Why Were They There?
by digby
Two of the seven CIA personnel killed in last week’s suicide bombing in Afghanistan worked as contractors for the company formerly known as Blackwater, but what role Dane Paresi and Jeremy Wise played at the CIA’s forward base in Khost remains unknown. The base collected intelligence used in the CIA’s drone attacks across the border in Pakistan, but CIA director Leon Panetta has said that the former Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, is no longer involved in the drone program.
Spokesman for both the CIA and Xe/Blackwater declined to comment whether Paresi and Wise were employed through Xe, but two private intelligence sources and one current government official familiar with CIA operations at the Afghanistan base confirmed to ABCNEWS.com that the two were there as Xe employees. A source familiar with Xe’s contracts said that their role was not to provide security for the base, but provided no further details.
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Last month, CIA director Leon Panetta announced that his agency had terminated its contract with Xe to load and arm Predator and Reaper drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are used to strike suspected militants and al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. According to two former intelligence sources, Forward Operating Base Chapman was used to gather intelligence for drone strikes across the border.
In response to an ABC News report last month that the CIA had expanded the role of contractors to operation positions, CIA spokesman George Little said, “CIA does not use Blackwater to perform our core missions of collecting intelligence, performing analysis or conducting covert operations,” said Little.
A U.S. government official told ABC News the private contractors “don’t kick down doors” but only fulfill a “security role” on certain CIA missions.
I’m not sure which way they would want this story to go. If they were there to provide security, they seem to have seriously fallen down on the job and sadly sacrificed their own lives in the process. If they weren’t there to provide security, what were they doing there, since the official line clearly says that was their only current mission?
I guess what’s happened is that the highly trained super spook/ special forces guys are all leaving government service to work for contractors and make better money. I think it would probably be better to just pay them better money directly, don’t you? Hiring a private army to do youir dirty work is a very bad idea. You end up having all the responsibility and accountability but without any of the control. That never works very well.
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