Blackwater Worldwide reaches agreement with U.S. State Department to pay $42 million in fines
WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) – The former private military company known as Blackwater Worldwide reached an agreement with the U.S. State Department, and will pay the U.S. $42 million in fines for hundreds of violations of the United States export control regulations, the New York Times reported.
Blackwater Worldwide, the company that garnered an intense level of criticism for its frequently controversial and illegal actions in Iraq and around the world, racked up a number of violations that included illegal weapons exports to Afghanistan, making unauthorized proposals to train troops in southern Sudan, and providing sniper trading for Taiwanese police officers, according to the New York Times.
The company has now reformed and is called Xe Services. The State Department allowed them to deal with the issue as an administrative matter, allowing the firm to avoid any criminal charges. While a company spokesperson could confirm that a deal was reached to the New York Times, the State Department could not immediately comment.
It should be noted that the settlement with the U.S. State Department doesn’t resolve any other legal troubles that are still facing Blackwater and its former executives and other personnel that were allegedly involved in criminal activities in various conflict-stricken countries. There are indictments still standing on five former executives, including Blackwater’s former president. A federal investigation is looking into evidence that Blackwater officials sought to bribe Iraqi government officials in addition to the arrest of two former Blackwater guards on federal murder charges.
While Blackwater did lose its largest federal contract to provide diplomatic security for the U.S. and its embassy personnel in Baghdad, it still has contracts providing security for the State Department and the CIA in Afghanistan.
For a short time, the company’s founder, Erick Prince, had the goal of turning Blackwater into an informal tool of American foreign policy and defense. He proposed to the CIA that they authorize and create “quick reaction force” that would handle paramilitary operations for the spy agency around the world. A public relations nightmare foiled that plan, however, when their ambitions were revealed by McClatchy newspapers in June, specifically in the Sudanese region.
Despite their tarnished reputation, the company is seeking to clean up its act, at least publically, by hiring a board of experts to supervise the firm’s compliance with U.S. export laws in regards to weapons, information, and training sales to individuals and organizations overseas.
CIA Director Leon Panetta defended his decision to renew the company’s contract, saying that the company offered the lowest bid and had “cleaned up its act.” Xe Services is now providing a $100 million security service contract for its station in Kabul.
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24-year old California Woman to Sue U.S. Gov’t for Billions on Allegations of Conspiracy and Torture. Lawyers Wanted.
“If any victims of research and experimentation perpetrated by the United States are found, they must be offered compensation, including health care services, to address ongoing health effects related to the experimentation, and a formal apology. [We] call on the White House and Congress to investigate thoroughly the full scope of the possible human experimentation designed and implemented in the post-Sept. 11 period. The War Crimes Act must be amended to restore traditional human subject protections.”
– Physicians for Human Rights
My name is Rayna Marie Vergara, but I go by Rayna Isabella. I am 24 years old, and I’m from San Diego, California. I attended the University of California at San Diego from 2004 to 2009, studying psychology; however, I assure you that this is not a piece of fiction or a work of art. I am a prisoner of a war. I am a U.S. Citizen, and this message was crafted under duress. I have been tortured and tormented by my own country. I have sought political asylum by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but they said that it was beyond the scope of their authority. I have sought protection from the government’s Office of Human Research Protections, but they claimed it was out of their jurisdiction. I am a victim of human experimentation and torture. So I turn to the American public and the International community. Please pass this on to friends, family, and those in authority. I need for my message to be heard, and I call on all those who can help to do so.
My petition for political refugee status and protection is grounded in the USA’s repeated patterns of gross violations of my human rights, specifically within the past two years, through mostly remote electronic means. I also wish to formally charge the United States, one of the most developed and powerful countries worldwide, on the allegations of conspiracy and violations of the Geneva convention, such as multiple counts of the filming and distribution of child pornography (within the past 8 years), in their quest for 360 degree research on the perfect human experimentee and government recruit, me, Rayna Vergara.
The voices of today’s victims, myself included, are suppressed by those wielding the technology. The American government is using its vast compendium of knowledge obtained through classified research, well beyond the bounds of what is currently being sold as high technology. Methods of torture that have been used on me include biological warfare, direct pain, nearly daily doses of induced amnesia at the short-term and long- term memory levels, shifts in physical balance, direct and indirect social and political control, and perverse sex research. Every nook and cranny of my brain and body has been exploited, from my depression and synaesthesia to my skeptic-to-a-fault, stubborn personality, scatterbrain memory, and certifiably genius levels of intelligence (I tested into the top 0.1% of the population when I was only seven years old).
