Ever heard of a private security contractor name Paravant? XPG? No? Well, that's just as Blackwater, the parent company of Paravant, XPG and dozens of other "subsidiaries", would have it. As a former Paravant Vice President noted in Senate hearings earlier this year, Paravant and Blackwater were "one and the same," with Paravant created in 2008 to put aside Blackwater's "baggage". But then again, we probably shouldn't be calling Blackwater Blackwater, since the company itself changed its name to Xe in 2007, hoping to get a fresh start in the race for wartime contracts from the U.S. government.
The New York Times reported last week the story of Blackwater and its "web of more than 30 shell companies," and this is not just a case of corporate rebranding on steroids. Blackwater's machinations and continued battlefield presence have been made possible by systemic changes such as a sharp decline in government's ability to oversee the work and even functions that have been increasingly outsourced to private companies. These changes are part of a new system of power and influence that made its debut after the Cold War's end. At the pinnacle of this system is the "shadow elite". That's the title of Janine's book in which she identifies a new breed of power broker who bend the rules and play with their identities to best press their own agenda. They shuttle back and forth among roles of power in official and private organizations, gaining and hoarding vital information at each stop to serve their own, not their organizations', interests. And they take advantage of the ambiguity at the murky spaces where state and private power meet, because with ambiguity comes a crucial asset: deniability.
Blackwater creates deniability in (at least) five ways. First, there's the obfuscation created by the shell companies themselves. Once the name "Blackwater" became radioactive, the company, like the most nimble players of the shadow elite era, recrafted its image and corporate structure, if not its practices, to achieve the same old agenda. Blackwater could continue to peddle its services through those subsidiaries.
Second there's the ambiguity of purpose of government officials - and the deniability that it lends them. As the Times puts it:
Army officials said [during a Senate hearing earlier this year] that when they awarded the contract to [shell company] Paravant for training of the Afghan Army, they had no idea that the business was part of Blackwater.There's no apparent reason to doubt those Army officials, but is that true for all of the contracts secured by Blackwater's renamed units? It's not hard to imagine the benefits of deniability to government officials who might want to use Blackwater's services, but are wary of the public relations toxicity. They can say they just didn't know they were dealing with Blackwater.
Third, there's the deniability implicit in hiring foreign contractors to perform sensitive and dangerous U.S. work. An internal email obtained by the Times shows just how much Blackwater tries to market this kind of deniability. A Blackwater executive actually uses the word in describing why the government, in this case the Drug Enforcement Administration, might be interested in the services of a private spy network set up by Blackwater. Blackwater official Enrique Prado is quoted as writing, "these are all foreign nationals...so deniability is built in and should be a big plus." (It's worth noting that Prado, in true shadow elite fashion, brought government experience to his work at Blackwater - he's "a former top CIA official," according to the Times.)
Fourth, Blackwater benefits from the deniability that comes when the mechanisms of government oversight have broken down, and chains of command are hard to discern, the systemic nature of which Janine explains in a new report, Selling Out Uncle Sam: How the Myth of Small Government Undermines National Security. Take the case of the deadly incident that was the focus of those Senate hearings - by the Armed Services Committee - mentioned above. The Times refers to the 2009 incident, in which two Paravant workers fired their weapons and killed two Afghan civilians, and a read of the Senate hearings shows how tangled the lines of authority apparently were. From the Committee Chairman, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.):
Who do you blame when no one can pin down who was really responsible in the first place?Army contracting personnel .... said that one way they monitored the contractor's performance was from their office in Florida, and that was by checking in with Colonel Wakefield ... in Kabul. However, Colonel Wakefield .... told the committee that Task Force (TF) Phoenix, a subordinate command, had oversight responsibility. Even after the May 2009 incident, a review of policies at Camp Alamo uncovered continuing 'uncertainty' as to what 'authorities and responsibilities are over contractors,' including 'disciplinary issues'.
