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Revolving Door to Blackwater Causes Alarm at CIA

Plus: More on the Agen­cy’s “Wehrma­cht”

by Ken Sil­ver­stein
HARPER’S [1]

Black­wa­ter USA [2], the pri­vate secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor that has oper­at­ed in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Azer­bai­jan, and New Orleans, has been boom­ing the past few years. Found­ed in Decem­ber of 1996, the com­pa­ny spent its ear­ly years “pay­ing staff with an exec­u­tive’s cred­it card and beg­ging for cus­tomers,” accord­ing to the Vir­gin­ian-Pilot [3]. But today, Black­wa­ter report­ed­ly has rev­enues of about $100 mil­lion annu­al­ly, almost all of it from gov­ern­ment con­tracts, and main­tains “a com­pound half the size of Man­hat­tan and 450 per­ma­nent employ­ees,” accord­ing to the news­pa­per.

How did Black­wa­ter rise so high, so fast? [CONTINUE ORIGINAL ARTICLE] [4]