Dirty Wars

by Jeremy Scahill

  Assigned to the company’s CIA security detail, Davis moved between Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar. According to a former JSOC staffer who worked on its classified operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while Davis was working as a contractor for the CIA, he was approached by JSOC and asked to simultaneously work on its operations in Pakistan, utilizing his more palatable CIA cover. “Davis was ‘vanilla’ Special Forces, not a black ops guy,” said the source. “There is nothing cooler for those guys than being approached by JSOC and being asked to do something for them. It was like a pro bono side gig for JSOC.”

  It was the beginning of Davis’s foray into the muddiest realm of covert US operations in Pakistan. Davis had worked with Blackwater in Pakistan until August 2010. In September of that year, he became a free agent and signed a contract worth $200,000 for “Overseas Protective Services.” As a contract vehicle, he used a company called Hyperion Protective Services, LLC, which described itself as providing “loss and risk management professionals.” It was registered at an address in Las Vegas. Davis and his wife were listed, along with one other person, as its officers. The address was actually a post office box in a UPS store in a strip mall next to a Super Cuts barbershop. Davis returned to Pakistan.

  The former JSOC staffer said that Davis helped to “wash” money and to establish safe houses for JSOC personnel, in addition to his work for the CIA. “All over the world we have people that, literally, are peripheral to policy and are just in-country to collect human intelligence or to facilitate special ops or espionage,” he said. That is, at least in part, what Davis was doing in Pakistan. His various roles, some legit, some covers and some covers within covers—diplomat, technical adviser, Blackwater contractor, CIA bodyguard, Green Beret, JSOC asset—suggest that his story and that of the secret US war in Pakistan are far more complicated, and less benign, than official accounts have led us to believe.

  That someone like Davis would end up working with JSOC is hardly a stretch. Many Blackwater operatives—quite a few of whom were former Special Ops or Special Forces—who originally went to Pakistan as security contractors eventually started working with JSOC on its targeted kill and capture operations. “The Blackwater individuals have the experience. A lot of these individuals are retired military, and they’ve been around twenty to thirty years and have experience that the younger Green Beret guys don’t,” said retired lieutenant colonel Jeffrey Addicott, a well-connected military lawyer who served as senior legal counsel for US Army Special Forces. “They’re known entities. Everybody knows who they are, what their capabilities are, and they’ve got the experience. They’re very valuable.”

  Special Ops veterans “make much more money being the smarts of these operations, planning hits in various countries and basing it off their experience in Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia,” said a US military intelligence source. “They were there for all of these things, they know what the hell they’re talking about.” He added: “They hire back people that used to work for them and had already planned and executed these [types of] operations.”

  When exactly this began in Pakistan is unclear. Blackwater had a presence along the Afghan-Pakistan border dating back to April 2002, when it won its first “black” contract to protect CIA operations in Afghanistan in the early stages of the US war. It also held diplomatic security, logistical and CIA contracts in Pakistan. According to a former senior Blackwater executive and the military intelligence source, the relationship with JSOC intensified after President Bush authorized an expansion of Special Ops activities in Pakistan.

  I asked the former senior Blackwater executive, who had extensive experience in Pakistan, for confirmation of what the military intelligence source told me—that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, but rather supporting JSOC and the CIA in doing so. “That’s not entirely accurate,” he replied. He concurred with the military intelligence source’s description of the JSOC and CIA programs, but he pointed to another role he said Blackwater played in Pakistan, not for the US government but for Islamabad. He said Blackwater worked on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm that specialized in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It was staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. Although Kestral’s main offices were in Pakistan, it also had branches in several other countries. Kestral did a robust business in defense logistics with the Pakistani government and other nations, as well as top US defense companies. Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, had a “pretty close relationship” with Kestral CEO Liaquat Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive. “They’ve met many times and struck a deal, and they [offer] mutual support for one another.” Working with Kestral, the former executive said, Blackwater provided convoy security for Defense Department shipments destined for Afghanistan that would arrive in the port at Karachi. Blackwater would guard the supplies as they were transported overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west through the Torkham border crossing, the most important supply route for the US military in Afghanistan.

