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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 10th,
2008 - Iraq Contractor in Shooting Case Makes Comeback |
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Iraq
Contractor in Shooting Case Makes Comeback By James Risen New York Times May 10, 2008 Washington - Last fall, Blackwater
Worldwide was in deep peril. Guards for the security
company were involved in a shooting in September that left at least 17 Iraqis
dead at a Baghdad intersection. Outrage over the killings prompted the Iraqi
government to demand Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and led to a
criminal investigation by the F.B.I., a series of internal investigations by
the State Department and the Pentagon, and high-profile Congressional
hearings. But after an intense public
and private lobbying campaign, Blackwater appears to be back to business as
usual. The State Department has
just renewed its contract to provide security for American diplomats in Iraq
for at least another year. Threats by the Iraqi government to strip Western
contractors of their immunity from Iraqi law have gone nowhere. No charges
have been brought in the United States against any Blackwater guard in the
September shooting, either, and the F.B.I. agents in Baghdad charged with
investigating whether Blackwater guards have committed any crimes under
United States law are sometimes protected as they travel through Baghdad by
Blackwater guards. The chief reason for the
company’s survival? State Department officials said Friday that they did not
believe they had any alternative to Blackwater, which supplies about 800
guards to the department to provide security for diplomats in Baghdad.
Officials say only three companies in the world meet their requirements for
protective services in Iraq, and the other two do not have the capability to
take on Blackwater’s role in Baghdad. After the shooting in September, the
State Department did not even open talks with the other two companies,
DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, to see if they could take over from
Blackwater, which is based in North Carolina. “We cannot operate without
private security firms in Iraq,” said Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary
of state for management. “If the contractors were removed, we would have to
leave Iraq.” Still, serious risks remain
for Blackwater and at least some of its current and former personnel. A
federal grand jury continues to consider evidence in the Baghdad shooting.
Although the company is not likely to face any criminal charges, people
involved in the case say that some Blackwater guards involved in the shooting
are cooperating with the F.B.I. as it pursues evidence against other guards. Separately, a former
Blackwater guard is under criminal investigation for the December 2006
shooting death of an Iraqi guard for an Iraqi vice president, and may soon
face federal charges. In a third case, two former Blackwater workers pleaded
guilty to weapons-related charges, but both received sentences that included
no jail time in return for their cooperation with federal prosecutors in a
broader investigation. A House committee has also
asked the Internal Revenue Service to begin an inquiry into whether
Blackwater has designated its guards as independent contractors rather than
employees to in order to avoid paying and withholding federal taxes. The
State Department renewed the security contract for only one year - just long
enough to take the company into the start of the next administration. And
Blackwater’s political connections to the Bush administration may not serve
it well if the Democrats win the White House in November. Given the furor that
surrounded Blackwater after the September shooting in Baghdad, critics say
the decision to renew the company’s contract in Iraq is a sign of the Bush administration’s
inability to curb its reliance on outside contractors in the war. “The shooting incident was
like a hammer blow, but where are the consequences?” said Peter W. Singer, a
scholar at the Brookings Institute and author of “Corporate Warriors,” a book
about contractors in Iraq. “I think it points to the fact that the dependence
on contractors is like a drug addiction. They just can’t help themselves.” Representative Henry Waxman,
California Democrat who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee, which has been investigating Blackwater on several fronts,
said, “I can’t understand why Blackwater’s contract was renewed. It seems to
me the administration should have looked for others who could do the job,
including the U.S. military.” In the past administration
officials have dismissed the notion of using military personnel to guard
diplomats. Founded in 1997 by Erik
Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and heir to a family fortune made
in the auto parts industry, Blackwater began to generate controversy in Iraq
long before last September’s shooting. Blackwater had developed a reputation
among both Iraqis and American military personnel as a company that flaunted
a quick-draw image that led its security personnel to take overly aggressive
actions to protect the people they were paid to guard. Last year the State
Department acknowledged that Blackwater had been involved in significantly
more shootings per convoy mission than DynCorp and Triple Canopy, which
provide security for the State Department outside Baghdad. The shooting death of the
bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president in 2006 rankled the Iraqi government
well before last September’s shooting. An off-duty Blackwater guard who
American and Iraqi officials said had been drinking heavily was the sole
suspect. The off-duty Blackwater guard, Andrew J. Moonen, who no longer works
for the company and who is a former Army paratrooper, is now under criminal
investigation by federal prosecutors in Seattle. Although Mr. Moonen has not
been charged, his lawyer, Stewart Riley of Seattle, said that he had recently
been in contact about the case with prosecutors from the United States
Attorney’s Office in Seattle. People familiar with the
case said they believed that the Justice Department had recently concluded
that it had found a way to skirt some of the jurisdictional problems that in
the past made it difficult to bring charges in American courts for crimes
committed by contractors in Iraq. “I think they may come to a
decision on what to do with this case in the next three or four months,” said
one person familiar with the matter. Mr. Riley says that Mr. Moonen maintains
his innocence in the shooting. In addition, a wrongful
death lawsuit against Blackwater filed by the families of four Blackwater
guards killed in Falluja, Iraq, in 2004 - an event that prompted the first
major battle in Falluja between the American military and insurgents that
year - is also still pending. A federal appeals court is
expected to rule this year on whether the families can proceed with their
lawsuit or be forced into arbitration with Blackwater, an outcome the company
prefers, according to the families’ lawyer, Daniel Callahan of California. Donna Zovko of Cleveland,
the mother of Jerko Gerald Zovko, one of the Blackwater guards, says
Blackwater has stonewalled the families. “It is 1,501 days since he
was killed, and I don’t know one-tenth of what happened to him, and no one
seems to care," Mrs. Zovko said in an interview. Given so many headlines
about his company, Mr. Prince until recently seemed eager to tell his side of
the story, and there were reports that he planned to write a book. But on
Friday, Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said Mr. Prince’s book
project had been put on hold. Copyright 2008 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/world/middleeast/10blackwater.html |