Exclusive: Court Docs Reveal Blackwater's Secret CIA Past

Exclusive: Court Docs Reveal Blackwater's Secret CIA Past

by Eli Lake Mar 14, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

It was the U.S. military's most notorious security contractor-but it may

also have been a virtual extension of the CIA. Eli Lake reports.

 

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Last month a three-year-long federal prosecution of Blackwater collapsed.

The government's 15-felony indictment-on such charges as conspiring to hide

purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the Bureau of Alcohol,

Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives-could have led to years of jail time for

Blackwater personnel. In the end, however, the government got only

misdemeanor guilty pleas by two former executives, each of whom were

sentenced to four months of house arrest, three years' probation, and a fine

of $5,000. Prosecutors dropped charges against three other executives named

in the suit and abandoned the felony charges altogether.

130305-lake-blackwater-tease

 

via office of the King of Jordan

 

But the most noteworthy thing about the largely failed prosecution wasn't

the outcome. It was the tens of thousands of pages of documents-some

declassified-that the litigation left in its wake. These documents

illuminate Blackwater's defense strategy-and it's a fascinating one: to

defeat the charges it was facing, Blackwater built a case not only that it

worked with the CIA-which was already widely known-but that it was in many

ways an extension of the agency itself.

 

Founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, heir to an auto-parts family fortune,

Blackwater had proved especially useful to the CIA in the early 2000s. "You

have to remember where the CIA was after 9/11," says retired Congressman

Pete Hoekstra, who served as the Republican chairman of the House Permanent

Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 to 2006 and later as the ranking

member of the committee. "They were gutted in the 1990s. They were sending

raw recruits into Afghanistan and other dangerous places. They were looking

for skills and capabilities, and they had to go to outside contractors like

Blackwater to make sure they could accomplish their mission."

 

But according to the documents Blackwater submitted in its defense-as well

as an email exchange I had recently with Prince-the contractor's

relationship with the CIA was far deeper than most observers thought.

"Blackwater's work with the CIA began when we provided specialized

instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked," Prince told me recently,

in response to written questions. "In the years that followed, the company

became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again

to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would

not do in-house."

 

A prime example of the close relationship appears to have unfolded on March

19, 2005. On that day, Prince and senior CIA officers joined King Abdullah

of Jordan and his brothers on a trip to Blackwater headquarters in Moyock,

North Carolina, according to lawyers for the company and former Blackwater

officials. After traveling by private jet from Washington to the compound,

Abdullah (a former Jordanian special-forces officer) and Prince (a former

Navy SEAL) participated in a simulated ambush, drove vehicles on a

high-speed racetrack, and raided one of the compound's "shoot houses," a

specially built facility used to train warriors in close-quarters combat

with live ammo, Prince recalls.

 

At the end of the day, company executives presented the king with two gifts:

a modified Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and a Remington shotgun, both engraved

with the Blackwater logo. They also presented three Blackwater-engraved

Glock pistols to Abdullah's brothers. According to Prince, the CIA asked

Blackwater to give the guns to Abdullah "when people at the agency had

forgotten to get gifts for him."

 

Three years later, the ATF raided the Moyock compound. In itself, this

wasn't unusual; the ATF had been conducting routine inspections of the place

since 2005, when Blackwater informed the government that two of its

employees had stolen guns and sold them on the black market. Typically,

agents would show up in street clothes, recalled Prince. "They knew our

people and our processes."

 

But the 2008 visit, according to Prince, was different. "ATF agents had guns

drawn and wore tactical jackets festooned with the initials ATF. It was a

cartoonish show of force," he said. (Earl Woodham, a spokesman for the

Charlotte field division of the ATF, disputes this characterization. "This

was the execution of a federal search warrant that requires they be

identified with the federal agency," he says. "They had their firearms

covered to execute a federal search warrant. To characterize this as

anything other than a low-key execution of a federal search warrant is

inaccurate.")

