It’s like they’re in a strip club, according to Jeff Stein:
The Central Intelligence Agency has hired Xe Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, to guard its facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere, according to an industry source.
The previously undisclosed CIA contract is worth about
Question of the day: Can guards for your company kill Afghan civilians, set up shell companies to win contracts, siphon off weapons intended for the Afghan police while using the names of cartoon characters to sign for them, and still win additional multi-million-dollar contracts to guard U.S. More…
Laura Rozen at Politico beat me to this, but today Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released letters he sent to Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking them to review Feb. 24 testimony from ex-Blackwater executives and Army officials More…
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s hearing on Blackwater/Paravant’s subcontract with Raytheon and the Army to train Afghan security forces has just ended, but not before Blackwater pushed all the blame onto Raytheon.
Fred Roitz, Blackwater’s top contract compliance officer, told the panel that Raytheon instructed Blackwater to hide its shell More…
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) got Fred Roitz of Blackwater — sorry, “Xe Services,” the new name for the company — to say that Blackwater shell company “Paravant” came into existence shortly before “Paravant” got a subcontract from defense giant Raytheon to train Afghan security forces. But then Levin read from More…
The head of contract compliance for Blackwater, Fred Roitz, told Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that he has never known that hundreds of weapons Blackwater employees took from a U.S. military depot in Afghanistan called 22 Bunkers (or Bunker 22) have been explicitly designated by Gen. David Petraeus, commander of More…
Leave aside the fact that Blackwater/Paravant employees subcontracted to train Afghan security forces never received authorization from the U.S. military to carry guns in Afghanistan. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) wanted to clarify that Blackwater/Paravant at least informed the military when its armed guards moved around their battlespace.
“It was More…
In an interview with Senate staff, former “Paravant” vice president Brian McCracken said that the only reason a company called Paravant ever existed was because Blackwater wanted a piece of Raytheon’s contract with the Army to train Afghan security officials — without the “baggage” of the Blackwater name. (You know, More…
Sen. George Lemieux (R-Fla.) wants to know which official at U.S. Central Command or anywhere else in the chain of command is “ultimately responsible for [ensuring] these contracts are being performed the way they’re supposed to.” Sensibly, he asked retired Col. Bradley Wakefield, a top former officer at Combined Security More…
Why did Blackwater/Paravant’s personnel carry weapons in Afghanistan for “personal use,” anyway? Brian McCracken, the former Paravant vice president, conceded to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) that it never received authorization from either the Army or U.S. Central Command, as it needed before carrying guns in a war zone. He nevertheless More…
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