Missile manufacturer, police forces and golf video company among more than 130 groups licensed to use technology

A surveillance drone used by Merseyside police, one of three forces that have permission to use UAVs. Photograph: John Giles/PA

Defence firms, police forces and fire services are among more than 130 organisations that have permission to fly small drones in UK airspace, the Guardian can reveal.

The Civil Aviation Authority list of companies and groups that have sought approval for the use of the unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, has not been published before – and it reflects the way the technology is now being used. The BBC, the National Grid and several universities are now certified to use them – as is Video Golf Marketing, which provides fly-over videos of golf courses.

Including multiple or expired licences, the CAA has granted approval to fly small UAVs more than 160 times.

“People are going to see more and more of these small vehicles operating around the country,” said John Moreland, general secretary of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems Association (UAVS), a trade body with more than 100 members. “There are any number of uses for them, and the technology is getting easier to use and cheaper all the time. These vehicles can operate anywhere in the UK, within reason.”

However, privacy campaigners have grave concerns about the proliferation of the technology and want an urgent review of regulations. “The increasing use of drones by private companies and government bodies poses a unique set of problems,” said Eric King, head of research at campaign group Privacy International.

“The CAA considers health and safety issues when deciding whether or not to grant licences to operate drone technology, but this is a very low bar. We need new regulation to ensure privacy and other civil liberties are also taken into account during the decision-making process.”

In the last two years the CAA has required anyone who wants to fly a small UAV in British airspace to apply for permission. The aircraft must weigh less than 20kg and operators have to abide by certain rules. These include not flying them higher than 122 metres (400ft), or further away from the operator than 500 metres – this is deemed the pilot’s “line of sight”.

The CAA list shows that three police forces, Merseyside, Staffordshire and Essex, have permission to use UAVs, as do three fire services, Dorset, West Midlands and Hampshire.

Some of Europe’s biggest defence companies can also fly them, including BAE Systems, Qinetiq and missile manufacturer MBDA. A company that supplies UAVs and other equipment to the Ministry of Defence, Marlborough Communications, is also registered, along with crime-scene and counter-terrorism specialist GWR & Associates.

Shane Knight, a spokesman for Marlborough, said: “If you can put these systems up in the sky, and they are safe, then they have many uses. If you are a police force, a fire or ambulance service, and, for instance, you are responding to a large fire, then you have a choice of sending out your people to do reconnaissance of an area, or you could use one of these small UAVs. Why put people in danger when you can use one of these systems? These UAVs are getting much better, and much smaller.”

The National Grid uses them to inspect power lines, while the Scottish Environment Protection Agency wants one to patrol and photograph remote areas, said Susan Stevens, a scientist in the agency’s marine ecology department. “The UAV equipment is currently being trialled,” she said.

“As an operational service it will have many uses, such as capturing aerial imagery of estuaries, wetlands and riverbanks, and to provide a snapshot of the environment before and after development work,” she said.

Moreland said the unmanned systems suffered from the perception that they were all “killer robots” flying in the sky, but he thought this would diminish as the public got used to seeing them.

“We are going to see all sorts of systems coming out over the years,” he said. “The operating bubble is going to expand like mad. Some of these systems will be able to look after themselves, and others will rely on the quality of the operators.

“You don’t have to be a qualified pilot … The person could come from a modelling background, or he may be a video game player. There are plenty of people you could imagine being able to control these systems in a delicate way.”

Gordon Slack, who owns Video Golf Marketing, said he had taught himself to use his UAV. “Once you know how to operate it, it is not too complicated. We’ve done six videos for golf courses, with a few more in the pipeline.”

…

(Owner ID number/Company name)

1 HoverCam

2 Meggitt Defence Systems

3 EagleEye (Aerial Photography) Ltd

4 Remote Services Limited

5 High Spy RC Aerial Photography

6 Magsurvey Limited

7 Pi In The Sky

8 Qinetiq

9 Eye In The Sky

10 AngleCam

11 Helicam Ltd

12 Flying Minicameras Ltd

13 S & C Thermofluids Ltd

14 Remote Airworks (pty) Ltd

15 National Grid

16 Dragonfly Aerial Photography

17 BlueBear Systems Research

18 William Walker

19 European UAV Systems Centre Ltd

20 In-House Films Ltd

21 MBDA UK Ltd

22 European UAV Systems Centre

23 Dorset Fire & Rescue Service

24 Conocophillips Limited

25 Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service

26 West Midlands Fire Service

27 Advanced Ceramics Research

28 UA Systems Ltd (Swisscopter)

29 Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd

30 Flight Refuelling Limited

31 BAE Systems (Operations) Ltd

32 Lindstrand Technologies Ltd

33 Upper Cut Productions

34 Cranfield University

35 Peregrine Media Ltd

36 Horizon Aerial Photography

37 Rory Game

38 Alan Stevens

39 Helipix LLP

40 Re-use*

41 Mike Garner

42 Cyberhawk Innovations Ltd

43 Staffordshire Police TPU

44 Merseyside Police

45 Health and Safety Laboratory

46 David Hogg

47 MRL Ltd

48 MRL Ltd

49 Re-use*

50 Dominic Blundell

51 Re-use*

52 Re-use*

53 Skylens Aerial Photography

54 Bonningtons Aerial Surveys

55 Small UAV Enterprises

56 British Technical Films

57 CARVEC Systems Ltd

58 Flying-Scots’Cam

59 Pulse Corporation Ltd (t/a Overshoot Photography)

60 Motor Bird Ltd

61 Advanced Aerial Imagery

62 AM-UAS Limited

63 Re-use*

64 Gatewing NV

65 Questuav Ltd

66 Advanced UAV Technology Ltd

67 Air 2 Air

68 MW Power Systems Limited

69 Re-use*

70 Roke Manor Research Ltd

71 Re-use*

72 NPIA

73 Pete Ulrick

74 Re-use*

75 SSE Power Distribution

76 University of Worcester

77 Re-use*

78 Rovision Ltd

79 Callen-Lenz Associates Ltd (Gubua Group)

80 SKM Studio

81 GWR Associates

82 Phoenix Model Aviation

83 Copycat

84 HD Skycam

85 Re-use*

86 Gary White

87 Aerial Target Systems Ltd

88 Aerial Target Systems

89 Re-use*

90 Video Golf Marketing Ltd

91 Re-use*

92 Helivisuals Ltd

93 Essex Police

94 Marlborough Comms Ltd

95 Re-use*

96 Siemans Wind Power A/S

97 Altimeter UK Ltd t/a Visionair

98 T/A Remote Imaging

99 Re-use*

100 Daniel Baker

101 Sky Futures

102 Aerovironment Inc

103 Spherical Images Ltd

104 Flying Camera Systems

105 Highviz Photography

106 ESDM Ltd

107 Flying Camera Systems Limited

108 Edward Martin

109 Digital Mapping and Survey Ltd

110 EDF NNB GenCo Ltd

111 EDF

112 Re-use*

113 AerialVue Ltd

114 Minerva NI Limited

115 Flying Fern Films Ltd

116 Out Filming Ltd

117 Hexcam Ltd

118 McKenzie Geospatial Surveys Ltd

119 Resource UAS

120 Plum Pictures

121 Jonathan Malory

122 Mas-UK Ltd

123 Bailey Balloons Ltd

124 David Bush

125 Southampton University

126 Helipov

127 Costain Ltd

128 Sky-Futures

129 Jonathan Blaxill

130 Roke Manor Research Ltd

131 Colin Bailie

132 British Broadcasting Corp

133 Simon Hailey

134 Re-use*

135 Trimvale Aviation

136 PSH Skypower Ltd

137 Aerosight Ltd

171 Re-use*

173 Colin Bailie

174 Simon Field

175 Re-use*

176 Aerial Graphical Services

177 Think Aerial Photography

178 Hedge Air Limited

179 Scottish Environment Protection Agency

180 Skypower Limited

181 Elevation Images

182 Universal Sky Pictures

183 MBDA UK Ltd

184 Helicammedia

185 Oculus Systems Ltd

186 MASA Ltd

187 Doozee Aerial Systems Ltd

188 Selex Galileo

189 Whisperdrone

190 Z-Axis

191 Rotarama Ltd

192 Re-use*

193 BBC (Natural History Unit)

194 Flying Camera Company

195 Flying Camera Company

* Short-term approval that was granted, but now no longer applies

Source: CAA

Nick Hopkins
The Guardian, Friday 25 January 2013 20.02 GMT

Find this story at 25 January 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Multimillion-pound plans by three police forces to outsource services to the firm at the centre of the Olympics security debacle have collapsed.

Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner David Lloyd said the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Strategic Alliance had discontinued negotiations with G4S.

The three forces were looking in to working with G4S in a bid to save £73 million by outsourcing support functions.

The proposals involved switching 1,100 roles, including human resources, IT and finance to the security contractor.

But doubts were raised after the company was forced to admit severe failings over the Olympics security contract last summer, which led to police officers and 3,500 extra troops being deployed to support the operation.

In a statement, Mr Lloyd said: “I have always said that I would make my decision once the evidence was received and assessed.

“It is now clear that the G4S framework contract through Lincolnshire Police was not suitable for the unique position of the three forces.”

But he added that outsourcing to other companies would still be considered.

Mr Lloyd said: “I am already in discussion with other market providers and will continue to talk with G4S about how they can assist policing support services in Hertfordshire. My clear position is that all elements of support work will be considered for outsourcing or other use of the market.

“I made my decision based on evidence and on the recommendations from the Chief Constables. I still believe that substantial elements of policing support services will be best delivered by the private sector and will ensure that this option is immediately pursued.

“We will now move forward looking at organisational support services, as before.”

Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedfordshire, Olly Martins, said: “The concerns that I had about this proposal are on record but I am pleased that following the evaluation and subsequent discussions, the three Police and Crime Commissioners have ended up in agreement with a shared view that this contract does not deliver what we need.

“However, we do still have to save money. Strengthening the ways in which we collaborate with Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire is a crucial element of our on-going investment in all our police services.

“I now look forward to working with my fellow commissioners to develop new and innovative ways in which we can progress our collaborative approach.”

The force’s Chief Constable Alf Hitchcock said: “As an Alliance we have been working together to explore a range of options for making savings at a time when all three forces are facing significant financial challenges.

“Along with my Chief Constable colleagues in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire and the three commissioners, we are continuing to explore other opportunities, whilst in Bedfordshire we are using the Option 10 and Lean processes to achieve savings in-house and protect front line policing.”

Kim Challis, chief executive of G4S Government and outsourcing solutions, said: “We have put forward a compelling proposition to the police forces of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire which would have guaranteed them savings of over £100 million over the next ten years, allowing them to meet the financial challenge of the Comprehensive Spending Review without compromising on efficiency or public safety.

“Our proposition was to operate back office services at the volume and scale required to deliver significant savings to forces, enabling them to concentrate their resources on frontline roles: it was never about replacing police officers. This has already proved to be the case in Lincolnshire, where we have a successful partnership which, in less than a year, has seen us deliver savings in running costs of around 16%.

…

Jennifer Cockerell
Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Find this story at 30 January 2013

© independent.co.uk

Jantje Beton zet de sponsorovereenkomst met beveiligingsbedrijf G4S Cash Solutions Nederland stop. Dit omdat het hoofdkantoor van het bedrijf G4S in de media werd beschuldigd van betrokkenheid bij de beveiliging van Israëlische gevangenissen waar Palestijnse politieke gevangenen onterecht vast zouden zitten. Dat meldde Jantje Beton.

De partijen besloten na goed overleg dat het „onwenselijk” was om te blijven samenwerken.

…

ma 24 dec 2012, 16:09

Find this story at 24 December 2012

© 1996-2012 Telegraaf Media Nederland | Landelijke Media B.V., Amsterdam.

