Last night Gary Jackson, president of Blackwater Worldwide a/k/a the most cartoonishly evil corporation in the world, told the Associated Press that the mega-private security contractor…would no longer do private security. Instead, Blackwater would focus on winning government contracts for other military and diplomacy-related matters like aviation, training and logistics.

Jackson’s words come on the heels of Pentagon chief Robert Gates questioning if private corporations should be used to protect dignitaries in Iraq. And it follows a year of Congressional and Justice Dept. scrutiny after Blackwater security guards opened fire in an Iraq public square, killing 17.

It sounds like occasion for government watchdogs to get the streamers and confetti. But according to the State Dept., Blackwater hasn’t told them that they’re getting out of their lucrative security contracts. And as the Jeremy Scahill reported in The Nation this May, Blackwater is expanding out into "CIA style" intelligence services to private companies. That’s not private security, per se, but it’s in the same family.

We’ll have to wait and see how many controversial business ventures Blackwater really reduces.-MB

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