The Blackwater Killings

2010/03/03 - Before Blackwater Case Failed, Legal Debate at DOJ

Wed, 3 Mar 2010 23:25:11 +0100

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

2010/02/23 - Daniel Brady et al vs. Xe Services: Legal Update

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:05:46 +0100

Daniel Brady et al vs. Xe Services LLC, Blackwater Security Consulting LLC et al
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina
Case No.: 5:09-cv-00449-BO (5:09-cv-00450-BO)
Filed on October 15th, 2009

Recent Filings:

February 17th, 2010 - Defendant Ridgeway’s Opposition to Conduct Jurisdictional Discovery

"[...] Comes now Defendant Jeremy P. Ridgeway (‘Mr. Ridgeway’), by counsel, pursuant to Local Rule 7.1, and hereby submits this Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Separated Motion for Leave to Conduct Jurisdictional Discovery (the ‘Opposition’). Plaintiffs’ Separated Motion for Leave to Conduct Jurisdictional Discovery (the ‘Motion’) should be denied because Plaintiffs have not established the requisite prima facie evidence of personal jurisdiction that is needed for the Court to grant Plaintiffs leave to conduct the discovery in question. The grounds for this Opposition are set forth more fully in the accompanying Memorandum in Support.

"Wherefore, Mr. Ridgeway requests respectfully that the Court deny Plaintiffs’ Motion. [...]"

February 16th, 2010 - Defendants Ball, [...] Reply to Opposition to Motion to Dismiss

"[...] Defendants Donald Wayne Ball, Dustin L. Heard, Evan Shawn Liberty, Nicholas Abrarn Slatten and Paul Alvin Slough hereby adopt, and refer the Court to the Corporate Defendants’ Reply Memorandum in Support of their Motion to Dismiss the Complaint or, in the Alternative, to Strike Exhibits, which is being filed today. [...]"

February 16th, 2010 - Corporate Defendants’ Memorandum in Support to Dismiss Complaint

"[...] Plaintiffs’ opposition to the Corporate Defendants’ motion to dismiss [...] describes an event that was undeniably tragic. Every tragic event that occurs throughout the world is not redressable through a lawsuit in the courts of the United States, however. The issue presented by this motion is whether the Complaint states a valid claim for relief against the Corporate Defendants. For all of the reasons stated herein and in the opening brief [...], it does not.

"[...] Plaintiffs are Iraqi citizens seeking compensation under Iraqi law for injuries allegedly sustained in the Iraq war zone at the hands of U.S. State Department contractors providing security services to U.S. diplomats. Such injuries are not redressable in this Court. [...]

"[...] Even if they were actionable here, Plaintiffs’ claims are deficient under Iraqi law. [...]"

January 25th, 2010 - Plaintiffs’ Motion for Leave to Conduct Jurisdictional Discovery

"[...] Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 7(b)(l), Local Civil Rule 7.1, EDNC, through undersigned counsel and upon the grounds set forth in the accompanying Memorandum of Law, Plaintiffs respectfully move the Court for an order allowing them a 90-day period to conduct limited discovery on the personal jurisdictional issue raised by Defendant Jeremy Ridgeway’s Motion to Dismiss and an additional twenty (20) days from the close of such discovery period to file a brief in opposition to said motion. In the alternative, if this Court does not grant Plaintiffs leave to conduct the requested limited discovery, Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court allow them twenty (20) days from the date of such ruling to respond to Defendant Ridgeway’s Motion to Dismiss. While Defendant Ridgeway’s counsel does not consent to Plaintiffs’ request for leave to conduct limited jurisdictional discovery, counsel does consent to Plaintiffs’ request for an additional twenty (20) days, from the date the Court rules on this Motion, to respond to Defendant Ridgeway’s Motion to Dismiss. [...]"

January 25th, 2010 - Plaintiffs’ Memorandum in Opposition to Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss

"[...] Plaintiffs, through counsel, respectfully submit this Memorandum of Law opposing defendants’ Motion to Dismiss and/or to Strike (‘Motion’). For the reasons that follow, defendants’ Motion should be overruled. Plaintiffs submit that this case should first be remanded to the state court from which defendants improperly removed it. Should the Court remand, the need to decide this Motion will be mooted. In any event, defendants’ Motion is meritless and should be rejected.

"Nature of the case

"This case is not about the United States military or the conduct of the war against terrorism in Iraq. This case is not about national security, nor is it about politics, and it does not implicate the separation of powers amongst co-equal branches of our government. Although the location of events is a public traffic circle known as Nisur Square in Baghdad, Iraq, none of the relevant events has any military or national security component whatsoever. There are no federal claims or causes of action raised in the Complaint.

"The defendants consist of a private company and its employees that were hired, as independent contractors, by the United States Department of State (‘DOS’) to provide bodyguard services to diplomats and related personnel. Defendants’ employees, per Blackwater’s contract with the DOS, were expressly prohibited from using deadly force except for purely defensive purposes. [...] Defendants, including the instant guard-defendants, also agreed to ‘comply with the laws of the United States and the host countries in which they are required to provide services under th[e] [WPPS II] contract.’ [...]"

2010/02/23 - U.S. vs. Slough, Slatten, Liberty, Heard & Ball: Legal Update

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:06:07 +0100

U.S. vs. Slough, Slatten, Liberty, Heard & Ball
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Case No.: 10-3006
Filed on January 29th, 2010

U.S. vs. Slough, Slatten, Liberty, Heard & Ball
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Case No.: CR-08-360
Filed on December 4th, 2008

Recent Filings:

February 12th, 2010 - Order

"[...] Upon consideration of appellant’s unopposed motion for extension of time to file brief, it is ordered that the motion be granted.

"The following revised briefing schedule will now apply in this case:

"Appellant’s Brief: April 30, 2010

"Appendix: April 30, 2010

"Appellees’ Brief: July 30, 2010

"Appellant’s Reply Brief: August 20, 2010 [...]"

January 29th, 2010 - Notice of Appeal

"[...] By an Order and Memorandum Opinion dated December 31, 2009, the district court dismissed the indictment.

"[...] I, the above-named appellant, hereby appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from the above-stated judgment.

"[...] United States of America, Appellant [...]"

2010/02/12 - Former Blackwater Employees Accuse Security Contractor of Defrauding Government

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:47:46 +0100

By Carol D. Leonnig & Nick Schwellenbach
Washington Post
February 12, 2010

This report is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and The Washington Post.

Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security contractor of defrauding the government for years through phony billing, including charging taxpayers for alcohol-filled parties, spa trips and a prostitute.

In court records unsealed this week, a husband and wife who worked for Blackwater said they have firsthand knowledge of the company falsifying invoices, double-billing federal agencies and improperly charging the government for personal expenses. They said they witnessed "systematic" fraud in the company's security contracts with the State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

Blackwater is the State Department's largest security contractor, and a State Department spokesman said Thursday that his agency and the Justice Department reviewed the allegations in 2008, when the lawsuit was filed under seal in federal court in Virginia. The spokesman, P.J. Crowley, could not determine what came of the review.

Brad Davis, a former Marine, served as a Blackwater team leader and security guard, including in Iraq. His wife, Melan Davis, worked as a finance and payroll employee, starting in Louisiana. Their lawsuit was filed under the False Claims Act, which allows whistle-blowers to win a portion of any money the government recovers as a result of the information. However, the Justice Department has chosen not to join them in pursuing their lawsuit, a decision that led to the suit being unsealed this week.

