rssIs Blackwater Bidding on State Dept. Contract?
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 5:30 pm
- 15 Comments
Jeremy Scahill, journalism’s most dogged investigator of the privatized military, reports that the State Department’s Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract is up for bid. Why’s that important? Because the contract — now apparently re-dubbed the Worldwide Protective Services program — is the lucrative mechanism whereby the State Department hires private security companies to protect its diplomats overseas. In the past, it’s relied on three of them: DynCorp, Triple Canopy and Blackwater/Xe Services/US Training Center. All of them have been cited for various sorts of abuses, from improper bookkeeping (DynCorp) to poor embassy security (Triple Canopy) to, uh, killing civilians and using the names of South Park characters to improperly hoard guns (guess).
But maybe not this time.
In August, Stacy DeLuke, a Blackwater spokeswoman, told me the company planned on bidding on WPS when it came up for renewal this year. According to Jeremy, though, they haven’t put in their bid yet:
Among the companies listed as “interested vendors” to bid on the contracts are the predictable list of industry giants: L-3 Services, SAIC, USIS, Northrop Grumman, and DynCorp. Two lesser-known firms in particular that have expressed interest in the contracts jump out: Instinctive Shooting International and Evergreen International Aviation.
Read on for Jeremy’s full report on Instinctive Shooting International. But it’s surprising to see that Blackwater hasn’t offered a bid yet. I called the company but was told that everyone who could speak to me has left for the day. No luck with the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which controls the contract, yet either. Hopefully tomorrow will bring clarity on this.
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15 Comments
Pingback posted April 21, 2010 @ 6:21 pm
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Comment posted April 21, 2010 @ 11:03 pm
With Cerberus acquiring DynCorp yesterday, this seems like the ultimate “private-public” relationship: “secretive private-equity fund” that prefers to play with the public's money and politically connected private security firm that prefers to do as little as possible “earning” the public's money.
Win-win.
Pingback posted April 22, 2010 @ 2:06 am
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Comment posted April 22, 2010 @ 12:46 pm
…so I asked the young lady in the library where she got her Blackwater sweatshirt. Says her boyfriend gave it to her before he left for Bahrain with the Coast Guard. The boyfriend is in the Coast Guard, but his “training” was contracted out to Blackwater???
Pingback posted April 22, 2010 @ 10:12 pm
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Trackback posted April 22, 2010 @ 11:25 pm
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by joerobertson: RT @jeremyscahill: .@attackerman follows up on my story, asking “Is Blackwater Bidding on State Dept. Contract?” http://bit.ly/aQvqoU #tcot…
Comment posted April 22, 2010 @ 11:00 pm
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Pingback posted April 23, 2010 @ 1:01 am
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Comment posted May 7, 2010 @ 2:57 pm
this is a dumb article – bids are not even due yet for this contract so NO ONE has submitted a bid. The list you are referring to in an “interested vendors” list that is totally optional and used by some companies to find partners.
Comment posted July 12, 2010 @ 11:00 am
If you know how military training is conducted, there are many “packages” you go through that are conducted at all sorts of locations. BW has a multi-million dollar training facility that all kinds of organizations use. Just because the government might have used their facility does not mean this coast guard dude received all his training. I love it when the clueless post about things they have never even remotely participated in, therefore know nothing about how things work. Most of you show up in these articles about contractors.
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