Blackwater Permit Faces Challenge Over ‘Vocational Training Institute’ Status
OTAY MESA - San Diego officials will challenge Blackwater Worldwide’s permit for an indoor military training facility in South County, saying the public didn’t know about the plan.
“Residents deserve to know when a facility like this is approved - before it is approved,” San Diego City Council President Scott Peters said.
The North Carolina company received a permit in March for a training site in Otay Mesa, an industrial section of south San Diego, shortly after abandoning its controversial proposal to build a larger facility in Potrero in East County.
The city Development Services Department granted the permit without public hearings. The site was already permitted for a vocational school, and city staff members decided Blackwater’s training of Navy personnel qualified. The facility will have a shooting range, a simulated Navy ship and classrooms.
Brian Bonfiglio, a Blackwater vice president, said the opposition seems to originate from anti-war sentiment, not animosity toward the facility itself.
Bonfiglio said the company has been conducting military training for five years at several facilities in San Diego County, including the American Shooting Center on Ruffin Road in Kearny Mesa.
“If they go after our range, they are getting ready to take on every other firearms business in the county,” he said. “They’re asking something of us that they are not asking of any other business, and quite frankly it’s inappropriate.”
Yesterday, Peters, San Diego Councilman Ben Hueso and Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, held a rally in Otay Mesa to oppose the permit. They were joined by about 30 community activists.
Mary Ussery of Coronado wore a “Stop Blackwater” T-shirt. She said military activity belongs on military bases, not private property.
“Although it’s not my backyard, it’s close enough,” Ussery said. “It’s still my country.”
Peters said Blackwater wasn’t upfront about its plans to operate out of a 61,600-square-foot building owned by Los Angeles company Hometex in a business park on Siempre Viva Road, just south of Brown Field.
“They filed for a permit under the name of a subcontractor as a deliberate dodge to keep our city and community in the dark,” Peters said.
Bonfiglio said, “We went through the same process that any other business does.”
Blackwater’s permit was obtained by Raven Development Group. Southwest Law Enforcement’s name is on the design plan that the city reviewed. Bonfiglio said the company has never sought to hide its affiliation with those businesses.
Peters said his office has requested the city’s permit documents. His staff is researching how to go about challenging the permit.
Blackwater officials in March abandoned the company’s plans to build an 824-acre training center in Potrero, a rural community about 40 miles east of downtown San Diego.
Blackwater’s plans there sparked intense opposition from critics who said the facility would bring noise and traffic to the quiet community. The company dropped its proposal after noise tests showed that the noise from gunfire exceeded county standards. Opponents also objected to the role of Blackwater’s security guards in Iraq, citing a shooting in September that killed 17 Iraqi civilians.
The Otay Mesa facility will train up to 48 students at a time, compared with the Potrero proposal, which envisioned up to 300 students a day.
Tanya Mannes: tanya.mannes@uniontrib.com
© 2008 San Diego Union-Tribune
“Granted without public hearings”.
“A vocational school”.
An unresolved shooting that killed 17 Iraqis followed by a formal request by the Iraqis that Blackwater cease operations. This does not appear to be anti-war sentiment but fundamentally questioning the legitimacy of business operations that occur in a highly conflicted context of domestic, international (and conceivably threatening conflation of UCMJ/constitutional) law.
“If they go after our range, they are getting ready to take on every other firearms business in the county,” he said. “They’re asking something of us that they are not asking of any other business, and quite frankly it’s inappropriate.”
Mr. Bonfiglio now speaks for intentions the citizens of SD? Or is that a threat? Interesting. What other firearms businesses have the conflicted profile of Blackwater? Are other firearms business also dealing with rape litigation within their ranks?
Most “vocational schools” that I am aware of would, under the circumstances, decline such a posture of extrapolation. It seems somewhat inappropriate though consistant with traumatized reasoning that perhaps should raise contract issues - perhaps there is an incapacity to sustain contractual coherence? Perhaps Mr. Bonfiglio might enlighten us?
Blackwater is a business that is operating within a problematic context. Part of this is the domestic situation of secret laws addressed today by Senator Russ Feingold:
Opening Statement of US Senator Russ Feingold Hearing on ‘Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government’
Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution
WASHINGTON, DC - April 30 - “More than any other Administration in recent history, this Administration has a penchant for secrecy. To an unprecedented degree, it has invoked executive privilege to thwart congressional oversight and the state secrets privilege to shut down lawsuits. It has relied increasingly on secret evidence and closed tribunals, not only in Guantanamo but here in the United States. And it has initiated secret programs involving surveillance, detention, and interrogation, some of the details of which remain unavailable today, even to Congress.
“These examples are the topic of much discussion and concern, and appropriately so. But there is a particularly sinister trend that has gone relatively unnoticed – the increasing prevalence in our country of secret law.
“The notion of ‘secret law’ has been described in court opinions and law treatises as ‘repugnant’ and ‘an abomination.’ It is a basic tenet of democracy that the people have a right to know the law. In keeping with this principle, the laws passed by Congress and the case law of our courts have historically been matters of public record. And when it became apparent in the middle of the 20th century that federal agencies were increasingly creating a body of non-public administrative law, Congress passed several statutes requiring this law to be made public, for the express purpose of preventing a regime of ‘secret law.’