The company changed its name to Xe Services LLC last year. Xe spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke said Thursday that the Davises' allegations are false. "The allegations are without merit and the company will vigorously defend against this lawsuit," she said. "It is noteworthy that the government has declined to intervene in this action."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Blackwater became the largest of the State Department's private security contractors. It has since been paid billions of dollars to protect diplomatic employees in Iraq and Afghanistan and for other agencies' security missions. The company also became a major source of anti-American sentiment in Iraq because of repeated deadly shootings involving its guards.

Iraq moved to expel Blackwater after a September 2007 incident in which witnesses told the FBI that the company's security guards fired guns without provocation into a busy intersection, killing at least 14 Iraqis. The Justice Department charged six Blackwater guards in that incident. One pleaded guilty, and a judge dismissed the charges against the five others in December.

In their suit, the Davises assert that Blackwater officials kept a Filipino prostitute on the company payroll for a State Department contract in Afghanistan, and billed the government for her time working for male Blackwater employees in Kabul. The prostitute's salary was categorized as part of the company's "Morale Welfare Recreation" expenses, they alleged.

Melan Davis said in court papers that while working in Blackwater's finance department, she questioned how the company could bill the government for its workers' travel expenses to and from Iraq when it lacked the documentation for those trips. She said she later traveled to a hotel in Amman, Jordan, where Blackwater personnel often stopped en route to Iraq. While there, she said, corporate officers directed her and two co-workers to generate reams of false invoices for plane travel at inflated rates, so her Blackwater bosses could overcharge the government.

In one instance, the Davises allege, the company was paying inflated prices to a vendor whose work was billed to the Department of Homeland Security for services related to security after Hurricane Katrina. They said the overpayments allowed the vendor to provide a barbecue pit for Blackwater staff parties.

Melan Davis argues that Blackwater terminated her in February 2008 because she questioned fraudulent billing. Brad Davis resigned.

Schwellenbach works for the Center for Public Integrity. Staff writer Jerry Markon contributed to this report.

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021100232.html

2010/02/11 - Missteps, Errors and Miscommunication Doomed Blackwater Case

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:16:35 +0100

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post
February 11, 2010

When its investigation into a deadly and politically sensitive Baghdad shooting involving U.S. security contractors ran into major trouble, the Justice Department quickly handed it over to Kenneth Kohl, a seasoned and well-respected prosecutor.

Kohl, after all, had successfully prosecuted Colombian narco-terrorists, overseen the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks and won scores of hard-fought homicide trials. He seemed to be the perfect prosecutor to lead a complex and thorny investigation into the controversial actions of U.S. private contractors in a faraway war zone.

So, how then, with all the forewarning of the case's pitfalls and Kohl's experience and dedication, does the Justice Department now find itself defending the prosecutor's conduct? How could such a high-profile case, one that generated international headlines and roiled U.S.-Iraq relations, implode so badly? On Dec. 31, a federal judge threw out the charges against the five Blackwater security guards.

The questions come as the Justice Department last month launched its appeal of a scathing opinion by the well-respected judge, who ruled that the conduct of Kohl and other prosecutors was so egregious that it "requires dismissal of the indictment against all the defendants." The guards had been accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 20 others in an eruption of gunfire and grenade explosions in a busy Baghdad square on a sunny afternoon in 2007.

The stakes are high. It was the most serious incident involving security contractors in Iraq or Afghanistan and raised profound questions about the oversight of private U.S. guards in war zones. Fallout from the incident was so intense that it forced Blackwater to rename itself; it now goes by Xe Services. In a sign of the case's continuing significance in U.S.-Iraq relations, Vice President Biden took the unusual step of announcing the appeal of the case's dismissal while on a trip to Baghdad.

Legal experts have said the Justice Department faces a difficult task in winning a reversal, pointing to what they consider a detailed and well-reasoned opinion by U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, and could risk further embarrassment if another set of judges comes to similar conclusions. The Justice Department's reputation has already been marred by prosecutorial misconduct in the trial of then-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on corruption charges. A federal judge threw out Stevens's conviction, and a lawyer appointed by that judge is investigating Justice Department prosecutors over potential criminal contempt violations.

A review of Urbina's decision, recently unsealed court papers and interviews with dozens of prosecutors, investigators and defense lawyers paint a less-than-flattering picture. They reveal a passionate prosecutor who risked his life in Iraq to seek justice while pushing legal boundaries and an investigation plagued by missteps, miscommunication and bungling.

Even when Kohl's team took steps to protect the integrity of the investigation, the procedures proved inadequate to withstand three weeks of intense closed-door hearings.

Tough case to prosecute

Kohl declined to comment. But in an e-mailed statement, he wrote: "All of us who were involved in this case felt an obligation to the 34 victims who were killed or wounded at Nisoor Square to do everything we could, within the bounds of the law, to bring this case to trial in an American courtroom.

"We don't want federal prosecutors to flinch at taking on tough cases involving complex legal issues, and I worry that some of the reaction to the court's ruling will have that effect." He declined to elaborate.

Kohl, 50, grew up in the Chicago area and joined the Justice Department in 1985, straight out of the Northern Illinois University College of Law. He lives with his wife and two children in the D.C. suburbs.

The prosecutor quickly rose through the ranks of the U.S. attorney's office in the District. Several colleagues say Kohl never lost a homicide trial. They described him as an aggressive and zealous advocate for victims.

In more recent years, he was assigned national security cases, including the years-long investigation into the anthrax attacks. In 2007, Kohl won a conviction against a Colombian rebel leader who took three Americans hostage. The man was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Alex Barbeito, an FBI agent who worked on that case, said Kohl was meticulous and brave. "He came down to Bogota several times, despite death threats to U.S. prosecutors," Barbeito said. "To me, he's exactly the type of prosecutor an agent wants to handle complex international criminal cases."

Colleagues say Kohl was fearless in his pursuit of the Blackwater guards, visiting Baghdad three times. On one visit, while staying in a trailer in the Green Zone, the compound was hit by rockets and mortar shells, forcing Kohl to dive under his bunk for shelter.

"And yet he still went back," a fellow prosecutor wrote in an e-mail. "It would take a lot for me to go back there" after that.

The shooting that led to the criminal charges occurred Sept. 16, 2007, when 19 Blackwater Worldwide security guards were part of a heavily armed convoy code-named Raven 23. At the time, Blackwater had a contract to provide security for State Department officials in Iraq.

Just after noon that day, Raven 23 arrived in Nisoor Square, which is near the Green Zone, to support other Blackwater teams in response to a bombing.

Soon, one Raven 23 guard was shooting at a white car. Five others fired machine guns and grenade launchers. By the time the explosions stopped, at least 14 Iraqis were dead and 20 were wounded, authorities have said.

Within hours, State Department investigators were questioning the Blackwater guards. Four of the five guards later indicted in U.S. District Court in Washington - Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Donald Ball and Dustin Heard - told investigators that they opened fire in the square in self-defense. The fifth, Evan Liberty, did not say whether he fired a shot but said the others responded to an attack by insurgents.

