Reply #38: Ambassador Cofer Black Becomes Vice-Chairman at Blackwater USA

[seemslikeadream]

Now you are putting me on, come on admit it, you're pullin' my leg

:rofl:

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_24131.shtml
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, you devote a whole chapter to another official within Blackwater, Cofer Black.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, Blackwater is really stacked to the deck. The deck is really stacked in Blackwater's favor. In the times that we live in right now, they have several former senior officials from the Bush administration, not from like the Reagan administration, but from the current Bush administration.

Among the most prominent, perhaps the biggest power player in Blackwater's arsenal, is J. Cofer Black, who is a thirty-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, began his career in the 1970s in Africa, as the US -- well, some would say supported the apartheid regime, others would say did nothing to stop it. So Cofer Black was one of the key CIA people in Africa throughout the ’70s and ’80s. And he arrived in Sudan in the early 1990s, and he came under diplomatic cover. As a sort of diplomat, he was there, but he actually was CIA.

And as Black was there, a young Saudi billionaire named Osama bin Laden was building up his international network. And by the time Black would leave Sudan a few years later, the CIA would refer to it as the Ford Foundation of Islamic terrorism. And so, Cofer Black and Osama bin Laden are both operating simultaneously in Khartoum in Sudan in the 1990s. And at one point, there was a plot to kill Cofer Black once bin Laden's group had learned that he was actually CIA. And so, they were sort of monitoring each other. And one of Black's operatives in Sudan actually cooked up a plot to kill bin Laden and toss his body over the fence at the Iranian embassy to make it seem like the Iranians had killed bin Laden. But at the time, bin Laden wasn’t considered a big fish. The big fish in Sudan was Carlos the Jackal, the famed international terrorist. And so, Cofer Black's claim to fame in the 1990s had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, but had to do with the fact that he was seen as the man who caught Carlos the Jackal. :rofl:

And Black would go on then to serve in Latin America, and just before 9/11 he was tapped to head up the CIA's counterterrorism center. And so when the 9/11 attacks happened, Cofer Black was called to the Situation Room in the White House on September 13, 2001, to lay out for President Bush the CIA plan to go after bin Laden. And he was said to be throwing papers on the ground as he described how they were going to insert Special Forces into Afghanistan. And he told President Bush that he would bring back Osama bin Laden's head in a box on dry ice. :rofl: And, in fact, those were the orders he gave to his CIA operatives that went in with the Jawbreaker team into Afghanistan after 9/11. And one of them said to Cofer Black, you know, “I don't know what we're going to do about dry ice in the field, but we certainly can get a cardboard box.”

Cofer Black became known in the administration as the flies-on-the-eyeballs guy, because he would talk in these sort of messianic terms about the mission that they were about to undertake and said, “When we're through with them, they'll have flies crawling across their eyeballs.” He told Russian diplomats, “We’re going to stick their heads on pikes in the field.” So this is now the guy who went on after 9/11 to really accelerate the use of extraordinary renditions, the capturing of people, putting hoods on them, putting diapers on them, sending them on these long flights to third countries where they're asked a series of questions provided by US interrogators and where they're tortured and humiliated and broken down -- people like Maher Arar, who you've covered extensively on this show.

AMY GOODMAN: Cofer Black is now part of a new Blackwater effort, a new company called Total Intelligence Solutions.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. This is really the next sort of generation of privatization, is the privatization of intelligence. And they’re marketing their services to Fortune 500 companies. And so, it's not just Cofer Black. It's another CIA guy who went on to work at Blackwater, Robert Richer, who was a Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA. So those two are really the sort of leaders behind this new initiative.





Blackwater Mercenaries in Downtown New Orleans
(Photo from Google Images; original source unknown.)


Shortly after the hurricane hit, Blackwater "launched a helicopter and crew with no contract, no one paying us, that went down to New Orleans," says company vice chairman Cofer Black. "We saved some 150 people that otherwise wouldn't have been saved. And, as a result of that, we've had a very positive experience." Indeed. It was only days after the company arrived that it started reeling in lucrative deals.


