Officials, employees recall Blackwater as CIA extension

WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the CIA's most sensitive activities: clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.

The raids against suspects occurred almost nightly during the height of the Iraqi insurgency between 2004 and 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called "snatch and grab" operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.

Several former Blackwater guards said their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the CIA, the military and Blackwater became blurred.

Instead of providing security for CIA officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.

Separately, former Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on some CIA flights transporting detainees in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. But Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Blackwater, and agency officials denied this.

The secret missions illuminate a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than government officials have previously acknowledged.

Blackwater's partnership with the CIA has been enormously profitable for the North Carolina-based company and became closer after several top agency officials joined Blackwater. "It became a very brotherly relationship," said one former top CIA officer. "There was a feeling that Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency."

George Little, a CIA spokesman, would not comment on Blackwater's ties to the agency. But he said the CIA employs contractors to "enhance the skills of our own work force, just as American law permits."

Corallo said Thursday that the firm was never under contract to participate in clandestine raids with the CIA or with Special Operations personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.

Blackwater's role in the secret operations raises concerns about the extent to which private security firms, hired for defensive guard duty, have joined in offensive military and intelligence operations.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said, "The use of contractors in intelligence and paramilitary operations is a scandal waiting to be examined."

Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, has come under intense criticism for what Iraqis have described as reckless conduct by its security guards, and the company lost its lucrative State Department contract to provide diplomatic security for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad this year after a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

Blackwater's ties to the CIA have emerged in recent months, beginning with disclosures that the agency had hired the company as part of a program to assassinate leaders of al-Qaida and to assist in the CIA's Predator unmanned-vehicle program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Leon Panetta, the CIA director, recently initiated an internal review examining all Blackwater contracts with the agency.

Five former Blackwater employees and four current and former U.S. intelligence officials interviewed for this article would speak only on condition of anonymity. The former Blackwater employees said they participated in the raids or had direct knowledge of them.

Along with the former officials, they provided few details about the targets of the raids in Iraq and Afghanistan, although they said many of the Iraq raids were directed against members of al-Qaida in Iraq. The former intelligence officials said Blackwater's work with the CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan grew out of its early contracts with the spy agency to provide security for the CIA stations in both countries.

In spring 2002, Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, offered to help the spy agency guard its makeshift Afghan station in the Ariana Hotel in Kabul. Not long after Prince signed the security contract with Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, then the CIA's third-ranking official, dozens of Blackwater personnel — many former Navy SEALs and Army Delta Force operatives — were sent to provide perimeter security for the CIA station.

The company's role soon changed as Blackwater operatives began accompanying CIA case officers on missions, according to former employees and intelligence officials.

A similar progression happened in Iraq, where Blackwater was first hired for "static security" of the Baghdad station. In addition, Blackwater was charged with providing personal security for CIA officers wherever they traveled in the two countries.

According to one former Blackwater manager, the company's involvement with the CIA raids was "widely known" by Blackwater executives.

The new details of Blackwater's involvement in Iraq come as the House Intelligence Committee is investigating the firm's role in the CIA's assassination program, and a federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating a wide range of accusations of illegal activity by Blackwater and its personnel, including gun running to Iraq.