Over the next few days, the guards gave written statements, and some were re-interviewed by State Department agents.

Guards’ tainted accounts

The shooting caused an uproar. The Iraqi government insisted that its citizens had been slain in an unprovoked attack. Meanwhile, the State Department and Blackwater said the guards had been responding to an ambush.

Caught in the middle was the Justice Department.

Ten days after the incident, State Department officials gave federal prosecutors and FBI agents copies of their initial reports, which included information from the guards' statements.

That caused an immediate problem. The guards had given written and follow-up interviews. The statements had been given under assurances that they would not be used in court and under warnings that the guards could be fired if they didn't cooperate.

Because of the assurances, prosecutors and FBI agents should never have been exposed to those accounts, so those agents and lawyers were reassigned. The Justice Department then turned the case over to Kohl.

Kohl and another prosecutor, Stephen Ponticello, examined the evidence and decided to treat the written statements as if they were out of bounds, court records indicate.

But Kohl did not think that the initial oral interviews deserved the same protection. To help Kohl navigate immunity questions, the Justice Department assigned Raymond Hulser, an expert on such issues, to act as a "taint" attorney. His job would be to screen material before it got into the hands of prosecutors and agents and to provide legal advice.

Within weeks, according to court records, Hulser was warning prosecutors and investigators to avoid the oral interviews because he thought a judge might rule that they were also protected.

In November, Hulser wrote an e-mail detailing his concerns to a Justice Department supervisor, Michael Mullaney, who forwarded the comments to Kohl. "Got it," Kohl responded. "Thanks Mike."

Hulser made a string of similar warnings over the next few months. Kohl says he never received the advice, and he denied having read the e-mail to which he had responded.

By January and February 2008, Kohl and FBI agents were interviewing the State Department investigators who had taken the guards' first oral statements - something that Hulser thought should have been avoided.

Kohl eventually obtained reports of the oral statements and used those accounts in search warrants to obtain drafts of the guards' written statements. Hulser was never told of the search-warrant effort.

A grand jury indicted the five guards in December 2008 on manslaughter and weapons charges. A sixth guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges.

By October, Urbina was holding closed-door hearings to determine whether the guards' statements had improperly influenced the investigation.

Kohl testified at the hearings, while other Justice Department lawyers defended the government's case. They argued that the oral statements were fair game and that any taint from the written accounts was harmless.

The guards' attorneys, who were paid by Blackwater, argued that prosecutors should have avoided the statements and that the case was too damaged to continue.

Urbina ruled in favor of the guards, writing that it was "objectively reasonable" for the contractors to believe that their first interviews were protected because they had given such statements in past shootings. But he didn't stop there.

The judge chastised prosecutors for not heeding the advice of Hulser and other experts. He also said that he did not believe Kohl's assertion that he had not received the expert's advice until it was too late.

The protected statements infected the entire case, Urbina wrote, and prosecutors even exploited them to decide whether to charge two of the guards. He was particularly perplexed that Kohl had thought it proper to use the oral accounts in search warrants for written statements, Urbina added.

The judge also accused prosecutors of not giving grand jurors evidence that was helpful to the guards. He found that Kohl and other prosecutors did not take steps to shield grand jurors from tainted testimony, particularly from three Blackwater guards who read the defendants' written statements or news stories describing them.

More subtle actions also irked the judge.

Kohl, for example, went out of his way to tell the grand jury that the five guards had given immunized statements to investigators, the judge wrote. Urbina felt that Kohl was playing dirty, "to color the grand jury's thinking," by alluding to the guards' statements without further elaboration.

"The explanations offered by the prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants' compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility," wrote Urbina, voicing astonishment that such a "seasoned and accomplished" lawyer could make so many blunders.

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/10/AR2010021004029.html

2010/02/10 - Iraq Orders Former Blackwater Security Guards Out

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:01:48 +0100

By Qassim Abdul-Zahra
Associated Press
February 10, 2010

Baghdad - Iraq has ordered hundreds of private security guards linked to Blackwater Worldwide to leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest on visa violations, the interior minister said Wednesday.

The order comes in the wake of a U.S. judge's dismissal of criminal charges against five Blackwater guards who were accused in the September 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.

It applies to about 250 security contractors who worked for Blackwater in Iraq at the time of the incident, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told The Associated Press.

Some of the guards now work for other security firms in Iraq, while others work for a Blackwater subsidiary, al-Bolani said. He said all "concerned parties" were notified of the order three days ago and now have four days left before they must leave. He did not name the companies.

Blackwater security contractors were protecting U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in Nisoor Square, a busy Baghdad intersection, on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

"We want to turn the page," al-Bolani said. "It was a painful experience, and we would like to go forward."

Backlash from the Blackwater shooting has been felt hardest by private security contractors, who typically provide protection for diplomats, journalists and aid workers. Iraqi security forces have routinely stopped security details at checkpoints to conduct searches and question guards.

Security guards will be required within the next 10 days to register their weapons with the Ministry of Interior, al-Bolani said. Failure to do so could result in arrest, he added.

Based in Moyock, North Carolina, Blackwater is now known as Xe Services, a name change that happened after six of the security firm's guards were charged in the Nisoor Square shooting. At the time, Blackwater was the largest of the State Department's three security contractors working in Iraq.

Xe Services said the company had no employees currently in Iraq, including with its subsidiary, Presidential Airways.

"Xe does not have one, single person in Iraq," said Xe spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined comment. The State Department in Washington did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.

The Blackwater guards involved in the incident said they were ambushed, but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said they let loose an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.

One of the accused guards pleaded guilty in the case, but a federal judge in Washington threw out charges against the other five in December, ruling that the Justice Department for mishandling the evidence.

The legal ruling infuriated Iraqis and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to seek punishment for the guards.

Last month, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden flew to Baghdad to assure Iraqis the Obama administration to appeal the case and bring the guards back to trial.

The shooting further strained relations between the United States and Iraq, leading the parliament in Baghdad to seek new laws that would clear the way for foreign contractors to be prosecuted in Iraqi courts. The U.S. government rejected those demands in the Blackwater case.

In January 2009, the State Department informed Blackwater that it would not renew its contracts to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq because of the Iraqi government's refusal to grant it an operating license.

But last September, the State Department said it temporarily extended a contract with Blackwater subsidiary Presidential Airways to provide air support for U.S. diplomats. The State Department has since ended its contracts with Xe, and DynCorp International has taken over air support.

The Justice Department now is investigating whether Blackwater tried to bribe Iraqi officials with $1 million to allow the company to keep working there after the Baghdad shooting, according to U.S. officials close to the probe.

Elsewhere in Iraq, attackers bombed an oil pipeline north of Baghdad, cutting production in half at a refinery in the capital, the Oil Ministry said Wednesday.

There were no injuries in Tuesday night's bombing in Rashidiya, just north of Baghdad.

Production at the Baghdad refinery was cut from 140,000 barrels per day to 70,000, said Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad.

The pipeline runs from oil fields in northern Kirkuk province to Baghdad. It has been the target of attacks for years, and has been bombed multiple times since 2004.

Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes, Mazin Yahya and Chelsea J. Carter in Baghdad; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/10/AR2010021001262.html

2010/02/09 - U.S. vs. Houston & Henson: Legal Update

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:12:26 +0100

U.S. vs. John A. Houston & Michael Henson
U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland
Case No.: 1:09-cr-00232-AW-1
Filed on September 4th, 2008

Recent Filings:

February 4th, 2010 - U.S.A.’s Memorandum to Admit Evidence Rel. to Def. Michael Henson

"[...] Facts giving rise to the charges:

"From approximately April 2007 until at least early 2008, the defendant was employed by SOS International [hereinafter SOSI], a company contracted by the United States Department of Defense, to provide services in Iraq. The defendant worked with the U.S. military and had access to firearms while in Iraq. During part of his employment, the defendant was supervised by codefendant John Houston, and both defendants Houston and Henson were otherwise personal friends.

"In early 2008, defendant Houston contacted Henson while the latter was on leave in the United States, specifically at his home in North Carolina, near Fort Bragg. Houston informed Henson that he was smuggling weapons from Iraq to Fort Bragg. Houston also asked Henson if he wanted to secrete any materials in the smuggled shipment and to retrieve the smuggled firearms upon their illicit arrival at Fort Bragg. Henson responded, via e-mail, that he concurred with the arrangements and that he would retrieve the shipment of smuggled weapons upon their arrival at Fort Bragg.

"Prior to his indictment and pursuant to their investigation of co-defendant John Houston, law enforcement officials contacted the defendant. The defendant agreed to speak with law enforcement officials on several occasions in late 2008 and early 2009. The defendant, however, made multiple false statements during the course of said interviews and meetings, including misrepresenting the fact that he had ever seen a particular weapon in co-defendant John Houston’s possession. The defendant, however, subsequently admitted that the weapon belonged to him [i.e., Henson] and that he previously observed said weapon under Houston’s bed in Iraq a short time before that weapon was one of eight others smuggled into the United States by both Houston and Henson. [...]"

February 1st, 2010 - Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Venue

"[...] Defendant John A. Houston, through his attorneys, James Wyda, Federal Public Defender for the District of Maryland, and Michael T. Citara Manis, Assistant Federal Public Defender, hereby requests this Honorable Court to dismiss the indictment herein for lack of venue in Maryland, or in the alternative, to order that this case be transferred to another, more appropriate district. [...]"

January 28th, 2010 - U.S.A.’s Memorandum to Admit Evidence Rel. to Def. John Houston

"[...] Facts giving rise to the charges:

"From approximately April 2007 to August 2008, the defendant worked in Iraq for two companies contracted by the United States Department of Defense. From approximately April 2007 to May 2008, the defendant was employed by SOS International [hereinafter SOSI]. He thereafter obtained employment with MPRI until August 2008. At various times during his employment in Iraq, the defendant worked as a military analyst and in a supervisory capacity. While in Iraq, the defendant worked with the U.S. military and had access to firearms.

"From approximately mid-2007, the defendant approached U.S. military soldiers and asked the soldiers to unlawfully smuggle weapons from Iraq into the U.S. on his behalf. A U.S. soldier reported the matter to his superiors. Subsequently, in a series of e-mails in early 2008, the defendant arranged with the U.S. soldier and co-defendant Michael Henson to unlawfully smuggle firearms from Iraq to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in a manner that would evade U.S. military and civilian customs regulations and inspections. The defendant then transported a bag of weapons via two SOSI employees under his supervision to the U.S. soldier, who ostensibly had agreed to secrete the weapons to Fort Bragg on behalf of the defendant. Co-defendant Michael Henson agreed to collect the weapons once they arrived at Fort Bragg. Military investigators, however, seized the weapons before they departed Iraq. The weapons seized included eight machine guns and one semi-automatic pistol. [...]"

2010/02/01 - AP Source: DOJ Probing Alleged Blackwater Payments

Wed, 3 Feb 2010 00:04:06 +0100

By Matt Apuzzo
Associated Press Writer
February 1, 2010

Washington - The Justice Department is investigating whether security contractor Blackwater Worldwide tried to bribe Iraqi officials to allow the company to keep working there after a fatal shooting involving Blackwater guards, according to a person close to the investigation.

The investigation in Raleigh, N.C., follows a November report by The New York Times that said executives at the North Carolina-based company authorized about $1 million in payments to Iraqi officials in 2007. Blackwater had been the source of tremendous anti-American sentiment in Iraq following the deadly shooting of 17 Iraqis in a crowded intersection.

A person close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, said the Justice Department's Fraud Section is working with federal prosecutors in North Carolina to investigate whether Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, violated U.S. laws prohibiting bribery of foreign officials.

The Times first reported the existence of the investigation Monday.

Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined to comment. There was no immediate comment from the company.

In November, the newspaper cited unnamed sources saying Blackwater's then-president, Gary Jackson, approved the payments. The Times' sources said Blackwater vice chairman Cofer Black, a former top CIA and State Department official, learned of the plan while in Baghdad discussing compensation with U.S. Embassy officials and confronted company CEO Erik Prince.

But Black himself has denied the account. He told The Associated Press that Blackwater was directed to provide "to provide some financial compensation to relatives of those Iraqi victims." He said he never confronted Prince or anyone else at Blackwater and was unaware of any plot to bribe Iraqi officials.

Similarly, Iraqi lawyer Jaafar al-Mousawi told the Times that he worked with top Blackwater officials to spend up to $1 million to compensate the families of victims. He said that he was unaware of any bribery efforts and believed that news reports misinterpreted the victim compensation as bribes.

The Times said Monday that present and former officials agreed to talk to the paper only on grounds their identities not be publicly divulged. The activities of the company then known as Blackwater have remained under scrutiny in the years since the shootings in Baghdad's Nisour Square.

Last week, Vice President Joe Biden, during a visit to Iraq, announced that the Obama administration will appeal a federal court decision in the United States that dismissed manslaughter charges against five guards who worked for Blackwater Worldwide.

His announcement came after a meeting in Baghdad with President Jalal Talabani.

The U.S. government initially turned aside Iraqi demands that the American contract employees face trial in the Iraqi court system. But after a lengthy investigation in this country, U.S. prosecutors did decide to charge five of the contractors with manslaughter, and they accepted a guilty plea from a sixth defendant.

But the case collapsed on Dec. 31 when U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina in Washington dismissed the case, ruling that the Justice Department had mishandled evidence and violated the guards' constitutional rights.

Eds: Associated Press Writer Mike Baker in Raleigh contributed to this story.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

External link: http://tinyurl.com/ygzg9h4

2010/01/30 - Father Pins Hopes on Last Blackwater Lawsuit

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:38:10 +0100

By Doug Miller
Charlotte Observer
January 30, 2010

The last chance for victims of the bloody Nisoor Square shootings to have their day in court may rest on a Charlotte firm's lawsuit accusing Blackwater of reckless conduct in Iraq.

Mohammed Kinani, an Iraqi businessman whose 9-year-old son died in the 2007 shootings, told the Observer this week the N.C.-based security firm has threatened him and offered him $20,000 to stop asking questions.

"I said I don't want anything," Kinani said. "All I need is for the Blackwater president to apologize for killing of my son. They refused to apologize."

The incident, where 30 civilians were killed or injured, remains a flashpoint over the use of private contractors in battle zones. Five Blackwater guards were accused in 14 deaths at the busy traffic circle outside Baghdad.

