blackwater

blackwater
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.

It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.

Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.

Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq.

It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license.

Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program.

Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta’s decision on the assassination program was “clear and straightforward.”

“Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it.”

A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress. “It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for,” she said.

The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta’s predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed.

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.

One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny.

“It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin,” the official said. “It went well beyond that.”

Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.’s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.

In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said.

Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.

C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.

An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians.

The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.

But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.

Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs.

But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot.

“I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.

Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.

narwhal whale

narwhal whale

One quiet evening not too long ago, Kristin Laidre was standing on a rocky beach, peering out of a fjord dotted with icebergs. The water looked strangely still under the nighttime sun.

"It's great conditions for seeing narwhals," said Laidre, watching through binoculars as a small group of narwhals moved past a glacier that spilled down from the Greenland ice cap. "They're so sneaky, but they can't really hide when the sea is like a mirror."

Narwhals are an Arctic whale known as the unicorn of the sea. The males have a distinctive long, spiral tusk. For centuries, traders sold these tusks as the legendary unicorn horn, which people thought had magic powers.

And in this particular fjord, called Inglefield Bredning, the narwhals do seem to have an almost magical ability to evade the researchers who are longing to catch them.

"They're swimming away from the nets," Laidre said, watching as the path of the swimming narwhals made a kind of shimmering line in the still water. "Yeah, they seem to be swimming toward the other side right now."

Thousands of narwhals spend their summers in this fjord, and Laidre, an oceanographer at the University of Washington, has been coming here for the past eight years. Again and again, she's tried to catch a narwhal by setting up giant nets. This shouldn't be impossible. She and her colleagues have had success with nets in other places. "We definitely can catch them in nets in Greenland and in Canada — in many places in Canada," she says. "But here, we haven't managed to do it."

If she could briefly snag a narwhal here, she could attach a small, sturdy satellite transmitter to a ridge of cartilage and blubber along its back. For months, the transmitter would send back all kinds of information, like where the narwhal goes and how deep it dives.

And that would be incredibly useful. Because even though the narwhal has long been famous for its unicorn horn — it's thought to be the whale version of a peacock's tail or a lion's mane — most of the narwhal's life is a mystery, hidden by darkness and ice.

"The main reason that narwhals are not studied is that it's not very easy," says Laidre. "They live in this, you know, totally extreme environment, where half the year, it's completely dark and minus 30 and covered in ice, and the whales are 200 kilometers offshore, and nobody in their right mind would make an expedition to study them."

Then in the summer, when there's warmth and endless light, she says, "they're completely skittish and shy from humans, and so you have to wait days before you might even see a narwhal. I mean days, weeks."

And so she waits ... and waits ... and waits. For two weeks in July, she heads up a little camp on this remote, rocky beach. There are a few tents, a couple of colleagues from Denmark, plus five Inuit hunters from a nearby town. Twenty-four hours a day, someone keeps watch on big white floats that will bob and jerk if a narwhal swims into the nets.

If that happens, Laidre will pull on a survival suit and rush toward the water to get her hands on the narwhal so she can tag it. In other places, when she's managed to do this, it's been an intense, wild ride. "It tends to be a little bit out of control," she says. "It's struggling, and it's trying to get free, and it's trying to get untangled, and it wants to come up for air, and it's going up and it's diving, coming down."

She says that when you touch a narwhal, it feels like a cold, hard, slippery inner tube. And the breath from their blowhole isn't that great. "They have whale breath," she says. "Kind of a heavy, little bit blubbery smell."

Here, though, she can see and even hear the narwhals spout, but only from far away. There's nowhere to go, nothing to do. For hours, days, her team sits around and stares at the blue sky, the blue water and icebergs — lots of icebergs — some bigger than houses. They drift by like clouds. As Laidre watches them with a colleague, partly to make sure none of them are headed for the nets, she jokes that maybe they should change fields, since "it's a lot easier to catch icebergs."

As a kid, Laidre remembers she had a set of stickers that had a narwhal, but she had no idea that she'd someday study the creatures. Her dream was ballet. "I trained intensively through high school, and then I went and I danced with a ballet company in Seattle," she says, explaining that an injury ended that career. So she went to college and now has a research job at the University of Washington.

Still, she thinks the physical and mental challenge of ballet was actually good training for studying narwhals. "You learn how to be miserable and suffer, and like, you just have to keep going for the sake of what you're doing," she says.

One night, a white mist suddenly covers everything. The hunters have to take in the nets since no one can see their buoys. As the fog lifts, but before the nets are back out, the narwhals appear, frolicking in front of the glacier, totally out of reach.

Another day, icebergs come dangerously close to the nets. The hunters have to move them to let the icebergs pass.

