By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal judge on Thursday threw out charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 people in a 2007 shooting in downtown Baghdad.

In a 90-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled that the government violated the guards’ rights by using their immunized statements to help the investigation. The ruling comes after a lengthy set of hearings that examined whether federal prosecutors and agents improperly used such statements that the guards gave to State Department investigators following the shooting on Sept. 16, 2007.

“The explanations offered by prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants’ compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility,” Urbina wrote.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said, “We’re obviously disappointed by the decision. We’re still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options.”

The five guards — Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball — are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations in the killing of 14 civilians and the wounding of 20 others.

The Justice Department alleges that the guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square while in a convoy. One guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded guilty and was expected to testify against the others. Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, had a contract to provide security for the State Department in Iraq.

Mark Hulkhower, the defense lawyer representing Slough, said he was obviously pleased. “We are very gratified by the judge’s thoughtful and reasoned opinion and we are very happy that Mr. Slough can start the New Year without this cloud hanging over his head.”

Read original article here.

Combat Role Would Be Against U.S. Law

This article was written by MATTHEW COLE, RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS at ABC News.

The CIA and the military special forces have quietly expanded the role of private contractors, including Blackwater, to include their involvement in raids and secret paramilitary operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, four current and former U.S. military and intelligence officers tell ABC News.

American law specifically prohibits the use of private soldiers or mercenaries in combat, according to Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

“The United States Congress has never approved the use of private contractors for combat operations,” Turley told ABC News in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.

CIA officials acknowledge that two private contractors were killed in Afghanistan in 2003 when they and other members of a CIA paramilitary team were in a firefight with Taliban fighters on a remote road.

In another case, in 2006, 12 Blackwater “tactical action operatives” were recruited for a secret raid into Pakistan by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, according to a military intelligence planner. The target of the planned raid, code-named Vibrant Fury, was a suspected al Qaeda training camp, according to the planner, who said he did not know the outcome of the mission.

In Iraq, a high-ranking U.S. Army officer told ABC News, Blackwater personnel have been used in military operations that “are supposed to include U.S. soldiers but often end up with the Blackwater people on their own.”

The New York Times reported Friday that such raids against Iraqi insurgents were conducted “almost nightly” between 2004 and 2006, and it quoted several Blackwater guards as saying “the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred.”

“A Very Serious Offense to Our Constitution”

The Washington Post today quoted former government officials as saying Blackwater’s actions included “active participation in raids overseen by CIA or special forces personnel.”

American officials reject the term “mercenary,” but others say the term applies if the role of private American contractors has been so significantly expanded beyond their previously known assignments in security and logistics.

“If contractors have been sent on true combat missions, missions where they are supposed to kill and engage the enemy, then they are by every definition of the term mercenaries,” said Professor Turley.

“To have such a force without allowing Congress to approve it would be considered a very serious offense to our Constitution,” said Turley.

A CIA spokesperson, George Little, acknowledged the use of contractors “in roles that complement and enhance the skills of our workforce, just as American law permits.”

Little said “it’s the way things actually work in the real world,” and he stressed that CIA officials always retained “decision-making authority and bear responsibility for results.”

“CIA does not use Blackwater to perform our core missions of collecting intelligence, performing analysis or conducting covert operations,” said Little.

A U.S. government official told ABC News the private contractors “don’t kick down doors” but only fulfill a “security role” on certain CIA missions.

The new CIA director under the Obama administration, Leon Panetta, has continued a “rigorous look” at the use of contractors and a “thorough review” of Blackwater’s contracts.

Said Little, “Earlier this year, Director Panetta ordered the end of one Blackwater contract and the transition of those activities to government personnel. In addition, he ordered a review of all Blackwater contracts.”

“At this time,” said Little, “Blackwater is not involved in any CIA operations in other than a security or support role.”

“A Wild and Unsubstantiated Allegation”

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the allegation that private contractors were used in combat situations by the American military was “bogus, nothing more than a wild and unsubstantiated allegation.” He said there was no evidence that the military had ever contracted with Blackwater for such missions.

Morrell did not respond to specific questions about the top-secret Vibrant Fury operation in 2006 that allegedly recruited Blackwater operatives.

“If you have a team of private contractors who are going into Pakistan with the approval of the United States government to engage in combat, then you have very serious international and domestic problems,” said Professor Turley.

