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A lawyer for the former Blackwater president who has been charged with gun crimes hinted at his client’s defense Wednesday, telling a North Carolina court room that a US government agency approved of what the company was doing.

Ken Bell — attorney for Gary Jackson, who was arrested last week along with four other Blackwater staffers — told the court that “all of this was with the knowledge of, the request of, for the convenience of, an agency of the US government,” reports the News & Observer in North Carolina.

While Bell would not say which US government agency that may have been, the News & Observer article suggests that he was talking about the CIA.

“The company has close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. The company has provided security to CIA stations and officers in Afghanistan and other countries, and several Blackwater officials were once high ranking CIA officials,” the article states.

Federal prosecutors indicted Jackson, who was president of Blackwater until last year, last week in a case that stemmed from a raid on Blackwater’s North Carolina headquarters in 2008, which turned up 22 automatic weapons, including 17 Russian-made AK-47s.

“The 22-page indictment includes accusations of falsifying paperwork to give a firearms gift to the king of Jordan and using the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, which had less than a dozen uniformed officers at the time, as a front to buy AK-47s for Blackwater’s training facility in Moyock,” the News & Observer reports.

Prosecutors told the court in Wednesday’s bail bond hearing that, as president, Jackson ran Blackwater with “sheer arrogance” and a “scofflaw attitude,” the Associated Press reports.

The News & Observer states that, if the agency involved is indeed the CIA, it may complicate the trial because of the presence of classified information.

Lawyers and court personnel need security clearances, and special evidence rooms are required. Special computers are needed to draft motions, according to Richard Myers, a UNC law professor who has worked with classified materials both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney.

“It certainly makes your prosecution more complex,” Myers said.

Defendants often try to introduce classified material in an effort to make prosecution more difficult.

In February, the Senate Armed Services Committee found “reckless” use of weapons by Blackwater employees in Afghanistan, and found Blackwater staffers had removed weapons from US military facilities without proper authorization.

In one instance, a Blackwater employee signed out military weapons under the name “Eric Cartman,” a character in TV’s South Park.

The former president of Blackwater Worldwide was charged Friday with using straw purchases to stockpile automatic weapons at the security firm and filing false documents to cover up gifts given to the King of Jordan.

The federal indictment charges Gary Jackson, 52, who left the company last year in a management shakeup, along with four other former workers. The charges against Jackson include a conspiracy to violate firearms laws, false statements and possession of an unregistered firearm.

Also indicted were former general counsel Andrew Howell, 44; former executive vice president Bill Mathews, 44; former procurement vice president Ana Bundy, 45; and, 65-year-old Ronald Slezak, a former weapons manager.

The charges open a new front of the government’s oversight of the sullied security company. Several of the company’s contractors have previously been charged with federal crimes for their actions in war zones, but the company’s executives have so far weathered a range of investigations.

The company has been trying to rehabilitate its image since a 2007 shooting in Baghdad left 17 people dead, outraged the Iraqi government and led to a federal charges against several Blackwater guards — accusations later thrown out of court after a judge found prosecutors mishandled evidence. Around the time that Jackson left the company, Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services.

The latest case stems from a raid conducted by federal agents at the company’s headquarters in Moyock in 2008 that seized 22 weapons, including 17 AK-47s.

Blackwater signed agreements in 2005 in which the company financed the purchase of 34 automatic weapons for the Camden County sheriff’s office. Sheriff Tony Perry became the official owner of the weapons, but Blackwater was allowed to keep most of the guns at its armory.

The indictment accuses Blackwater officials of enticing the local sheriff’s office to pose as the purchaser of the weapons, something prosecutors called essentially a straw purchase. The office provided blank letterhead to the company, which then used the stationery to prepare letters ordering weapons.

Prosecutors said company officials, hoping to land a lucrative overseas contract, presented the king of Jordan with several firearms as gifts then realized that they were unable to account for where the weapons went. To cover it up, they falsified four federal documents “to give the appearance that the weapons had been purchased by them as individuals,” according to the indictment.

Federal law prohibits licensed firearms dealers such as Blackwater to have more than two of the same style of weapon. Law enforcement agencies can have fully automatic weapons.

Kenneth Bell, an attorney for Jackson, said the former executive was a true American hero. Jackson spent two decades in the military as a Navy Seal.

“These charges are false,” Bell said. “He will defend himself, as he defended this country, in what he calls the greatest justice system in the world.”

Xe spokesman Mark Corallo said the company has fully cooperated with the federal investigation. He declined further comment. Jordanian officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

One of the 2005 agreements viewed later by the AP says the weapons will be kept under “lock and key” and doesn’t describe whether Blackwater would use the guns. Perry said at the time that his department only used the AK-47s in shooting practice at Blackwater and that none of his 19 deputies were qualified to use them.

Blackwater has said federal authorities knew about the weapons for years and that investigators got a complete look at the company’s cache in 2005 after two employees were fired.

In a 2008 interview with the AP, Jackson and other Blackwater executives said the company provided the local Camden County sheriff’s office a place to store weapons, calling the gesture a “professional courtesy.”

“We gave them a big safe so that they can store their own guns,” Jackson said at the time. Added then-executive vice president Bill Mathews: “We give stuff to police departments all over the country, and we take particularly good care of our home police departments.”

Company officials, including both Jackson and Howell, downplayed the raid during the interview. Jackson said some of the 16 uniformed officers who came to serve the warrant were embarrassed by the event and said agents had to stop at Blackwater’s front gate to get passes to come onto the company’s sprawling campus in northeastern North Carolina.

“As a hypothetical, one would think that, if you were going on a raid, you’d take your Kevlar and your weapon,” Howell said to laughter from other executives.

Source: The Associated Press

Two ex-Blackwater Worldwide employees allege the company charged the government for a prostitute and strippers and kept incompetent personnel for financial reasons, part of what they call a systematic pattern to defraud authorities.

The accusations come in a lawsuit filed by Brad and Melan Davis — who said the fraudulent activity, such as double billing and submitting false invoices, occurred while the security firm, now known as Xe, carried out its work in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.

Melan Davis, who was involved in record-keeping, said Blackwater billed the government for prostitution services in Afghanistan from a Filipino female, whose name was on Blackwater’s payroll roster under a category called “Morale Welfare Recreation.”

She said Blackwater billed the woman’s plane tickets and monthly salary to the United States.

Read more at: Suit: Prostitute, strippers part of Blackwater fraud (CNN)

Prosecutors in Germany have launched an investigation into whether the CIA deployed a team of Blackwater operatives on a secret mission in Hamburg. It is alleged that they aimed to assassinate a German citizen with suspected ties to Al Qaeda.  The assassination operation was revealed last month in a Vanity Fair profile of Blackwater’s owner Erik Prince.

Vanity Fair profile of Erik Prince

Blackwater Hit Team in Germany (The Nation)

CIA ‘death team’ plotted murder in Germany? (Russia Today)