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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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November 11th,
2009 - Blackwater Said to Pursue Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died |
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Blackwater Said to Pursue
Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died By Mark Mazzetti & James Risen New York Times November 11, 2009 Washington - Top executives
at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to
Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their
support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally
shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials. Blackwater approved the cash
payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly
shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about
reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi
investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top
Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and
company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating
license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and
private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Four former executives said
in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then Blackwater’s president, had
approved the bribes and that the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where the
company maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The
executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi
officials or the identities of the potential recipients. Blackwater’s strategy of
buying off the government officials, which would have been illegal under
American law, created a deep rift inside the company, according to the former
executives. They said that Cofer Black, who was then the company’s vice
chairman and a former top C.I.A. and State Department official, learned of
the plan from another Blackwater manager while he was in Baghdad discussing
compensation for families of the shooting victims with United States Embassy
officials. Alarmed about the secret
payments, Mr. Black cut short his talks and left Iraq. Soon after returning
to the United States, he confronted Erik Prince, the company’s chairman and
founder, who did not dispute that there was a bribery plan, according to a
former Blackwater executive familiar with the meeting. Mr. Black resigned the
following year. Stacy DeLuke, a spokeswoman
for the company, now called Xe Services, dismissed the allegations as
“baseless” and said the company would not comment about former employees. Mr.
Black did not respond to telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment. Reached by phone, Mr.
Jackson, who resigned as president early this year, criticized The New York
Times and said, “I don’t care what you write.” The four former Blackwater
executives, who had held high-ranking posts at the company, would speak only
on condition of anonymity. Two of them said they took part in talks about the
payments; the two others said they had been told by several Blackwater
officials about the discussions. In agreeing to describe those conversations,
the four officials said that they were troubled by a pattern of questionable
conduct by Blackwater, which had led them to leave the company. A senior State Department
official said that American diplomats were not aware of any payoffs to Iraqi
officials. Blackwater continued
operating as the prime contractor providing security for the United States
Embassy in Baghdad until spring, when the Iraqi government said it would deny
the company an operating license. The State Department replaced Blackwater
with a rival in May, but the company still does some work for the department
in Iraq on a temporary basis. Five Blackwater guards involved
in the shooting are facing federal manslaughter charges, and their trial is
scheduled to start in February in Washington. A sixth guard pleaded guilty in
December. The company has never faced criminal charges in the case, although
the Iraqi victims brought a civil lawsuit in federal court against Blackwater
and Mr. Prince. Separately, a federal grand
jury in North Carolina, where the company has its headquarters, has been
conducting a lengthy investigation into it. One of the former executives said
that he had told federal prosecutors there about the plan to pay Iraqi
officials to drop their inquiries into the Nisour Square case. If Blackwater
followed through, the company or its officials could face charges of
obstruction of justice and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which
bans bribes to foreign officials. Officials at the United
States Attorney’s Office in Raleigh declined to comment on their
investigation, and it is not clear whether the payment scheme is a focus of
the grand jury. Federal prosecutors in North
Carolina have interviewed a number of former Blackwater employees about a
variety of issues, including allegations of weapons smuggling, according to
several former employees who say they have testified before the grand jury or
been interviewed by prosecutors, as well as lawyers familiar with the matter.
Two former employees have pleaded guilty to weapons charges and are believed
to be cooperating with prosecutors. Since 2001, Blackwater has
undergone explosive growth, not only from security contracts in Iraq and
Afghanistan, but also from classified work for the Central Intelligence
Agency that included taking part in a now defunct program to assassinate
leaders of Al Qaeda and to load missiles on Predator drones. The Nisour Square shooting
was the bloodiest and most controversial episode involving Blackwater in the
Iraq war. At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on
Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire
in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even
launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and
dozens more were wounded. The matter set off an
international outcry and intense debates in Iraq and the United States over
the role of private contractors in war zones. Many Iraqis condemned
Blackwater, which they had long seen as an arrogant rogue operation, and
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki declared that the Blackwater shooting was
a challenge to his nation’s sovereignty. His government opened investigations
into the episode and previous fatal shootings by Blackwater guards, and
threatened to bar the company from operating in the country. Those responses deeply
worried Blackwater officials. Before the Nisour Square shootings, the company
had operated in Iraq without a license largely because the Iraqi government
had never enforced the rules. Being blocked from the country would have been
costly - the State Department deal was Blackwater’s single biggest contract.