MPs say decision is ‘unbelievable’ and they should be banned after London 2012 fiasco
G4S failed to recruit enough staff and more than 10,000 troops had to be drafted in at the last minute
Bosses say decision proves Government recognises they can ‘still win business’

Bungling Olympic security firm G4S is set to be offered another gold-plated Government contract despite its failure to provide enough staff for London 2012.

The company, which MPs want blacklisted from taxpayer-funded deals because the Army had to rescue it this summer, has now been shortlisted to help in several call centres.

G4S has been picked by the Department for Work and Pensions above 16 other firms and now looks likely to help advise the public on benefits.

Scandal: G4S’s mishandling of its Olympic security contract led to the military being called in, but it has now been shortlisted for another taxpayer-funded deal

Its inability to cope with an Olympics security contract meant that 18,000 troops and 12,000 police were drafted in to form the ‘ring of steel’ around venues that G4S had promised, causing national outrage.

G4S signed a £284million deal to provide 10,400 Games security guards, but just 16 days before the opening ceremony it admitted it had only fulfilled 83 per cent of contracted shifts.

Laughing: G4S boss Nick Buckles managed to keep his £5.3m a year job despite the embarrassing problems this summer

Politicians have today vented their fury at the news.

Shadow sports minister Clive Efford said: ‘This is unbelievable after the way they let down the country.’

Tory MP Patrick Mercer and former Army officer added: ‘I would be deeply concerned about further taxpayers’ money being spent on the firm that caused such chaos.’

But despite their catastrophic failings this summer G4S, which offers a wide range of services, not just security, said they could do the job.

Sean Williams, managing director of its employment support services arm, said the decision showed it could ‘still win business’.

‘We’ve done a massive amount of work for the Government over the past few years and we hope the Government recognises that,’ he added.

G4S look set to run call centres linked to the Coalition’s roll out of its Universal credits system.

The six main benefits will be rolled into one over the next five years and G4S staff could help answer calls from the public.

A DWP spokesperson said: ‘Framework agreements with six suppliers will allow DWP to procure contact centre requirements over the next four years, if needed.

‘DWP’s own call centres remain the primary point of contact for claimants and there is no guaranteed work for any suppliers on the Framework.’

Changes: British soldiers were denied holiday and brought back from warzones to fill in for G4S

G4S SIGNS UP NEW DIRECTORS TO SURE UP BUSINESS

G4S announced the appointment of three new directors today as the security group looks to move on following its Olympics Games contract fiasco.

ITV chief executive Adam Crozier and Paul Spence, who has served on Capgemini’s management committee, will join the G4S board next month, while Tim Weller, chief financial officer of Petrofac, will start in April.

The non-executive appointments replace Bo Lerenius and Paul Condon, who will retire from the company’s board in June following nine years service.

Shares in the FTSE 100 Index group were 3 per cent higher today.

The head of the bungling security firm kept his job despite an independent review finding the company guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract.

…

By Martin Robinson

PUBLISHED: 13:31 GMT, 18 December 2012 | UPDATED: 17:49 GMT, 18 December 2012

Find this story at 18 December 2012

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Student campaigners created stickers imitating G4S’ logo to raise awareness on campus. (Photo courtesey of Palestine Committee at the University of Oslo)

In a major success for the campaign against Israeli prison contractor G4S, the University of Oslo has announced that it will terminate its contract with the company in July 2013.

G4S is a private security company that has a contract to provide equipment and services to Israeli prisons at which Palestinian political prisoners, including child prisoners, are detained and mistreated. G4S also provides equipment and services to checkpoints, illegal settlements and businesses in settlements. The Israeli governmentrecently confirmed that G4S also provides equipment to Israel’s illegal apartheid wall.

Student activists with the Palestine Committee at the University of Oslo began campaigning in August for the university to not renew its contract with G4S, which has been providing security services on campus since 2010. Campaigners plastered the campus with “Boycott G4S” stickers that imitated real G4S stickers and the student parliament voted to support the campaign. Students have also held demonstrations and other actions on campus.

The university had the option to extend the contract for another year beyond its original expiry date of March 2013 but has now negotiated a termination date of 1 July 2013. The University of Oslo does not want to “support companies that operate in an ethical grey area” and new ethical procurement guidelines will be developed to prevent any future contracts with companies involved in human rights abuses, university director Ole Petter Ottersen has said.

In November, a petition signed by 21 organizations including trade unions, political parties and nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International was sent to G4S Norway. The signatories stated: ”G4S must immediately withdraw from all activities on occupied Palestinian land and halt all deliveries to Israeli prisons in which Palestinian prisoners are imprisoned in violation of the Geneva conventions.”

There are campaigns against G4S in several other European countries including Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Belgium and several public bodies, nongovernmental organizations and private companies have already been succesfully persuaded to cut their ties to the company.
Continued deception

While attempting to defend its support for Israeli violations of international law to Norwegian media outlets, G4S repeated earlier claims that it intends to pull out of several contracts to provide equipment to Israeli settlements and checkpoints by 2015, creating the false impression that it is ending all support for Israeli violations of international law.

Yet if G4S is serious about ending its complicity, why doesn’t it end all involvement in settlements immediately? The comapny has so far not announced any plans to end its provision of security services to private businesses in illegal Israeli settlements.

Most importantly, G4S continues to omit any mention of its role in prisons inside Israelin its public communications in response to campaigns, making clear its intent to continue its role in the Israeli prison system, underlining the need for continued campaigning.

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Michael Deas at Electronic Intifada

Find this story at 11 December 2012

G4S will face its “next big test” of government support as early as next month after it was stripped of a key prison contract in the wake of the company’s Olympics security shambles.
FTSE 100 security group is waiting to hear whether it will be reappointed on a contract to provide electronic tagging of offenders. MPs stopped short of calling for the resignation of chief executive Nick Buckles after the Olympics fiasco.

The FTSE 100 security group is waiting to hear whether it will be reappointed on a contract to provide electronic tagging of offenders services across England and Wales, worth £50m of annual revenue to the company.

G4S and Serco gained an extension to an existing contract in 2009, which is due to expire in March 2013. It is understood that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is considering bids for the next phase of the contract with an announcement expected next month.

Under the existing contract G4S and Serco manage the entire process including the technology, tagging, and monitoring of offenders, in two regions each. Under the next phase, the contract will not be split into regions but “services”, with one company providing technology across England and Wales and the other providing tagging for example. In September G4S won a contract to provide tagging services in Scotland.

G4S declined to comment on the contract in England and Wales, but David Brockton, analyst at Espirito Santo, said it would be “the next big test”.

The MoJ said on Thursday it would strip G4S of its contract to manage HMP Wolds in East Yorkshire when its contract expires in July 2013, with management reverting to the public sector.
Related Articles
Olympics security firm G4S loses contract to run Wolds prison 08 Nov 2012
G4S rebounds after Olympics fiasco 06 Nov 2012
Olympics fiasco: G4S to be frozen out in future 22 Jul 2012
Political risks are getting too hot for private companies 08 Nov 2012.

…

By Angela Monaghan

7:30AM GMT 11 Nov 2012

Find this story at 11 November 2012

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2012

Another shambles as security giant leaves asylum seeker living in squalor

An asylum seeker with a five-month-old baby claims she was placed in a property by the private contractor G4S that was infested with cockroaches and slugs. The woman, who was trafficked to the UK and sold into prostitution before seeking asylum, claims she and her baby were left in the house for weeks before the local council intervened to ensure they were rehoused.

Leeds City Council contacted G4S, and their property sub-contractors Cascade, earlier this week after their inspectors found the property was a “Category 1 Hazard” and unfit for human habitation in its current condition. G4S holds contracts to supply accommodation to asylum contracts across much of England as part of the UK Border Agency’s COMPASS project.

The woman, known as Angela, says she was “dumped” at the property after she refused to accept an alternative place offered to her on the basis that the filth, mould and damp there would pose a health risk to her child.

She made repeated complaints to both G4S and Cascade and was told by the firms that they had carried out their own inspections and were satisfied the accommodations was “decent”.

“One of the people said to me when I rang ‘slugs are not harmful, even if your baby eats one of them’” she told The Independent.

Angela, who was forced into prostitution after being trafficked to the UK in 2000, was initially housed in a “nice” one-bed flat by UKBA after seeking refuge from her handlers.

But when her son was born she was moved to an area contracted to G4S and sub-contracted to property firm Cascade. “When I came here I said ‘this house doesn’t look safe for me and my child to live in’, there were cockroaches and slugs,” Angela recalls. “They took me to another property and that was absolutely disgusting, worse than this one. The kitchen smells of wee, the whole place, words cannot describe I was crying, I was screaming”.

…

Charlotte Philby
Friday, 14 December 2012

Find This story at 14 December 2012

© independent.co.uk

Companies making use of offshore secrecy include firm that supplied surveillance software used by repressive regimes.

A number of so-called nominee directors of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have connections to military or intelligence activities, an investigation has revealed.

In the past, the British arms giant BAE was the most notorious user of offshore secrecy. The Guardian in 2003 revealed the firm had set up a pair of covert BVI entities.

The undeclared subsidiaries were used to distribute hundreds of millions of pounds in secret payments to get overseas arms contracts.

Today the investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Guardian uncovers the identities of other offshore operators.

Louthean Nelson owns the Gamma Group, a controversial computer surveillance firm employing ex-military personnel. It sells bugging technology to Middle East and south-east Asian governments.

Nelson owns a BVI offshore arm, Gamma Group International Ltd.

Gamma’s spyware, which can be used against dissidents, has turned up in the hands of both Egyptian and Bahraini state security police, although Nelson’s representative claims this happened inadvertently.

He initially denied to us that Nelson was linked to Gamma, and denied that Nelson owned the anonymous BVI affiliate.

Martin Muench, who has a 15 per cent share in the company’s German subsidiary, said he was the group’s sole press spokesman, and told us: “Louthean Nelson is not associated with any company by the name of Gamma Group International Ltd. If by chance you are referring to any other Gamma company, then the explanation is the same for each and every one of them.”

After he was confronted with evidence obtained by the ICIJ/Guardian investigation, Muench changed his position. He told us: “You are absolutely right, apparently there is a Gamma Group International Ltd.”

He added: “So in effect I was wrong – sorry. However I did not say that Louthean Nelson was not associated with any Gamma company, only the one that I thought did not exist.”

Nelson set up his BVI offshoot in 2007, using an agency, BizCorp Management Pte, located in Singapore. His spokesman claimed the BVI company was not involved in sales of Gamma’s “Finfisher” spyware. But he refused to disclose the entity’s purpose.

Earlier this year, computer researchers in California told the New York Times they had discovered Finfisher being run from servers in Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Mongolia and a government ministry in Turkmenistan. The spying software was previously proved to have infected the computers of political activists in Bahrain, which Louthean Nelson visited in June 2006.

The Finfisher progamme is marketed as a technique for so-called “IT intrusion”. The code disguises itself as a software update or an email attachment, which the target victim is unaware will transmit back all his or her transactions and keystrokes.

Gamma calls itself “a government contractor to state intelligence and law enforcement agencies for … high-quality surveillance vans” and telephone tapping of all kinds.

Activists’ investigations into Finfisher originally began in March 2011, after protesters who broke into Egypt’s state security headquarters discovered documents showing the bugging system was being marketed to the then president Hosni Mubarak’s regime, at a price of $353,000.

Muench said demonstration copies of the Finfisher software must have been “stolen”. He refused to identify Gamma’s customers.

Nelson’s father, Bill Nelson, is described as the CEO of the UK Gamma, which sells a range of covert surveillance equipment from a modern industrial estate outside Andover in Hampshire, near the family home in the village of Winterbourne Earls.

In September this year, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, called for an EU-wide ban on the export of such surveillance software to totalitarian states. “These regimes should not get the technical instruments to spy on their own citizens,” Westerwelle said.

The UK has now agreed that future Finfisher exports from Andover to questionable regimes will need government permission.

Other types of anonymous offshore user we have identified in this area include a south London private detective, Gerry Moore, who operated Swiss bank accounts. He did not respond to invitations to comment.

