EXCLUSIVE: To Obscure the Scope of Post-October 7 US Support for Israel, the Biden Administration Is Discreetly Funneling Money to Corporate Military Contractors that Operate in the Country

Constellis, which bought Blackwater after it collapsed due to its scandalous actions in Iraq, provides "armed security” at a secret Pentagon facility near Gaza that supports the Israeli military.

President Joe Biden, always happy to provide a little help to his friends, with his bestie Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a 2023 meeting in New York. Phot credit: Cameron Smith for the White House/Public Domain.

No matter who’s the sitting occupant at the White House, the US government is never keen to advertise the scope of the country’s overseas military operations and footprint, and President Joe Biden is no exception in that regard. His administration has been particularly sensitive about the topics of Ukraine, where the cost of known weapons shipments has reached astronomical levels and is generating increased political blowback, and Israel, where Biden has done his best to downplay the US role as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most important military ally and steadfast supporter.

And who can blame the president for his skittishness, particularly about Israel? It’s quite awkward to be so deeply in bed with a regime that slaughters civilians in broad daylight on a daily basis and whose most senior officials, including Netanyahu, have been targeted for arrest by the International Criminal Court so they can be brought to trial on charges of “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war…[and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict,” in the words of prosecutor Karim Khan. The situation becomes all the more problematic for Biden as polls show growing opposition to blanket US backing of Israel, especially among Democratic voters and – even more tragically from the president’s personal point of view – in several key swing states.

I’ll be writing more about Ukraine a little bit down the road, but the spotlight today will be on Israel. The more narrow focus concerns an unreported component of the Biden administration’s playbook to try to keep the public in the dark about exactly what it’s doing to assist the Netanyahu regime’s relentless, criminal assault on Gaza, and to generally portray the US as doing its best to ensure Palestinian civilians are protected and to block Israel from launching a full scale invasion of Lebanon or otherwise expand its military operations in the region, neither of which is remotely true.

The particular aspect of Biden’s strategy I’m referring to is its quiet authorization of funding for US Private Military Contractors – or mercenary firms, depending on your preference – to support the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF. Deploying private military firms abroad has become standard operating procedure ever since many activities previously conducted by the Pentagon, CIA, and other national security agencies began to be outsourced in wholesale fashion beginning about three decades ago.

The practice offers numerous advantages over sending US troops and intelligence officials to foreign hotspots, for Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Among the major ones are, 1) It allows the sitting president to reward corporations that donate heavily to his party (or her party, assuming that day ever comes to pass in what US officials routinely and hilariously describe as “the world’s greatest democracy”) by funneling federal contracts their way; 2) When private contractors get killed in war zones it doesn’t cause nearly as much of a fuss as when US troops do, which requires the president to travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to greet the coffins carrying their remains, and it’s also highly preferable if contractors murder or torture civilians because the government can blame their employers; and 3) It also causes much less of a fuss to dispatch private contractors rather than soldiers to foreign battlefields in the first place unless the cause is extremely popular, which would not be the case at the moment if troops were sent to Israel, which Biden has said he won’t do.

A study released this month by The Lancet estimated that as many as 186,000 Palestinians have died as a result of Israel’s military assault on Gaza, so it’s perfectly understandable the Biden administration would like to minimize knowledge of its full role and direct responsibility for the ongoing tragedy there. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

An additional reason to rely as much as possible on private contractors is that it’s enormously helpful in obscuring the size and nature of US involvement, which is most relevant in the situation under discussion here. To take one example, the activities of private military firms are overseen by multiple agencies scattered across different government departments nor is there a centralized, publicly-available federal database that identifies the numerous corporate firms that receive contracts, the value of those contracts, where they operate or what they do.

Hence, it’s essentially impossible for the public, the media, or even experts on the US military – and I called more than a few when researching this story and none were able to help me – to keep tabs on the private military industry, whose global size in 2022 was estimated to be worth $224 billion. More than one-third of those revenues were generated by US companies, which collectively are the world’s leader in the field by a wide margin.

The first corporation that became prominent in the private military field, and not in a good way, was Blackwater, which was founded by Erik Prince (who I’ve written quite a bit about recently at Washington Babylon and at the New Republic) and made a fortune before it imploded following the 2007 murders of 14 Iraqi civilians by its employees at Baghdad's Nisour Square. Virginia-headquartered Constellis, which bought Blackwater following the latter’s collapse and currently has offices in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and operates in roughly another 50 countries, including Israel, where it has a significant presence.

