The Terrifying Background of a Man who Ran a CIA Assassination Unit

[Octafish]

Who says there's a hiring freeze in Washington?

The Terrifying Background of the Man Who Ran a CIA Assassination Unit

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic, Jul 18, 2012

A federal investigation alleged Enrique Prado's involvement in seven murders, yet he was in charge when America outsourced covert killing to a private company.

It was one of the biggest secrets of the post-9/11 era: soon after the attacks, President Bush gave the CIA permission to create a top secret assassination unit to find and kill Al Qaeda operatives. The program was kept from Congress for seven years. And when Leon Panetta told legislators about it in 2009, he revealed that the CIA had hired the private security firm Blackwater to help run it. "The move was historic," says Evan Wright, the two-time National Magazine Award-winning journalist who wrote Generation Kill. "It seems to have marked the first time the U.S. government outsourced a covert assassination service to private enterprise."

The quote is from his e-book How to Get Away With Murder in America, which goes on to note that "in the past, the CIA was subject to oversight, however tenuous, from the president and Congress," but that "President Bush's 2001 executive order severed this line by transferring to the CIA his unique authority to approve assassinations. By removing himself from the decision-making cycle, the president shielded himself -- and all elected authority -- from responsibility should a mission go wrong or be found illegal. When the CIA transferred the assassination unit to Blackwater, it continued the trend. CIA officers would no longer participate in the agency's most violent operations, or witness them. If it practiced any oversight at all, the CIA would rely on Blackwater's self-reporting about missions it conducted. Running operations through Blackwater gave the CIA the power to have people abducted, or killed, with no one in the government being exactly responsible." None of this is new information, though I imagine that many people reading this item are hearing about it for the first time.

Isn't that bizarre?

The bulk of Wright's e-book (full disclosure: I help edit the website of Byliner, publisher of the e-book) tells the story of Enrique Prado, a high-ranking CIA-officer-turned-Blackwater-employee who oversaw assassination units for both the CIA and the contractor. To whom was this awesome responsibility entrusted? According to Wright's investigation, a federal organized crime squad run out of the Miami-Dade Police Department produced an investigation allegedly tying Prado to seven murders carried out while he worked as a bodyguard for a narco crime boss. At the time, the CIA declared him unavailable for questioning; the investigation was shut down before he was arrested or tried.

CONTINUED...

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/the-terrifying-background-of-the-man-who-ran-a-cia-assassination-unit/259856/

Secret government is un-American.

[Baitball Blogger]

1. Chills.

They're trying to outsource control of our government.

[snappyturtle]

3. On Sept. 10th, 2001 Donald Rumsfeld laid out his plan to

privatize the armed services with the likes of Blackwater ad Halliburton! Wasn't that convenient?

[Octafish]

7. Cheney laid the groundwork for privatizing Pentagon profits in Gulf War I...

Some news that seems to have been left out of the newspapers and off the television screen...

Cheney's Multi-Million Dollar Revolving Door

News: As Bush Sr.'s secretary of defense, Dick Cheney steered millions of dollars in government business to a private military contractor -- whose parent company just happened to give him a high-paying job after he left the government.

By Robert Bryce
Mother Jones
August 2, 2000

EXCERPT...

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney's direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies -- like itself -- could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. BRS specializes in such work; from 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company worked in the former South Vietnam building roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.

After Bill Clinton's election cost Cheney his government job, he wound up in 1995 as CEO of Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services giant -- which just happens to own Brown & Root Services. Since then, Cheney has collected more than $10 million in salary and stock payments from the company. In addition, he is currently the company's largest individual shareholder, holding stock and options worth another $40 million. Those holdings have undoubtedly been made more valuable by the ever-more lucrative contracts BRS continues to score with the Pentagon.

Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company's help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/08/cheney.html

Must've been an, eh, awkward moment for the draft dodger. Then, of course, a big cash bonus made that hurt go away.

[snappyturtle]

11. How interesting! Thanks. nt

[Octafish]

6. Blackwater was merely managing the Death Drones...

Gentlemen don't get their hands dirty. They hire others to do the dirty work for them.

