Blackwater (now Xi)

[Austin Kelley]

The author has a personal history that might raise some questions but I see no negative effected on his reporting here:

Contractors stirred by sexy tales
By David Isenberg


Xe Services (formerly known as Blackwater) is once again in the news, thanks to charges made by two former employees. Brad and Melan Davis, a married couple, worked in various Blackwater locations, both overseas and in the United States.

They are suing Blackwater using the False Claims Act, a US federal law that allows people with no government affiliation to file lawsuits against federal contractors claiming fraud against the government. People filing under the act stand to receive a portion (usually about 15-25%) of any recovered damages. Typically, allegations have been filed by people with inside knowledge of false claims involving health care, military or other government spending programs. The government recovered nearly $22 billion under the act between 1987 and 2008.

Their suit makes many allegations but, predictably, the press thus far have largely focused on the most sensational, namely that Blackwater officials kept a Filipino prostitute on the company payroll for a US State Department contract in Afghanistan, and billed the government for her time working for Blackwater male employees in Kabul. The alleged prostitute's salary was categorized as part of the company's "Morale Welfare Recreation" expenses. The Davis' charges have not yet been proved or disproved.

It may be sad to say but, given the history of sexual activities and some private contractors, the alleged use of a prostitute may actually be a step up. At least they were not trafficking in child sex slaves, as some DynCorp contractors did in Bosnia in the late 1990s.

The story of the now legendary Tori the Escort shows how prostitutes have been shipped in to war zones. In 2007, the blog Wonkette broke the story that Tori was going to be in Baghdad's Green Zone for an extended tour, "entertaining all members of the PMC community registered with PSCAI [Private Security Company Association of Iraq]".

As the use of a prostitute is between consenting parties it cannot be termed "sexual harassment", which is prohibited under the terms of the Worldwide Personal Protective Services (WPPS) contract under which Blackwater operates in Afghanistan. However, there is a clause with respect to guard conduct that states:

Personal activity on post: The guards will not engage in any unofficial business on post; ie, soliciting, canvassing, peddling, sales promotion of a commercial item, loan money for interest and etc. [pg 70]

A lawyer could probably argue that the woman was originally working at a hotel, thus not on base, and as such is not covered by the clause. Where she worked when she was put on the payroll remains an unanswered question.

It bears pointing out that Melan Davis, who reported the billing of the prostitute's services to the government, was hired back in December 2005. In the suit she notes:

After the Department of State meeting educated me on dire permissibility of various practices, I discovered a substantial amount of fraudulent billing. One of the first items I uncovered was Blackwater billing for payments made to a prostitute. I came across the name of a female Filipino on the expenses submitted for cost reimbursables in connection with Task Force No 4. At that time, to my knowledge, the only third-country nationals we had in country in Afghanistan were Columbians. I wanted to figure out whether we had Filipino third-country nationals as well because I had not seen any others beyond this name.

I contacted Susan Bergman, who was the logistics operations manager in Kabul, Afghanistan. She informed me that the woman was not a third-country national hired to serve as a static guard, but rather was a prostitute, who had been ousted from the hotel where she was working for several Blackwater men. As a result, they put her on the Blackwater payroll under the Morale Welfare Recreation (MWR) category. To the best of my knowledge, Blackwater billed her plane tickets and monthly salary to the United States under the Task Orders.

This takes corporate pimping to new heights. Also, given the timeline she describes this means that Blackwater was still a member of the International Peace Operations Association, a leading trade group for the private military contracting industry.

Blackwater pulled out of IPOA after Blackwater employees were accused of killing innocent Iraqi civilians in the Nisour Square shootings of September, 2007. In December, a US federal judge dismissed charges against the contractors on the grounds that the government bungled the case by using testimony that was given under a grant of immunity.

The IPOA has a code of conduct that its member companies are supposed to follow, though what happens if a company violates the code has never been clear. While nothing in the code says that contractors can't use prostitutes, there is language that could reasonably be construed as suggesting it is a bad idea.

