CIA hired private killers to do their dirty work

MPACUK Comment: The role of mercenaries has been questioned by human rights campaigners around the world. Their role is immoral where they are contracted to carry out the “dirty work” that cannot be seen to be carried out by the armies of Western states who, in theory at least, operate under the norms of international conventions. This latest controversy puts paid to the claim that these guns for hire have any legitimate role.

Take the example of Blackwater, a firm that killed innocent Iraqi bystanders in 2008 and then sought to blame the deaths on others. They should be tried and punished for their crimes in Iraqi prisons and then deported upon their release. Our government and the US administration should answer for their use of such mercenaries in the courts. This episode also destroys any pretence of holding the moral high ground in the so called Global War on Terror.

The CIA hired contractors from the controversial private security firm Blackwater to take part in a secret operation to track down and assassinate members of al-Qaida, it was reported today.

According to the New York Times, the deal with the firm, Blackwater USA, was agreed in 2004 but was only revealed to Congress in June this year after it was discovered by the CIA's new director, Leon Panetta.

The Blackwater deal did not result in any assassinations, the report said, as it ran into legal, practical and diplomatic difficulties, and the programme was closed down before Panetta took over in February. It is unclear whether the firm's employees, many of them former soldiers from US special forces, were meant to carry out the killings or simply help with training and surveillance.

However, it is a damaging revelation, illustrating the extent to which the Bush administration's "war on terror" was outsourced – in this instance to a company surrounded by controversy for a string of incidents in Iraq in which Blackwater guards were found to have opened fire without justification. The Iraqi government consequently refused to renew the company's operating licence. Earlier this year the North Carolina-based firm changed its name to Xe Services. According to today's report it still has classified contracts with the CIA.

The report also draws attention to the Bush presidency's practice of loosening legal constraints on the CIA's counterterrorist operations and failing to inform Congress. Former vice-president Dick Cheney has defended both the measures taken and the administration's secrecy, arguing they were justified by the special circumstances of the "war on terror".

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal brought to light the CIA's use of private companies to interrogate suspected terrorists, but Blackwater's involvement in a programme of targeted killing raises even more serious questions of accountability.

An internal CIA review of the programme found that the CIA leadership under the Bush administration did not think it was necessary to tell Congress because the project was not far enough advanced.

However, one unnamed official told the New York Times: "It's wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin … it went well beyond that."

Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, refused to give details of the programme but said: "Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so. He also knew it hadn't been successful, so he ended it."

Some Democratic congressmen believe the outsourced assassination programme may be one of many covert operations that have yet to be uncovered, and have called for further investigations of the secret side of America's "war on terror".

Source: The Guardian