Blackwater (now Xi)

[Jan Klimkowski]

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.

(snip)

Reached by telephone and asked about the meeting with Black in Zurich, Monsanto's Wilson initially said, "I'm not going to discuss it with you." In a subsequent e-mail to The Nation, Wilson confirmed he met Black in Zurich and that Monsanto hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and worked with the company until early 2010. He denied that he and Black discussed infiltrating animal rights groups, stating "there was no such discussion." He claimed that Total Intelligence only provided Monsanto "with reports about the activities of groups or individuals that could pose a risk to company personnel or operations around the world which were developed by monitoring local media reports and other publicly available information. The subject matter ranged from information regarding terrorist incidents in Asia or kidnappings in Central America to scanning the content of activist blogs and websites." Wilson asserted that Black told him Total Intelligence was "a completely separate entity from Blackwater."

Monsanto, eh? Why am I not surprized that Blackwater goons allegedly offered to act as agents provocateurs for Monsanto... mokin:

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."

(snip)

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."

(snip)

In November 2007 officials from Prince's companies developed a pricing structure for security and intelligence services for private companies and wealthy individuals. One official wrote that Prado had the capacity to "develop infrastructures" and "conduct ground-truth and security activities."

The (im)plausible deniability part is familiar. But what is a "ground truth" operation?

Here's wiki on "ground truth": In US military slang, "ground truth" is used to describe the reality of a tactical situation as opposed to what intelligence reports and mission plans assert the reality to be. The term is reflected in the title of the 2006 Iraq War documentary The Ground Truth and is used in military publications, for example Stars and Stripes saying "Stripes decided to figure out what the ground truth was in Iraq."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_truth

I wonder what "ground truth" means when translated from Blackwater's crumby prose?

Disproportionate use of force in civilian areas by plausibly deniable non-Americans perhaps?

According to the pricing chart, potential customers could hire Prado and other Blackwater officials to operate in the United States and globally: in Latin America, North Africa, francophone countries, the Middle East, Europe, China, Russia, Japan, and Central and Southeast Asia. A four-man team headed by Prado for countersurveillance in the United States cost $33,600 weekly, while "safehouses" could be established for $250,000, plus operational costs. Identical services were offered globally. For $5,000 a day, clients could hire Prado or former senior CIA officials Cofer Black and Robert Richer for "representation" to national "decision-makers." Before joining Blackwater, Black, a twenty-eight-year CIA veteran, ran the agency's counterterrorism center, while Richer was the agency's deputy director of operations. (Neither Black nor Richer currently works for the company.)

I was going to call Blackwater personnel dogs of war. But that's an insult to dogs.

Then I was going to call them whores. But that's an insult to sex workers.

Mercenary scum seems to fit quite nicely.