Another private intelligence agency, Ciex, was used as a postbox by the financier Julian Askin to set up a covert entity registered in the Cook Islands, called Pastech. He too did not respond to invitations to comment.

An ex-CIA officer and a South African mercenary soldier, John Walbridge and Mauritz Le Roux, used London agents to set up a series of BVI-registered companies in 2005, after obtaining bodyguarding contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Le Roux told us one of his reasons was to accommodate “local partnerships” in foreign countries. Walbridge did not respond.

A former BAE software engineer from Hull, John Cunningham, says he set up his own offshore BVI company in the hope of selling helicopter drones for purely civilian use.

Now based in Thailand, he previously designed military avionics for Britain’s Hawk and Typhoon war planes.

He told us: “That account was set up by my ‘friend’ in Indonesia who does aerial mapping with small UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. He was going to pay me a commission through that account … However, this was my first attempt to work in Asia and as I have found, money tends to be not forthcoming. I have never used that account.”
The military and intelligence register

Gerry Moore

Company: GM Property Developments, LHM Property Holdings

Story: South London private detective sets up BVI companies with Swiss bank accounts

Details: Moore founded “Thames Investigation Services”, later “Thames Associates”, in Blackheath, south London. He opened a Swiss bank account with UBS Basel in 1998. In 2007, he sought to open another account with Credit Suisse, Zurich, for his newly-registered BVI entity GM Property Developments. He sought to register a second offshore company, LHM Property Holdings, using his wife Linda’s initials.

Intermediary: Netincorp. BVI (Damien Fong)

Comment: No response. Thames Associates website taken down after Guardian approaches.

John Walbridge and Mauritz Le Roux

Companies: Overseas Security & Strategic Information Ltd, Remington Resources (Walbridge), Safenet UXO, Sparenberg, Gladeaway, Maplethorpe, Hawksbourne (Le Roux)

Story: Former CIA officer and South African ex-mercenary provide guards in Iraq and Afghanistan

Details: John H Walbridge Jr says he served with US special forces in Vietnam and then with the CIA in Brazil. His Miami-based private military company, OSSI Inc teamed up with South African ex-soldier and Executive Outcomes mercenary Mauritz Le Roux to win contracts in Kabul in 2005. Walbridge set up his 2 BVI entities with his wife Cassandra via a London agency in June and August 2005, and Le Roux incorporated 5 parallel BVI companies.

Intermediary: Alpha Offshore, London

Comment: Le Roux told us some of his offshore entities were kept available “in case we need to start up operations in a country where we would need to have local partnerships”. His joint venture with OSSI was based offshore in Dubai, he said, but used BVI entities ” to operate within a legal framework under British law, rather than the legal framework of the UAE”. Walbridge did not respond to invitations to comment.

Julian Askin

Company: Pastech

Story: Businessman used private intelligence agency to set up covert offshore entity in the Cook Islands

Details: Askin was a British football pools entrepreneur. He alleged Afrikaner conspiracies against him in South Africa, when his Tollgate transport group there collapsed. The apartheid regime failed to have him extradited, alleging fraud. He hired the Ciex agency to report on ABSA, the South African bank which foreclosed on him. Ciex was founded by ex-MI6 senior officer Michael Oatley along with ex-MI6 officer Hamilton Macmillan. In May 2000, they were used to help set up Pastech for their client in the obscure Pacific offshore location of Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, with anonymous nominee directors and shareholders. Askin now lives in Semer, Suffolk.

Intermediary: Ciex, Buckingham Gate, London

Comment: He did not respond to invitations to comment.

Louthean Nelson

Company: Gamma Group International

Story: Gamma sells Finfisher round the world, spying software which infects a target’s computer.

Details: Nelson set up a UK company in 2007 on an Andover industrial estate, to make and sell Finfisher – a so-called Trojan which can remotely spy on a victim’s computer, by pretending to be a routine software update. He set up a parallel, more covert company with a similar name, registered in the BVI, via an agency in Singapore, using his father’s address at Winterbourne Earls, near Andover. He also sells to the Middle East via premises in Beirut. He ran into controversy last year when secret police in Egypt and Bahrain were alleged to have obtained Finfisher, which he denies knowingly supplying to them.

Intermediary: Bizcorp Management Pte Ltd, Singapore

Comment: His spokesman declines to say what was the purpose of the group’s BVI entity.

John Cunningham

Company: Aurilla International

Story: Military avionics software engineer from Hull with separate UK company, launches civilian venture in Indonesia

Details: Cunningham set up a BVI entity in 2007. His small UK company, On-Target Software Solutions Ltd has worked on “black boxes” for BAE Hawk and Typhoon warplanes, and does foreign consultancy. He also has interests in Thailand in a drone helicopter control system.

Intermediary: Allen & Bryans tax consultants, Singapore

Comment: Cunningham says the offshore account was never activated. “I actually make systems for civilian small UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). I have never sold to the military. That account was set up by my ‘friend’ in Indonesia who does aerial mapping with small UAVs. He was going to pay me a commission through that account”.

By David Leigh, Harold Frayman and James Ball November 28, 2012, 2:15 pm

Find This story at 28 November 2012

Copyright © 2012. The Center for Public Integrity®. All Rights Reserved. Read our privacy policy and the terms under which this service is provided to you.

Companies making use of offshore secrecy include firm that supplied surveillance software used by repressive regimes

Bahraini protesters flee teargas. Activists’ computers in the country were infected with Finfisher spying software. Photograph: Mohammed al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images

A number of nominee directors of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have connections to military or intelligence activities, an investigation has revealed.

In the past, the British arms giant BAE was the most notorious user of offshore secrecy. The Guardian in 2003 revealed the firm had set up a pair of covert BVI entities. The undeclared subsidiaries were used to distribute hundreds of millions of pounds in secret payments to get overseas arms contracts.

Today the investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the Guardian uncovers the identities of other offshore operators.

Louthean Nelson owns the Gamma Group, a controversial computer surveillance firm employing ex-military personnel. It sells bugging technology to Middle East and south-east Asian governments. Nelson owns a BVI offshore arm, Gamma Group International Ltd.

Gamma’s spyware, which can be used against dissidents, has turned up in the hands of Egyptian and Bahraini state security police, although Nelson’s representative claims this happened inadvertently. He initially denied to us that Nelson was linked to Gamma, and denied that Nelson owned the anonymous BVI affiliate. Martin Muench, who has a 15% share in the company’s German subsidiary, said he was the group’s sole press spokesman, and told us: “Louthean Nelson is not associated with any company by the name of Gamma Group International Ltd. If by chance you are referring to any other Gamma company, then the explanation is the same for each and every one of them.”

After he was confronted with evidence obtained by the Guardian/ICIJ investigation, Muench changed his position. He told us: “You are absolutely right, apparently there is a Gamma Group International Ltd. So in effect I was wrong – sorry. However I did not say that Louthean Nelson was not associated with any Gamma company, only the one that I thought did not exist.”

Nelson set up his BVI offshoot in 2007, using an agency, BizCorp Management Pte, located in Singapore. His spokesman claimed the BVI company was not involved in sales of Gamma’s Finfisher spyware. But he refused to disclose the entity’s purpose.

Earlier this year, computer researchers in California told the New York Times they had discovered Finfisher being run from servers in Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Mongolia and a government ministry in Turkmenistan. The spying software was previously proved to have infected the computers of political activists in Bahrain, which Nelson visited in June 2006.

The Finfisher programme is marketed as a technique for so-called “IT intrusion”. The code disguises itself as a software update or an email attachment, which the target victim is unaware will transmit back all his or her transactions and keystrokes. Gamma calls itself “a government contractor to state intelligence and law enforcement agencies for … high-quality surveillance vans” and telephone tapping of all kinds.

Activists’ investigations into Finfisher began in March 2011, after protesters who broke into Egypt’s state security headquarters discovered documents showing the bugging system was being marketed to the then president Hosni Mubarak’s regime, at a price of $353,000.

Muench said demonstration copies of the software must have been stolen. He refused to identify Gamma’s customers.

Nelson’s father, Bill Nelson, is described as the CEO of the UK Gamma, which sells a range of covert surveillance equipment from a modern industrial estate outside Andover, Hampshire, near the family home in the village of Winterbourne Earls, Wiltshire.

In September, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, called for an EU-wide ban on the export of such surveillance software to totalitarian states. “These regimes should not get the technical instruments to spy on their own citizens,” he said. The UK has now agreed that future Finfisher exports from Andover to questionable regimes will need government permission.

Other types of anonymous offshore user we have identified in this area include a south London private detective, Gerry Moore, who operated Swiss bank accounts. He did not respond to invitations to comment.

Another private intelligence agency, Ciex, was used as a postbox by the financier Julian Askin to set up a covert entity registered in the Cook Islands, called Pastech. He too did not respond to invitations to comment.

An ex-CIA officer and a South African mercenary soldier, John Walbridge and Mauritz Le Roux, used London agents to set up a series of BVI-registered companies in 2005, after obtaining bodyguarding contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Le Roux told us one of his reasons was to accommodate “local partnerships” in foreign countries. Walbridge did not respond.

A former BAE software engineer from Hull, John Cunningham, says he set up his own offshore BVI company in the hope of selling helicopter drones for purely civilian use. Now based in Thailand, he previously designed military avionics for Britain’s Hawk and Typhoon war planes. He told us: “That account was set up by my ‘friend’ in Indonesia who does aerial mapping with small UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. He was going to pay me a commission through that account … However, this was my first attempt to work in Asia and as I have found, money tends to be not forthcoming. I have never used that account.”

The military and intelligence register
Gerry Moore

Company: GM Property Developments, LHM Property Holdings Story: south London private detective sets up BVI companies with Swiss bank accounts Details: Moore founded “Thames Investigation Services”, later “Thames Associates”, in Blackheath, south London. He opened a Swiss bank account with UBS Basel in 1998. In 2007, he sought to open another account with Credit Suisse, Zurich, for his newly registered BVI entity GM Property Developments. He sought to register a second offshore company, LHM Property Holdings, using his wife Linda’s initials.

Intermediary: Netincorp. BVI (Damien Fong)

Comment: No response. Thames Associates website taken down after Guardian approaches.

John Walbridge and Mauritz le Roux

Companies: Overseas Security & Strategic Information Ltd, Remington Resources (Walbridge), Safenet UXO, Sparenberg, Gladeaway, Maplethorpe, Hawksbourne (Le Roux)

Story: former CIA officer and South African ex-mercenary provide guards in Iraq and Afghanistan Details: John H Walbridge Jr says he served with US special forces in Vietnam and then with the CIA in Brazil. His Miami-based private military company OSSI Inc teamed up with the South African ex-soldier and Executive Outcomes mercenary Mauritz le Roux to win contracts in Kabul in 2005. Walbridge set up his two BVI entities with his wife, Cassandra, via a London agency in June and August 2005, and Le Roux incorporated five parallel BVI companies.

Intermediary: Alpha Offshore, London Comment: Le Roux told us some of his offshore entities were kept available “in case we need to start up operations in a country where we would need to have local partnerships”. His joint venture with OSSI was based offshore in Dubai, he said, but used BVI entities “to operate within a legal framework under British law, rather than the legal framework of the UAE”. Walbridge did not respond to invitations to comment.

Julian Askin

Company: Pastech Story: exiled businessman used a private intelligence agency to set up covert offshore entity in the Cook Islands Details: Askin was a British football pools entrepreneur. He alleged Afrikaner conspiracies against him in South Africa, when his Tollgate transport group there collapsed. The apartheid regime failed to have him extradited, alleging fraud. He hired the Ciex agency to report on ABSA, the South African bank which foreclosed on him. Ciex was founded by the ex-MI6 senior officer Michael Oatley along with ex-MI6 officer Hamilton Macmillan. In May 2000, they were used to help set up Pastech for their client in the obscure Pacific offshore location of Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, with anonymous nominee directors and shareholders. Askin now lives in Semer, Suffolk.

