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<h1><font size=4><b>Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan
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<a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/scahill/print" eudora="autourl">
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/scahill/print<br><br>
</a></font><h2><b>By</b>
</h2><a href="http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/jeremy_scahill">
<font size=3>Jeremy Scahill</a><br>
</font><h3><b>November 23, 2009</b></h3><font size=3>At a covert forward
operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in
the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of
Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan
targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives,
"snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive
action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by <i>The Nation</i>
has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering
intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign
that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according
to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
<br><br>
The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years,
including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of
Blackwater's involvement. He spoke to <i>The Nation</i> on condition of
anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the
program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within
the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be
aware of its existence. <br><br>
The White House did not return calls or email messages seeking comment
for this story. Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael
Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told <i>The Nation</i>,
"We do not discuss current operations one way or the other,
regardless of their nature." A defense official, on background,
specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or
intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. "We don't have any contracts to
do that work for us. We don't contract that kind of work out,
period," the official said. "There has not been, and is not
now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of
services." <br><br>
The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said,
is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the agency's
director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June 2009.
"This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source.
"They are two separate beasts." The program puts Blackwater at
the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation
against which the United States has not declared war--knowledge that
could further strain the already tense relations between the United
States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a
deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with
the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission.
Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military
operations in the country.<br><br>
Blackwater, which recently changed its name to Xe Services and US
Training Center, denies the company is operating in Pakistan. "Xe
Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction
oversight for the U.S. Government," Blackwater spokesperson Mark
Corallo said in a statement to <i>The Nation</i>, adding that the company
has "no other operations of any kind in Pakistan." <br><br>
A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military
intelligence source's claim that the company is working in Pakistan for
the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations
force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for
the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based
security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with
Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids
and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and
elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said,
allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations
forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military
presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility
in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former
executive spoke on condition of anonymity. <br><br>
His account and that of the military intelligence source were borne out
by a US military source who has knowledge of Special Forces actions in
Pakistan and Afghanistan. When asked about Blackwater's covert work for
JSOC in Pakistan, this source, who also asked for anonymity, told <i>The
Nation</i>, "From my information that I have, that is absolutely
correct," adding, "There's no question that's occurring."
<br><br>
"It wouldn't surprise me because we've outsourced nearly
everything," said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary
of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, when told of
Blackwater's role in Pakistan. Wilkerson said that during his time in the
Bush administration, he saw the beginnings of Blackwater's involvement
with the sensitive operations of the military and CIA. "Part of
this, of course, is an attempt to get around the constraints the Congress
has placed on DoD. If you don't have sufficient soldiers to do it, you
hire civilians to do it. I mean, it's that simple. It would not surprise
me." <br><br>
<b>The Counterterrorism Tag Team in Karachi</b> <br><br>
The covert JSOC program with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at
least 2007, according to the military intelligence source. The current
head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the post from
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008 before being
named the top US commander in Afghanistan. Blackwater's presence in
Pakistan is "not really visible, and that's why nobody has cracked
down on it," said the source. Blackwater's operations in Pakistan,
he said, are not done through State Department contracts or publicly
identified Defense contracts. "It's Blackwater via JSOC, and it's a
classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis." The main
JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is
nondescript: three trailers with various generators, satellite phones and
computer systems are used as a makeshift operations center. "It's a
very rudimentary operation," says the source. "I would compare
it to [CIA] outposts in Kurdistan or any of the Special Forces outposts.
It's very bare bones, and that's the point." <br><br>
Blackwater's work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force
based at Bagram Air Base in neighboring Afghanistan, according to the
military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the operations
in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special
operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as
Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater
affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by
Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince. The military source said that the name
Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence,
which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the
Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and
operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. It is modeled after
the CIA's counterterrorism center. In Karachi, TIS runs a
"media-scouring/open-source network," according to the source.
Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA
officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the
company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either its original name or
its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the former Blackwater
executive. "They are running most of their work through TIS because
the other two [names] have such a stain on them," he said. Corallo,
the Blackwater spokesperson, denied that TIS or any other division or
affiliate of Blackwater has any personnel in Pakistan. <br><br>
The US military intelligence source said that Blackwater's classified
contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he
said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of the
US military operations in Pakistan. According to the former Blackwater
executive, "The politics that go with the brand of BW is somewhat
set aside because what you're doing is really one military guy to
another." Blackwater's first known contract with the CIA for
operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border. <br><br>
One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that
some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances
above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized
Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted
clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to
describe highly classified "black" operations. "With an
ACCM, the security manager can grant access to you to be exposed to and
operate within compartmentalized programs far above 'secret'--even though
you have no business doing so," said the source. It allows
Blackwater personnel that "do not have the requisite security
clearance or do not hold a security clearance whatsoever to participate
in classified operations by virtue of trust," he added. "Think
of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That's exactly what
it is: a circle of love." Blackwater, therefore, has access to
"all source" reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in
the field. "That's how a lot of things over the years have been
conducted with contractors," said the source. "We have
contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don't unless
they ask." <br><br>
According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a
company whose operatives have "conducted lethal direct action
missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC
just ate that up," he said, adding, "They have a sizable force
in Pakistan--not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at
it that way--but to support a legitimate contract that's classified for
JSOC." Blackwater's Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are
therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure
when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of
Blackwater SELECT "was issued a no-bid contract for support to
shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it." Some of
the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as aid workers.
"Nobody even gives them a second thought." <br><br>
The military intelligence source said that the Blackwater/JSOC Karachi
operation is referred to as "Qatar cubed," in reference to the
US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the
planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq. "This is
supposed to be the brave new world," he says. "This is the
Jamestown of the new millennium and it's meant to be a lily pad. You can
jump off to Uzbekistan, you can jump back over the border, you can jump
sideways, you can jump northwest. It's strategically located so that they
can get their people wherever they have to without having to wrangle with
the military chain of command in Afghanistan, which is convoluted. They
don't have to deal with that because they're operating under a classified
mandate." <br><br>
In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al
Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the
Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside
Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the
military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the
operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces.
"That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don't know
if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan,"
he said. "So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into
power?" <br><br>
<b>Pakistan's Military Contracting Maze</b> <br><br>
Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not doing
the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. "The SELECT
personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after
targets," he said. "It's not like Blackwater SELECT people are
running around assassinating people." Instead, US Special Forces
teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater. The military
intelligence source drew a distinction between the Blackwater operatives
who work for the State Department, which he calls "Blackwater
Vanilla," and the seasoned Special Forces veterans who work on the
JSOC program. "Good or bad, there's a small number of people who
know how to pull off an operation like that. That's probably a good
thing," said the source. "It's the Blackwater SELECT people
that have and continue to plan these types of operations because they're
the only people that know how and they went where the money was. It's not
trigger-happy fucks, like some of the PSD [Personal Security Detail]
guys. These are not people that believe that Barack Obama is a socialist,
these are not people that kill innocent civilians. They're very good at
what they do." <br><br>
The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that
Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said,
"that's not entirely accurate." While he concurred with the
military intelligence source's description of the JSOC and CIA programs,
he pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan,
not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the executive,
Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful
Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private
security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former
high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral's
main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other
countries. <br><br>
A spokesperson for the US State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade
Controls (DDTC), which is responsible for issuing licenses to US
corporations to provide defense-related services to foreign governments
or entities, would neither confirm nor deny for <i>The Nation</i> that
Blackwater has a license to work in Pakistan or to work with Kestral.
"We cannot help you," said department spokesperson David
McKeeby after checking with the relevant DDTC officials. "You'll
have to contact the companies directly." Blackwater's Corallo said
the company has "no operations of any kind" in Pakistan other
than the one employee working for the DoD. Kestral did not respond to
inquiries from <i>The Nation</i>. <br><br>
According to federal lobbying records, Kestral recently hired former
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger
Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US
government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on
foreign affairs issues "regarding [Kestral's] capabilities to carry
out activities of interest to the United States." Noriega was hired
through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina Rocca, a
former CIA operations official who served as assistant secretary of state
for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in
shaping US policy toward Pakistan. In October 2009, Kestral paid Vision
Americas $15,000 and paid a Vision Americas-affiliated firm, Firecreek
Ltd., an equal amount to lobby on defense and foreign policy issues.
<br><br>
For years, Kestral has done a robust business in defense logistics with
the Pakistani government and other nations, as well as top US defense
companies. Blackwater owner Erik Prince is close with Kestral CEO Liaquat
Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive. "Ali and
Erik have a pretty close relationship," he said. "They've met
many times and struck a deal, and they [offer] mutual support for one
another." Working with Kestral, he said, Blackwater has provided
convoy security for Defense Department shipments destined for Afghanistan
that would arrive in the port at Karachi. Blackwater, according to the
former executive, would guard the supplies as they were transported
overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west through the Torkham
border crossing, the most important supply route for the US military in
Afghanistan. <br><br>
According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also integrate
with Kestral's forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the
North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the
Pakistani Interior Ministry's paramilitary force, known as the Frontier
Corps (alternately referred to as "frontier scouts"). The
Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive
said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater "is
providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations]
and Kestral's folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they're having
the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go
out with the teams when they're executing the job," he said.
