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The State Department has extended a contract with controversial private security firm Blackwater, ABC News has learned. The contract was due to expire this month.
Sources say the department has agreed to temporarily continue using the subsidiary known as Presidential Airways to provide helicopter transport for embassy employees around Iraq until a new contract with another security company, Dyncorp International, is fully implemented. Presidential Airways is an arm of U.S. Training
Center, which is a subsidiary of the company Xe, formerly and still commonly known as Blackwater.
Officials say Dyncorp will not be fully staffed and certified in order to assume the responsibilities immediately. Dyncorp takes over the airlift contract on Sept. 4, but because of the delicate handoff between companies, the contract with Blackwater was extended so that the companies overlap.
"The deployment of an aviation program in Iraq is a complex challenge -- a slower transition to DynCorp taking over the task order is in the best interest of the government," a State Department official said.
The Blackwater contract's extension is for an indefinite period of time, but an official stressed it was "limited." The official said the State Department would like to complete the transition in "weeks or months."
Once this contract expires, it will end Blackwater's controversial presence in Iraq. The company was banned from operating in Iraq by the Iraqi government earlier this year and the State Department did not renew its contracts for personal security details in Iraq. The airlift contract had been allowed to continue until it was set to expire this month.
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