Vinnell a CIA front...?

This brief article in today's Times/U.K. says the target of Monday's terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia may be a CIA front.

AS BEFITS a company that has been accused of being a CIA front, of recruiting “executive mercenaries” and attempting to overthrow the Prime Minister of a Commonwealth state, the Vinnell Corporation kept a low profile in Riyadh.

Its discreet security fooled nobody, however: the bomb attack was the second it has suffered in eight years. In 1995 seven people were killed....

According to the article, Vinnell was brought to Saudi Arabia in the 1970's to train Saudi troops to guard oil fields. Since then, it has helped the Saudis increase their National Guard strength from 26,000 troops to around 70,000. Vinnell employees were even seen fighting alongside Saudi troops in the 1991 Gulf War. (I didn't know Saudi troops fought in that war.)

Meanwhile, the article says, on the other side of the globe in the early 1980's, two Vinnell employees were embroiled in a failed attempt to overthrow Maurice Bishop, the left-wing Prime Minister of Grenada. Soon after that, a former employee was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal.

CIA front or not, it doesn't exactly sound like a company with clean hands.

Information in the NY Times is just as damning. It identifies Vinnell as "a Virginia subsidiary of Northrop Grumman." (Here). Northrop, a "$25 billion global defense enterprise" (by its own self-description) is anything but an innocent noncombatant in the Middle East.

A fact Vinell employees seemed cognizant of. A Northrop spokesperson said in the NY Times article, that the compound in Saudi Arabia was referred to as "Camp Vinnell" on the company website.

Thus, contrary to the way Bush officials are trying to spin this latest attack, Vinnell employees were aware that they lived on the front lines of the "battle against terrorism" in Saudi Arabia.

There's more.

[Note added on 5/20: the following regarding Westinghouse is false, a bogus posting. See post on 5/15....] According to On the Fritz, Westinghouse--a Northrop affiliate--just won a multibillion dollar contract to provide "infrastructure redevelopment" for post-war Iraq--despite the fact it has little or no experience in the large-scale construction field. (I haven't been able to independently verify this yet. I'll keep you posted.)

Not in any way to justify terrorism, but these connections shed quite a different light on Monday's bombings, don't they?

(Thanks also to Common Dreams.)