"You can see how that can lead to other things in the border
areas." He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the
Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected
terrorists. "You've got BW guys that are assisting... and they're
all going to want to go on the jobs--so they're going to go with
them," he said. "So, the things that you're seeing in the news
about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or
did this or did that--in some of those cases, you're going to have
Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the
house." Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government
through Kestral for consulting services. "That gives the Pakistani
government the cover to say, 'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing
this. It's all local and our people are doing it.' But it gets them the
expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related
work." <br><br>
The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the
Frontier Corps, saying, "There's no real oversight. It's not really
on people's radar screen." <br><br>
In October, in response to Pakistani news reports that a Kestral
warehouse in Islamabad was being used to store heavy weapons for
Blackwater, the US Embassy in Pakistan released a statement denying the
weapons were being used by "a private American security
contractor." The statement said, "Kestral Logistics is a
private logistics company that handles the importation of equipment and
supplies provided by the United States to the Government of Pakistan. All
of the equipment and supplies were imported at the request of the
Government of Pakistan, which also certified the shipments."
<br><br>
<b>Who is Behind the Drone Attacks?</b> <br><br>
Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the United States has
expanded drone bombing raids in Pakistan. Obama first ordered a drone
strike against targets in North and South Waziristan on January 23, and
the strikes have been conducted consistently ever since. The Obama
administration has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in
Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US
lawmakers over civilian deaths. A drone attack in June killed as many as
sixty people attending a Taliban funeral. <br><br>
In August, the <i>New York Times</i> reported that Blackwater works for
the CIA at "hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the
company's contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound
laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft." In
February, The <i>Times</i> of London obtained a satellite image of a
secret CIA airbase in Shamsi, in Pakistan's southwestern province of
Baluchistan, showing three drone aircraft. The <i>New York Times</i> also
reported that the agency uses a secret base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to
strike in Pakistan. <br><br>
The military intelligence source says that the drone strike that
reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, his wife and
his bodyguards in Waziristan in August was a CIA strike, but that many
others attributed in media reports to the CIA are actually JSOC strikes.
"Some of these strikes are attributed to OGA [Other Government
Agency, intelligence parlance for the CIA], but in reality it's JSOC and
their parallel program of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] because they
also have access to UAVs. So when you see some of these hits, especially
the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC
strikes." The Pentagon has stated bluntly, "There are no US
military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan." <br><br>
The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater continues
to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, as
previously reported in the <i>New York Times</i>, but added that
Blackwater is working on JSOC's drone bombings as well. "It's
Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC," said the
source. When civilians are killed, "people go, 'Oh, it's the CIA
doing crazy shit again unchecked.' Well, at least 50 percent of the time,
that's JSOC [hitting] somebody they've identified through HUMINT [human
intelligence] or they've culled the intelligence themselves or it's been
shared with them and they take that person out and that's how it
works." <br><br>
The military intelligence source says that the CIA operations are subject
to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings.
"Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now
and the CIA knows that," he says. "Contractors and especially
JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by
Congress], so they just don't care. If there's one person they're going
after and there's thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people
are going to die. That's the mentality." He added, "They're not
accountable to anybody and they know that. It's an open secret, but what
are you going to do, shut down JSOC?" <br><br>
In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes,
Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the sensitive
task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and Defense
Intelligence Agency camps inside Pakistan, according to the military
intelligence source. <br><br>
Mosharraf Zaidi, a well-known Pakistani journalist who has served as a
consultant for the UN and European Union in Pakistan and Afghanistan,
says that the Blackwater/JSOC program raises serious questions about the
norms of international relations. "The immediate question is, How do
you define the active pursuit of military objectives in a country with
which not only have you not declared war but that is supposedly a
front-line non-NATO ally in the US struggle to contain extremist violence
coming out of Afghanistan and the border regions of Afghanistan and
Pakistan?" asks Zaidi, who is currently a columnist for <i>The
News</i>, the biggest English-language daily in Pakistan. "Let's
forget Blackwater for a second. What this is confirming is that there are
US military operations in Pakistan that aren't about logistics or getting
food to Bagram; that are actually about the exercise of physical
violence, physical force inside of Pakistani territory." <br><br>
<b>JSOC: Rumsfeld and Cheney's Extra Special Force</b> <br><br>
Colonel Wilkerson said that he is concerned that with General
McChrystal's elevation as the military commander of the Afghan war--which
is increasingly seeping into Pakistan--there is a concomitant rise in
JSOC's power and influence within the military structure. "I don't
see how you can escape that; it's just a matter of the way the authority
flows and the power flows, and it's inevitable, I think," Wilkerson
told <i>The Nation</i>. He added, "I'm alarmed when I see execute
orders and combat orders that go out saying that the supporting force is
Central Command and the supported force is Special Operations
Command," under which JSOC operates. "That's backward. But
that's essentially what we have today." <br><br>
From 2003 to 2008 McChrystal headed JSOC, which is headquartered at Pope
Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where Blackwater's
7,000-acre operating base is also situated. JSOC controls the Army's
Delta Force, the Navy's SEAL Team 6, as well as the Army's 75th Ranger
Regiment and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and the Air
Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron. JSOC performs strike operations,
reconnaissance in denied areas and special intelligence missions.