Intermediary: Ciex, Buckingham Gate, London Comment: he did not respond to invitations to comment.

Louthean Nelson

Company: Gamma Group International Story: Gamma sells Finfisher around the world, spying software which infects a target’s computer.

Details: Nelson set up a UK company in 2007 on an Andover industrial estate to make and sell Finfisher – a so-called Trojan which can remotely spy on a victim’s computer by pretending to be a routine software update. He set up a parallel, more covert company with a similar name, registered in the BVI, via an agency in Singapore, using his father’s address at Winterbourne Earls, near Andover. He also sells to the Middle East via premises in Beirut. He ran into controversy last year when secret police in Egypt and Bahrain were alleged to have obtained Finfisher, which he denies knowingly supplying to them.

Intermediary: Bizcorp Management Pte Ltd, Singapore Comment: his spokesman declines to say what was the purpose of the group’s BVI entity.

John Cunningham

Company: Aurilla International Story: military avionics software engineer from Hull with separate UK company launches civilian venture in Indonesia Details: Cunningham set up a BVI entity in 2007. His small UK company, On-Target Software Solutions Ltd, has worked on “black boxes” for BAE Hawk and Typhoon war planes, and does foreign consultancy. He also has interests in Thailand in a drone helicopter control system.

…

David Leigh
The Guardian, Wednesday 28 November 2012 19.35 GMT

Find this story at 28 November 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Disclosure in first report of prisons inspector on UK Border Agency’s ‘family-friendly’ Cedars unit near Gatwick

G4S staff manage security and the facilities at Cedars, the UK Border Agency’s holding centre near Gatwick for families facing deportation. Photograph: David Jones/PA

A pregnant woman in a wheelchair was tipped up and had her feet held by staff from G4S, the firm behind the Olympics security shambles, as she was forcibly removed from the country. The disclosure comes in the first report into conditions at a new centre designed to hold families facing deportation from the UK.

Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, and his team made an unannounced inspection of Cedars, the UK Border Agency’s new pre-departure accommodation near Gatwick, where families are housed for the final 72 hours before they are removed from the UK.

Nick Clegg promised in the Liberal Democrats’ 2010 manifesto that he would put an end to the detention of children. Replacing the controversial Yarl’s Wood detention centre with Cedars was at the heart of the coalition’s family-friendly removal policy.

Hardwick said the unit is “an exceptional facility [which] has many practices which should be replicated in other areas of detention.”

“It is to the considerable credit of staff at Cedars that children held were, in general, happily occupied and that parents were able to concentrate on communication with solicitors, family and friends,” he added.

But inspectors also said unacceptable force was used when a pregnant woman was given a wheelchair in the departures area. When she resisted “substantial force” was used by G4S staff and the wheelchair “was tipped up with staff holding her feet”.

“At one point she slipped down from the chair and the risk of injury to the unborn child was significant,” the report said. “There is no safe way to use force against a pregnant woman, and to initiate it for the purpose of removal is to take an unacceptable risk.”

Inspectors also reported that although most work from family escort staff was commendable, they “observed unprofessional behaviour by an officer on a different escort in the hearing of children”.

The report also said that although “considerable efforts were made to avoid force at the point of removal, it had been used against six of the 39 families going through Cedars”.

Judith Dennis, policy officer at the Refugee Council, said: “The numbers of children in detention are increasing. The government acknowledged then how harmful this practice is for children, so why are they still continuing to do it?

…

Amelia Hill
The Guardian, Tuesday 23 October 2012

Find this story at 23 October 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

After CIA director Leon Panetta revealed last summer that private contractor Blackwater was part of a covert CIA hit squad, tasked with summary killings and assassinations of al-Qaeda operatives, the CIA vowed to sever its contacts with the trigger-happy security firm. But did it do so? It doesn’t look like it. Last November, it became known that the company, (recently renamed Xe Services) remains part of a covert CIA program in Pakistan that includes planned assassinations and kidnappings of Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects. More recently, it was revealed that two of the seven Americans who died in the December 30 bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, were actually Blackwater employees subcontracted by the CIA.

The question is, why were these two Blackwater employees present during a sensitive security debriefing at the base, involving the entire leadership of the CIA team there, and even the Agency’s second-in-command in Afghanistan? As Nation magazine’s Jeremy Scahill correctly points out, “the fact that two Blackwater personnel were in such close proximity to the […] suicide bomber shows how deeply enmeshed Blackwater remains in sensitive CIA operations, including those CIA officials claim it no longer participates in, such as intelligence gathering and briefings with valuable agency assets”.

…

January 8, 2010 by intelNews 11 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 8 Januari 2010 

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.

Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater security firm (recently renamed Xe), at the company’s Virginia offices. Photograph by Nigel Parry.

I put myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky missions,” says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. “But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.” Prince—the founder of Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military contractor—is royally steamed. He wants to vent. And he wants you to hear him vent.

Erik Prince has an image problem—the kind that’s impervious to a Madison Avenue makeover. The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, and a former navy seal, he has had the distinction of being vilified recently both in life and in art. In Washington, Prince has become a scapegoat for some of the Bush administration’s misadventures in Iraq—though Blackwater’s own deeds have also come in for withering criticism. Congressmen and lawyers, human-rights groups and pundits, have described Prince as a war profiteer, one who has assembled a rogue fighting force capable of toppling governments. His employees have been repeatedly accused of using excessive, even deadly force in Iraq; many Iraqis, in fact, have died during encounters with Blackwater. And in November, as a North Carolina grand jury was considering a raft of charges against the company, as a half-dozen civil suits were brewing in Virginia, and as five former Blackwater staffers were preparing for trial for their roles in the deaths of 17 Iraqis, The New York Times reported in a page-one story that Prince’s firm, in the aftermath of the tragedy, had sought to bribe Iraqi officials for their compliance, charges which Prince calls “lies … undocumented, unsubstantiated [and] anonymous.” (So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in suicide bombings in Pakistan.)

In Hollywood, meanwhile, a town that loves nothing so much as a good villain, Prince, with his blond crop and Daniel Craig mien, has become the screenwriters’ darling. In the film State of Play, a Blackwater clone (PointCorp.) uses its network of mercenaries for illegal surveillance and murder. On the Fox series 24, Jon Voight has played Jonas Hodges, a thinly veiled version of Prince, whose company (Starkwood) helps an African warlord procure nerve gas for use against U.S. targets.

But the truth about Prince may be orders of magnitude stranger than fiction. For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life. Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into “denied areas”—places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence. (Full disclosure: In the 1990s, before becoming a journalist for CBS and then NBC News, I was a C.I.A. attorney. My contract was not renewed, under contentious circumstances.)

But Prince, with a new administration in power, and foes closing in, is finally coming in from the cold. This past fall, though he infrequently grants interviews, he decided it was time to tell his side of the story—to respond to the array of accusations, to reveal exactly what he has been doing in the shadows of the U.S. government, and to present his rationale. He also hoped to convey why he’s going to walk away from it all.

To that end, he invited Vanity Fair to his training camp in North Carolina, to his Virginia offices, and to his Afghan outposts. It seemed like a propitious time to tag along.
Split Personality

Erik Prince can be a difficult man to wrap your mind around—an amalgam of contradictory caricatures. He has been branded a “Christian supremacist” who sanctions the murder of Iraqi civilians, yet he has built mosques at his overseas bases and supports a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan. He and his family have long backed conservative causes, funded right-wing political candidates, and befriended evangelicals, but he calls himself a libertarian and is a practicing Roman Catholic. Sometimes considered arrogant and reclusive—Howard Hughes without the O.C.D.—he nonetheless enters competitions that combine mountain-biking, beach running, ocean kayaking, and rappelling.

The common denominator is a relentless intensity that seems to have no Off switch. Seated in the back of a Boeing 777 en route to Afghanistan, Prince leafs through Defense News while the film Taken beams from the in-flight entertainment system. In the movie, Liam Neeson plays a retired C.I.A. officer who mounts an aggressive rescue effort after his daughter is kidnapped in Paris. Neeson’s character warns his daughter’s captors:

If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills … skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you [don’t] let my daughter go now … I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Prince comments, “I used that movie as a teaching tool for my girls.” (The father of seven, Prince remarried after his first wife died of cancer in 2003.) “I wanted them to understand the dangers out there. And I wanted them to know how I would respond.”

You can’t escape the impression that Prince sees himself as somehow destined, his mission anointed. It comes out even in the most personal of stories. During the flight, he tells of being in Kabul in September 2008 and receiving a two a.m. call from his wife, Joanna. Prince’s son Charlie, one year old at the time, had fallen into the family swimming pool. Charlie’s brother Christian, then 12, pulled him out of the water, purple and motionless, and successfully performed CPR. Christian and three siblings, it turns out, had recently received Red Cross certification at the Blackwater training camp.

But there are intimations of a higher power at work as the story continues. Desperate to get home, Prince scrapped one itinerary, which called for a stay-over at the Marriott in Islamabad, and found a direct flight. That night, at the time Prince would have been checking in, terrorists struck the hotel with a truck bomb, killing more than 50. Prince says simply, “Christian saved Charlie’s life and Charlie saved mine.” At times, his sense of his own place in history can border on the evangelical. When pressed about suggestions that he’s a mercenary—a term he loathes—he rattles off the names of other freelance military figures, even citing Lafayette, the colonists’ ally during the Revolutionary War.

Prince’s default mode is one of readiness. He is clenched-jawed and tightly wound. He cannot stand down. Waiting in the security line at Dulles airport just hours before, Prince had delivered a little homily: “Every time an American goes through security, I want them to pause for a moment and think, What is my government doing to inconvenience the terrorists? Rendition teams, Predator drones, assassination squads. That’s all part of it.”

Such brazenness is not lost on a listener, nor is the fact that Prince himself is quite familiar with some of these tactics. In fact Prince, like other contractors, has drawn fire for running a company that some call a “body shop”—many of its staffers having departed military or intelligence posts to take similar jobs at much higher salaries, paid mainly by Uncle Sam. And to get those jobs done—protecting, defending, and killing, if required—Prince has had to employ the services of some decorated vets as well as some ruthless types, snipers and spies among them.

Erik Prince flies coach internationally. It’s not just economical (“Why should I pay for business? Fly coach, you arrive at the same time”) but also less likely to draw undue attention. He considers himself a marked man. Prince describes the diplomats and dignitaries Blackwater protects as “Al Jazeera–worthy,” meaning that, in his view, “bin Laden and his acolytes would love to kill them in a spectacular fashion and have it broadcast on televisions worldwide.”

Stepping off the plane at Kabul’s international airport, Prince is treated as if he, too, were Al Jazeera–worthy. He is immediately shuffled into a waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves, and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s tactical-operations center.

Prince in the tactical-operations center at a company base in Kabul. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Once in the van, Prince’s team gives him a security briefing. Using satellite photos of the area, they review the route to Blackwater’s compound and point out where weapons and ammunition are stored inside the vehicle. The men warn him that in the event that they are incapacitated or killed in an ambush Prince should assume control of the weapons and push the red button near the emergency brake, which will send out a silent alarm and call in reinforcements.
Black Hawks and Zeppelins

Blackwater’s origins were humble, bordering on the primordial. The company took form in the dismal peat bogs of Moyock, North Carolina—not exactly a hotbed of the defense-contracting world.

In 1995, Prince’s father, Edgar, died of a heart attack (the Evangelical James C. Dobson, founder of the socially conservative Focus on the Family, delivered the eulogy at the funeral). Edgar Prince left behind a vibrant auto-parts manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, with 4,500 employees and a line of products ranging from a lighted sun visor to a programmable garage-door opener. At the time, 25-year-old Erik was serving as a navy seal (he saw service in Haiti, the Middle East, and Bosnia), and neither he nor his sisters were in a position to take over the business. They sold Prince Automotive for $1.35 billion.

