CIA Report: Security Lapses Led to Afghanistan Bombing

http://politics.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/10/25/cia-report-security-lapses-led-to-afghanistan-bombing.html

How is it 9 years after 9/11, the same excuse can still be used for the reason an attack occurred?
Communication is still, after the poring of billions upon billions of dollars into the efforts to advance the technological uses of it, is still failing to make it up to the proper channels to be of any use in saving lives?
Who the hell is running this dog and pony show that this kind of ineptitude still continues to this day?
No documentation as well as management oversight?
Is this a contracted out position?
Dime to a dollar says it is.
And if it is, there can be no doubt about it, that people died directly due to the use of outsourcing by our government to pad the coffers of another Corporate favor fulfilled.


An internal review of the events leading up to the suicide attack against a CIA base in a remote part of Afghanistan last year has revealed a string of security and communications lapses in the weeks before the incident, which took the lives of seven agency employees. The bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was a Jordanian doctor who had convinced his CIA handlers that he could get close to top al Qaeda leaders.

Though al-Balawi had provided truthful and useful information in the past, that story was just a ruse to lull the Americans into a false sense of security. When al-Balawi arrived last year to meet with CIA officers for the first time in person at a remote base near Khost, he was not searched at the gate and proceeded to detonate an explosive vest near a group of officers assembled to greet him. "There wasn't a single point of failure that led to this incident," says a senior counterterrorism official who has read the report.

But in retrospect, some things could have been done differently. Three weeks prior to the attack, for example, a CIA officer in Amman had heard warnings that al-Balawi may be laying a trap, but those suspicions failed to pass far enough up his chain of command, the review found.

The review also confirmed what has long been known inside the CIA: that elementary security precautions, such as searching visitors to the base for weapons and explosives, were not followed. "These missteps occurred because of shortcomings across several agency components in areas including communications, documentation, and management oversight,"

Revealed: After Baghdad massacre, Blackwater split into 30 shell companies

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/revealed-blackwater-formed-30-shell-companies-suck-taxpayer-money/


Why do we need a private company to load missiles? What exactly is there left for military enlistees to do anymore, if jobs like that are outsourced to private companies?
And since when can't the CIA provide their own in house security?



The security company Blackwater Worldwide formed a network of 30 shell companies and subsidiaries to try to get millions of dollars in government business after the company faced strong criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, The New York Times reported Friday.

The newspaper said that it was unclear how many of the created companies got American contracts but that at least three of them obtained work with the U.S. militaryand the CIA.

But recently the company was awarded a $100 million contract to provide security for the agency in Afghanistan, prompting criticism from some in Congress. CIA Director Leon Panetta said that the CIA had no choice but to hire the company because it underbid others by $26 million and that a CIA review concluded that the contractor had cleaned up its act.

Last year, Panetta canceled a contract with Xe that allowed the company's operatives to load missiles on Predator drones in Pakistan, and shifted the work to government personnel

CIA cancels Blackwater drone missile-loading contract

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8409358.stm

Lol me thinks Prince got a little to cocky. And why isn't the Air Force loading the drones?

The CIA has cancelled a contract with US private security firm Blackwater for its operatives to load bombs onto drone aircraft in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

CIA Director Leon Panetta wanted such work to be done by the organisation's own employees only, officials said.

The New York Times revealed the existence of the secret contract with Blackwater, renamed Xe, in August.

On Thursday, the paper also reported that Xe employees had been involved in "snatch-and-grab operations" in Iraq.