"Blackwater" Author Jeremy Scahill's Book Tour to Stop in ABQ

Nation Books author Jeremy Scahill will appear in Albuquerque later this month to sign and discuss his powerful book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. The event is cosponsored by KUNM Community Radio and Bookworks bookstore. A thoroughly revised and updated paperback edition of the revealing New York Times best seller was launched this month.

According to the publisher, the book tells the unauthorized story of the epic rise of one of the most powerful and secretive forces to emerge from the U.S. military-industrial complex, hailed by the Bush administration as a revolution in military affairs, but considered by others as a dire threat to American democracy.

Blackwater USA is the powerful private army that the U.S. government quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. With its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and twenty-thousand troops at the ready, Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror." Blackwater was also hired during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the Department of Homeland Security, as well as by private clients, including communications, petrochemical and insurance companies.

Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater
Booksigning & Discussion
Friday, June 27, 2008, 7:00 PM
UNM Continuing Education Center
1634 University Blvd, Albuquerque, NM
Co-sponsored by KUNM Community Radio and Bookworks bookstore

Tickets on Sale at with proceeds to benefit KUNM. General admission $10.00 or buy a book with your ticket and receive admission for 2. Get your tickets at Bookworks (4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW) or at the door. Call (505)344-8139 for more info.

Blackwater in New Orleans after Katrina

Jeremy Scahill is a Polk Award-winning investigative journalist. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio show Democracy Now! Scahill has reported extensively from Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Nigeria. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill lives in Brooklyn, New York

Paperback Edition Has New Material
For more on the new edition of Blackwater, check out Amy Goodman's June 2nd interview with Scahill on Democracy Now! The paperback version of Scahill's book has more than 100 pages of new material, including a section that carefully details the circumstances surrounding the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians last September by Blackwater forces in Baghdad's Nisour Square. He tells Goodman:

... what's become very, very clear over the past year is that without Blackwater, the occupation of Iraq would be untenable. I mean, this is a company now that has become so central to the US occupation that it can be responsible for one of the single greatest killing sprees of Iraqi civilians and face basically no consequences for that action and in fact continue to win hundreds of millions of dollars in US State Department contracts.

Blackwater in Iraq was awarded over $100 million in contracts just in the two weeks following the Nisour Square shooting. It's had over a billion dollars in contracts from the United States State Department. And the men who were alleged to have been responsible for those killings at Nisour Square, to this day, are walking around as free individuals.

Your Own Private CIA
The paperbook edition of Blackwater also delves into the company's recent development of something called Total Intelligence Solutions -- essentially a privatized, globalized version of the CIA. According to Scahill, Blackwater's owner Eric Prince has joined forces with former high-level U.S. intelligence honchos to build:

.. what they call a "global fusion center" in Total Intelligence Solutions headquarters, which is modeled after the CIA's Counterterrorism Center that [Cofer] Black once ran, with huge plasma-screen TVs, analysts sitting at desks. They have about a hundred people now working for the company, and they're marketing what they say in their literature are CIA-type services -- what they say -- to Fortune 1000 corporations and foreign governments, and the United States government, as well.

Cahill goes on to explain:

The US has sixteen intelligence agencies now under one umbrella. 70 percent of their combined budget is now in the hands of the private sector. You have private contractors working basically at every level of the US intelligence apparatus.

And so, what we see now, through Total Intelligence Solutions, is that Erik Prince is taking the decades and decades of CIA experience, the careers of people like Cofer Black, Robert Richer, Enrique Prado, and putting all of their contacts, their knowledge, their networks, their intimate relationships with governments and heads of state around the world, on the open market for bidding. You know, services that were once the realm of sovereign governments are now on the open market for bidding. And Blackwater has some of the heaviest hitters in the history of US intelligence, whose services are now available for private hire.

What's Next for Blackwater?
Scahill reports that Blackwater intends to go "full spectrum" in their services, including establishing mysterious new facilities in the United States:

Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, says that in the future Blackwater is going to be a full-spectrum operation. That's what he talks about. So they're manufacturing their own armored vehicle, which can go sixty-five miles an hour, and they're trying to get it licensed for use on US highways, which raises questions about what they want to do with these. They're also making a surveillance blimp that could be used by the Department of Homeland Security, for instance, Blackwater says, in monitoring the US-Mexico border.

The other thing that's happened is that Blackwater recently was defeated in its attempt to open up a private base in the south of California in a tiny town called Potrero. They were run out of town, basically, by 850 people ... They have another one in Illinois.

Chilling as hell, isn't it? Clearly, Cahill's appearance in Albuquerque is a must-see for anyone interested in the dangers that privatized, corporatized "defense" and homeland security companies pose to civil liberties and national sovereignty around the world. Imagine what's to come if companies like Blackwater are allowed to continue to provide their lucrative, secretive services to the highest bidders, both at home and abroad, without any meaningful oversight of any kind from American or international agencies or watchdogs. The "security services" they provided during Katrina were just a test run.

Excellent resources:

• Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater Book Channel on YouTube
• New York Times Blackwater file

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