American retired Air Force officer Michael D. Furlong is now full-time Defense Department official at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15contractors.html
The New York Times reported on March 14, 2010 that Michael Furlong is now under criminal investigation been accused of running an off-the-books spy operation with the help of private contractors.
The contractors come from private security companies that employed among others, former CIA and Special Forces operatives and also a figure of the Iran-Contra scandal.
The network of private contractors was set up to help track and kill people Furlong's people saw as suspect militants.
Mr. Furlong is said to have extensive experience in “psychological operations”.
In conversations with him and his colleagues, he referred to his stable of contractors as “my Jason Bournes,” in a reference to the fictional American amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne, played by Matt Damon in the movies The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007).
Among contractors the retired Air Force official appears to have used are:
- International Media Ventures, a private “strategic communication” firm run by several former Special Operations officers. Until recently, one of the members of International Media’s board of directors was Gen. Dell L. Dailey, former head of Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees the military’s covert units.
- American International Security Corporation, a Boston-based company run by Mike Taylor, a former Green Beret that also had employed Duane Clarridge, former top C.I.A. official linked to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Clarridge denies that he had worked with Furlong in such operations.
The New York Times article, March 14, 2010 - by Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti
"Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants"
HEREhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15contractors.html
