
The Terrifying Background of the Man Who Ran a CIA Assassination Unit - philco
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/the-terrifying-background-of-the-man-who-ran-a-cia-assassination-unit/259856/
======
mcantelon
Having NGOs conduct killing on behalf of the government is a tried-and-true
method of counterinsurgence (South American paramilitary death squads for
example). The plausible deniability introduced by working through a proxy
allows the government to conduct more politically risky operations (including
false flag attacks if public support is waning). Criticizing the government
becomes riskier. And, if not held in check, the paramilitary elements will
inevitably use their power for their own objectives.

~~~
fpp
Well said - similar happened in Europe during the 1970s with people being
classified as (left-wing) terrorists (and a few might have certainly been) and
being "transported" between countries by so-called freelancers - TMK quite a
few did not survive the travel and definitely no obituaries in the press.

~~~
ra
There's a great movie set in this context, "Munich"

~~~
vdm
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) was much better.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765432/>

~~~
ra
Ahhh .... yes I think that's actually the movie I was thinking of. Brilliant.

------
chernevik
That's quite a headline. But the article is mostly about delegations of
authority (and that not in any real detail), a story of US contractors
conducting assassinations, and one (1) corroborating opinion -- that
corroboration in no detail, and almost certainly second-hand.

There's a paragraph about the "terrifying background", in absolutely no detail
whatsoever.

This sort of thing has become a subgenre of its own, one where the
documentation almost always falls well short of the promise.

People should think about what the cries of "Wolf!" are doing to our ability
to spot truly documented and disturbing problems.

~~~
pemulis
What do you mean? The "terrifying background" seemed pretty clear to me -- a
federal organized crime task force believed that he was involved in seven
murders as a drug enforcer in Miami before becoming a contractor for the CIA.

------
theorique
The book on Blackwater written by the journalist Jeremy Scahill has a lot of
interesting background on Prado. Also, "American Desperado" ( _great book_ ,
also by Evan Wright) talks about some of Prado's interesting involvement in
drug importation into Florida in the 1980s.

Sounds like an interesting guy, but probably not someone you want to meet in a
dark alley.

 _Edit:_

The Scahill book is [http://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Powerful-Mercenary-
Revised-...](http://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Powerful-Mercenary-Revised-
Updated/dp/156858394X)

The Wright book is [http://www.amazon.com/American-Desperado-Life---Soldier-
Gove...](http://www.amazon.com/American-Desperado-Life---Soldier-
Government/dp/0307450422/)

I've read both and highly recommend them.

~~~
smashing
That's an interesting expression. What kind of people would you LIKE to meet
in a dark alley?

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
Friends. The principled and empathetic. Those who give one another the benefit
of the doubt and default to altruism in the absence of specific threat.

~~~
smashing
Do you have friends which prefer meetings in dark alleys?

------
reinhardt
"The administration then awarded Blackwater (which is now called Academi) a
$250 million contract to perform unspecified services for the CIA."

Your tax dollars at work.

~~~
daveying99
I thought they had changed their name to Xe services. What sort of name is
Academi for a private mercenary company?

~~~
knowtheory
Honestly, that's probably why they changed it again. Blackwater was a
comically villainous name to begin with.

