Backdoor Blackwater

No wonder they gave up on the San Diego Potrero site:

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.

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.

The interview by Amy Goodman with Raymond Lutz:

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.

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.

Such a nice Christian company! Sneaky, feral, lying, shadowy, unaccountable...

So, are they planning to invade Mexico? Or just shoot families as they struggle across the border?

Blackwater withdraws military base project near San Diego

It's not a retreat, it's a withdrawal:

Blackwater Worldwide officials have announced they are pulling their application to build a training center on an 824-acre site in the East County community of Potrero.

The North Carolina-based company dropped off a letter to the county planning department today notifying officials of their decision not to pursue plans for the project on a former chicken and cattle ranch.

“Although our project would have brought a great benefit to San Diego County, – providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with access to low-cost superior training facilities while bringing much-needed jobs to the area – the proposed site does not meet our business objectives at this time,” states the letter from Blackwater vice president Brian Bonfiglio.

Bonfiglio said noise tests the company conducted at the site did not meet county standards, and the cost of reducing the noise was too expensive. He said Blackwater had spent well over $1 million in its effort to get government approval for the site.

[snip]

Bonfiglio said opposition to the project played no role in the company's decision to withdraw the project.

Opponents of the project were stunned and pleased to hear the news.

That's wonderful, but now we don't know where they are going to pop up next and what kind of plans they'll have while they have White House protection. Border patrol with a shoot-to-kill mandate? Detention Centers for citizens as well as illegal immigrants where no lawyers ever set foot? Training and infiltrating local police with training for martial law?

To prevent the cancer from metastasizing we have to be always alert to what this megabillion dollar company wants to do next.

crossposted at SteveAudio

Blackwater in California

An overview:



And:



And how helpful they were after the San Diego fires:



Randi Rhodes tries to puzzle it out:



But just remember:

A softer, gentler Blackwater

Still has San Diego county in the crosshairs:

So it has come to the border hamlet of Potrero, population 850. Eight miles from Mexico and 40 miles inland from San Diego, Potrero has found itself at the centre of a controversy.

But it is a dispute that goes beyond the rights and wrongs of a large company intent on developing farmland. Opponents fear that it will be the first step towards Blackwater moving in on the potentially lucrative and politically sensitive job of patrolling the US-Mexico border. While Congress has authorised increased recruitment for the Border Patrol, the federal agency that polices the border, many have asked how it is going to be paid for and who is going to do the training. Enter Blackwater West.

"We're here by happenstance," said Brian Bonfiglio, Blackwater West's vice-president. Bonfiglio, who was previously in charge of security for Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, was dispatched a year ago from the company's base in North Carolina to oversee the expansion west. "We're a training company. This site was not chosen because of its proximity to the border. The Border Patrol has not approached us and we're not chasing Border Patrol contracts. If the government said here's a contract we want you to bid on, I can't say what the company would do."

Bonfiglio may not be able to say, but the company's president did. In his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, journalist Jeremy Scahill recounts company president Gary Jackson's May 2005 appearance before the House homeland security committee. "Just as the private sector has responded in moving mail and packages around the world more efficiently," Jackson told the committee, "so too can Blackwater respond to the customs' and Border Patrol's emerging and compelling training needs."

The first salvo against Blackwater's plans comes on December 11, when a recall election - called as a result of a petition by residents - will be held to replace the majority of the Potrero planning group. The group has been criticised for unanimously approving Blackwater's application to build a training facility on a dilapidated chicken farm. Set in 824 acres, the valley that would be Blackwater West is surrounded by low brush and hills. The land includes part of the Cleveland national forest, although Blackwater says it will not use any of the forest land on its property.

Approval was given last December before all but a handful of residents were aware of the plans. Once details emerged, some locals decided to act. "A lot of my neighbours were of the opinion that you couldn't do anything about it," said Parks. "But as time went by I found out that we had some supporters. Now there are more people who aren't afraid to come out and speak."

And has plans branching out into more areas:

Jeremy Scahill for The Nation:

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.

Just what are the plans for Blackwater in the United States? Or, saying it another way, what plans does the Bush administration have for Blackwater? Containing war protesters? A holy crusade? Concentration camps? A coup? A fascist state?

Just exactly what is going on?

Blackwater and Mexico

Just think of Blackwater's heavy hand dealing with Mexico. Will they respect human rights, borders, and a nation's laws? Or would we see callous shootings of illegal immigrants, invasion into Mexico in pursuit of quarry, indifference to Mexican or U.S. laws, harrassment of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent? I mean, what could go wrong?

If and when private security contractor Blackwater USA and its heavily-armed operatives are forced to pull out of Iraq as the result of the September 16th rampage in downtown Baghdad when its employees massacred up to 28 Iraqis, Mexico could be a profitable option for the North Carolina-based company.

Actually, Blackwater is almost in Mexico already. For months, the North Carolina-based corporation has been pressuring local San Diego officials to grant it an operating license for an 824-acre training site to be known as Blackwater West in Potrero California 45 miles east of that bustling port city but only six miles from the Tecate Mexico border crossing. The site, some of which snakes through the Cleveland National Forest, is a favored transit route for undocumented Mexican workers heading north and has been recently scorched by out-of-control wildfires.

[snip]

Blackwater USA is attracted to the San Diego area because of the heavy concentration of military bases such as Camp Pendleton in the environs that could produce a windfall of security and training contracts from its pals in the Pentagon. Blackwater USA was founded by ex-Navy Seal Eric Prince who cultivates close ties with the military.

One of Blackwater's most rah-rah backers in the Potrero venture is local congressman Duncan Hunter, ranking republican on the House Armed Services Committee and a dark horse candidate for his party's presidential nomination. Hunter is considered one of the most virulent anti-Mexican immigration voices in congress and is a political architect of the separation wall that now lines California's border with Mexico.

