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The man who headed the NSA and CIA under President George W. Bush suggested Friday that mercenaries were needed to deal with growing cyber threats.

Gen. Michael Hayden told the Aspen Security Forum that in the near future, the Department of Defense may have to allow the creation of a "digital Blackwater."

Private sector offense "might be one of those big new ideas in terms of how we have to conduct ourselves in this new cyber domain," Hayden explained. "You think back long enough in history and there are times when the private sector was responsible for its own defense."

"We may come to a point where defense is more actively and aggressively defined even for the private sector and what is permitted there is something that we would never let the private sector do in physical space... Let me really throw out a bumper sticker for you. How about a digital Blackwater?" he suggested.

"I mean, we have privatized certain defense activities even in physical space and now you've got a new domain in which we don't have any paths trampled down in the forest in terms of what it is we expect the government or will allow the government to do. In the past when that has happened, private sector expands to fill the empty space. I'm not quite an advocate for that, but these are the kinds of things that are going to be put into play here very, very soon."

Watch the entire Aspen Security Forum on cyber security here.

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Amy Goodman:

The private military firm Blackwater has hired former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as the company’s new "ethics" chief. In a statement, Blackwater said Ashcroft will serve as "independent director,” tasked with overseeing accountability and promoting ethics and professionalism. Blackwater is currently under investigation for its involvement in a 2007 shooting massacre in Baghdad that left 17 civilians dead and more than 20 wounded. The firm has also been accused of falsifying documents to acquire unauthorized weapons, defrauding the government, and endemic use of steroids and cocaine. Ashcroft served as Attorney General during President George W. Bush’s first term. Blackwater now goes by the name Xe Services.

And here's more from Spencer Ackerman -- Blackwater’s New Ethics Chief: John Ashcroft:

The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former U.S. attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater.

Ashcroft will head Xe’s new “subcommittee on governance,” its backers announced early Wednesday in a statement. The subcommittee is designed to “maximize governance, compliance and accountability” and “promote the highest degrees of ethics and professionalism within the private-security industry.”

In other words, no more shooting civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, no more signing for weapons its guards aren’t authorized to carry in war zones, no more impersonations of cartoon characters to acquire said weaponry, and no more ‘roids and coke on the job.

Ashcroft’s arrival at Xe is yet another clear signal it’s not giving up the quest for lucrative government security contracts now that it’s no longer owned by founder Erik Prince, even as it emphasizes the side of its business that trains law enforcement officers. In September, it won part of a $10 billion State Department contract to protect diplomats, starting with the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem.

Ashcroft, a U.S. senator before becoming attorney general in the Bush administration, is a very known quantity to the federal officials that Xe will pitch. Even if he’s not lobbying for Blackwater, Ashcroft’s addition on the board is meant to inspire confidence in government officials of its newfound rectitude.

Read on...

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With our economy in a state where everyone in Washington DC is claiming that we must all "share the sacrifice" in order to get our budget deficit in hand, I have to wonder what this fiasco cost us. In a news cycle dominated understandably by the coverage of what's going on in Japan, I give Rachel Maddow credit for making at least a small amount of time for this and not allowing it to go completely under the radar.

I already posted about this at Video Cafe last month -- American Being Held for Shootings in Pakistan Worked as Blackwater CIA Contractor.

Here's the latest.

CIA contractor Raymond Davis freed after ‘blood money’ payment:

Pakistan’s decision Wednesday to release a CIA contractor accused of killing two men resolved a standoff that threatened to damage diplomatic relations between Islamabad and Washington, but it triggered new protests in Pakistan that reflected rising hostility from the United States’ key counterterrorism ally.

Raymond A. Davis was freed from a jail in Lahore after relatives of the Pakistani victims received as much as $2.3 million in “blood money” compensation.

Davis, a CIA security guard, was pardoned and flown to a U.S. facility in Kabul, where he was to be examined and questioned about his treatment before returning to the United States.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed gratitude to the victims’ families in Pakistan and said that the Justice Department has begun an investigation of the shooting that led to Davis’s arrest in Lahore on Jan. 27.

Clinton insisted that the United States had not made any payment to the families or agreed to reimburse the Pakistani government. But other U.S. officials signaled that Washington had endorsed the “blood money” payments and that it expects to reimburse Pakistani authorities, who had led an effort in recent weeks to persuade the Pakistani families to accept cash in return for dropping the case.

“We expect to receive a bill,” a U.S. official said.

Read on...

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Apparently MSNBC and The New York Times were both aware of this story but did not report on it at the request of the Unites States government until The Guardian broke their embargo today and ran the story anyway. Somehow Andrea Mitchell and Steve Clemons managed to report on this story without ever using the words Blackwater, Xe or private contractor.

Looks like our so-called "war on terror" is coming back to bite us again with the Pakistani population growing increasingly fed up with these sorts of incidents.

American Held in Pakistan Shootings Worked With the C.I.A.:

The American arrested in Pakistan after shooting two men at a crowded traffic stop was part of a covert, C.I.A.-led team of operatives conducting surveillance on militant groups deep inside the country, according to American government officials.

