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Blackwater (now Xi) - Magda Hassan - 07-10-2012

Blackwater Founder's Mercenary Army Abandoned in Somali Desert

Well-Armed Fighters Left to Fend for Themselves as UAE Pulls Funds

by Jason Ditz, October 05, 2012

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Last year it was revealed that Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince had been put in charge of building a mercenary army in northern Somalia, with funding from the United Arab Emirates and a goal of attacking the various pirate factions along the Somali coast.
[Image: somalia.jpg]

It apparently seemed like a good idea at the time, but the United Arab Emirates has gotten sick of throwing money at the operation and pulled the plug. Now, the hundreds of mercenaries are sitting on a secret desert base with potentially millions of dollars in heavy weapons illegally smuggled into Somalia and nothing to do.
The decision apparently came after an April incident when the fighters attacked and killed a South African trainer. The corporation put in charge of the mission, the shadowy Sterling Corporate Services, insisted at the time that it was an isolated incident, but quickly withdrew its trainers, leaving the recruits stranded on a base in the Puntland desert.
But they likely won't stay on that base for long, as those familiar with the situation say that the fighters, who were not ideologically motivated to join the anti-piracy fight in the first place, are liable to take their weapons and head out looking for new employers, with pirates among the likely bidders.
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/05/blackwater-founders-mercenary-army-abandoned-in-somali-desert/

Blackwater (now Xi) - Andrew Gray - 11-12-2012

I don't think it's any stretch of the imagination for this forum to say that Erik Prince sees himself as a Templar Knight, a Christian Crusader of the 21st century. And I know most of you have probably read about Seymour Hersh (edit: I see that David Guyatt has an older post containing this info a few posts above) alleging that top US Military Brass ie General McChrystal, either belong to or at least kiss the ring of Opus Dei and other elite Catholic secret societies. So, with that in mind, always, I was browsing the recent uploads to Cryptome.org, and John had a post titled "Erik Prince and Retired FBI" in a series of posts containing emails and information about different FBI links to the ex-Military and other things, and among these emails is a few exchanges between Ret. USMCR Colonel Susan Lynn Malone and Erik Prince, where she references Prince's donations and acceptance to the Order of Malta. HMMM...Bet being able to go into any country and skip immigration/customs has its perks for mercenaries/arms sales/drug & human trafficking!

edit: reading David's post, I see that Prince was already surrounded by SMOM, so this is just a confirmation of what everyone already suspected.

[Image: princemalta-2.jpg]

I

I quickly cropped/enlarged/highlighted the important parts of the emails, so click thru the links for the full emails/posts, there's lots of interesting info in there.

info on Malone:
http://cryptome.org/2012-info/malone/susan-lynn-malone.htm

Quote: One of first 2 women FBI agents - 1972
USMCR Colonel (01/01/1989 - 06/30/1999 - Team Chief, Secretary of Defense
Crisis Coordination (1989-1991), Branch Chief Combating Terrorism J-33, JS
(1991-1993), Commanding Office, 4th Civil Affairs Group (1994-1996), Deputy
Director, Marine Corps Intelligence Activity (1996-1999)
Washington, DC, District of Columbia United States
Supervisor: Sheryl Axtell, Col Tom Myerchin, LTG W. Boykin - unknown

Blackwater (now Xi) - Jan Klimkowski - 11-12-2012

See also the DPF thread: Blackwater psyop: Erik Prince as Col Walter Kurtz.

Blackwater (now Xi) - Peter Lemkin - 26-02-2013

Greece: Blackwater mercenaries guarding Govt and overseeing police; coup feared
Posted on February 25, 2013 by admin

Blackwater mercenaries are currently overseeing the police in Greece as rumours of a coup abound. We understand the situation is extremely tense and that the mercenaries are there mainly to protect the Government and parliament should trouble break out either in the form of a revolution or counter-revolution. Already, a destabilisation plot involving the far-right and police has been uncovered. More belowâ€¦

Over the last 12 months or more Greece has seen wave after wave of mass demonstrations, riots, battles between police and protesters, armed attacks on Government premises, attacks by fascists (i.e. Golden Dawn ) on migrants, as well as, of course, the complete collapse of the economy. The Government has been beset by scandals (e.g. secret bank accounts in Switzerland) and journalists have been arrested. Most people now exist day by day via co-operatives ; workers are taking over the factories .

As we have said, there is a revolution taking place a messy revolution . And it's going to get messier, for the situation in Greece has now entered a critical phase here is a summary (with further details below):

* Strategy of tension has already commenced
* Government is under siege and is protected by mercenaries
* Military coup is now talked of openly
* Insider warns that revolution (or counter-revolution) is imminent

Strategy of tension

A few days ago we reported on a plot by the police in collusion with the far-right to instigate a massacre of police, which would then be blamed on anarchists presumably this would then be used as an excuse to introduce martial law or a state of emergency. The plot may have been foiled (23 persons were arrested) by Blackwater working in conjunction with police officers who are loyal to the Government. Blackwater are expected to continue monitoring police operations generally, to identify those officers who may be involved in other, similar plots.

Noteâ€¦ The term strategy of tension came about in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s when bombings of civilian were committed by neofascist organisations such as Ordine Nuovo , Avanguardia Nazionale or Fronte Nazionale ).

Mercenaries protecting Government under siege

The Greek Government signed a contract with Academi (the new name for Blackwater) in November last year, though this was a secret agreement and you will not find details about it on the Academi website ). News of the contract leaked out end of January when the Greek ambassador to Canada, Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, let slip about it in an interview, which was then published in a blog (see highlighted sentence in red). The contract with Academi was confirmed a few days later via the Greek military news site Defencenet.

Blackwater/Academi are infamous as the company that ran mercenary operations during the last Iraq War and were engaged in unnecessary fire fights in urban areas, taking civilian lives. They currently have a forward ops base in Afghanistan.

We understand their principal role in Greece is two-fold. One is to oversee police operations. They have been contracted to do this because the Government are aware that the police have been comprehensively infiltrated by members of the fascist Golden Dawn and so cannot trust the police to stay loyal. Their other role is to act as a neutral force to provide full protection to the Government against assault from any quarter. In effect, the Greek Government is under siege.

Coup possibility

Recently the Government secured an agreement from the army that under no circumstances would they resort to a coup (as happened in 1967, leading to the junta of 1967-1974 ). Whether this agreement will be honoured remains to be seen. As Greece is now part of the European Community a coup will be unlikely, but in the event of heightened tension martial law could be declared with curfews etc.

Warning of revolution/counter-revolution

According to Ambassador Chrysanthopoulos in his interview, "At a certain moment, quite soon, there will be an explosion of social unrest. It will be very unpleasant." He then referred to fifteen armed incidents in the previous ten days, including the firebombing of the offices of the governing parties and the homes of pro-government journalists, the machine-gunning of the headquarters of the prime minister's conservative New Democracy party, and a bomb explosion at a shopping mall belonging to the country's second wealthiest citizen. Chrysanthopoulos predicts the trouble will begin when new tax bills arrive (soon)

Posted from the darker net via Android.

Blackwater (now Xi) - Magda Hassan - 16-03-2013

Blackwater was CIA's extension, founder Erik Prince admits

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Published time: March 14, 2013 19:01
Edited time: March 14, 2013 23:28

Tags
Arms, CIA, Court, Crime, Military, Scandal, Security, USA, War

Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater - now known as Academi - claims his firm "became a virtual extension of the CIA," taking orders from the agency.

In an interview published Thursday by the Daily Beast, Prince revealed how deeply connected Blackwater was to the Central Intelligence Agency, especially in the early 2000s. Last month, federal prosecutors dropped felony charges against Blackwater personnel after it was revealed that the employees had been acting under the orders of the US government. After a three-year-long prosecution, most of the company's executives walked free and two men received nothing more than probation, house arrest and $5,000 fines.But the tens of thousands of pages of court documents from the case shed light on an argument the company made throughout those three years that Blackwater itself was an extension of the CIA.
"Blackwater's work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked," Prince told the Daily Beast."In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the agency either could not or would not do in-house."
Initially, lawmakers believed the CIA was "looking for skills and capabilities, and they had to go to outside contractors like Blackwater to make sure they could accomplish their mission," said retired Congressman Pete Hoekstra. But the relationship was in fact much closer than believed.
When King Abdullah of Jordan visited the US in 2005, he took a trip to the Blackwater headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, where company executives awarded him two gifts a modified Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and a Remington shotgun. The weapons were labeled with the Blackwater logo, but Prince says that the CIA asked the company to give Abdullah the guns "when people at the agency had forgotten to get gifts for him."
In a 2008 raid of the Blackwater headquarters, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discovered that the weapons given to Abdullah had been registered as personal property by two employees at the agency and there was no paperwork indicating that they were now in the possession of Jordanian royalty.
Additionally, the ATF found that many of Blackwater's weapons had been purchased illegally. Some of these weapons, which included Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmaster AR-13s, had illegally had their barrels shortened and been exported to other countries in violation of federal gun laws.

