(Forge Books) is about the turf wars between the Pentagon and the CIA and the privatization of national security.
Former Colombian Recruiter Killed. On Thursday, a controversial former recruiter of Colombian soldiers for ID Systems, which provided Colombian soldiers to Blackwater (or probably more accurately, its affiliate Greystone) for work in Iraq was gunned down on a Bogota street on Tuesday. The former Colombian Army Captain Gonzalo Adolfo Guevara recruited for Colombian-owned ID Systems. Late last summer an exposé in a Colombian newsweekly Semana named him as the recruiter who 35 BW/Greystone contractors accused of improper recruiting practices, promising large sums that never materialized. The same group described near-captive conditions after they complained about the discrepancies, with threats to throw them out on the streets of Baghdad and to withhold potable water. (A partial English translation of the Semana article can be found here.) The murder is under investigation and its relation to his recruitment practices work is unknown.
TRO Against the Army. In a bizarre chain of events, the Army is under a sealed temporary restraining order to prevent it from awarding a $475 million security and intelligence contract, Steve Fainaru and Alec Klein of the Washington Post report. It seems a anti-war activist who makes a hobby of applying for government contracts and filing protests when he doesn't get them, hit it lucky and the GAO got spooked. The net effect is that Enrisys, the current contract holder, filed a TRO to force the Army to hold back making the award and will undoubtedly receive several million more dollars to through the contract extension--a clever business move even if they expect to lose the appeal.
New Chief for the Secret Squirrels. US Army Maj. Gen Richard Zhaner has been nominated for the position of deputy secretary of defense for intelligence and warfighting support. In simpler terms, he will replace General Boykin in command of the Secret Squirrels, the Strategic Support Branch which houses the Pentagon's new spy unit. It seems the Secret Squirrels are keeping their three stars, a good sign for squirrel fans.
The Spy Who Billed Me on LA Radio this Sunday. I'll talking about the outsourcing of intelligence on KPFK Pacific Radio for SoCal at 90.7 FM in LA and 98.7 in Santa Barbara tomorrow morning, Sunday, June 3 sometime between 11:00 and 12:00 Pacific Daylight Time. The program is "Background Briefing with Ian Masters." It appears to also be available live via the internet.
First, outstanding work in the last few posts, and nice catch here. Your site provides a great service to those of us seekiing information on the privatization of America's military, and intelligence apparatus, and the all the murky unknown unknowns therein.
Outside of naked power and profit ends, - I see no reason why the US, and particularly the people who want, or in anyway benerfit from 70% of our intelligence and whoknowshowmuch of our military appartus pimped out to private contractors whose loyalty ultimate ambitions, and accountability are the pentultimate in murky unknown unknowns.
There are several recent accounts of Columbian, Peruvian, Bolivian, and whoknowswho from latin America's former death squad crowd finding lucrative employment with US PMC, and PIC's, so this America is in a macabre way pleased to see others are onto the dirty dealings, and forcing accountability - by whatever means.
"Deliver us from evil!"
Posted by: Tony Foresta | June 03, 2007 at 01:49
My greatest fear is further compounded after listening to you this Sunday AM on KPFK.
What the Bush/Cheney/PNAC gang have done is to create a huge, most sophisticated, privatized army who are necessarily loyal to those who sign their paychecks, and not to upholding the Constitution of the United States.
They have created what I think will become the "death squads" of the United States. These will function just as the death squads of Latin America have functioned in the last 50 years. These new death squads will become activated by the ruling elite of the U.S. when they feel their fundamental power is seriously threatened.
The new death squads will not be the activated merely by the removal of Bush, which is inevitable (perhaps Jebb Bush will become Republican nominee??). But the capitalist ruling class will especially becomes threatened when millions of people realize we are in for a major economic depression. Millions are without health care, no living wage jobs, affordable housing, public schools destroyed, Social security threatened. Democratic processes (voting, access to media,etc.) have been virtually destroyed.
The complicity of the Democratic party, the political bankruptcy of the organized labor movement, the lack of access to mass media by the majority of people being victimized, make this grim future almost inevitable.
In other words, the "low-intensity" class war of the last 30 years in this country, will become overt as the ruling elite becomes desperate to retain profit and power.
To end war, the profit motive must be taken out of war. To end global warming the corporations who pollute with minimal restraint, must be put out of business.
Some kind of democratic socialism is necessary if humanity is to survive.
jeremy@infowells.com
www.infowells.com
Posted by: Jeremy Wells | June 03, 2007 at 15:25
I would like to suggest an addition to your blog list: World Socialist Web Site URL http://www.wsws.org
The WSWS provides a unique daily report critical of U.S. and multi-national corporate capitalism from a socialist perspective. Routinely WSWS journalists from several countries provide insights as to what is happening that is simply ignored or censored in the U.S. corporate mass media. They provide a free email newsletter and a RSS feed.
Another excellent source of critical information from Canada worth linking:
Global Reasearch
http://www.globalresearch.ca.
They provide well documented critical articles from many academic specialists, journalists, etc. on the current global political crises.
Both of these sites are perhaps immediately outside "intelligence" operations. But intelligence operations are put into place by governments in pursuit of a political/economic goals. These goals are typically obscured and denied by existing governments. (Bush and the Iraq war for example). Mass media and the media used by the ruling class elite to indoctrinate their own power base, are often written in euphemistic babble.
Posted by: Jeremy Wells | June 03, 2007 at 17:19
The Ian Master's [http//:www.ianmasters.org] interview was excellent!
I am glad that I found your blog!
In case you or others have not yet seen 'GovExec news' this weekend, there is a related story from the "National Journal" about what has been happening at 'DHS' courtesy of the strategic wisdom of our current crop of "government ponzi scheme policy makers", who use the revolving doors between government and the private sector to make large sums of money on public interests.
Yeah, the less competent rascals and off-spring of the well-connected to "...uncork the corporate business marketplace to a few well placed and positioned private interests and let them run public government administration of intel and security into the ground without oversight and accountability restraints" crowd are hangin' out and hangin' loose in the " US Federal HOMELAND of Misfit Toys".
As we are learning from the US Attorney and GSA scandal for the 'govt ponzi policy maker schemes' to work efficiently--you must have incompetence and complicity in government for such strategy stupidity in key leadership positions ...
The article's author examines the current state of the DHS, an organization born in the evolving dysfunctional atmosphere we now have in full bloom and what is turned up isn't pretty.
The article covers the DHS; and your interview today discusses the CIA; and so we begin to see the scope of the real fiascos we have on our hands in terms of the national security protection bubble we have been brewing...
Move over KATRINA victims---when this bubble pops it will reverberate throughout the US and maybe even around the globe...
But don't take my word on this---read on for yourself:
--------------------------------
Homeland Security could face transition problem
By Shane Harris National Journal June 1, 2007
On November 2, 2004, top officials from the Homeland Security Department held a small Election Night party at a Washington restaurant to watch the presidential election returns come in on television. Nearly every leader there owed his job to the man then fighting for his own job -- George W. Bush.
The department was almost two years old and run almost entirely by political appointees. Twenty-three months earlier, they had been tapped to lash together 22 disparate, frequently dysfunctional agencies, some of whose failures to safeguard domestic security contributed to the 9/11 attacks.[...]
[RJH: Text of entire article deleted due to copyright issues.]
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=37094&dcn=todaysnews
Posted by: zz ziled | June 03, 2007 at 18:51