From 2004 through today, the company has collected more than $1.5 billion for
its work protecting American diplomats and providing air transportation for
them inside Iraq. “It would hurt us,” Mr.
Prince, the chairman, said in an interview in January about losing the
diplomatic security contract. “It would not be a mortal blow, but it would
hurt us.” The former Blackwater
executives said it was not clear who proposed paying off Iraqi officials. But
after Mr. Jackson, the former company president, approved the plan, the cash
for the payoffs was taken from Amman and given to Rich Garner, then a top
manager in Iraq, the former executives said. One of those executives said
that officials in Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which is responsible for
operating licenses, were the intended recipients. Mr. Garner, who still works
for the company, could not be reached for comment. The former executives said
they did not know whether Mr. Garner was involved in decisions about the
bribery scheme. At that time, Mr. Black was
in a series of discussions with Patricia A. Butenis, the deputy chief of
mission at the American Embassy in Baghdad, about compensation payments to
the Nisour Square victims. According to former Blackwater officials, Mr.
Black was furious when he learned that the payoff money was being funneled
into Iraq, and he swiftly broke off the talks with Ms. Butenis. “We are out of here,” Mr.
Black told a colleague, one former executive said. After returning to the
United States, Mr. Black and Robert Richer, who had also joined Blackwater
after a C.I.A. career, separately confronted Mr. Prince with their concerns
about the plan, one former Blackwater executive said. Mr. Richer left Blackwater
in February 2008, followed by Mr. Black several months later, amid a battle
inside Blackwater between former C.I.A. officers working at the company’s
office outside Washington and executives at Blackwater’s headquarters in
North Carolina. The former officials said that
Mr. Black, Mr. Richer and others believed that Blackwater had cultivated a
cowboy culture that was contemptuous of government rules and regulations, and
that some of the company’s leaders - former members of the Navy Seals
including Mr. Prince and Mr. Jackson - had pushed the boundaries of legality.
Contacted by telephone, Mr. Richer would not discuss specifics of why he left
the company. Ms. Butenis, now the United
States ambassador to Sri Lanka, declined to comment for this article. But
other State Department officials confirmed that embassy officials had met
with Blackwater executives to encourage them to compensate the victims of
Nisour Square. The United States military
had a well-established program for paying families of civilian victims of American
military operations, but at the time of the Nisour Square shooting, the State
Department did not have a similar program, officials said. In interviews, three Iraqis
wounded in Nisour Square said that Blackwater had made payments of several
thousand dollars to them and other victims. Still, some of them joined the
civil lawsuit against Blackwater. Settlement talks collapsed Tuesday,
according to Susan Burke, a lawyer for the victims. Even after the furor that
was set off by the shootings, State Department officials made it clear that
they did not believe they could operate in Baghdad without Blackwater, and
Iraqi officials eventually dropped their public demands for the company’s
immediate ouster. Raed Jarrar, the Iraq
consultant to the American Friends Service Committee, said in a recent
interview that the Maliki government had gone too easy on Blackwater. “They
had two different messages,” he said. “The Iraqi public, and even the Iraqi
Parliament, was told that all private contractors would be pulled out of the
country, while the contractors and the State Department were told the
opposite.” In late 2008, the Bush
administration and the Iraqi government hammered out an agreement governing
the role of security contractors in Iraq. Under the new rules, security
contractors lost their immunity from Iraqi laws, which had been granted in
2004 by L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority,
which ran the country after the start of the American-led war. The Iraqi
government also made it mandatory for security contractors to obtain licenses
to operate in the country. In March 2009, the Iraqis
said that the company would not be awarded a license. Two months later, the
State Department replaced it with a competing security contractor, Triple
Canopy. Barclay Walsh contributed
research from Washington, and Mohammed Hussein from Baghdad. Copyright © 2009 The New
York Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html Ex-Blackwater
official ‘unaware’ of any bribe plot; Iraq probing news report From Cable Network News November 11, 2009 A former vice president of
the Blackwater private security company said he was "unaware of any plot
or guidance for Blackwater to bribe Iraqi officials" as rage erupted
over the killings of 17 civilians by the company's security guards more than
two years ago. Cofer Black made the comment
after The New York Times reported in its Wednesday editions that Blackwater,
now operating under the name Xe, "authorized secret payments of about $1
million to Iraqi officials." Xe passed along his statement to CNN. Iraq is probing the report,
and Black denied actions the Times' sources said he took after allegedly
learning about the payments. He did say he had met with
U.S. Embassy officials during the "period described" in the Times
report "to discuss the best course of action" in the aftermath of
the September 2007 shootings in Nusoor Square. The company had been providing
security for diplomats and the sprawling U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. "Blackwater was
directed to provide some financial compensation to relatives of those Iraqi
victims, which embassy officials described as called for by Iraqi
custom," Black said. "During these meetings
with embassy officials, Blackwater sought State Department leadership in
dispensing any such good faith compensation from Blackwater to the victims'
relatives as Blackwater was subordinate to the State Department as its
security contractor." A senior State Department
official told CNN the State Department is unaware of any payments to Iraqi
government officials but said it did encourage Blackwater to compensate the
victims of the Nusoor Square shootings. In an exclusive interview
with CNN, Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said the ministry is
investigating the issue, and he asked the appropriate commanders to prepare a
report about the Times article and to follow up on the matter. "My door is open to
anyone with any complaints or information about this and I hope they provide
me with any information that may help with the investigation," he said. The Times report, which
attributed the information to former company officials, said the money was
"intended to silence" Iraqi criticism and "buy their
support" after the deadly incident, which exacerbated the feelings of
many Iraqis that private American security contractors have operated since
2003 with little regard for Iraqi law or life. Blackwater said its
employees were returning fire after armed insurgents attacked them, but an
Iraqi investigation concluded that the guards randomly fired at civilians
without provocation. According to the Times
article, four former executives said former Blackwater president Gary Jackson
OK'd the bribes. They said "the money was sent from Amman, Jordan,"
the report said, to a "top manager in Iraq." Black "learned of the
plan from another Blackwater manager while he was in Baghdad discussing
compensation for families of the shooting victims with United States Embassy
officials," the sources told the newspaper. "Alarmed about the
secret payments, Mr. Black cut short his talks and left Iraq. Soon after
returning to the United States, he confronted Erik Prince, the company's
chairman and founder, who did not dispute that there was a bribery plan,
according to a former Blackwater executive familiar with the meeting. Mr.
Black resigned the following year," The New York Times report said. The Times said four former
executives agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. It said two of the
executives said "they took part in talks about the payments" and
"two others said they had been told by several Blackwater officials
about the discussions." While saying he didn't know
about any bribery plot, Black also denied he had ever "confronted Erik
Prince or any other Blackwater official regarding any allegations of bribing
Iraqi officials." Iraq's al-Bolani said the
government has made a dent in the battle against bribery and want to get to
the bottom of this and other claims of corruption. "This issue is being
carefully followed up on," he said. "We will not allow anyone to
damage Iraq's reputation and the reputation of Iraq's institutions. But if
there are any bad individuals or individuals involved in illegal activity, we
will not go easy on them and the most severe legal measures will be taken
against anyone who could be involved and is proven to have been involved in
this and they will be referred to the judiciary." The Nusoor Square incident
touched a nerve in Iraq; al-Bolani called it a "major national
tragedy." "No Iraqi can ever
forget it, but the Iraqi government was committed and acted responsibly for
the sake of the Iraqi people and the reputation of Iraq," al-Bolani
said. In January, five former
security guards pleaded not guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and
other serious crimes stemming from their involvement in the incident. A sixth
former security guard has pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter
and attempted manslaughter. Because of the killings, the
U.S. State Department decided not to renew Xe's main contract in January
after the Iraqi government's refusal to renew the firm's operating license. Despite this, the company
has continued to operate in Iraq, with activity such as providing aviation
services for the State Department, but al-Bolani said it is phasing out its
work. Citing its commitments and
activities with some Iraqi institutions, he said he believes the company is
"in the process of completing some arrangements," a process that
could be lengthy. Triple Canopy, based in
Herndon, Virginia, has taken over the main contract from Xe in Iraq. Al-Bolani - asked what he
thought about the fact that Triple Canopy has hired former Blackwater
employees - said there will be no problems so long as law is obeyed. "The important thing
that everyone should know, when the Iraqi government and its institutions
take certain measures, they do not want to punish all individuals," he
said. "The incident that happened and other incidents and violations
that took place were caused by certain individuals." Al-Bolani said he expects
the improving security situation to lessen the need for private companies. Xe continues to hold
contracts with the State Department to protect American diplomats elsewhere
in the world. Prince resigned as head of the business in March, but he
remains the owner of the company. CNN's Suzanne Simons, Jomana
Karadsheh and Mohammed Jamjoom contributed to this report External link: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/11/11/iraq.blackwater/ |