Controversial Blackwater Security Firm Gets Iraq Contract Extended by State Dept
Company Banned From Operating by Iraqi Government Earlier This Year By KIRIT RADIA
Sept. 1, 2009-
The State Department has extended a contract with controversial private security firm Blackwater, ABC News has learned. The contract was due to expire this month.
Sources say the department has agreed to temporarily continue using the subsidiary known as Presidential Airways to provide helicopter transport for embassy employees around Iraq until a new contract with another security company, Dyncorp International, is fully implemented. Presidential Airways is an arm of U.S. Training Center, which is a subsidiary of the company Xe, formerly and still commonly known as Blackwater....
The Blackwater contract's extension is for an indefinite period of time, but an official stressed it was "limited." The official said the State Department would like to complete the transition in "weeks or months."
Certainly by 2012. Or '13. Definitely by '13. Or '14.
Census Bureau Cuts Its Ties With Acorn
By JAKE SHERMAN
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Census Bureau on Friday dropped Acorn as a partner for the 2010 Census after two separate hidden-camera videos captured four employees of the community organization giving tax advice on running a brothel to a man posing as an aspiring politician and a woman posing as his girlfriend and a prostitute.
The Census Bureau earlier this year signed up the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, one of the nation's largest community groups, as a national partner for the decennial census, a role that entails helping to publicize the importance of the count and encouraging people to participate.
In a letter to Acorn President Maude Hurd, Census Director Robert Groves said Acorn had become a distraction.
But not Blackwater. No distraction there. Dead Iraqis, maybe. But no distractions.
Violence is cool. Sex, not so much. Even if the violence is real, and the sex hypothetical.
STATE BLOGS
