A lawyer for the former Blackwater president who has been charged with gun crimes hinted at his client's defense Wednesday, telling a North Carolina court room that a US government agency approved of what the company was doing.
Ken Bell -- attorney for Gary Jackson, who was arrested last week along with four other Blackwater staffers -- told the court that "all of this was with the knowledge of, the request of, for the convenience of, an agency of the US government," reports the News & Observer in North Carolina.
While Bell would not say which US government agency that may have been, the News & Observer article suggests that he was talking about the CIA.
"The company has close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. The company has provided security to CIA stations and officers in Afghanistan and other countries, and several Blackwater officials were once high ranking CIA officials," the article states.
Federal prosecutors indicted Jackson, who was president of Blackwater until last year, last week in a case that stemmed from a raid on Blackwater's North Carolina headquarters in 2008, which turned up 22 automatic weapons, including 17 Russian-made AK-47s.
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