The company’s most sensitive work involves providing “armed security” at Site 512, a classified US radar facility in the Negev desert near Be'er Sheva that sits less than 25 miles from Gaza. Constellis has been hiring up contractors to work at the installation, which is run by the Missile Defense Agency and operates in conjunction with the IDF to provide Israel with early warning of ballistic missiles launched by Iran or other enemies. 

Construction of Site 512 began in 2017, but Constellis has been hiring for a Pentagon contract that seems to have been awarded or greatly expanded after Hamas’ attacks in Israel last October 7. I haven’t been able to determine when the contract was awarded or how much money it came with, but it must be reasonably sizeable as Constellis has been recruiting to fill the positions since at least early this year and still was as of recently, which I first learned about from sources with direct knowledge of the company’s activities who would only speak off the record. 

Rare image from the ground at Site 512. Phot credit: Senior Airman Edgar Grimaldo, 86th Airlift Wing Public Affairs/Public Domain.

I independently confirmed Site 512 was the work location by reviewing job listings posted by Constellis for positions with its subsidiary Triple Canopy, which won a $1 billion contract to provide security in Iraq as a replacement for Blackwater after the Nisour Square disaster but quickly was accused of a variety of illegal practices, such as buying weapons on the black market, with some of the proceeds allegedly enriching insurgent groups, and trading booze for weapons, as reported by ProPublica in 2009. Triple Canopy was later charged with wildly overbilling the US government for its services, which the company settled by paying a fine of $2.6 million for violating the False Claims Act.

The location of the work with Triple Canopy wasn’t specified in the job listings, which said those hired would perform duties at a “US Department of Defense installation located OCONUS.” That’s an acronym for “Outside of the Continental United States,” which past employees of private military firms I spoke with said is commonly used when the companies doing the hiring and the US government want to cloak the relevant activities to the maximum degree possible. However, details from the job ads made it virtually certain that the sources were correct about Site 512 being the job site.

I found direct confirmation of that in social media posts from a few highly indiscreet corporate employees. In his LinkedIn profile, Victor Moya, a Master Sergeant in the US Air Force Reserve, said he had worked for Triple Canopy for almost a decade, beginning with a position as “Security Contractor Supervisor” in “South District, Israel,” and now as “Lead Security Officer Supervisor” and “CCTV security surveillance and communications officer,” with duties that include “entry access control at designated locations as well as physical security inspections in support of Site 512 program.” 

The positions at Site 512 are only open to “US citizens who have or are able to obtain a government Secret Clearance,” according to the job listings advertised by Constellis. As part of their work, new hires would protect “assets, personnel, and equipment,” including duty on a “Quick Reaction Force” that works with an Israeli Ministry of Defense security unit assigned to shadow and protect senior military officers stationed at the base or visiting it.

Additional duties included screening and searching all “persons, equipment, and vehicles entering and exiting Entry Control Points,” manning tower guard posts and conducting perimeter patrols. In the event of a military attack on the base, Triple Canopy contractors were expected to provide emergency medical care and assist with MEDEVAC procedures.

Applicants for the jobs at Site 512 were required to have military, law enforcement or private security experience and be able to “perform physically demanding work” in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit while wearing Personal Protective Equipment. The job ads provided no information about compensation other than saying guards would be paid competitively and receive generous benefits.

Last August, the Pentagon also issued a $35.8 million contract to Bryan Ashush JV, a company based in Colorado, for construction work at Site 512, which was reported by The Intercept. As the outlet noted in the story, the award wasn’t publicly announced but was noted in a contract announcement that said the work would be “performed in Israel” without mentioning Site 512.

Incidentally, Site 512 is outfitted with state-of-the-art radar, signals intelligence equipment, and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system commonly known as THAAD system, whose primary manufacturer Lockheed Martin calls “a highly effective, combat-proven defense against short, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats...designed to intercept targets outside and inside the atmosphere.” Like all of the Pentagon’s hideously overpriced weapons systems, THAAD’s core mission isn’t a militarily one, but to generate obscene profits for Lockheed and its multiplicity of subcontractors, including Raytheon, Boeing, Honeywell, BAE Systems, and Oshkosh Defense.

That was seen last October 7, when Site 512 failed to detect the thousands of rockets Hamas fired into Israel that day. The reason for the failure: the installation’s cutting edge equipment wasn’t monitoring Gaza, where the rockets were fired from and sat just down the road from Site 512, but was focused on Iran in order to prevent a long range missile attack from there, and hence was looking in the wrong direction by more than 700 miles.