Blackwater, which was founded by former Navy SEALs, employs scores of
veteran Special Forces operators--which several former military officials
pointed to as the basis for Blackwater's alleged contracts with JSOC.
<br><br>
Since 9/11, many top-level Special Forces veterans have taken up
employment with private firms, where they can make more money doing the
highly specialized work they did in uniform. "The Blackwater
individuals have the experience. A lot of these individuals are retired
military, and they've been around twenty to thirty years and have
experience that the younger Green Beret guys don't," said retired
Army Lieut. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, a well-connected military lawyer who
served as senior legal counsel for US Army Special Forces. "They're
known entities. Everybody knows who they are, what their capabilities
are, and they've got the experience. They're very valuable."
<br><br>
"They make much more money being the smarts of these operations,
planning hits in various countries and basing it off their experience in
Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia," said the military intelligence
source. "They were there for all of these things, they know what the
hell they're talking about. And JSOC has unfortunately lost the
institutional capability to plan within, so they hire back people that
used to work for them and had already planned and executed these [types
of] operations. They hired back people that jumped over to Blackwater
SELECT and then pay them exorbitant amounts of money to plan future
operations. It's a ridiculous revolving door." <br><br>
While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and
covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the
Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in
interviews with <i>The Nation</i> an extremely cozy relationship that
developed between the executive branch (primarily through Vice President
Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the
Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that
acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination
with the White House. Throughout the Bush years, it was largely General
McChrystal who ran JSOC. "What I was seeing was the development of
what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations
forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander
even knowing what they were doing," said Colonel Wilkerson.
"That's dangerous, that's very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess
when you don't tell the theater commander what you're doing."
<br><br>
Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the
State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and
developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this
begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg.
"I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they
went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM
[Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The
receptivity in JSOC was quite good," says Wilkerson. "I think
Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was
asking him for instructions." He said the relationship between JSOC
and Cheney and Rumsfeld "built up initially because Rumsfeld didn't
get the responsiveness. He didn't get the can-do kind of attitude out of
the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out
and went straight to the horse's mouth. At that point you had JSOC
operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things the
executive branch--read: Cheney and Rumsfeld--wanted it to do. This would
be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very
alarming for me as a conventional soldier." <br><br>
Wilkerson said the JSOC teams caused diplomatic problems for the United
States across the globe. "When these teams started hitting capital
cities and other places all around the world, [Rumsfeld] didn't tell the
State Department either. The only way we found out about it is our
ambassadors started to call us and say, 'Who the hell are these
six-foot-four white males with eighteen-inch biceps walking around our
capital cities?' So we discovered this, we discovered one in South
America, for example, because he actually murdered a taxi driver, and we
had to get him out of there real quick. We rendered him--we rendered him
home." <br><br>
As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic
Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources from the
Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC
operations. The SSB was created using "reprogrammed" funds
"without explicit congressional authority or appropriation,"
according to the <i>Washington Post</i>. The SSB operated outside the
military chain of command and circumvented the CIA's authority on
clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end
"near total dependence on CIA." Under US law, the Defense
Department is required to report all deployment orders to Congress. But
guidelines issued in January 2005 by former Under Secretary of Defense
for Intelligence Stephen Cambone stated that Special Operations forces
may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations...before
publication" of a deployment order. This effectively gave Rumsfeld
unilateral control over clandestine operations. <br><br>
The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was defense
secretary, JSOC was deployed to commit some of the "darkest
acts" in part to keep them concealed from Congress. "Everything
can be justified as a military operation versus a clandestine
intelligence performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to
Congress," said the source. "They were aware of that and they
knew that, and they would exploit it at every turn and they took full
advantage of it. They knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would
happen because A, it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and B,
who was going to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which
was on all of the PowerPoints: 'Preparing the Battlefield.'"