Erik Prince and some of his navy friends, it so happens, had been kicking around the idea of opening a full-service training compound to replace the usual patchwork of such facilities. In 1996, Prince took an honorable discharge and began buying up land in North Carolina. “The idea was not to be a defense contractor per se,” Prince says, touring the grounds of what looks and feels like a Disneyland for alpha males. “I just wanted a first-rate training facility for law enforcement, the military, and, in particular, the special-operations community.”

Business was slow. The navy seals came early—January 1998—but they didn’t come often, and by the time the Blackwater Lodge and Training Center officially opened, that May, Prince’s friends and advisers thought he was throwing good money after bad. “A lot of people said, ‘This is a rich kid’s hunting lodge,’” Prince explains. “They could not figure out what I was doing.”

Blackwater outpost near the Pakistan border, used for training Afghan police. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Today, the site is the flagship for a network of facilities that train some 30,000 attendees a year. Prince, who owns an unmanned, zeppelin-esque airship and spent $45 million to build a fleet of customized, bomb-proof armored personnel carriers, often commutes to the lodge by air, piloting a Cessna Caravan from his home in Virginia. The training center has a private landing strip. Its hangars shelter a petting zoo of aircraft: Bell 412 helicopters (used to tail or shuttle diplomats in Iraq), Black Hawk helicopters (currently being modified to accommodate the security requests of a Gulf State client), a Dash 8 airplane (the type that ferries troops in Afghanistan). Amid the 52 firing ranges are virtual villages designed for addressing every conceivable real-world threat: small town squares, littered with blown-up cars, are situated near railway crossings and maritime mock-ups. At one junction, swat teams fire handguns, sniper rifles, and shotguns; at another, police officers tear around the world’s longest tactical-driving track, dodging simulated roadside bombs.

In keeping with the company’s original name, the central complex, constructed of stone, glass, concrete, and logs, actually resembles a lodge, an REI store on steroids. Here and there are distinctive touches, such as door handles crafted from imitation gun barrels. Where other companies might have Us Weekly lying about the lobby, Blackwater has counterterror magazines with cover stories such as “How to Destroy Al Qaeda.”

In fact, it was al-Qaeda that put Blackwater on the map. In the aftermath of the group’s October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in Yemen, the navy turned to Prince, among others, for help in re-training its sailors to fend off attackers at close range. (To date, the company says, it has put some 125,000 navy personnel through its programs.) In addition to providing a cash infusion, the navy contract helped Blackwater build a database of retired military men—many of them special-forces veterans—who could be called upon to serve as instructors.

When al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. mainland on 9/11, Prince says, he was struck with the urge to either re-enlist or join the C.I.A. He says he actually applied. “I was rejected,” he admits, grinning at the irony of courting the very agency that would later woo him. “They said I didn’t have enough hard skills, enough time in the field.” Undeterred, he decided to turn his Rolodex into a roll call for what would in essence become a private army.

After the terror attacks, Prince’s company toiled, even reveled, in relative obscurity, taking on assignments in Afghanistan and, after the U.S. invasion, in Iraq. Then came March 31, 2004. That was the day insurgents ambushed four of its employees in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. The men were shot, their bodies set on fire by a mob. The charred, hacked-up remains of two of them were left hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates.

“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Prince recalls. “I had been in the military, and no one under my command had ever died. At Blackwater, we had never even had a firearms training accident. Now all of a sudden four of my guys aren’t just killed, but desecrated.” Three months later an edict from coalition authorities in Baghdad declared private contractors immune from Iraqi law.

Subsequently, the contractors’ families sued Blackwater, contending the company had failed to protect their loved ones. Blackwater countersued the families for breaching contracts that forbid the men or their estates from filing such lawsuits; the company also claimed that, because it operates as an extension of the military, it cannot be held responsible for deaths in a war zone. (After five years, the case remains unresolved.) In 2007, a congressional investigation into the incident concluded that the employees had been sent into an insurgent stronghold “without sufficient preparation, resources, and support.” Blackwater called the report a “one-sided” version of a “tragic incident.”

After Fallujah, Blackwater became a household name. Its primary mission in Iraq had been to protect American dignitaries, and it did so, in part, by projecting an image of invincibility, sending heavily armed men in armored Suburbans racing through the streets of Baghdad with sirens blaring. The show of swagger and firepower, which alienated both the locals and the U.S. military, helped contribute to the allegations of excessive force. As the war dragged on, charges against the firm mounted. In one case, a contractor shot and killed an Iraqi father of six who was standing along the roadside in Hillah. (Prince later told Congress that the contractor was fired for trying to cover up the incident.) In another, a Blackwater firearms technician was accused of drinking too much at a party in the Green Zone and killing a bodyguard assigned to protect Iraq’s vice president. The technician was fired but not prosecuted and later settled a wrongful-death suit with the man’s family.

Those episodes, however, paled in comparison with the events of September 16, 2007, when a phalanx of Blackwater bodyguards emerged from their four-car convoy at a Baghdad intersection called Nisour Square and opened fire. When the smoke cleared, 17 Iraqi civilians lay dead. After 15 months of investigation, the Justice Department charged six with voluntary manslaughter and other offenses, insisting that the use of force was not only unjustified but unprovoked. One guard pleaded guilty and, in a trial set for February, is expected to testify against the others, all of whom maintain their innocence. The New York Times recently reported that in the wake of the shootings the company’s top executives authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi higher-ups in order to buy their silence—a claim Prince dismisses as “false,” insisting “[there was] zero plan or discussion of bribing any officials.”

Nisour Square had disastrous repercussions for Blackwater. Its role in Iraq was curtailed, its revenue dropping 40 percent. Today, Prince claims, he is shelling out $2 million a month in legal fees to cope with a spate of civil lawsuits as well as what he calls a “giant proctological exam” by nearly a dozen federal agencies. “We used to spend money on R&D to develop better capabilities to serve the U.S. government,” says Prince. “Now we pay lawyers.”

Does he ever. In North Carolina, a federal grand jury is investigating various allegations, including the illegal transport of assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in dog-food sacks. (Blackwater denied this, but confirmed hiding weapons on pallets of dog food to protect against theft by “corrupt foreign customs agents.”) In Virginia, two ex-employees have filed affidavits claiming that Prince and Blackwater may have murdered or ordered the murder of people suspected of cooperating with U.S. authorities investigating the company—charges which Blackwater has characterized as “scandalous and baseless.” One of the men also asserted in filings that company employees ran a sex and wife-swapping ring, allegations which Blackwater has called “anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive.”

Meanwhile, last February, Prince mounted an expensive rebranding campaign. Following the infamous ValuJet crash, in 1996, ValuJet disappeared into AirTran, after a merger, and moved on to a happy new life. Prince, likewise, decided to retire the Blackwater name and replace it with the name Xe, short for Xenon—an inert, non-combustible gas that, in keeping with his political leanings, sits on the far right of the periodic table. Still, Prince and other top company officials continued to use the name Blackwater among themselves. And as events would soon prove, the company’s reputation would remain as combustible as ever.

Prince at a Kandahar airfield. Photograph Adam Ferguson.

Spies and Whispers

Last June, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta met in a closed session with the House and Senate intelligence committees to brief them on a covert-action program, which the agency had long concealed from Congress. Panetta explained that he had learned of the existence of the operation only the day before and had promptly shut it down. The reason, C.I.A. spokesman Paul Gimigliano now explains: “It hadn’t taken any terrorists off the street.” During the meeting, according to two attendees, Panetta named both Erik Prince and Blackwater as key participants in the program. (When asked to verify this account, Gimigliano notes that “Director Panetta treats as confidential discussions with Congress that take place behind closed doors.”) Soon thereafter, Prince says, he began fielding inquisitive calls from people he characterizes as far outside the circle of trust.

It took three weeks for details, however sketchy, to surface. In July, The Wall Street Journal described the program as “an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.” The agency reportedly planned to accomplish this task by dispatching small hit teams overseas. Lawmakers, who couldn’t exactly quibble with the mission’s objective, were in high dudgeon over having been kept in the dark. (Former C.I.A. officials reportedly saw the matter differently, characterizing the program as “more aspirational than operational” and implying that it had never progressed far enough to justify briefing the Hill.)

On August 20, the gloves came off. The New York Times published a story headlined cia sought blackwater’s help to kill jihadists. The Washington Post concurred: cia hired firm for assassin program. Prince confesses to feeling betrayed. “I don’t understand how a program this sensitive leaks,” he says. “And to ‘out’ me on top of it?” The next day, the Times went further, revealing Blackwater’s role in the use of aerial drones to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders: “At hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan … the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

E
rik Prince, almost overnight, had undergone a second rebranding of sorts, this one not of his own making. The war profiteer had become a merchant of death, with a license to kill on the ground and in the air. “I’m an easy target,” he says. “I’m from a Republican family and I own this company outright. Our competitors have nameless, faceless management teams.”

Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there is a double standard at play. “The left complained about how [C.I.A. operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.” As in the Plame case, though, the leaks prompted C.I.A. attorneys to send a referral to the Justice Department, requesting that a criminal investigation be undertaken to identify those responsible for providing highly classified information to the media.

By focusing so intently on Blackwater, Congress and the press overlooked the elephant in the room. Prince wasn’t merely a contractor; he was, insiders say, a full-blown asset. Three sources with direct knowledge of the relationship say that the C.I.A.’s National Resources Division recruited Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special skills or unusual access to targets of interest. As assets go, Prince would have been quite a catch. He had more cash, transport, matériel, and personnel at his disposal than almost anyone Langley would have run in its 62-year history.

The C.I.A. won’t comment further on such assertions, but Prince himself is slightly more forthcoming. “I was looking at creating a small, focused capability,” he says, “just like Donovan did years ago”—the reference being to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who, in World War II, served as the head of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the modern C.I.A. (Prince’s youngest son, Charles Donovan—the one who fell into the pool—is named after Wild Bill.) Two sources familiar with the arrangement say that Prince’s handlers obtained provisional operational approval from senior management to recruit Prince and later generated a “201 file,” which would have put him on the agency’s books as a vetted asset. It’s not at all clear who was running whom, since Prince says that, unlike many other assets, he did much of his work on spec, claiming to have used personal funds to road-test the viability of certain operations. “I grew up around the auto industry,” Prince explains. “Customers would say to my dad, ‘We have this need.’ He would then use his own money to create prototypes to fulfill those needs. He took the ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach.”

According to two sources familiar with his work, Prince was developing unconventional means of penetrating “hard target” countries—where the C.I.A. has great difficulty working either because there are no stations from which to operate or because local intelligence services have the wherewithal to frustrate the agency’s designs. “I made no money whatsoever off this work,” Prince contends. He is unwilling to specify the exact nature of his forays. “I’m painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket.” (His pocket is deep: according to The Wall Street Journal, Blackwater had revenues of more than $600 million in 2008.)

Clutch Cargo

The Afghan countryside, from a speeding perch at 200 knots, whizzes by in a khaki haze. The terrain is rendered all the more nondescript by the fact that Erik Prince is riding less than 200 feet above it. The back of the airplane, a small, Spanish-built eads casa C-212, is open, revealing Prince in silhouette against a blue sky. Wearing Oakleys, tactical pants, and a white polo shirt, he looks strikingly boyish.

A Blackwater aircraft en route to drop supplies to U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan in September. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

As the crew chief initiates a countdown sequence, Prince adjusts his harness and moves into position. When the “go” order comes, a young G.I. beside him cuts a tether, and Prince pushes a pallet out the tail chute. Black parachutes deploy and the aircraft lunges forward from the sudden weight differential. The cargo—provisions and munitions—drops inside the perimeter of a forward operating base (fob) belonging to an elite Special Forces squad.

Five days a week, Blackwater’s aviation arm—with its unabashedly 60s-spook name, Presidential Airways—flies low-altitude sorties to some of the most remote outposts in Afghanistan. Since 2006, Prince’s company has been conscripted to offer this “turnkey” service for U.S. troops, flying thousands of delivery runs. Blackwater also provides security for U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and his staff, and trains narcotics and Afghan special police units.

