So reports Jeremy Scahill in a monster piece. This is one of those occasions when I wonder if there’s really anything I can add because the piece is so massive and the reporter knows his subject better than any competitor. But there is one thing I think I can say, and it’s about this:

One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified “black” operations. “With an ACCM, the security manager can grant access to you to be exposed to and operate within compartmentalized programs far above ‘secret’–even though you have no business doing so,” said the source. It allows Blackwater personnel that “do not have the requisite security clearance or do not hold a security clearance whatsoever to participate in classified operations by virtue of trust,” he added. “Think of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That’s exactly what it is: a circle of love.” Blackwater, therefore, has access to “all source” reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in the field. “That’s how a lot of things over the years have been conducted with contractors,” said the source. “We have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don’t unless they ask.”

I don’t know anything about this particular case. But that is an all-too-plausible arrangement. If you read Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes — or, say, my review of it last year in The Nation — you’re familiar with the theme of presidents just wanting a meddlesome priest to be gone and not caring about how it happens. A related dynamic is that top-level presidential aides interpret their mandate as keeping knowledge of the dirty work as far away from the Oval Office as possible.

In this case, as I say, I don’t know what’s going on with remotely the detail that Jeremy is reporting, and that’s as honest as I can be. But I do note that Adm. McRaven, the current commander of JSOC, is indeed a real player in Afghanistan-Pakistan policymaking, and that’s not been a well-covered development. I’m not passing a judgment on that, I’m just observing.