Special Operations: Safe

Archives

August 4, 2009: For many years, Blackwater Worldwide (now Xe Services) had a contract with the U.S. State Department to protect their personnel in Iraq. For six years, Blackwater, using many former special operations personnel, saw to it no State Department personnel were killed, even though the State Department had more personnel in Iraq than in any other country. But Blackwater lost the contract this year, because of incidents where the Blackwater security personnel killed Iraqi civilians while responding to attacks on the State Department staff being guarded.

DynCorp replaced Blackwater, and will use the same kind of people to continue guarding State Department personnel in Iraq. The State Department pays about $1.2 billion a year for these security services in Iraq.

 

Article Archive

Special Operations: Current 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contributions. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   Contribute   Close