The last couple weeks have started a great pattern for our purposes: shocking revelations about a company that never wants for shocking revelations. Last week, Jeremy Scahill reported that sealed testimony in a civil liability complaint against the-private-security-firm-formerly-known-as-Blackwater USA (now going by the moniker "Xe") accused the company and its owner, Erik Prince, of conspiring to smuggle weapons into Afghanistan and Iraq and to murder whistle blowers. Shocker!
This caused a little bit of a stir...but nothing like this morning's news, as seen in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and theNation.com, that in 2004, the CIA contracted with Blackwater to hunt and kill suspected Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and gave Blackwater operational control of the program. That's right: they outsourced assassination attempts.
This was part of the CIA program recently disclosed - and disbanded - by current CIA Director Leon Panetta; according to today's reports, in fact, it was a key factor in Mr. Panetta's decision to alert Congress. (You might recall that the program was allegedly kept from Congress at the direction of Vice President Cheney. Which might surprise you, considering how communicative Mr. Cheney usually is.)
It's true that in this case the Times and the Post got this into print before our Mr. Scahill, who's usually far ahead of the curve on issues relating to Blackwater. (Remember: Nation Books published his book a full six months before the mainstream media was forced to pay attention to them after their employees murdered 17 Iraqi civilians.) But given how focused Mr. Scahill is on this issue, I'd not be surprised at all if he had more of the story to tell. And we'll have plenty of chances to find out -- as the recognized authority, he's the one the talking heads and blogging heads are turning to: this morning, he was Amy Goodman's guest on "Democracy Now" to discuss the issue. You can see their conversation here.
This evening, he will be Keith Olbermann's guest on "Countdown;" and tomorrow he will be a special in-studio guest of Bill Maher's on "Real Time." (He'll also stick around to join the panel - his co-panelists will include Chuck Todd of NBC News and Jay Leno of NBC entertainment.)
When Mr. Scahill gets his teeth into something, he keeps at it. He told Amy Goodman today that what was reported in the Times and the Post is just a small fraction of the story. I'm very interested to see what more he finds. In the meantime, we've got plenty of stock....
Blackwater: the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
by Jeremy Scahill
9781568583945
Nation Books
paper, $16.95
This caused a little bit of a stir...but nothing like this morning's news, as seen in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and theNation.com, that in 2004, the CIA contracted with Blackwater to hunt and kill suspected Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and gave Blackwater operational control of the program. That's right: they outsourced assassination attempts.
This was part of the CIA program recently disclosed - and disbanded - by current CIA Director Leon Panetta; according to today's reports, in fact, it was a key factor in Mr. Panetta's decision to alert Congress. (You might recall that the program was allegedly kept from Congress at the direction of Vice President Cheney. Which might surprise you, considering how communicative Mr. Cheney usually is.)
It's true that in this case the Times and the Post got this into print before our Mr. Scahill, who's usually far ahead of the curve on issues relating to Blackwater. (Remember: Nation Books published his book a full six months before the mainstream media was forced to pay attention to them after their employees murdered 17 Iraqi civilians.) But given how focused Mr. Scahill is on this issue, I'd not be surprised at all if he had more of the story to tell. And we'll have plenty of chances to find out -- as the recognized authority, he's the one the talking heads and blogging heads are turning to: this morning, he was Amy Goodman's guest on "Democracy Now" to discuss the issue. You can see their conversation here.
This evening, he will be Keith Olbermann's guest on "Countdown;" and tomorrow he will be a special in-studio guest of Bill Maher's on "Real Time." (He'll also stick around to join the panel - his co-panelists will include Chuck Todd of NBC News and Jay Leno of NBC entertainment.)
When Mr. Scahill gets his teeth into something, he keeps at it. He told Amy Goodman today that what was reported in the Times and the Post is just a small fraction of the story. I'm very interested to see what more he finds. In the meantime, we've got plenty of stock....
Blackwater: the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
by Jeremy Scahill
9781568583945
Nation Books
paper, $16.95
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