίοδο των Ολυμπιακών Αγώνων.
Χρυσανθόπουλος: Η «Blackwater» φυλάει τη Βουλή!
Σοκ προκαλεί η αποκάλυψη του Έλληνα Πρέσβη κ. Λεωνίδα Χρυσανθόπουλου, ο οποίος σε συνέντευξή του σε καναδική εφημερίδα και ιστοσελίδα κάνει λόγο για πλήρη κατάργηση της δημοκρατίας στην Πατρίδα μας και προφανή κίνδυνο να ξεσπάσει εμφύλιος πόλεμος στην Ελλάδα.
Μάλιστα, ο εμπειρότατος Έλληνας διπλωμάτης, που δεν θα ρίσκαρε να προβεί σε τέτοιες δηλώσεις εάν δεν ήταν απόλυτα σίγουρος για αυτά που επικαλείται, υποστηρίζει ότι η ελληνική κυβέρνηση σύναψε συμβόλαιο «προστασίας» του Ελληνικού Κοινοβουλίου με την «Academi», γνωστή και με το πρώην όνομά της «Blackwater» που είναι μία ομάδα ενόπλων μισθοφόρων, η οποία ανέλαβε δράση για πρώτη φορά στον πόλεμο του Ιράκ και κατηγορείται για σωρεία σφαγών σε βάρος αμάχων.
Σε αυτούς ...στους μπεκρήδες πιστολέρο μακελάρηδες έχει αποθέσει η Ελληνική Βουλή την προστασία της; Από ποιόν άραγε; Από τον Έλληνα πολίτη που διεκδικεί τα δίκαια του ...δημοκρατικά;
Στην είδηση αυτή επανήλθαμε στο Newsbomb, γιατί παρότι έχουν περάσει τόσες ώρες από την αποκάλυψή της ακόμα δεν έχει υπάρξει η παραμικρή απάντηση από πλευράς κυβέρνησης και κοινοβουλίου.... κάτι που αναμένουμε με αγωνία! Όπως επίσης καλό θα ήταν να υπάρξει απάντηση από το Υπουργείο Δημόσιας Τάξης και Προστασίας του Πολίτη και ...σαφέστατα από το Υπουργείο Εθνικής Άμυνας για το εάν και κατά πόσο ισχύουν όλα αυτά και εάν και κατά πόσο έχουν δικαίωμα οπλισμένοι επαγγελματίες δολοφόνοι να λαμβάνουν την ευθύνη της προστασίας της ...δημοκρατίας μας!
Μάλιστα, ο κ. Χρυσανθόπουλος, μιλώντας στο millstonenews.com υποστηρίζει πως ακόμα και τα μέσα ενημέρωσης λαμβάνουν κατευθυντήριες γραμμές για το τι μπορούν να πουν ή να γράψουν και τι όχι. Προσθέτει, πως οι δημοσιογράφοι που δεν συμμορφώνονται παρενοχλούνται ή και συλλαμβάνονται από κυβερνητικούς πράκτορες. Αναφέρει μάλιστα πως δημοσιογράφος από την κρατική τηλεόραση απολύθηκε επειδή κατά τη διάρκεια της 28ης Οκτωβρίου έδειξε αποδοκιμασίες εναντίον του πρωθυπουργού. Προφανώς εννοούσε το περιστατικό με τους Αρβανίτη και Κατσίμη, οι οποίοι «μπήκαν» στον «πάγο» για σχόλια που έκαναν εναντίον του υπουργού Προστασίας του Πολίτη Νίκου Δένδια.
«Δεν υπάρχει πλέον στην Ελλάδα δημοκρατία», λέει και σημειώνει «στις δημοκρατίες τα κοινοβούλια δεν χρειάζονται προστασία». Για το μέλλον της Ελλάδας είναι απαισιόδοξος, αν συνεχιστεί η κατάσταση που επικρατεί σήμερα. «Θα είναι δύσκολο να αποφευχθεί η κοινωνική αναταραχή, ακόμα και ένας εμφύλιος πόλεμος είναι πιθανός υπό αυτές τις συνθήκες». Αναφερόμενος δε στην πολιτική λιτότητας που επιβάλλουν οι δανειστές λέει, «δεν μπορείς να σώσεις μία χώρα, καταστρέφοντάς τη».
Ο Λεωνίδας Χρυσανθόπουλος έχει θητεύσει ως πρέσβης της Ελλάδας στην Αρμενία, το Τορόντο και το Πεκίνο, ενώ ως νεαρός διπλωμάτης συμμετείχε στις ενταξιακές διαπραγματεύσεις της Ελλάδας στην ΕΟΚ, το 1977. Μέχρι το 2012 ήταν Γ.Γ. της Διεθνούς Γραμματείας του Οργανισμού Οικονομικής Συνεργασίας Μαύρης Θάλασσας.
