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The State Department’s $10 billion, five-year contract with private security firms is finally out. Guess who’s still a part of it?
I have an exclusive over at Danger Room about how an arm of Blackwater successfully formed a “joint venture” to stay in the picture. Here’s what I’d highlight for you:
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 on 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.”
I mean, just try Googling “International Development Solutions.” You see a lot of information about what this company is? It’s hard not to recall Paravant. As Senator Levin explained: “The investigation revealed that Paravant had never performed any services and was simply a shell company established to avoid what one former Blackwater executive called the ‘baggage’ associated with the Blackwater name as the company pursued government business.”
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For some reason I do not think the word “‘baggage’” is the one that best describes Blackwater and its exec….maybe we could have a little word game to get a better fit.
As we all know too well, it’s really hard to kill a zombie.
Why do we need middlemen like these gov’t “departments” at all anymore?
As these facts of our government’s scurrilous treatment of those defined variously as “other” emerge I become terminally disheartened and I believe all of good will in the country are also. Today also comes news of one more egregious medccal experiment carried out in our name. Was there ever a time in our history that our government actually practiced the moreal values claimed to define us as “exceptional?”
blackwater
one of the criminal organizations formed by the former administration to privitize government function and responsibility
they operate at 10 times the price of are armed forces, they operate under our banner and they contribute to the destruction of the reputation of this nation
and obama continues as if he lived in a sound proof box for the 8 years before he took office
man o man I could not have believed I would be this disapointed in a d president
but here I am
Xe represent the Oligarchs private insurance, against the rabble.
Spencer, in your reporter’s role, did you ask why the State Dept recontracted with a criminal enterprise?
Recall how closely Black/Zee was to the Cheney’s and his neo-con crime family. The Corporations controlling the USA, Exxon, BP, SAIC, Lockheed and Goldman Sachs need their own secret army to spy and threaten any potential whistleblowers.
Black/Zee is not intended to protect government employees. It is intended to guarantee that government employees keep the wars going on forever and ever. They are the privatized secret police who do not have to follow laws. Obama says anyone can be murdered to protect the secrets and the wars. Blackwater is the official assassination unit of the secret government. Remember Pat Tillman.
Remember and see the movie…and scream and weep.
Our war of aggression against Iraq is a gift that keeps on giving, ain’t it?
I can’t figure out how those who supported this crime against international law and human rights can show their faces in public. After supporting this catastrophe, why would they expect anyone to ever believe a word they said, much less trust their judgement. They were all apologists for war crimes and mass murder.
Disgusting. And sad.
That’s what I’ve thought since first hearing of BW/Xe: they’re a private army for deployment against any latter-day Wat Tylers who might show up. Kind of a redneck palace guard. Obama sticks with ‘em, ignores all the murders they’ve committed. But it’s okay–Obie’s a constitutional scholar. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, too. It’s enough to make you puke.
Since a female (Hillary) is signing off on them, it’s well and dandy for the country club set.
“Torture team” is the one I keep coming up with.
And in all the world, there does not seem to be any country willing to go after Blackwater/Xe/Christ Eternal/whatever the hell they call themselves today, or even to speak out. Why not? I do not see any credible reason for silence from the nations of the world.
Now we know it for what it is.
For those whose interest is aroused: Wat Tyler.
The primary objective of the high-tech surveillance is to sniff out and snuff out any potential peasant uprising.
Because they have little packets of highly radioactive heavy metals.
And if they don’t like you they can slip it in your food.
The more nuclear reactors we run the more of that shit gets produced. There is nothing you can do with it to make it safe, and some of it is too toxic to even handle. So you really should ask yourself we we keep producing it.
Totally.
The minute we get violent, we’re dead.
He’s not making this up. Link.
And now they have drones to use so no one sees who’s responsible for the bloodshed.
I guess that means they’re re-upping with this, too:
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20101002/D9IJ8EVO0.html
Lt. Calley! Lt. Calley??? You there???
Whatcha think???
body “baggage”
I was just looking over the list of President Obama’s accomplishments, according to Robert P. Watson. At the end of the “Ethics” section it says:
Yes, and you can bet they are still working with the Special Forces Black-ops and have something to do with the drone attacks on Pakistan, our 3rd illegal war!
Sounds good but that HAS BEEN the law. They just never enforce it. I mean, the government would have to start with the crybabies like BOEING who got the government to take a way a contract from Lockheed-Martin to buy one of their inferior tankers.
Why doesn’t State run a test on Xe like they ran in Guatemala in the forties? Seems like patriots ought to line up to volunteer.
This really sucks. I thought there was gonna be CHANGE.
But no.
Great reporting, Spencer!
For those worried about the power of the elite, with assassinations, private imperial guard, and what not. Let’s remember that a violent uprising or opposition is never what we wanted anyway. The tactic of terrorism is a tactic of despair, and self-defeating. Just like the leftists of old, it’s all about winning over the majority of the populace. The fact that is a real possibility from a historical POV is exactly what makes them so uneasy. But every dictatorship has its Achilles heel, and should the U.S. really unveil the iron fist, then only mass opposition will turn things around.