Working from a safe house in the eastern city of Lahore, the detained American contractor, Raymond A. Davis, a retired Special Forces soldier, carried out scouting and other reconnaissance missions as a security officer for a Central Intelligence Agency task force of case officers and technical surveillance experts, the officials said.

Mr. Davis’s arrest and detention, which came after what American officials have described as a botched robbery attempt, has inadvertently pulled back the curtain on a web of covert American operations inside Pakistan, part of a secret war run by the C.I.A. It has exacerbated already frayed relations between the American intelligence agency and its Pakistani counterpart, created a political dilemma for the weak, pro-American Pakistani government, and further threatened the stability of the country, which has the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenal.

Without describing Mr. Davis’s mission or intelligence affiliation, President Obama last week made a public plea for his release. Meanwhile, there have been a flurry of private phone calls to Pakistan from Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all intended to persuade the Pakistanis to release the secret operative. Mr. Davis has worked for years as a C.I.A. contractor, including time at Blackwater Worldwide, the controversial private security firm (now called Xe) that Pakistanis have long viewed as symbolizing a culture of American gun slinging overseas.

Read on...

As usual the foreign press is doing a better job on this than our American media. From Aljazeera, some of the latest to come out of the recent WikiLeaks Iraq War Files.

Leaks reveal Blackwater excesses:

Blackwater, the private security firm now known as Xe Services, has acquired a controversial reputation in recent years for playing a largely unregulated, mercenary role as the US' former guard of choice in Iraq and other countries.

The group operated under a $465m contract in Iraq and became infamous for a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nissour Square that left 17 civilians dead. Five Blackwater guards were charged with murder, though a judge in January dismissed the case for prosecutorial misconduct.

The WikiLeaks Iraq war files reveal 14 other incidents in which Blackwater guards opened fire on civilians, killing 10 and wounding seven.

Much more here -- The Secret Iraq Files

And Amy Goodman talked to whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about this on Friday on Democracy Now right before WikiLeaks released the documents -- EXCLUSIVE: WikiLeaks Prepares Largest Intel Leak in US History with Release of 400,000 Iraq War Docs.

C-SPAN also covered the press conference with Julian Assange among others on the panel in London discussing the release of the documents that you can watch in its entirety here. This has me curious as to how long that link is going to remain valid though because when you go to their schedules page for Oct. 23, 2010 to view the program rather than the link from their main site as of Oct. 23rd, this is what you get. This program is not available to view or purchase.

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How can a company allegedly responsible for killing 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007 continue to get State Department and CIA contracts? CIA Director Leon Panetta says there is "not much choice" because few companies have the capabilities of Blackwater.

"Since I have become director, I have asked our agency to review every contract we have had with Blackwater and whatever their new name is now, Xe, to ensure first and foremost that we have no contract in which they are engaged in any CIA operations. We're doing our own operations. That's important that we not contract that out to anybody," Panetta told ABC's Jake Tapper Sunday.

"I have to tell you that in the war zone, we continue to have needs for security. You've got a lot of forward bases. You've got a lot of attacks on some of those bases. We've got to have security. Unfortunately, there are few companies that provide that kind of security," Panetta continued.

"State Department relies on them. We rely on them to a certain extent. So, we've bid out some of those contracts. They provided a bid that underbid everyone else by about $26 million and a panel that we had said that they can do the job, that they've shaped up their act," he said.

"There was really not much choice but to accept that contract," said Panetta.

"But having said that, I will tell you that I continue to be very cautious about any of those contracts and we're reviewing all of the bids that we have with that company," he concluded.

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Jeremy Scahill joined Keith Olbermann to discuss the company formerly known as Blackwater, Xe's new contracts despite their horrible record. Here's more from Scahill at The Nation.

Obama Administration Keeping Blackwater Armed and Dangerous in Afghanistan:

Blackwater is up for sale and its shadowy owner, Erik Prince, is rumored to be planning to move to the United Arab Emirates as his top deputies face indictment for a range of alleged crimes, yet the company remains a central part of President Obama's Afghanistan war. Now, Blackwater's role is expanding.

On Friday, the US State Department awarded Blackwater another "diplomatic security" contract to protect US officials in Afghanistan. CBS News reports that the $120 million deal is for "protective services" at the US consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. Blackwater has another security contract in Afghanistan worth $200 million and trains Afghan forces. The company also works for the CIA and the US military and provides bodyguards for US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry as well as US lawmakers and other officials who visit the country. The company has four forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Prince has boasted that Blackwater's counter-narcotics forces have called in NATO airstrikes.

The new security contract was awarded to one of Blackwater's alter egos, the United States Training Center, despite the indictments of five senior company officials on bribery, weapons and conspiracy charges. Its operatives in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been indicted for killing innocent civilians. The Senate Armed Services Committee has called on the Justice Department to investigate Blackwater's use of a shell company, Paravant, to win training contracts in Afghanistan. Despite these and numerous other scandals, the State Department once again awarded the company a lucrative contract.

