CIA did business with Blackwater through over 30 brass plate firms -- WMR names them
In yet another example of how Barack Obama is subservient to the wishes of the CIA, his one-time employer through a well-documented front company, it has been revealed by the Senate Armed Services Committee that the former Blackwater established a network of 31 brass plate, shell, and off-shore tax dodging subsidiaries, many of which had contracts with the CIA. Some of these contracts continue with the CIA, as well as the State Department. The CIA's contract work with the successor companies to Blackwater and its subsidiaries has been authorized by CIA director Leon Panetta, who one former CIA official described to WMR as an "asshole who is merely a figurehead."
The New York Times recently reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee released a chart showing that Blackwater and its various entities, described as over 30 shell companies, to garner U.S. government contracts even after it was cited for human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, the successor to Blackwater, Xe Services LLC, was awarded a $100 million contract by the CIA to provide security for its base of operations in Afghanistan. Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, recently moved to Abu Dhbi with his family to seek new business for Xe Security in the region.
The New York Times misses the point in its revelation. Blackwater/Xe and all of its contrivances, many of them off-shore firms far removed from U.S. government oversight, fit the pattern usually found with CIA front companies. The fact that President Obama, himself, worked for such a firm, Business International Corporation in Manhattan, appears to have been lost on Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and his committee investigators. With Panetta at Langley and Robert Gates, a former CIA director at the helm of the Pentagon, Obama has signalled to the U.S. intelligence community that the use of CIA proprietaries by his administration is every much "business as usual" as was the CIA's use of Southern Air Transport, another CIA proprietary, during the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s. There also is no indication that Obama has abandoned the use of CIA airline proprietary firms, with post office box and mail drop addresses scattered across the United States that were first used by the Bush-Cheney administration in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" kidnapping and secret detention program.
The Times article mentions two Blackwater/Xe shadow firms, XPG and Greystone Ltd. WMR previously reported on the use of Barbados's company confidentiality laws by Blackwater to establish Greystone as an international marketing arm of Blackwater/Xe. From Barbados, Blackwater/Xe is free to conduct mercenary recruiting operations from nations around the world with dismally poor human rights records and ex-security force personnel more than willing to engage in their murderous activities under contract to the CIA, Pentagon, or any other repressive tin-horn dictatorship willing to pay.
On October 13, 2007, WMR reported on Greystone stirring up a political hornet's nest on Barbados: "Blackwater USA's international marketing branch, Greystone, Ltd., registered as an International Business Company in Barbados, is beginning to create a political stir in the Caribbean island nation. Recently, Erik Prince, Blackwater's Chairman and CEO, testified under oath to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Blackwater did not market foreign governments to provide security services. He testified that the only foreign contracts performed by Blackwater were under license from the U.S. government. However, Greystone's website statesthe following about the subsidiary's foreign marketing:
"Greystone is an international security services company that offers your country or organization a complete solution to your most pressing security needs. We have the personnel, logistical support, equipment, and expertise to solve your most critical security problems."
Prince seems to have omitted Greystone as a Blackwater firm during his congressional testimony. Or he perjured himself under oath. Blackwater's presence in Barbados, under the corporate confidentiality regimes of the Caribbean island nation's off-shore corporation hosting legal contrivances, has stirred up opposition in the country. Bajans are pointing to Prime Minister Owen Arthur's Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Senator Lynette Eastmond, who has oversight authority for foreign corporations in Barbados. However, the selection of Barbados as Blackwater's headquarters for its international marketing arm is likely due to the island nation's past cooperation with other U.S. covert activities."
In the book, "Jaded Tasks: Brass Plates, Black Ops, and Big Oil," this editor delved into the use of various corporate contrivances by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies in the so-called "global war on terror." Although Obama said the global war terror is a thing of the past, it is another case of not listening to what Obama says but watching what he does. There is no indication that Obama is any different from his predecessor in using secretive corporate identities to mask U.S. covert operations, many of them of questionable legality, abroad.
The New York Times curiously did not produce Levin's committee's chart showing the some 30 Blackwater/Xe shell firms, partnerships, and subsidiaries. We are providing that information in the table of Blackwater/Xe's various corporate contrivances and linkages at the end of this article.
With private military contractors like Blackwater/Xe having hired tens of thousands of soldiers of fortune to supplement the military and para-military activities of the United States, Britain, and other countries, there may be another reason to keep these privateers fully employed. One such ex-private military contractor, who now finds himself out of work because of blowing the whistle on contract fraud and ties between private contractors and known terrorists, was more than willing to tell WMR what he discovered in his work in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Afghanistan and that is that "Al Qaeda is made-up bullshit."
On April 16, 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, the then-commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, stated in a speech in Paris that the use of private security contractors in combat zones had "gone too far." Perhaps that was one of the major reasons that the CIA's sock puppet, Obama, and its one-time director, Gates, fired McChrystal. To have the top U.S. military commander questioning the CIA's covert wars and use of brigands to support them was likely the final nail in McChrystal's professional coffin.
With General David Petraeus, the neocons' favorite general, now in command in Afghanistan and Prince safely ensconced in Abu Dhabi, the CIA and its former employee Obama are free to continue to act in the shadows away from public scrutiny.
The Web of Blackwater |
|
|
|
The Prince Group (holding company) Blackwater USA à Xe Services LLC Blackwater Worldwide à Xe Services Prince Manufacturing Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), LLC The Black Group (merged to form TIS) The Terrorism Research Center, Inc. (merged to form TIS) Technical Defense (merged to form TIS) Blackwater Lodge & Training Center à US Training Center Blackwater Airships, LLC à Guardian Flight Systems Blackwater Maritime Solutions Raven Development Group Blackwater Target Systems à GSD Manufacturing Blackwater Security Consulting Blackwater Peace and Stability Operations Institute Blackwater K-9 Aviation Worldwide Services (AWS) à AAR Corporation STI Aviation, Inc. (subsidiary of AWS) Air Quest, Inc. “ Presidential Airways, Inc. Blackwater SELECT (Karachi) Kestral Holdings (Pakistani partner) Kestral Logistics Kestral Trading Blackwater PTC Paravant, LLC. XPG E&J Holdings LLC Greystone, Ltd. (Barbados) Satelles Solutions, Inc. (Philippines) Constellation Consulting Grupo Tactico (Chile) (partner) --> Red Tactica Consulting Group, Washington, DC Neskowin (Uruguay) (recruiter) Global Guards (Panama) (recruiter) --> Gun Supply (Lima) --> Triple Canopy --> Your Solutions, Inc. (Honduran recruiter) --> Clayton Consultants --> AIG TigerSwan (spin-off) Babylon Eagles/TigerSwan (Iraqi joint venture) Sovereign Military Order of Malta (diplomatic cover)* |
|