«Καρατομήθηκε» ο Έλληνας Πρέσβης που αποκάλυψε την «έλευση Blackwater στην Ελλάδα»
Για μια ακόμη φορά η τρικομματική και κατ’ ευφημισμό «κυβέρνηση», μας έδειξε την αποτελεσματικότητα και τη δύναμή της!
Όχι βέβαια ορθώνοντας το ανάστημά της αξιοπρεπώς απέναντι στους τροϊκανούς υπαλλήλους, αλλά απέναντι στον μέχρι πρότινος Γενικό Γραμματέα του Οργανισμού Οικονομικής Συνεργασίας Ευξείνου Πόντου (ΟΣΕΠ) και μέλος του ΕΠΑΜ πρέσβη κ. Λεωνίδα Χρυσανθόπουλο, αφαιρώντας του τον τίτλο του επί τιμή πρέσβη,που του είχε απονεμηθεί, για τις σημαντικές υπηρεσίες που προσέφερε στην Πατρίδα και στο Διπλωματικό Σώμα!
Αν και καμία αναφορά ή αιτιολογία δεν δίνεται για την υπόψη διοικητική πράξη στο σχετικό ΠΔ που εκδόθηκε, η πραγματική αιτία είναι ότι ο κ. πρέσβης τόλμησε και έδωσε σειρά συνεντεύξεων που του ζητήθηκαν από ελληνικά και ξένα ΜΜΕ, αναφορικά με την καταστρεπτική πορεία για την χώρα που ακολουθεί το καθεστώς, και που προκάλεσαν σχόλια και εντυπώσεις σε Ελλάδα και Εξωτερικό.
Με αυτήν την ευκαιρία το ΕΠΑΜ ευχαριστεί ιδιαίτερα:
α. Τον Πρόεδρο της «δημοκρατίας» για την επιβεβαίωση ότι ζούμε σε περιβάλλον «Αποφασίζουμε και Διατάσσουμε».
β. Τον υπ.εξ. και πρώην διπλωματικό υπάλληλο κ. Αβραμόπουλο, για την τόσο αποτελεσματική του ενασχόληση με τα διεθνή ζητήματα, αφού είμαστε και εμείς τώρα απόλυτα σίγουροι ότι, αφαιρώντας τον τίτλο «επί τιμή» από ένα πρέσβη, τον οποίο μάλιστα εγκωμίαζε με το από 25 Ιουνίου Μήνυμά του που είναι ανηρτημένο ακόμη στην ιστοσελίδα του υπουργείου, διευθετήθηκαν αυτόματα και η ΑΟΖ μας και το θέμα της υφαλοκρηπίδας, τα προβλήματα των παραβιάσεων και παραβάσεων στο Αιγαίο, οι λεγόμενες «γκρίζες ζώνες», το «casus belli» των Τούρκων και …και….και…
γ. Την ίδια την «κυβέρνηση», που αποδεχόμενη αυτήν την απόφαση, μας ξαναχάρισε στιγμές νοσταλγίας, αφού ζούμε και πάλι την εποχή με τον Γ. Σεφέρη, που του αφαίρεσαν τον τίτλο του επί τιμή πρέσβη για τις δηλώσεις του προς το BBC στις 28 Μαρτίου 1969 και τις απαγορεύσεις της έκφρασης που εξέδωσε η Χούντα.
Το τραγικό είναι ότι επιβεβαιώνεται επισήμως η κατάργηση της ελευθέριας του λόγου στην Ελλάδα του 2013.
Με όλα αυτά το ΕΠΑΜ αισθάνεται ιδιαίτερα ικανοποιημένο, αφού οι μεν πράξεις της τρικομματικής «κυβέρνησης» από μόνες τους, φανερώνουν ότι μιλάμε για μια κακοφορμισμένη χούντα και έτσι το απαλλάσσουν από την έρευνα που θα χρειαζόταν για να αποδειχθεί αυτό, οι δε πολιτικές διώξεις των μελών του, γιγαντώνουν την πίστη στον αγώνα του και διευρύνουν την αποδοχή των προταγμάτων του στην Ελληνική Κοινωνία.
