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]