Is the DEA Contracting Blackwater?
Published on 03-08-2008
Source: Infowars - Kurt Nimmo
On Friday, August 1, The Agitator blog posted the following: “Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project sends the photo below. It’s from a series of L.A. Times photos from a federal raid on a medical marijuana clinic in California. I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from it. But it is a little disconcerting.”
So disconcerting, apparently, the L.A. Times pulled this particular photo from its slideshow and fed it into the memory hole.
Man dressed as a Blackwater mercenary partakes in a DEA raid on a Culver City medical marijuana dispensary.
Maybe this particular DEA agent gets his jollies dressing up like a Blackwater mercenary — and maybe he is a Blackwater mercenary. I leave it up to you to decide, although the latter as opposed to the former makes more sense, that is unless the DEA has relaxed its dress code to the point of absurdity.
“As a U.S. Marine, I would have faced charges for simply wearing my camouflage utility uniform into a store,” writes Tim King for Salem-News. “There are these things called standards that the Corps and other military and police groups are obligated to follow. It is to avoid giving someone the wrong idea about who you are and your application in society. I guess Blackwater and the federal marijuana plant warriors don’t care what people think.”
Is it a stretch to conclude Blackwater operates domestically? Last week, Raw Story’s David Edwards and Muriel Kane wrote a story about Jeremy Scahill, who detailed Blackwater’s foray into intelligence. Blackwater is not only providing intelligence to “foreign governments, but to Fortune 500 corporations.” Moreover, Blackwater’s Total Intelligence Solutions appears to be a catch-all for former CIA spooks, including J. Cofer Black, who ran the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. As Tim Weiner wrote for the New York Times on January 20, 2002, the CIA now operates domestically, never mind this is prohibited by its charter.
Recall FEMA and the DHS contracting Blackwater after Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater mercenaries were even “deputized” by the Louisiana governor. “What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal government and the state of Louisiana,” wrote Daniela Crespo and Jeremy Scahill for Alternet on September 12, 2005. “That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater’s men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security.”
As Wayne Madsen noted last October, Blackwater is now in the business of “training” domestic law enforcement in the United States — in Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, New York, Indiana, Virginia, New Jersey, Florida, Oregon, Alaska, and elsewhere. Madsen’s exhaustive list also indicates the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration receives training from Blackwater, although a Google search does not return mention of such training (this video, however, claims to show Blackwater and the DEA jointly training counternarcotics police in Afghanistan).
As it turns out, the DoD has tapped Blackwater to work its “counter-narcoterrorism activities,” along with Raytheon, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman. As I wrote last November, “the military-mercenary complex is expanding operations” and the Pentagon’s “Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program” is just the ticket — and in the case of Blackwater and the others, a handsome meal ticket.
Considering all of this, is it possible Blackwater is working with the DEA here in America? I’d say the possibility is more than fifty percent they are.
Now that John McCain has called for the military to be used in American cities to “fight crime” — crime that is largely related to illegal drugs — no doubt Blackwater will be tapped, as they were in New Orleans, even though the DHS claimed ignorance of the fact. Of course, McCain’s idea was not his own, and it will not be limited to crime infested inner cities, but will be expanded in order that the commoners get accustomed to the idea of martial law and mercenary thugs in black uniforms toting automatic weapons.