JSOC
olicitation Number:
RRTO-20150130-W-JSOCJCTE
Notice Type:
Special Notice
Synopsis:
Added: Jan 30, 2015 1:16 pm
SYNOPSIS: 2015 JSOC Capabilities and Technology Expo (JCTE) and Classified Technology Needs List
JSOC has assembled a SECRET listing of approximately 100 Special Operations Force's (SOF) technology and capability needs. The list will be available for release to Industry, Academia, and National Labs in February 2015. JSOC will follow up the release of the Needs List with two events through two additional special notices: one, a Capability Needs Event to be held in McLean, VA on 29 and 30 April 2015 that will host up to 250 SECRET cleared Industry representatives each day to discuss this list of needs and potential opportunities to partner with industry to address them through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs); and two, a Capability Solutions Event to be held in October 2015 which will be a by invitation only event for selected Industry partners to present solutions to JSOC representatives.
A. INTRODUCTION:
This notice is NOT a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations.
The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) mission is to conduct studies; training; exercises; research, development, testing, and evaluation; and acquisition and procurement to ensure interoperability among special operations forces (SOF), general purpose forces, and interagency and foreign partners. JSOC has assigned and attached subordinate units and may deploy to support Geographic Combatant Commander's training, exercises, activities, and operations.
It is JSOC's desire to inform and influence industry's internal investment decisions in areas that address SOF's most sensitive and urgent needs. Many in industry have expertise, capacity, funding, and a desire to better understand and invest in SOF unique needs.
Factors that make this unique collaboration opportunity attractive include: 1) Increasing Military Budget Austerity - SOF is a judicious transition partner whose future resourcing is the most well-preserved of the military Services. It is JSOC's desire to improve collaboration in an era where budget austerity tends to erect barriers to open communication. 2) Intellectual Property (IP) - The commercialization of dual-use (government/ commercial) technology can reduce costs to the government, but government contracting IP clauses often restrict industry's ability to capitalize on their own IP. Our proposed collaboration model preserves and protects industry's ownership of their intellectual property.
B. OBJECTIVE:
The purpose of this Special Notice is to provide Industry the ability to request the 2015 JSOC Capability Needs list in order to help focus industry research and development decisions toward JSOC's unique needs.
The CRADA relationship provides industry a more intimate "hands on" collaborative relationship with users, combat developers and program planners with the goal of speeding transition of capability from the laboratory to the field. The CRADA also offers enhanced IP protection for industry. "Designated under the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-502) (which amended the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-480)), a CRADA is intended to speed the commercialization of technology, optimize resources, and protect the private company involved. A CRADA allows both parties to keep research results confidential for up to five years under the Freedom of Information Act."
JSOC's Technology Needs listing includes multiple needs in each of the following functional areas:
1. Breaching
2. Communications
3. Electronic Warfare
4. Fire Support
5. Information Technology
6. Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
7. Knowledge Management
8. Lighten the Load
9. Mobility
10. Scalable Effects Engagement/Non-Lethal
11. Power and Energy
12. Soldier Survival
13. Target Engagement
14. Visual Augmentation
15. Other Need Areas
JSOC does NOT anticipate issuing Requests for Proposals and/or awarding contracts as a result of this Special Notice. Instead, JSOC aims to work towards collaborative agreements with selected Industry partners as they develop proprietary technologies for the market which address specific
JSOC technology and capability needs.
JSOC anticipates entering into approximately 5-25 CRADA's. Under each CRADA JSOC will provide:
1. A technical and programmatic POC
2. Copies of any testing conducted
3. A written JSOC Tech Assessment (JTA) summarizing our view of the technology and its potential to include candid non-attributable quotes from all assessors across the JSOC enterprise
4. JSOC's highest level sponsorship for participation in a SOCOM Technical Experimentation event to demonstrate the technology to participants from the SOF community at large to include MARSOC, USASOC, WARCOM, AFSOC and the SOCOM HQ
5. JSOC transition assistance
C. REGISTRATION:
In order to request the 2015 JSOC Capability and Technology Needs List, email the following information to osd.jcte@mail.mil:
1. Company Name
2. CAGE Code
3. Classified Mailing Address: both Inner and Outer labels including the Attn: line POC
4. Delivery Method: Pick Up (specify CD or Paper Hard Copy); via email on SIPR, JWICS, CWAN/GWAN; or via registered US mail (specify CD or Paper Hard Copy)
NOTE: All requestors within a 75 mile radius of the Pentagon in Washington, DC who cannot receive the list via email will be required to pick up the list. In addition, those who received the 2014 Needs List will be able to request a compilation of 2015 changes document. Those who haven't received the 2014 Needs List can request a full copy.
F. SPECIAL NOTICE:
JSOC will utilize contractor consultant/advisors to assist with the distribution of the 2015 Capabilities and Technology Needs List. All advisors shall comply with procurement integrity laws and shall sign non-disclosure agreements. The Government shall take into consideration requirements for avoiding conflicts of interest and ensure advisors comply with safeguarding proprietary data. Contractor consultant/advisors will also be involved in follow on collaboration with selected Industry partners, including managing and maintaining websites/databases and other tasks JSOC assigns.
Please consult the list of document viewers if you cannot open a file.
2015 JSOC JCTE
Type:
Other (Draft RFPs/RFIs, Responses to Questions, etc..)
Posted Date:
January 30, 2015
JCTE_2015_Special_Notice.pdf (24.62 Kb)
Description: 2015 JSOC Capabilities and Technology Expo (JCTE) and Classified Technology Needs List
2015_Needs_List_Request_Form.xlsx (12.16 Kb)
Description: 2015 Needs List Request Form
Contracting Office Address:
5611 Columbia Pike
Suite 04C20
Falls Church, Virginia 22041
United States
Primary Point of Contact.:
JSOC JCTE
This is what people think of when they imagine the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC — the secretive, über-elite military unit that killed Osama bin Laden. The leader of a JSOC unit in Iraq, known as K-Bar, gets shot in the chest by insurgents. K-Bar waves away his medic until he finishes killing his assailants. His reward? Leading JSOC’s operations in Afghanistan.
Ludicrous acts of superhuman bravado are part of JSOC’s myth and mystique. That mystique is hard to penetrate: JSOC is so secretive that it instructs its members not to write down important information, lest it be vulnerable to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. But a new book reveals that killing might not even be the most important thing JSOC does.
Marc Ambinder, a former reporter for The Atlanticand National Journal, goes deep inside JSOC to reveal that it has become perhaps the government’s most effective intelligence agency. Unassuming office buildings around the Washington area and beyond have become unlabeled spy centers that process untold volumes of information extracted from JSOC’s hunting missions, with such a rapid analytic turnaround time that the “shooters” of the unit can quickly begin planning their next kills. In fact, Ambinder reports in The Command, his just-published eBook, the integration of tactical spying within JSOC is so thorough that it’s hard to distinguish “shooters” from analysts.
Yet JSOC operates with practically no accountability. In Iraq, it ran a torture chamber at a place called Camp Nama — until its leader, Stanley McChrystal and his intelligence chief, Michael Flynn, cleaned it up. (There’s a debate in military circles about whether McChrystal or his friend and successor, Adm. William McRaven deserve credit for JSOC’s resurgence; but Ambinder’s reporting suggests Flynn is the real father of the modern JSOC.) The unit is supposed to answer to the chain of command, but it advised President Obama not to ask which Navy SEAL actually killed Osama bin Laden — and then wouldn’t tell Obama’s chief of staff, who ignored the advice. Even while the CIA works intimately with JSOC, it whispers to reporters, self-interestedly, that the unit is out of control.
But JSOC has the biggest trump card of all to play, institutionally: it works. Killing bin Laden was just the culmination of a furious, decade-long pace of lethal operations, involving hundreds of Afghanistan night raids in a single year; what Ambinder describes as a “free hand” in Somalia, including last month’s dramatic hostage rescue; and unseen counterterrorism mission from Pakistan to, of all places, Peru. JSOC is so busy its leadership thinks it’sexhausted, and prominent analysts claim it needs tostep up its game to prevent nuclear terrorism.
Danger Room spoke with Ambinder about JSOC’s successes — and the implications for the secretive organization’s expanded reach into the spy world, especially as it becomes the lead force wagingAmerica’s Shadow Wars.
Danger Room: How did JSOC become an intelligence agency?
Marc Ambinder: It was born of necessity. As the insurgency in Iraq became too much for commanders to bear, there was a scramble to figure out how to get tactical intelligence out of anyone they captured. And it seemed like the military’s first response, generally, to use a broad over generalization, for the important people, we’ll rough them up. At least they’ll say something, and that’ll give us something tactical. But obviously it didn’t work very well, it’s immoral. They hadn’t really figured out beforehand that [Iraq] would require a lot of tactical intelligence. All the intelligence planning that went on for the Iraq war was strategic.
