{"id":537897,"date":"2010-04-21T17:30:38","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T21:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=82937"},"modified":"2010-04-21T17:30:38","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T21:30:38","slug":"is-blackwater-bidding-on-state-dept-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/537897","title":{"rendered":"Is Blackwater Bidding on State Dept. Contract?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremy Scahill, journalism&#8217;s most dogged investigator of the privatized military, <a href=\"http:\/\/rebelreports.com\/post\/538740461\/firm-run-by-ex-israeli-special-forces-soldier-wants-us\">reports<\/a> that the State Department&#8217;s Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract is up for bid. Why&#8217;s that important? Because the contract &#8212; now apparently re-dubbed the Worldwide Protective Services program &#8212; is the lucrative mechanism whereby the State Department hires private security companies to protect its diplomats overseas. In the past, it&#8217;s relied on three of them: DynCorp, Triple Canopy and Blackwater\/Xe Services\/US Training Center. All of them have been cited for various sorts of abuses, from improper bookkeeping (<a href=\"http:\/\/thecable.foreignpolicy.com\/posts\/2010\/01\/25\/report_faults_state_department_dyncorp_for_missing_1_billion_0\">DynCorp<\/a>) to poor embassy security (<a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/80563\/surprise-another-war-zone-embassy-poorly-guarded-by-contractors\">Triple Canopy<\/a>) to, uh, killing civilians and using the names of South Park characters to improperly hoard guns (<a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/77476\/blackwater-the-senate-and-south-park\">guess<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>But maybe not this time.<span id=\"more-82937\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In August, Stacy DeLuke, a Blackwater spokeswoman, <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/54342\/blackwater-heir-wants-to-keep-state-dept-security-contract\">told me<\/a> the company planned on bidding on WPS when it came up for renewal this year. According to Jeremy, though, they haven&#8217;t put in their bid yet:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Among the companies listed as \u201cinterested vendors\u201d to bid on the contracts are the predictable list of industry giants: L-3 Services, SAIC, USIS, Northrop Grumman, and DynCorp. Two lesser-known firms in particular that have expressed interest in the contracts jump out:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.isitrainingcenter.com\/\">Instinctive Shooting International<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php?title=Evergreen_International_Aviation%2C_Inc.#cite_note-evergreenstorypart1-0\">Evergreen International Aviation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rebelreports.com\/post\/538740461\/firm-run-by-ex-israeli-special-forces-soldier-wants-us\">Read on<\/a> for Jeremy&#8217;s full report on Instinctive Shooting International. But it&#8217;s surprising to see that Blackwater hasn&#8217;t offered a bid yet. I called the company but was told that everyone who could speak to me has left for the day. No luck with the State Department&#8217;s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which controls the contract, yet either. Hopefully tomorrow will bring clarity on this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremy Scahill, journalism&#8217;s most dogged investigator of the privatized military, reports that the State Department&#8217;s Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract is up for bid. Why&#8217;s that important? Because the contract &#8212; now apparently re-dubbed the Worldwide Protective Services program &#8212; is the lucrative mechanism whereby the State Department hires private security companies to protect its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}