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State Department awards Blackwater $120 million contract
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of CBS News
Posted: June 28th, 2010
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20008238-10391695.html
CBS News has learned in an exclusive report that the State Department has awarded a part of what was formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide a contract worth more than $120 million for providing security services in Afghanistan. Private security firm U.S. Training Center, a business unit of the Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater, now called Xe Services, was awarded the contract [on June 18], a State Department spokeswoman said. Under the contract, U.S. Training Center will provide "protective security services" at the new U.S. consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, the spokeswoman said. The firm can begin work "immediately" and has to start within two months. The contract lasts a year but can be extended twice for three months at a time to last a maximum of 18 months. The awarding of the contract comes just more than four months after the government of Iraq ordered hundreds of Blackwater-linked security guards to leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest. The Justice Department is also trying to prosecute a case against five Blackwater guards who had opened fire on a crowded Baghdad street in 2007. The Justice Department's case or Blackwater's expulsion from Iraq didn't block U.S. Training Center from bidding on the multi-million dollar contract, the State Department spokeswoman said.
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