The section on accountability says: "Signatories shall support effective legal accountability to relevant authorities for their actions and the actions of their personnel. Signatories shall proactively address minor infractions, and to the extent possible and subject to contractual and legal limitations, fully cooperate with official investigations into allegations of contractual violations and breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws." By billing the government for the prostitute's services Blackwater was certainly in violation of "contractual limitations".

Moving on, there are a number of far more serious allegations in the Davis' suit, which merit full investigation.

Consider Hurricane Katrina. Over the years Blackwater has taken lots of criticism from people with axes to grind for supposedly providing jackbooted mercenaries to patrol the streets in the hurricane's aftermath. Up to now this has mostly been hot air with precious little substantiation.

But in the suit, Brad Davis, who worked in Louisiana for Blackwater, contends:

Blackwater failed to provide the services required by the contract with FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] and the State of Louisiana. Blackwater was arming its employees with deadly weapons (shotguns, Glocks, and M-4s) in order to provide security. As a result, Blackwater was required to monitor closely the weaponry, and keep at all times a registry of the weapons in the hands of its employees. Blackwater utterly failed to monitor these deadly weapons, and instead lost track of countless weapons.

Blackwater repeatedly and routinely falsified records to hide this serious issue from FEMA and other United States agencies.

Blackwater repeatedly and routinely falsified GSA 139 forms, which are the forms that Blackwater was directed to use to record the hours worked by its employees. Blackwater permitted employees to "clock in" for their fellow employees.

Beginning in October 2005, and continuing until at least April 2006, Blackwater submitted invoices to the United States and to the State of Louisiana that contained falsified hours.

Reasonable discovery is likely to establish that the persistent fraud by Blackwater on the Hurricane Katrina contracts that was observed firsthand by Relators from October 2005 to April 2006 actually persisted well past then.

It bears to note that during this time, when Blackwater was a member, that IPOA's code of conduct states that, "Signatories using weapons shall put the highest emphasis on accounting for and controlling all weapons and ammunition utilized during an operation and for ensuring their legal and proper accounting and disposal at the end of a contract."

A thus-far unmentioned aspect to the weapons issue, mentioned in a footnote to the suit, is the following from Brad Davis:

I also learned from colleagues that the failure to account for weapons was not limited to Louisiana. On one occasion, Blackwater employees working in Moyock sold a M249 (known as a "saw") to a civilian for $10,000. It is illegal to possess such weapons. Not realizing it was illegal, the purchaser brought it back to the armory on a different shift, complaining that there was something wrong and seeking refund or replacement Although the United States ended up learning about the incident, the United States did not realize that the United States law enforcement personnel tasked to investigate the incident were put on Blackwater's payroll.

In plain English that seems to allege that Blackwater paid off the police to ignore its violation of the law.

Davis also says that:

Blackwater failed to fulfill the contract requirements for training in Louisiana. Blackwater hired persons without completing any screening in advance. At times, it turned out that Blackwater had armed and placed on the streets persons who had been convicted of felonies or were otherwise prohibited by the Lautenberg Act (regarding persons convicted of domestic violence) from carrying weapons. Although Blackwater eventually terminated some or all of those persons, Blackwater had armed them and placed them on public streets of Louisiana for a significant period of time.

Another disturbing charge is this:

Blackwater operated a private training facility called Blackwater Academy.

Many persons enrolled in Blackwater Academy were subsequently hired by Blackwater to serve on the Department of State contract, International Republican Institute contract, and other contracts funded by the United States.

Blackwater hired persons to serve on these contracts in order to ensure that these persons had the funds necessary to pay their outstanding tuition bills at Blackwater Academy.

As a result of this direct financial benefit to Blackwater Academy, Blackwater would continue to deploy persons to serve as "shooters” on contracts funded by the United States even after such persons had proven themselves wholly incompetent.

Despite pleas from its own management, Blackwater repeatedly refused to terminate shooters who had used excessive and unjustified force against Iraqis because Blackwater wanted to ensure that these persons could pay outstanding Blackwater Academy tuition.

