Blackwater CEO's CIA Paycheck Unravels Key Mysteries

[babylonsister]

Blackwater CEO's CIA Paycheck Unravels Key Mysteries

By Max Fisher on December 03, 2009 11:29am


Erik Prince is the just-resigned CEO of Blackwater, a private military firm with $1 billion in contracts--from guarding Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Afghanistan to running drone strike programs--and an infamous reputation for the controversial killings of Iraqi civilians. How did it get so powerful? The answer may lie in Prince's other job, reported this week by Vanity Fair: CIA asset. From Adam Ciralsky's blockbuster story in Vanity Fair:

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.

This revelation could explain several long-unanswered questions about Blackwater and Prince, as well as raise new questions.

* Blackwater Explained Spencer Ackerman marvels. "{H}ow does a law-enforcement services company go from zero to a billion-dollar government contractor inside barely a decade; how does it keep its contracts with the diplomatic entity of the United States government after its operatives kill 17 unarmed foreign civilians; how does it perform counterterrorism-support operations of the highest sensitivity; how does it hire and affiliate with top-flight CIA talent like Cofer Black, Buzzy Krongard, Rob Richer-Oh. Erik Prince is a CIA asset."

* Who Set Up CIA With Prince? Politico's Laura Rozen wonders. "And who sanctified the alleged relationship? Worth considering that the CIA executive director appointed by Porter Goss in 2004, Kyle Dusty Foggo, is now serving a prison term for throwing CIA contracts to his friend contractor Brent Wilkes. Among the contracts he tried to throw Wilkes? One for covert air operations."

more...

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Blackwater-CEOs-CIA-Paycheck-Unravels-Key-Mysteries-1788

[MinneapolisMatt]

1. All those "resources"

and he still didn't catch bin Laden.

Not that I'm surprised since he was probably ordered NOT to catch him...

[babylonsister]

2. You're right; that wasn't the job he was given. nt

[arcadian]

3. I've been saying this the whole time.

It's not just Prince, it means the whole damn Blackwater Army was essentially a CIA Army.

[babylonsister]

4. So, they were federal employees!

:hide:

It's sounding like that is so; I wonder why Prince felt the need to spill the beans.

[arcadian]

8. You could see it in their attitude, they acted with impunity.

With no regard for any law. Only CIA acts like that, they were given "get out of jail free" cards the before the ink was even dry on the CIA/Blackwater contract and Erik Prince saw himself as some messianic wrath of God avenger. The whole thing is sickening.

[xiamiam]

25. multi billion dollar question?

[tridim]

13. A CIA Army built for BushCo's Fundy crusaders

Funded by the taxpayers.

Just lovely.

[Arctic Dave]

17. Now we know why contractors having immunity was part of the Iraq

occupation.

[nc4bo]

5. Is it my imagination or is this post getting Unrec'd?

What the hell is wrong with some people?!

This is a perfect example of the shadow government at work.

Ugh.

[YOY]

6. Because we're supposed to be cheering these assholes now apparently.

and pimping this unwinnable waste of a war.

[xiamiam]

26. because ignorance is bliss..and what you dont know makes everything rosy..nt

[klook]

31. Because there are right-wing dipshits on this board who unrec anything that exposes their heroes-n/t

[BeHereNow]

7. I can't wait to hear Jeremy Scahill weigh in on this!!!!!!!

Porter Goss is one EVIL man.
BHN

[annabanana]

9. I expect it will be comprehensive. .

Scahill has been on them for a long time.

[BeHereNow]

10. INDEED IT WILL~ Scahill is no doubt, the foremost authority on them.

I'm surprised this story did not come from him!

BHN

[babylonsister]

14. He's on Maddow now, fyi. nt

[dgibby]

19. Already did.

He was on Rachel's show earlier. It's repeating now. Just started.

[BeHereNow]

22. Thanks- I'll try to find it later online!

BHN:hi:

[NightWatcher]

11. dude, it's even bigger than that

the line between government agency and private entity is even more blurry.
Telecoms, data mining firms, private intel.......

[Octafish]

12. Closer to Ollie North than 007.

You know, a reconstructionist-dominionist John Bircher with a license to kill.

[babylonsister]

16. We all had it wrong, or did we? I recall

people digging up his religious origins, his dad, etc., but never imagined he was a federal employee, sort of. Funny we never heard that justification from the BFEE.

[Octafish]

18. DU was on to his official gangster arse way before Corporate McPravda..

You are correct, my Friend. The guy was connected, turning his start-up into a no-bid billion dollar federal contract.

The great DUer seafan, for starters, a couple years back, noted:

Oliver North vs Erik Prince: Different decade, same attitude.

The great DUer bobthedrummer asked what should we know around then:

What questions would you like put to Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince, next week?

The great DUer hissyspit noted another nice connection:

Confirmed: A.B. 'Buzzy' Krongard, Brother Of State Dep't IG, Sits On Blackwater's Advisory Board

The great DUer FaygoKid pegged 'em, as did many, many DUers:

Blackwater goes deeper than you think. I am posting this from another response; it's worth a look

bobthedrummer and the dear, departed great DUer seemslikeadream pegged the, eh, superpatriotic fellah:

Why isn't J. Cofer Black a household name? He should have recognition with we that know our BFEE.



Small world. And very, very bad.

