[NYTr] Blackwater's Bu$ine$$

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Nation - Dec 24, 2007 issue
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071224/scahill

Blackwater's Bu$ine$$

by JEREMY SCAHILL

Gunning down seventeen Iraqi civilians in an incident the military has
labeled "criminal." Multiple Congressional investigations. A federal
grand jury. Allegations of illegal arms smuggling. Wrongful death
lawsuits brought by families of dead employees and US soldiers. A
federal lawsuit alleging war crimes. Charges of steroid use by
trigger-happy mercenaries. Allegations of "significant tax evasion."
The US-installed government in Iraq labeling its forces "murderers."
With a new scandal breaking practically every day, one would think
Blackwater security would be on the ropes, facing a corporate meltdown
or even a total wipeout. But it seems that business for the company has
never been better, as it continues to pull in major federal contracts.
And its public demeanor grows bolder and cockier by the day.

Rather than hiding out and hoping for the scandals to fade, the Bush
Administration's preferred mercenary company has launched a major
rebranding campaign, changing its name to Blackwater Worldwide and
softening its logo: once a bear paw in the site of a sniper scope, it's
now a bear claw wrapped in two half ovals--sort of like the outline of
a globe with a United Nations feel. Its website boasts of a corporate
vision "guided by integrity, innovation, and a desire for a safer
world." Blackwater mercenaries are now referred to as "global
stabilization professionals." Blackwater's 38-year-old owner, Erik
Prince, was No. 11 in Details magazine's "Power 50," the men "who
control your viewing patterns, your buying habits, your anxieties, your
lust.... the people who have taken over the space in your head."

In one of the company's most bizarre recent actions, on December 1
Blackwater paratroopers staged a dramatic aerial landing, complete with
Blackwater flags and parachutes--not in Baghdad or Kabul but in San
Diego at Qualcomm Stadium during the halftime show at the San Diego
State/BYU football game. The location was interesting, given that
Blackwater is fighting fierce local opposition to its attempt to open a
new camp--Blackwater West--on 824 acres in the small rural community of
Potrero, just outside San Diego. Blackwater's parachute squad plans to
land at the Armed Forces Bowl in Texas this month and the Virginia Gold
Cup in May. The company recently sponsored a NASCAR racer, and it has
teamed up with gun manufacturer Sig Sauer to create a Blackwater
Special Edition full-sized 9-millimeter pistol with the company logo on
the grip. It comes with a Limited Lifetime Warranty. For $18, parents
can purchase infant onesies with the company logo.

In recent weeks, Blackwater has indicated it might quit Iraq. "We see
the security market diminishing," Prince told the Wall Street Journal
in October. Yet on December 3 Blackwater posted job listings for
"security specialists" and snipers as a result of its State Department
diplomatic security "contract expansion." While its name may be mud in
the human rights world, Blackwater has not only made big money in Iraq
(about $1 billion in State Department contracts); it has secured a
reputation as a company that keeps US officials alive by any means
necessary. The dirty open secret in Washington is that Blackwater has
done its job in Iraq, even if it has done so by valuing the lives of
Iraqis much lower than those of US VIPs. That badass image will serve
it well as it expands globally.

Prince promises that Blackwater "is going to be more of a full
spectrum" operation. Amid the cornucopia of scandals, Blackwater is
bidding for a share of a five-year, $15 billion contract with the
Pentagon to "fight terrorists with drug-trade ties." Perhaps the firm
will join the mercenary giant DynCorp in Colombia or Bolivia or be sent
into Mexico on a "training" mission. This "war on drugs" contract would
put Blackwater in the arena with the godfathers of the war business,
including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.

In addition to its robust business in law enforcement, military and
homeland security training, Blackwater is branching out. Here are some
of its current projects and initiatives:

§ Blackwater affiliate Greystone Ltd., registered offshore in Barbados,
is an old-fashioned mercenary operation offering "personnel from the
best militaries throughout the world" for hire by governments and
private organizations. It also boasts of a "multi-national peacekeeping
program," with forces "specializing in crowd control and less than
lethal techniques and military personnel for the less stable areas of
operation."

§ Prince's Total Intelligence Solutions, headed by three CIA veterans
(among them Blackwater's number two, Cofer Black), puts CIA-type
services on the open market for hire by corporations or governments.

§ Blackwater is launching an armored vehicle called the Grizzly, which
the company characterizes as the most versatile in history. Blackwater
intends to modify it to be legal for use on US highways.

§ Blackwater's aviation division has some forty aircraft, including
turboprop planes that can be used for unorthodox landings. It has
ordered a Super Tucano paramilitary plane from Brazil, which can be
used in counterinsurgency operations. In August the aviation division
won a $92 million contract with the Pentagon to operate flights in
Central Asia.

§ It recently flight-tested the unmanned Polar 400 airship, which may
be marketed to the Department of Homeland Security for use in
monitoring the US-Mexico border and to "military, law enforcement, and
non-government customers."

§ A fast-growing maritime division has a new, 184-foot vessel that has
been fitted for potential paramilitary use.

Meanwhile, Blackwater is deep in the camp of GOP presidential candidate
Mitt Romney. Cofer Black is Romney's senior adviser on
counterterrorism. At the recent CNN/YouTube debate, when Romney refused
to call waterboarding torture, he said, "I'm not going to specify the
specific means of what is and what is not torture so that the people
that we capture will know what things we're able to do and what things
we're not able to do. And I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a
person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some
thirty-five years." That was an exaggeration of Black's career at the
CIA (he was there twenty-eight years and head of counterterrorism for
only three), but a Romney presidency could make Blackwater's business
under Bush look like a church bake sale.

In short, Blackwater is moving ahead at full steam. Individual scandals
clearly aren't enough to slow it down. The company's critics in the
Democratic-controlled Congress must confront the root of the problem:
the government is in the midst of its most radical privatization in
history, and companies like Blackwater are becoming ever more deeply
embedded in the war apparatus. Until this system is brought down, the
world's the limit for Blackwater Worldwide--and as its rebranding
campaign shows, Blackwater knows it.