  According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also integrated with Kestral’s forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they worked in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry’s paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as “frontier scouts”). The Blackwater personnel were technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line was often blurred in the field. Blackwater was “providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral’s folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they’re having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they’re executing the job,” he said. “You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas.” He said that when Blackwater personnel were out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engaged in operations against suspected terrorists. “You’ve got BW guys that are assisting...and they’re all going to want to go on the jobs—so they’re going to go with them,” he said. “So, the things that you’re seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that—in some of those cases, you’re going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house.” Blackwater, he said, was paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. “That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, ‘Hey, no, we don’t have any Westerners doing this. It’s all local and our people are doing it.’ But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work.” The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater worked with the Frontier Corps, saying, “There’s no real oversight. It’s not really on people’s radar screen.”

  A spokesperson for the US State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), which is responsible for issuing licenses to US corporations to provide defense-related services to foreign governments or entities, would neither confirm nor deny that Blackwater had a license to work in Pakistan or to work with Kestral. “We cannot help you,” said department spokesperson David McKeeby after checking with the relevant DDTC officials. “You’ll have to contact the companies directly.” Blackwater’s spokesman said the company had “no operations of any kind” in Pakistan other than one employee working for the DoD. Kestral did not respond to inquiries about its relationship with Blackwater.

  According to federal lobbying records, Kestral had hired former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs Roger Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues “regarding [Kestral’s] capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the United States.” Noriega was hired through his firm, Vision Americas, which he ran with Christina Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as assistant secretary of state for Sou
th Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan. In October 2009, Kestral paid Vision Americas $15,000 and gave a Vision Americas–affiliated firm, Firecreek Ltd., an equal amount to lobby on defense and foreign policy issues.

  IN NOVEMBER 2009, as I worked on an investigative report for the Nation magazine on JSOC’s targeted killing operations in Pakistan, I received an unprompted call on my cell phone the day before publication from Captain John Kirby, the spokesperson for Admiral Michael Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Obama’s most senior military adviser. Kirby wouldn’t explain how he got my number or how he had heard about the story. “Let’s just leave it at: we heard about it,” he told me bluntly. Kirby told me that my story was false but would not go on record saying that. Instead, he told me, “We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature.” He told me bluntly that if we published the story, which connected Blackwater to JSOC’s operations in Pakistan, I would be “on thin ice.”

  We had confidence in our sources, so despite this clear attempt at intimidation, the Nation ran the story. The next day, when the article, titled “The Secret US War in Pakistan,” was published, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell called it “conspiratorial” and explicitly denied that US Special Operations Forces were doing anything other than “training” in Pakistan. Morrell told reporters: “We have basically, I think, a few dozen forces on the ground in Pakistan who are involved in a train-the-trainer mission. These are Special Operations Forces. We’ve been very candid about this. They are—they have been for months, if not years now, training Pakistani forces so that they can in turn train other Pakistani military on how to—on certain skills and operational techniques. And that’s the extent of our—our, you know, military boots on the ground in Pakistan, despite whatever conspiratorial theories that, you know, magazines...may want to cook up. There’s nothing to it.”

  In fact, there was a lot to it.

  A year after my story in the Nation, WikiLeaks released a series of classified cables showing that a month before Morrell denounced my report, the US Embassy was aware that US military Special Operations Forces had been conducting offensive operations inside Pakistan, helping direct US drone strikes and conducting joint operations with Pakistani forces against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in North and South Waziristan and elsewhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. According to an October 9, 2009, cable classified by US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, the operations were “almost certainly [conducted] with the personal consent of [Pakistan’s] Chief of Army Staff General [Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani.” The operations were coordinated with the US Office of the Defense Representative in Pakistan. A US Special Operations source told me that the US forces described in the cable as “SOC(FWD)-PAK” (Special Operations Command-Forward Pakistan) were “forward operating troops” from JSOC.

  In the fall of 2008, the US Special Operations Command asked top US diplomats in Pakistan and Afghanistan for detailed information on refugee camps along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and a list of humanitarian aid organizations working in those camps. On October 6, Ambassador Patterson, sent a cable marked “Confidential” to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the CIA, US Central Command and several US embassies saying that some of the requests, which came orally and in the form of e-mails, “suggested that agencies intend to use the data for targeting purposes.” Other requests, according to the cable, “indicate it would be used for ‘NO STRIKE’ purposes.” The cable, which was issued jointly by the US Embassies in Kabul and Islamabad, declared: “We are concerned about providing information gained from humanitarian organizations to military personnel, especially for reasons that remain unclear. Particularly worrisome, this does not seem to us a very efficient way to gather accurate information.” What this cable said in plain terms is that at least one person within the US Special Operations Command actually asked US diplomats in Kabul and/or Islamabad point blank for information on refugee camps, information that was to be used in a targeted killing or capture operation.