Blackwater earned hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts in Iraq, where contractors outnumber U.S. troops. The firm eventually lost its license to work there.

One former guard, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, said in court papers that a convoy from the security firm, now called Xe, went to Nisoor Square outside the fortified Green Zone to provide security after reports of a car bomb a mile away.

Blackwater says guards shot in self-defense. But Kinani and others said the gunmen were unprovoked.

The lawsuit, filed in Raleigh last year by SouthPark firm Lewis & Roberts, is the last Nisoor Square case pending in the U.S.

Other more-publicized cases have fallen away.

A federal judge on Dec. 31 dismissed manslaughter charges against five other guards, a ruling the Justice Department appealed Friday. Vice President Biden announced the appeal last week while visiting Iraq in response to anger there over the dismissals.

In early January, a larger group of survivors and families of those killed settled their civil suit against Blackwater. Most reportedly agreed to payments ranging from $20,000 to $100,000, though the attorney in that case, Susan Burke of Washington, D.C., would not comment on the amounts.

Kinani said Blackwater offered to meet with him and eventually offered money, but he refused both gestures. His suit against Blackwater includes families of two other victims killed and three injured survivors. Attorney Gary Mauney said none of the firm's clients have accepted settlements.

In an interview, Kinani described the death of his youngest child, Ali.

Speaking in Arabic through a translator, Kinani said he never intended to take his son on the drive that morning, until Ali begged him, "Daddy, I want to come with you."

Inseparable pair drove into trouble

Kinani, now 59, admits that he doted on Ali, the youngest of three boys and a girl. He said the two were separated for any length of time only once, when Ali visited relatives in Syria. At home, he had his own room, but slept with his parents. "My arms were his pillows," Kinani said.

So Kinani obliged that September 2007 morning when the boy asked to accompany him. Kinani had just dropped his father off at their auto parts store. He reluctantly took Ali along on a trip to pick up Kinani's sister.

Kinani worried about sectarian violence in the Sunni area where his sister lived, but they arrived safely. His sister and her children got inside, and Kinani headed home.

With Kinani driving, here is how they sat in the four-door 1996 Isuzu: His sister in the front passenger seat, and the four children across the back - her two young boys and one girl, then Ali, behind his father.

Kinani said he passed three Iraqi police checkpoints and security was high by the time they entered the traffic circle in Nisoor Square. He said he heard far-away gunfire. Traffic slowed to a crawl.

Ahead, he saw a large armed vehicle blocking the road. Two gunmen were on top. They wore military clothes and Kinani thought they were American soldiers. Investigators later said they were security guards. One man put two fists in the air, Kinani said, a motion for all the cars to stop.

Kinani recalled someone shouting - "They are shooting at the front" - and then chaos.

Bewildering barrage of gunfire

Kinani said after destroying the front car with gunfire, the gunmen turned their aim toward the rest of the square, to cars and people running away. To Kinani, they were shooting "just absolutely to shoot. They just wanted to shoot." No one fired back, he said.

Kinani said he saw people falling, people dying, cars getting hit - boom, boom, boom - sounds of gunfire, shattered glass and tires exploding.

Why are they shooting us, his sister asked? Maybe somebody shot at them somewhere else and they are seeking revenge, Kinani recalled saying.

She pulled his head down and laid over him on the driver's seat. Bullets hit the headrest of her seat of where she had just been sitting, her life spared by protecting him.

Awkward, he thought. He should be protecting his younger sister, not the other way around, and he put her beneath him. A bullet shattered his rear window.

When finally the shooting stopped, Kinani said he opened his door to get out. He looked at his son's head lying against the back door, and as he opened it, Ali's body fell with the door.

"They killed my son, they killed my son," Kinani recalled screaming.

Family celebrated Saddam’s overthrow

When the U.S. liberated Iraq in 2003, Kinani said his elated family celebrated with cake, sweets and juice. Iraqis for the "next million years" should be grateful that Americans saved his country from a terrible dictator, he said.

"Whatever officials made the decision to topple Saddam Hussein, it was a gift from heaven. Divine intervention," Kinani said.

He is grateful that the U.S. officials investigated Nisoor Square and sought indictments against the security firm. During the shootings, he said he was shocked because he believed the assailants were soldiers.

Ten days after his son's death, Kinani said three Army officers took his statement and he begged them to find out the truth.

"You guys have come to Iraq and sacrificed a lot of your people. My son has been added to the sacrifice. Don't disappoint us," he told them.

The U.S. embassy gave him $10,000, which he said he would accept as long as they took half of it back to give to the family of a slain soldier.

Investigations, lawsuits sort out responsibility

A U.S. military investigation determined that Blackwater guards used excessive force and fired without provocation.

In December, federal District Judge Ricardo Urbina threw out the criminal charges, ruling that overzealous prosecutors improperly used statements from guards who had been promised immunity.

In a recent ruling stemming from that case, Urbina unsealed court papers with statements from three Blackwater guards who were present at Nisoor Square and said they believed the shootings were unjustified.

An Xe spokesman on Friday said the company could not comment on pending litigation.

Charlotte attorneys Mauney and Paul Dickinson Jr. said they could not divulge how they became involved in the case for "legal, ethical reasons." They would not say who was paying for their services.

The suit against Blackwater argues that the company's management "cultivated and condoned a culture of reckless and unlawful conduct."

Mauney said his firm has asked Iraqi government officials to help them collect evidence. Mauney doesn't rule out a settlement, but he said his goal is for a North Carolina jury to hear the case.

Said Kinani: "I just want the world to know what happened."

External link: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/story/1213836.html

2010/01/29 - Justice Department Appeals Dismissal of Blackwater Case

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:36:34 +0100

By Joe Palazzolo
Main Justice
January 29, 2010

The Justice Department on Friday appealed a court decision dismissing charges against five former Blackwater guards involved in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead.

Vice President Joe Biden announced the government’s intention to file an appeal last weekend, after a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Prosecutors say the guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad intersection without provocation, killing or wounding more than 30 Iraqis, including women and children. Attorneys for the guards say their clients, who were protecting U.S. diplomats, took fire from insurgents and responded in kind.

U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina in Washington dismissed manslaughter charges against the guards in a harshly worded Dec. 31 ruling, in which he faulted Justice Department prosecutors for using tainted evidence to build their case and for abusing the grand jury process.

Many Iraqis were outraged by the decision, viewing it as evidence that the U.S. was not accountable for bloodshed in their country. Iraqi leaders have been collecting signatures for a class action against the security contractor, which changed its name to Xe Services last year.

Urbina’s December ruling invited comparisons to the the botched prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), whose conviction was erased last year because of government missteps.

In that case, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who sits on same court as Urbina, criticized the government for failing to disclose materials that could have aided in Stevens’ defense. Sullivan dismissed the case at Attorney General Eric Holder’s request, and then appointed a counsel to investigate prosecutors for possible criminal contempt.

Urbina, however, made no formal finding of misconduct, and in a ruling earlier this month, he said the Justice Department could seek a new indictment against the men. Urbina said prosecutors acted with "disregard" but concluded that dismissing the case - without prejudice - was punishment enough.

The government has not yet filed a brief explaining the grounds for appeal. In pretrial hearings, prosecutors argued that interviews the guards gave to the State Department after the shooting were part of the normal course of their job and could be used against them. Urbina ruled that interviews were compelled, which immunized the guards.

