"New details of Blackwater participation in clandestine CIA raids detail the extent to which private security contractors were involved in covert government antiterror operations.
"According to former employees and current and former American intelligence officials, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions, Blackwater security guards participated in clandestine raids to capture or kill suspected insurgents in #Iraq and #Afghanistan and in transportation of detainees on CIA flights.
"The raids against suspects were said to occur almost nightly between 2004 and 2006, the height of the Iraqi insurgency. Several of the former Blackwater employees said the lines dividing the government-sanctioned agencies (the CIA and the military) and Blackwater began to blur.
"This information highlights a more extensive relationship between the CIA and Blackwater, now re-named Xe Services, than government investigation had previously acknowledged.
"This was confirmed recently by an article about #ErikPrince, the founder of Blackwater, published in Vanity Fair. In it, Prince spoke about the extent of his involvement with the CIA, which ranged from putting together, funding and executing operations to bring personnel into 'denied areas' to targeting specific people for #assassination who were deemed enemies by the #USGovernment.
"Though Prince alleged that he participated as a private citizen and used his personal funds to carry out operations, the Blackwater employees interviewed by The New York Times confirmed both their full knowledge of and participation in the raids.
"#Xe spokesman Mark Corallo, however, continued to deny this."
