Blackwater (now Xi)

[Ed Jewett]

Blackwater gets Hidden New Contract with State Dept.

16th October 2010

By Ed Brayton

Michigan Messenger | October 5, 2010

Spencer Ackerman, formerly the foreign policy and military correspondent for our sister site the Washington Independent, reports that Blackwater/Xe, the controversial private military company owned by Michigan native Erik Prince, has received yet another contract to protect American diplomats around the world — but the contract was kept hidden from view through secret deals and shell corporations.

Eight private security firms have won State’s giant Worldwide Protective Services contract, the big Foggy Bottom partnership to keep embassies and their inhabitants safe. Two of those firms are longtime State contract holders DynCorp and Triple Canopy. The others are newcomers to the big security contract: EOD Technology, SOC, Aegis Defense Services, Global Strategies Group, Torres International Services and International Development Solutions LLC.
Don’t see any of Blackwater’s myriad business names on there? That’s apparently by design.
Blackwater and the State Department tried their best to obscure their renewed relationship. As Danger Room reported Wednesday, Blackwater did not appear on the vendors’ list for Worldwide Protective Services. And the State Department confirms that the company, renamed Xe Services, didn’t actually submit its own independent bid.
Instead, they used a blandly named cut-out, “International Development Solutions,” to retain a toehold into State’s lucrative security business. No one who looks at the official announcement of the contract award would have any idea that firm is connected to Blackwater.
Blackwater’s “affiliate U.S. Training Center is part of International Development Solutions (IDS), a joint venture with Kaseman,” according to an official State Department statement to Danger Room. “This joint venture was determined by the Department’s source-selection authority to be eligible for award.”

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, held hearings in February that revealed that Blackwater has used other shell corporations in order to keep getting government contracts despite a long history of criminal accusations and malfeasance.


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