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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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September 27th,
2007 - Blackwater Blamed for Guard Deaths News article by the Associated Press |
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Blackwater Blamed for Guard Deaths By Richard Lardner & Mike Baker Associated Press September 27, 2007 Washington - Blackwater USA
triggered a major battle in the Iraq war in 2004 by sending an unprepared
team of guards into an insurgent stronghold, a move that led to their
horrific deaths and a violent response by U.S. forces, says a congressional
investigation released Thursday. The private security
company, one of the largest working in Iraq and under scrutiny for how it
operates, also is faulted for initially insisting its guards were properly
prepared and equipped. It is also accused of impeding the inquiry by the
Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The results of the staff
inquiry come less than a week before Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL and
Blackwater's founder, is scheduled to testify before the committee, which is
chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., a longtime critic of Blackwater. The March 2004 incident
involving Blackwater was widely viewed as a turning point in the Iraq war
after images of the mutilated bodies of the four guards were seen around the
world. Four days after the Blackwater guards were killed, a major military
offensive, known as the Battle of Fallujah, began. The combat lasted almost a
month in Fallujah, which is 40 miles west of Baghdad. At least 36 U.S.
military personnel were killed along with 200 insurgents and an estimated 600
civilians, the congressional investigation found. In a statement, Blackwater
spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell called the report a "one-sided version" of
a tragic incident. She said the committee has documents that show the
Blackwater team was "betrayed" and steered into "a
well-planned ambush." The report does not
acknowledge "that the terrorists determined what happened that fateful
day in 2004," Tyrrell said. "The terrorists were intent on killing
Americans and desecrating their bodies." David Marin, the committee's
Republican staff director, criticized the Democratic staff for reaching
conclusions before the committee could dig deeper for answers. "We certainly don't get
there in this plaintiff's roadmap masquerading as an investigative
report," Marin said. Donna Zovko, whose son,
Jerko "Jerry" Zovko, died in the Fallujah incident, said she hopes
the staff report will lead to more oversight and more discussions about the
use of contractors. "Congress can't change
anything for my son. He is gone and nothing can bring him back," Zovko
said. "But let's see what they can do for the others out there because
someone needs to care for these contractors. Blackwater cares about nothing
but the mighty dollar." The families of the four
slain contractors filed suit against the company in January 2005, saying
Blackwater's cost-cutting measures led to the deaths. That lawsuit is still
pending as a federal judge tries to determine whether it should be heard in
arbitration or in open court. Blackwater has argued in
court that it is immune to such a lawsuit because the company operates as an
extension of the military and cannot be responsible for deaths in a war zone. The results of the
Democratic staff's probe cast Blackwater in a more negative light. On Sept. 16, 2007, 11 Iraqis
were killed in a shoot-out involving Blackwater guards protecting a U.S.
diplomatic convoy in Baghdad. The State Department, one of
Blackwater's largest customers, has opened an investigation into the
incident. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told Congress on
Wednesday that the Baghdad incident was tragic, but that private security
companies like Blackwater were essential to operations in Iraq. The staff report called
Blackwater an "unprepared and disorderly" organization on the
morning of March 31, 2004, when Zovko, Wesley Batalona, Michael Teague, and
Scott Helvenston were riding in Mitsubishi Pajeros and guarding a supply
convoy. Although warned by other
contractors that it was dangerous to drive through Fallujah, the Blackwater
guards "seemed unaware of the potential risk," the report says. Prior to the team's
departure, two members were cut from the mission, leaving the vehicles
without rear gunners. The report says they were needed to perform
administrative duties elsewhere. Blackwater
"consistently delayed and erected impediments" to the investigation
by claiming information was classified and "asserting questionable legal
privileges," the report says. © 2007 The Associated Press External link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/5170608.html Blackwater
Tops Firms in Iraq in Shooting Rate By John M. Broder & James Risen New York Times September 27, 2007 Washington, Sept. 26 - The
American security contractor Blackwater USA has been involved in a far higher
rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other
security firms providing similar services to the State Department, according
to Bush administration officials and industry officials. Blackwater is now the focus
of investigations in both Baghdad and Washington over a Sept. 16 shooting in
which at least 11 Iraqis were killed. Beyond that episode, the company has
been involved in cases in which its personnel fired weapons while guarding
State Department officials in Iraq at least twice as often per convoy mission
as security guards working for other American security firms, the officials
said. The disclosure came as the
Pentagon said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had sent a team of officials
to Iraq to get answers to questions about the use of American security
contractors there. The State Department keeps
reports on each case in which weapons were fired by security personnel
guarding American diplomats in Iraq. Officials familiar with the internal
State Department reports would not provide the actual statistics, but they
indicated that the records showed that Blackwater personnel were involved in
dozens of episodes in which they had resorted to force. The officials said that
Blackwater’s incident rate was at least twice that recorded by employees of
DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, the two other United States-based
security firms that have been contracted by the State Department to provide
security for diplomats and other senior civilians in Iraq. The State Department would
not comment on most matters relating to Blackwater, citing the current
investigation. But Sean McCormack, the department’s spokesman, said that of
1,800 escort missions by Blackwater this year, there had been “only a very
small fraction, very small fraction, that have involved any sort of use of
force.” In 2005, DynCorp reported 32
shootings during about 3,200 convoy missions, and in 2006 that company
reported 10 episodes during about 1,500 convoy missions. While comparable
Blackwater statistics were not available, government officials said the
firm’s rate per convoy mission was about twice DynCorp’s. The State Department’s
incident reports have not been made public, and Blackwater refused to provide
its own data on cases in which its personnel used their weapons while
guarding American diplomats. The State Department is in the process of
providing at least some of the data to Congress. The administration and