External link: http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/01/29/justice-department-appeals-dismissal-of-blackwater-case/

2010/01/24 - Biden: US to Appeal Dismissal of Blackwater Case

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:57:13 +0100

By Matt Apuzzo
Associated Press
January 24, 2010

Baghdad - The U.S. will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday.

Biden's announcement after a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani shows just how diplomatically sensitive the incident remains nearly three years later. A lawyer for one guard, noting that word of the intended appeal came in Iraq, accused the Obama administration of political expediency and said the U.S. was pursuing an innocent man, rather than justice.

Blackwater security contractors were guarding U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in Nisoor Square, a crowded Baghdad intersection, on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

Biden expressed his "personal regret" for the shooting and said the Obama administration was disappointed by the dismissal. "A dismissal is not an acquittal," he said.

The U.S. rebuffed Iraqi demands that the U.S. contractors face trial in Iraqi courts. After a lengthy investigation, U.S. prosecutors charged five of the contractors with manslaughter and took a guilty plea from a sixth.

But the case fell apart when a federal trial judge in Washington, Ricardo Urbina, said in a Dec. 31 ruling that the Justice Department mishandled evidence and violated the guards' constitutional rights. Prosecutors now face difficult odds getting an appeals court to reinstate the case.

The dismissal outraged many Iraqis, who said it showed the Americans considered themselves above the law. The Iraqi government began collecting signatures for a class-action lawsuit from victims who were wounded or lost relatives.

Lawyers for two of the Blackwater guards - Donald Ball, a former U.S. Marine from West Valley City, Utah, and Dustin Heard, a former U.S. Marine from Knoxville, Tenn. - sharply criticized the U.S. government's planned appeal.

"By announcing this decision in Iraq, through an elected official, the United States makes clear it has decided to do what is politically expedient, rather than what is just based on Judge Urbina's unshakable findings that the prosecutors engaged in gross misconduct and intentionally violated Mr. Ball's constitutional rights," attorney Steven McCool, who represents Ball, said in a statement. "In the end, the United States has shown it will pursue an innocent man, rather than justice."

Attorney David Schertler, who represents Heard, said moving ahead with an appeal "appears to be based upon political considerations rather than a careful consideration of the legal merits of the case as it should be."

White House officials said the U.S. Justice Department decided on the appeal and that Biden's trip was not originally intended to be the way it would be announced. The White House learned of the Justice decision Friday night, which led to the timing of the announcement.

Messages seeking comment from lawyers for the other three guards who fought the charges were not immediately returned Saturday.

Those guards are Evan Liberty, a former U.S. Marine from Rochester, N.H.; Nick Slatten, a former U.S. Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn., and Paul Slough, an U.S. Army veteran from Keller, Texas.

The sixth guard, Jeremy Ridgeway of California, pleaded guilty to one count each of manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and aiding and abetting. It's unclear what Urbina's ruling means for him.

Blackwater has said the guards were innocent, contending there were ambushed by insurgents. Prosecutors said the shooting was unprovoked.

Court documents paint a murky picture of a case rife with conflicting evidence. Some witnesses say the Blackwater convoy was under fire; others say it wasn't. Some said the entire convoy fired into the intersection; others said only a few men opened fire.

Even the government's key witnesses, three members of the Blackwater convoy, at times seemed to undercut the government's case.

Since the shooting, the Myock, N.C.-based Blackwater has renamed itself Xe Services and overhauled its management. Iraq has pulled the company's license to operate in the country.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

External link: http://license.icopyright.net/s13/3.5721?icx_id=D9DE0A801

2010/01/23 - Biden Says US to Appeal Blackwater Court Decision

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:48:28 +0100

By Salam Faraj
Agence France Presse
January 23, 2010

Baghdad - Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday announced an appeal into a US court decision to drop charges against an American firm whose security guards are accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

"A dismissal is not an acquittal," Biden told reporters during a visit to Baghdad, referring to the case involving the five guards employed by the private company formerly known as Blackwater.

"Today I am announcing that the United States government will appeal this decision. Our justice department will file that appeal next week," he said.

Iraq welcomed Biden's remarks with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari saying it was "good news."

"This is a very important issue for the Iraqi people and the US government responded positively to a request from the foreign ministry to appeal against the court ruling, which is very good news," Zebari said.

The five guards, who had been part of a convoy of armoured vehicles, had been charged with killing the civilians and wounding 18 others in an attack using guns and grenades at Baghdad's busy Nisur square in September 2007.

Charges against the Blackwater employees were dismissed last year, when a judge ruled US prosecutors violated their rights by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during a State Department probe.

The ruling outraged the Baghdad government which maintains that 17 people were killed.

"The United States is determined to hold to account anyone who commits crimes against Iraqi people," Biden added.

"While we fully respect the independence and the integrity of the US judicial system, we were disappointed with the judge's decision to dismiss the indictment which was based on the way some evidence had been acquired."

The Iraqi government said this week it was considering lodging its own complaint against Blackwater, which has since been renamed Xe, to seek compensation for the families of the victims.

In his ruling on December 31, US federal judge Ricardo Urbina found prosecutors violated the guards' rights by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during the US State Department probe.

The decision was welcomed by the US company, but several senators including 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain have since voiced regret at the ruling and called for a US government appeal.

But the admissibility of the Iraqi government complaint is uncertain because all of the families except one agreed damages from Xe, according to a lawyer injured in the incident.

The lawyer, Hassan Jabbar Salman, said the families of those killed were offered 100,000 dollars and those wounded received between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars from the US security firm.

Blackwater Worldwide changed its name in February 2009, following what the company said was a change of business focus.

Critics however suggested that the rebranding was an effort to polish an image tarnished by an alleged culture of lawlessness and lack of accountability among Blackwater workers as they carried out their duties in Iraq.

Biden, President Barack Obama's pointman on Iraq, arrived in Baghdad late on Friday.

The main thrust of his visit was to defuse a row over the banning of hundreds of candidates from a March 7 general election over their alleged links to executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

Copyright © 2010 AFP.

External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iH3LQK6I0tQSuKatdxAFfND3t2BA
________________________________________________________________________________________

U.S. to Appeal Blackwater Case Dismissal, Biden Says

By Anthony Shadid
New York Times
January 23, 2010

Baghdad - Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. promised Iraqi leaders on Saturday that the United States would appeal the dismissal of manslaughter charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security contractors involved in a deadly shooting here that has inflamed anti-American tensions.

Mr. Biden, tasked by the Obama administration to oversee policy in Iraq, made the statement after a day of meetings with Iraqi leaders that dealt, in part, with a political crisis that has erupted over the March 7 parliamentary elections. American officials view the vote, a barometer of the durability of Iraq’s political system, as a crucial date in American plans to withdraw tens of thousands of combat troops from Iraq by the end of August.

The vice president expressed his "personal regret" for the Blackwater shooting in 2007, in which contractors guarding American diplomats opened fire in a crowded Baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 people, including women and children.

"A dismissal is not an acquittal," he said after meeting President Jalal Talabani.

Investigators had concluded that the guards fired indiscriminately on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified attack. The guards contended that they had been ambushed by insurgents and fired in self-defense.