  The cable also revealed that in addition to the requests from SOCOM and the US defense attaché, a SOCOM contractor had also asked US diplomats for “information on camps along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border which are housing Afghan refugees and/or Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).” Specifically, the cable added, SOCOM and its “contractor” have “requested information on camp names and locations, camp status, number of IDS/refugees and ethnic breakdown, and NGO/humanitarian relief organizations working in the camps.”

  From the October 2008 cable, it is evident that US diplomats in Kabul and Islamabad were disturbed by the requests, asking various US military, intelligence and government entities for “clarification of the origin and purpose of this tasker.” At the same time the cable suggested that if the CIA or Special Operations Forces wanted such information, they “should send a front channel cable to the appropriate Embassy” or a representative of the director of national intelligence rather than by e-mailing or orally requesting the information from embassy personnel. Clearly, the back-channel approach was used for a reason.

  So close was Blackwater to the most highly classified, sensitive operations the CIA was conducting that its members were among the casualties in one of the deadliest known attacks against the Agency in its history, the December 2009 suicide bombing at a CIA outpost at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan. Blackwater operatives were serving as the security team for the Agency’s second-highest-ranking officer in Afghanistan. They were meeting with a source, someone traveling by car from Pakistan, whom they believed knew the whereabouts of Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s number-two man. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al Balawi, it turned out, was a double agent whose true allegiance was to the Pakistani Taliban. In all, seven CIA personnel and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed when Balawi walked onto the base and blew himself up. Two of those killed were Blackwater operatives.

  In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater also provided private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and Defense Intelligence Agency facilities inside Pakistan, according to the military intelligence source.

  THE ABILITY OF US SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES to operate in Pakistan was clearly viewed as a major development by the US Embassy. “Patient relationship-building with the military is the key factor that has brought us to this point,” according to an October 2009 US diplomatic cable. It also noted the potential consequences of the activities leaking: “These deployments are highly politically sensitive because of widely-held concerns among the public about Pakistani sovereignty and opposition to allowing foreign military forces to operate in any fashion on Pakistani soil. Should these developments and/or related matters receive any coverage in the Pakistani or US media, the Pakistani military will likely stop making requests for such assistance.”

  Such statements might help explain why ambassador Richard Holbrooke, at the time the top US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, misled the world when he said bluntly in July 2010: “People think that the US has troops in Pakistan; well, we don’t.”

  In late 2010, relations between the United States and the ISI began to rapidly deteriorate. In November, a civil lawsuit filed in New York accused the ISI’s chief, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, of involvement in the 2008 Mumbai bombings carried out by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. In December, the CIA scrambled to whisk its Islamabad station chief out of Pakistan after local media blew his cover and reported his name, Jonathan Banks. The top spy’s identity was first revealed in a lawsuit filed in Pakistan by a man from North Waziristan who alleged that two of his relatives had been killed in a drone strike. US officials accused the ISI of leaking the name in retaliation for the lawsuit that named Pasha. A US intelligence official said that Banks had to be removed because “terrorist threats against him in Pakistan were of such a serious nature that it would be imprudent no
t to act.”

  A month later, on January 20, 2011, Raymond Davis returned to Pakistan.

  The Curious Case of Raymond Davis: Act II

  PAKISTAN, 2011 —In Lahore, Raymond Davis lived and worked out of a US safe house in Upper Mall that he reportedly shared with five CIA security personnel. JSOC operatives also used the house. Far from being a diplomat, Davis worked on an ultrasecret, highly compartmentalized, classified team of men tasked with conducting sensitive surveillance and intelligence operations that could lead to targeted killing or capture. Among their tasks, according to US officials, was covertly gathering intel on the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba. On January 27, Davis was conducting an “area familiarization route,” putting him out in the open on the streets of Lahore for hours. He scouted several locations, including religious schools and government buildings. That’s why the Pakistani authorities found, in his car, the high-tech kit of a clandestine operative: weapons with enough ammo to fight a small street war, surveillance equipment, wire cutters, knives and infrared equipment. It would also explain the collection of various identity cards bearing different job descriptions, as well as theatrical makeup. Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer told me it is common for covert operators to alter their appearance to blend in. “It’s acting without a script,” he said. “That is really what it comes down to. It’s tradecraft.”