According to Blackwater's government contracts, obtained by The Nation, from September 8 to September 30, 2005, Blackwater was paid $409,000 for providing fourteen guards and four vehicles to "protect the temporary morgue in Baton Rouge, LA." That contract kicked off a hurricane boon for Blackwater. From September to the end of December 2005, the government paid Blackwater at least $33.3 million—well surpassing the amount of Blackwater's contract to guard Ambassador Paul Bremer when he was head of the US occupation of Iraq. And the company has likely raked in much more in the hurricane zone. Exactly how much is unclear, as attempts to get information on Blackwater's current contracts in New Orleans have been unsuccessful.


"We saw the costs, in terms of accountability and dollars, for this practice in Iraq, and now we are seeing it in New Orleans," says Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, who has been one of Blackwater's few critics in Congress. "They have again given a sweetheart contract—without an open bidding process—to a company with close ties to the Administration."


After The Nation exposed Blackwater's operations in New Orleans this past fall , Schakowsky and a handful of other Congress members raised questions about the scandal. They entered the report into the Congressional Record during hearings on Katrina and cited it in letters to DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner, who then began an inquiry. In letters to Congressional offices in February, Skinner defended the Blackwater deal, asserting that it was "appropriate" for the government to contract with the company. Skinner admitted that "the ongoing cost of the contract...is clearly very high" and then quietly dropped a bombshell: "It is expected that FEMA will require guard services on a relatively long-term basis (two to five years)." Two to five years? Already most of the 330 federally contracted private guards in the hurricane zone are working for Blackwater, according to the Washington Post. Another firm, DynCorp, is also trying to grab more of the action, offering its security services for less than $700 per day per guard.


http://canberra.usembassy.gov/hyper/2004/0518/epf204.htm

*EPF204 05/18/2004
Text: Anti-Terror Chief Sees U.S., Israel Fighting Terror Together
(State's Cofer Black discusses al-Qaida, Iran, Syria at AIPAC) (3290)

The State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism says that of the many nations cooperating with the United States in the global war against terror, "none more stalwart than the state of Israel."

Speaking at the 2004 Policy Conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington May 17, Ambassador Cofer Black said he was certain that "ur two great nations will stand together to fight terror." Terrorists and their supporters "will be brought to justice, or justice will be brought to them. We are in this fight together," Black said, "and for the long haul; there can be no accommodation with this evil."

Black termed the bilateral organization, the U.S.-Israel Joint Counterterrorism Group (JCG), as "an important part of our counterterrorism partnership." Established in 1996, the JCG allows agencies of the two governments to exchange information on terrorism issues, and looks for ways to improve bilateral counterterrorism cooperation. Its focus is "on augmenting key capacities to combat terror," Black said.

Then there is the Technical Support Working Group, Black said, which pursues cooperative research and development projects in areas such as physical security, detecting and defeating explosives, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threat countermeasures, and investigative support and forensics technologies. It reports to the JCG, he said.

Turning to the U.S. effort to combat al-Qaida since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Black noted that the terrorist organization has lost heavily in manpower, especially at its upper levels, in finances and methods of financing, and in its crucial base of operations in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, "it would be fair to say that we are seeing greater cooperation between al-Qaida and smaller Islamic extremist groups, as well as even more localized organizations," Black said. In particular, he noted Ansar al-Islam and the Zarqawi network in Iraq, along with Jemaah Islamiya (JI) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/20/1337226

Interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

JEREMY SCAHILL: Among the most prominent, perhaps the biggest power player in Blackwater’s arsenal, is J. Cofer Black, who is a thirty-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, began his career in the 1970s in Africa, as the US — well, some would say supported the apartheid regime, others would say did nothing to stop it. So Cofer Black was one of the key CIA people in Africa throughout the ’70s and ’80s. And he arrived in Sudan in the early 1990s, and he came under diplomatic cover. As a sort of diplomat, he was there, but he actually was CIA.