Blackwater argued that in all of these instances, it had been working on behalf of the CIA. Court documents include depositions from CIA executives testifying that Blackwater provided weapons and training for them. One court document even lists "Erik P" as a CIA officer himself.
"The CIA routinely used Blackwater in missions throughout the world," one document reads. "These efforts were made under written and unwritten contracts and through informal requests. On many occasions the CIA paid Blackwater nothing for its assistance. Blackwater also employed CIA officers and agents, and provided cover to CIA agents and officers operating in covert and clandestine assignments. In many respects, Blackwater, or at least portions of Blackwater, was an extension of the CIA."
Prince told the Daily Beast that he agreed to provide the CIA with free services out of "patriotic duty". And even though he sold Blackwater, now known as Academi, for $200 million, he continues to hold a grudge against prosecutors for going after the company.
"Blackwater carried out countless life-threatening missions for the CIA," he said. "And in return, the government chose to prosecute my people for doing exactly what was asked of them."
http://rt.com/usa/blackwater-cia-extension-prince-273/

Blackwater (now Xi) - Jan Klimkowski - 16-03-2013

Quote:Blackwater argued that in all of these instances, it had been working on behalf of the CIA. Court documents include depositions from CIA executives testifying that Blackwater provided weapons and training for them. One court document even lists "Erik P" as a CIA officer himself.
"The CIA routinely used Blackwater in missions throughout the world," one document reads. "These efforts were made under written and unwritten contracts and through informal requests. On many occasions the CIA paid Blackwater nothing for its assistance. Blackwater also employed CIA officers and agents, and provided cover to CIA agents and officers operating in covert and clandestine assignments. In many respects, Blackwater, or at least portions of Blackwater, was an extension of the CIA."
Prince told the Daily Beast that he agreed to provide the CIA with free services out of "patriotic duty". And even though he sold Blackwater, now known as Academi, for $200 million, he continues to hold a grudge against prosecutors for going after the company.
"Blackwater carried out countless life-threatening missions for the CIA," he said. "And in return, the government chose to prosecute my people for doing exactly what was asked of them."

Erik Prince still thinks he's Colonel Kurtz, the visionary who sees beyond tired, conventional, morality and does what has to be done to keep his family and his country safe from evil.

I wrote about that here.

Blackwater (now Xi) - Peter Lemkin - 15-08-2013

The military contractor CACI International is seeking legal costs from four Iraqi prisoners who unsuccessfully sued the company for their torture at Abu Ghraib. One of the plaintiffs, an Iraqi farmer, alleges he was caged, beaten, threatened with dogs and given electric shocks during more than four years in U.S. detention. But a federal judge dismissed the case in June, citing the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to restrict lawsuits under the Alien Tort Statute against corporations for abuses on foreign soil. Based on that ruling, the website CommonDreams.org reports that CACI has now filed a lawsuit demanding that the four Iraqis hand over $15,000 to cover the firm's legal fees.

Blackwater (now Xi) - Peter Lemkin - 24-02-2014

S. Carolina Politician's Divorce Case Exposes Secret CIA Financial Conduit to Blackwater

By / February 20th, 2014The State, February 20, 2014:

Fallout from state Rep. Andy Patrick's divorce case has attracted the attention of the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service and the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents, interviews and statements made in court.

Officials from the FBI and Secret Service traveled to Hilton Head Island earlier this month to obtain documents removed from Andy Patrick's files by his estranged wife, Amee. She had gone through the files, which Andy Patrick had left in the couple's former home at 17 Timbercrest off Spanish Wells Road, in order to support allegations she has made against him in their divorce case. â€¦
Secret Service agents described the documents as "law enforcement sensitive information."