Once back on terra firma, Prince, a BlackBerry on one hip and a 9-mm. on the other, does a sweep around one of Blackwater’s bases in northeast Afghanistan, pointing out buildings recently hit by mortar fire. As a drone circles overhead, its camera presumably trained on the surroundings, Prince climbs a guard tower and peers down at a spot where two of his contractors were nearly killed last July by an improvised explosive device. “Not counting civilian checkpoints,” he says, “this is the closest base to the [Pakistani] border.” His voice takes on a melodramatic solemnity. “Who else has built a fob along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?” It doesn’t quite have the ring of Lawrence of Arabia’s “To Aqaba!,” but you get the picture.
Going “Low-Pro”

Blackwater has been in Afghanistan since 2002. At the time, the C.I.A.’s executive director, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, responding to his operatives’ complaints of being “worried sick about the Afghans’ coming over the fence or opening the doors,” enlisted the company to offer protection for the agency’s Kabul station. Going “low-pro,” or low-profile, paid off: not a single C.I.A. employee, according to sources close to the company, died in Afghanistan while under Blackwater’s protection. (Talk about a tight-knit bunch. Krongard would later serve as an unpaid adviser to Blackwater’s board, until 2007. And his brother Howard “Cookie” Krongard—the State Department’s inspector general—had to recuse himself from Blackwater-related oversight matters after his brother’s involvement with the company surfaced. Buzzy, in response, stepped down.)

As the agency’s confidence in Blackwater grew, so did the company’s responsibilities, expanding from static protection to mobile security—shadowing agency personnel, ever wary of suicide bombers, ambushes, and roadside devices, as they moved about the country. By 2005, Blackwater, accustomed to guarding C.I.A. personnel, was starting to look a little bit like the C.I.A. itself. Enrique “Ric” Prado joined Blackwater after serving as chief of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). A short time later, Prado’s boss, J. Cofer Black, the head of the CTC, moved over to Blackwater, too. He was followed, in turn, by his superior, Rob Richer, second-in-command of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Of the three, Cofer Black had the outsize reputation. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book Bush at War, on September 13, 2001, Black had promised President Bush that when the C.I.A. was through with al-Qaeda “they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.” According to Woodward, “Black became known in Bush’s inner circle as the ‘flies-on-the-eyeballs guy.’” Richer and Black soon helped start a new company, Total Intelligence Solutions (which collects data to help businesses assess risks overseas), but in 2008 both men left Blackwater, as did company president Gary Jackson this year.

Prince in his Virginia office. His company took in more than $1 billion from government contracts during the George W. Bush era. Photograph by Nigel Parry.

Off and on, Black and Richer’s onetime partner Ric Prado, first with the C.I.A., then as a Blackwater employee, worked quietly with Prince as his vice president of “special programs” to provide the agency with what every intelligence service wants: plausible deniability. Shortly after 9/11, President Bush had issued a “lethal finding,” giving the C.I.A. the go-ahead to kill or capture al-Qaeda members. (Under an executive order issued by President Gerald Ford, it had been illegal since 1976 for U.S. intelligence operatives to conduct assassinations.) As a seasoned case officer, Prado helped implement the order by putting together a small team of “blue-badgers,” as government agents are known. Their job was threefold: find, fix, and finish. Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off. When the time came to train the hit squad, the agency, insiders say, turned to Prince. Wary of attracting undue attention, the team practiced not at the company’s North Carolina compound but at Prince’s own domain, an hour outside Washington, D.C. The property looks like an outpost of the landed gentry, with pastures and horses, but also features less traditional accents, such as an indoor firing range. Once again, Prince has Wild Bill on his mind, observing that “the O.S.S. trained during World War II on a country estate.”

Among the team’s targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al-Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency’s radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The C.I.A. team supposedly went in “dark,” meaning they did not notify their own station—much less the German government—of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down. Another target, the source says, was A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who shared nuclear know-how with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The C.I.A. team supposedly tracked him in Dubai. In both cases, the source insists, the authorities in Washington chose not to pull the trigger. Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged. (Says agency spokesman Gimigliano, “[The] C.I.A. hasn’t discussed—despite some mischaracterizations that have appeared in the public domain—the substance of this effort or earlier ones.”)

The source familiar with the Darkazanli and Khan missions bristles at public comments that current and former C.I.A. officials have made: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”

W
hen Prado left the C.I.A., in 2004, he effectively took the program with him, after a short hiatus. By that point, according to sources familiar with the plan, Prince was already an agency asset, and the pair had begun working to privatize matters by changing the team’s composition from blue-badgers to a combination of “green-badgers” (C.I.A. contractors) and third-country nationals (unaware of the C.I.A. connection). Blackwater officials insist that company resources and manpower were never directly utilized—these were supposedly off-the-books initiatives done on Prince’s own dime, for which he was later reimbursed—and that despite their close ties to the C.I.A. neither Cofer Black nor Rob Richer took part. As Prince puts it, “We were building a unilateral, unattributable capability. If it went bad, we weren’t expecting the chief of station, the ambassador, or anyone to bail us out.” He insists that, had the team deployed, the agency would have had full operational control. Instead, due to what he calls “institutional osteoporosis,” the second iteration of the assassination program lost steam.

Sometime after 2006, the C.I.A. would take another shot at the program, according to an insider who was familiar with the plan. “Everyone found some reason not to participate,” says the insider. “There was a sick-out. People would say to management, ‘I have a family, I have other obligations.’ This is the fucking C.I.A. They were supposed to lead the charge after al-Qaeda and they couldn’t find the people to do it.” Others with knowledge of the program are far more charitable and question why any right-thinking officer would sign up for an assassination program at a time when their colleagues—who had thought they had legal cover to engage in another sensitive effort, the “enhanced interrogations” program at secret C.I.A. sites in foreign countries—were finding themselves in legal limbo.

America and Erik Prince, it seems, have been slow to extract themselves from the assassination business. Beyond the killer drones flown with Blackwater’s help along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (President Obama has reportedly authorized more than three dozen such hits), Prince claims he and a team of foreign nationals helped find and fix a target in October 2008, then left the finishing to others. “In Syria,” he says, “we did the signals intelligence to geo-locate the bad guys in a very denied area.” Subsequently, a U.S. Special Forces team launched a helicopter-borne assault to hunt down al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah. Ghadiyah, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al-Mazidih, was said to have been killed along with six others—though doubts have emerged about whether Ghadiyah was even there that day, as detailed in a recent Vanity Fair Web story by Reese Ehrlich and Peter Coyote.

And up until two months ago—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug—he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their mission: non-disclosable.
Exit Strategy

Flying out of Kabul, Prince does a slow burn, returning to the topic of how exposed he has felt since press accounts revealed his role in the assassination program. The firestorm that began in August has continued to smolder and may indeed have his handlers wondering whether Prince himself is more of a liability than an asset. He says he can’t understand why they would shut down certain high-risk, high-payoff collection efforts against some of America’s most implacable enemies for fear that his involvement could, given the political climate, result in their compromise.

He is incredulous that U.S. officials seem willing, in effect, to cut off their nose to spite their face. “I’ve been overtly and covertly serving America since I started in the armed services,” Prince observes. After 12 years building the company, he says he intends to turn it over to its employees and a board, and exit defense contracting altogether. An internal power struggle is said to be under way among those seeking to define the direction and underlying mission of a post-Prince Blackwater.

He insists, simply, “I’m through.”

In the past, Prince has entertained the idea of building a pre-positioning ship—complete with security personnel, doctors, helicopters, medicine, food, and fuel—and stationing it off the coast of Africa to provide “relief with teeth” to the continent’s trouble spots or to curb piracy off Somalia. At one point, he considered creating a rapidly deployable brigade that could be farmed out, for a fee, to a foreign government.

For the time being, however, Prince contends that his plans are far more modest. “I’m going to teach high school,” he says, straight-faced. “History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.”

Stepping off the plane at Kabul’s international airport, Prince is treated as if he, too, were Al Jazeera–worthy. He is immediately shuffled into a waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves, and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s tactical-operations center.

Prince in the tactical-operations center at a company base in Kabul. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Once in the van, Prince’s team gives him a security briefing. Using satellite photos of the area, they review the route to Blackwater’s compound and point out where weapons and ammunition are stored inside the vehicle. The men warn him that in the event that they are incapacitated or killed in an ambush Prince should assume control of the weapons and push the red button near the emergency brake, which will send out a silent alarm and call in reinforcements.
Black Hawks and Zeppelins

Blackwater’s origins were humble, bordering on the primordial. The company took form in the dismal peat bogs of Moyock, North Carolina—not exactly a hotbed of the defense-contracting world.

In 1995, Prince’s father, Edgar, died of a heart attack (the Evangelical James C. Dobson, founder of the socially conservative Focus on the Family, delivered the eulogy at the funeral). Edgar Prince left behind a vibrant auto-parts manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, with 4,500 employees and a line of products ranging from a lighted sun visor to a programmable garage-door opener. At the time, 25-year-old Erik was serving as a navy seal (he saw service in Haiti, the Middle East, and Bosnia), and neither he nor his sisters were in a position to take over the business. They sold Prince Automotive for $1.35 billion.

Erik Prince and some of his navy friends, it so happens, had been kicking around the idea of opening a full-service training compound to replace the usual patchwork of such facilities. In 1996, Prince took an honorable discharge and began buying up land in North Carolina. “The idea was not to be a defense contractor per se,” Prince says, touring the grounds of what looks and feels like a Disneyland for alpha males. “I just wanted a first-rate training facility for law enforcement, the military, and, in particular, the special-operations community.”

Business was slow. The navy seals came early—January 1998—but they didn’t come often, and by the time the Blackwater Lodge and Training Center officially opened, that May, Prince’s friends and advisers thought he was throwing good money after bad. “A lot of people said, ‘This is a rich kid’s hunting lodge,’” Prince explains. “They could not figure out what I was doing.”

Blackwater outpost near the Pakistan border, used for training Afghan police. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Today, the site is the flagship for a network of facilities that train some 30,000 attendees a year. Prince, who owns an unmanned, zeppelin-esque airship and spent $45 million to build a fleet of customized, bomb-proof armored personnel carriers, often commutes to the lodge by air, piloting a Cessna Caravan from his home in Virginia. The training center has a private landing strip. Its hangars shelter a petting zoo of aircraft: Bell 412 helicopters (used to tail or shuttle diplomats in Iraq), Black Hawk helicopters (currently being modified to accommodate the security requests of a Gulf State client), a Dash 8 airplane (the type that ferries troops in Afghanistan). Amid the 52 firing ranges are virtual villages designed for addressing every conceivable real-world threat: small town squares, littered with blown-up cars, are situated near railway crossings and maritime mock-ups. At one junction, swat teams fire handguns, sniper rifles, and shotguns; at another, police officers tear around the world’s longest tactical-driving track, dodging simulated roadside bombs.

In keeping with the company’s original name, the central complex, constructed of stone, glass, concrete, and logs, actually resembles a lodge, an REI store on steroids. Here and there are distinctive touches, such as door handles crafted from imitation gun barrels. Where other companies might have Us Weekly lying about the lobby, Blackwater has counterterror magazines with cover stories such as “How to Destroy Al Qaeda.”

In fact, it was al-Qaeda that put Blackwater on the map. In the aftermath of the group’s October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in Yemen, the navy turned to Prince, among others, for help in re-training its sailors to fend off attackers at close range. (To date, the company says, it has put some 125,000 navy personnel through its programs.) In addition to providing a cash infusion, the navy contract helped Blackwater build a database of retired military men—many of them special-forces veterans—who could be called upon to serve as instructors.