“That purpose today is being thwarted. Congressional enactments and agency regulations are for the most part still public. But the law that applies in this country is determined not only by statutes and regulations, but also by the controlling interpretations of courts and, in some cases, the executive branch. More and more, this body of executive and judicial law is being kept secret from the public, and too often from Congress as well.
“The recent release of the March 2003 John Yoo torture memorandum has shone a sobering light on this practice. A legal interpretation by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, or OLC, binds the entire executive branch, just like a regulation or the ruling of a court. In the words of former OLC head Jack Goldsmith, ‘These executive branch precedents are “law” for the executive branch.’ The Yoo memorandum was, for a nine-month period in 2003 until it was withdrawn by Mr. Goldsmith, the law that this Administration followed when it came to matters of torture. And of course, that law was essentially a declaration that few if any laws applied.
“This entire memorandum was classified and withheld from Congress and the public for years on the claim that it contained information that could not be disclosed without harming national security. Now it may be appropriate, prior to public disclosure of an OLC memorandum, to redact information about, for example, specific intelligence sources or methods. But as we now know, this 81-page document contains no information about sources, methods, or any other operational information that could compromise national security. What it contains is a shocking glimpse of the ‘law’ that governed the Administration’s conduct during the period this memo was in effect. And the many, many footnoted references to other OLC memos we’ve never seen suggests that there is an entire regime of secret law that may be just as shocking.
“Another body of secret law is the controlling interpretations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that are issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. FISA, of course, is the law that governs the government’s ability in intelligence investigations to conduct wiretaps and search the homes of people in the United States. Under that statute, the FISA Court is directed to evaluate wiretap and search warrant applications and decide whether the standard for issuing a warrant has been met – a largely factual evaluation that is properly done behind closed doors. But with the evolution of technology and with this Administration’s efforts to get the Court’s blessing for its illegal wiretapping activities, we now know that the Court’s role is broader, and that it is very much engaged in substantive interpretations of the governing statute.
“These interpretations are as much a part of this country’s surveillance law as the statute itself. Without access to them, it is impossible for Congress or the public to have an informed debate on matters that deeply affect the privacy and civil liberties of all Americans. While some aspects of the FISA Court’s work involve operational details and should not be publicly disclosed, I do not believe that same presumption must apply to the Court’s purely legal interpretations of what the statute means. Yet the Administration has fought tooth and nail against public disclosure of how the Court interprets the law, and has strictly limited even congressional access to some of those decisions.
“The Administration’s shroud of secrecy extends to agency rules and executive pronouncements, such as Executive Orders, that carry the force of law. Through the diligent efforts of my colleague Senator Whitehouse, we have learned that OLC has taken the position that a President can ‘waive’ or ‘modify’ a published Executive Order without any notice to the public or Congress – simply by not following it.
“Now, none of us disputes that a President can withdraw or revise an Executive Order at any time; that’s every President’s prerogative. But abrogating an Executive Order without any public notice works a secret change in the law. Worse, because the published Order stays on the books, it actively misleads Congress and the public as to what the law is. That has the effect – presumably, the intended effect – of derailing any accountability or oversight that could otherwise occur.
“And that gets us to the heart of the problem. In a democracy, the government must be accountable to the people, and that means the people must know what their government is doing. Through the classification system and the common law, we’ve carved out limited exceptions for highly sensitive factual information about military operations, intelligence sources and methods, nuclear programs, and the like. That is entirely appropriate and important to protecting our national security. But even in these areas, Congress and the courts must maintain some access to the information to ensure that the President is acting in accordance with the law and the Constitution. And when it comes to the law that governs the executive branch’s actions, Congress, the courts, and the public have the right and the need to know what law is in effect. An executive branch that operates pursuant to secret law makes a mockery of the democratic principles and freedoms on which this country was based.
“We’ll hear today from several experts who can help us understand the extent of this problem and help us begin to think about solutions.”
American Storm Troopers !!!
Just how far are we from a putsch? It seems unimaginable such a thing could happen in the USA but this whole Blackwater (and similar enterprises) already equipped with their own aircraft and stationed on our native soil represent the first stage of rot in our fundamental principles and democratic values.
Had Irak truly represented an authentic threat to our survival the government would have 1/ done all in its means diplomatically to avoid going to war and 2/ if war had still been the only way to save our nation from real peril, they would have instituted the draft which the public would have accepted.
But the reasons for this war were all lies, at the service of the oil companies, and even Bush-Cheney realized they couldn’t get away with instituting the draft. To make up for the missing manpower we now have a parallel mercenary army which by the way is manned not only by American citizens but also by foreign employees from all over the world who have no particular incentive to fight for our country the way our own sons and daughters always have. Blackwater–how aptly named–is becoming more of a threat to our democratic values everyday. These mercenary corporations should be disbanded and made illegal.
I agree completely with “ragdoll”…the use of these mercenary armies by our gov’t needs to end. Besides the problems they create with their “beyond the law” acivities and allegiance to their corporations before our country; they use paychecks that are often 10 times higher than what the US military pays to effectively dry up the pool of dedicated, experienced soldiers who might otherwise reenlist in our armed forces. Halting the practice of using mercenaries is just one of the many things that need to be corrected once the Bush crime family is finally gone.