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March 2nd,
2010 - Before Blackwater Case Failed, Legal Debate at DOJ News article from the
Associated Press |
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Before
Blackwater Case Failed, Legal Debate at DOJ By Matt Apuzzo Associated Press March 2, 2010 Washington - As the U.S.
investigated Blackwater Worldwide contractors for a deadly 2007 shooting in
Baghdad, a legal debate was playing out behind the scenes at the Justice
Department between two veteran prosecutors. One urged caution. The other
aggressively pushed the case forward. The disagreement
foreshadowed problems that in December led a judge to dismiss manslaughter
charges against five contractors who fired machine guns and grenades into a
busy intersection. The dismissal outraged Iraqis and sent the Obama
administration scrambling to repair a case that is all but in ruins. In dismissing the case, U.S.
District Judge Ricardo Urbina said prosecutors ignored the advice of senior
Justice Department officials and built their case on sworn statements that
had been given under a promise of immunity. Documents unsealed Tuesday in
response to a request by The Associated Press and The Washington Post paint
the clearest picture yet of how the case prosecution went awry. Immediately after the Sept.
16, 2007, shooting, Blackwater contractors told State Department
investigators what happened. Two days later, the security gave written
statements under a promise that nothing they said could be used against them
in a criminal case. Because of that deal,
prosecutors had to make sure they didn't use the written statements to build
their case. It was unclear, however whether prosecutors could use the Sept.
16 interviews. Ken Kohl, the lead
prosecutor, believed he could. And he thought Raymond Hulser agreed. Hulser is among the Justice
Department's experts on Garrity V. New Jersey, the Supreme Court case that
spells out how to deal with these kinds of immunity deals. Hulser did not
agree with Kohl. "I think that we agreed
that there was an issue regarding the Sept. 16, the earlier statements,"
Hulser testified in one of several closed-door hearing last year that
ultimately persuaded Urbina to dismiss the case. "My view was that the
risk was such that they shouldn't take it. His view was that they had a good
chance of arguing the other way." Hulser repeatedly tried to
warn Kohl that building the investigation on those interviews could
jeopardize the case. "We've got an uphill
battle on this Garrity issue, and the burden of proof is ours, so we need to
be particularly cautious," Hulser wrote in an e-mail to Michael
Mullaney, who served as the middle man between Hulser and Kohl. The Justice Department
installed Mullaney as a middle man as a safeguard to protect tainted evidence
from sinking the case. But that structure just made things more confusing,
attorneys said in testimony unsealed Friday. When Mullaney relayed
Hulser's warnings, Kohl said he either didn't read them or didn't interpret
them the way they were intended. Kohl's team did use the Sept. 16 statements,
a strategy that ultimately helped unravel the prosecution. Kohl acknowledged that at
times his investigation went "close to the line" but said he always
thought he had the approval of his supervisors. In his ruling, Urbina said
Kohl simply ignored the warnings. The Justice Departments internal affairs
division, the Office of Professional Responsibility, is investigating the
Blackwater prosecutors for their handling of the case. The Justice Department now
faces an uphill battle resurrecting the case. Traveling in Iraq earlier this
year, Vice President Joe Biden told Iraqi leaders that the U.S. would not
give up. The five guards are Donald
Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former
Marine from Knoxville, Tenn.; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester,
N.H.; Nick Slatten, a former Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn., and Paul
Slough, an Army veteran from Keller, Texas. Associated Press writer Pete
Yost contributed to this report. Copyright © 2010 The
Associated Press. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gew3dv19JkSK3-DtzwDvCn-5g8TAD9E6QEC01 Interference Seen in
Blackwater Inquiry By James Risen New York Times March 2, 2010 Washington - An official at
the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he
believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious
investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide
security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to
court testimony made public on Tuesday. David Farrington, a State
Department security agent in the American Embassy at the time of the shooting
in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, told prosecutors that some of his colleagues were
handling evidence in a way they hoped would help the Blackwater guards avoid
punishment for a crime that drew headlines and raised tensions between
American and Iraqi officials. The description of Mr.