And as Black was there, a young Saudi billionaire named Osama bin Laden was building up his international network. And by the time Black would leave Sudan a few years later, the CIA would refer to it as the Ford Foundation of Islamic terrorism. And so, Cofer Black and Osama bin Laden are both operating simultaneously in Khartoum in Sudan in the 1990s.

And Black would go on then to serve in Latin America, and just before 9/11 he was tapped to head up the CIA’s counterterrorism center.

AMY GOODMAN: Cofer Black is now part of a new Blackwater effort, a new company called Total Intelligence Solutions.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. This is really the next sort of generation of privatization, is the privatization of intelligence. And they’re marketing their services to Fortune 500 companies. And so, it’s not just Cofer Black. It’s another CIA guy who went on to work at Blackwater, Robert Richer, who was a Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA. So those two are really the sort of leaders behind this new initiative.

But, really, the man behind all of it is Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater. He’s rapidly buying up, for instance, a think tank, the Terrorism Research Center, and other intelligence entities and sort of cobbling them together. Blackwater’s big push now is not just for government contracts, but it’s also for corporate contracts. And so, it’s part of this radical privatization agenda. And to have a man heading this who told Congress openly, “There was a before 9/11 and an after 9/11, and after 9/11 the gloves come off” — this is a guy who ran essentially the extraordinary rendition program, now is working as the vice chairman of Blackwater and starting his own private intelligence company.


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/scahill
Revolving Door: from the Pentagon to Blackwater

Since 9/11 Blackwater has hired some well-connected officials close to the Bush Administration as senior executives. Among them are J. Cofer Black, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA and the man who led the hunt for Osama bin Laden after 9/11, and Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon Inspector General, who was responsible for policing contractors like Blackwater during much of the “war on terror”–something he stood accused of not doing effectively. By the end of Schmitz’s tenure, powerful Republican Senator Charles Grassley launched a Congressional probe into whether Schmitz had “quashed or redirected two ongoing criminal investigations” of senior Bush Administration officials. Under bipartisan fire, Schmitz resigned and signed up with Blackwater.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek
Al-Libi's capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government's internal debates over interrogation methods. FBI officials brought their plea to retain control over al-Libi's interrogation up to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency's hawkish counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.' So we lost that fight." (A CIA official said he had no comment.)

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/29/the-cias-top-counterterrorism-officials/
I wrote two weeks ago that Cofer Black is Bush’s equivalent of Nixon’s Butterfield who divulged the presence of an Oval Office audio taping system. That brought Nixon down. Black said two weeks ago when referring to 9/11 that they had strong feelings that the attack would take place in August. His statement seem to be inadvertent. After 9/11 Black was appointed to an Ambassador At Large position. Was this a reward to keep his mouth shut? Black is now an officer with Blackwell USA, which has made a fortune off the war. If the Democrats gain subpoena power, Cofer Black should be one of the first served.


http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/12/15/031215fa_fact
wrote Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker in December 2003,

"According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers – again, in secret – when full-field operations begin. (Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. 'No one wants to talk about this,' an Israeli official told me. 'It's incendiary. Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli cooperation' on Iraq.)"


http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/12/10/2003079052
THE GUARDIAN, WASHINGTON
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2003, Page 7
Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said on Monday.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq.

US forces in Iraq's Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centers of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops.

But the secret war in Iraq is about to get much tougher, in the hope that the Baathist-led insurgency can be suppressed ahead of November's presidential election.

US special forces teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign fighters before they cross the border, and a group focused on the "neutralization" of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to sources familiar with the operations.

................


http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/58/18702
An "Alliance" of Violence
By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 29 March 2006

A disturbing trend noticeable in Iraq for quite some time now is that each aggressive Israeli military operation in the occupied territories results in a corresponding increase in the number of attacks on US forces in Iraq. One of the first instances of this was the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March 2004 and the reaction it set off across Shia and Sunni, ultimately spiraling into the siege and devastation of Fallujah. Fallujah is but one example one may use to demonstrate how the ongoing use of heavy handed tactics by the US-Israel alliance is proving to be as suicidal as it is homicidal. US troops in Iraq and Israeli civilians in their homes can bear testimony to this, as they are the ones who bear the brunt. Not to mention the collateral damage in Iraq.

May 17, 2004, Washington

Cofer Black, at the time Coordinator for Counterterrorism for the US State Department, in a talk at the 2004 Policy Conference for the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), said that of all the nations cooperating with the US in the global war on terror, "none more stalwart than the state of Israel." He told the audience of the powerful lobby group that "Our two great nations will stand together to fight terror" and deemed the US-Israel Joint Counterterrorism Group (JCG) "an important part of our counterterrorism partnership."

May 10, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq

The first US siege of Fallujah ended in early May, 2004, and on May 10th US forces abandoned all control of the city, handing it back over to the Iraqis.

April 4, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq

US military directed to launch the first, and eventually failed, revenge assault in retaliation for the four Blackwater USA mercenaries killed on March 31st. The siege caused severe casualties among the people of Fallujah, killing 736 people, over 60% of whom were women, children and the elderly, according to the director of Fallujah General Hospital.

April 2, 2004, Iraq

Speaking on al-Manar TV, Muqtada al-Sadr pledged, "From here I announce my solidarity with the genuine unity announced by Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah with the mujahideen movement Hamas. Let them consider me their striking hand in Iraq whenever the need arises. As the martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said, Iraq and Palestine have the same destiny."

March 31, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq

Four Blackwater USA mercenaries killed in Fallujah in an attack avenging the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Nine days after the assassination, the bodies of four mercenaries from Blackwater USA were burned, chopped into pieces, dragged behind vehicles bearing posters of Sheikh Yassin, and finally put on display by being hung from a bridge. Pamphlets were distributed at the scene which declared the attack against the four men as having been carried out in the name of Yassin. It was also reported by several Arab media outlets at the time that a group known as the "Phalange of Sheikh Yassin" claimed responsibility for the attack, and that the deaths of the four men were meant as a "gift to the Palestinian people."

March 28, 2004, Baghdad, Iraq

The head of the CPA, Paul Bremer, ordered the closing of the al-Hawza newspaper, the mouthpiece of Muqtada al-Sadr. One of Sadr's spokespeople, Sheikh Mahmud Sudani, told reporters at the time that al-Hawza had attracted censure because of its strong critique of the killing of Sheikh Yassin by Israeli forces. The closing of this paper was a primary factor that led to the first violent uprising called by Sadr against the occupiers.


http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060807C.shtml
Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

After filing its suit against the dead men's estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families' existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.

Over 300 contractors have been killed in Iraq with very little inquiry into their deaths. The families claim that Blackwater is attempting to cover up its incompetence, its cutting of corners in favor of higher profits, and its over billing to the government. Due to lack of accountability and oversight, Blackwater's private army has been able to obtain huge profits from the government, utilizing contacts established through Erik Prince's relationships with high-ranking government officials such as Cofer Black and Joseph Schmitz.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/
It is not only in Iraq that the emphasis on intelligence gathering has led to apparent brutality against military detainees. The American base at Bagram in Afghanistan has acquired a reputation for abusive interrogations of suspected al-Qaeda members. Two prisoners there were said by military pathologists last year to have died through “homicide” but the U.S. Army has provided no information about any subsequent investigation. Notoriously, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief Cofer Black has been quoted as saying about interrogation techniques that “after 9/11, the gloves came off.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0308-33.htm
On the evening of September 11, Bush told his counterterrorism staff, according to Richard Clarke, that “any barriers in your way, they are gone.” And he said: “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we’re going to kick some ass.” He also authorized the CIA to send detainees to third countries for torture. And he let George Tenet and the CIA know that the gloves are off, in the words of Cofer Black, who was head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center on 9/11.