[babylonsister]

21. Your post needs its own thread! Great job! nt

[patrice]

30. no-bid, cost-plus 15% contracts

[Canuckistanian]

15. A "CIA Asset"

I've noticed the dichotomy between "CIA Asset" and "Asset to the Nation".

The two don't seem to coincide.

[juno jones]

20. K&R! n/t

[leveymg]

23. Here's the real story: Blackwater managers ran the CIA unit that allowed 9/11 hijackers into the US

Cofer Black was CIA Chief of Station in Khartoum in the mid-1990s at the time that bin Laden, Abu Zubaydeh, KSM and many of the other principal 9/11 plotters were running CIA-assisted paramilitary operations against the Russians from bases in Sudan. Black has admitted in Congressional testimony that he had met bin Laden there at the time. You can draw your own conclusions about whether Black was UBL's control officer, but it has to at least be considered as a possibility.

After the East Asia Embassy bombings in 1998, Black was brought in from the field by CIA Director George Tenet to head the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CIA/CTC), along with a Tenet protege Richard Blee, with Rob Richer as another Deputy. In late December 1999, the NSA picked up a communication from Nawaf al-Hazmi through an AQ communications center run by al-Hazmi's uncle in Yemen. That communique indicated that a summit meeting of al-Qaeda figures was being convened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in the first two weeks of January, 2000. The CIA/CTC had ten days to prepare, and started surveillance, including videotape, of that meeting. According to the 9/11 Commission, both the 9/11 Planes Operation and the USS Cole attacks were planned there. CIA Director Tenet was briefed about that meeting. In the second week of January, al-Hazmi and his partner Khalid al-Midhar departed Kuala Lumpur in the company of "Khalad" bin-Atash, who headed bin Laden's personal security detail in Sudan.


COFER BLACK On January 15, 2000, al-Hazmi and al-Midhar entered the US at Los Angeles, and immediately met an air attache working under civilian cover (Dallah-AVCO Air Services) out of the Saudi Consulate in LA, who gave the pair funds from a Riggs Bank account and drove the pair to San Diego, installing them in a rental unit under the supervision of several figures, including a Iman who would end up at the center of another terrorist attack in 2009. The entry of the pair, who would go on to hijack AA Flt 77 that crashed into the Pentagon was noted at CTC, and a warning cable was drafted by the FBI liaison officer, but withheld at the direct order of the CTC Assn't Director, Richard Blee, Cofer Black's No. 2.

Black and Blee ran CTC during the next 20 months that the Flt. 77 hijackers were allowed to run free inside the US, taking flight training and meeting frequently with other 9/11 attack cell members. During that time, the FBI I-49 National Security Unit, under the command of John O'Neill -- which was charged with monitoring AQ inside the US, and had been frustrated in its investigation of the Cole attack - was kept in the dark. O'Neill resigned from the FBI shortly before 9/11, when he was killed during the collapse of the World Trade Center, where he had taken the job as head of security. In the summer of 2001, O'Neill and I-49 officers repeatedly clashed with Black and Blee over the CIA's refusal to turn over CIA files about the attack squads the FBI knew from other sources were plotting attacks inside the US. FBI warrants for electronic surveillance were withheld by ranking figures in Washington.

By July, it was clear what the targets of the hijackers were and the time-frame they would be hit. On the 10th, Tenet, Black, and Blee got into a CIA SUV, and visited National Security Advisor Condi Rice, and had a tense meeting with her about al-Qaeda. According to Tenet, she seemed to understand the threat, but was ambivalent in her response. Finally, in mid August, Tenet got on a CIA jet and visited President Bush in Crawford, where the President had been deposited for safe-keeping since returning in early July from Genoa, where ground-to-air missiles were installed to protect him from suspected al-Qaeda attack by aircraft. Tenet went on to perjure himself before the 9/11 Commission, falsely claiming he had had no communication with Bush during the 60 days before 9/11. In fact, records showed they had talked on at least a dozen occasions, including the face-to-face on either August 15 or 21, the latter date being the day the FBI finally got alerted and some of the details about the entry of al-Hazmi and al-Midhar 19 months earlier.

Black resigned from the CIA in April 2002, after interrogation of Abu Zubaydeh revealed the names of leading Saudi and Pakistani figures who had bankrolled the operation, and after the apparently willful failure of Jawbreaker, the CIA-run operation to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan the previous December. Apparently willful is the watchword for the Bush-Cheney management of this element of the CIA, which went on to run a division of Blackwater, and in the actions of these individuals in failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks and failure to capture top terrorist leaders thereafter.

[babylonsister]

24. It'd be very interesting if that ever came to light. nt

[Blue_Tires]

27. ttt

[spanone]

28. congressional hearings N O W.

[patrice]

29. "Mr Fix it"? Am I the only one who thinks that 1 of the main reasons Iraqi roses became bullets is

because of Blackwater et al?

Also: I'm STILL wondering why our troops would take goddam PICTURES of the shit they were into at Abu Ghraib. The only hypothesis I can come up with is that someone told them the pictures would be useful blackmail in establishing political control of Iraqis released from prison - or - something of that nature. Now, who might have been into those kinds of dirty tricks?

Mr. Fix it? Shouldn't that be

Mr. Fuck It Up-Beyond-ALL-Control-and-get-a-few-thousand-Americans-not-to-mention-millions-of-Iraqis-killed-and-orphaned Edward Prince?