For example, on March 13, earlier this past year (2009), it was reported in the USA that: "Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an executive assassination ring" throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney."
click here From a recent news broadcast on Democracy Now and in the USA media:
"Blackwater is all over the news (this week). In the last seventy-two hours, a series of breaking developments involving the notorious private military firm have come to light, ranging from their involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even Germany, as well as legal cases here at home.
click here
Here is how the story is covered in the USA as of yesterday (January 8, 2009) on Democracy Now.
REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY: Look, I'm introducing legislation called Stop Outsourcing Our Security, and the idea of that is that when we have mission-sensitive activities, inherently governmental functions in battle zones around the world, that we should have only people that bear the stamp of the United States government. And that means that that would include no private military contractors at all in those operations.
Now, look, when we have a situation where you can question whether or not these contractors can get away with murder--after all, this case against those shooters at Nisoor Square has been dismissed--hopefully that there will be another effort by the Justice Department to go after these people, because it was dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct, which is true. I think there were many mistakes made. But right now, these contractors are in a legal limbo. And so, if these individuals can get away with murder, imagine--you don't have to imagine, you know what it does to our relations with the Iraqi government and with governments around the world.
And now you've got a situation where Germany is asking, what were Blackwater people doing in Germany?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I'd like to ask you about that, in particular, Congresswoman. Here you have a situation not just of being involved in murder, but apparently of being involved in government-sanctioned assassination attempts. And that is being, to some degree, contracted out. Forget about whether the government should be involved in such a kind of assassination attempts, but to contract out that activity?
That is really astounding.
REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY: This really is part of an ongoing investigation that I can't talk about, but even the fact that there is that allegation, I think, gives one a picture of the degree to which Blackwater has been completely enmeshed in these secret operations. And, you know, at least the allegation that they are, I think is disturbing enough. And there is an investigation going on around activities, you know, like that.
In contrast, I look at the major German newspapers on Saturday (today), January 9, 2009 and there is next to hardly any serious news on Blackwater and Germany at all.
JEREMY SCAHILL: So, what Representative Schakowsky is talking about here, or, Juan, you were asking about, is that one of these operations allegedly took place in Hamburg, Germany, where a Blackwater-led team inserted inside of Germany to hunt down this man who was a Syrian-born naturalized citizen of Germany that had been alleged to have had connections with three of the 9/11 plotters. And they were doing what's called--they were trying to find him, fix his location, and finish him off, is what they call it.
And my understanding is that someone actually in government, not a Blackwater person, called off that operation, so the trigger was never pulled.
Another operation took place, we understand, inside of Dubai. And Erik Prince talks about working on covert operations inside of Syria, as well, where he was helping the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC, the Special Forces, identify targets inside of Syria.
So all of this needs to be very deeply probed, because you have not only a situation where these hit teams are being contracted out, but the German politicians are now saying, What if the German intelligence outsourced to a private company assassination operations in New Orleans, in the United States?
How would your government respond to this? So this could be a substantial diplomatic problem for the Obama administration, because the Merkel government is now starting to ask questions. Not just Green Party politicians, but today one of Angela Merkel's biggest allies in Germany said that they're probing it, and they want answers from Washington.
I have just done a websearch on Blackwater in German newspapers. DIE BERLINER ZEITUNG had no news recently on Blackwater at all. Meanwhile, DIE ZEIT onlines (newspaper) most recent story on Blackwater in Germany was last August 2009, when it was reported that young Germans were contracting to work with Blackwater in Afghanistan.
http://www.zeit.de/2009/35/L-P-Hutsch-BiG
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