Blackwater USA
Urbina said that the guards would have lost their jobs had they not given the statements, thus making the statements inadmissible. The Iraqi government announced that Xe must leave Iraq as soon as a joint Iraqi–US committee finishes drafting the new guidelines on private contractors under the current Iraqi–US security agreement.federal prosecutors announced an investigation into allegations that Blackwater employees may have smuggled weapons into Iraq, and that these weapons may have been later transferred to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish nationalist group designated a terrorist organization by the United States, NATO and the EU. Prince claimed in September 2007 that there was a “rush to judgment” about Blackwater, due to inaccurate information . In January 2008, Marshall Adame, a Democrat running for Congress in North Carolina s 3rd District, took part in a live question-and-answer forum where he was asked a question about Blackwater. The families say they are suing not for financial damages, but for the details of their sons and husbands deaths, saying Xe has refused to supply these details, and that in its zeal to exploit this unexpected market for private security men, the company showed a callous disregard for the safety of its employees. On November 27, 2004, an army report says that a Blackwater airplane, in violation of numerous government regulations and contract requirements, crashed into a mountainside in Afghanistan, killing all six passengers on board. On October 11, 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit against Blackwater under the Alien Tort Claims Act on behalf of an injured Iraqi and the families of three of the 17 Iraqis killed by Blackwater employees during the September 16, 2007, Blackwater Baghdad shootings. In June 2009, an amended lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, alleging that Blackwater employees shot and killed three members of an Iraqi family, including a nine-year-old boy, who were traveling from the Baghdad airport to Baghdad on July 1, 2007.
The experience we ve had would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at risk, company founder and CEO Erik Prince told The Associated Press during a daylong visit to the company s North Carolina compound. Prince announced his resignation as CEO on March 2, 2009. In the past it has trained Greek security forces for the 2004 Olympics, Azerbaijan Naval Sea Commandos, and Afghanistan s Ministry of Interior. It also purchased a 183-foot vessel, McArthur, which has been outfitted for disaster response and training. The Raven Development Group is a construction management and management subsidiary.
Prosecution under civilian law would be through the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows the extension of federal law to civilians supporting military operations; however, according to the deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department s criminal division, Robert Litt, trying a criminal case in federal court would require a secure chain of evidence, with police securing the crime scene immediately, while evidence gathered by Iraqi investigators would be regarded as suspect. A number of Iraqi families with killed relatives are taking Blackwater to court over alleged random killings committed by private Blackwater guards . Blackwater Worldwide was employed to assist the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts on the Gulf Coast. This Xe facility has been operational since April 2007 and serves law enforcement agencies throughout the Midwest.
Air Quest, Inc. Prince will remain as chairman of the board but will no longer be involved in day-to-day operations.
Umm Tahsin, widow of one of the men killed by Xe employees in the Nisoor Square shooting, said of the denial, Those people are a group of criminals. They also offer courses in tactical and off road driving. USTC s primary training facility, located on 7,000 acres (28 km2) in northeastern North Carolina, comprises several ranges, indoor, outdoor, urban reproductions, a man-made lake, and a driving track in Camden and Currituck counties.
It owns and operates three subsidiaries: STI Aviation, Inc. If the court rules against Xe on the racketeering account, it could dissolve the company. On December 31, 2009 Judge Ricardo Urbina threw out the criminal case against the five guards under indictment.
Critics have suggested this may be going too far in putting political decisions in the hands of privately owned corporations. In December 2006, an Iraqi politician, Ayham al-Samarie, escaped from a prison in Iraq, where he was awaiting trial for 12 criminal corruption cases. On September 22, 2007, U.S. Moonen, at the time an employee of Blackwater USA, of murdering him while drunk.
The training consists of military offensive and defensive operations, as well as smaller scale personal security. Xe is currently the largest of the US State Department s three private security contractors. The false statements claimed that the one of the Blackwater vehicles had been hit by insurgent gunfire, but the investigation found that one of the Blackwater guards had actually fired into his own vehicle.
Paul Bremer. On March 31, 2004, four Blackwater Security Consulting (BSC) employees were ambushed and killed in Fallujah, and their bodies were hung on bridges. Since June 2004, Blackwater has been paid more than $320 million out of a $1 billion, five-year State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protective Service, which protects U.S. According to a company press release, it provided airlift, security, logistics, and transportation services, as well as humanitarian support.