When al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. mainland on 9/11, Prince says, he was struck with the urge to either re-enlist or join the C.I.A. He says he actually applied. “I was rejected,” he admits, grinning at the irony of courting the very agency that would later woo him. “They said I didn’t have enough hard skills, enough time in the field.” Undeterred, he decided to turn his Rolodex into a roll call for what would in essence become a private army.

After the terror attacks, Prince’s company toiled, even reveled, in relative obscurity, taking on assignments in Afghanistan and, after the U.S. invasion, in Iraq. Then came March 31, 2004. That was the day insurgents ambushed four of its employees in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. The men were shot, their bodies set on fire by a mob. The charred, hacked-up remains of two of them were left hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates.

“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Prince recalls. “I had been in the military, and no one under my command had ever died. At Blackwater, we had never even had a firearms training accident. Now all of a sudden four of my guys aren’t just killed, but desecrated.” Three months later an edict from coalition authorities in Baghdad declared private contractors immune from Iraqi law.

Subsequently, the contractors’ families sued Blackwater, contending the company had failed to protect their loved ones. Blackwater countersued the families for breaching contracts that forbid the men or their estates from filing such lawsuits; the company also claimed that, because it operates as an extension of the military, it cannot be held responsible for deaths in a war zone. (After five years, the case remains unresolved.) In 2007, a congressional investigation into the incident concluded that the employees had been sent into an insurgent stronghold “without sufficient preparation, resources, and support.” Blackwater called the report a “one-sided” version of a “tragic incident.”

After Fallujah, Blackwater became a household name. Its primary mission in Iraq had been to protect American dignitaries, and it did so, in part, by projecting an image of invincibility, sending heavily armed men in armored Suburbans racing through the streets of Baghdad with sirens blaring. The show of swagger and firepower, which alienated both the locals and the U.S. military, helped contribute to the allegations of excessive force. As the war dragged on, charges against the firm mounted. In one case, a contractor shot and killed an Iraqi father of six who was standing along the roadside in Hillah. (Prince later told Congress that the contractor was fired for trying to cover up the incident.) In another, a Blackwater firearms technician was accused of drinking too much at a party in the Green Zone and killing a bodyguard assigned to protect Iraq’s vice president. The technician was fired but not prosecuted and later settled a wrongful-death suit with the man’s family.

Those episodes, however, paled in comparison with the events of September 16, 2007, when a phalanx of Blackwater bodyguards emerged from their four-car convoy at a Baghdad intersection called Nisour Square and opened fire. When the smoke cleared, 17 Iraqi civilians lay dead. After 15 months of investigation, the Justice Department charged six with voluntary manslaughter and other offenses, insisting that the use of force was not only unjustified but unprovoked. One guard pleaded guilty and, in a trial set for February, is expected to testify against the others, all of whom maintain their innocence. The New York Times recently reported that in the wake of the shootings the company’s top executives authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi higher-ups in order to buy their silence—a claim Prince dismisses as “false,” insisting “[there was] zero plan or discussion of bribing any officials.”

Nisour Square had disastrous repercussions for Blackwater. Its role in Iraq was curtailed, its revenue dropping 40 percent. Today, Prince claims, he is shelling out $2 million a month in legal fees to cope with a spate of civil lawsuits as well as what he calls a “giant proctological exam” by nearly a dozen federal agencies. “We used to spend money on R&D to develop better capabilities to serve the U.S. government,” says Prince. “Now we pay lawyers.”

Does he ever. In North Carolina, a federal grand jury is investigating various allegations, including the illegal transport of assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in dog-food sacks. (Blackwater denied this, but confirmed hiding weapons on pallets of dog food to protect against theft by “corrupt foreign customs agents.”) In Virginia, two ex-employees have filed affidavits claiming that Prince and Blackwater may have murdered or ordered the murder of people suspected of cooperating with U.S. authorities investigating the company—charges which Blackwater has characterized as “scandalous and baseless.” One of the men also asserted in filings that company employees ran a sex and wife-swapping ring, allegations which Blackwater has called “anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive.”

Meanwhile, last February, Prince mounted an expensive rebranding campaign. Following the infamous ValuJet crash, in 1996, ValuJet disappeared into AirTran, after a merger, and moved on to a happy new life. Prince, likewise, decided to retire the Blackwater name and replace it with the name Xe, short for Xenon—an inert, non-combustible gas that, in keeping with his political leanings, sits on the far right of the periodic table. Still, Prince and other top company officials continued to use the name Blackwater among themselves. And as events would soon prove, the company’s reputation would remain as combustible as ever.

Prince at a Kandahar airfield. Photograph Adam Ferguson.

Spies and Whispers

Last June, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta met in a closed session with the House and Senate intelligence committees to brief them on a covert-action program, which the agency had long concealed from Congress. Panetta explained that he had learned of the existence of the operation only the day before and had promptly shut it down. The reason, C.I.A. spokesman Paul Gimigliano now explains: “It hadn’t taken any terrorists off the street.” During the meeting, according to two attendees, Panetta named both Erik Prince and Blackwater as key participants in the program. (When asked to verify this account, Gimigliano notes that “Director Panetta treats as confidential discussions with Congress that take place behind closed doors.”) Soon thereafter, Prince says, he began fielding inquisitive calls from people he characterizes as far outside the circle of trust.

It took three weeks for details, however sketchy, to surface. In July, The Wall Street Journal described the program as “an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.” The agency reportedly planned to accomplish this task by dispatching small hit teams overseas. Lawmakers, who couldn’t exactly quibble with the mission’s objective, were in high dudgeon over having been kept in the dark. (Former C.I.A. officials reportedly saw the matter differently, characterizing the program as “more aspirational than operational” and implying that it had never progressed far enough to justify briefing the Hill.)

On August 20, the gloves came off. The New York Times published a story headlined cia sought blackwater’s help to kill jihadists. The Washington Post concurred: cia hired firm for assassin program. Prince confesses to feeling betrayed. “I don’t understand how a program this sensitive leaks,” he says. “And to ‘out’ me on top of it?” The next day, the Times went further, revealing Blackwater’s role in the use of aerial drones to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders: “At hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan … the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

E
rik Prince, almost overnight, had undergone a second rebranding of sorts, this one not of his own making. The war profiteer had become a merchant of death, with a license to kill on the ground and in the air. “I’m an easy target,” he says. “I’m from a Republican family and I own this company outright. Our competitors have nameless, faceless management teams.”

Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there is a double standard at play. “The left complained about how [C.I.A. operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.” As in the Plame case, though, the leaks prompted C.I.A. attorneys to send a referral to the Justice Department, requesting that a criminal investigation be undertaken to identify those responsible for providing highly classified information to the media.

By focusing so intently on Blackwater, Congress and the press overlooked the elephant in the room. Prince wasn’t merely a contractor; he was, insiders say, a full-blown asset. Three sources with direct knowledge of the relationship say that the C.I.A.’s National Resources Division recruited Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special skills or unusual access to targets of interest. As assets go, Prince would have been quite a catch. He had more cash, transport, matériel, and personnel at his disposal than almost anyone Langley would have run in its 62-year history.

The C.I.A. won’t comment further on such assertions, but Prince himself is slightly more forthcoming. “I was looking at creating a small, focused capability,” he says, “just like Donovan did years ago”—the reference being to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who, in World War II, served as the head of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the modern C.I.A. (Prince’s youngest son, Charles Donovan—the one who fell into the pool—is named after Wild Bill.) Two sources familiar with the arrangement say that Prince’s handlers obtained provisional operational approval from senior management to recruit Prince and later generated a “201 file,” which would have put him on the agency’s books as a vetted asset. It’s not at all clear who was running whom, since Prince says that, unlike many other assets, he did much of his work on spec, claiming to have used personal funds to road-test the viability of certain operations. “I grew up around the auto industry,” Prince explains. “Customers would say to my dad, ‘We have this need.’ He would then use his own money to create prototypes to fulfill those needs. He took the ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach.”

According to two sources familiar with his work, Prince was developing unconventional means of penetrating “hard target” countries—where the C.I.A. has great difficulty working either because there are no stations from which to operate or because local intelligence services have the wherewithal to frustrate the agency’s designs. “I made no money whatsoever off this work,” Prince contends. He is unwilling to specify the exact nature of his forays. “I’m painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket.” (His pocket is deep: according to The Wall Street Journal, Blackwater had revenues of more than $600 million in 2008.)

Clutch Cargo

The Afghan countryside, from a speeding perch at 200 knots, whizzes by in a khaki haze. The terrain is rendered all the more nondescript by the fact that Erik Prince is riding less than 200 feet above it. The back of the airplane, a small, Spanish-built eads casa C-212, is open, revealing Prince in silhouette against a blue sky. Wearing Oakleys, tactical pants, and a white polo shirt, he looks strikingly boyish.

A Blackwater aircraft en route to drop supplies to U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan in September. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

As the crew chief initiates a countdown sequence, Prince adjusts his harness and moves into position. When the “go” order comes, a young G.I. beside him cuts a tether, and Prince pushes a pallet out the tail chute. Black parachutes deploy and the aircraft lunges forward from the sudden weight differential. The cargo—provisions and munitions—drops inside the perimeter of a forward operating base (fob) belonging to an elite Special Forces squad.

Five days a week, Blackwater’s aviation arm—with its unabashedly 60s-spook name, Presidential Airways—flies low-altitude sorties to some of the most remote outposts in Afghanistan. Since 2006, Prince’s company has been conscripted to offer this “turnkey” service for U.S. troops, flying thousands of delivery runs. Blackwater also provides security for U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and his staff, and trains narcotics and Afghan special police units.

Once back on terra firma, Prince, a BlackBerry on one hip and a 9-mm. on the other, does a sweep around one of Blackwater’s bases in northeast Afghanistan, pointing out buildings recently hit by mortar fire. As a drone circles overhead, its camera presumably trained on the surroundings, Prince climbs a guard tower and peers down at a spot where two of his contractors were nearly killed last July by an improvised explosive device. “Not counting civilian checkpoints,” he says, “this is the closest base to the [Pakistani] border.” His voice takes on a melodramatic solemnity. “Who else has built a fob along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?” It doesn’t quite have the ring of Lawrence of Arabia’s “To Aqaba!,” but you get the picture.
Going “Low-Pro”

Blackwater has been in Afghanistan since 2002. At the time, the C.I.A.’s executive director, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, responding to his operatives’ complaints of being “worried sick about the Afghans’ coming over the fence or opening the doors,” enlisted the company to offer protection for the agency’s Kabul station. Going “low-pro,” or low-profile, paid off: not a single C.I.A. employee, according to sources close to the company, died in Afghanistan while under Blackwater’s protection. (Talk about a tight-knit bunch. Krongard would later serve as an unpaid adviser to Blackwater’s board, until 2007. And his brother Howard “Cookie” Krongard—the State Department’s inspector general—had to recuse himself from Blackwater-related oversight matters after his brother’s involvement with the company surfaced. Buzzy, in response, stepped down.)

As the agency’s confidence in Blackwater grew, so did the company’s responsibilities, expanding from static protection to mobile security—shadowing agency personnel, ever wary of suicide bombers, ambushes, and roadside devices, as they moved about the country. By 2005, Blackwater, accustomed to guarding C.I.A. personnel, was starting to look a little bit like the C.I.A. itself. Enrique “Ric” Prado joined Blackwater after serving as chief of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). A short time later, Prado’s boss, J. Cofer Black, the head of the CTC, moved over to Blackwater, too. He was followed, in turn, by his superior, Rob Richer, second-in-command of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Of the three, Cofer Black had the outsize reputation. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book Bush at War, on September 13, 2001, Black had promised President Bush that when the C.I.A. was through with al-Qaeda “they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.” According to Woodward, “Black became known in Bush’s inner circle as the ‘flies-on-the-eyeballs guy.’” Richer and Black soon helped start a new company, Total Intelligence Solutions (which collects data to help businesses assess risks overseas), but in 2008 both men left Blackwater, as did company president Gary Jackson this year.

