Saturday, December 12, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US Central Intelligence Agency has cancelled a contract with a security company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide that allowed the company to load bombs on CIA drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, The New York Times reported late Friday. Citing intelligence officials, the newspaper said the contract gave Blackwater employees an operational role in one of the CIA's most significant covert programs, which has killed dozens of militants with Predator and Reaper drones. The contract with the company, now called Xe Services, was canceled this year by CIA Director Leon Panetta, the report said. CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta had ordered that the agency's employees take over the jobs from Xe employees at the remote drone bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the paper noted.Panetta had also ordered a review of all contracts with the company, according to the report.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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