Posted on Tuesday, September 12, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.
Blackwater USA [ http://www.blackwaterusa.com/ ], the private security contractor that has operated in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and New Orleans, has been booming the past few years. Founded in December of 1996, the company spent its early years “paying staff with an executive's credit card and begging for customers,” according to the Virginian-Pilot [ http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=108003&ran=206428 ]. But today, Blackwater reportedly has revenues of about $100 million annually, almost all of it from government contracts, and maintains “a compound half the size of Manhattan and 450 permanent employees,” according to the newspaper.
How did Blackwater rise so high, so fast? The “war on terrorism” got the ball rolling for the firm, but one suspects that political connections played a big part as well. Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, is a former SEAL who is deeply involved in Republican Party politics. Since 1998, he has funneled roughly $200,000 to GOP committees and candidates, including President Bush. In 2004, Blackwater retained the Alexander Strategy Group, the PR and lobbying firm that closed down earlier this year due to its embarrassing ties to Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. (Paul Behrends, a former national security adviser to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, handled the account for Alexander. After the firm shut down, Behrends moved on to a firm called C&M Capitolink, and took the Blackwater account with him.)
A number of senior CIA and Pentagon officials have taken top jobs at Blackwater, including firm vice chairman Cofer Black, who was the Bush Administration's top counterterrorism official at the time of the 9/11 attacks (and who famously said in 2002, “There was before 9/11 and after 9/11. After 9/11, the gloves came off.”) Robert Young Pelton [ http://www.harpers.org/sb-six-questions-robert-young-pelton-1157654152.html (F6 note -- my next post, a reply to this post)], author of the new book, Licensed to Kill [ http://comebackalive.com/site3.php ], says that an early Blackwater contract—a secret no-bid $5.4 million deal with the CIA—came in 2002 after Prince placed a call to Buzzy Krongard, who was then the CIA's executive director.
A CIA source with whom I spoke said that Prince is very tight with top agency officials and has a “green badge,” the security pass for contractors who have access to CIA installations. “He's over there [at CIA headquarters] regularly, probably once a month or so,” this person told me. “He meets with senior people, especially in the D.O.” (The D.O., or Directorate of Operations, runs covert operations; last year, it was absorbed by the newly created National Clandestine Service.)
Prince's visits are probably one reason that the revolving door to Blackwater keeps turning. Last fall, Rob Richer resigned from the post of Associate Deputy Director of Operations; he immediately took a job as Blackwater's Vice President of Intelligence. Richer is a former head of the CIA's Near East Division and long served in Amman, where, for a period beginning in 1999, he held the post of station chief. For years he was the agency's point man with Jordan's King Abdullah, with whom he developed an extraordinarily close relationship. “There have been some ups and downs in our relationship with Jordan, but the king has always been on good terms with the CIA,” said a person familiar with the situation. “The king's primary relationship is always with the CIA, not the American ambassador.”
The CIA has lavishly subsidized Jordan's intelligence service, and has sent millions of dollars in recent years for intelligence training. After Richer retired, sources say, he helped Blackwater land a lucrative deal with the Jordanian government to provide the same sort of training offered by the CIA. Millions of dollars that the CIA “invested” in Jordan walked out the door with Richer—if this were a movie, it would be a cross between Jerry Maguire and Syriana. “People [at the agency] are pissed off,” said one source. “Abdullah still speaks with Richer regularly and he thinks that's the same thing as talking to us. He thinks Richer is still the man.” Except in this case it's Richer, not his client, yelling “show me the money.” (Richer did not return a phone call seeking comment.)
Meanwhile, there's talk at the agency that Blackwater is also aggressively recruiting Jose Rodriguez, the CIA's current top spy as director of the National Clandestine Service. Rodriguez has a number of former agency friends at Blackwater, most notably Rick Prado, with whom he served in Latin America and who is now Blackwater's Vice President of Special Programs.
One of my sources told me that agency employees have voiced concerns to CIA director Michael Hayden about the Blackwater revolving door. “In a situation like this, there are too many opportunities for people to scratch each others' backs,” he said.
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Note: Another internal concern at the CIA is that employees involved in the agency's secret detention program might be hit with subpoenas or indictments if the Democrats win control of the House in November. I noted this [ http://harpers.org/sb-cia-wehrmacht.html (F6 note -- at http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=10760162 )] back in April; on Monday, the Washington Post had a front-page [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001286.html (F6 note -- at http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=13273951 )] story saying that CIA counterterrorism officers have “signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing . . . The new enrollments reflect heightened anxiety at the CIA that officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”
I'm told that a number of CIA employees have been complaining to Inspector General John Helgerson about the detainee program. “They have told him that they don't like the program and they want to be on the record about it now, in case the subpoenas start flying,” a source reports.
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This is Revolving Door to Blackwater Causes Alarm at CIA by Ken Silverstein, published Tuesday, September 12, 2006. It is part of Washington Babylon, which is part of Harpers.org.
Iraq's hidden casualties: 13,000 working for contractors
"I've been shot at, had my truck blown out from under me, had an I.E.D. hit about six feet away from me," said Gordon Dreher, who broke his back driving in Iraq. He is back in Brick, New Jersey, with his dog, Dancer. (Laura Pedrick for The New York Times)
By John M. Broder and James Risen Published: May 19, 2007
WASHINGTON: Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the U.S. military in the war zone, according to new government numbers.
At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as U.S. government contractors in Iraq.
That brings the total number of contractors killed in Iraq to at least 917, along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews. Truck drivers and translators account for a significant share of the casualties, but the recent death toll includes others who make up what amounts to a private army.
The numbers, which have not been previously reported, reveal the extent to which contractors - Americans, Iraqis, and workers from more than three dozen other countries - are largely hidden casualties of the war, and now are facing increased risks alongside U.S. troops as President George W. Bush's escalation in Baghdad takes hold.
As troops patrol more aggressively in and around the capital, both soldiers and the contractors who support them, often at small outposts, are at greater peril. The contractor deaths earlier this year, for example, came closer to the number of U.S. military deaths during the same period - 244 - than during any other quarter since the war began, according to official figures.
"The insurgents are going after the softest targets, and the contractors are softer targets than the military," said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense for manpower during the Reagan administration. "The U.S. is being more aggressive over there, and these contractor deaths go right along with it."
Among the recent deaths were four Americans working as guards who died in a helicopter crash in January, 28 Turkish construction workers whose plane crashed north of Baghdad the same month, a Massachusetts man who was blown up as he dismantled munitions for an U.S. company in March, and a Georgia woman killed in a missile attack in March while working as a coordinator for KBR, the contractor that Halliburton subsequently spun off.
Donald Tolfree Jr., a trucker from Michigan, was fatally shot in the cab of his vehicle while returning to Camp Anaconda, north of Baghdad, in early February. His daughter, Kristen Martin, 23, said U.S. Army officials told her he was shot by a guard confused about her father's assignment. The army confirms the death as under investigation as a possible friendly-fire episode.
Martin said she waited three weeks for her father's body to be returned home and expressed resentment that dead contractors were treated differently from soldiers who fall in battle.
"If anything happens to the military people, you hear about it right away," she said in a telephone interview. "Flags get lowered, they get their respect. You don't hear anything about the contractors."
Military officials in Washington and Baghdad said that no Pentagon office tracked contractor casualties and that they had no way to confirm or explain the sharp rise in deaths this year.
Major General William Caldwell 4th, the top spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, declined through an aide to address the matter. "Contractors are out of our lane, and we don't comment on them," said the aide, Lieutenant Matthew Breedlove.
Companies that have lost workers in Iraq were generally unresponsive to questions about the numbers of deaths and the circumstances that led to casualties. None acknowledged that they had seen an increase this year. But a spokesman for American International Group, the insurance company that covers about 80 percent of the contractor workforce in Iraq, said it had seen a sharp increase in death and injury claims in recent months.
The Labor Department records show that in addition to the 146 dead in the first three months this year, another 3,430 contractors filed claims for wounds or injuries suffered in Iraq, also a quarterly record. The number of casualties, though, may be much higher because the government's statistical database is not complete.
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