Andy Patrick
Available records don't specify what the CIA is interested in, but a paragraph in an affidavit Amee Patrick filed in Beaufort County Family Court says she believes money supplied by the CIA was funneled through Andy Patrick's security firm, Advance Point Global, and distributed to people "oconus" government shorthand for "outside the continental U.S." â€¦
Patrick was an agent for the Secret Service for 10 years before resigning in 2007.
http://www.thestate.com/ 2014/02/20/3279632/patrick-fallout-involves-fbi-secret.html#storylink=cpy

Blackwater (now Xi) - Magda Hassan - 05-07-2014

Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater

Blackwater personnel escorting Paul Bremer, an American civil administrator, upon his arrival in Ramadi, Iraq, in March 2004.
Peter Andrews / Reuters

By JAMES RISEN

June 29, 2014

WASHINGTON Just weeks before Blackwater guards ]fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there issued a threat: "that he could kill" the government's chief investigator and "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," according to department reports.
American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy's relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.
After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created "an environment full of liability and negligence."
"The management structures in place to manage and monitor our contracts in Iraq have become subservient to the contractors themselves," the investigator, Jean C. Richter, wrote in an Aug. 31, 2007, memo to State Department officials. "Blackwater contractors saw themselves as above the law," he said, adding that the "hands off" management resulted in a situation in which "the contractors, instead of Department officials, are in command and in control."
[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/30/us/100000002970926.mobile.html"] [Image: 30blackwater-documents-1404091443101-articleInline.png]

[Image: 30blackwater-documents-1404091443101-articleInline.png]

Document | State Department Documents on Blackwater Episode Documents related to a 2007 inquiry of Blackwater's Iraq operations and a State Department investigator's report that the private security firm's manager there had threatened to kill him.

[/URL]
His memo and other newly disclosed State Department documents make clear that the department was alerted to serious problems involving Blackwater and its government overseers before the Nisour Square shooting, which ]outraged Iraqis and deepened resentment over the United States' presence in the country.
Today, as conflict rages again in Iraq, four Blackwater guards involved in the Nisour Square shooting are on trial in Washington on charges stemming from the episode, the government's second attempt to prosecute the case in an American court after previous charges against five guards ]were dismissed in 2009.
The shooting was a watershed moment in the American occupation of Iraq, and was a factor in Iraq's refusal the next year to agree to a treaty allowing United States troops to stay in the country beyond 2011. Despite a series of investigations in the wake of Nisour Square, the back story of what happened with Blackwater and the embassy in Baghdad before the fateful shooting has never been fully told.
The State Department declined to comment on the aborted investigation. A spokesman for Erik Prince, the founder and former chief executive of Blackwater, who ]sold the company in 2010, said Mr. Prince had never been told about the matter.
[URL="http://mobile.nytimes.com/video/2007/10/25/world/middleeast/1194817114268/the-blackwater-shooting.html"]

Video | The Blackwater Shooting Witnesses shed new light on the killing of 17 Iraqis by American contractors in Baghdad.

