Exclusive: Blackwater Wins Piece of $10 Billion Mercenary Deal
By Spencer Ackerman
October 1, 2010
Never mind the dead civilians. Forget about the stolen guns. Get over the murder arrests, the fraud allegations, and the accusations of guards pumping themselves up with steroids and cocaine. Through a “joint venture,” the notorious private-security firm Blackwater has won a piece of a five-year State Department contract worth up to $10 billion, Danger Room has learned.忘記死的平民，忘掉被盜的槍支，克服謀殺罪的逮捕、欺詐的指控，和警衛泵起自己以類固醇和可卡因的控告。通過一“合資公司”，臭名昭著的私人保安公司黑水已贏得一份五年的國務院合同，價值高達 100億美元，危險室已知道。
Apparently, there is no misdeed so big that it can keep guns-for-hire from working for the government. And this is despite a 2008 campaign pledge from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ban the company from federal contracts.
表面地，沒有任何如此大的不當行為，能阻止為政府工作的槍枝聘用。和這儘管是一 2008年的競選承諾，國務卿希拉里克林頓禁制該公司取得聯邦合約。
Eight private security firms have won State’s giant Worldwide Protective Services contract, the big Foggy Bottom partnership to keep embassies and their inhabitants safe. Two of those firms are longtime State contract holders DynCorp and Triple Canopy. The others are newcomers to the big security contract: EOD Technology, SOC, Aegis Defense Services, Global Strategies Group, Torres International Services and International Development Solutions LLC.
Don’t see any of Blackwater’s myriad business names on there? That’s apparently by design.
Blackwater and the State Department tried their best to obscure their renewed relationship. As Danger Room reported Wednesday, Blackwater did not appear on the vendors’ list for Worldwide Protective Services. And the State Department confirms that the company, renamed Xe Services, didn’t actually submit its own independent bid.
Instead, they used a blandly named cut-out, “International Development Solutions,” to retain a toehold into State’s lucrative security business. No one who looks at the official announcement of the contract award would have any idea that firm is connected to Blackwater.
Blackwater’s “affiliate U.S. Training Center is part of International Development Solutions (IDS), a joint venture with Kaseman,” according to an official State Department statement to Danger Room. “This joint venture was determined by the Department’s source-selection authority to be eligible for award.”
Last year, a Blackwater subdivision, the Blackwater Lodge and Training Center, changed its name to U.S. Training Center. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) blasted Blackwater in February for setting up shell companies in order to keep winning government security contracts despite its infamy.
According to State’s statement, the contracting process for the new Worldwide Protective Services deal included a “review” to ensure that companies met “minimum criteria” for eligibility. “This review included a process to determine whether any offerors had been suspended or debarred from the award of federal contracts,” it said. Despite Blackwater guards killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, killing two Afghan civilians on a Kabul road in 2009, and absconding with hundreds of unauthorized guns from a U.S. military weapons depot in Afghanistan using the name of a South Park character, federal contracting authorities have never suspended or debarred Blackwater.
It’s not yet clear what the U.S. Training Center–International Development Solutions–Kaseman “joint venture” will do for the State Department. Worldwide Protective Services is actually a bundle of contracts in one, each governing specific duties for a firm to handle in a given country. Only two of those component contracts have been awarded so far.
One of them is to guard the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad. That’s gone to SOC, which has ousted Triple Canopy, the incumbent security provider (which will still be part of the overall Worldwide Protective Services deal). If SOC remains the contract holder in Baghdad for the full five years — there’s an annual review — it stands to make nearly $974 million.
But because that so-called “task order” is specifically for on-site security around the gates of the Baghdad embassy, it’s not clear if SOC will also provide the 6,000 to 7,000 security guards the State Department estimates it needs to protect diplomats on the move around Iraq or its other outposts around the country. Last year, the Iraqi government barred Blackwater from doing business in Iraq in response to Nisour Square. But it’s not clear whether this new “joint venture” is eligible to operate in Iraq.
The other task order issued under Worldwide Protective Services is to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. That contract’s gone to EOD Technology, a global firm which has in the past guarded the British and Canadian embassies in the Afghan capital. And that means ArmorGroup North America — last seen with its guards taking tequila shots out of each others’ butts and engaging in extracurricular sex trafficking — has lost a contract worth nearly $274 million over five years.
According to a different statement from the Department of State, the new Worldwide Protective Services contract comes with new safeguards to prevent abuse. Those include mandatory cultural awareness training, the addition of interpreters on all protection missions, financial penalties for poor performance, and a formal ban on alcohol. (Yes — after years of alcohol-related contractor incidents.) Despite these new protections, the department still sees fit to continue business with the most infamous member of the private-security world.
Photo: Wikimedia
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阿富汗正式查禁民營保全公司
(法新社)2010年10月3日 星期日 20:35
（法新社喀布爾3日電） 阿富汗 總統發言人今天表示，阿富汗已正式查禁8家外國民營保全公司，包括引起爭議的前「黑水」（Blackwater）公司。
發言人奧默（Waheed Omer）告訴媒體記者：「解散8家民營保全公司以及收繳他們的槍枝，執行過程順利。」
他表示，這些公司包括了NCL、FHI、白鷹（WhiteEagle）和XE（即前黑水公司）。（譯者：中央社郭傳信）
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/101003/8/kiz4.html
黑水在阿富汗'瓦解'
Blackwater 'dissolved' in Afghanistan
Sun Oct 3, 2010 1:43PM
Afghanistan has officially banned eight foreign security firms, including American contractor Xe Services LLC, formerly known as Blackwater.
Afghan officials say the private contractors have been dissolved and their weapons collected.
"The process of dissolving eight private security companies and collecting their weapons has been carried out successfully," Waheed Omer, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday.
The announcement comes a day after Washington granted Blackwater a fresh five-year contract to operate in Afghanistan.
The firm also signed another contract worth USD 100 million with the CIA two months ago.
The company uses subsidiaries to win contracts.
The deals have been signed despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's campaign promise to keep Blackwater and other private contractors away from federal contracts.
The company has been struggling with a trail of legal cases and civil lawsuits, including one for killing 17 Iraqi civilians during a Baghdad shootout in 2007.
Karzai had earlier accused foreign security contractors in the country of operating as militias, saying that these firms are only worsening the security situation in Afghanistan.
The move spotlights misconduct of US mercenaries, who are contracted to protect the western embassies and companies in central and remote regions of Afghanistan.
Most of the mercenaries are believed to have close ties with Afghan warlords. They are also accused of contributing to the rising number of civilian casualties in the country.
JR/AKM/MMN
http://presstv.ir/detail/145040.html
孟山都、黑水終於合作了
黑水使用別名來贏取合約
中央情報局給黑水公司新的 1億美元合約
每日郵報：黑水、美軍為塔利班毒梟工作
黑色直升機的恐懼 - 黑水
儘管否認，黑水仍在為美國工作
黑水在阿聯酋組織秘密軍隊
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