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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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December 29th,
2007 - For Blackwater, a Year in Uncomfortable Spotlight |
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For
Blackwater, a Year in Uncomfortable Spotlight By Bill Sizemore The Virginian-Pilot December 29, 2007 On Christmas Eve 2006, in an
alcohol-fueled confrontation inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, a
Blackwater security contractor shot and killed a personal bodyguard to Iraqi
Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi. A year later, he has not
been charged with a crime. That shooting foreshadowed
what has been a bloody year for Blackwater, literally and figuratively. The
Moyock, N.C.-based private military company has taken a public thrashing from
Baghdad to Washington to California for the actions of its armed security men
in Iraq. As Blackwater heads into
2008, a number of investigations, inquiries and lawsuits are still swirling
around the company. Several were sparked by a Sept. 16 shooting in a Baghdad
traffic square in which Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians. The FBI
and a federal grand jury are still looking into the incident. In the weeks following that
incident , a congressional committee released data showing that the company’s
contractors have been involved in nearly 200 shooting incidents in Iraq since
Jan. 1, 2005. At the heart of the scrutiny
is the question of accountability. Nearly five years after the U.S.-led
invasion, tens of thousands of armed civilian contractors have cycled through
the Iraq war zone. Not one has been charged
with a violent crime against an Iraqi. One of the earliest public
airings of the accountability issue arose out of the December 2006 shooting
in the Green Zone, which was first reported by The Virginian-Pilot in
January. The shooter, identified in
later media reports as Andrew Moonen, was one of about 1,000 armed security
contractors working in Iraq for Blackwater under a multimillion-dollar
contract with the State Department to protect American diplomatic personnel.
Within 36 hours after the shooting, he was fired and flown home. In diplomatic correspondence
obtained by The Pilot under the Freedom of Information Act, Vice President
Abdul-Mahdi assured the U.S. ambassador that he was trying to keep the
incident out of the public eye. Nevertheless, Abdul-Mahdi said, he hoped the
shooter would be brought to justice because Iraqis would not understand how a
foreigner could kill an Iraqi and be spirited back home a free man. According to State
Department documents obtained by Congress, the department and Blackwater
agreed on a $15,000 payment to be made to the family of the slain Iraqi
bodyguard. CNN reported that Moonen
went to work for another military contractor in Kuwait in February. Stewart Riley, a Seattle
lawyer who represents Moonen, said government lawyers have told him there is
an “ongoing investigation” of the case but have given him no indication of
whether his client will be charged. Meanwhile, in the year since
the Christmas Eve shooting, Blackwater has weathered a steady drumbeat of bad
news: - Five Blackwater
contractors were killed Jan. 23 when their helicopters came under attack
while protecting an American convoy. - In a harbinger of
heightened scrutiny of the private military industry by the new
Democratic-controlled Congress, a House panel heard emotional testimony Feb.
7 from family members of the four Blackwater contractors who were killed,
their bodies mutilated and hung from a bridge in Fallujah, Iraq, in March
2004. The families are suing Blackwater for wrongful death. - After encountering public
and political opposition in the Philippines, Blackwater said in April that
its plans to open an Asian branch on the site of the former U.S. naval base
at Subic Bay had been scrapped. - The Sept. 16 shootings in
Baghdad prompted angry Iraqi officials to demand that Blackwater be ousted
from the country and put the company’s lucrative diplomatic security contract
in jeopardy. - In October, a week after
Blackwater CEO Erik Prince assured Congress that Blackwater welcomes
increased accountability, the company abruptly pulled out of its
Washington-based trade group, which had just authorized an independent review
of its conduct. - A three-judge federal
appeals court panel ruled against Blackwater in October, allowing a
wrongful-death lawsuit against the company’s aviation affiliate to proceed in
Florida. The plaintiffs are relatives of three U.S. servicemen who were
killed, along with three civilian crew members, when a Blackwater aircraft
crashed into a mountainside in Afghanistan in 2004. The company is appealing
the decision. - Seven protesters were
arrested Oct. 20 at Blackwater’s Moyock headquarters after staging a
re-enactment of the Sept. 16 shootings. In December trials, all but one of
which were closed to the press and public, they were convicted of
trespassing. The verdicts are under appeal. - Rep. Henry Waxman,
D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
accused Blackwater in October of evading millions of dollars in taxes by
improperly classifying its security operatives as independent contractors,
not employees. The company denied the allegation. - State Department Inspector
General Howard Krongard, accused by Waxman of impeding an investigation into
alleged arms smuggling by Blackwater, resigned in December after it was
revealed that his brother, Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, had taken a position on
Blackwater’s advisory board. Alvin Krongard also gave up the Blackwater post. - Residents of tiny Potrero,
Calif., 45 miles east of San Diego, voted overwhelmingly Dec. 11 to recall
five members of an advisory planning board who had approved Blackwater’s
proposal to build a West Coast base on an 824-acre chicken and cattle ranch.
The company vowed to push ahead with the controversial plan despite the vote. - In December, one of
Blackwater’s K-9 handlers fatally shot a dog in The New York Times’ Baghdad
compound. A company spokeswoman said The Times’ dog had attacked one of
Blackwater’s bomb-sniffing dogs. External link: http://hamptonroads.com/2007/12/blackwater%2C-year-uncomfortable-spotlight |