Blackwater’s “Select” Program

Blackwater, now re-named Xe, has a “select” program within its operation that helped to staff some of the expanded and more difficult roles in the two war zones, according to U.S. military officials, former U.S. intelligence officers and a person with knowledge of Blackwater operations.

A 2007 on-line recruitment advertisement for the Blackwater USA select program described the openings as positions in a “Mobile Security Contract in support of a U.S. government agency.”

Candidates were required to be able to maintain a Top Secret clearance and have “one year of experience in Iraq, Afghanistan or other High Threat Environment.”

A U.S. Army officer who ran human intelligence collections activities in Afghanistan in 2003, Tony Shaffer, says he never worked directly with Blackwater personnel but frequently encountered them in secret operations run by the military and the CIA.

“I actually met with the CIA and Blackwater operatives who were working together, totally hand in glove, to conduct operational planning and support of their objectives, which are paramilitary operations along the border,” said Shaffer, then a Major but now a Lieutenant Colonel who teaches at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies.

“The idea was to bring to bear additional resources for specific special operations missions,” he said. “The purpose for that, in my judgment, may have been to avoid some level of oversight.”

In the case of Operation Vibrant Fury, military personnel say the decision to request Blackwater personnel came after a request for military “tier one” operatives was denied.

A spokesperson for Blackwater said the company was unaware of any operation with the code name Vibrant Fury.

The mission was to raid, destroy and kill al Qaeda members at a camp in Pakistan where guards for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri were believed to be training, according to the military planner.

A second person briefed on the operation confirmed Blackwater agreed to provide operatives for the military special forces.

The commanders of the elite special forces, then called Task Force 373, decided to solicit help from Blackwater, said the planner, after military superiors said the men could not be spared from Iraq.

The request to Blackwater was met on Oct. 31, 2006, according to the planner.

Firm’s personnel were drawn into operations on ad-hoc basis

This article was written by R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick at The Washington Post on 11 Dec 2009.

Highly trained personnel employed with the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide sometimes operated side by side with CIA field officers in Iraq and Afghanistan as the agency undertook missions to kill or capture members of insurgent groups in those countries, according to a former government official and a source familiar with the operations.

The actions taken by the private personnel went beyond the protective role specified in a classified Blackwater contract with the CIA and included active participation in raids overseen by CIA or special forces personnel, these sources said. They emphasized that roles and responsibilities often are blurred or altered in a battlefield setting, and that Blackwater personnel were drawn into the operations on an ad-hoc basis because they were present and had the necessary skills.

Still, the involvement of Blackwater’s officers in raids is likely to raise new questions about the degree to which deadly actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were outsourced to contract personnel who operated without direct contractual authority or without the kind of oversight and accountability applied to CIA and military personnel.

CIA Director Leon Panetta earlier this year ordered the agency to terminate many of its contracts with Blackwater, but CIA officials said Thursday that Panetta has ordered a special internal review of the agency’s contracts with the company to ensure that its work is strictly security-related — a review that may wind up shining a new light on intelligence practices during the Bush administration.

The agency still relies on the firm, now named Xe Services, to provide security for agency employees and assets. Panetta told Congress in the summer that he had shut down a CIA assassination program that employed Blackwater personnel in a supporting role. The CIA has publicly stated that the program, which dated from President George W. Bush’s first term in office, was never fully implemented and that no one was killed. A House committee is investigating that program.

The CIA declined to comment yesterday on specific intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Xe Services, said Blackwater was never under contract to participate in covert raids with CIA or Special Forces troops “in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.” Corallo added: “Any allegation to the contrary by any news organization would be false.” The New York Times published on its Web site Thursday evening a story saying Blackwater guards had participated in clandestine CIA raids.

Several former CIA counterterrorism officials who were based in Washington at the time said CIA headquarters was not aware of such actions and did not authorize them. They said they knew of occasions when Blackwater personnel took part in firefights while protecting CIA officers undertaking lethal raids, but the officials characterized these actions as defensive, not offensive.

A former intelligence officer who managed covert teams overseas said contractors would have been authorized to use deadly force if fired upon. “That was clearly understood and part of the rules,” the official said.

The source familiar with the operations said that they had been reviewed and approved in advance by CIA lawyers, and that agency personnel typically played the dominant role in their planning. Some requests from the field for lethal raids were rejected at CIA headquarters because they posed excessive risks to the U.S. teams or to civilians, or because intelligence experts merely wanted to keep watching the prospective targets.

But when the time came to carry out those raids — often against figures who were thought to be al-Qaeda leaders — some CIA field officers assigned responsibilities among the available personnel without regard to which ones were contractors or federal employees, according to the source, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss classified operations.

That meant Blackwater personnel helped to kill some of the targets and did not merely defend the CIA officers taking part in the raids, the source said.

A former agency officer experienced in covert operations in the Middle East said it was common knowledge that military contractors would sometimes participate in missions alongside Special Forces and paramilitary teams. He said the arrangements were made locally and were “practical,” because the active-duty forces and contractors typically shared the same training and were used to working together.

For government employees, working with contractors offered ways to circumvent red tape, said the retired officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There was no bench strength with either the CIA or Special Forces, so sometimes they would turn to contractors, who often had lots of the same skills,” the former operative said.

Robert Baer, a former CIA officer, said such informal arrangements would undoubtedly lead to problems because they short-circuit normal chains of command. “Once you cede your authorities, people are no longer restrained by regulations and federal law,” Baer said. “There have been abuses; there’s no question about it.”

The CIA’s new review of its Blackwater dealings is only the latest in a series of investigations focused on the firm. Five Blackwater guards are on trial in federal court in the District on manslaughter and other charges in connection with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007. The guards’ attorneys contend that the government does not have jurisdiction to bring such charges and that the guards’ conduct was justified. The Justice Department said in November that it would drop charges against one of the guards. A sixth guard pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and is expected to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

The company is also named in a separate civil case in federal court in Virginia in which 70 Iraqi civilians are alleging that the company engaged in “lawless behavior” and that it covered up killings and hired mercenaries. Attorneys for the company have denied the allegations and sought to dismiss the lawsuit.

In an interview with the magazine Vanity Fair this month, Blackwater’s founder and principal owner, Erik Prince — whose conservative leanings are widely known — depicted those who revealed the company’s links to the CIA as motivated in part by politics. “People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it,” he said.

This article was written by Nathan Hodge at Wired’s Danger Room.

After a string of disasters involving their guns-for-hire, the State Department went looking for some folks who could help supervise their protective details in Iraq, Afghanistan and Afghanistan. Somehow, after eight months, Foggy Bottom has only managed to hire a grand total of four of these new security agents.

Back in February, the State Department posted a help-wanted ad for Security Protective Specialists to serve on one-year, renewable contracts with the Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The idea was to provide temporary hires to augment its 1,500-strong force of DS agents, who have been stretched thin by the requirements for post-9/11 security and a push for more muddy-boots diplomacy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

So how many have stepped forward to volunteer for the job? According to the Government Accountability Office, exactly four.

In a footnote to a newly released report on diplomatic security, GAO said the program was still “under development.”  The first four hires entered duty on July 29, and it looks like the State Department might have to cancel the program altogether.

“Diplomatic Security has had difficulty recruiting and hiring a sufficient number of SPS candidates,” GAO dryly noted. “Diplomatic Security originally intended to hire and train 25 SPSs and later add 20 more positions. Diplomatic Security officials reported having difficulty filling the positions because they compete with private security contractors for new hires and, at the end of September 2009, only 10 positions had been filled. According to senior Diplomatic Security officials, the bureau may cancel the program if they can not recruit enough qualified candidates.”

And that’s a crying shame — because these new agents are supposed to provide critically needed oversight and supervision of protective details in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Over the past few years, diplomatic security in high-threat areas has become heavily outsourced: In July 2005, State selected three companies – Blackwater, DynCorp and Triple Canopy — to compete for task orders under the Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) II contract, worth a potential USD1.2 billion to each contractor over a period of five years; the main WPPS II task orders are in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel.

The results have been nothing short of disastrous, from the antics of Phi Cracka Snacka in Kabul to the deadly Nisour Square incident in Baghdad. These new agents could help provide a desperately needed layer of accountability.

So why can’t State find willing recruits? It’s basically competing against itself. Base pay for a Security Protective Specialist would be $52,221 per year. Even with overseas allowances and pay differentials, that’s a hell of a lot less than the six-figure pay a U.S. operator for a company like Triple Canopy, DynCorp or Blackwater would expect to receive. Note to DS: You need to try a bit harder.