Were they CIA?

I strongly condemn xymphora's seeming glee at the ghastly fate meted out to the civilians killed in Fallujah. Even so, I find myself asking the same question he asks: Were the victims truly working for a private security firm? Or were they CIA?

Standard news accounts claim that they were employed by a North Carolina-based company called Blackwater Consulting. However, the founder of that firm, Jamie Smith, was a former "company" man. There's a long history of ex-spooks who "leave" the CIA yet continue to work for (or with) the Agency; E. Howard Hunt provides us with the most famous example. Long-time spook-watchers will recall the notorious Edwin Wilson, who set up firms similar to Blackwater as fronts.

Or were the Fallujah victims members of the American Special Forces, using Blackwater as a cover? That sort of thing has been known to occur before. The Age has reported that the victims wore dogtags. The vehicle is said to have been "of a kind" used by Special Forces and U.S. intelligence.

Estimates of the number of CIA agents in Iraq right now run as high as 3000.

More to come...