In December, in a decision that was a blow to the Justice Department and unleashed anger and disbelief in Iraq, a federal judge threw out the five guards’ indictment on manslaughter charges, citing misuse of their statements that violated their constitutional rights. The judge’s scathing and detailed ruling was expected to make any appeal difficult.

"This is great news," Abdel-Amir Jihan, who was wounded in the shooting, said after hearing of Mr. Biden’s announcement. "The court was not fair to us. We felt great injustice when we heard the verdict. It was not right to drop the charges against them."

Mr. Biden was scheduled to leave Saturday evening after a 24-hour visit that involved meetings with most of the pivotal players in the election crisis. That dispute erupted this month after a government commission barred more than 500 candidates, accusing them of supporting Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. While some leaders have insisted that the disqualifications adhered to Iraqi law, many Sunni Muslims have seen them as score-settling by religious Shiite parties who suffered under Baath Party rule, and American officials have worried that the move could impair the vote’s legitimacy.

American officials have warned Iraqi leaders to avoid a process that, in the words of Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Antony J. Blinken, "lacks transparency and fairness and credibility." But as expected, there was no breakthrough in the meetings, and Mr. Biden, who spent the day shuttling between meetings, stressed that the United States would not impose a solution.

"I want to make clear I am not here to resolve that issue," he said. "I am confident that Iraq’s leaders are seized with this issue and are working for a final, just solution."

Before his meeting with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, though, Mr. Biden alluded to how frequently American mediation - especially his own, over the course of three trips here since he became vice president - has been necessary. He jokingly told Mr. Maliki: "I’ve come to apply for citizenship. I’ve been here enough."

The crisis has proved intractable in part because of its very nature: a legal process with obvious and sweeping political effects, seized on by Iraqi leaders with competing interests.

In Mr. Biden’s meeting with Mr. Maliki, officials said, the prime minister insisted that the disqualifications were simply a legal issue. But Mr. Maliki’s critics have accused him of politicizing the issue as much as anyone, and in a speech on Friday, he took an especially hard line, saying that the barring of candidates in itself did not go far enough.

And while many of the most senior Iraqi officials have warned the United States against interference in Iraq’s affairs, others - especially many of the Sunni politicians who were barred from running - have sought American intervention.

American officials have said that, despite the current political crisis, they do not foresee any delay in this August’s withdrawal of the main body of American combat troops.

A notable step in that process happened Saturday when the Marine Corps handed over security duties in Anbar Province, once a cradle of the insurgency, to United States Army soldiers. The move formally ended the seven-year-long Marine presence in Iraq, in effect signaling the end of heavy combat operations.

As many as 25,000 Marines were once in the country, and the remaining few thousand are expected to leave within weeks.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company.

External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html

2010/01/20 - No Bail for Former Security Contractor

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:08:33 +0100

From United Press International
January 20, 2010

Norfolk, Va. - A federal judge in Virginia has ordered pre-trial detention for a man accused of killing two Afghan civilians while working for Blackwater, now called Xe.

U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar said Christopher Drotleff might "shoot somebody he felt had angered him," The Virginian-Pilot reported Wednesday.

At Tuesday's hearing, prosecutors argued for continuing to deny Drotleff bail. They presented evidence that Drotleff threatened in 2002 to shoot a pedestrian and that he went AWOL seven times as a U.S. Marine and has a history of misdemeanor convictions.

Drotleff was working for a subsidiary of Xe, the name adopted by the military contractor Blackwater, in Afghanistan last year when he allegedly opened fire on civilians. Two were killed and a third wounded.

His lawyer played a tape of a 911 call Drotleff made to report "armed contractors" - actually FBI agents - were coming for him. Defense attorney Lawrence Woodward Jr. argued Drotleff did not know the men were government agents, but the judge took the tape as more evidence of Drotleff's dangerousness.

"I wouldn't want to brush up against him and provoke anger," Doumar said. "He and society do not get along."

© 2010 United Press International, Inc.

External link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/01/20/No-bail-for-former-security-contractor/UPI-73601264012670/

2010/01/19 - No Misconduct Found in Blackwater Case

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:56:22 +0100

From the Associated Press
January 19, 2010

Washington - A federal judge has opted not to impose a finding of prosecutorial misconduct on Justice Department lawyers for their handling of a case against Blackwater security guards involved in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad.

In Federal District Court here last month, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina threw out all charges against the five involved in the shootings, which left 17 Iraqis dead and about 20 wounded.

In that decision, Judge Urbina wrote that in a "reckless violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights," investigators, prosecutors and government witnesses had inappropriately relied on statements the guards had been compelled to make in debriefings by the State Department shortly after the shootings. The State Department had hired the guards to protect its officials.

But in a ruling on Tuesday, Judge Urbina said he would not take what he called the "extreme" step of prohibiting prosecutors from reviving the case.

Had Judge Urbina ruled that prosecutors committed misconduct, it could have set off an internal Justice Department investigation and led to sanctions against the prosecutors.

External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/us/20blackwater.html
________________________________________________________________

Prosecutors Can Seek New Indictment in Blackwater Case

By Joe Palazzolo
Main Justice
January 19, 2010

Prosecutors can seek a new indictment against former Blackwater guards accused in a 2007 shooting that left more than 30 Iraqis injured or dead, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

Judge Ricardo Urbina of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia threw out manslaughter and gun charges against five former guards late last month, finding that prosecutors used immunized statements to build their case.

Before Urbina jettisoned the charges, the government filed a motion to dismiss its case against Nicholas Slatten, conceding it had used tainted evidence against him but reserving the right to pursue new charges.

He and another former guard, Donald Ball, subsequently asked Urbina to dismiss the indictment with prejudice, arguing that prosecutors engaged in misconduct and that the government would be unable to build another case without resorting, again, to tainted evidence

The men accused prosecutors of holding back evidence from a grand jury, misrepresenting their case to the court and making public comments about the case that prejudiced the guards.

In a 12-page opinion, Urbina said it was not his place to opine on whether the government had enough evidence to seek a new indictment. And while the judge agreed that prosecutors acted with "disregard," the misconduct was not so severe as to bar the government from investigating the men in the future, he said.

"The court is not persuaded that the additional, extreme sanction of dismissal with prejudice is justified under these circumstances," Urbina wrote.

The charges against the Blackwater guards arose from an incident in Baghdad’s crowded Nisur Square, in which more than 30 Iraqi civilians were killed or wounded. The Blackwater guards, who were contracted to provide security for U.S. government employees in Iraq, claimed they had fired in self defense after an attack by insurgents. But the government said the guards fired without provocation.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will appeal Urbina’s Dec. 31 ruling dismissing the indictment.

External link: http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/01/19/prsoecutors-can-seek-new-indictment-in-blackwater-case/

2010/01/18 - Iraqis Authorize Government to Sue Blackwater

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:34:05 +0100

From the Associated Press
January 18, 2010

Baghdad - Iraq's government has started collecting signatures for a class-action lawsuit from victims who were wounded or lost family in incidents involving the U.S. private security firm formerly known as Blackwater.

The head of the prime minister's legal consultation office said Monday the government will seek compensation for a string of incidents, including the 2007 killing of 17 civilians in Nisoor Square.