The dispute over Blackwater's proposed Potrero training camp is not just a NIMBY-type confrontation. Siting the facility a stone's throw from the Mexican border internationalizes the proposition. By any stretch of the imagination, Mexican president Felipe Calderon ought to be nervous about the encampment of the world's largest private army on his conflictive northern border, particularly one that is not accountable to either the Geneva Convention or U.S. and Mexican military and civil law. Yet Calderon has not publically protested the proposal.

Blackwater wants the base in San Diego

And doesn't seem to care the neighbors don't want it there:

Moyock, NC (AHN) - Controversial private security firm Blackwater USA, the company under investigation by the United States Congress for deadly shootings in Iraq, runs its own battle ground in America in a huge complex.

Now the company wants to expand its training center and build a complex in San Diego County, California. According to reports, Erick Prince, 38, chief of Blackwater USA, owns a real army along with modern weapons, bomb-sniffing dogs, airstrip, aircraft, armored cars and more.

The company is under scrutiny by the U.S. House committee and was widely criticized by the Iraqi government as its security personnel were reportedly involved in a fatal shooting on Sept. 16 in Baghdad, which killed around 17 Iraqi civilians.

According to The Seattle Times, the company has gotten most expensive contracts that exceed $600 million last year. Two months ago, Blackwater was awarded a $15 billion five-year contract shared with four other security companies to train personnel in counter narcotics.

[snip]

But after the deadly shooting episodes, the Bush administration has decided to reduce the use of private companies managing security in Iraq. However, the measure by the government doesn't seem to slow down on the expansion plan of Blackwater.

Blackwater Vice President Brian Bonfiglio confirmed to the Union-Tribune newspaper that the North Carolina-based company will go ahead with its plan to open a law enforcement and military training center in Potrero. The center, if opened, will be located around 45 miles east of San Diego.

"[Our] charter is to make this thing work even more now," Bonfiglio told the newspaper.

Um... right. Blackwater owner Erik Prince concedes the mercenaries in Iraq might have .. just might have made a mistake... maybe:

Charlie Rose: Why are you so convinced that this was not one of those cases where because of the fog of war, your guys made a mistake?

Erik Prince: I'm not saying it's impossible they made a mistake. I'm saying on the front end, we do a very thorough job of finding the best of the best. These are true proven professionals that come out of the US military that have significant positions of responsibility already. We put them through extensive vetting, psychological evaluations, we put them through more vetting and procedures dictated by the State Department than most soldiers in the US military do. So, yes, it is a very tough job. It required the tightest of judgment. Is it possible they made a mistake? Yes.

Charlie Rose: But they have assured you in what they have said to you, they didn't make a mistake, that there was provocation before they acted.

Erik Prince: In the statements I've seen, that is the case.

Charlie Rose: I want to give you a chance, because you feel like the media and others have made baseless allegations.

Erik Prince: Yes, but I'm also not prejudging to say that they're completely
innocent. I'm saying from their track record, as proven individuals working in high-threat situations for the past many years, almost all those guys were military veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan, serving there as an active duty member of the armed forces. They had good service then. There is no reason to believe that suddenly they went rogue. I don't believe they did. Is it possible one of them had bad judgment? Yes, it is possible. But the fact is, I'm very confident that there are bullet impacts in their vehicles to the point that one of them was disabled.

Great. I just love the idea we have a fully equipped mercenary army in the United States, just ready to go at a moment's notice... within the U.S. To the highest bidder.

King maker and deposer, anyone? I give you the 21st century version of the Praetorian Guard.

The largest private military base in the world

Is right here in the United States. Owned by Blackwater. (links from Bouphonia)

Beginning on a swampy 5,000 acre plot of land near Moyock, North Carolina, Blackwater has in the last ten years expanded their headquarters to 7,000 acres, making it the world's largest private military base.

And now, Blackwater is trying to move into California:

All of which gets us to California, the other destination on Blackwater’s westward expansion radar. The company has apparently been running roughshod over the political process of establishing a 824 acre training facility in a little rural community East of San Diego. This is being documented now by multiple media sources. One writer from the Daily Kos describes the secluded and obviously vulnerable Potrero, California by saying, “It's not exactly an urban metropolis, the population is only 978, and about a quarter of those people live below the poverty level.” Despite its pastoral surrounding landscape, “it could be anywhere in America really.”
Using politicians on the inside to hasten a quick turnaround on an environmental review, Blackwater is pulling its usual shadowy tricks and has for the most part completely circumnavigated any real due public process. If you read the Daily Kos article, it quotes Don Bauder from the San Diego Reader (who has been watching this deal intently), he reports how the people of the county there are vehemently opposed to the facility, and that Blackwater got the County’s approval pretty much behind the scenes without any public meetings or additional hearings.

When will we demand and get accountability from this corporation?

Update: More on Blackwater:

So what will happen with Blackwater's expansive vision? Much may come down to politics. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) recently singled out Blackwater in an oversight hearing on Iraq contracting practices. During that hearing -- which featured testimony from families of Fallujah ambush victims -- a company attorney confirmed that one of its contract employees had shot and killed an Iraqi security guard in the protected International Zone. The company whisked the contractor out of the country; no charges against the shooter have been made public.The killing could make an interesting test case for new laws governing contractors on the battlefield.

The legal environment is shifting rapidly for companies like Blackwater, and a recent change in law – quietly inserted into a defense authorization bill by Sen. Lindsey Graham ( R-S.C.) – would place contractors operating in places like Iraq under military jurisdiction. It may also help close the legal loophole that allowed contractors, previously exempt from Iraqi law, to escape prosecution for wrongdoing.