Weashington, December 12: The CIA was again forced to fend off potentially grave allegations yesterday after claims emerged that for years during the George Bush era it regularly invited operatives from the private security contractor Blackwater to join covert and high-risk anti-insurgency operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even though the North Carolina-based private firm was originally hired merely to provide perimeter security to CIA personnel and operations centres in the countries, former employees are now alleging that over time the relationship between them and the intelligence agency became much deeper.
Those ties evolved to the point where armed security guards provided by Blackwater directly participated between 2004 and 2006 in so-called “snatch and grab” raids aimed at capturing and potentially killing insurgency leaders, The New York Times reported yesterday.
–Agencies