~~~
autodidakto
Not only is it comically villainous, it's the technical term for waste water
from toilets. That is, sewage. Whoever is picking their names needs to be,
uhm, shot.

~~~
chubbard
It has nothing to do with sewage.

Blackwater got it names from the swamps surrounding the area: "the Great
Dismal Swamp, a vast swamp on the North Carolina/Virginia border, now mostly a
National Wildlife Refuge...There, he created his state-of-the-art private
training facility and his contracting company, Blackwater, which he named for
the peat-colored water of the swamp.[10]"

But apparently if Blackwater wanted to shot the person that named it they can
do that.

------
mmaunder
"Your sources seem to have been correct. Private contractors are whacking
people like crazy over in Afghanistan for the CIA."

If you want to have a debate, lets talk about ending the various wars the USA
is fighting in various forms around the world. Not whether a particular covert
surgical tactic is being carried out by the correct kind of soldier.

------
joering2
Jesus Christ, think about it! a Blackwater employee killed your six year old
son, but he turned out to be a wrong person. You have all the evidence in the
world for justice to be served, and yet you get this: "oh, sorry, but this
company and their employees have unofficially issued government license to
kill. Neither your local sherrif office, nor police, nor your congressmen,
people in congress, DOJ or Supreme Court alone can do shit about it".

And this happens on the soil of the United States of America!

------
jakeonthemove
Well, to be fair, every government uses or at least has plans for these kind
of tactics. KGB/FSB, Mossad, MI6, DGSE, otehr variations of a DSS agency -
you've got to be very naive to believe they don't conduct covert operations
and planned assassinations themselves or through third parties. It's only
shocking when it comes to light (or maybe _because_ it comes to light, when it
shouldn't?)...

~~~
knowtheory
There is an Epic Level difference between a government agency who is
ultimately responsible for their conduct to their citizens, one way or another
having a secret assassination program, and a government paying a 3rd party to
carry out assassinations.

One particular way in which this is different, is that the CIA can't go out
and decide that it (as an organization) wants to freelance for other nations
or organizations.

Blackwater, once set up as a paramilitary organization who specializes in
covert assassinations... who's to say they're not moonlighting for Zetas or
the Russian mob? What's the ethical block stopping them? They're already
secretly killing people for money.

~~~
Zakharov
They're not moonlighting for the Zetas or the Russian mob because if they
were, they'd lose billions of dollars of CIA money.

~~~
Someone
If you were the government looking to hire a third party to do this kind of
things for you, wouldn't you prefer someone with experience?

Yes, you could only hire people that went through your own training program,
but hiring ones that went through other training programs would give more
plausible deniability. It also could be an excellent Way to sow seeds of
distrust between otherwise friendly parties.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
The article says Obama approves the targets. So right there, accountability,
Obama is 'owning' it.

~~~
baconner
Better maybe, but when the kill list is secret and the reasons are secret
that's not exactly "accountability"

------
anupj
Maybe I've missed something here but how is this question relevent to hacker
news?

~~~
fooandbarify
See the guidelines [1]. One could argue that it "gratifies intellectual
curiosity", and it is certainly "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon"
(for varying values of new; it is nevertheless interesting new evidence).

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
mcantelon
>"evidence of some interesting new phenomenon"

Accountability hacking perhaps.

------
r0s
Just another reason that withdrawing "official" military from Iraq is a farce
of the same level as declaring victory.

We don't officially torture prisoners (anymore), but unaccountable private
contractors can run wild, hidden from all that pesky human rights oversight.

