Blackwater's Black Ops-Internal docs reveal the firm's clandestine work

[kpete]

Source: The Nation

Blackwater's Black Ops

Internal documents reveal the firm's clandestine work for multinationals and governments.
Jeremy Scahill
Posted September 15, 2010

Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater's work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.


One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm

..........................

According to internal Total Intelligence communications, biotech giant Monsanto—the world’s largest supplier of genetically modified seeds—hired the firm in 2008–09. The relationship between the two companies appears to have been solidified in January 2008 when Total Intelligence chair Cofer Black traveled to Zurich to meet with Kevin Wilson, Monsanto’s security manager for global issues.

After the meeting in Zurich, Black sent an e-mail to other Blackwater executives, including to Prince and Prado at their Blackwater e-mail addresses. Black wrote that Wilson “understands that we can span collection from internet, to reach out, to boots on the ground on legit basis protecting the Monsanto brand name…. Ahead of the curve info and insight/heads up is what he is looking for.” Black added that Total Intelligence “would develop into acting as intel arm of Monsanto.” Black also noted that Monsanto was concerned about animal rights activists and that they discussed how Blackwater “could have our person(s) actually joinactivist] group(s) legally.” Black wrote that initial payments to Total Intelligence would be paid out of Monsanto’s “generous protection budget” but would eventually become a line item in the company’s annual budget. He estimated the potential payments to Total Intelligence at between $100,000 and $500,000. According to documents, Monsanto paid Total Intelligence $127,000 in 2008 and $105,000 in 2009.

Read more: http://www.thenation.com/article/154739/blackwaters-black-ops

[rfranklin]

1. Pretty poor billing for such a rich client...

It's chump change for Monsanto.

[Solly Mack]

2. k/r

[truedelphi]

3. Many activists have long been afraid of the links between "security forces" and Monsanto

Remember how Rumsfeld wanted to have environmentalists and religious activists labeled as terrorists?

Meanwhile the GM seeds of death spawned by Monsanto have destroyed the health of US crops. Foreign nations now boycott our grain, not wanting their citizens to eat food contaminated with fusarium.

[Blue_Tires]

15. ugh... talk about an "unholy alliance"...

[seafan]

4. Blackwater's Black Ops

The actions of this shadowy entity that metastasized during the catastrophic years of George W. Bush, now exist as one of the most serious threats to U. S. national security.



Jeremy Scahill reports in The Nation:


September 15, 2010

.....

On September 3 the New York Times reported that Blackwater had "created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq." The documents obtained by The Nation reveal previously unreported details of several such companies and open a rare window into the sensitive intelligence and security operations Blackwater performs for a range of powerful corporations and government agencies. The new evidence also sheds light on the key roles of several former top CIA officials who went on to work for Blackwater.

The coordinator of Blackwater's covert CIA business, former CIA paramilitary officer Enrique "Ric" Prado, set up a global network of foreign operatives, offering their "deniability" as a "big plus" for potential Blackwater customers, according to company documents. The CIA has long used proxy forces to carry out extralegal actions or to shield US government involvement in unsavory operations from scrutiny. In some cases, these "deniable" foreign forces don't even know who they are working for. Prado and Prince built up a network of such foreigners while Blackwater was at the center of the CIA's assassination program, beginning in 2004. They trained special missions units at one of Prince's properties in Virginia with the intent of hunting terrorism suspects globally, often working with foreign operatives. A former senior CIA official said the benefit of using Blackwater's foreign operatives in CIA operations was that "you wouldn't want to have American fingerprints on it."

While the network was originally established for use in CIA operations, documents show that Prado viewed it as potentially valuable to other government agencies. In an e-mail in October 2007 with the subject line "Possible Opportunity in DEA—Read and Delete," Prado wrote to a Total Intelligence executive with a pitch for the Drug Enforcement Administration. That executive was an eighteen-year DEA veteran with extensive government connections who had recently joined the firm. Prado explained that Blackwater had developed "a rapidly growing, worldwide network of folks that can do everything from surveillance to ground truth to disruption operations." He added, "These are all foreign nationals (except for a few cases where US persons are the conduit but no longer 'play' on the street), so deniability is built in and should be a big plus."

