Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

What could prove to be one of Blackwater’s most profitable and enduring enterprises is one of the company’s most secretive initiatives—a move into the world of privatized intelligence services. In April 2006, Prince quietly began building Total Intelligence Solutions, which boasts that it “brings CIA-style” services to the open market for Fortune 500 companies. 35Among its offerings are “surveillance and countersurveillance, deployed intelligence collection, and rapid safeguarding of employees or other key assets.” 36

As the U.S. finds itself in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in the nation’s history, few areas have seen as dramatic a transformation to privatized services as the world of intelligence. “This is the magnet now. Everything is being attracted to these private companies in terms of individuals and expertise and functions that were normally done by the intelligence community,” says former CIA division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman. “My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control. It’s outrageous.” 37

In late 2007, R.J. Hillhouse, a blogger who investigates the clandestine world of private contractors and U.S. intelligence, obtained documents from the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI) showing that Washington spends some $42 billion annually on private intelligence contractors, up from $17.54 billion in 2000. 38That means 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget is currently going to private companies. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the head of the DNI, as of the spring of 2008, was Mike McConnell, the former chair of the board of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the private intelligence industry’s trade association.

Hillhouse also revealed that one of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence documents, the Presidential Daily Briefing, is prepared in part by private companies, despite having the official seal of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. “Let’s say a company is frustrated with a government that’s hampering its business or business of one of its clients. Introducing and spinning intelligence on that government’s suspected collaboration with terrorists would quickly get the White House’s attention and could be used to shape national policy,” Hillhouse argued. 39

Total Intelligence, which opened for business in February 2007, is a fusion of three entities bought up by Prince—the Terrorism Research Center; Technical Defense; and The Black Group, Blackwater vice chair Cofer Black’s consulting agency. 40The company’s leadership reads like a who’s who from the CIA’s early “war on terror” operations after 9/11. In addition to the twenty-eight-year CIA veteran Black, who is chairman of Total Intelligence, the company’s executives include CEO Robert Richer, the former associate deputy director of the agency’s Directorate of Operations and the second-ranking official in charge of clandestine operations. From 1999 to 2004, Richer was head of the CIA’s Near East Division, where he ran clandestine operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia. As part of his duties, he was the CIA liaison with Jordan’s King Abdullah, a key U.S. ally and Blackwater client, and briefed President Bush on the burgeoning Iraqi resistance in its early stages. 41Total Intelligence’s chief operating officer is Enrique “Ric” Prado, a twenty-four-year CIA veteran and former senior executive officer in the Directorate of Operations. He spent more than a decade working in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and ten years with the CIA’s “paramilitary” Special Operations Group. 42Prado and Black worked closely together at the CIA. 43Prado also served in Latin America with Jose Rodriguez, who would gain infamy in late 2007 after it was revealed that as director of the National Clandestine Service at the CIA he was allegedly responsible for the destruction of videotaped interrogations of prisoners, during which “enhanced” interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, were reportedly used. 44Richer told the New York Times he recalled many conversations with his then boss, Rodriguez, about the tapes. “He would always say, ‘I’m not going to let my people get nailed for something they were ordered to do,’” Richer said. 45Before the scandal, there were reports that Blackwater had been “aggressively recruiting” Rodriguez. 46He has since retired from the CIA.

Total Intelligence’s leadership also includes Craig Johnson, a twenty-seven-year CIA officer who specialized in Central and South America, and Caleb “Cal” Temple, who joined the company straight out of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served from 2004 to 2006 as chief of the Office of Intelligence Operations in the Joint Intelligence Task Force—Combating Terrorism. 47According to his Total Intelligence bio, Temple directed the “DIA’s 24/7 analytic terrorism target development and other counterterrorism intelligence activities in support of military operations worldwide. He also oversaw 24/7 global counterterrorism indications and warning analysis for the U.S. Defense Department.” The company also boasts officials drawn from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI. 48

Total Intelligence is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia. 49Its “Global Fusion Center,” complete with large-screen TVs broadcasting international news channels and computer stations staffed by analysts surfing the web, “operates around the clock every day of the year” 50and is modeled after the CIA’s counter-terrorist center, once run by Black. 51The firm now employs at least sixty-five full-time staff—some estimates say it is closer to 100. 52“Total Intel brings the… skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives directly to the board-room,” Black said when the company launched. “With a service like this, CEOs and their security personnel will be able to respond to threats quickly and confidently—whether it’s determining which city is safest to open a new plant in or working to keep employees out of harm’s way after a terrorist attack.” 53

Black insists, “This is a completely legal enterprise. We break no laws. We don’t go anywhere near breaking laws. We don’t have to.” 54But what exact services Total Intelligence is providing and to whom remain shrouded in secrecy. What is clear is that the company is leveraging the reputations and inside connections of its executives. “Cofer can open doors,” Richer told the Washington Post in 2007. “I can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see. We don’t help pay bribes. We do everything within the law, but we can deal with the right minister or person.” 55Black told the paper he and Richer spend a lot of their time traveling. “I am discreet in where I go and who I see. I spend most of my time dealing with senior people in governments, making connections.” 56But it is clear that the existing connections from the former spooks’ time at the agency have brought business to Total Intelligence.

Take the case of Jordan.

For years, Richer worked closely with King Abdullah, serving as the CIA’s liaison with the king. As journalist Ken Silverstein reported, “The CIA has lavishly subsidized Jordan’s intelligence service, and has sent millions of dollars in recent years for intelligence training. After Richer retired, sources say, he helped Blackwater land a lucrative deal with the Jordanian government to provide the same sort of training offered by the CIA. Millions of dollars that the CIA ‘invested’ in Jordan walked out the door with Richer—if this were a movie, it would be a cross between Jerry Maguire and Syriana . ‘People [at the agency] are pissed off,’ said one source. ‘Abdullah still speaks with Richer regularly and he thinks that’s the same thing as talking to us. He thinks Richer is still the man.’ Except in this case it’s Richer, not his client, yelling ‘show me the money.’” 57