Ex-Blackwater executives finger CIA in weapons trial

Cross Posted from Civilian Contractors

Several other lawsuits filed by Contractor Employers will expose the extent to which Civilian Contractors were actually working for the CIA and the State Department in capacities that are not known to the public.

It is known that Ronco Consulting has worked for/with the CIA via the State Department .

The Virginian Pilot  June 2, 2012

Five ex-Blackwater executives, facing federal firearms charges in connection with a gift of weaponry to a Middle Eastern monarch, have come up with a new explanation for how it occured:

It was a CIA operation.

In court papers filed last month in Raleigh, the defendants say the gift of five guns to King Abdullah II of Jordan during a royal visit to Blackwater’s Moyock, N.C., headquarters in March 2005 was requested, directed and authorized by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Attorneys for the five have filed declarations from two retired CIA officials, including a former Jordan station chief, who say they are familiar with the circumstances of the king’s visit and would be willing to testify about it.

The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s a new wrinkle in a case that dates to April 2010, when the five security company executives were indicted on a variety of felony firearms charges. One key section of the indictment involved King Abdullah’s 2005 visit to Moyock, during which the monarch was presented a Bushmaster M4 rifle, a Remington shotgun and three Glock handguns.

Please read the entire article here

US citizen killed by Afghan at Kabul Embassy ‘CIA compound’

KABUL — A US citizen has been shot dead by an Afghan employee in a baffling attack at an annex to the US embassy used by the CIA in Kabul, officials said Monday.

The gunman was killed in the incident at the the Ariana Hotel compound late Sunday and another US citizen also wounded, the embassy said

Raymond Allen Davis, CIA Agent, Detained in Pakistan, Former Blackwater Security Contractor

US reveals that CIA agent Raymond Davis worked for private security firm Xe, formerly known as Blackwater

For background on this ongoing diplomatic standoff and US Coverup read here

The Guardian UK

Pakistani Police escort Raymond Davis

US officials have provided fresh details about at the centre of a diplomatic stand-off in Pakistan, including confirmation that he had worked for the private security contractor Xe, formerly known as Blackwater. They also disclosed for the first time that he had been providing security for a CIA team tracking militants.

Davis was attached to the CIA’s Global Response Staff, whose duties include protecting case officers when they meet with sources. He was familiarising himself with a sensitive area of Lahore on the day he shot dead two Pakistanis.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and other media outlets reported for the first time that Davis is a CIA employee. They said they had been aware of his status but kept it under wraps at the request of US officials who said they feared for his safety if involvement with the spy agency was to come out. The officials claimed that he is at risk in the prison in Lahore. The officials released them from their obligation after the Guardian on Sunday reported that Davis was a CIA agent.

Davis shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore last month who he says he been trying to rob him. A third Pakistani man was killed by a car driven by Americans apparently on their way to rescue Davis.

Confirmation that he worked for Xe could prove even more problematic than working for the CIA, given the extent of hatred towards Blackwater, whose staff have gained a reputation in Pakistan as trigger-happy. For Pakistanis the word “Blackwater” has become a byword for covert American operations targeting the country’s nuclear capability. Newspaper reports have been filled with lurid reports of lawless operatives roaming the country

Read the entire article here

One Year ago Today: The Khost Suicide Bombing – December 30, 2009

A year ago today one of the most defining incidents of the upcoming year at war in Afghanistan occurred.  

Civilian Contractors and the  CIA working side by side were killed when a double agent set off a suicide vest  in Khost, Afghanistan.

Thank you for your service

Our Thoughts are with your families today

Jeremy Wise

Former Navy Seal  working for Blackwater

Dane Clark Paresi

Former Special Forces working for  Blackwater.

Harold Brown Jr.

Former Army Officer who specialed in Intelligence and had served as a contractor for military intelligence

and

Scott Michael Roberson

Former Detective with the Atlanta Police Department had served as a private security contractor

had recently become CIA Officers.