Moonen was subsequently fired by Blackwater for violating alcohol and firearm policy , and travelled from Iraq to the United States days after the incident. He was formerly the head of the CIA s Near East Division. Xe s primary training facility, located on 7,000 acres (28 km2) in northeastern North Carolina, comprises several ranges: indoor, outdoor, urban reproductions; an artificial lake; and a driving track in Camden and Currituck counties.
Danielle Esposito was named the new chief operating officer and executive vice president. In December 2009, Prince announced that he is severing his ties with Xe and is considering becoming a teacher. Xe consists of nine business units: United States Training Center (USTC, formerly Blackwater Training Center) offers tactics and weapons training to military, government, and law enforcement agencies. It announced on February 13, 2009, that it would operate under the new name Xe .
The fate of the car s driver was unknown because the convoy did not stop after the shooting. It was reported that the company also acted as law enforcement in the disaster-stricken areas, for example securing neighborhoods and confronting criminals. Xe is one of five companies picked by the Department of Defense Counter-Narcotics Technology Program Office in a five-year contract for equipment, material and services in support of counter-narcotics activities.
The guards stated that they felt threatened by the car s approach. United States Attorneys are currently investigating. Five Blackwater contractors were killed on January 23, 2007, in Iraq when their Hughes H-6 helicopter was shot down on Baghdad s Haifa Street.
According to the 13 witnesses who were present, the guards had not fired on the Justice Ministry. would replace Xe/Blackwater as the department s security contractor in Iraq. The Russel Crowe starrer, State of Play, is a 2009 feature film that makes references to a fictional private military company, PointCorp, which directly serves as a stand-in for Blackwater and its operations (the film even makes a reference to its post-Katrina duties).
BSC is one of the private security firms employed during the Iraq War to guard officials and installations, train Iraq s new Army and Police, and provide other support for Coalition Forces. Its primary public contract is from the U.S. The film tells a sinister tale of how the PMC (in this case the fictional firm) uses Congressional lobbyists and other methods to keep and renew its contracts with the US Dept.
Marine back to safety outside of the city. On February 16, 2005, four Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. Here he created his state-of-the-art private training facility, and his contracting company—Blackwater—is named for the peat-colored water of the swamp.
Of the 987 contractors Xe provides, 744 are US citizens. In October 2007, the company, Blackwater USA, was renamed Blackwater Worldwide. Xe is also trying to open an 824-acre (3.33 km2) training facility three miles north of Potrero, a small town in rural east San Diego County, California located 45 miles (72 km) east of San Diego, for military and law enforcement training. In October 2007, Blackwater USA began a process of altering its name to Blackwater Worldwide, and unveiled a new logo. On July 21, 2008, Blackwater Worldwide stated that they would shift resources away from security contracting because of extensive risk in that sector.
The suit also alleges that Blackwater employees used three company aircraft to kidnap Iraqi citizens from Iraq and further accuses the company of engaging in weapons smuggling, money laundering, tax evasion, child prostitution, illegal drug use and destruction of evidence. There was absolutely no reason, no provocation whatsoever. He then stated, There is no place in the American force structure, or in American culture for mercenaries, they are guns for hire; No more, no less. Xe, which had been operating in Iraq without an Iraqi government license, applied for one for the first time, but the request was denied by Iraqi officials in January 2009.
Robert Richer was vice president of intelligence until January 2007, when he formed Total Intelligence Solutions. Xe Services LLC (pronounced /ˈzi/), still usually referred to as Blackwater , is a private military company founded as Blackwater USA in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark. 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.
In 2003, Blackwater attained its first high-profile contract when it received a $21 million no-bid contract for guarding the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. John Frese, the U.S.
Department of Defense. AWS also appears to provide services to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as three of its aircraft, with tail numbers N962BW, N964BW, and N968BW, have flown into its Camp Peary facility. A CASA 212 aircraft, tail number N960BW, operated by Presidential Airways crashed on November 27, 2004, in Afghanistan; it had been a contract flight for the United States Air Force en route from Bagram to Farah. In late September 2007, Presidential Airways received a $92m contract from the Department of Defense for air transportation in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. STI Aviation focuses on aircraft maintenance, and is a FAA/JAA 145 repair station. Many of Blackwater s tactical and training aircraft are registered to Blackwater affiliate EP Aviation LLC, named for Blackwater s owner, Erik Prince. A private security service, Greystone is registered in Barbados, and employs third country nationals for offshore security work through its affiliate Satelles Solutions, Inc. Greystone had planned to open a training facility on the grounds of the Subic Bay U.S. However, their role in their work is the factor of these controversies. In August 2009, Blackwater and Blackwater founder Eric Prince was accused of murder and of failing to stop the use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes by their men. In March 2006, Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA, allegedly suggested at an international conference in Amman, Jordan, that the company was ready to move towards providing security professionals up to brigade size (3,000–5,000) for humanitarian efforts and low-intensity conflicts.
courts, and Senate Democratic leaders have said they plan to send similar legislation to President Bush as soon as possible. In December 2008 a US State Department panel recommended that Xe should be dropped as the main private security contractor for U.S. officials and some foreign officials in conflict zones. In 2006, Blackwater won the remunerative contract to protect diplomats for the U.S.