Add to the confusion the fifth opportunity for deniability: in the case of the Paravant deal (and countless others throughout the contracting universe), this contract was actually a subcontract - with another defense firm, Raytheon. As seen in the Senate hearings, teasing out what Raytheon's oversight role exactly was is no simple task. Again, ambiguity makes accountability a near impossibility.
Ambiguity is not an accident. As Janine writes in Shadow Elite, ambiguity is a key feature of the new system of power and influence, and it serves power brokers an important function. They can play different sets of constraints off each other, skirting accountability in one venue by claiming they were operating in another. They need not necessarily break the rules; they merely shift around them. Ambiguity is what affords actors deniability: while advancing their own agendas, they agilely defy scrutiny and public accountability.
The Times quotes Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, who doesn't understand why the government keeps giving Blackwater work:
I am continually and increasingly mystified by this relationship.....to engage with a company that is such a chronic, repeat offender, it's reckless.
Reckless, yes, but to our eyes, not surprising.
One of the more infuriating aspects of the shadow elite is the ability to seize new opportunities, fresh deals, no matter how egregious the track record. The overarching reason is that those on the other side of the deal are getting something too. In Blackwater's case, the government wants some of the dangerous and dirty work of war carried out by hired guns, not uniformed U.S. forces. And they apparently want to maintain the ability to point the finger elsewhere when, as was the case that night of May 5, 2009 on Jalalabad Road in Kabul, things go horribly wrong.
Follow Janine R. Wedel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/profjanine
Civil war, anyone?
Why do you think we have wars?
It is because during wars, especially the fraudulently concocted ones we now enjoy, the doors to the vault are flung open and anyone with the nads to make up a reason can walk in and help themselves to as much cash as they want. This is how people in power reward those who got them there. In the Bush case - completely off the books, not mentioned in any budget or accounted for in the deficit. In the Obama case, an overwhelming wall of entrenched power that can defy any controls.
The tragedy, of course, is that our brave, loyal and underpaid troops are sent to be killed in wars that will be extended as far as possible by those making vast fortunes from them. And they come home to no health care, no support, and no jobs.
Meanwhile, the Blackwater and Halliburton execs live like sultans and even their hired guns are set for life.
This is one very screwed up mess.
Donald Rumsfeld
He left out there are things we know and don't want you to know, and we will do everything we can to hide it and deny it.
Choose the songs that will be used to wake up the crews on NASA's last space shuttle missions.
The wakeup song has been a part of the space program since the days of the Apollo missions, and now NASA is giving you two chances to be a part of this history! You can either vote for your favorite from among 40 songs that have been used as wake-up calls, or you can submit your own composition to be used.
Learn more to vote or to submit your original song.
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Important dates
Submission Period:
Start: August 27, 2010 End: November 01, 2010
Winners announced:
November 02, 2010
http://challenge.gov/NASA/32-nasa-s-space-rock
The UK Blair/Brown government threw out all capable people and installed consultants for the same reason. No matter that it almost doubled the cost of the government itself, it provided deniability ("it wasn't me"), plausibility ("the 'independent' consultant said so - because we told him what to say") and a way to convert tax money into pocket filling (guess where these people go after their term?).
A classic example of that was the UK ID card debacle - it is clear that the feasibility study was anything but unbiased as the same setup got the job afterwards (and, given the lack of take-up, not based on facts). The people on the job got to sit around a lot - at a huge cost per week to the unwilling tax payer.
"Ah", you say, "but they have an audit office! Surely they would spot such abuse?" Well, no. The first thing the consultants did was replace the top with one of their own. Problem fixed, snout back in the trough..
Blackwater just does it with guns, the underlying principle is the same. "It wasn't me". As long as voters and politicians do not insist on clear lines of responsibility you will not clean this up - ditto for the finance world. Only personal responsibility makes people responsible. Simple.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/us/politics/11blackwater.html?scp=1&sq=blackwater%20cia&st=cse
Halliburton is malignant. Blackwater is ultramalignant.
F'd