A SECRET CIA programme to kill top al-Qaeda leaders with assassination teams was outsourced in 2004 to Blackwater USA, the private security contractor whose operations in Iraq prompted intense scrutiny, according to two former intelligence officials familiar with the events.
The North Carolina-based company was given operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders and was awarded millions of dollars for training and weaponry, but the programme was cancelled before any missions were conducted, the two officials said.
The assassination programme – revealed to Congress in June by CIA director Leon Panetta – was initially launched in 2001 as a CIA-led effort to kill or capture top al-Qaeda members using the agency’s paramilitary forces.
However, in 2004, after briefly terminating the programme, agency officials decided to revive it under a different code name, using outside contractors, the officials said.
“Outsourcing gave the agency more protection in case something went wrong,” said a retired intelligence officer intimately familiar with the assassination programme.
The contract was awarded to Blackwater, now known as Xe Services LLC, in part because of its close ties to the CIA and because of its record in carrying out covert assignments overseas, the officials said. The security contractor’s senior management has included high-ranking former CIA officials – among them Cofer Black, the agency’s former top counterterrorism official, who joined the company in early 2005, three months after leaving the CIA.
Blackwater became notorious for a string of incidents in Iraq during which its heavily armed guards were accused of using excessive force. In the deadliest incident, 17 civilians were killed in a Baghdad square by Blackwater guards in September 2007 after the guards’ convoy reportedly came under fire.
The plan to kill top al-Qaeda leaders was thrust into the spotlight in July, shortly after Mr Panetta briefed members of two congressional panels about the programme. Mr Panetta told House and Senate leaders that he had only recently learned of the programme and, upon doing so, had cancelled it.
Mr Panetta also told lawmakers he thought they had been inappropriately kept in the dark about the plan – in part because former vice-president Dick Cheney had directed the CIA not to reveal the programme to Congress.
The House intelligence committee has launched an investigation into whether the CIA broke the law by failing to notify Congress about the programme for eight years.
The plan, known to intelligence officials as the “targeted killing” programme, was originally conceived for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, but officials later sought to expand it to other countries in the region, according to a source familiar with its inception.
It was aimed at removing from the battlefield members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates who were judged to be plotting attacks against US forces or interests. Initially managed by the CIA’s counterterrorism centre, its functions were partly transferred to Blackwater when key officials from the centre retired from the CIA and went to work for the private contractor.
Former agency officials have described the assassination programme as more aspirational than operational.
One former high-ranking intelligence official briefed on the details said there were three iterations of the programme over eight years, each with a separate code name.
Total spending was well under $20 million (€14 million) over eight years, the official said.
“We never actually did anything,” said the former official. “It never became a covert action.”
A second former official, who is also intimately familiar with details of the programme, said the Blackwater phase involved “lots of time spent training”, mostly near the CIA’s covert facility near Williamsburg, in Virginia.
"They were involved not only in trying to kill but also in getting close enough to snatch," he said. Among team members there was "much frustration" that the programme never reached an operational stage, he said. – ( LA Times-Washington Postservice)