An Iraqi police report described the shootings as an act of terrorism and said Blackwater caused the incident. Blackwater s license to operate in Iraq was revoked by the Iraqi Government on September 17, 2007, resulting from a highly contentious incident that occurred the previous day during which seventeen (initially reported as eleven) Iraqis were killed. On October 2, 2007, Erik Prince attended a congressional hearing conducted by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform following the controversy related to Blackwater s conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his testimony before Congress, Prince said his company has a lack of remedies to deal with employee misdeeds. embassy in Iraq, the largest American embassy in the world.
Xe s founder and former CEO Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL, attended the Naval Academy, graduated from Hillsdale College, and was an intern in George H. Some of the weapons were believed to have ended up on the country’s black market. For work in Iraq, Xe has drawn contractors from their international pool of professionals, a database containing 21,000 former Special Forces operatives, soldiers, and retired law enforcement agents, overall. On March 31, 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah attacked a convoy containing four American private military contractors from Blackwater USA who were conducting delivery for food caterers ESS. In April 2004, a few days after the Fallujah bridge hanging, a small team of Blackwater employees, along with a fire team of U.S.
Company literature says that it is the largest training facility in the country. During the siege, as supplies and ammunition ran low, a team of Blackwater contractors 70 miles (113 km) away flew to the compound to resupply and bring an injured U.S.
This facility is also known as The Site . Adame, who had served as a State Department official in Iraq recounted, I saw them shoot people, I saw them crash into cars while I was their passenger.
Three insurgencies claimed to be responsible for shooting down the helicopter, although such has not been confirmed by the United States. In late May 2007, Blackwater contractors opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days, one of the incidents provoking a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos, according to U.S. It was established in 1999 to design and build Blackwater Worldwide s training facility in North Carolina. Aviation Worldwide Services (AWS) was founded by Richard Pere and Tim Childrey, and is based at Melbourne, Florida, USA.
Prince is a major financial supporter of Republican Party causes and candidates. Cofer Black, the company s vice-chairman from 2006 through 2008, was director of the CIA s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001. State Department under the Bureau of Diplomatic Security s Worldwide Personal Protective Services (WPPS) and WPPS II umbrella contracts, along with DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, Inc.
Joseph Yorio was named as the new president and CEO, replacing Gary Jackson as president and Prince as CEO. of Defense.
It operates aircraft owned by AWS. In April 2003 it was acquired by Blackwater USA. Presidential Airways (PAW) is an FAA Part 135 charter cargo and passenger airline based at Melbourne International Airport.
Even in the film, the training facility of PointCorp as Little Baghdad was mentioned, which Blackwater s training complex used a similar naming in their so-called Little Baghdad urban environment training site within the training complex. Pushing them out is the best solution.
Contractors accused of crimes abroad could be tried in the United States under either military or civilian law; however, the applicable military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, was changed in 2006, and appears to now exempt State Department contractors that provide security escorts for a civilian agency. The headquarters was surrounded and it was the last area in the city that remained in coalition control.
In November 2006 Blackwater USA announced it acquired an 80-acre (30 ha) facility 150 miles (240 km) west of Chicago, in Mount Carroll, Illinois to be called Blackwater North. In announcing the dismissal, Urbina said that the prosecutors violated the guards Fifth Amendment rights by using the statements they gave to the State Department as evidence.
Blackwater officials have met with Arnold Schwarzenegger to discuss earthquake response services. Training canines to work in patrol capacities as war dogs, explosives and drug detection, and various other roles for military and law enforcement duties. Blackwater Airships LLC was established in January 2006 to build a remotely piloted airship vehicle (RPAV). Blackwater recently introduced its own armored personnel carrier, the Grizzly APC. Blackwater Maritime Security Services offers tactical training for maritime force protection units. Naval Base, but those plans were later abandoned. Blackwater Worldwide has played a substantial role during the Iraq War as a contractor for the United States government.
The contract is worth up to $15 billion. There are a variety of ongoing controversies involving Blackwater Worldwide that are not in direct relation to their specific and individual operations for the U.S.