By providing unqualified shooters who used excessive and unjustified force against Iraqis, Blackwater defrauded the United States in two ways: First, it failed to provide contractually required services. Second, this misconduct caused the United States to expend substantial time and money redressing the various harms caused by these unqualified persons.

These unqualified persons included Beau Phillips and Luke Doak, both of whom injured Iraqis with unjustified and excessive force.

Blackwater management was well aware of the unjustified shootings, but failed to report them to the United States as was required by the terms of the contract. Blackwater also failed to terminate these persons and instead continued to bill the United States for their services.

Blackwater continues to defraud the United States to date by billing the United States for trainings conducted by Luke Doak.

If true, what Blackwater did could be considered a form of indentured servitude. Blackwater permits persons to go through the academy at no charge, and then deducts the tuition from their subsequent pay as Blackwater contractors over a two-year period. That explains why Blackwater would keep someone in the field who should not be there. For example, Blackwater benefited financially in two ways by keeping Doak on contract: Blackwater received payments from the United States and also received payments directly from Doak.

As Davis notes in the suit, "Gloria Shyties told me that Blackwater needed to find Doak a job in order to ensure that he repaid Blackwater the tuition. She was well aware of the fact that Doak had murdered two people with Blackwater weapons while working on a Blackwater contract in Iraq."

Second, if Blackwater was providing unqualified personnel to work in Iraq it was clearly in violation of the terms of its WPPS contract.

According to Brad Davis, Blackwater not only overbilled the United States for travel expenses in Afghanistan but did so in various ways:

First, Blackwater created phony invoices that misled the United States into believing Blackwater had made payments to an unrelated third party.

Second, Blackwater transported employees on its own wholly-controlled Presidential Airways subsidiary (previously called Blackwater Aviation), but billed the United States as if the travel had occurred on unrelated third-party commercial carriers.

Third, Blackwater created phony invoices to obscure the fact that Blackwater had failed to keep any of the necessary contemporaneous documentation on travel. Blackwater and Greystone employees worked around the clock in Jordan for several days in February 2008 creating phony invoices - at rates well in excess of what was actually paid to any third party - to match personnel musters. In reality, Blackwater lacked the necessary contemporaneous records and was not authorized to bill the United States under the terms of the contract.

Davis also charges that in addition to improperly billing the US government it also solicited kickbacks:

Blackwater overbilled the United States for services provided by a man named Sargon Hendrich. Mr Hendrich provided some services to Blackwater, and invoiced those services at rates well in excess of fair market value. Blackwater billed the services to the United States. After the funds received from the United States were disbursed to Mr Hendrich, he would then pay kickbacks to Blackwater.

Furthermore, in what can be only viewed as a moment of serendipity in light of a recent US Government Accountability Office report on the subject, Brad Davis charges that:

Blackwater used Greystone, a wholly-controlled offshore company, to obscure the amount of taxable revenues earned by Blackwater. Reasonable discovery will show that Blackwater transferred funds offshore to Greystone, and then reflected those funds as payment for management fees.

Reasonable discovery will show that Blackwater was using this mechanism to send its profits offshore beyond the reach of the United States Internal Revenue Service.

It also appears that Blackwater may have been inspired by former US senator John Edwards of North Carolina, the state where Blackwater is headquartered. Among other things, Edwards is distinguished for cheating on his wife when she was battling lung cancer. The suit notes that:

Defendants wrongfully terminated Melan Davis from the corporate offices in retaliation for her attempts to rectify the abuses occurring in the Jordan offices. Defendants' own internal investigation recommended that Ms Davis not be terminated, but Defendants nonetheless terminated Ms Davis on February 1, 2008, while she was out on leave battling cancer.

Yet another charge, which seems reminiscent of the character Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder in Joseph Heller's famed Catch-22 novel is that "Erik Prince personally smuggled out antique Iraqi fighter planes. He had the planes dismantled, smuggled out in parts, and then reassembled for display."

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Xe Services said: "The allegations are without merit and the company will vigorously defend against this lawsuit. It is noteworthy that the government has declined to intervene in this action," he said.

Back when the US government was investigating Blackwater contractors for the Nisour Square shootings company spokesmen condemned the government for what it characterized as a rush to government before the facts were in. Now it is praising the government for not joining in even though the facts have yet to be verified.



David Isenberg is a researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. He is an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, a US Navy veteran, and the author of a new book, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq. The views expressed are his own. His email is sento@earthlink.net.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LB18Ak02.html

[David Guyatt]

It seems to me to be company that is out of control and because it is not subject to rigorous oversight, knows it can get away with murder.

[Magda Hassan]

It seems to me to be company that is out of control and because it is not subject to rigorous oversight, knows it can get away with murder.

It is paid to get away with murder.

[Jan Klimkowski]

My own judgement is that Blackwater/Xe/Manchurian Global is now a busted flush.

It's so visible that Hollywood will soon be making comedies about it.

My speculative judgement is that Blackwater was a major player around the time of 9/11, and a largely invisible, "plausibly deniable", sub-contractor for "Buzzy" Krongard and that particular crew of deep political thugs.

During "Shock and Awe", Blackwater was sufficiently powerful for the city of Fallujah to suffer biblical retribution - starvation, drought, plague and hellfire - for its crime of executing and stringing up four Blackwater mercenaries. Faux News was of course cheering the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus against a population including a large proportion of civilians from the sidelines. The newborn of Fallujah now suffer statistically high levels of birth defects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K1qhUoz1Z8

Erik Prince was a useful idiot-cum-CEO. He's now left the company and been helped by spin doctors to create his own patriotic legend:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=2729

Blackwater has been reduced to a diversionary sideshow, to distract from the real deep political activies being undertaken elsewhere.

Its successor will already have taken over its operations.

The successor after that is probably being incorporated and washed in an Arlington suburb right now.

[Ed Jewett]

Yes, but it will all clone, and then re-clone, and then branch off, re-think, return to how it was done years ago and get a fresh new re-make in the former of something that we won't recognize instantly for what it is. That's why this small collection of folk exist here on this one web site... because we have seen it done, learned and documented (albeit slowly), and then repeated, rinsed, lathered and rinsed again. Patterns are beginning to emerge. We must get our discernment--to-activity cycle to be sharp and operating at a faster pace than theirs.

[Ed Jewett]

Interference Seen in Blackwater Inquiry

By JAMES RISEN

Published: March 2, 2010WASHINGTON — An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday.