<br><br>
The significance of the flexibility of JSOC's operations inside Pakistan
versus the CIA's is best summed up by Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "Every single
intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the
Congress," she said. "If they are not, that is a violation of
the law." <br><br>
<b>Blackwater: Company Non Grata in Pakistan</b> <br><br>
For months, the Pakistani media has been flooded with stories about
Blackwater's alleged growing presence in the country. For the most part,
these stories have been ignored by the US press and denounced as lies or
propaganda by US officials in Pakistan. But the reality is that, although
many of the stories appear to be wildly exaggerated, Pakistanis have good
reason to be concerned about Blackwater's operations in their country. It
is no secret in Washington or Islamabad that Blackwater has been a
central part of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the company
has been involved--almost from the beginning of the "war on
terror"--with clandestine US operations. Indeed, Blackwater is
accepting applications for contractors fluent in Urdu and Punjabi. The US
Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, has denied Blackwater's presence
in the country, stating bluntly in September, "Blackwater is not
operating in Pakistan." In her trip to Pakistan in October,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dodged questions from the Pakistani
press about Blackwater's rumored Pakistani operations. Pakistan's
interior minister, Rehman Malik, said on November 21 he will resign if
Blackwater is found operating anywhere in Pakistan. <br><br>
The <i>Christian Science Monitor</i> recently reported that Blackwater
"provides security for a US-backed aid project" in Peshawar,
suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a
luxury hotel the United States reportedly is considering purchasing to
use as a consulate in the city. "We have no contracts in
Pakistan," Blackwater spokesperson Stacey DeLuke said recently.
"We've been blamed for all that has gone wrong in Peshawar, none of
which is true, since we have absolutely no presence there."
<br><br>
Reports of Blackwater's alleged presence in Karachi and elsewhere in the
country have been floating around the Pakistani press for months. Hamid
Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist who rose to fame after his 1997
interview with Osama bin Laden, claimed in a recent interview that
Blackwater is in Karachi. "The US [intelligence] agencies think that
a number of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are hiding in Karachi and
Peshawar," he said. "That is why [Blackwater] agents are
operating in these two cities." Ambassador Patterson has said that
the claims of Mir and other Pakistani journalists are "wildly
incorrect," saying they had compromised the security of US personnel
in Pakistan. On November 20 the <i>Washington Times</i>, citing three
current and former US intelligence officials, reported that Mullah
Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has "found refuge
from potential U.S. attacks" in Karachi "with the assistance of
Pakistan's intelligence service." <br><br>
In September, the Pakistani press covered a report on Blackwater
allegedly submitted by Pakistan's intelligence agencies to the federal
interior ministry. In the report, the intelligence agencies reportedly
allege that Blackwater was provided houses by a federal minister who is
also helping them clear shipments of weapons and vehicles through
Karachi's Port Qasim on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The military
intelligence source did not confirm this but did say, "The port
jives because they have a lot of [former] SEALs and they would revert to
what they know: the ocean, instead of flying stuff in." <br><br>
<i>The Nation</i> cannot independently confirm these allegations and has
not seen the Pakistani intelligence report. But according to Pakistani
press coverage, the intelligence report also said Blackwater has acquired
"bungalows" in the Defense Housing Authority in the city.
According to the DHA website, it is a large residential estate originally
established "for the welfare of the serving and retired officers of
the Armed Forces of Pakistan." Its motto is: "Home for
Defenders." The report alleges Blackwater is receiving help from
local government officials in Karachi and is using vehicles with license
plates traditionally assigned to members of the national and provincial
assemblies, meaning local law enforcement will not stop them. <br><br>
The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations
such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the
benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in an
already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go wrong,
it's the contractors' fault, not the government's. But the widespread use
of contractors also raises serious legal questions, particularly when
they are a part of lethal, covert actions. "We are using contractors
for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation
of the Geneva Convention," said Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the
Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law in San
Antonio, Texas. "In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the
breaking limit, and it's almost a fiction that these guys are not in
offensive military operations." Addicott added, "If we were
subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could
easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That's one
of the reasons we're not members of the International Criminal
Court." <br><br>
If there is one quality that has defined Blackwater over the past decade,
it is the ability to survive against the odds while simultaneously
reinventing and rebranding itself. That is most evident in Afghanistan,
where the company continues to work for the US military, the CIA and the
State Department despite intense criticism and almost weekly scandals.
Blackwater's alleged Pakistan operations, said the military intelligence
source, are indicative of its new frontier. "Having learned its
lessons after the private security contracting fiasco in Iraq, Blackwater
has shifted its operational focus to two venues: protecting things that
are in danger and anticipating other places we're going to go as a nation
that are dangerous," he said. "It's as simple as that."
<br><br>
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