Of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Blackwater (UPDATED):

The mercenary firm Blackwater is clearly more teflon than Gen. Stanley McChrystal. While McChrystal sips Bud Light Lime, watching Talladega Nights and ponders what private sector job to scoop up, Erik Prince's crusading private soldiers will still be running around Afghanistan and other theaters of undeclared US wars globally with the CIA. All with the blessing of the Commander in Chief.

Continue reading »

Rachel Maddow talk to The Nation's Jeremy Scahill about the lastest Blackwater scandal where they stole weapons meant for the Afghan police. Scahill has a longer list yet.

MADDOW: Whatever the level of U.S. government oversight of the defense contractor Blackwater has or hasn‘t been, that level is very likely about to change. We have just learned that the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that in September 2008, more than 200 AK-47s were signed out by a Blackwater employee apparently named for this guy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC CARTMAN, CARTOON CHARACTER: Hey, I‘m a cop and you will respect my authority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: That is Eric Cartman from “South Park.” Eric Cartman is the name that a Blackwater contractor used to sign out hundreds of AK-47s for Blackwater employee‘s personal use in Afghanistan. These were guns that were supposed to be issued to Afghan police. And no, there was no one actually named Eric Cartman working for Blackwater at that time. And no, Blackwater employees at that time were not even allowed to possess weapons in Afghanistan without permission—which, of course, they did not have.

In December 2008, after grabbing these weapons they weren‘t supposed to have, a Blackwater contractor jumped on the back of a moving vehicle with his loaded weapon. When that moving vehicle hit a bump, the contractor accidentally shot another contractor in the head. What happened to the “Dukes of Hazard” reckless shooter? Blackwater sent the shooter back home to the U.S.—that was it.

Blackwater was also nailed today for setting up a shell company for its operations in Afghanistan to avoid being associated with Blackwater‘s infamy.

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Jeremy Scahill talks to Thom Hartmann about his latest article at The Nation--Blackwater and the Khost Bombing: Is the CIA Deceiving Congress?:

A leading member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has told The Nation that she will launch an investigation into why two Blackwater contractors were among the dead in the December 30 suicide bombing at the CIA station at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. "The Intelligence Committees and the public were led to believe that the CIA was phasing out its contracts with Blackwater and now we find out that there is this ongoing presence," said Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, in an interview. "Is the CIA once again deceiving us about the relationship with Blackwater?"

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And Blackwater's problems in Germany--Germany Launches Probe Into Blackwater/CIA Assassination Plot:

German prosecutors have launched a preliminary investigation into allegations that a Blackwater-led CIA team conducted a clandestine operation in Hamburg, Germany after 9/11 ultimately aimed at assassinating a German citizen with suspected ties to al Qaeda. The alleged assassination operation was revealed last month in a Vanity Fair profile of Blackwater’s owner Erik Prince.

The magazine reported that after 9/11, the CIA used one of Prince’s homes in Virginia as a covert training facility for hit teams that would hunt al Qaeda suspects globally. Their job was find, fix, and finish: “Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off.”

According to Vanity Fair, one of the team’s targets was Mamoun Darkazanli, a naturalized German citizen originally from Syria. Darkazanli has been accused by Spain of being an al Qaeda supporter with close ties to the alleged 9/11 plotters who lived in Hamburg. The Blackwater/C.I.A. team “supposedly went in ‘dark,’ meaning they did not notify their own station—much less the German government—of their presence,” according to Vanity Fair. “[T]hey then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down.” Authorities in Washington, however, “chose not to pull the trigger.”

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From Democracy Now--“Blackwatergate”–Private Military Firm in Firestorm of Controversy over Involvements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Germany:

Blackwater is all over the news. In the last seventy-two hours, a series of breaking developments involving the notorious private military firm have come to light, ranging from their involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even Germany, as well as legal cases here at home. We speak with investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a leading member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, who is launching an investigation into why two Blackwater contractors were among the dead in the December 30 suicide bombing at the CIA station at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Blackwater is all over the news. In the last seventy-two hours, a series of breaking developments involving the notorious private military firm have come to light, ranging from their involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even Germany, as well as legal cases here at home.

In the latest news, two former Blackwater operatives were arrested yesterday on murder charges stemming from their alleged involvement in the shooting deaths of two Afghan civilians in Kabul in May.

The news broke just hours after it was revealed Blackwater had reached a settlement with Iraqi victims of a string of shootings, including the Nisoor Square massacre, who had sued the company for what they called “senseless slaughter.” Blackwater is reportedly paying $100,000 for each of the Iraqis killed by its forces and between $20,000 to $30,000 to each Iraqi wounded. News of the settlement came a week after a federal judge dismissed manslaughter charges against five Blackwater operatives involved in the Nisoor Square massacre that killed seventeen Iraqi civilians.

Then, on Wednesday, prosecutors in Germany announced they had launched a preliminary investigation into a report that the CIA and Blackwater had planned a secret operation in 2004 to assassinate a German citizen in Hamburg with suspected ties to al-Qaeda.

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