[/URL]
After Mr. Prince sold the company, the new owners named it Academi. In early June, it merged with Triple Canopy, one of its rivals for government and commercial contracts to provide private security. The new firm is called Constellis Holdings.
Experts who were previously unaware of this episode said it fit into a larger pattern of behavior. "The Blackwater-State Department relationship gave new meaning to the word dysfunctional,' " said Peter Singer, a strategist at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute, who has written extensively on private security contractors. "It involved everything from catastrophic failures of supervision to shortchanging broader national security goals at the expense of short-term desires."
Even before Nisour Square, Blackwater's security guards had acquired ]a reputation among Iraqis and American military personnel for swagger and recklessness, but their complaints about practices ranging from running cars off the road to shooting wildly in the streets and even killing civilians typically did not result in serious action by the United States or the Iraqi government.
But scrutiny of the company intensified after a Blackwater convoy traveling through Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, just over two weeks after Mr. Richter sent his memo, fired on the crowded traffic circle. A 9-year-old boy was among the civilians killed. Blackwater guards later claimed that they had been fired upon first, but American military officials who inspected the scene determined that there was no evidence of any insurgent activity in the square that day. Federal prosecutors later said Blackwater personnel had shot indiscriminately with automatic weapons, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.
Founded in 1997 by Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy SEALs and an heir to an auto parts fortune, Blackwater began as a small company providing shooting ranges and training facilities in rural North Carolina for the military and for police departments. After the American-led invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq, it ramped up to becomea global security contractor with billions of dollars in contracts for the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.
The company's gung-ho attitude and willingness to take on risky tasks were seductive to government officials in Washington. The State Department, for example, secretly sent Blackwater guards to Shenyang, China, to provide security for ]North Korean asylum seekers who had gone to the United States Consulate there and refused to leave for fear the Chinese government would force them to go back to North Korea, according to company documents and interviews with former Blackwater personnel.
But Blackwater's rapid growth and the State Department's growing dependence on the contractor led to unbridled hubris, according to several former company officials. That was fostered, they said, by Mr. Prince, who not long before the Nisour Square shooting gathered employees in front of Blackwater headquarters in Moyock, N.C., and demanded that they swear an oath of allegiance.
Saying that the business was on the verge of being awarded lucrative new contracts, Mr. Prince told the workers that they had to take a pledge the same one required of those entering the United States military "to display our commitment to the war on terror," several former employees recalled.
As he was speaking, the employees were handed copies of the oath, which had a Blackwater bear paw logo on top, and told to sign and return it to their supervisors after reciting the words. But some balked.
This was an oath for soldiers, not the employees of a private company, and many in the crowd were veterans who believed that it was inappropriately being linked to the company's commercial prospects.
"It was kind of like pledging allegiance to Erik," said a former Blackwater employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he had been required to sign a nondisclosure agreement with Blackwater. "That's how a lot of us interpreted it."
Soon after State Department investigators arrived in Baghdad on Aug. 1, 2007, to begin a monthlong review of Blackwater's operations, the situation became volatile. Internal State Department documents, which were turned over to plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Blackwater that was unrelated to the Nisour Square shooting, provide details of what happened.
It did not take long for the two-man investigative team Mr. Richter, a Diplomatic Security special agent, and Donald Thomas Jr., a State Department management analyst to discover a long list of contract violations by Blackwater.
They found that Blackwater's staffing of its security details for American diplomats had been changed without State Department approval, reducing guards on many details to eight from 10, the documents said. Blackwater guards were storing automatic weapons and ammunition in their private rooms, where they also were drinking heavily and partying with frequent female visitors. Many of the guards had failed to regularly qualify on their weapons, and were often carrying weapons on which they had never been certified and that they were not authorized to use.
The armored vehicles Blackwater used to protect American diplomats were poorly maintained and deteriorating, and the investigators found that four drunk guards had commandeered one heavily armored, $180,000 vehicle to drive to a private party, and crashed into a concrete barrier.
Blackwater was also overbilling the State Department by manipulating its personnel records, using guards assigned to the State Department contract for other work and falsifying other staffing data on the contract, the investigators concluded.
A Blackwater-affiliated firm was forcing "third country nationals" low-paid workers from Pakistan, Yemen and other countries, including some who performed guard duty at Blackwater's compound to live in squalid conditions, sometimes three to a cramped room with no bed, according to the report by the investigators.
The investigators concluded that Blackwater was getting away with such conduct because embassy personnel had gotten too close to the contractor.
On Aug. 20, 2007, Mr. Richter was called in to the office of the embassy's regional security officer, Bob Hanni, who said he had received a call asking him to document Mr. Richter's "inappropriate behavior." Mr. Richter quickly called his supervisor in Washington, who instructed him to take Mr. Thomas with him to all remaining meetings in Baghdad, his report noted.
The next day, the two men met with Daniel Carroll, Blackwater's project manager in Iraq, to discuss the investigation, including a complaint over food quality and sanitary conditions at a cafeteria in Blackwater's compound. Mr. Carroll barked that Mr. Richter could not tell him what to do about his cafeteria, Mr. Richter's report said. The Blackwater official went on to threaten the agent and say he would not face any consequences, according to Mr. Richter's later account.
Mr. Carroll said "that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," Mr. Richter wrote in a memo to senior State Department officials in Washington. He noted that Mr. Carroll had formerly served with Navy SEAL Team 6, an elite unit.
"Mr. Carroll's statement was made in a low, even tone of voice, his head was slightly lowered; his eyes were fixed on mine," Mr. Richter stated in his memo. "I took Mr. Carroll's threat seriously. We were in a combat zone where things can happen quite unexpectedly, especially when issues involve potentially negative impacts on a lucrative security contract."
He added that he was especially alarmed because Mr. Carroll was Blackwater's leader in Iraq, and "organizations take on the attitudes and mannerisms of their leader."
Mr. Thomas witnessed the exchange and corroborated Mr. Richter's version of events in a separate statement, writing that Mr. Carroll's comments were "unprofessional and threatening in nature." He added that others in Baghdad had told the two investigators to be "very careful," considering that their review could jeopardize job security for Blackwater personnel.
Mr. Richter was shocked when embassy officials sided with Mr. Carroll and ordered Mr. Richter and Mr. Thomas to leave Iraq immediately, according to the documents. On Aug. 23, Ricardo Colon, the acting regional security officer at the embassy, wrote in an email that Mr. Richter and Mr. Thomas had become "unsustainably disruptive to day-to-day operations and created an unnecessarily hostile environment for a number of contract personnel." The two men cut short their inquiry and returned to Washington the next day.
Mr. Richter and Mr. Thomas declined to comment for this article. Mr. Carroll did not respond to a request for comment.
On Oct. 5, 2007, just as the State Department and Blackwater were being rocked by scandal in the aftermath of Nisour Square, State Department officials finally responded to Mr. Richter's August warning about Blackwater. They took statements from Mr. Richter and Mr. Thomas about their accusations of a threat by Mr. Carroll, but took no further action.
Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, named a special panel to examine the Nisour Square episode and recommend reforms, but the panel never interviewed Mr. Richter or Mr. Thomas.
Patrick Kennedy, the State Department official who led the special panel, told reporters on Oct. 23, 2007, that the panel had not found any communications from the embassy in Baghdad before the Nisour Square shooting that raised concerns about contractor conduct.
"We interviewed a large number of individuals," Mr. Kennedy said. "We did not find any, I think, significant pattern of incidents that had not that the embassy had suppressed in any way."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/us/before-shooting-in-iraq-warning-on-blackwater.html