More on the Khost Suicide Bombing here

Officer Failed to Warn CIA Before Khost Bombing that Killed Civilian Contractors

Officer Failed to Warn CIA Before Attack

Dane Clark Paresi, Jeremy Wise, Harold Brown Jr., Scott Michael Roberson

by Mark Mazzetti New York Times

WASHINGTON — Three weeks before a Jordanian double agent set off a bomb at a remote Central Intelligence Agency base in eastern Afghanistan last December, a C.I.A. officer in Jordan received warnings that the man might be working for Al Qaeda, according to an investigation into the deadly attack.

But the C.I.A. officer did not tell his bosses of suspicions — brought to the Americans by a Jordanian intelligence officer — that the man might be planning to lure Americans into a trap, according to the recently completed investigation by the agency. Later that month the Qaeda operative, a Jordanian doctor, detonated a suicide vest as he stood among a group of C.I.A. officers at the base.

The internal investigation documents a litany of breakdowns leading to the Dec. 30 attack at the Khost base that killed seven C.I.A. employees, the deadliest day for the spy agency since the 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut. Besides the failure to pass on warnings about the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the C.I.A. investigation chronicled major security lapses at the base in Afghanistan, a lack of war zone experience among the agency’s personnel at the base, insufficient vetting of the alleged defector and a murky chain of command with different branches of the intelligence agency competing for control over the operation.

Some of these failures mirror other lapses that have bedeviled the sprawling intelligence and antiterrorism community in the past several years, despite numerous efforts at reform.

The report found that the breakdowns were partly the result of C.I.A. officers’ wanting to believe they had finally come across the thing that had eluded them for years: a golden source who could lead them to the terror network’s second highest figure, Ayman al-Zawahri.

As it turned out, the bomber who was spirited onto a base pretending to be a Qaeda operative willing to cooperate with the Americans was actually a double agent who detonated a suicide vest as he stood among a group of C.I.A. officers. “The mission itself may have clouded some of the judgments made here,” said the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, who provided details of the investigation to reporters on Tuesday.  Read more here

Shaun Sexton, UK Security Guard, Killed in Afghanistan Attack

A UK private security guard killed in a suicide attack in northern Afghanistan on Friday was a former British soldier.

Shaun Sexton, 29, from Ashington, Northumberland, died in an attack on offices of US consultancy Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) in Kunduz.

Mr Sexton’s employer, Edinburgh International (EI), said Mr Sexton had served as a platoon sergeant in 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment.

Three other security guards were killed in the assault.

All four men – Mr Sexton, two Afghans and a German – worked for DAI’s security sub-contractor EI.

A second Briton was seriously injured in the attack.

‘Heroes’

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn raid, which began at about 0330 local time on Friday when a suicide bomber blew up a car outside DAI’s compound in Kunduz.

At least five other militants wearing explosives vests ran inside the building and started a fierce gun battle that lasted several hours before they were killed.

The men who died were hailed as heroes for their attempts to defend the compound.

Washington DC-based DAI is contracted by the US Agency for International Development to improve governance and community development in Kunduz, which is largely patrolled by German troops.  Original Story here

Secret Erik Prince/Blackwater Tape Exposed

The reclusive Blackwater founder tries to ban journalists and recorders from his speeches in front of friendly audiences. This time he failed.

By Jeremy Scahill at RebelReports

[Note: This post, written for TheNation.com, will be posted on The Nation magazine’s homepage soon as part of the launch of a new blog. I am posting it here until the site is fully functional because of the timely nature of the story. Please check The Nation site for exciting developments.]

Erik Prince, the reclusive owner of the Blackwater empire, rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban journalists from attending and forbids recording or videotaping of his remarks. On May 5, that is exactly what Prince is trying to do when he speaks at DeVos Fieldhouse as the keynote speaker for the “Tulip Time Festival” in his hometown of Holland, Michigan. He told the event’s organizers no news reporting could be done on his speech and they consented to the ban. Journalists and media associations in Michigan are protesting this attempt to bar reporting on his remarks.  Read this story in its entirety at RebelReports

Hilda Solis: Labor’s New Sheriff ?

After an entire year of asking Hilda Solis to address the ruthless treatment of Injured War Zone Contractors by AIG, CNA, and ACE and being completely ignored, we are having a hard time choking down this story.

A Labor Day Message to Hilda Solis

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis Avoids interviews and meetings with Contractor Groups

Injured Abroad Neglected at Home

We have much to say about being ignored by Hilda Solis and her refusal to acknowledge us or be interviewed regarding the Defense Base Act Workers’ Comp program that her Department of Labor has allowed us to be physically and financially abused by.  Sure we fell into this black hole during the Bush Administration but this Administration has allowed the continued financial ruin and denied medical benefits to thousands of American Families and those of our allies.  Winning hearts and minds all around the world.

We’ll have something more on this very soon.

For now, here is what she’s done for those in a position to lobby.

Hilda Solis:  Labor’s New Sheriff

by Esther Kaplan at The Nation

Here is an excerpt, you will want to read the full story at

The Nation

During the Bush years, the Department of Labor became a cautionary tale about what happens when foxes are asked to guard the henhouse. But since California Congresswoman Hilda Solis became labor secretary last winter, she has brought on board a team of lifelong advocates for working people–some of whom come from the ranks of organized labor–and has hired hundreds of new investigators and enforcers.

President Obama calls Solis part of his economic team, but the truth is she’s not part of the daily huddle at the White House with Summers and Geithner and Orszag. She’s tapped instead as a lead voice in the “jobs, jobs, jobs” choir, advocating for Obama’s latest stimulus package. She has tiptoed into the realm of financial regulation, organizing a joint hearing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the abysmal performance of target date retirement funds during the market crash, and she doles out hundreds of millions of dollars in job training funds, a decent chunk of which she has used to shape policy by channeling it to green industries. But Solis understands that her real influence lies in her power to enforce the nation’s labor laws–the primary mission of the DoL. It’s a role she embraced with relish at her swearing-in, where she announced with a grin, “To those who have for too long abused workers, put them in harm’s way, denied them fair pay, let me be clear: there is a new sheriff in town.”

Indeed, Solis threw her weight around on Capitol Hill when one key deputy, Labor Solicitor Patricia Smith, faced stiff opposition from business lobbies and the GOP. One of Smith’s predecessors as labor solicitor–the nation’s top enforcer of labor laws–was Eugene Scalia, son of the Supreme Court justice. Scalia’s previous claim to fame was his successful campaign to block an ergonomics safety standard, using an industry-supported Astroturf group to question whether repetitive-motion injuries exist at all. As labor solicitor, he invoked the Taft-Hartley Act against West Coast longshoremen locked out by their employer (a former client) and made a habit of undermining his own agency, writing a brief supporting limits on whistleblower protections. After a one-year tour, he landed on the lush payroll of Gibson Dunn, a leading “union avoidance” firm, where he now serves as an expert on “downsizing” when not penning attacks on the Employee Free Choice Act for the Wall Street Journal.

Blackwater Investigation blocked by State Department Interference

WASHINGTON — An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday Read the Story at the New York Times

Afghanistan Bombing Victims’ (Dane Paresi) Widow Feels Betrayed by Military

Wait until CNA gets through with her……

Chris Egert
KIRO 7 Eyewitness News

TACOMA, Wash. — She’s a dedicated military wife who watched her husband march off to battle for years.

Now, she’s opening-up about the day her husband was killed in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan.  Dane Paresi was killed in December.  When KIRO 7 Morning News Anchor Chris Egert talked to his widow, she said she feels betrayed by the military her husband dedicated his career to.  Master Sergeant Dane Clark Paresi was killed in Afghanistan, Dec. 30, 2009.   He had won about every military honor available in his 27 years in the Army and been almost everywhere while working in Special Forces.

“Afghanistan and Iraq.  He’s just been all over: Rwanda, right after the genocide, helping. Mauritania, Mozambique, Kenya,” said MindyLou Paresi, his wife of 14 years.

Mystery surround’s Paresi’s death, and MindyLou says she’s doesn’t know much.   He was working as a contractor for the company formerly known as Blackwater, now called Xe, when a man infiltrated a forward military base in Khost province and blew himself up.  Paresi, was one of seven US intelligence operatives killed.  “What they were able to tell me is that they were meeting with this man, and he got out of the wrong side of the car, he was very animated, he had his hands in his pockets, and when Dane and Jeremy went in to do their security check, that’s when he detonated the bomb, and that’s all I know,  ” MindyLou Paresi said.

MindyLou Paresi said the outpouring of support from friends, family, the CIA, the Xe has been overwhelming.   She and her daughters even got a letter of condolence from President Obama

Yet now, as hard as it is, she wants to shed some light on the negative experiences she’s had since her husband’s death — particularly what she describes as the “two hours of hell” she spent in early January at Waller Hall on Joint Base Lewis McChord.  “When you are grieving, you are in a cloud, you are in a fog, you feel like you have the weight of the world on you, you can’t move,” she said.  In that blurry mental state, Mrs. Paresi said she was called and told to go to the office of Casualty Affairs, then asked to discuss details about what happened with a staff she considered rude and uncaring, with no privacy or sensitivity to the subject.

“I wasn’t taken into a room,  I wasn’t treated with respect, what are you here for?   How can I help you?”  Paresi says the experience was similar in all the offices she visited that day.  Then, while waiting at one of the various departments, Mrs. Paresi said a soldier approached her and made the off-handed comment about her being “available now” as she was again discussing the details of her husband’s recent death, right out in the open.  “And I looked at him and I just — I am in a fog, and I am, like, what? T  hat doesn’t even deserve a response, and I walked out.

“Her mistreatment claims that go beyond Joint Base Lewis McChord to Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C.  Shortly after her husband’s death, she was told that his retirement pay and VA disability paycheck had been rescinded.  Three thousand, five hundred dollars that the government had already paid was then taken out of their account — because Dane hadn’t lived the entire month.  “They had deposited it, the retirement check and the VA check, on the first.   Dane was killed on the 30th.   And because he did not live another 7 hours and 31 minutes, they took it out.

“Her belief is that retired military families don’t get near the assistance and respect as active duty.   She is now in the process of setting up a non-profit organization called Paresi’s Promise as a way to bring attention to unbelievable amount of bureaucracy and paperwork involved in the current process.

Egert: “This has to be an incredible insult?”
Paresi: “It is, in more ways than you can imagine. I did not expect the red carpet to be rolled out, but I expected to be treated with dignity and respect, and that wasn’t the case.

“We contacted Joint Base Lewis McChord about this on Thursday. The Public Affairs office issued this statement Friday afternoon, saying in part,

“We are deeply concerned that the service provided to Mrs. Paresi following the death of her husband, Master Sergeant (Retired) Dane Paresi, did not meet the highest standards we all expect.”

What is being kept from you

You may not agree with everything  Gordon Duff says in this article but it should make you think.  It was removed from Veterans Today overnight though he is a senior writer there.  Did he step on some toes?

If you are an injured contractor fighting the DBA insurance companies and our government which is enabling them, we think you’ll find this paragraph hits home.

Our battle makes no sense at all.  Why is our government allowing it?

Whenever you see President Obama speak about change yet no change happens.

Whenever you wonder why something obvious to you isn’t seen by others, take heed.

When an idiot with a bomb is walked onto a plane,

when a psychiatrist goes on a murder rampage on a military base,

when laws are broken but prosecutions never happen,

when a hundred things that make no sense at all sneak onto the comic or sports pages or into your email,

if one is true, and we do nothing, we are lost.