So there was a huge need for it. Also, there was the timing of it. JSOC was in charge of finding and interrogating high value targets in Iraq. They had just launched internal investigation inside the command into what happened at Camp Nama. There was a lot of sensitivity to the interrogation techniques that were used there. There are different accounts as to how precisely this sort of investigative police directive doctrines became embedded in the minds of the elite, tier-one warriors. But most people give credit to the J2 [intelligence chief] at the time, Gen. Mike Flynn. As he describes it, he would observe your average JSOC operation and you would see insurgents, or whomever, rounded up, put in the same room, with all the stuff they had in their hands, all the pocket litter, would be separated and just kept in a trash bag. And it was brought back to one of the other bases for processing. That was way too inefficient and way too slow for the operational tempo of the insurgents. In his mind, Flynn envisioned the insurgency to be this ever-expanding spider’s web, and the U.S. military would be like this tiny mouse, clawing at one end of it. And you needed to speed up.
DR: How complicit was JSOC in torture?
MA: I would say JSOC was moderately complicit. The number of actual interrogators and tier-one operators who actually participated in torture was very small. Less than 50. But the number of people who knew about it, even in a closed culture like JSOC, had to be much larger. And one of the big questions that still hangs over the head of Gen. McChrystal, who’s otherwise widely admired for turning JSOC around and moving it away from these [torture] techniques, is that it took him seemingly a long time when he took over the command to get his arms around how the command’s interrogation practices were actually working. There’s a legitimate and still open question of how much he knew, and what did about it.
I was able to learn that he did initiate an internal investigation that resulted in about 30 people being disciplined, with some of them kicked out of the military or transferred to other units. Because it’s a secret organization for most part the results of the investigations remain secret. JSOC prefers to keep its record of accountability in-house. But if you look at the time line, and look at what’s public — the torture report from the Senate intelligence committee blacked out all the references to JSOC. Quite clear that even on a senior level, task force commanders in Iraq knew what was going on.
DR: So they torture people until Flynn figures out there’s a better way to get intelligence?
MA: I know that sounds like a neat narrative, and this is a complicated story. But in essence, that is what happened. While you have to say the command was complicit in the rough, bad stuff early on, they figured out what was happening, and they figured out a much better, humane and more effective way of doing it. Then they proselytize it, and make sure rest of the military knows they’re doing it that way. You can’t ever erase the stain of torture, but this command deserves credit for figuring out what to do about it, and how to meet the need for intelligence without roughing people up, and how to get inside the decision loops of the insurgents.
DR: What were some of the intelligence tactics that JSOC would use?
MA: Some of the tactics were as simple as equipping your tier-one operators — i.e., a Delta Force shooter or a SEAL Team Six demolition expert, the elite of the elite — with a camera. Instead of rounding up insurgents, bringing them to one area of a house, they’d have pictures of them exactly where they are, and take pictures what they have on them exactly. They’d keep them with their pocket litter until they were processed. And they’d send pictures back in real time to an intelligence fusion center. The main one in Iraq was in Balad but there were others. And you’d have analyst who could use many of various databases that JSOC had access to, and many that JSOC was building. The common metaphor was that you’re building the airplane as it’s taking off. You built all these databases for intelligence and had secret biometrics processes. There were teams of U.S. intelligence officers who were trying to get as many fingerprints, DNA samples and so forth of anyone in Baghdad as they could. The analysts would be able to create link analysis charts from them.
If you captured Abu So-and-So, you’d be able to say within a minute, “Hey, I know your uncle is this person, who we really want to get to. If you can tell me where this person is right now, we’ll give you a break and even let you go.” And often, that would be what Abu So-and-So would do, because it would be in his best interest. Within maybe 20 minutes, JSOC could launch a second raid targeting the uncle of Abu So-and-So.
At a ground level, those kind of techniques, by 2007-8, were used not just by the elite special operations forces, but also the so-called white special operations forces — Green Berets and other Navy SEAL elements, as well as conventional human intelligence brigades that were attached to combat units.
DR: Is JSOC now the tactical intelligence agency of choice for the U.S. government?
MA: Not only are they the tactical intel of choice, they also have the operational capacity to act on that intelligence. So they generate intelligence, they analyze it, and they act on it, all in one package.
DR: What does that mean for holding JSOC accountable? This is an extraordinarily secretive military unit.
MA: There are a lot of buried caches in West Virginia and Virginia of JSOC documents. I only say that with some exaggeration. This is obviously a command that had to be secret when it was stood up in part because secrecy is the coin of realm when doing one-off special operations. The problem generally here is that by law, JSOC can’t really collect strategic intelligence or intelligence for its own sake, depending on where they are. In the war zone, in Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s different; they can collect and use intelligence there. But they also operate outside of designated war zones in North Africa, in South America, in Asia, and they use these intelligence collection techniques there as well.