C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on Drones

By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
The New York Times
August 21, 2009

WASHINGTON — From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, the company formerly known as Blackwater has assumed a role in Washington’s most important counterterrorism program: the use of remotely piloted drones to kill Al Qaeda’s leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees.

The division’s operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.

The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater. It has grown through government work, even as it attracted criticism and allegations of brutality in Iraq.

SNIP...

In interviews on Thursday, current and former government officials provided new details about Blackwater’s association with the assassination program, which began in 2004 not long after Porter J. Goss took over at the C.I.A. The officials said that the spy agency did not dispatch the Blackwater executives with a “license to kill.” Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.

“The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise,” said one government official familiar with the canceled C.I.A. program. “It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html

In America, death is good business.

[jimmil]

14. A friend

A friend of my son works for them. He is on a month off a month in Afghanistan. He brings in about $150,000.00 every month he is there. He was in the Marines prior to this doing the exact same thing on an E-5's pay.

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[Octafish]

15. We meant well.

This guy paints the picture:

Leaking War: How Obama’s Targeted Killings, Leaks, and the Everything-Is-Classified State Have Fused

By Peter Van Buren
MichaelMoore.com
June 13th, 2012 9:02 AM

White is black and down is up. Leaks that favor the president are shoveled out regardless of national security, while national security is twisted to pummel leaks that do not favor him. Watching their boss, bureaucrats act on their own, freelancing the punishment of whistleblowers, knowing their retaliatory actions will be condoned. The United States rains Hellfire missiles down on its enemies, with the president alone sitting in judgment of who will live and who will die by his hand.

The issue of whether the White House leaked information to support the president’s reelection while crushing whistleblower leaks it disfavors shouldn’t be seen as just another O’Reilly v. Maddow sporting event. What lies at the nexus of Obama’s targeted drone killings, his self-serving leaks, and his aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers is a president who believes himself above the law, and seems convinced that he alone has a preternatural ability to determine right from wrong.

If the President Does It, It’s Legal?

In May 2011 the Pentagon declared that another country’s cyber-attacks -- computer sabotage, against the U.S. -- could be considered an “act of war.” Then, one morning in 2012 readers of the New York Times woke up to headlines announcing that the Stuxnet worm had been dispatched into Iran’s nuclear facilities to shut down its computer-controlled centrifuges (essential to nuclear fuel processing) by order of President Obama and executed by the US and Israel. The info had been leaked to the paper by anonymous “high ranking officials.” In other words, the speculation about Stuxnet was at an end. It was an act of war ordered by the president alone

CONTINUED...

http://michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/leaking-war-how-obamas-targeted-killings-leaks-and-everything-classified-state-have-fused

What has happened to us, xchrom? We used to be the Good Guys.

[xchrom]

16. +1

[ljm2002]

4. "Secret government is un-American"

Unfortunately, secret government has become all too American. Even here at DU we have cheerleaders for secrecy, who would like to see Bradley Manning put to death for (allegedly) revealing state secrets, yet they remain silent on the war crimes that were revealed. They also remain silent on the fact that our government continues to classify more and more information, some of it clearly done to cover up crimes or incompetence.

There are people who think that the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, somehow committed treason against the USA even though he is not a citizen of the USA. We have also just found out that there is talk about charging reporters for the NY Times and other US newspapers, for publishing secret information. This of course flies in the face of our entire history as a nation, but hey, what the hell.

We've gone too far down the rabbit hole to come back in one piece, IMO. The American dream is dead, killed from within. The ethos now is pure social Darwinism, a metaphorical "kill or be killed, eat or be eaten" morality. Having a frayed social safety net helps to keep the value instilled deeply: those fortunate enough to have jobs and a roof over their heads, see cautionary tales every day that keep them from wanting to rock the boat too hard, lest they end up on the streets themselves.

We are screwed. But there is always hope, "Where there is life, there is hope". It is a true statement. We don't know what form it will take, but ultimately we will find other structures that serve us better. Of course there are huge hazards, first among them is global warming, which may make the rest of it moot -- and may harden the structures for those who survive.

I hope we can do better than that though, and find a way out of the morass before it is too late globally.

[newfie11]

5. Well said! Thank you. Nt

[raouldukelives]

13. You said a mouthful. This is our America and our legacy. nt

[Octafish]

17. Not even U.S. Senators know -- or can even tell -- if we're enemies of the state or not.

I am ashamed to write that our nation now punishes people for telling the truth. In a democracy, telling the truth is the cornerstone of government. The truth is supposed to be the way of the land, the natural state of affairs, the way We the People can oversee what the Government is doing with the public's office. Truth is necessary for Justice.

Instead, we are considered suspects just for wondering what could be hidden by Wall Street or their cronies on the other side of the revolving door in Washington. Remember, deregulation is just what the economy needs. Cutting taxes will increase revenues. We can have a big war and transfer wealth to the wealthy.

One doesn't have to carry a placard outside the Bohemian Grove to see what happens when propaganda propaganda rules the "free press." It's made possible the current political reality where big money and ultranationalist security intersect in the most profitable and secret of ways for the connected.

The Patriot Act You Don’t Know About

George Zornick
The Nation on March 16, 2012 - 3:31 PM ET

When the federal government wants some information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act—which allows agents to access “tangible things” like business records—it goes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This much we know.

What we don’t know is how broadly FISA interprets Section 215—what information it allows federal agents to access, and to what extent the government must prove “relevance” to a terrorism investigation.

Two men who do know, however—Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden of the Senate Intelligence Committee—have consistently sounded alarms about what FISA is allowing under Section 215. While unable to reveal specifically what they have learned, the two Senators have repeatedly said that the public would be shocked if it knew what information was being collected with the help of FISA and the Patriot Act.

This week, Udall and Wyden wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to address this issue (emphasis is theirs):

We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act. As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn't know what its government thinks the law says.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166865/patriot-act-you-dont-know-about#

Perhaps we will have that moment when enough good people say "Enough!" to Wall Street and the idea that things -- property, money -- are less important than people. All it takes is for good people to see through the smog and show those who can't see that if we continue down the warmongering path of empire, we will all go the way of the dinosaur. Even the richest amongst us would have a lonely existence with their fellow survivors, the rats and cockroaches.

Still, I wonder: Does opposing government policy -- like illegal, immoral, and unnecessary warmongering -- now make me an enemy of the state? Either way, ljm2002, I very much appreciate you standing up to the traitors.

[sabrina 1]

27. Very well said. They've infected the 'left' with these criminal policies also it seems, as you said

we see blind support for some of these policies right here on DU. One of the reasons I think why so many progressives are no longer here. DU used to be so outspoken against all of this, but now? Watch as OPs get shut down, either by comments intended to distract or even, sometimes, by hosts.

It doesn't mean though that anyone has changed their minds regarding what is right or wrong. It has revealed however, the bi-partisan nature of these policies and we needed to know that, otherwise how can we go about changing it, within our own party?

[tex-wyo-dem]

8. k & r...chilling...

[Octafish]

18. Jimmy Carter: ''The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.''

You know, I thought Jimmy Carter too conservative during his days in office, but looking back through the lens of what's transpired since then, he was TOPS!

THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html

The Safari Club did evil things to a good man -- treasonous things, for the participating Americans.

http://books.google.com/books?id=rAAU3_cIKIQC&pg=PA314&lpg=PA314&dq=joseph+trento+safari+club&source=bl&ots=lErljo6cOK&sig=9PwNuAYoySnlKJFWBxiRlsGf2v8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pyoPUJTsIefM0AG5rIDgCg&ved=0CE8Q6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=joseph%20trento%20safari%20club&f=false

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[Octafish]

20. It's the hijacking of American Democracy.

No one and no thing seem interested or capable of stopping the Warmonger Express.

Something very important that many may've missed from Michael Klare and TomDispatch.com:

Is Barack Obama Morphing Into Dick Cheney?

Four Ways the President Is Pursuing Cheney’s Geopolitics of Global Energy

By Michael T. Klare
TomDispatch.com
June 21, 2012

EXCERPT...

For Cheney, the geopolitics of oil lay at the core of international relations, largely determining the rise and fall of nations. From this, it followed that any steps, including war and environmental devastation, were justified so long as they enhanced America’s power at the expense of its rivals.

Cheney’s World

Through his speeches, Congressional testimony, and actions in office, it is possible to reconstruct the geopolitical blueprint that Cheney followed in his career as a top White House strategist -- a blueprint that President Obama, eerily enough, now appears to be implementing, despite the many risks involved.