Prince in his Virginia office. His company took in more than $1 billion from government contracts during the George W. Bush era. Photograph by Nigel Parry.

Off and on, Black and Richer’s onetime partner Ric Prado, first with the C.I.A., then as a Blackwater employee, worked quietly with Prince as his vice president of “special programs” to provide the agency with what every intelligence service wants: plausible deniability. Shortly after 9/11, President Bush had issued a “lethal finding,” giving the C.I.A. the go-ahead to kill or capture al-Qaeda members. (Under an executive order issued by President Gerald Ford, it had been illegal since 1976 for U.S. intelligence operatives to conduct assassinations.) As a seasoned case officer, Prado helped implement the order by putting together a small team of “blue-badgers,” as government agents are known. Their job was threefold: find, fix, and finish. Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off. When the time came to train the hit squad, the agency, insiders say, turned to Prince. Wary of attracting undue attention, the team practiced not at the company’s North Carolina compound but at Prince’s own domain, an hour outside Washington, D.C. The property looks like an outpost of the landed gentry, with pastures and horses, but also features less traditional accents, such as an indoor firing range. Once again, Prince has Wild Bill on his mind, observing that “the O.S.S. trained during World War II on a country estate.”

Among the team’s targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al-Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency’s radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The C.I.A. team supposedly went in “dark,” meaning they did not notify their own station—much less the German government—of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down. Another target, the source says, was A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who shared nuclear know-how with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The C.I.A. team supposedly tracked him in Dubai. In both cases, the source insists, the authorities in Washington chose not to pull the trigger. Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged. (Says agency spokesman Gimigliano, “[The] C.I.A. hasn’t discussed—despite some mischaracterizations that have appeared in the public domain—the substance of this effort or earlier ones.”)

The source familiar with the Darkazanli and Khan missions bristles at public comments that current and former C.I.A. officials have made: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”

W
hen Prado left the C.I.A., in 2004, he effectively took the program with him, after a short hiatus. By that point, according to sources familiar with the plan, Prince was already an agency asset, and the pair had begun working to privatize matters by changing the team’s composition from blue-badgers to a combination of “green-badgers” (C.I.A. contractors) and third-country nationals (unaware of the C.I.A. connection). Blackwater officials insist that company resources and manpower were never directly utilized—these were supposedly off-the-books initiatives done on Prince’s own dime, for which he was later reimbursed—and that despite their close ties to the C.I.A. neither Cofer Black nor Rob Richer took part. As Prince puts it, “We were building a unilateral, unattributable capability. If it went bad, we weren’t expecting the chief of station, the ambassador, or anyone to bail us out.” He insists that, had the team deployed, the agency would have had full operational control. Instead, due to what he calls “institutional osteoporosis,” the second iteration of the assassination program lost steam.

Sometime after 2006, the C.I.A. would take another shot at the program, according to an insider who was familiar with the plan. “Everyone found some reason not to participate,” says the insider. “There was a sick-out. People would say to management, ‘I have a family, I have other obligations.’ This is the fucking C.I.A. They were supposed to lead the charge after al-Qaeda and they couldn’t find the people to do it.” Others with knowledge of the program are far more charitable and question why any right-thinking officer would sign up for an assassination program at a time when their colleagues—who had thought they had legal cover to engage in another sensitive effort, the “enhanced interrogations” program at secret C.I.A. sites in foreign countries—were finding themselves in legal limbo.

America and Erik Prince, it seems, have been slow to extract themselves from the assassination business. Beyond the killer drones flown with Blackwater’s help along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (President Obama has reportedly authorized more than three dozen such hits), Prince claims he and a team of foreign nationals helped find and fix a target in October 2008, then left the finishing to others. “In Syria,” he says, “we did the signals intelligence to geo-locate the bad guys in a very denied area.” Subsequently, a U.S. Special Forces team launched a helicopter-borne assault to hunt down al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah. Ghadiyah, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al-Mazidih, was said to have been killed along with six others—though doubts have emerged about whether Ghadiyah was even there that day, as detailed in a recent Vanity Fair Web story by Reese Ehrlich and Peter Coyote.

And up until two months ago—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug—he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their mission: non-disclosable.
Exit Strategy

…

By Adam Ciralsky

Find this story at Januari 2010

Vanity Fair © Condé Nast Digital. Your California Privacy Rights.

In the eyes of many, the United States-based security firm formerly known as Blackwater is synonymous with ‘scandal’. Founded in 1997 by self-confessed CIA agent Erik Prince, the company was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in non-competitive contract bids by the Bush administration, to provide wide-ranging security services in Iraq. But the company’s ‘shoot-first-ask-questions-later’ attitude resulted in numerous bloody incidents in the country, including the 2007 Nisur Square massacre, in which at least 14 Iraqi civilians were killed by trigger-happy Blackwater guards. In 2009, a frustrated US Department of State refused to renew the company’s governmental contracts, after which Blackwater terminated its partnership with the US government (or did it?). What is perhaps less known about the company, now renamed to Academi LLC, is that it has for years been the subject of several investigations by US authorities for a host of criminal offences, ranging from selling secret plans to foreign governments to illicit weapons trafficking. According to court documents unsealed yesterday at the United States District Court in New Bern, North Carolina, Academi has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle some of these charges. Under the agreement, the company has owned up to 17 different criminal violations with which it was charged after a five-year multi-agency federal investigation led by the Department of Justice. The charges include possessing unregistered fully automatic weapons in the US, illegally exporting encrypted satellite-telephone hardware to Sudan, training foreign nationals without a license, giving classified documents to foreign governments, as well as selling weapons to the Kingdom of Jordan without US government authorization and then lying about it to US federal firearms officials. It is worth noting that yesterday’s settlement was in addition to a separate $42 million settlement agreed in 2010 with the US Department of State. The latter had charged Blackwater/Academi with violating the US Arms Export Control and the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations Acts. Interestingly, the attorney for the US government, Thomas G. Walker, chose his words carefully yesterday in speaking publicly about the case. He said that the proceedings concluded “a lengthy and complex investigation into a company which has provided valuable services to the United States government, but which, at times, and in many ways, failed to comply with important laws and regulations concerning how we, as a country, interact with our international allies and adversaries”. But some of the investigators who actually worked on the ground in the case were far less diplomatic in their court testimony. Jeannine A. Hammett, a Special Agent and Criminal Investigator with the Internal Revenue Service, accused Blackwater/Academi’s senior leadership of breaking the trust of the American public by committing crimes “to line their own pockets”.

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August 8, 2012 by intelNews 1 Comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 8 August 2012

Ex-employees Tell ABC News the Firm Used Dog Food Sacks to Smuggle Unauthorized Weapons to Iraq

A federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food, ABCNews.com has learned.

Under State Department rules, Blackwater is prohibited from using certain assault weapons and silencers in Iraq because they are considered “offensive” weapons inappropriate for Blackwater’s role as a private security firm protecting US diplomatic missions.

“The only reason you need a silencer is if you want to assassinate someone,” said former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou, an ABC News consultant.

Six Blackwater employees are under investigation by another federal grand jury, in Washington, D.C., in connection with the shooting deaths of at least 17 civilians in September 2007 at a Baghdad traffic circle. Prosecutors are expected to return indictments in the next few weeks, according to people familiar with the case.

The investigation of the alleged dog food smuggling scheme began last year after two Blackwater employees were caught trying to sell stolen weapons in North Carolina. The two, Kenneth Cashwell and William “Max” Grumiaux pleaded guilty in February and became government witnesses, according to court documents.

Two other former employees tell ABCNews.com they also witnessed the dog food smuggling operation. They say the weapons were actually hidden inside large sacks of dog food, packaged at company headquarters in North Carolina and sent to Iraq for the company’s 20 bomb-sniffing dogs.

Larger items, including M-4 assault weapons, were secreted on shipping pallets surrounded by stacks of dog food bags, the former employees said. The entire pallet would be wrapped in cellophane shrink wrap, the former employees said, making it less likely US Customs inspectors would look too closely.

In a statement, Blackwater did not address directly the allegations involving silencers but says “all firearms shipped to Iraq by Blackwater were given proper US government license.” The statement denied Blackwater owned or possessed any M4 weapons in Iraq.

US Army officials told ABCNews.com earlier this year, at least one Blackwater M4 weapon was discovered during a raid on an suspected insurgent location in Iraq.

Last year, a US Department of Commerce inspector at JFK airport in New York discovered a two-way radio hidden in a dog food sack being shipped by Blackwater to Iraq, according to people familiar with the incident.

Blackwater says the radio did not need a license and was hidden among the dog food sacks, not inside the dog food.

The company says it is a common practice “to prevent corrupt foreign customs agents and shipping workers from stealing the valuables.”

In addition to the grand jury investigation, Blackwater sources say the company is facing a multi-million dollar fine for some 900 instances in which it violated State Department licensing requirements for the export of certain weapons and technical know-how.

Blackwater acknowledged in its statements “numerous mistakes in complex and demanding area of export compliance,” saying most of the violations were failures of paperwork not “nefarious smuggling.”

Of the 900 cases, about 100 of them have been referred to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution, according to lawyers briefed on the case.

…

By BRIAN ROSS and JASON RYAN

November 14, 2008—

Find this story at 14 November 2008

Copyright © 2012 ABC News Internet Ventures

Last week I gave a live television interview to the main news program of RT, about the company formerly known as Blackwater. As intelNews reported on August 8, the private military outfit, which rebranded itself to Academi in late 2011, agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle no fewer than 17 violations of United States federal laws, including several charges of illegal weapons exports. This was hardly the first time that the scandal-prone company made headlines for breaking the law. Last week’s settlement followed a separate $42 million settlement agreed in 2010 with the US Department of State. The latter had charged Blackwater/Academi with violating the US Arms Export Control and International Trafficking in Arms Regulations Acts. Those familiar with the murky world of private military contractors are aware that these companies are often hired by governments precisely because they are willing and able to break the law in pursuit of tactical directives. In fact, the main difference between Blackwater/Academi and other private military contractors is not its disregard for legal boundaries, but the lack of discretion with which it keeps breaking the law. This is precisely the reason why it regularly finds itself charged with a host of different criminal violations.

Now, there is little doubt that the services Blackwater/Academi provided to the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan far exceeded things such as VIP protection or tactical training. In one typical case, the company was found to have illegally shipped to Iraq weapon silencers, hidden among sacks of dog food intended for its K-9 unit. As I told RT news, one does not have to be an expert on the operational side of intelligence to realize that there is really only one thing you need gun silencers for —and it’s not VIP protection.

But if Blackwater/Academi resorted to breaking the law in order to assist the US government’s military or intelligence objectives in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, why was it taken to court by that very government? The answer, as I told RT, has to do with the fact that governments —including America’s— are not monolithic. They are complex amalgamations of actors, often with competing interests, who fight for bureaucratic dominance as often as they collaborate in pursuit of common goals.

Blackwater/Academi is a case in point: the company has for over a decade had a very cozy relationship with certain elements of the US government apparatus, notably the CIA, the George W. Bush White House, and some offices in the State Department. But other governmental interest groups, including parts of the Pentagon, the Internal Revenue Service, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have been skeptical about Blackwater/Academi’s operations since even before 9/11. It is not surprising, therefore, that government agencies like the IRS or the FBI examine Blackwater/Academi’s role with reference to their own, narrow administrative goals, while disregarding the broader strategic benefits that others in the US government may attribute to these very operations. It is plausible, for instance, that by presenting the King of Jordan with a birthday present consisting of a case of state-of-the-art fully automatic weapons, Blackwater/Academi was acting as a conduit for the US Department of State or the CIA. The FBI, which has always considered Blackwater/Academi as a band of mercenary cowboys, could care less about the relationship between the Royal House of Jordan and the State Department. It therefore takes the company to court, and as in fact it did, for illegally exporting weapons to a foreign country.

…

August 13, 2012 by intelNews

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 13 August 2012