After leaving public service, Black became chairman of the privately owned intelligence gathering company Total Intelligence Solutions, Inc., as well as vice chairman for 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. In the late 1990s, Erik Prince spent part of his inherited wealth to purchase about 6,000 acres (24 km2) of the Great Dismal Swamp, a vast swamp on the North Carolina/Virginia border, now mostly a National Wildlife Refuge.
They destroyed our family. On April 1, 2009, the U.S. State Department prepared to issue a multimillion-dollar fine to Blackwater for shipping hundreds of automatic firearms to Iraq without the necessary permits and without paying the proper tariffs.
State Department announced that Triple Canopy, Inc. State Department convoy fired 70 bullets into an Iraqi s car.
The Iraqi government has accused Andrew J. W.
government. It is estimated by the Pentagon and company representatives that there are 20,000 to 30,000 armed security contractors working in Iraq, and some estimates are as high as 100,000, though no official figures exist. In November 2008, the U.S.
That facility has been operational since April 2007 and serves law enforcement agencies throughout the Midwest. This division provides and maintains target range steel targets and a shoothouse system. Blackwater Security Consulting (BSC) was formed in 2001, and based in Moyock, North Carolina. Bush s White House.
embassy in Iraq s top security official, declined to punish Blackwater or the security guards, stating that any disciplinary actions would be deemed as lowering the morale of the Blackwater contractors. On Christmas Eve 2006, a security guard of the Iraqi vice president, Adel Abdul Mahdi, was shot and killed while on duty outside the Iraqi prime minister s compound. In November 2006 Blackwater USA announced it recently acquired an 80-acre (30 ha) facility 150 miles (240 km) west of Chicago in Mount Carroll, Illinois to be called Blackwater North.
The other companies picked are Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Arinc Inc. In 2005, it worked to train the Naval Sea Commando regiment of Azerbaijan, enhancing their interdiction capabilities on the Caspian Sea. Xe is currently being sued by the families of four contractors killed in Fallujah in March 2004. The child prositituion charge refers to young Iraqi girls allegedly being brought to the Blackwater compound in Baghdad s fortified Green Zone, identified in the lawsuit as the Blackwater Man Camp, to provide oral sex to contractors for $1.
The crash site was secured by a personal security detail, callsign Jester from 1/26 Infantry, 1st Infantry Division. troops to arrive.
and Iraqi officials. A sniper employed by Blackwater Worldwide opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry, killing three guards working for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network on February 6, 2006. and Presidential Airways, Inc.
An investigation by the State Department s Diplomatic Security Service concluded that the shooting was not justified and that the Blackwater employees provided false statements to investigators. Company literature says that it is the largest training facility in the country.
Presidential Airways holds a Secret Facility Clearance from the U.S. When asked why an employee involved in the killing of a vice-presidential guard incident had been whisked out of the country he replied, We can t flog him, we can t incarcerate him. A Committee on Oversight and Government Reform staff report, based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents, describes Blackwater as being staffed with reckless, shoot-first guards who were not always sober and did not always stop to see who or what was hit by their bullets. In the wake of Prince s testimony before Congress, the US House passed a bill in October 2007 that would make all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones subject to prosecution by U.S.
State Department told Blackwater Worldwide that it will not renew its contract in Iraq. On September 23, 2007, the Iraqi government said that it expects to refer criminal charges to its courts in connection with a shooting involving Blackwater guards. Legal specialists say that the U.S. for protective services in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Israel. Blackwater Security is also now pursuing domestic work as disaster relief workers, following their Katrina response.
He was the United States Department of State coordinator for counterterrorism with the rank of ambassador at large from December 2002 to November 2004. It is inspired by controversies surrounding contracting companies such as Blackwater Worldwide and their recent involvements in Iraq. Mark Manzetti, writing in the New York Times on August 19, 2009, reported that the CIA had hired Blackwater as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda. .
Another American, low-budget feature film called Blackline: The Beirut Contract is currently in production. USTC also offers several open-enrollment courses periodically throughout the year, from hand to hand combat (executive course) to precision rifle marksmanship.
Marines, held off over 400 insurgents outside the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Al Najaf, Iraq, waiting for U.S. diplomats in Iraq. On Jan 30, 2009, The U.S.
What they did was a massacre. Blackwater consists of nine divisions, and a subsidiary, Blackwater Vehicles. Xe is a privately held company and does not publish much information about internal affairs.
government is unlikely to allow a trial in the Iraqi courts, because there is little confidence that trials would be fair.