That blueprint consists of four key features:

1. Promote domestic oil and gas production at any cost to reduce America’s dependence on unfriendly foreign suppliers, thereby increasing Washington's freedom of action.

2. Keep control over the oil flow from the Persian Gulf (even if the U.S. gets an ever-diminishing share of its own oil supplies from the region) in order to retain an “economic stranglehold” over other major oil importers.

3. Dominate the sea lanes of Asia, so as to control the flow of oil and other raw materials to America’s potential economic rivals, China and Japan.

4. Promote energy “diversification” in Europe, especially through increased reliance on oil and natural gas supplies from the former Soviet republics of the Caspian Sea basin, in order to reduce Europe’s heavy dependence on Russian oil and gas, along with the political influence this brings Moscow.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175560/

We the People don't pledge allegiance to an empire.

[Diclotican]

10. Octafish

Octafish

It is a pity this things would not be known outside the DU corner of the world - and the few who read theatlantic.com on a regular basis...

If it have been any right in the world - this things should be going on air 24/7 a whole year - so all the evidences about it had been known...

Diclotican

[lostnote12]

12. Your the Best Octafish!!!....thank you once again!!

[riderinthestorm]

19. Way too important to drop off the front page. A BIG K & R!!

[mattclearing]

21. Nice pick-up. K & R. nt

[panader0]

22. Rec'd

[sarcasmo]

23. I still hold out hope papa Bush talks of the Kennedy assassination before he dies.

[Octafish]

24. Poppy brought up the assassination of President Kennedy while delivering a eulogy for President Ford

It was a telling moment:



Poppy Bush brought up JFK Assassination and ''Conspiracy Theorists'' at Ford Funeral

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3029417

Poppy smirks or laughs or grins at the moment he says "deluded gunman" near the 1:09 mark:

George H.W. Bush’s Eulogy for Gerald R. Ford

The New York Times
Published: January 2, 2007

Following is the transcript of the eulogy for former President Gerald R. Ford delivered today by former President George H.W. Bush in Washington, as recorded by The New York Times.

EXCERPT…

After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness. And the conspiracy theorists can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford’s word was always good.

A decade later, when scandal forced a vice president from office, President Nixon turned to the minority leader in the House to stabilize his administration because of Jerry Ford’s sterling reputation for integrity within the Congress. To political ally and adversary alike, Jerry Ford’s word was always good.

SOURCE:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/washington/02cnd-ford-ghwb.html

PS: Of course, to Gerald Ford Warren Commission skeptics presented "no problem."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3772251

PPS: What's even more telling is how there are still people interested in scrubbing the assassination record of any reference to Poppy.

PPPS: For those interested, background...

Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was assassinated.

[sarcasmo]

26. Thanks for this, he was a stone cold killer. You don't rise to the top of the CIA

by being a nice guy.

[bobthedrummer]

25. Review J. Cofer Black's career path from the Agency to Blackwater to Total Intelligence Solutions

It's a Culture of Death-American Style with these "superior range" killers, isn't it?
K&R

J.Cofer Black (Sorcewatch page)
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=J._Cofer_Black

[sabrina 1]

28. So I have a question. Has Congress given up all of its power to private mercenaries like

Blackwater? I should say 'murderers' like Blackwater because we know they are murderers.

The consensus, well of those who outsourced murder to Blackwater seems to be that by doing so, the POTUS and Congress have basically 'washed their hands of any blood spilled in the name of the US by Blackwater'? Is that the thinking? Because if so, I could not disagree more. Who is funding these murderous programs? Does Blackwater have its own personal key to the treasury, or does Congress approve of the funding?

Silence is consent. If we ever return to the rule of law, there is no way any of them will be exempted from blame.

That's like someone who pays a hired killer, trying to claim they had nothing to do it. As far as I know, it is the one who hires the killer who, under our laws, is held the most accountable, with the hired killer often getting a reduced sentence for cooperating with the law.

This is sickening, I can't think of enough adjectives to express the revolt I feel just reading it. Shame on Congress, shame on all of our elected officials who are turning a blind eye to these crimes.