“This is a guy who ran essentially the extraordinary rendition program, now is working as the vice chairman of Blackwater and starting his own private intelligence company. “

Interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

JEREMY SCAHILL: Among the most prominent, perhaps the biggest power player in Blackwater’s arsenal, is J. Cofer Black, who is a thirty-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, began his career in the 1970s in Africa, as the US — well, some would say supported the apartheid regime, others would say did nothing to stop it. So Cofer Black was one of the key CIA people in Africa throughout the ’70s and ’80s. And he arrived in Sudan in the early 1990s, and he came under diplomatic cover. As a sort of diplomat, he was there, but he actually was CIA.

And as Black was there, a young Saudi billionaire named Osama bin Laden was building up his international network. And by the time Black would leave Sudan a few years later, the CIA would refer to it as the Ford Foundation of Islamic terrorism. And so, Cofer Black and Osama bin Laden are both operating simultaneously in Khartoum in Sudan in the 1990s.

And Black would go on then to serve in Latin America, and just before 9/11 he was tapped to head up the CIA’s counterterrorism center.

AMY GOODMAN: Cofer Black is now part of a new Blackwater effort, a new company called Total Intelligence Solutions.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. This is really the next sort of generation of privatization, is the privatization of intelligence. And they’re marketing their services to Fortune 500 companies. And so, it’s not just Cofer Black. It’s another CIA guy who went on to work at Blackwater, Robert Richer, who was a Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA. So those two are really the sort of leaders behind this new initiative.

But, really, the man behind all of it is Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater. He’s rapidly buying up, for instance, a think tank, the Terrorism Research Center, and other intelligence entities and sort of cobbling them together. Blackwater’s big push now is not just for government contracts, but it’s also for corporate contracts. And so, it’s part of this radical privatization agenda. And to have a man heading this who told Congress openly, “There was a before 9/11 and an after 9/11, and after 9/11 the gloves come off” — this is a guy who ran essentially the extraordinary rendition program, now is working as the vice chairman of Blackwater and starting his own private intelligence company.

[Democracy Now]

Revolving Door: from the Pentagon to Blackwater

Since 9/11 Blackwater has hired some well-connected officials close to the Bush Administration as senior executives. Among them are J. Cofer Black, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA and the man who led the hunt for Osama bin Laden after 9/11, and Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon Inspector General, who was responsible for policing contractors like Blackwater during much of the “war on terror”–something he stood accused of not doing effectively. By the end of Schmitz’s tenure, powerful Republican Senator Charles Grassley launched a Congressional probe into whether Schmitz had “quashed or redirected two ongoing criminal investigations” of senior Bush Administration officials. Under bipartisan fire, Schmitz resigned and signed up with Blackwater.

[Jeremy Scahill: The Nation]