Since 2000, BlackWater USA has received over $1 billion ($1,059,633,363) from the United States government. In FY 2006 alone they received over half a billion dollars ($593,075,845). Of the FY 2006 total, less than $3 million (0.5%) was through completely open competition.
If you haven't upchucked yet, Kellogg Brown and Root (formerly part of Halliburton) got over 10 times more than BlackWater in '06.
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It's fucking disgusting.
We are living in a black period of American History.
How we act and how we vote over the next few years will determine if 30 years from now historians will see this as a particular vile time in our history or just the begining of the glorious revolution that foisted America to the top as Global Leader.
Thanks very, very much for the pointer to the OMBWatch spending site. Very few of the many news reports since the Nisour Square massacre have mentioned the scale of Blackwater's contract with State.
Looking at the list on that site, I'm more curious than ever about this question: Under authority of which contracting agency were Blackwater mercs sent to New Orleans?
The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS, gave BlackWater a $5 million contract for "armed guard services for Hurricane Kartina relief" on September 25, 2005. The contract was for "250 employees" and terminated on October 31, 2005. (source: OBM Watch, award #9)
The contract started more than two weeks after BlackWater soldiers began patrolling New Orleans. At the time BlackWater personnel interviewed by Jeremy Scahill said they were paid $350 a day. Who paid them for the four weeks before the DHS contract kicked in is a mystery.
That's most interesting. My guess is that Blackwater fronted the payments to its operatives. That may be a fairly routine process for contractors, to compensate for the inevitable grinding of bureaucratic mills.
In this case, though, it's utterly creepy.
ICE has no legitimate role in disaster work. It's clear that the rollup into DHS of the previously separate agencies including FEMA and immigration is -- among other things -- an opportunity to do whatever the regime wants in whatever situation presents itself.
Immigration enforcement is an ongoing, invisible-to-most-Americans nightmare world of indefinite detention and arbitrary treatment/abuse.
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