ABC NEWS: Mystery Surrounds Contractors' Role at CIA Base

[laststeamtrain]

Mystery Surrounds Contractors' Role at CIA Base
Paresi and Wise, Killed by CIA Suicide Bomber, Worked For Company Once Known as Blackwater
By MATTHEW COLE, NICK SCHIFRIN and RHONDA SCHWARTZ
Jan. 6, 2010

Two of the seven CIA personnel killed in last week's suicide bombing in Afghanistan worked as contractors for the company formerly known as Blackwater, but what role Dane Paresi and Jeremy Wise played at the CIA's forward base in Khost remains unknown. The base collected intelligence used in the CIA's drone attacks across the border in Pakistan, but CIA director Leon Panetta has said that the former Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, is no longer involved in the drone program.

Spokesman for both the CIA and Xe/Blackwater declined to comment whether Paresi and Wise were employed through Xe, but two private intelligence sources and one current government official familiar with CIA operations at the Afghanistan base confirmed to ABCNEWS.com that the two were there as Xe employees. A source familiar with Xe's contracts said that their role was not to provide security for the base, but provided no further details.

Paresi and Wise were both former elite military commandos, and were killed when a Jordanian double agent detonated a suicide bomb at a meeting inside the CIA base near the Pakistan border. Wise was a 35-year-old former Navy SEAL from Virginia Beach, Va. A statement from the family of the 46-year-old Dane Paresi described him as having recently retired from 27 years in the Army, many in Special Operations. He was from Portland, Ore. ... http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mystery-surrounds-contractors-role-cia-base/story?id=9486136

[Solly Mack]

1. k/r

[babylonsister]

2. And what was the reasoning behind letting this guy in without

frisking him? I 'get' that they were trying to establish trust, but given the region, that seemed foolhardy to me.

Devastating lessons learned...

[gratuitous]

3. Hmmmm

Is this another case where ABC has nice, slick graphic representations of the dastardly terrorist deeds that has to be greatly revised as later facts come to light? I remember the extraction of Pvt. Lynch being a storyboard of exciting actions and derring-do under cover of night as an elite strike force landed under cover of darkness, fought their way into the ward where Pvt. Lynch was being held, then whisked her away before her startled captors could react to the heroic efforts of our star-spangled fightin' men. Later, the real story came out that she was turned over by hospital staff in an orderly way to a military detachment that came to pick her up by prearrangement. ABC has never really explained how they got the initial story so very wrong.

Similarly, in this case, ABC had an animated representation of the skulking terrorist somehow finagling his way past the outer perimeter to sneak his dastardly way into the heart of the compound before perpetrating his ultimate cowardly act. I wonder what the real story will be a few weeks, months or years from now?

[underpants]

9. she aren't supposed to remember let alone mention Pvt. Lynch

and nothing NOTHING about Terri Schiavo

[enough]

4. Sounds like Viet Nam

Read James Ellroy or Denis Johnson.

(or many others)

[leveymg]

13. Sounds like Beirut. But, few at CIA are old enough to remember that one.

Most of those with an institutional memory and a conscience left the Agency during the Bush-Cheney years.

[bemildred]

5. Double agent's bait too good for CIA to refuse

There is mounting confusion over how the man, identified as Jordanian doctor Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, managed to infiltrate the CIA base and detonate his explosives on December 30.

The CIA reportedly thought its informant was bringing information about the location of Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It was the deadliest attack against the CIA in decades and now one US television network is reporting that there is a video showing the moment the suicide bomber blew himself up.

The bomber had been working with Jordanian intelligence. It is understood he had already been to the CIA base in Afghanistan half a dozen times, and on this last occasion, when he went through three layers of security, local guards were told not to search him.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/07/2787151.htm?section=world

It's not tricky, he waited until they dropped their guard. The only real question is why they would ever drop their guard, or who decided to drop their guard, or something like that.

[malaise]

6. I'm sure I read somewhere today that it was the two

Blackwater guys who let him through. Very strange.

[bemildred]

7. It's always disorienting when you find out you are not as smart as you thought you were.

One thing that seems pretty clear here is that it wasn't just luck.

[Octafish]

8. Who was the CIA boss there?

Was she the 'target' or just happen to be there?

If so, did Blackwater compromise her security by accident or dud they "give her up"?

[malaise]

10. She died - head of station

CIA has not released her name.
Apparently the big wigs were there because the guy had 'very important information'.

add

[Octafish]

11. The 'big information' was a lure.

Wonder if the private contractors created the security breach, meaning did they tip-off or set-up -- accidently -- the meeting.

War is a waste in every way. The greatest is human. Here she was someone's mom and our nation's servant.

[malaise]

14. We have to wonder about that

She was the mother of three - very sad but I guess she knew the risks.

[spanone]

12. k&r...no telling what horrifying shit cheney/bu$h* concocted