By Allison Hoffman, Associated Press Writer
SAN DIEGO (AP) - A major defense contractor's plan for a 700-acre training camp in Southern California is running into opposition from a local Democratic congressman who claims the company won initial approval by cozying up to local officials and keeping its plans from the public.
Blackwater USA wants to buy a defunct ranch in a rugged mountain valley about 45 miles east of San Diego. Chicken coops would be turned into firing ranges and augmented with a tactical driving track, a ship simulator, a rescue safety training tower and a helipad, according to company documents filed with San Diego County.
U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, who represents the area, said he was not contacted by company officials, who hired an influential San Diego lobbyist to introduce them to local officials with final say over the project. By the time he heard about it from constituents, he said, company officers were on friendly terms with county planners and a local planning board had voted unanimously to support the project.
The project still is two years away from final approval but Filner is exploring legislation that would block the deal pending further review by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has included Blackwater in its review of Iraq war contractors.
"They're under investigation in a couple different ways and I just want to make sure that, if there's something they're doing wrong, we need to know about it before they go further on this project," Filner said.
Blackwater executive vice president Bill Mathews said the company never meant to circumvent Filner. He said project managers initially contacted Republican U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, whose district borders the property and who until January was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
"When we first started we were under the impression we were in Hunter's district, so we started with his office and worked our way down through to local elected officials," said Mathews, adding that his local staff has since reached out to Filner's office. "It was an honest mistake."
Staffers from Hunter's office attended a meeting with Blackwater officials and a county supervisor last May where the project was discussed. Hunter, bidding for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, supports Blackwater's plan, spokesman Joe Kasper said.
The facility, known as "Blackwater West," would offer five-day and two-week training courses in firearms and tactical training.
It's part of a broader expansion by the company. Earlier this month, the company welcomed the first class of trainees to its new 80-acre camp in Mount Carroll, Ill., known as "Blackwater North."
Company executives said they began scouting Southern California properties in late 2005 and chose the rural community of Potrero for its proximity to San Diego's naval and Marine Corps installations and array of federal law enforcement agencies - including FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Border Patrol.
Mathews said the company sees a need for outside training facilities to serve those and other law enforcement organizations.
The satellite facilities will not provide the intensive training offered at the company's 7,000-acre Moyock, N.C., headquarters for active-duty military personnel and civilians who are deployed to augment U.S. government operations, he said.
In a March 2006 speech in Amman, Jordan, Blackwater vice chairman Cofer Black said the decade-old company was interested in creating an army-for-hire to police hotspots such as the troubled Darfur region of Sudan using its 450 permanent employees and roster of independent contractors. Black was a former top counterterrorism official with the CIA and State Department before joining Blackwater.
Blackwater, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government contracts, has been a subject of congressional hearings. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., in February questioned Blackwater officials about whether the private company had provided sufficient equipment to its security guards before four of them were killed, burned and dragged through the streets of Fallujah in a gruesome 2004 incident that triggered a three-week U.S. offensive.
Company officials said they behaved responsibly in Iraq.
Fueling Democratic suspicions, the company's founder, Erik Prince, contributed $1,000 to Hunter in 2004 and tens of thousands more to other Republican candidates and committees. Blackwater was hired in Iraq as a subcontractor under KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., the company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.
To help with the California project, the company hired well-known San Diego lobbyist Nikki Clay, whose firm represents San Diego County.
"The credibility of the project goes up with Nikki Clay involved," said Phil Blair, a former San Diego city councilman.
In December, the Potrero planning board voted 7-0 to forward the proposal to the county for review. Local planning officials say the Blackwater facility is at least two years away from a vote by the county board of supervisors, who must decide whether to shift the land from agricultural zoning to commercial use.
Potential stumbling blocks include the site's proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, wildfire risk, a concentration of Indian archaeological remains and an endangered golden eagle population that nests in the area.
Potrero residents appear split on the project.
Planning Board Chairman Gordon Hammers, a 69-year-old retiree who moved to the area 37 years ago to manage an electronics factory across the border in Tecate, Mexico, said it would provide an economic boost.
"Almost 400 people here in Potrero live in a mobile home park, and we want an economic engine out there to make the community more of a middle-class place," Hammers said.
Several dozen residents attended a county meeting earlier this month to voice dismay about the project, expressing classic not-in-my-backyard sentiments along with a deeper strain of ideological discomfort with Blackwater's mission.
"It started out as a quality-of-life issue," said Jan Hedlun, a new member of the planning board who opposes the facility but did not participate in the December vote. "But the more I've learned about them the more I don't want them for their principles."
