Despite Denials, Blackwater Still Working for U.S.

[n2doc]

By Spencer Ackerman January 11, 2011 | 11:30 am | Categories: Mercs


Reports that Blackwater is out of the government’s private-security game have been greatly exaggerated. A consigliere to the company’s new owners tells Danger Room that not only does the controversial firm still hold security contracts with the State Department, it has every intention of seeking more.

In October, Danger Room reported that U.S. Training Center, a division of the renamed “Xe Services,” had won part of State’s $10-billion Worldwide Protective Services contract to guard diplomats. U.S. Training Center formed a partnership with Kaseman, another security firm, called International Development Solutions, to bid on the contract. But last week, an anonymous State Department official told Danger Room pal Jeff Stein of the Washington Post that the firm “no longer had a relationship with Xe.”

Untrue, says Harry Clark, an adviser to USTC Holdings LLC, the group of investors that purchased Xe from founder Erik Prince last month. “U.S. Training Center is a subsidiary of Xe Services. Still,” Clark says. Any future security services Xe provides to State will be conducted through International Development Solutions, in which USTC is a “minority partner.”


First up — as Stein was the first to report — International Development Solutions will guard the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, part of a Worldwide Protective Services deal worth up to $84 million. It includes providing “protective security in the West Bank,” says State Department spokesman Andy Laine. That’s the first opportunity for the revamped Xe to demonstrate that its guards are no longer the sort of people that open fire on civilians, take drugs or carry unauthorized firearms — part of the rationale for selling the company off.
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/despite-denials-blackwater-still-working-for-u-s/

[Skidmore]

1. Blackwater/Xe is an employer for mercenaries who will not

work for the pay of a regular military personnel. It is an employment program for a war machine at a time when people will not readily volunteer to fight. At this time the military is a training program for them.