Much Ado About Nothing

By Johanan Raatz

Several weeks ago, a CIA program was declassified revealing that the intelligence agency was planning to hire the private military contractor company Blackwater USA (now Xe International) to assassinate top Al-Qaeda operatives. Because the program was only in the early planning stages it had not yet been revealed to congress.
Once it was CIA director Leon Panetta released it to congress it was received with much whining and obsessive bluster. Rather than being viewed negatively though the so-called "scandal" of this program was actually a good idea for several reasons:

1.) The CIA has had long standing close ties to Blackwater so it would only be reasonable for the intelligence agency to work with them. Blackwater's intelligence division, Total Intelligence Solutions is even run by former members of the CIA including former Coordinator for Counterterrorism Cofer Black and Deputy Director of Operations Robert Richer. Thus it is only logical that the two organizations would work together.

2.) Blackwater has had an excellent track record in accomplishing their objectives. They have a perfect 100% success rate in protecting their "nouns" or VIP's they are assigned to guard, and have been a useful partner in the Global War on Terror. In many cases they are hired so that they can fight without there hands tied by meddlesome regulations. In this way they have certain advantages over governmental agencies.

3.) While the CIA is solely American, Blackwater has operatives from all over the world, including Iraqi's. This provides valuable experience that can simply not be taught to government agents, allowing for greater flexibility in CIA operations. Additionally it has another advantage. Using foreign Blackwater operatives the CIA can remove American fingerprints from their operations as has already been pointed out by at least one CIA official.

With all of this in mind the question changes from why should the CIA work with Blackwater on counterterrorism operations to why shouldn't they? With the aforementioned reasons in mind it would be only logical that they would and in fact foolish for them not to. Tantrum throwing congressmen and blubbering bureaucrats would do well to think on this and let the intelligence agency do it's job without meddlesome interference.