You can read the article here

SENATE BURGLARY: CIA DOMESTIC BLACK-OP TEAM ARRESTED

January 30, 2010 by Gordon Duff

Read the full story at Veterans Today

Last week’s breakin at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in the New Orleans Federal Building was more than it seemed, much more.  All of the 4 arrested had been trained by the CIA and, possibly, Israel.  One arrested, Stan Dai, is listed as an Operations Officer of the Department of Defense Irregular Warfare Program and  a known expert and lecturer on, not only surveillance but explosives training, assassinations and “false flag operations.”  If you wanted a plane to crash, an enemy to get sick and die or a building to blow up, Dai would be the man to know how to make it happen.  Problem is, his skills were being used as part of a criminal conspiracy inside the United States against members of our own government.

Original reports on the “break-in” were also wrong.  One of those arrested was found blocks away with a covert receiver, managing the office bugs.  The man in the car is identified as Stan  Dai, Operations Officer for the Department of Defense Irregular Warfare Program:

”one of the four was arrested with a listening device in a car blocks from the senator’s offices.” The FBI’s affidavit noted that Flanagan and Basel were in the building with O’Keefe, and a federal law enforcement official confirmed to AP that Dai was the one in the car.”

What is not initially known is whether this was the first attempt or, as is much more likely, an additional incursion to plant new bugs as the ones in place were missing key conversations.  Also, it is not known how many “black ops” crews are being run by the CIA inside the United States in violation of their charter or if their operations are being limited to spying on Democratic lawmakers or if operations of a more threatening nature have been performed but remain undiscovered.

Additionally, as this was a covert op against  US government investigations of, not only terrorism and terrorism funding but major financial crimes against the United States, it is unclear who the recipient of the “product,” an intelligence industry term for “output” or information put up for “distribution” might be.  Potential buyers could be the Republican Party, Israel, Turkey, India, Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea or financial institutions involved in massive money laundering schemes being investigated by the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security of which Senator Landireu is a member.

Learn how the Intelliegence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC CAE) at Georgetown University and the CIA got involved in this seedy domestic “black ops” group.  In a story broken this week:

Dane Clark Paresi Former Special Forces, Contractor, Killed in CIA suicide bombing

DuPont man among seven killed in Afghan suicide attack

A DuPont resident and former Fort Lewis soldier was one of seven U.S. intelligence agents killed by a suicide bomber who infiltrated a base in Afghanistan last week, his widow said Tuesday.

Dane Clark Paresi, a retired Army master sergeant, died Dec. 30 in the blast at a forward military base in Khost province, on the restive Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Paresi, 46, retired from 1st Special Forces Group at Fort Lewis in 2008, capping 27 years in the Army, and was working as a contractor alongside CIA employees when he was killed, according to family and friends.

MindyLou Paresi said she was told her husband was at the meeting inside the military compound and suspected something was wrong. When he approached, the informant detonated his explosives. She said her husband was right next to the bomber, the closest person to the blast.

“He saved many people, unfortunately seven of them did die,” she said, noting that others were wounded. “It could have been worse.”

She credited her husband’s employer, Xe Services (formerly Blackwater), for keeping her informed and taking care of the family’s emotional, financial and other needs over the last several days.

Jordanian double agent killed CIA Officers/Blackwater Xe Contractors

By Robert Windrem and Richard Engel, NBC News

The suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan last week was carried out by a Jordanian doctor who was an al-Qaida double agent, Western intelligence officials told NBC News.
Initial reports said that the attack, which killed seven CIA officers, was carried out by a member of the Afghan National Army.

Two Contractors killed in CIA bombing worked for Xe Blackwater

Xe spokesman Mark Corallo declined to confirm whether the men worked for the North Carolina-based company. A former U.S. intelligence official has said that a suicide bomber killed eight people inside a CIA base in Afghanistan, including four CIA officers, three security guards and a Jordanian intelligence officer. Here

CNN: Xe contractors killed in CIA bombing

Posted: Jan. 2, 2010

Moyock, N.C. — Two CIA contractors killed in a bombing in Afghanistan Wednesday were employed by North Carolina-based Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, according to CNN.

A former intelligence officer told CNN that two of seven deceased worked for the private security and training firm based in Moyock, a small community in Currituck County.