Foro de Inteligencia, Espionaje y Servicios Secretos

Well when they put the Dillon Miniguns on their birds then they'll be gunships. Of course, that all depends on whether or not the State Dept. buys off on it. They seemed to have liked the demo that they got last month at Moyock. Also, since they also secured a new aviation contract this is probably just part of ther support package. Or not.

ChicagoPublicRadio.org escribió:University Police Director Resigns Amid Work With Military Contractor


A university police director resigned amid scrutiny of his ties with a military contractor. Tom Dempsey was the director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois. After signing an agreement between Blackwater USA and the university to share facilities and students, Dempsey separately began working for the military contractor. In July, the Chicago Tribune first reported the possible conflict of interest. Jay Stewart is the executive director of the Better Government Association, a government watchdog group.

STEWART: I don't think it takes a rocket scientist...this guy should have known as a competent adult manager that when you're negotiating with your second employer you might have wanted to tell somebody that. You think you might want your primary employer to know that? Of course, I mean that's just common sense.

A spokesperson for the University of Illinois says it's reviewing existing agreements and how they're approved. Blackwater is known for its private security forces used by the federal government in Iraq and Afghanistan.

CHAMPAIGN (AP) — The University of Illinois is investigating the ties between the director of its police institute and a military contractor best known for providing security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to university officials.

Tom Dempsey, director of the university’s Police Training Institute, requested a leave of absence to work for Blackwater USA two months after signing an agreement that lets the institute and the contractor swap students and staff and share facilities, university spokeswoman Robin Kaler said.

The university is investigating “a potential conflict of commitment” involving Dempsey and the contractor, Kaler said.

The home number listed for Dempsey in the university telephone directory was answered Tuesday with a recorded message indicating the line doesn’t work. An e-mail sent to his university address drew an automatic reply saying he is away on vacation.

The university is trying to find out whether Dempsey was working for Blackwater when he signed the partnership agreement on May 17 and why the agreement doesn’t address that, university provost Linda Katehi told the Chicago Tribune, which first reported Dempsey’s ties to Blackwater.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, indicates the Police Training Institute and Blackwater will work together for five years, exchanging faculty, working with each other’s students and conducting unspecified research together. Under the terms of the deal, no money will change hands.

University officials who didn’t know about the agreement approved Dempsey’s July 19 request for a monthlong leave of absence to go to Afghanistan to work for the contractor, according to Katehi.

University employees are required to sign a conflict of commitment document saying they don’t have any outside activities that conflict with their responsibilities for the university, Kaler said.

Dempsey, a former Marine, earns more than $118,000 annually in his university post.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said it is against company policy to discuss employees in sensitive situations overseas. She confirmed, however, that Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater trains Afghan police to combat the drug trade.

She said the agreement with Illinois was related only to civilian police training. The security firm is well-known for providing paramilitary personnel for U.S. war efforts.

The university’s police institute trains people for jobs in the law enforcement and corrections field and is one of the largest such institutes in the country.

It is also one of five training centers in the state certified by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board to train potential police officers, board Executive Director Tom Jurkanin said.

Any Blackwater instructor teaching courses certified by the board would need to be OK’d by the board, Jurkanin said. Similarly, Blackwater would have to apply to the board to offer certified courses, he said. Neither has happened.

But law enforcement agencies can and do send officers to courses not certified by the board, Jurkanin added.

Blackwater already owns a training center in the state.

In April it opened the 80-acre Blackwater North in Mount Carroll, about 60 miles west of Rockford. It has trained 187 people since, Tyrrell said. The site has drawn anti-war protesters.

Tyrrell said the agreement with the University of Illinois was not connected to Blackwater North, saying students trained under the university deal would only take classes in Mount Carroll if there wasn’t room at the police institute in Champaign or Blackwater’s North Carolina headquarters.

The agreement, she said, is “not a tool for expansion; it’s a tool for heightened expertise.”

Una de las prendas favoritas de muchos shooters. Los iraquies se ponen histéricos al ver la calavera iluminándose con los fogonazos.

CNN.com escribió: Blackwater security firm banned from Iraq
Story Highlights
Iraq blames U.S. security firm for gunfight that killed eight civilians

Details sketchy on the battle; AP reports State Department motorcade attacked

Seven killed, 31 detained in U.S.-led coalition raids across Iraq

Car bomb near Shiite mosque in Baghdad kills three, injures 11
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's Interior Ministry has revoked the license of Blackwater Security Consulting, an American firm whose contractors are blamed for a Sunday gunbattle in Baghdad that left eight civilians dead.

The firefight took place near Nisoor Square about noon, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday. In addition to the fatalities, 14 people were wounded, most of them civilians, the official said.

Details were sketchy, but the official said witnesses reported that one side of the gunbattle involved Westerners driving sport utility vehicles, which security contractors often use. The state television network al-Iraqiya reported that a Western security company was involved in the shootout, but it did not identify the firm.

An official with the U.S. Embassy told The Associated Press that a State Department motorcade came under small-arms fire near Nisoor Square, and one of the vehicles was disabled.

The official said no State Department officials were injured but provided no information on Iraqi casualties, the AP reported.

Blackwater is one of many security firms contracted by the U.S. government during the Iraq war. An estimated 25,000-plus employees of private security firms are working in Iraq, guarding diplomats, reconstruction workers and government officials. As many as 200 are believed to have been killed on the job, according to U.S. congressional reports.

"We have revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq," Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf said Monday. "The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday's killing will be referred to Iraqi justice."

In a statement carried Sunday on al-Iraqiya, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said his government would punish those responsible and ban the company involved from working in Iraq.

Iraqi authorities have issued previous complaints about shootings by private military contractors, but Iraqi courts do not have the authority to bring contractors to trial, according to a July report from the Congressional Research Service.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee estimated in February that nearly $4 billion had been spent on security contracts amid the insurgency that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003 -- costs that have forced the delay, cancellation or scaling back of some reconstruction projects.