WASHINGTON: The Central Intelligence Agency has terminated a contract with the security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide that allowed the company to load bombs on CIA drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, intelligence officials said.
The contract gave employees with the company an operational role in one of the CIA’s most significant covert programs, which has killed dozens of militants with Predator and Reaper drones. The company’s involvement highlighted the extent to which the CIA had outsourced critical jobs to private companies since the 9/11 attacks.
The contract with the company, now called Xe Services, was canceled this year by Leon Panetta, the CIA director, according to a spokesman of the US agency. In August, the New York Times first revealed the existence of the contract, which was run by a division of the company called Blackwater Select, which handles classified contracts.
George Little, the CIA spokesman, said that Panetta had ordered that the agency’s employees take over the jobs from Xe employees at the remote drone bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that Panetta had also ordered a review of all contracts with the company. “At this time, Blackwater is not involved in any CIA operations other than in a security or support role,” Little said.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the
copyright owner.