.....

The Nation has previously reported on Blackwater's work for the CIA and JSOC in Pakistan. New documents reveal a history of activity relating to Pakistan by Blackwater. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto worked with the company when she returned to Pakistan to campaign for the 2008 elections, according to the documents. In October 2007, when media reports emerged that Bhutto had hired "American security," senior Blackwater official Robert Richer wrote to company executives, "We need to watch this carefully from a number of angles. If our name surfaces, the Pakistani press reaction will be very important. How that plays through the Muslim world will also need tracking." Richer wrote that "we should be prepared to (sic) a communique from an affiliate of Al-Qaida if our name surfaces (BW). That will impact the security profile." Clearly a word is missing in the e-mail or there is a typo that leaves unclear what Richer meant when he mentioned the Al Qaeda communiqué. Bhutto was assassinated two months later.

.....

This past summer Erik Prince put Blackwater up for sale and moved to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. But he doesn't seem to be leaving the shadowy world of security and intelligence. He says he moved to Abu Dhabi because of its "great proximity to potential opportunities across the entire Middle East, and great logistics," adding that it has "a friendly business climate, low to no taxes, free trade and no out of control trial lawyers or labor unions. It's pro-business and opportunity." It also has no extradition treaty with the United States.

Thanks to DUer kpete for bringing this piece to our attention.

[nashville_brook]

13. the last line..on why the move Dubai -->> "No extradition treaty."

[wordpix]

22. "low to no taxes" and "no out of control trial lawyers" ---so how much gov work is Xe/Blackwater

getting? Are they paying US taxes on their US profits? :shrug:

[felix_numinous]

5. Well Blackwater sure looks after the oil companies overseas...nt

[OnyxCollie]

6. K&R. nt

[alfredo]

7. We used to call that Industrial Espionage. I could have gone

that route working in Saudi Arabia for a US company. My job would have been to monitor and copy morse and voice communications from and to oil companies. I think the company was called Nathan Hale. There is a Nathan Hale Institute, but I'm not sure if there is any connection. It's been a few decades.

[lovuian]

8. Monsanto and Blackwater

if you wanted Satanic and Fascist companies
those would be the two

and in Zurich

[glinda]

9. K & R Now where is the Media On this? hmmmmmmmm

[leveymg]

10. These guys are the least secret agents imaginable. They may be the only ones who don't know that.

The obvious question is how these guys can credibly claim to operate with any secrecy when they're the subject of so much notoriety. They can't be terribly effective as covert operatives.

[bananas]

11. Crossposted to the Environment/Energy forum

I changed the subject line to make it more relevant to the E/E forum, hope you don't mind:
'Blackwater sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x258678

[Lance_Boyle]

12. Disney and Royal Caribbean I can understand - they have legit customer protection

issues that a private security firm can address. But Monsanto? Chevron? These corps do not need private armies or their own little CIAs.

[boppers]

19. Big Oil/Pharma/Ag have security concerns as well.

While their customers aren't usually targets, their staff, knowledge, and facilities are.

[bobthedrummer]

14. A kick and a related active GD crosslink for you kpete & others that ngu on the truth and accounting

"No-Go" Tribal Areas Became Basis for Afghan Insurgency Documents Show (started 9-14-10)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9131563

[Ignis]

16. Here's a kick for this important info.

:kick:

[bobthedrummer]

17. And another n/t

[Ignis]

18. And that one.

:kick:

[bobthedrummer]

23. and a backatcha n/t

[fascisthunter]

20. modern day fascist paramilitary outfit - right wing

and I bet they all claim to be "conservative". I wonder if any of these meat heads even know what the word means.

[wordpix]

21. companies that dump chemicals in the env't & develop GM crops need to be secure

since they're making EVERYONE less so. Of course, corpos like Monsanto have CEOs and COOs that make so much money they can hide themselves behind the gates in their palaces and pretend the poor poisoned masses don't exist.

[formercia]

24. $127K won't cover the annual salary for one operative.

There would have to be other funding to make this significant.