industry officials who agreed to discuss the broad rate of Blackwater’s
involvement in violent events would not disclose the specific numbers. “The incident rate for
Blackwater is higher, there is a distinction,” said a senior American
government official who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss a delicate,
continuing investigation. “The real question that is open for discussion is
why.” A Blackwater spokeswoman
declined to comment. Blackwater, based in North
Carolina, has gained a reputation among Iraqis and even among American
military personnel serving in Iraq as a company that flaunts an aggressive,
quick-draw image that leads its security personnel to take excessively
violent actions to protect the people they are paid to guard. After the
latest shooting, the Iraqi government demanded that the company be banned
from operating in the country. “You can find any number of
people, particularly in uniform, who will tell you that they do see
Blackwater as a company that promotes a much more aggressive response to
things than other main contractors do,” a senior American official said. Today, Blackwater operates
in the most violent parts of Iraq and guards the most prominent American
diplomats, which some American government officials say explains why it is
involved in more shootings than its competitors. The shootings included in
the reports include all cases in which weapons are fired, including those
meant as warning shots. Others add that Blackwater’s aggressive posture in
guarding diplomats reflects the wishes of its client, the State Department’s
Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Still, other government
officials say that Blackwater’s corporate culture seems to encourage
excessive behavior. “Is it the operating environment or something specific
about Blackwater?” asked one government official. “My best guess is that it
is both.” Blackwater was founded in
1997 by Erik Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals, and is privately
owned. Most of its nearly 1,000 people in Iraq are independent contractors,
rather than employees of the company, according to a spokeswoman, Anne
Tyrrell. Blackwater has a total of about 550 full-time employees, the she said. Its diplomatic security
contract with the State Department is now the company’s largest, Ms. Tyrrell
said, while declining to provide the dollar amount. The company also provides
security for the State Department in Afghanistan, where it also has counternarcotics-related
contracts. In addition to the Sept. 16
shooting in the Nisour area of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said Blackwater
employees had been involved in six other episodes under investigation. Those
episodes left a total of 10 Iraqis dead and 15 wounded, they said. Many American officials now
share the view that Blackwater’s behavior is increasingly stoking resentment
among Iraqis and is proving counterproductive to American efforts to gain
support for its military efforts in Iraq. “They’re repeat offenders,
and yet they continue to prosper in Iraq,” said Representative Jan
Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who has been broadly critical of the role of
contractors in Iraq. “It’s really affecting attitudes toward the United
States when you have these cowboy guys out there. These guys represent the
U.S. to them and there are no rules of the game for them.” Despite the growing
criticism of Blackwater and its tactics, the company still enjoys an
unusually close relationship with the Bush administration, and with the State
Department and Pentagon in particular. It has received government contracts
worth more than $1 billion since 2002, with most coming under the Bureau of
Diplomatic Security, according to the independent budget monitoring group OMB
Watch. Last year, the State
Department gave Blackwater the lead role in diplomatic security in Iraq,
reducing the roles of DynCorp and Triple Canopy. The company employs about
850 workers in Iraq under its diplomatic security contract, about
three-quarters of them Americans, according to the State Department and the
Congressional Research Service. DynCorp has 157 security guards in Iraq;
Triple Canopy has about 250. The figures compiled by the State Department
track the number of shootings per convoy mission, rather than measuring
against the number of employees. Just in recent weeks,
Blackwater has also been awarded another large State Department contract to
provide helicopter services in Iraq. The company’s close ties to
the Bush administration have raised questions about the political clout of
Mr. Prince, Blackwater’s founder and owner. He is the scion of a wealthy
Michigan family that is active in Republican politics. He and the family have
given more than $325,000 in political donations over the past 10 years, the
vast majority to Republican candidates and party committees, according to
federal campaign finance reports. Mr. Prince has helped cement
his ties to the government by hiring prominent officials. J. Cofer Black, the
former counterterrorism chief at the C.I.A. and State Department, is a vice
chairman at Blackwater. Mr. Black is also now a senior adviser on
counterterrorism and national security issues to the Republican presidential
campaign of Mitt Romney. Joseph E. Schmitz, the
former inspector general at the Pentagon, now is chief operating officer and
general counsel for Blackwater’s parent company, the Prince Group. Officials
at other firms in the contracting industry said that Mr. Prince sometimes met
with government contracting officers, which they say is an unusual step for
the chief executive of a corporation. No Blackwater employees, or
any other contractors, have been charged with crimes related to the shootings
in Iraq, although there are a number of American laws governing actions
overseas and in wartime that could be applied, according to experts in
international law. In addition, a measure enacted last year calls for the
Pentagon to bring contractors in Iraq under the jurisdiction of American
military law, but the Defense Department has not yet put into effect the
rules needed to do so. Separately, American
officials specifically exempted all United States personnel from Iraqi law
under an order signed in 2004 by L.Paul Bremer III, then the top official of
the American occupation authority. The Sept. 16 shootings have so angered
Iraqis, however, that the Iraqi government is proposing a measure that would
overturn the American rule and subject Western private security companies to
Iraqi law. The proposal requires the approval of the Iraqi Parliament. In a sign of the Pentagon’s
concern over private security contractors, Mr. Gates last Sunday sent a
five-person team to Iraq to discuss with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top
American commander in Iraq, the rules governing contractors. “He has some
real concerns about oversight of contractors in Iraq and he is looking for
ways to sort of make sure we do a better job on that front,” Geoff Morrell,
Mr. Gates’s spokesman, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday. On Tuesday night, Deputy
Defense Secretary Gordon England sent a three-page memorandum to senior
Defense Department officials and top commanders around the world ordering
them to ensure that contractors in the field were operating under rules of
engagement consistent with the military’s. Copyright 2007 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/world/middleeast/27contractor.html |