Farrington’s account came in closed-door testimony last October from Kenneth
Kohl, the lead prosecutor in the case against the Blackwater guards. “I talked to David
Farrington, who was concerned, who expressed concern about the integrity of
the work being done by his fellow officers,” Mr. Kohl recalled. He said that
Mr. Farrington had said he was in meetings where diplomatic security agents
said that after they had gone to the scene and picked up casings and other
evidence, “They said we’ve got enough to get these guys off now.” Mr. Farrington, who also
testified in a closed-door pretrial hearing in the Nisour Square shooting
case, declined to comment. His own testimony has not yet been unsealed by the
court. Blackwater became a
multimillion-dollar contractor as the United States escalated wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, providing protection for State Department officials and
covert work for the Central Intelligence Agency. The company, dominated by
former American officials, has been described by critics as being too close
to the intelligence and diplomatic agencies for which it worked. The New York Times has
reported that the Justice Department was investigating allegations that
Blackwater had tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of
retaining their security business after the deadly shooting. In December, a federal judge
dismissed the criminal charges against five former Blackwater guards in the
Nisour Square shooting, and criticized the Justice Department’s handling of
the case, chiding prosecutors for trying to use statements from defendants
who had been offered immunity and testimony from witnesses tainted by news
media leaks. The documents made public on
Tuesday show that before the December dismissal, prosecutors and Federal
Bureau of Investigation agents working on the Nisour Square case took the
stand in October to argue that they had plenty of untainted evidence. In a
closed-door hearing, they also contended that they had evidence that, in the
immediate aftermath of the shootings, there had been a concerted effort to
make the case go away, both by Blackwater and by at least some embassy
officials. In fact, prosecutors were
told that the embassy had never conducted any significant investigation of
any of the numerous shooting episodes in Iraq involving Blackwater before the
Nisour Square case, according to the documents. In his October testimony,
Mr. Kohl described how the Justice Department had “serious concerns” about
obstruction of justice in the case. He also said prosecutors briefed Kenneth
Wainstein, then an assistant attorney general, on evidence of obstruction by
Blackwater management. Mr. Kohl disclosed that
prosecutors had discovered that five Blackwater guards who were on the convoy
involved in the Nisour Square shootings reported to Blackwater management
what they had seen. One guard, he said, described it as “murder in cold
blood.” Mr. Kohl said that Blackwater management never reported these
statements by the guards to the State Department. He said that prosecutors
informed senior Justice Department officials as early as 2007 that they were
investigating whether Blackwater managers “manipulated” the official statements
made by the guards to the State Department. But he testified that
prosecutors also had evidence of embassy officials thwarting the inquiry. In
addition to the testimony of Mr. Farrington, Mr. Kohl said that United States
military officials had told prosecutors that they witnessed State Department
investigators “badgering” Iraqi witnesses. He also testified that
diplomatic security agents, who conducted the embassy’s initial investigation
before the F.B.I. and Justice Department began a criminal inquiry, left out
important facts from their report relating to a witness’s account. Philip J. Crowley, assistant
secretary of state for public affairs, defended the department’s handling of
the Nisour Square case. He said: “Seventeen people died in broad daylight. We
took the case seriously from the outset. We invited the F.B.I. to join the
investigation, and more than two years later, we continue to pursue the case
and seek justice.” Officials from Blackwater,
now known as Xe Services, did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Kohl described what he
believed was “an undercurrent of obstruction in this case.” He said that a Blackwater
official had told him that the whole criminal investigation could have been
avoided if the State Department had given Blackwater officials more time to
prepare the official statements by the guards involved in the shooting. “He said, do you know why
this all happened, why we’re here?” Mr. Kohl recalled. “Because the State
Department didn’t give us enough time to work on these statements with these
guys. We only had a couple hours, and we needed to get these over to the
embassy.” The dismissal of the
criminal case against the guards for Blackwater in the Nisour Square shooting
prompted bitter protests by Iraqis against the United States, and it led the
Iraqi government to threaten to bring a lawsuit of its own in the case. The Justice Department has
now appealed the dismissal. Blackwater has settled one series of civil
lawsuits brought by victims of the Nisour Square shooting, but another
lawsuit brought by another group of victims is still pending. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/middleeast/03blackwater.html |