Obama's Blackwater? Chicago Mercenary Firm Gets Millions for Private "Security" in Israel and Iraq

By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet. Posted April 2, 2009.

Like Blackwater, Triple Canopy has had its share of bloody incidents, among them  allegations that operatives have gone on missions where they shot at civilian vehicles, including one after a briefing where a team leader cocked his M-4 and said to his men, "I want to kill somebody today. ... Because I'm going on vacation tomorrow." (The man in question denied any wrongdoing). While Triple Canopy fired some employees for not reporting shooting incidents in Iraq, none have been criminally prosecuted in Iraq or the U.S. (For a full report on this and other incidents involving Triple Canopy, check out the great work of Washington Post foreign correspondent Steve Fainaru, author of Big Boy Rules.)

Also like Blackwater, Triple Canopy has hired mercenaries from countries with atrocious human rights records and histories of violent counter-insurgencies. Among them: Peru, Chile, Colombia and El Salvador. In fact, in Iraq, Triple Canopy hired far more "Third Country Nationals" than Blackwater and DynCorp and has used more TCNs than US citizens or Iraqis. As I reported in my book, Triple Canopy used the same Chilean recruiter (who served in Augusto Pinochet's military) Blackwater used when it hired Chilean forces, including some "seasoned veterans" of the Pinochet era. In El Salvador, the company reportedly used "a U.S.-trained former paratrooper and officer of the Salvadoran special forces during the country's civil war" where the U.S. backed a brutal right wing dictatorship in a war that took the lives of some 75,000 Salvadorans. A Triple Canopy spokesperson reportedly said of the Salvadorans, "They've got the right background for the type of work we are doing." A Triple Canopy subsidiary in Latin America has also reportedly used a former CIA base in Lepaterique, Honduras as a training center. In the 1980s, the facility was used by the CIA and Argentinian military intelligence in training Contra death squads to attack Nicaragua. The base also served as the headquarters for the notorious Battalion 316, a CIA-trained Honduran military unit responsible for torture and disappearances.

There is also cause for concern about Triple Canopy's attitude towards accountability for its forces in Iraq, particularly in light of new rules which, on paper, give Iraqi courts jurisdiction over contractor crimes. Blackwater has, at times, conspired with the U.S. State Department to whisk its forces out of Iraq when they are facing potential prosecution for alleged crimes committed in the country, as in the case of a drunken Blackwater operative who was alleged to have shot and killed a bodyguard to Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel-Mahdi on Christmas Eve 2006.

According to one Triple Canopy operative, "We were always told, from the very beginning, if for some reason something happened and the Iraqis were trying to prosecute us, they would put you in the back of a car and sneak you out of the country in the middle of the night." Another Triple Canopy operative said U.S. contractors had their own motto: "What happens here today, stays here today."

The use of mercenaries by Hillary Clinton's State Department stands in stark contrast to her co-sponsorship as a Senator of a bill last year that sought to ban the use of such companies in U.S. war zones, specifically Iraq. Last February Clinton said, "The time to show these contractors the door is long past due." Now, Clinton will be relying on these hired guns for protecting her and her staff in various countries.

It's hardly a surprise that Obama is continuing the use of mercenaries in Iraq and beyond (Triple Canopy itself maintains offices in Abu Dhabi, Nigeria, Peru, Jordan and Uganda); nevertheless, members of Congress -- whose actions when Bush deployed these private armies were too little, too late -- have a responsibility to investigate his use of companies whose profits are intimately linked to a continuation of war. Moreover, Obama's choice of this particular company should be investigated, both by the House and Senate, before May 7th when Obama's mercenaries become the official paramilitary force in Iraq. As for Triple Canopy's role in Israel, Obama's administration should explain exactly what these forces are doing on the U.S. government payroll.

See more stories tagged with: cnn, barack obama, blackwater, mercenaries, kbr, state department, dyncorp, xe, triple canopy, worldwide personal protec, steve fainaru, big boy rules, private military firms

Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

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