David Farrington, a State Department security agent in the American Embassy at the time of the shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, told prosecutors that some of his colleagues were handling evidence in a way they hoped would help the Blackwater guards avoid punishment for a crime that drew headlines and raised tensions between American and Iraqi officials.
The description of Mr. Farrington’s account came in closed-door testimony last October from Kenneth Kohl, the lead prosecutor in the case against the Blackwater guards.
“I talked to David Farrington, who was concerned, who expressed concern about the integrity of the work being done by his fellow officers,” Mr. Kohl recalled. He said that Mr. Farrington had said he was in meetings where diplomatic security agents said that after they had gone to the scene and picked up casings and other evidence, “They said we’ve got enough to get these guys off now.”
Mr. Farrington, who also testified in a closed-door pretrial hearing in the Nisour Square shooting case, declined to comment. His own testimony has not yet been unsealed by the court.
Blackwater became a multimillion-dollar contractor as the United States escalated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, providing protection for State Department officials and covert work for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The company, dominated by former American officials, has been described by critics as being too close to the intelligence and diplomatic agencies for which it worked.
The New York Times has reported that the Justice Department was investigating allegations that Blackwater had tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of retaining their security business after the deadly shooting.
In December, a federal judge dismissed the criminal charges against five former Blackwater guards in the Nisour Square shooting, and criticized the Justice Department’s handling of the case, chiding prosecutors for trying to use statements from defendants who had been offered immunity and testimony from witnesses tainted by news media leaks.
The documents made public on Tuesday show that before the December dismissal, prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents working on the Nisour Square case took the stand in October to argue that they had plenty of untainted evidence. In a closed-door hearing, they also contended that they had evidence that, in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, there had been a concerted effort to make the case go away, both by Blackwater and by at least some embassy officials.
In fact, prosecutors were told that the embassy had never conducted any significant investigation of any of the numerous shooting episodes in Iraq involving Blackwater before the Nisour Square case, according to the documents.
In his October testimony, Mr. Kohl described how the Justice Department had “serious concerns” about obstruction of justice in the case. He also said prosecutors briefed Kenneth Wainstein, then an assistant attorney general, on evidence of obstruction by Blackwater management.
Mr. Kohl disclosed that prosecutors had discovered that five Blackwater guards who were on the convoy involved in the Nisour Square shootings reported to Blackwater management what they had seen. One guard, he said, described it as “murder in cold blood.” Mr. Kohl said that Blackwater management never reported these statements by the guards to the State Department.
He said that prosecutors informed senior Justice Department officials as early as 2007 that they were investigating whether Blackwater managers “manipulated” the official statements made by the guards to the State Department.
But he testified that prosecutors also had evidence of embassy officials thwarting the inquiry. In addition to the testimony of Mr. Farrington, Mr. Kohl said that United States military officials had told prosecutors that they witnessed State Department investigators “badgering” Iraqi witnesses.
He also testified that diplomatic security agents, who conducted the embassy’s initial investigation before the F.B.I. and Justice Department began a criminal inquiry, left out important facts from their report relating to a witness’s account.
Philip J. Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, defended the department’s handling of the Nisour Square case. He said: “Seventeen people died in broad daylight. We took the case seriously from the outset. We invited the F.B.I. to join the investigation, and more than two years later, we continue to pursue the case and seek justice.”
Officials from Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Kohl described what he believed was “an undercurrent of obstruction in this case.”
He said that a Blackwater official had told him that the whole criminal investigation could have been avoided if the State Department had given Blackwater officials more time to prepare the official statements by the guards involved in the shooting.
“He said, do you know why this all happened, why we’re here?” Mr. Kohl recalled. “Because the State Department didn’t give us enough time to work on these statements with these guys. We only had a couple hours, and we needed to get these over to the embassy.”
The dismissal of the criminal case against the guards for Blackwater in the Nisour Square shooting prompted bitter protests by Iraqis against the United States, and it led the Iraqi government to threaten to bring a lawsuit of its own in the case.
The Justice Department has now appealed the dismissal. Blackwater has settled one series of civil lawsuits brought by victims of the Nisour Square shooting, but another lawsuit brought by another group of victims is still pending.



A version of this article appeared in print on March 3, 2010, on page A12 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/...odayspaper

[Ed Jewett]

Army contractor's use of a cover name for Blackwater angers Sen. McCaskill


09 Mar 2010



"The American people have a right to be outraged that we're playing this kind of game with contracting. It's wrong. It's flat wrong." With those words, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) voiced her exasperation near the end of a three-hour Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about a contract to train Afghan National Army troops last year to use American weapons. One issue at the Feb. 24. hearing was that the $25 million contract, awarded in September 2008, was to a company called Paravant -- well known to those involved as a cover name for Blackwater (now Xe Services).

[Ed Jewett]

Blackwater Managers Ran The CIA Unit That Allowed 9/11 Hijackers Into The US

Submitted by Chip on Tue, 2010-03-09 05:58.

• Afghanistan
  
• General Discussion
  
• Military Industrial Complex
  
• Pakistan
  

Blackwater managers ran the CIA unit that allowed 9/11 hijackers into the US
By leveymg | Democratic Underground
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. Read more.


exploded here:


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.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Regarding deep black Blackwater intel/rogue operations circa 2000, a certain AB "Buzzy" Krongard is highly relevant:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=2729

[Ed Jewett]

Buzzy seems to have gotten his proboscis into a lot of places. :willy: