|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
July 23rd,
2009 - Blackwater Seeks Gag Order |
|
By Jeremy Scahill National Public Radio July 23, 2009 It became common practice
during the Iraq occupation for the US State Department to work with private
security companies like Blackwater to help facilitate giving what amounted to
hush money to the families of Iraqis shot dead by private security contractors.
In fact, Blackwater's owner, Erik Prince, discussed this practice when he
testified in front of Congress in October 2007 and admitted to paying $20,000
to a Blackwater victim's family and $5,000 to another. "We don't determine
that value," Prince told Congress when asked how his company decides how
much an Iraqi life is worth. "That's kind of an Iraqi-wide policy. We
don't make that one." Now, Blackwater (which
recently renamed itself "Xe") is attempting to use other means to
silence its victims. On July 20, the company's high-powered lawyers from
Mayer Brown, which boasts that it represents eighty-nine of the Fortune 100
companies and thirty-five of the fifty largest US banks, filed a motion in
the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to impose a gag
order on Iraqi civilians suing the company. The motion also seeks to silence
the lawyers representing the families of Iraqis allegedly killed or injured
by Blackwater in a series of violent incidents spanning several years. Four
cases in the Washington, DC, area were recently consolidated before Judge
T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions.
After preliminary issues are resolved, each case is slated to be tried
individually. The July 20 motion, filed on
behalf of Blackwater by Peter H. White of Mayer Brown, requests that Judge
Ellis issue "an Order restraining extrajudicial statements relating to
these cases by the parties and their counsel to ensure that all parties
receive a fair trial and a decision from an impartial jury." The motion
specifically seeks to prohibit statements to "the national and local
news media." At the same time, according
to a court filing, Blackwater is also asking Judge Ellis to seal evidence
that Blackwater claims is confidential or could impact national security. The
company argues that if its contracts with the State Department and its
"Tactical Standard Operating Procedure" guide are publicly
revealed, it "could give valuable information to those who wish to plan
more effective attacks against diplomatic personnel stationed in Iraq."
Susan Burke, the lead attorney on the civil lawsuits against Blackwater, is
not contesting Blackwater's request to seal these specific documents - primarily
because they will still remain evidence. But, it does mean that the public
will not be able to view them. "Blackwater is basically trying to keep
from public view all of the evidence that shows their criminality," says
Burke. "They are trying to ensure that we cannot apprise the public of
the progress of the lawsuit." Blackwater's gag-order
motion focuses at length on Burke. It cites her labeling of Erik Prince as
"a modern-day merchant of death" whose "repeated illegal
conduct ... must be stopped" and then lists statements by Burke and
other lawyers that Blackwater says "are merely the latest in a long line
of inflammatory public utterances": - The death of plaintiff
Sa'adoon was "part of a pattern of illegal Xe-Blackwater shootings
around the globe known to company management," and part of a
"culture of lawlessness and unaccountability" fostered by the
company. - The deaths of plaintiffs
in the Hassoon case "reflect the pattern and practice of recklessness in
the use of deadly force" by Blackwater "mercenaries" who have
"flouted the laws of the United States and their host nation Iraq." - "Xe-Blackwater's
repeated illegal conduct has caused hundreds of unnecessary deaths and
thousands of unnecessary injuries. This shooting of [plaintiff] Rabea was not
an isolated event. Xe-Blackwater personnel repeatedly and routinely shot for
no reason as they prowled the streets of Iraq." When asked about these
specific statements, Burke quickly shot back: "It's all accurate. Those
are all completely accurate statements. I stand by what I said." The Blackwater legal team
argues "there is no constitutional right to sway potential jurors
through press releases, media interviews, and other extrajudicial statements.
'Legal trials,' the Supreme Court has observed, 'are not like elections, to
be won through the use of the meeting-hall, the radio and the newspaper.'" Burke's partner in the
lawsuit, the Center for Constitutional Rights, says it will fight vigorously
against Blackwater's attempt to silence their Iraqi clients and attorneys.
"Blackwater has consistently spent millions of dollars on PR and public advocacy
to try to promote their position and this is something that they have done
before," says Bill Quigley, CCR's Legal Director. "This is a
blatant attempt to gag the First Amendment rights of the individual Iraqis,
their families, their lawyers and the public at large and to bury these
factual allegations under a cone of silence. It's not new for
Blackwater." Judge Ellis has scheduled a
public hearing on Blackwater's requests for sealed evidence for July 28 at
5:30 pm,, where journalists and the public can express their views to the
judge. A hearing on the gag order request is set for August 7. Both will be
held in the Eastern District of Virginia court. It is possible that
Blackwater could ask the State Department to intervene on the company's behalf
to support the sealing of documents, as Blackwater has done in the past with
the Department of Defense. "I would encourage the State Department, the
Obama administration and anybody else that thinks that Blackwater's misdeeds
should be kept out of the public eye to really think very, very carefully
before advancing that position publicly," says CCR's Quigley. As for the
gag order, among the arguments Burke could make is this: Blackwater itself
has a record of leaking information from court cases to the media. Earlier this year, lawyers
from the US Justice Department prosecuting five Blackwater operatives for the
September 2007 Nisour Square massacre accused Blackwater's attorneys of
improperly passing court discovery material to journalists, specifically Matt
Apuzzo of the Associated Press. Apuzzo wrote several stories based on leaked
"evidence" that supported Blackwater's line on the case, namely
that their men fired in self-defense. (Apuzzo is a reporter with a track
record of confronting US government attempts to keep information from the
public or "off the record." There is no allegation Apuzzo engaged
in improper or unethical conduct in covering Blackwater.) On April 6, 2009, US Attorney
Jeffrey A. Taylor wrote: “Since the prosecutors sent a letter to the
defendants on December 3, 2008, formally advising them to surrender
themselves for arrest, there have been a number of documents and other
material associated with this case that have been selectively provided to Mr.
Matt Apuzzo, a reporter for the Associated Press wire service. In each
instance, the material was provided to Mr. Apuzzo in an apparent attempt to
influence improperly the opinions of prospective jurors at a trial in this
case. ... [Blackwater's] counsel have insisted on the right to disseminate
copies of discovery material to third parties as they deem appropriate, and
have declined to accept language that would place enforceable limitations on
what those third parties can do with the material.” The judge in that case
issued an order clarifying the rules, and Blackwater's lawyers, who insisted
they had done nothing wrong, reached an agreement with prosecutors not to
leak information. This case shows that "it's Blackwater, not us, that
has been violating court strictures," says Burke. "For them to
actually be bringing this on against us is ridiculous. There's nothing we've
done that would merit any kind of order." Quigley sees Blackwater's
attempt to gag the Iraqi victims, their families and the attorneys
representing them as an attack on the public's right to information about a
government contractor that has been paid more than $1 billion in US taxpayer
funds. "Blackwater is concerned about what the lawyers say and what the
parties say and what's in the record, but what they're really concerned about
is that journalists will cover it," says Quigley. "And so, even
though this isn't an attempt directly to gag journalists, it's clearly - the
thrust of this thing is to deprive journalists of any information that they
can use to write about Blackwater or to hold Blackwater accountable or even
to discuss the issues of hired mercenaries by our government." Another interesting line to
emerge in Blackwater's motion is that the company now prefers to be called by
one of its recently created alternate identities, "US Training
Center." One would be forgiven for thinking this is an Olympic facility,
instead of a mercenary operation. The lawyer representing Blackwater, Peter
H. White, boasts in his bio that he is "listed in The Best Lawyers in
America - White Collar Criminal Defense." Blackwater/Xe/US Training
Center did not respond to a request for comment. External link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106914797 |