Just two months after local opposition thwarted its effort to build a massive outdoor training facility near San Diego, the private military company Blackwater USA is being accused of secretly trying to build a new one just blocks from the US-Mexico border. Blackwater received approval for the 61,000 square-foot indoor facility in Otay Mesa, California, by filing for permits using the names of two subsidiaries.The interview by Amy Goodman with Raymond Lutz:
AMY GOODMAN: We’re on the road in San Diego. The private security company Blackwater USA is being accused of trying to secretly build a military training facility in San Diego, right here, just blocks from the US-Mexican border. Blackwater received approval for the 61,000 square-foot indoor facility in Otay Mesa, California, by filing for permits using the names of two subsidiaries. It was only last week when San Diego officials learned Blackwater was behind the project.
The news comes just two months after local residents successfully blocked Blackwater from opening an 824-acre military complex known as Blackwater West in the rural hamlet of Potrero, California.
Opposition is now growing to Blackwater’s plans in Otay Mesa. Last week, Democratic Congressmember Bob Filner led a protest at the site of Blackwater’s future facility. Several local officials question how Blackwater’s presence will affect US-Mexican relations. The site is located just three blocks from the international border.
RAYMOND LUTZ: Well, I got the tip from an anonymous like yahoo.com email address person who said he was an ex-friend of a former Blackwater employee. He told me that this site was being put in and was ready to open. I drove down to check it out, and indeed I could see the ventilation equipment out the back of the building, which is apparently necessary for the indoor shooting range that they’re intending to put in. I went down to—and I checked all the news media at the time and everyone I could find. No one had heard anything about this.Such a nice Christian company! Sneaky, feral, lying, shadowy, unaccountable...
They had secretly started this last September, about a month before our big rally out in Potrero. So the rally really had an effect. In other words, at that time, they were saying, “We’re throwing in the towel” on this other thing, but they weren’t letting the cat out of the bag, when in the process of filing these permits under the names Raven Development and Southwest Law Enforcement. And then, I understand that’s under a shell company out in Puerto Rico.
They went in calling this a vocational school. None of the permits, which I just saw last—yesterday at the Department of Planning of the City of San Diego, had any real notation on it about the fact that this is going to be—have an indoor shooting range and have firearms and so forth inside.
But after I received the tip, I went down, and sure enough, everything panned out that the guy was telling me. I talked to the news media, and they confirmed with Brian Bonfiglio, the VP of Blackwater, that they were trying to put that in.
So, are they planning to invade Mexico? Or just shoot families as they struggle across the border?
2 comments:
Ellroon, no one ever checks what's happening on Otay Mesa. Friends would walk through the fields when they were taking a plane from the Tijuana airport to avoid the border crossing delays. [This was before the new commercial crossing.]
Flights in and out of Brown Field were always dodgy.
The county has always ignored the area, so it's not surprising that they went in there.
Oh lovely. So now we have holed up in Otay Mesa a renegade band of mercenaries, armed to the teeth with state-of-the-art weapons lead by a wacko religious wingnut. Haven't we seen this movie?
Jokes aside, thanks for the info, Bryan. I'll go and google Otay Mesa to find out more about why it fits Blackwater's move to replace the Minute Men and the Border Patrol ...
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