What more is going to come out?!
It now comes out that Blackwater may have been basically hired out by the CIA and the executive branch of the government with NO Congressional Oversight to act as a private army and assassination sqaud.
GREG MILLER Reporting from Washington -
A CIA decision to hire contractors from Blackwater USA for a covert assassination program was part of a broader constellation of connections between the agency and the widely criticized security firm. The 2004 contract cemented what was then a burgeoning relationship with Blackwater, setting the stage for a series of departures by senior CIA officials who took high-level positions with the North Carolina company. The revolving door helped fuel a backlash against what many inside the agency and on Capitol Hill came to regard as an overuse of outside firms, many of which made millions of dollars after filling their staffs with former CIA employees. "I have believed for a long time that the intelligence community is over-reliant on contractors to carry out its work," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "This is especially a problem when contractors are used to carry out activities that are inherently governmental." Feinstein's comment underscored how the disclosure of the Blackwater contract has renewed questions about the nature of the work the CIA has been willing to outsource since the Sept. 11 attacks. In recent years, the agency has also faced criticism for its use of contractors in interrogating prisoners. Experts said there may not be any legal barrier against using contractors to kill terrorism suspects or subject them to brutal interrogation methods. Still, they said, there tends to be deep public discomfort with the idea of delegating certain activities – whether issuing pardons, making arrests, or pulling triggers – people who are not direct employees of the government. "The use of force has been traditionally thought of as inherently governmental," said Jeffrey Smith, the former general counsel at the CIA. "The use of a contractor actually employing lethal force is clearly troublesome, but I'm not sure it's necessarily illegal." U.S. officials familiar with the targeted killing program said that Blackwater's involvement was limited in scope and duration, and that the arrangement was ended several years before CIA Director Leon E. Panetta killed the program two months ago. The program had been kept secret from Congress for nearly eight years before Panetta informed lawmakers of its existence in June. CIA officials have stressed that the program was never operational, and that it did not lead to the capture or killing of a single terrorism suspect before it was discontinued. "It was never successful, so he ended it," CIA Spokesman Paul Gimigliano said. Panetta "never suggested to Congress that anyone at the CIA misled the intelligence committees or otherwise broke the law." The CIA delivered a report to Congress earlier this month after conducting an internal probe of the program, which was first launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks but was cancelled and restarted several times under different regimes at the agency. Officials familiar with the report said that the agency did not have a formal contract with Blackwater in connection with the targeted killing program. Instead, the agency hired the company's founder, Erik D. Prince, a former Navy SEAL team member, and other Blackwater executives to help turn an idea for forming Al Qaeda hit squads into an operational program. The effort ranged from consulting with top executives to carrying out training exercises at Blackwater's headquarters in North Carolina. Company officials did not respond to requests for comment. Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services LLC to escape the notoriety that followed a series of bloody incidents in Iraq, where the firm was accused of employing excessive force in its work providing protection for State Department employees. In one case, Blackwater guards were accused of opening fire in a crowded Baghdad square and killing 17 civilians. Blackwater had been hired in a similar capacity with the CIA in 2002, providing security at agency facilities in Afghanistan. Two years later the CIA turned to Blackwater executives for help with the assassination program largely because the company – which has hired dozens of former U.S. special operations soldiers – was seen as having deeper expertise than the agency itself on clandestine lethal operations. The use of contractors for the task was not considered an issue under the secret authorities the agency had been granted by then President George W. Bush. "If there's a covert action finding that says go hunt down Osama Bin Laden – which there was – the agency can use whatever means necessary," said a former senior CIA official. Over the next several years, the ties between the CIA and Blackwater deepened considerably as a series of CIA executives took senior roles at the company. Among them were Cofer Black, the former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism center; Robert Richer, the former No. 2 for operations; Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, the former executive director; and Enrique "Ric" Prado, who was the military chief of the Counter-terrorism Center. Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden sought to reverse that trend by refusing to grant security clearances to contractors until at least 12 months after they had resigned their positions at the agency. But Hayden defended the use of contractors during a panel discussion on the issue Thursday. "We go to contractors because they possess certain experience or certain knowledge that we don't have inherently inside our workforce," Hayden said. "We generally use the best athlete available in the draft."
CIA hired Blackwater for killings, claims report
By Reuters and Financial Times Staff
Published: August 20 2009 19:55 | Last updated: August 20 2009 19:55
The US Central Intelligence Agency outsourced part of a secret programme to track and assassinate al-Qaeda leaders to Blackwater, the private security group, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
Blackwater helped with planning, training and surveillance in a programme on which the CIA spent several million dollars without capturing or killing any militants, the newspaper said, quoting former and current US officials.
The report is only the latest indication of how far the former Bush administration went in its “war on terror”.
The Times said it was not clear whether the CIA had planned to use Blackwater executives to capture or kill al-Qaeda operatives or limit the contractors to help with training and surveillance.
The North Carolina-based contractor, which recently changed its name to Xe Services, was enmeshed in controversy in 2007 when Blackwater employees guarding US diplomats were involved in an incident in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed.
The CIA uses outside contractors for a wide range of activities, ranging from help with information technology systems to support for operations, and frequently hires former employees as contractors because of their expertise.
On Thursday Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the US Senate’s Intelligence Committee, said she had long believed US intelligence agencies relied too much on contractors to do their work. Leon Panetta, CIA director, told Congress about the programme in June.
Two US officials speaking to The Washington Post said Blackwater, which had close ties to the CIA and had carried out other covert operations abroad, was given operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders and was awarded millions of dollars for training and weaponry. But the programme was cancelled before any missions were conducted.
“Outsourcing gave the agency more protection in case something went wrong,” a retired intelligence officer told the Post.
On Thursday the CIA declined to confirm or deny the reports, although it stressed that Mr Panetta judged that the programme had failed and that it needed to be briefed to Congress, since it had moved beyond a planning phase.