After a six-month investigation, Physicians for Human Rights ( http://phrtorturepapers.org) has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. These experiments were conducted on the basis of learning to extract intel from prisoners and terrorists.
This violation of human rights did not take place in a prison cell in Guantanamo or a foxhole in Iraq. I am an American citizen who has been treated like a third-world country prisoner by Americans, on American soil. I have been tortured through electronic, wireless drugs, and I have been used as a guinea pig for “enhanced interrogation” gov’t-military programs, presumably under the basis that, when the time comes for those in power to attest for their wrong deeds, they will either deny all allegations until an investigative committee conducts a complete audit of every government employee’s activity, including liberties taken and decisions made off-the-record, or they will tell the truth and defect to those in authority, saying they were simply fulfilling their duty to their country by following government and/or military orders.
According to Physicians for Human Rights’ Campaign Against Torture, “almost immediately after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration began dismantling US anti-torture law and policy. As disclosed by the 2006 report of the Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General, Pentagon leadership, in collaboration with military psychologists, systematically designed and implemented methods of psychological torture and physical abuse that became “standard operating procedure” for interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Similar techniques comprise the CIA’s notorious ‘enhanced interrogation methods.’”
I call on the White House and Congress to investigate thoroughly the full scope of the human experimentation designed and implemented in the post-Sept. 11 period. Those who authorized, designed, implemented and supervised these alleged practices of human experimentation—whether health professionals, uniformed personnel, or civilian national security officials—must be held to account for their actions if they are found to have violated what international tribunals previously have held to constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• President Obama must order the attorney general to undertake an immediate criminal investigation of alleged illegal human experimentation and research on detainees conducted by the CIA and other government agencies following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
• The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services must instruct the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) to begin an investigation of alleged violations of the Common Rule by the CIA and other government agencies as part of the “enhanced” interrogation program.
• Congress must amend the War Crimes Act to eliminate changes made to the Act in 2006 which weaken the prohibition on biological experimentation on detainees, and ensure that the War Crimes Act definition of the grave breach of biological experimentation is consistent with the definition of that crime under the Geneva Conventions.
• Congress should convene a joint select committee comprising members of the House and Senate committees responsible for oversight on intelligence, military, judiciary and health and human services matters to conduct a full investigation of alleged human research and experimentation activities on detainees in US custody.
• President Obama should issue an executive order immediately suspending any federally funded human subject research currently occurring in secret — regardless of whether or not it involves detainees.
• The Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility should commence an investigation into alleged professional misconduct by OLC lawyers related to violations of domestic and international law and regulations governing prohibitions on human subject experimentation and research on detainees.
• President Obama should appoint a presidential task force to restore the integrity of the US regime of protections for human research subjects. This task force, comprising current and former officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the human rights community, and leading health professional associations, should review current human subject protections for detainees, and recommend changes to ensure that the human rights of those in US custody are upheld.
• States should adopt policies specifically prohibiting participation in torture and improper treatment of prisoners by health care professionals. Such participation is considered professional misconduct and is grounds for loss of professional licensure. Proposed legislation in New York State provides a model for such policy.
• The United Nations special rapporteur on torture should undertake an investigation of allegations that the United States engaged in gross violations of international human rights law by engaging in human subject research and experimentation on detainees in its custody.
Physicians for Human Rights, together with Amnesty International, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Victims of Torture, Human Rights Watch, International Rehabilatation Council for Torture Victims, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and Psychologists for Social Responsibility, has filed a complaint based on evidence of CIA experimentation with the Office of Human Research Protection. The complaint demands that OHRP launch a full investigation into possible human experimentation by the CIA. At the time of press (August 23, 2010), OHRP and UNHCR have refused to get involved, claiming lack of jurisdiction. Who has oversight in this matter? We must fight and make sure that the message is heard across political and social lines, until President Obama responds to this crisis and brings the victims to justice.
According to The Science Channel, the CIA was involved in the research of various drugs for the use of mind control since the 1950s. This research was done under the codename MKULTRA, or Project MK-ULTRA. In 2007, the Canadian government, which also took part in MK-ULTRA research, received a class-action lawsuit from former psychiatric patients who said they were used as human guinea pigs.