 

During the raid, the ATF seized 17 Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmaster AR-13

rifles the bureau claimed were purchased illegally through the sheriff's

office in Camden County, North Carolina. It also alleged that Blackwater

illegally shortened the barrels of rifles and then exported them to other

countries in violation of federal gun laws. Meanwhile, in the process of

trying to account for Blackwater's guns, the ATF discovered that the rifles

and pistols presented in 2005 to King Abdullah and his brothers were

registered to Blackwater employees. Prosecutors would subsequently allege

that Gary Jackson-the former president of Blackwater and one of the two

people who would eventually plead guilty to a misdemeanor-had instructed

employees to falsely claim on ATF forms that the guns were their own

personal property and not in the possession of Jordanian royalty.

 

In all of these instances-the purchase of the rifles through the Camden

County sheriff, the shipment of the guns to other countries, and the gifts

to Abdullah-Blackwater argued that it was acting on behalf of the U.S.

government and the CIA. All of these arguments, obviously, were very much in

Blackwater's legal interest. That said, it provided the court with

classified emails, memoranda, contracts, and photos. It also obtained sealed

depositions from top CIA executives from the Directorate of Operations,

testifying that Blackwater provided training and weapons for agency

operations. (A CIA spokesman declined to comment for this story.)

 

One document submitted by the defense names Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA

chief of the Directorate of Operations, and Buzzy Krongard, the agency's

former executive director, as among those CIA officers who had direct

knowledge of Blackwater's activities, in a section that is still partially

redacted. This document is the closest Blackwater has come to acknowledging

that Prince himself was a CIA asset, something first reported in 2010 by

Vanity Fair. One of the names on the list of CIA officers with knowledge of

Blackwater's work in the document is "Erik P"-with the remaining letters

whited out.

 

This document made Blackwater's defense clear: "the CIA routinely used

Blackwater in missions throughout the world," it said. "These efforts were

made under written and unwritten contracts and through informal requests. On

many occasions the CIA paid Blackwater nothing for its assistance.

Blackwater also employed CIA officers and agents, and provided cover to CIA

agents and officers operating in covert and clandestine assignments. In many

respects, Blackwater, or at least portions of Blackwater, was an extension

of the CIA."

 

When I asked Prince why Blackwater would often work for free, he responded,

"I agreed to provide some services gratis because, in the wake of 9/11, I

felt it my patriotic duty. I knew that I had the tools and resources to help

my country."

 

Moreover, according to still-sealed testimony described to The Daily Beast,

the agency had its own secure telephone line and a facility for handling

classified information within Blackwater's North Carolina headquarters. CIA

officers trained there and used an area-fully shielded from view inside the

rest of the Blackwater compound by 20-foot berms-to coordinate operations.

Blackwater Prince

 

Sara D. Davis/AP

 

In the wake of the major charges being dropped, the U.S. attorney who

prosecuted the case against Blackwater, Thomas Walker, told me that it would

be wrong to dismiss the prosecution as a waste of time. "The company looks

completely different now than before the investigation," he said. "For

example, in 2009, Erik Prince was the sole owner. This company now has a

governing board that is accountable."

 

In 2010 Prince sold Blackwater, which is now known as Academi, for an

estimated $200 million. Prince retains control of numerous companies

affiliated with Academi, but he told me that he had "ceased providing any

services" to the U.S. government.

 

Walker would not discuss Blackwater's relationship with the CIA. But he did

say the defense that the company was acting for the government did not

excuse any violations of federal law. "Our evidence showed there was a

mentality at the company that they considered themselves above the law,"

Walker said. "That is a slippery slope. There came a time when there had to

be accountability at Blackwater."

 

David Boies, the lawyer who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, took up

Gary Jackson's case last fall. Boies told me he did so because he saw the

prosecution as an abuse of power. "These people were functioning really as

an arm of the CIA at a time when the CIA's resources were strained," he

said. "I think that Erik Prince and Mr. Jackson and other people at

Blackwater thought they were being patriots."

 

Reflecting on the prosecution and the scrutiny of the company he founded,

Prince said the charges against Blackwater executives left him "perplexed

and angry." "Blackwater carried out countless life-threatening missions for

the CIA," he said. "And, in return, the government chose to prosecute my

people for doing exactly what was asked of them."

 

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