It’s under the rubric of what they call “Operational Preparation of the Environment.” Which is to say, any time there’s JSOC operation, you don’t want them to fly in blind, so you have to collect some intelligence. But in practice they really stretch that definition. Elements of JSOC run their own human intelligence sources. I didn’t put this in the book, but I had one former senior JSOC operator describing to me a very elaborate JSOC operation in Beirut where a dozen more human sources were recruited to steal a variety of documents, relating to international narcotics trafficking. Which sounds great, until you remember that it’s not law enforcement officers or the CIA doing it, but the U.S. military doing it.
There are legal restrictions on what the CIA can do in terms of covert operations. There has to be a finding, the president has to notify at least the “Gang of Eight” [leaders of the intelligence oversight committees] in Congress. JSOC doesn’t have to do any of that. There is very little accountability for their actions. What’s weird is that many in congress who’d be very sensitive to CIA operations almost treat JSOC as an entity that doesn’t have to submit to oversight. It’s almost like this is the president’s private army, we’ll let the president do what he needs to do. As long as you don’t get in trouble, we’re not gonna ask too many questions.
You don’t want the command to brief members of Congress before every operation. On other hand, regular briefings every three months might give some sense of the military intelligence collection that goes on. And when you collect intelligence, it’s not just satellites that’s listen to conversation. You’re making in a lot of cases very difficult, grey, moral choices like the CIA does all the time. There’s an argument to be made — incidentally, it’s one that Republican [Rep.] Mike Rogers, the head of the House intelligence committee agrees with — for more regular briefings from JSOC, to get a more granular sense of how JSOC uses and distributes the money it’s given for intelligence gathering. He understands that a lot of vital strategic intelligence isn’t being collected by CIA, it’s being collected by JSOC, in pursuit of legitimate objectives without oversight.
DR: Does JSOC need to get better at preventing nuclear terrorism, as some critics you cite allege? You wrote a piece recently that discussed U.S. planning to seize loose Pakistani nukes. Won’t it be JSOC that does that?
MA: Adm. Eric Olson, the former commander of [U.S. Special Operations Command], has begun to express that worry publicly. JSOC has become the world’s premiere counterterrorism force, but other skills have atrophied, and that includes the ability to secure nuclear weapons. The command is aware of that. They will tell you that they still have the same number of people trained to do counterproliferation work. But you can argue that over the past ten years that the amount of counterproliferation work needs to be done, or the level of threat from nuclear proliferation has increased or is rising to the level that requires JSOC to reorient its focus. One argument is that JSOC should be used for special missions, not your average Army Ranger door-knock operation. That’s something Gen. McChrystal came to believe, something I believe Adm. McRaven also agrees with. So I think you’ll see over the next couple years the command reorient itself around counterproliferation.
DR: What does that mean in practice? JSOC is going to swoop into former Soviet states and snatch nuclear material?
MA: They have done that. In practice, though, the real secret of the Pakistan nuclear question is that there’s no way that there are enough trained American — or American and British and Israeli — soldiers to go into Pakistan and seize their nuclear arsenal and render it safe. There’s just no way. It would take an entire army of people who were extremely well trained to do that. But the concern is that, in general, you have proliferation concerns and you have forces that haven’t trained to confront them in a way that they should.
DR: What was JSOC doing in Peru?
MA: My understanding is that they were pursuing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah elements that were laundering money and using Peru as a base of operations for that type of activity throughout South America. Technically JSOC was attached to the embassy through the cover of one of these Defense Intelligence Agency programs. There were [bureaucratic] outposts that Donald Rumsfeld created to expand JSOC’s footprint across the world.
DR: Should we expect to see JSOC become a global strike force, rather than one that operates at the periphery of the war on terror?
MA: Yes. McRaven has not told me this directly, but I believe he wants to turn JSOC into the non-missile equivalent of Prompt Global Strike. If there’s an acute problem somewhere in the world, not just a bunch of people with guns can be there, but an entire integrated military operation can be transported there as a package, with all the branches — communications, intelligence, everything — devoted to the problem and can fix the problem. One gets the sense that the way the administration is budgeting for defense that they agree.
The phrase that’s used all the time is “creating lilypads” across the world, from which you can hop into hot zones if necessary. It’s a way to cope with the reduction in conventional forces. The idea is that elite forces are force multipliers. If you look at the way the command is structured now, with the number of command posts they have throughout the world, it’s hard to see them as anything but a Prompt Global Strike capacity absent active wars. And very soon they’ll have a larger presence in Afghanistan. But absent Iraq, absent Afghanistan over the next couple years, that’s what it’s gonna be. And their focus will be on counter-proliferation, counter-cyber — that’s a word we haven’t really heard before; JSOC is building a cyber capacity — counternarcotics.
