Today on Fresh Air there was a great interview with Jeremy Scahill, who has been investigating Blackwater for a long time (he wrote a book called Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army in 2007) which was very crazy.
Check it out here if you want to get freaked out about how one man can start a private army that loans out jets to the US military to run covert operations with, among other supremely questionable things.
A little background information in case you aren't familiar.
Was:
Is:
In case you don't know about Blackwater here is a good intro from Wikipedia:
Xe Services LLC, still usually referred to as "Blackwater", is a private military company founded as Blackwater USA in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark. In October 2007, the company was renamed Blackwater Worldwide. Blackwater has a wide array of business divisions, subsidiaries, and spin-off corporations but the organization as a whole has courted much controversy.
Based in North Carolina, Xe operates a tactical training facility (36°27′N 76°12′W / 36.45°N 76.2°W / 36.45; -76.2) which the company claims is the world's largest, and at which it trains more than 40,000 people a year, mostly from US and other military and police services. The training consists of military offensive and defensive operations, as well as smaller scale personal security.
The company announced on February 13, 2009, that it would operate under the new name "Xe". In a memo sent to employees, President Gary Jackson wrote that the new name "reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security." A spokesman for the company stated that it feels the Blackwater name is too closely associated with the company's work in the occupation of Iraq. Spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said there was no meaning in the new name, which the company took over a year to arrive at in an internal search.
Xe is currently the largest of the US State Department's three private security contractors. Of the 987 contractors Xe provides, 744 are US citizens. At least 90 percent of the company's revenue comes from government contracts, of which two-thirds are no-bid contracts. Xe provided security services in Iraq to the United States federal government, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency on a contractual basis. They no longer have a license to operate in Iraq: the new Iraqi government made multiple attempts to expel them from their country, and denied their application for an operating license in January 2009. However, the company is still under contract with the State Department and some Xe personnel will likely remain working illegally in Iraq at least until September 2009.
One last thing:
Here is the only thing that shows up on website for Blackwater or Xe or whatever they are calling themselves at the moment.
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