Blackwater (now Xi) - Peter Lemkin - 05-07-2014

Just for the record, some time ago Xi, formerly Blackwater, changed their name once again....their current nom du guerre is Academi LLC. : Sherlock

:

Oh, and if you haven't yet figured it out, Blackwater/Xi/Academi are not very nice guys....they play dirty:

Report: Blackwater Manager Threatened to Kill State Dept. Investigator, Officials Blamed The Investigator

Posted on June 30, 2014 at 4:00 pm by JM Ashby
It's 2014 and we're still learning terrible things about the Bush administration.
According to the New York Times, a senior manager for Blackwater threatened to kill one of the State Department's top investigators and, rather than scold or punish Blackwater, embassy officials scolded the investigator. I shit you not.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy's relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports. [...]
Mr. Carroll said "that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,"Mr. Richter wrote in a memo to senior State Department officials in Washington. He noted that Mr. Carroll had formerly served with Navy SEAL Team 6, an elite unit. [...]
Mr. Thomas witnessed the exchange and corroborated Mr. Richter's version of events in a separate statement, writing that Mr. Carroll's comments were "unprofessional and threatening in nature." He added that others in Baghdad had told the two investigators to be "very careful," considering that their review could jeopardize job security for Blackwater personnel.
Mr. Richter was shocked when embassy officials sided with Mr. Carroll and ordered Mr. Richter and Mr. Thomas to leave Iraq immediately, according to the documents. On Aug. 23, Ricardo Colon, the acting regional security officer at the embassy, wrote in an email that Mr. Richter and Mr. Thomas had become "unsustainably disruptive to day-to-day operations and created an unnecessarily hostile environment for a number of contract personnel." The two men cut short their inquiry and returned to Washington the next day.

Weeks after Blackwater manager Daniel Carroll threatened to kill State Department investigator Jean C. Richter two weeks after the embassy told Richter and Donald Thomas to leave Iraq immediately for hurting their relationship with Blackwater Blackwater contractors shot and killed 17 people in Nisour Square.
Richter and Thomas were not interviewed by the State Department after the shooting and the panel that investigated the shooting apparently did not consider the threat to kill Richter relevant.
If something like this happened today I cannot even envision the unholy shitstorm that would descend on the White House.