See all Judge Judith Hayes posts.
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See Erik Prince, Master of War.Who exactly was keeping America safe during the Bush years? And who was buying loyalty with US taxpayer dollars? It looks like Blackwater (now known as Xe) was using tax dollars to pay foreigners and former CIA agents for their loyalty--to Blackwater.
How Many Moral Waivers Has Blackwater Issued?
The Washington Note
Oct 11 2007
(Note the date. It seems that our calamities are often predicted; it's just that no one acts on the warnings.)
A while back, I got interested in the fact that the Pentagon has issued more than 125,000 "moral waivers" to recruits in order to continue to meet manpower requirements. While issuing these waivers for various kinds of felonies -- including theft and assault -- the military under its highly righteous most senior general, Joint Chiefs Commander Pete Pace, continued to legally harrass and expel discovered homosexuals in its ranks.
This raises the questions about norms in private military contractors -- like Blackwater.
I don't know the answers but it would be interesting to know if Blackwater has issued any moral waivers to its recruits -- or whether it has any moral benchmarks at all. Someone really ought to ask...
Former DoD official and defense policy staffer at CSIS and the Council on Foreign Relations John Hillen used to focus on the "norms gap" between society and the Department of Defense -- and he'd side with the anti-gay bias of the Pentagon in general. But Blackwater USA and other private contractors raise a new question not about the gap between their outfits and American society -- but about the norms gap between a Blackwater operation and the military.
My New America Foundation colleague and friend Jim Pinkerton -- who used to hang out with the current President when "W" was a lost puppy looking for purpose under the political direction of Lee Atwater -- has written a great essay on Blackwater -- with particular focus on the cockiness of the firm's CEO, Erik Prince...
Blackwater tapped foreigners on secret CIA program
By ADAM GOLDMAN and PAMELA HESS, Associated Press
Aug 30, 2009
WASHINGTON – When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA.
With Blackwater's lucrative government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots around the world, company officials offered the services of foreigners supposedly skilled at tracking terrorists in lawless regions and countries where the CIA had no working relationships with the government.
Blackwater told the CIA that it "could put people on the ground to provide the surveillance and support — all of the things you need to conduct an operation," a former senior CIA official familiar with the secret program told The Associated Press.
But the CIA's use of the private contractor as part of its now-abandoned plan to dispatch death squads skirted concerns now re-emerging with recent disclosures about Blackwater's role.
The former senior CIA official said he had doubts during his tenure about whether Blackwater's foreign recruits had mastered the necessary skills to pull off such a high-stakes operation. Blackwater's later hiring of several senior CIA officials who were involved in or aware of the secret program, including one of the men who ran the operation, showed the blurred lines of using a private contractor for such a highly classified and dangerous project...