To pass the time, one day Laidre decides to decorate a plywood sign that's lying around. Under the name of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, which supports this project, there's the black outline of a narwhal. She picks up a paintbrush and starts filling it in with white paint. It looks like she's creating a tiny narwhal version of Moby Dick. She's read the book, of course, and jokes that sometimes she feels worse than Captain Ahab.

But even though catching a narwhal here might feel like pursuing something impossible and elusive, "I approach it with a very fatalistic attitude, a very realistic attitude with a good sense of humor," says Laidre. "Not expecting too much."

Then, two days before she has to leave, the narwhals come. She joins two hunters at the top of a hill and peers through binoculars. The backs of the narwhals move up and down through the water. A large group is near shore, sort of milling around. They don't seem to be in any hurry. Laidre runs down to the beach, pulls out her box of satellite transmitters, and struggles into a red survival suit. "I think it's really close," she says. "It's like the closest we've come in a really long time. After all these years, I don't usually put my suit on unless I really believe that there might be a chance."

She's quiet and tense, watching the narwhals. They move toward the nets. Then they veer slightly and slip away.

That night in her tent, Laidre hardly sleeps, waking every hour to check the nets. When she does drift off, narwhals swim into her dreams. One dream narwhal beaches itself by her tent. In another dream, she finds a strangely tiny narwhal, like a salamander, lying at her feet. "Now I had too many narwhals," she laughs, "but for various reasons I still couldn't tag them! So they were really weird dreams, and then I woke up and I thought, I think it might be time to go home."

The nets are pulled out onto the rocky shore. Everything gets packed into a permanent tent for storage. The plywood sign with the painted narwhal is screwed over the front door to keep polar bears from busting in. And Laidre says she hopes to come back next year, to try again.

nj unemployment

nj unemployment

If you are one of New Jersey's unemployment victims, you may be already aware that you will be able to apply for your unemployment insurance benefits. You will not automatically be able to enjoy your NJ unemployment insurance benefits; you have to claim your benefits through proper channels. You can apply for your unemployment benefits either through the Internet or the telephone.

Applying online for New Jersey unemployment benefits

Take note of the following when applying online for Unemployment Insurance

You need to be a resident of New Jersey.
Employed in NJ for the past 18 months and must not have worked for the Federal Government or in military service in that time.
You need to give an Alien Registration number if not a citizen of USA.
To be eligible for a New Jersey unemployment benefits

You must have worked a minimum of 20 base weeks in covered employment or must have earned $7,200.

'For weeks worked in 2005, the amount needed to establish a base week was $103; for weeks worked in 2006, the amount is $123; and for weeks worked in 2007, the amount is $143. These wages must have been earned during a 52 week period that is called a base year.' Any unemployed worker who had worked in New Jersey at any time during the past 18 months can file an unemployment claim and learn whether they are eligible for a claim.

How to apply online for NJ unemployment benefits

If you meet all the above requirements, you will be able to apply online for your NJ unemployment insurance benefits by visiting wnjpin.state.nj.us/uiclaim/. Through this site you will be able to make a new claim or reopen an existing claim. You will also be able to claim your weekly benefits through this site.

To make your online unemployment benefits claim you will need the following information:

Your social security number.
Alien registration number if you are not a citizen of the USA.
Your job recall rate if any.
Complete reference details of your last four employers including their full name, address and contact number.
Employment period and the reason for separation from your past four employers.

NJ unemployment benefits claim through telephone

The other option to claim your unemployment insurance benefit is to contact your Reemployment center through telephone. You will be able to reach your Reemployment centers through the following numbers:

Northeast New Jersey - (201) 601-4100
Northwest and Central New Jersey - (732) 761-2020
South Jersey - (856) 507-2340

If you should have any queries you will find all the contact information including telephone number, FAX, Mailing address and Email address in the following page: www.state.nj.us/labor/ui/contact.html. Furthermore, something worthwhile to note regarding the New Jersey unemployment benefits policy is that you have the choice of getting your benefits transferred to your checking bank account electronically deposited as opposed to paper check.

You might like to know what profession is in demand in which area. You can find the labor demand occupations report in the following page: www.wnjpin.net/coei/labor_demand/labor_demand.htm. If you should feel apprehensive about your unemployment and interested in getting some quality suggestions and career advice do feel free to visit our career advice forum.

aishwarya rai swine flu

aishwarya rai swine flu

Former Miss World and famous Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai is reportedly suffering with a “chest infection” and “flu like symptoms”. Some reports also suggest that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is down with swine flu, but these reports are not confirmed yet. So it is not sure whether the 35-year-old lady is having swine flu or not. On her health issues, her father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan is very anxious.

About Aishwarya’s illness, Amitabh Bachchan wrote in his blog: