Hunt of the Sea Wolves

ABC News:

The hedge fund giant that owns a controlling stake in Chrysler is in negotiations to buy the controversial security firm Blackwater USA, which has millions of dollars in U.S. government contracts in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the talks.

Cerberus Capital Management could invest $200 million for a stake in Blackwater, said a source close to the negotiations. Other sources said auditors from Cerberus had been examining Blackwater’s books since the beginning of the year.

Sun Star:

ZAMBOANGA CITY — Government troops have captured Wednesday a bomb-making camp of the al-Qaeda-linked militants in the island province of Sulu, south of Zamboanga City, a top military official said.

Brigadier General Juancho Sabban, the military’s Joint Task Force Comet (JTFC) chief, said the bomb-making camp fell into the hands of the troops after heavy fighting shortly before noontime Wednesday.

Voice of America:

The Philippine military says its troops have captured a camp used by the Abu Sayyaf militant group on a remote southern island.

Military officials say about 300 marine and army commandoes battled 200 militants overnight, seizing the camp on Jolo island early Wednesday morning. A heavy artillery and mortar bombardment preceded the attack.

There was no immediate word on casualties or on whether any militants were captured.

Homeported in Pearl Harbor, USS Port Royal (CG 73) was the twenty-seventh and last of the Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers built in the twentieth century. Commissioned in Savannah, Georgia, July 9, 1994, she was also the first of her class to carry women as part of the crew of thirty-three officers and three hundred sixty-seven enlisted.

The Ticonderoga-class cruisers were highly sophisticate warships originally designed to counter the serious air and missile threat that Soviet air and naval forces posed to U.S. carrier battle groups and other task forces.

After the implosion of the Soviet Union and the nearly total abandonment of its navy, Port Royal and her Yokosuka-based, older sister ships, USS Cowpens (CG 63) and USS Chancellorville (CG 62), were relegated to the WESTPAC duty, where their primary mission was to track the secretive maneuvers of the North Korea’s submarines. It was no longer their old nemesis, the Soviet Union Navy, but the subs they chased were, for the most part, old, were diesel-powered, Russian-built Romeo and Whiskey coastal patrol submarines better suited as museum displays. The North Koreans also had Chinese-designed Sang-O infiltration submarines, each with a crew of nineteen, plus six swimmers, whose job it was to infiltrate and spy on South Korea. As obsolete as the subs were, the Falkland Island War had demonstrated that a small, tactically ineffective submarine force could still have an impact on combat operations simply by being at sea and staying hidden, which the North Koreans were very good at doing.

The day following the mass murder of three thousand innocent travelers, the Port Royal’s sickbay overflowed with injured survivors from the Bali Song Flower. Surgeon and Naval Reservist, Lieutenant Commander Steven Chesser, would not have been aboard the 567-foot cruiser, which under normal circumstances only rated an enlisted corpsman or a warrant officer. But these were not normal circumstances. He had been flown over to the Port Royal on one of the its two LAMPS 3, SH-60 Sea Hawks from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72).

International Herald Tribune:

Strange how an African country can be moving from prolonged chaos to violent collapse and no one in the world notices until a couple of European boats get seized by armed gunmen.

War-ravaged Somalia is in the worst shape it has been in for years - which, for this devastated country that has not had a proper government for nearly a generation, is really saying something.

Yet, neither of the two resolutions currently in preparation at the UN Security Council mention the 85 dead in Mogadishu last weekend, or the exodus of newly displaced persons from that city, or Ethiopian shelling of civilian areas or the dwindling international humanitarian response.

Instead, one of the resolutions proposed by France, the United States and Britain is a reaction to the hijacking of a French yacht and a Spanish fishing vessel, and would authorize countries to fight piracy off Somalia’s coast.

MADRID (AFP) — The pirates who held a Spanish trawler and its crew of 26 hostage for six days off the coast of Somalia received their ransom on board the vessel, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

The pirates collected the money in plastic bags on board the Playa de Bakio and divided it up amongst themselves before fleeing, top-selling daily El Pais reported, citing sources close to the negotiations.

“The chiefs of the group, who numbered six according to one source, counted the money, pocketed their part and paid each one of the other pirates who were further down the ranks with wads of bills,” the newspaper said.

The Daily Astorian:

The $8.4 billion Coast Guard bill that overwhelmingly passed the U.S. House last week contains much of local relevance, most notably a requirement that the USCG must enforce security zones around liquefied natural gas terminals and arriving tankers.

It will come as a surprise to many here that there previously was no such rule. Although the Coast Guard provides some security for LNG sites and ships, USCG Commandant Adm. Thad Allen strenuously objected last week to having LNG duties written into law, something he said robs the Coast Guard of “necessary discretion and flexibility to meet our mission demands in an often-changing, dangerous operating environment.”

President Bush threatens to veto the bill, both because of the Coast Guard’s objections and because it amounts to an “unwarranted subsidy” to LNG firms. The bill’s vote of 395-7 effectively makes it veto proof.

Union-Tribune:

 Now that Ron Shusett and I are working on a script titled, “Blackwater USA,” for Shoreline Motion Pictures, I thought it appropriate to begin adding information about the company. Since most of the media seems to view Blackwater and its contractors as mercenaries and evil, it might be difficult finding balance. As a police officer once told me when it comes to a difference in stories being told by opposing sides–both lie and the truth is somewhere in the middle. — John Chadwell

SAN DIEGO – The owner of a shooting range who trained military personnel for Blackwater Worldwide said yesterday he will no longer work with the North Carolina-based government contractor because of its notoriety.

I’m tired of being dragged into this thing,” said Marc Halcon, owner of American Shooting Center in Kearny Mesa.

Halcon, who has run American Shooting Center for 11 years, said he has been a subcontractor for Blackwater since 2002. He sent a fax yesterday notifying the company that the agreement will end May 31.

Blackwater plans to open an indoor training center for Navy personnel this summer in a 61,600-square-foot warehouse in Otay Mesa. The company scuttled plans to build a training center in the East County community of Potrero after noise tests showed gunfire at the site exceeded county standards.

By John Chadwell:

From all the news about Somali pirates it might surprise some people that piracy is on the increase again and they are operating beyond the African coast.

According to the International Chamber of Commerce’s weekly piracy report, pirates boarded a tanker in the Vung Tau Song Go Gia anchorage, Vietnam, April 21. They broke open the forward storeroom and stole ship’s stores.  The duty crew spotted the robbers and raised the alarm and the pirates escaped. None of the crew were injured.

On April 22, off Tanzania, eight pirates armed with knives boarded a container ship at anchor. Before the watch keepers could contact and warn the bridge the robbers tied them up. The alarm was raised only when the chief officer could not contact the watch keepers. By then the pirates had stolen contents from several containers. They escaped when the alarm was raised.

Pirates are not only interested in cargo ships and fishing vessels. On April 22, off Mumbia, India, four robbers in a motor boat attempted to board a research vessel at anchor.  

CNN:

A French yacht. A Japanese tanker. A Spanish fishing boat. After several years of decline, pirates are striking with increasing frequency on the high seas.

Attacks in the first three months of this year were up 20 percent compared with the same period in 2007, analysts say. Last year saw more pirate attacks than the year before.

And while the motive is still money, today’s pirates are a far cry from the eye-patched, peg-legged swashbucklers of Hollywood.

“The only thing today’s pirates have in common with the romantic vision people have of pirates is that they are ruthless criminals who exploit very vulnerable people at sea,” said Pottengal Mukundan of the International Maritime Bureau, which monitors shipping crime.