I think one of big challenges will be to figure out how you create legal framework for that that allows for a prompt response that at the same time assures accountability. And I would hope members of Congress are thinking about that.
The film Dirty Wars, which premiered at Sundance, can be viewed, as Amy Goodman sees it, as an important narrative of excesses in the global "war on terror". It is also a record of something scary for those of us at home – and uncovers the biggest story, I would say, in our nation's contemporary history.
Though they wisely refrain from drawing inferences, Scahill and Rowley have uncovered the facts of a new unaccountable power in America and the world that has the potential to shape domestic and international events in an unprecedented way. The film tracks the Joint Special Operations Command (JSoc), a network of highly-trained, completely unaccountable US assassins, armed with ever-expanding "kill lists". It was JSoc that ran the operation behind the Navy Seal team six that killed bin Laden.
Scahill and Rowley track this new model of US warfare that strikes at civilians and insurgents alike – in 70 countries. They interview former JSoc assassins, who are shell-shocked at how the "kill lists" they are given keep expanding, even as they eliminate more and more people.
Our conventional forces are subject to international laws of war: they are accountable for crimes in courts martial; and they run according to a clear chain of command. As much as the US military may fall short of these standards at times, it is a model of lawfulness compared with JSoc, which has far greater scope to undertake the commission of extra-legal operations – and unimaginable crimes.
JSoc morphs the secretive, unaccountable mercenary model of private military contracting, which Scahill identified in Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, into a hybrid with the firepower and intelligence backup of our full state resources. The Hill reports that JSoc is now seeking more "flexibility" to expand its operations globally.
JSoc operates outside the traditional chain of command; it reports directly to the president of the United States. In the words of Wired magazine:
"JSoc operates with practically no accountability."
Scahill calls JSoc the president's "paramilitary". Its budget, which may be in the billions, is secret.
What does it means for the president to have an unaccountable paramilitary force, which can assassinate anyone anywhere in the world? JSoc has already been sent to kill at least one US citizen – one who had been indicted for no crime, but was condemned for propagandizing for al-Qaida.Anwar al-Awlaki, on JSoc's "kill list" since 2010, was killed by CIA-controlled drone attack in September 2011; his teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki – also a US citizen – was killed by a US drone two weeks later.
This arrangement – where death squads roam under the sole control of the executive – is one definition of dictatorship. It now has the potential to threaten critics of the US anywhere in the world.
The film reveals some of these dangers: Scahill, writing in the Nation, reportedthat President Obama called Yemen's President Saleh in 2011 to express "concern" about jailed reporter Abdulelah Haider Shaye. US spokespeople have confirmed the US interest in keeping him in prison.
Shaye, a Yemeni journalist based in Sana'a, had a reputation for independent journalism through his neutral interviewing of al-Qaida operatives, and of critics of US policy such as Anwar al-Awlaki. Journalist colleagues in Yemen dismiss the notion of any terrorist affiliation: Shaye had worked for the Washington Post, ABC news, al-Jazeera, and other major media outlets.
Shaye went to al-Majala in Yemen, where a missile strike had killed a group that the US had called "al-Qaida". "What he discovered," reports Scahill, "were the remnants of Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs … some of them bearing the label 'Made in the USA', and distributed the photos to international media outlets."
Fourteen women and 21 children were killed. "Whether anyone actually active in al-Qaida was killed remains hotly contested." Shortly afterwards, Shaye was kidnapped and beaten by Yemeni security forces. In a trial that was criticized internationally by reporters' groups and human rights organizations, he was accused of terrorism. Shaye is currently serving a five-year sentence.
Scahill and Rowley got to the bars of Shaye's cell to interview him, before the camera goes dark (in almost every scene, they put their lives at risk). This might also bring to mind the fates of Sami al-Haj of al-Jazeera, also kidnapped, and sent to Guantánamo, and of Julian Assange, trapped in asylum in Ecuador's London embassy.
President Obama thus helped put a respected reporter in prison for reporting critically on JSoc's activities. The most disturbing issue of all, however, is the documentation of the "secret laws" now facilitating these abuses of American power: Scahill succeeds in getting Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on the Senate intelligence committee, to confirm the fact that there are secret legal opinions governing the use of drones in targeted assassinations that, he says, Americans would be "very surprised" to know about. This is not the first time Wyden has issued this warning.
