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Thread: Feds target Blackwater in weapons probe

  1. #1
    Chana3812 Guest

    Feds target Blackwater in weapons probe

    Feds target Blackwater in weapons probe

    By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press



    Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.

    The U.S. Attorney's Office in Raleigh, N.C., is handling the investigation with help from Pentagon and State Department auditors, who have concluded there is enough evidence to file charges, the officials told The Associated Press. Blackwater is based in Moyock, N.C.

    A spokeswoman for Blackwater did not return calls seeking comment Friday. The U.S. attorney for the eastern district of North Carolina, George Holding, declined to comment, as did Pentagon and State Department spokesmen.

    Officials with knowledge of the case said it is active, although at an early stage. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, which has heightened since 11 Iraqis were killed Sunday in a shooting involving Blackwater contractors protecting a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Baghdad.

    The officials could not say whether the investigation would result in indictments, how many Blackwater employees are involved or if the company itself, which has won hundreds of millions of dollars in government security contracts since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is under scrutiny.

    In Saturday's editions, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported that two former Blackwater employees — Kenneth Wayne Cashwell of Virginia Beach, Va., and William Ellsworth "Max" Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C. — are cooperating with federal investigators.

    Cashwell and Grumiaux pleaded guilty in early 2007 to possession of stolen firearms that had been shipped in interstate or foreign commerce, and aided and abetted another in doing so, according to court papers viewed by The Associated Press. In their plea agreements, which call for a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the men agreed to testify in any future proceedings.

    Calls to defense attorneys were not immediately returned Friday evening, and calls to the telephone listings for both men also were not returned.

    The News & Observer, citing unidentified sources, reported that the probe was looking at whether Blackwater had shipped unlicensed automatic weapons and military goods to Iraq without a license.

    The paper's report that the company itself was under investigation could not be confirmed by the AP.

    Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered a review of security practices for U.S. diplomats in Iraq following a deadly incident involving Blackwater USA guards protecting an embassy convoy.

    Rice's announcement came as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad resumed limited diplomatic convoys under the protection of Blackwater outside the heavily fortified Green Zone after a suspension because of the weekend incident in that city.

    In the United States, officials in Washington said the smuggling investigation grew from internal Pentagon and State Department inquiries into U.S. weapons that had gone missing in Iraq. It gained steam after Turkish authorities protested to the U.S. in July that they had seized American arms from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels.

    The Turks provided serial numbers of the weapons to U.S. investigators, said a Turkish official.

    The Pentagon said in late July it was looking into the Turkish complaints and a U.S. official said FBI agents had traveled to Turkey in recent months to look into cases of missing U.S. weapons in Iraq.

    Investigators are determining whether the alleged Blackwater weapons match those taken from the PKK.

    It was not clear if Blackwater employees suspected of selling to the black market knew the weapons they allegedly sold to middlemen might wind up with the PKK. If they did, possible charges against them could be more serious than theft or illegal weapons sales, officials said.



    The PKK, which is fighting for an independent Kurdistan, is banned in Turkey, which has a restive Kurdish population and is considered a "foreign terrorist organization" by the State Department. That designation bars U.S. citizens or those in U.S. jurisdictions from supporting the group in any way.

    The North Carolina investigation was first brought to light by State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, who mentioned it, perhaps inadvertently, this week while denying he had improperly blocked fraud and corruption probes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Krongard was accused in a letter by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, of politically motivated malfeasance, including refusing to cooperate with an investigation into alleged weapons smuggling by a large, unidentified State Department contractor.

    In response, Krongard said in a written statement that he "made one of my best investigators available to help Assistant U.S. Attorneys in North Carolina in their investigation into alleged smuggling of weapons into Iraq by a contractor."

    His statement went further than Waxman's letter because it identified the state in which the investigation was taking place. Blackwater is the biggest of the State Department's three private security contractors. The other two, Dyncorp and Triple Canopy, are based in Washington's northern Virginias suburbs, outside the jurisdiction of the North Carolina's attorneys.

  2. #2
    AuGmENTor Guest
    Plausible deniability. Let your sub-contractors smuggle the arms to weaponize the other side, thus keeping the war going.

  3. #3
    dMole Guest

    PD? Need to know?

    Hi Aug,

    You know the "plausible deniability" phrase- have you ever worked in the "dark gray" or "black" neighborhoods or are you just well-read?

    One thing I got from the article at the top of this thread-
    "Rice's announcement came as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad resumed limited diplomatic convoys under the protection of Blackwater outside the heavily fortified Green Zone after a suspension because of the weekend incident in that city."

    Umm, didn't Blackwater lose their license to operate in Iraq on Monday, making this an armed "terrorist" act by the Blackwater operatives?

  4. #4
    AuGmENTor Guest
    Hi dMole. I immediately understood that term the second I heard it used in a sentence, wich at this point, I have no idea where that was. Please expand on what you mean by the statement you made about "dark gray," as I find that interesting in and of itself.

  5. #5
    Chana3812 Guest
    dark grey - sounds like a dead body

    ick !!

  6. #6
    AuGmENTor Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by Chana3812
    dark grey - sounds like a dead body

    ick !!
    women...

  7. #7
    dMole Guest

    Pretty Much...

    Quote Originally Posted by Chana3812
    dark grey - sounds like a dead body

    ick !!
    Dark grey ~= clandestine or false flag, like 9/11 and 7/7
    Black = covert ops, like the Phoenix Project in SE Asia and Bush Drug Trafficking

    Yeah, the people involved in this work pretty much use dead bodies like we use pennies.

    "There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself."

    -- Senator Daniel K. Inouye

    "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy." -Henry Kissinger

    "Principle is OK up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose." -Dick Cheney

  8. #8
    Chana3812 Guest

    You know the "plausible deniability" phrase- have you ever worked in the "dark gray" or "black" neighborhoods
    I thought you guyz were talkin 'bout the hood

    Women !!

  9. #9
    dMole Guest

    Grey 'hoods?

    [QUOTE=Chana3812]I thought you guyz were talkin 'bout the hood

    Wouldn't "dark grey" be in David Icke's "alien" neighborhood? Or Area 51 in SE NV? I'm just askin' here... JK

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