blackwater

Remember ArmorGroup, the negligence-and-fraud-prone security contractor that’s responsible for protecting the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan? When last I checked in, the State Department was reviewing its contract — yes, again — and dangling the possibility that it might finally revoke the deal after credible allegations emerged of widespread incompetence, dabbling in prostitution, the inability of [...]

The CIA is none too happy about the recent disclosure of apparently inchoate “significant actions” canceled by Director Leon Panetta. After the activities’ initial disclosure to Congress in late June, additional reporting determined that these actions were a never-operational effort at assassinating members of al-Qaeda and were contracted to the controversial firm Blackwater. Now, Eli [...]

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly came out of the box yesterday with a strong statement. The State Department takes the allegations of impropriety on the part of ArmorGroup, the security company State hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, so seriously that the Office of the Inspector General has opened an investigation. In fact, [...]

TWI’s own Spencer Ackerman appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” Wednesday to discuss Afghanistan, contractors, and the shocking scandal that has recently come to light. In case you missed it, here’s the video (after the jump).

While the government’s use of private security contractors has garnered no end of criticism, the highest-profile blunders and abuses have come from companies that work not for the Pentagon, but for the State Department.

These documents about the behavior of ArmorGroup, a security company hired by the State Department to protect the U.S. embassy in Kabul, have to be seen to be believed. The Project on Government Oversight released them in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Here’s a sample:
Numerous emails, photographs, and videos portray a [...]

Statement out from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
“The first thing to remember is that the program has been canceled. It was fully briefed to the Senate Intelligence Committee, first by Director Panetta in June, and afterward through additional oversight.
The program was never briefed to the Congress before June [...]

Fresh off the latest revelation that the CIA contracted Blackwater for an assassination effort, here’s Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater’s most dogged pursuer, writing in The Nation to remind people about the breadth of the private military firm’s relationship with the agency. This quote in particular helps explain some of the legal backstory I wrote about [...]

There’s not much I can add at this point to Mark Mazzetti’s great scoop about the CIA hiring the-private-military-firm-formerly-known-as-Blackwater for its never-quite-specified “significant actions” efforts at assassinating members of al-Qaeda. Jeremy Scahill has tweeted that The Nation is set to publish a follow-on piece, so I’d keep an eye out for that. But here’s my [...]

The firm faces a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from a 2007 shooting incident in Baghdad.