------
kiba
Never mind conspiracy theory, we have evidence openly showing how our
government is doing bad things for the "right reason".

~~~
mtgx
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm sure the Spanish
Inquisition had "good intentions" as well when they tortured the "heretics".

Governments can easily get out of hand if not vigilantly watched and stopped
when necessary, or they will create situations where they can punish whoever
they want for whatever reason they say.

------
ilaksh
I like to think of the current structures that define and drive of our
'civilization' as a legacy design that is very difficult to replace, sort of
like PC and Von Neumann-ish architecture, or a giant Perl codebase.

I think that in this technological era, secret government (or private)
killings, war, domination of resources by force, etc., is completely
inexcusable. I think that the structures are unfortunately supported by
primitive Social Darwinist belief systems.

I am actually optimistic that when violence and violence suppression really
becomes an information technology (i.e., a non-wealthy person can run a
program/device that fabricates and launches his own swarm of protective
robots) that will lead to a more equal distribution of resources and generally
less violence and coercion. May sound far-fetched, and maybe it is.. but
things are so fucked up, I have to hope for some science-fictiony sounding
solutions.

------
AYBABTME
[quote] So there you have it: A former Air Force lieutenant colonel, speaking
on the record and using the present tense, said in 2011 that "private
contractors are whacking people like crazy over in Afghanistan for the CIA."
[/quote]

A journalist looking for any reference that would support his article. I'm not
saying the US Gov. isn't contracting private security firms to carry some of
their dirty work. But saying "Huh a former lt-col from the Air Force confirmed
<whatever>" isn't worth anything. In fact, all it does, in my opinion, is
uncover and expose how naive is the reporter.

A former Air Force lieutenant-colonel... is it supposed to mean anything? It's
a claim to Authority, with a weak authority to bring forward.

------
briandear
It's almost ridiculous how some people get so indignant about CIA; I can
almost feel their spittle as they shout at their computer screens. At the same
time, people get equally outraged when terrorists kill people and then want to
blame CIA for their failings.

It's a bad world. I am not sympathetic to the plight of those who associate
with terrorists (even if they themselves haven't committed a terrorist act)
and find themselves it Gitmo or dead. Are mistakes made? Of course, CIA has a
long history of public f'ups, however their degree of success is noteworthy,
though often unheralded. Bin Laden was found because of CIA, the Iranian and
North K nuke programs have been slowed and countless people AREN'T dead
because of CIA. The Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc was
hastened due to CIA and Reagan forcing the issue by spending the Soviets into
insolvency because of the arms race. Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton were avid
weilders of covert action -- it's not a political party issue.

On the British side, MI6 is right there with CIA. The old Deuxiéme Bureau as
well as German Intelligence is highly active in the black operations side of
geopolitical affairs. This isn't peculiar to America, though in America, we
have a (mostly) free press and a scandal-hungry populace that tends to
sensationalize missteps or failures.

Let's not through the baby out with the bathwater. I'm far more worried about
getting blown up on the PATH train than ending up in CIA (or their proxy's)
crosshairs.

~~~
heretohelp
>Reagan forcing the issue by spending the Soviets into insolvency because of
the arms race

I agreed with most of what you said but you're wrong here, the Saudis forced
the Soviets into insolvency because they didn't like the Soviet actions in
Iran and Afghanistan. The Saudis were able to sell oil at a lower price than
the USSR, took advantage of that and broke them. Any extra spending incurred
by Reagan is a drop in the ocean compared the complete destruction of their
revenue source.

~~~
refurb
"A central instrument for putting pressure on the Soviet Union was Reagan’s
massive defense build-up, which raised defense spending from $134 billion in
1980 to $253 billion in 1989. This raised American defense spending to 7
percent of GDP, dramatically increasing the federal deficit. Yet in its
efforts to keep up with the American defense build-up, the Soviet Union was
compelled in the first half of the 1980s to raise the share of its defense
spending from 22 percent to 27 percent of GDP, while it froze the production
of civilian goods at 1980 levels."

<http://wais.stanford.edu/History/history_ussrandreagan.htm>

~~~
Spooky23
Consider the other event that was contributing to that 20% increase in defense
spending. (ie. the Afghanistan war)

Afghanistan was part of the Russian sphere of influence since the days of the
imperial "Great Game" era. The Russians didn't invade Afghanistan because they
got a kick out of tribal politics -- their sphere of influence was being
threatened.

------
mekwall
So, we should all stop outsourcing and do our own dirty-work.

------
EternalFury
And then people ask: Why do they hate us? Nothing stays covert everywhere and
forever.

------
runjake
I read Wright's book, How To Get Away With Murder. It's a quick read. It's not
very focused and doesn't answer many questions. Ironically, there's very
little focus on Ric Prado, who's the most interesting of the bunch.

------
joering2
also from the article:

 _"At the time, the CIA declared him unavailable for questioning; the
investigation was shut down before he was arrested or tried._ "

If this is not rotten corruption and MOB in its pures form, then what is?

------
vernon
The privatization of assassinations is even scarier than illegal operations
from the CIA.