In 2011, Wyden sought an amendment to the USA Patriot Act titled requiring the US government "to end practice of secretly interpreting law". Wyden warns that there is now a system of law beneath or behind the law that we can see and debate:
"It is impossible for Congress to hold an informed public debate on the Patriot Act when there is a significant gap between what most Americans believe the law says and what the government is using the law to do. In fact, I believe many members of Congress who have voted on this issue would be stunned to know how the Patriot Act is being interpreted and applied.
"Even secret operations need to be conducted within the bounds of established, publicly understood law. Any time there is a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the government secretly thinks the law says, I believe you have a serious problem."
I have often wondered, since I first wrote about America's slide toward fascism, what was driving it. I saw the symptoms but not the cause. Scahill's and Rowley's brave, transformational film reveals the prime movers at work. The US executive now has a network of secret laws, secret budgets, secret kill lists, and a well-funded, globally deployed army of secret teams of assassins. That is precisely the driving force working behind what we can see. Is fascism really too strong a word to describe it?
• This article originally referred to Scahill and Rowley's documentary as Secret Wars; this was amended to Dirty Wars at 5.20pm ET on 3 February. The phrase "US kill list" in the subhead was also amended to "kill list" in order to remove possible ambiguity
Πηγές
http://www.wired.com/2012/02/JSoc-ambinder/
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/01/blackwater-201001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi#Greystone_Limited
http://rt.com/usa/189684-blackwater-private-army-isis/
http://listverse.com/2014/01/07/11-frightening-facts-about-private-military-companies/
http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi
www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/03/blackwaters-world-warcraft?page=2
http://www.phantomreport.com/greystone-limited-mercenaries-operating-in-ukraine
http://www.logiosermis.net/2013/07/blackwater-monsanto.html#.VWG1kvntmko
http://www.onalert.gr/stories/isovia-se-stelexi-tis-blackwater/41893
https://emprosnews.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/%CE%B1%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%BA%CE%BB%CE%B5%CE%B9%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%BF-%CF%84%CE%B1-%CE%B1%CE%BC%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AC%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%B1-%CF%83%CE%BA%CF%85%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%AC/
http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=405360
http://antigoldgr.org/blog/2013/12/20/wanted/
http://www.newsbomb.gr/politikh/news/story/275965/hrysanthopoylos-i-blackwater-fylaei-ti-voyli
http://greeknation.blogspot.gr/2014/10/blackwater.html
http://www.enikos.gr/international/246844,NYT-H-Blackwater-eixe-apeilhsei-na-skotwsei-ereynhth.html
http://greeknation.blogspot.gr/2012/11/blackwater-2012.html
http://www.epirus-ellas.gr/2013/09/blackwater_30.html
http://www.triklopodia.gr/giatseniouk-dnt-chrimatodoti-blackwater-ke-aegis-pou-dolofonoun-rosofonous/
http://www.antipagkosmiopoihsh.gr/2014/05/13/blackwater-cia-misthofori-apo-ipa-stin-oukrania/
http://www.kathimerini.gr/774190/article/epikairothta/kosmos/yperanw-toy-nomoy-h-blackwater
http://katohika.gr/2013/04/karatomithike-o-presvis-pou-apokalipse-tin-eleysi-blackwater.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZI8pTt6l3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKXOzhqHtjw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDODC0mgQ68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1PHT_BiLHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JxGSY2YC14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GgIXyTPRkE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqKQFcFT4TY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvkxwSLcEkM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN0udPRnd2M
http://www.epirus-ellas.gr/2013/09/blackwater_30.html
http://www.triklopodia.gr/giatseniouk-dnt-chrimatodoti-blackwater-ke-aegis-pou-dolofonoun-rosofonous/
http://www.antipagkosmiopoihsh.gr/2014/05/13/blackwater-cia-misthofori-apo-ipa-stin-oukrania/
http://www.kathimerini.gr/774190/article/epikairothta/kosmos/yperanw-toy-nomoy-h-blackwater
http://katohika.gr/2013/04/karatomithike-o-presvis-pou-apokalipse-tin-eleysi-blackwater.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZI8pTt6l3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKXOzhqHtjw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDODC0mgQ68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1PHT_BiLHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JxGSY2YC14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GgIXyTPRkE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqKQFcFT4TY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvkxwSLcEkM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN0udPRnd2M
1 σχόλιο:
γεια σου τραιανε
και ας λες οτι σε λενε Χριστινα
αν και εισαι το οκταγωνο
εγω τελικα ποιος ειμαι
λενε οτι ειμαι ο κατασκοπος σου
ειναι αληθεια???
γεια σου κοριτσι
Δημοσίευση σχολίου