RAW STORY– How can a company allegedly responsible for killing 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007 continue to get State Department and CIA contracts? CIA Director Leon Panetta says there is “not much choice” because few companies have the capabilities of Blackwater.

“Since I have become director, I have asked our agency to review every contract we have had with Blackwater and whatever their new name is now — Xe — to ensure first and foremost that we have no contract in which they are engaged in any CIA operations. We’re doing our own operations. That’s important that we not contract that out to anybody,” Panetta told ABC’s Jake Tapper Sunday.

“But at the same time I have to tell you that in the war zone, we continue to have needs for security. You’ve got a lot of forward bases. You’ve got a lot of attacks on some of those bases. We’ve got to have security. Unfortunately, there are few companies that provide that kind of security,” Panetta continued.

“State Department relies on them. We rely on them to a certain extent. So, we’ve bid out some of those contracts. They provided a bid that underbid everyone else by about $26 million and a panel that we had said that they can do the job, that they’ve shaped up their act,” he said.

“There was really not much choice but to accept that contract,” said Panetta.

“But having said that, I will tell you that I continue to be very cautious about any of those contracts and we’re reviewing all of the bids that we have with that company,” he concluded.

The CIA recently signed a new $100-million contract with Blackwater to guard its facilities in Afghanistan.

50 TO 100 AL QAEDA IN AFGHANISTAN

Panetta also told ABC’s Jake Tapper that he estimates there are somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 100 Al Qaeda operatives inside Afghanistan.

“There’s no question that the main location of Al Qaeda is in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” he said.

Faiz Shakir at ThinkProgress notes that, with approximately 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan, that works out to 1,000 troops per Al Qaeda agent.

FEDS WON’T CHARGE BLACKWATER IN ATTEMPT TO BREAK SANCTIONS

The US won’t charge Blackwater over its attempts to secure security contracts in restive southern Sudan, even though the company’s attempts evidently violated sanctions placed on Sudan by the US, McClatchy news service reports.

The effort to drum up new business in East Africa by Blackwater owner Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who had close ties with top officials in the George W. Bush White House and the CIA, became a major element in a continuing four-year federal investigation into allegations of sanctions violations, illegal exports and bribery.

The Obama administration, however, has decided for now not to bring criminal charges against Blackwater, according to a U.S. official close to the case.

Had the company been indicted, it could have been suspended from doing business with the U.S. government, and a conviction could have brought debarment from all government contracts, including providing guard services for the CIA and State Department in war zones.

© COPYRIGHT RAW STORY, 2010

AP– The Supreme Court upheld the government’s authority Monday to ban aid to designated terrorist groups, even when that support is intended to steer the groups toward peaceful and legal activities.

The court left intact a federal law that the Obama administration considers an important tool against terrorism. But human rights organizations say the law’s ban on providing training and advice to nearly four dozen organizations on a State Department list squanders a chance to persuade people to renounce extremism.

The justices voted 6-3 to reject a free-speech challenge from humanitarian aid groups to the law that bars “material support” — everything from money to technical know-how to legal advice — to foreign terrorist organizations.

The aid groups were only challenging provisions that put them at risk of being prosecuted for talking to terrorist organizations about nonviolent activities.

But Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opinion for the court that material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways.

“Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends,” Roberts said in an opinion joined by four other conservative justices, but also the liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.

The court often looks skeptically on laws that criminalize speech and holds them to a high level of scrutiny. But Roberts said there is good reason in this case to defer to Congress and the president, “uniquely positioned to make principled distinctions between activities that will further terrorist conduct and undermine United States foreign policy, and those that will not.”

Continue reading about the High Court Upholds Anti-Terror Law Prized by Obama.

AP Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Photo by flickr user dbking

© AP, 2010

AP– Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure’s on to allow them in the skies over the United States.

The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.

On top of that, these pilotless aircraft come in a variety of sizes. Some are as big as a small airliner, others the size of a backpack. The tiniest are small enough to fly through a house window.

The obvious risks have not deterred the civilian demand for pilotless planes. Tornado researchers want to send them into storms to gather data. Energy companies want to use them to monitor pipelines. State police hope to send them up to capture images of speeding cars’ license plates. Local police envision using them to track fleeing suspects.

Like many robots, the planes have advantages over humans for jobs that are dirty, dangerous or dull. And the planes often cost less than piloted aircraft and can stay aloft far longer.

Continue reading about Feds Under Pressure to Open US Skies to Drones.

© AP, 2010

Photo by flickr user PLaneMGlasgow

RAW STORY– US Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected suggestions Sunday that US forces will move out of Afghanistan in large numbers in July of next year under a deadline set by President Barack Obama.

“That absolutely has not been decided,” Gates said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.

His comment was the latest indication that the magnitude of the drawdown, if not the deadline itself, is the subject of an intensifying internal debate at a time when a NATO-led campaign against the Taliban is going slower than expected.

Vice President Joe Biden, an early skeptic of the US military buildup in Afghanistan, was quoted as telling author Jonathan Alter recently: “In July of 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.”

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel did not deny the Biden quote when asked about it, but, like Gates, said that the size of the drawdown would depend on conditions on the ground.

“Everybody knows there’s a firm date. And that firm date is a date (that) deals with the troops that are part of the surge, the additional 30,000,” he said in an interview with ABC “This Week.”

“What will be determined at that date or going into that date will be the scale and scope of that reduction,” he said.

General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, said last week that in setting the deadline for the surge last year, Obama’s message was “one of urgency — not that July 2011 is when we race for the exits, reach for the light switch and flip it off.”

Petraeus told lawmakers he would be duty-bound to recommend delaying the redeployment of forces if he thought it necessary.

In the same hearing, the Pentagon’s policy chief, Michelle Flournoy, said a responsible, conditions-based drawdown would depend on there being provinces ready to be transferred to Afghan control, and that there be Afghan combat forces capable of taking the lead.

Officials have said that training of Afghan security forces has gone slower than expected, in part because there are not enough trainers.

Continue to read about the US Backing Away from Withdrawl Date.

Photo by US Army flickr

© COPYRIGHT RAW STORY, 2010