CIA and mercenaries plotted murder of German citizen

[laststeamtrain]

Assassination without borders
CIA and mercenaries plotted murder of German citizen
By Peter Schwarz
7 January 2010

Four years ago in Hamburg, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and mercenary firm Blackwater planned and prepared the assassination of the German-Syrian businessman Mamoun Darkazanli. This is reported by the American magazine Vanity Fair in its January issue. The report has unleashed considerable turmoil in German political circles. It reveals that the policy of targeted killing, the liquidation of alleged terrorists by the US, does not stop at the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen. It is also practiced on the territory of Washington’s NATO allies.

The information about the plans to murder Darkazanli can be found in a lengthy article about Erik Prince, the boss and founder of Blackwater, now called XE. Prince founded the company in the mid-1990s with the help of an inheritance worth billions. This former member of the elite US Navy Seals offered to provide specialised training for US military units at the company’s premises in North Carolina.

Blackwater’s big moment came with the declaration of the “war on terror” by President George W. Bush. The company evolved into a private army, which could be deployed wherever it was too hot for the military or intelligence forces. Between 2001 and 2009, it collected more than $1.5 billion from the US government. In 2008 alone, the firm’s revenues amounted to $600 million.

In addition to training troops, Blackwater provides personal security in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, and also carries out the provisioning of US forces in inaccessible areas. Mercenaries employed by the company have repeatedly caused headlines because of their brutality and trigger-happy approach. On March 31, 2004, four Blackwater employees were killed and their bodies later hung from a bridge by an angry crowd in Fallujah; on September 16, 2007, at an intersection in Baghdad, a group of Blackwater bodyguards shot wildly and killed 17 civilians.

Above all, Blackwater plays a key role in the targeted killings of alleged terrorists. The private company hunts down opponents of the US government in countries where the military and intelligence agencies have no access; they participate in air strikes with pilotless drones and organise death squads. The firm works closely with the CIA. The links between the two are very fluid. Prince himself has played a dual role for six years. Officially, he is CEO of Blackwater; unofficially, he is an agent and one of the most important assets of the CIA.

Leading intelligence personnel, such as J. Cofer Black, the former head of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, Enrique Prado, the center’s former chief of operations, and Rob Richer, formerly the second-in-command of the agency’s clandestine service, have transferred from the CIA to Blackwater.

<more>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/dark-j07.shtml
*
AP story on incident from yesterday's NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/06/world/AP-EU-Germany-Terror-Suspect.html

[mmonk]

1. Thanks

[clear eye]

2. So basically what's being said is that the CIA is no longer dependent

on Congressional funding overseen by the Intelligence committee as they now have a small private army funded through bloated payments to XE for war zone assignments. That's a pretty good motivation for them to advise the President that these endless wars are essential to our nat'l security.

Daddy Bush & co. edge closer and closer to total control. Pair this w/ programmable e-voting machines...

[winyanstaz]

6. you nailed it...the cia is now rogue...

and has their own branch of outlaw murdering thugs to do whatever they damned well wanna do.
There is no way to shut them down now without people dying...and probably not even then.

[Mopar151]

3. Disturbing paralells in our history

The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was a private detective agency in the United States, founded in the 1890s by William Gibboney Baldwin and Thomas Lafayette Felts and based in Roanoke, Virginia and Bluefield, West Virginia.

Agents were hired by railroads and other companies to investigate train robberies and other crime, but Baldwin-Felts became best known for violent confrontations with labor union members in such places as Ludlow, Colorado and Matewan, West Virginia. Thus, the agency continued to have an extremely poor reputation among labor union members and were thought of as union busters and hired thugs.

More at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin-Felts_Detective_Agency

A comic take on the issue, no less true: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3BRI7WFYVU

[ShortnFiery]

4. "Blackwater plays a key role in the targeted killings of alleged terrorists."

THAT is against the International Rules of Law ... the very DEFINITION of "State Sponsored TERRORISM" without the red tape of official government involvement.

These mercenary organization should be BANNED from being hired by the US Government.



How are these PRIVATE ARMIES keeping American's safer?

[sabrina 1]

7. You beat me to it. How casually we now talk about

'targeted assassinations' as if it was acceptable. No trials, no charges, no due process of any kind, and who decides who is to be murdered? Is the president made aware, Congress, of which human beings are to be killed?

I remember just a few years ago that Israel was accused of using these tactics, and condemned for violating international law. In their defense, I remember people saying it was not approved by the Israeli Government. But the outrage was justified.

If these mercenaries are murdering people, who is giving them permission to do so? Where do the orders come from and why is Congress turning a blind eye to this egregious violation of the law? The American people are paying for this. Blackwater et al are funded with tax dollars. How do we know how many innocent people have been murdered?

I couldn't agree with you more, these murderous mercenary companies should be banned. I always thought mercenaries were illegal.

It gets easier and easier to see how Germany happened. it didn't happen all at once, as one man who witnessed it said 'it happened incrementally, you felt uncomfortable about certain things but thought it was probably an abberation. Then there were more. You waited for a big event that would stop it. But it never came. After a while, people just stopped talking about them, there was an acceptance' ~ I'm paraphrasing, but I read that diary a few years ago, and couldn't help seeing the parallels here.

[bertman]

5. Go back to the late 50's and early 60's when the CIA was financing and training mini-armies

of Cuban exiles who were prepared to invade and "liberate" Cuba. Presidential intervention by JFK was what cut off their funding. Congress had nothing to do with it.

This shit has been going on in one form or another since the intelligence services were initiated. Now they have unlimited, black budgets that not even Congress has the power to oversee.

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