I am a survivor of the same torture methods used in Project MK-Ultra (MKULTRA), as well as multiple government experiments on intelligence, particularly at the top 0.1% of the population.
The evidence against the United States is insurmountable; all that is needed is an independent committee with the security clearance to investigate the truth. For an idea of why I have been secretly tortured and kept silent, see Orson Scott Card’s book, Ender in Exile. My case is solid, and my cause is pure. Everything that is a threat to those still in power who stand to go to prison for their crimes against humanity.
What exactly are “enhanced interrogation methods,” and why are they violations to a person’s most core human rights and civil liberties? The CIA and other government agencies were interested in producing new methods and materials to control the minds of others, such as drugs to induce hypnosis, drugs to enhance torture, drugs to make their own agents withstand torture, materials to induce amnesia like the flashlights in Men-in-Black, sleeping pills…really, anything that one Pokemon could use to attack another Pokemon, whether subtly (so that an agent may administer the drug and get away with it scot-free, as in a situation where the agent has infiltrated an enemy cell and wishes to remain undercover for years or longer) or overtly, and allow for a memory clearing or other method of cover-up afterwards.
To most people, you say “mind control” and images of Frankenstein and futuristic sci-fi backdrops come to mind. But the truth is a lot closer to what the Nazi scientists did to prisoners in World War II-era concentration camps. Today’s high-tech mind control research involves the use of electronic, wireless drugs, kind of like the technology Trinity used in The Matrix when she needed to learn how to fly a helicopter. Imagine being able to download a venti cappucino right into your brain without having to wait for the chemicals to be absorbed into your sytem. Caffeine, cocaine, alcohol, downers, uppers, psychotics; you name it, we’ve mapped it and figured out how to replicate the chemical sequences remotely. This means that the same methods used to train dogs and circus animals can, in capable hands, be used to create numb human slaves, or, in military experiments, elite soldiers that will make it through enemy territory with a high kill ratio.
Military boot camp is supposed to create a soldier with a clean slate, so that military programming can create a soldier that follow orders. It is, after all, about being sure that when our sons and daughters are of age to join the military, they’ll be prepared to use the missions’ futuristic roleplaying technology and so-real-you-can-reach-out-and-
touch-it high resolution video training games. A mind that is completely mapped out and readable by a computer can stay sharp by using the latest in hyper-responsive, interactive controls to train a body’s shooting eyes and arms to top accuracy and precision. It also allows the recruiter to evaluate the soldier’s mind and body separately, and come up with training plans consisting of separate but complementary mental and physical components to shape an off-the-street candidate to an ideal recruit in the shortest amount of time possible.
Any history teacher worth his weight in gold will tell you that these experiments were not done following ethical guidelines. The declassified documents prove it. Drugs were often given to people without their knowledge. Pregnant women were given radiation under the name of “science.”
This research is wide-spread; not only because of the sheer amount of people currently employed or receiving direct or indirect payment by the U.S. Military, especially in a Navy town like San Diego, but because some people very high up are paid to ensure that CIA-funded research will always be decades ahead of commercial technology in areas like cell-phones, cameras, and satellites. It’s part of the “national security” directives. Stay ahead of the game. Gauge public opinion through sci-fi movies like Inception and Avatar; the technology is possible and in use today. But if the American public knew that the deepest desires, hopes, and dreams of their inner psyches were subject to hacking, theft, and coercion, they would freak out as though aliens were probing their anuses while they were sleeping. When I found out it was possible to see out of another person’s eyes like a surrogate satellite camera feed, and that others were tapping my visual and mental banks while I was in the shower and on the toilet, I had my own freak out episode. It was a carefully planned, controlled freak-out, although I didn’t know that at the time. My own awakening was planned from start to finish. It included many horrible, life-altering experiences that belong only in mindfuck movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and military/police recruitment shows like 24. I have been broken worse than a little girl at the end of boot camp. I have been on my hands and knees in the mud, crying, praying for helicopter rescue. It was not pretty. But it broke me enough to know that not only was I sane, I was a victim of human and civil rights abuse. Over time, I began to peel back the layers of my mental prison to realize that an outside force was responsible, and the only way out was through rational investigation, resiliency, and strength.
I urge you to take immediate action, and demand that Attorney General Eric Holder open an investigation into alleged illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. If a crime is found to have been committed, the Obama Administration must prosecute those responsible. The integrity of America’s commitment to human rights and international law stands in the balance.
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