The official, Fadhil Mohammed Jawad, says there is no deadline to receive the authorizations. He refused to give a date for the lawsuit.

On Dec. 31, a U.S. federal judge threw out criminal charges against the company, now known as Xe Services, regarding the Nisoor Square killings, citing mistakes by prosecutors.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

External link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_IRAQ_BLACKWATER

2009/09/08 - U.S. vs. Slough, Slatten, Liberty, Heard & Ball: Memorandum Opinion

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:46:04 +0100

U.S. vs. Slough, Slatten, Liberty, Heard & Ball
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Case-No.: CR-08-360
Filed on December 4th, 2008

September 8th, 2009 - Memorandum Opinion

"[...] This matter is before the court on the defendants’ motion for an evidentiary Kastigar hearing. The defendants have been charged with multiple manslaughter counts arising out of a shooting that occurred in Baghdad, Iraq on September 16, 2007. They contend that in the course of this prosecution, prosecutors have unlawfully utilized statements the defendants made to Department of State investigators shortly after the shooting, which were compelled under a threat of job loss. The defendants argue that immunity attaches to these statements by virtue of Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967), and that the court should hold a Kastigar hearing at which the government must prove that it has not improperly utilized immunized testimony.

"As discussed below, the defendants have laid a firm factual and legal foundation for their contention that immunized testimony was used in the course of this prosecution. Accordingly, the court grants the defendants' motion. [...]"

2010/01/16 - Blackwater Guards’ Accounts of 2007 Attack on Civilians Unveiled in Court Papers

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:04:56 +0100

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post
January 16, 2010

One Blackwater Worldwide security guard thought he had witnessed a murder. Another felt that innocent Iraqis "clearly were no threat to anyone." A third worried that his managers would try to cover up what had happened. All three were horrified by what they thought was an unprovoked attack in 2007 that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead in Baghdad, prosecutors say.

The guards' accounts of the shooting by a team of Blackwater contractors emerged from prosecutors' court papers that a federal judge ordered unsealed Friday, two weeks after he dismissed manslaughter and weapons charges against five Blackwater contractors in the incident.

Federal prosecutors have said the shooting was an unprovoked assault on civilians. They were seeking to bring five guards - one has pleaded guilty - to trial on voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations in the District's federal court. But on Dec. 31, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina threw out all charges against the guards, ruling that prosecutors had acted overzealously and recklessly in their investigation.

Urbina's decision followed three weeks of closed hearings into the conduct of prosecutors, federal agents and witnesses. On Friday, the judge ordered redacted motions filed by prosecutors and defense attorneys to be unsealed, providing a detailed account of the shooting and the government's efforts to investigate it.

Until now, it was not clear how other Blackwater guards had reacted to the Sept. 16, 2007, incident in Nisoor Square, which strained relations between Washington and Baghdad. The episode so badly stigmatized Blackwater that it renamed itself Xe Services, and the incident prompted serious questions about how to police the behavior of private contractors in war zones.

The papers reveal that 19 Blackwater guards were providing security for diplomats under a State Department contract and were members of a four-vehicle convoy that secured an evacuation route for U.S. officials fleeing a bomb explosion.

After the incident, prosecutors wrote, three guards felt so terrible about what they had witnessed that they vowed to report what occurred to authorities. "We could not believe what we had just seen," one guard, Adam Frost, wrote in a journal.

Another, Mark Mealy, told the grand jury that he saw "some heinous" acts that deeply upset him. He also watched as two of the guards involved in the shooting patted each other on the back and bragged "about what a great job they had done," prosecutors wrote.

Frost wrote in his journal that a manager had encouraged him not to talk to FBI agents. The guards, former members of the military and Iraq War veterans before joining Blackwater, later testified before a grand jury.

In the court papers, defense attorneys argued that the five guards charged in the shooting - Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten, Donald Ball, Dustin Heard and Paul Slough - fired in self-defense. The attorneys also accused government officials of improperly using immunized statements to build their case. The guards provided those statements to State Department investigators in the hours and days after the shooting, thinking they could be fired if they did not talk to the investigators. They also thought they had a guarantee that their statements would not be used against them.

Attorneys for the guards urged Urbina to throw out the indictment. Two of the guards' attorneys went further and accused prosecutors of engaging in intentional misconduct by withholding helpful evidence from grand jurors and by using the immunized statements in their investigation.

According to the court papers and Urbina's 90-page opinion, it was clear early on that Justice Department officials were worried about how the guards' statements might hinder their investigation.

One team of prosecutors and agents was taken off the case after it read some of the guards' statements, and another squad was assigned to the case. The department set up a second platoon of prosecutors to review material to ensure it wasn't "tainted" before reaching trial lawyers or agents.

In the court papers, prosecutors said they managed to avoid immunized statements and any errors were harmless.

"The United States has proved that its evidence stems from legitimate sources wholly independent of any immunized statements," they wrote.

Prosecutors added that they thought the first oral statements by the guards were not protected by promises of immunity.

Urbina wrote that prosecutors should have known better and avoided all of the statements and disregarded advice from experienced Justice Department lawyers on the matter. He also wrote that prosecutors provided tainted material to grand jurors and withheld from them material favorable to the guards.

In throwing out the case, Urbina sided with defense attorneys and found that the guards provided the statements, in which they admitted opening fire, to investigators because they were afraid they would lose their jobs if they didn't cooperate. They also thought their statements could not be used against them in court, the judge found.

The Justice Department has not disclosed whether it will appeal the ruling.

Staff researchers Julie Tate and Meg Smith contributed to this report.

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011503937.html

2010/01/14 - Consolidated Civil Proceedings/Legal Update

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:39:43 +0100

In Re: Blackwater Alien Tort Claims Act Litigation
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Case No.: 1:09-cv-615, 1:09-cv-616, 1:09-cv-617, 1:09-cv-618, 1:09-cv-645, 1:09-cv-1017, 1:09-cv-1048
Consolidated on July 17th & October 22nd, 2009

Recent Filings:

January 6th, 2010 - Order

"[...] On January 6, 2010, plaintiffs by counsel, withdrew their previously filed motions seeking relief from judgment pursuant to Rule 60(b), Fed. R. Civ. P. In an accompanying affidavit, plaintiffs’ counsel states that all plaintiffs have knowingly and voluntarily agreed to the terms of the settlement agreement reached between the parties. Accordingly, the parties’ stipulation of dismissal pursuant to Rule 41(a)(l), Fed. R. Civ. P., filed November 6, 2009, remains effective.

"Accordingly, and for good cause, it is hereby ordered that plaintiffs’ motions for relief from judgment pursuant to Rule 60(b), Fed. R. Civ. P., are withdrawn.

"It is further ordered that these cases are dismissed with prejudice.

"The clerk is directed to send a copy of this Order to all counsel of record and to place these matters among the ended causes. [...]"

January 6th, 2010 - Plaintiffs’ Notice of Withdrawal of Rule 60(b) Motions for Relief

"[...] 1. On November 4, 2009, the undersigned counsel, on behalf of plaintiffs, executed written settlement agreement with the defendants. Prior to doing so, the undersigned, with the assistance of interpreters, solicited the consent of all plaintiffs and certain other claimants. At the time the undersigned executed the settlement agreement, the undersigned believed that all plaintiffs had provided verbal and/or written assent to the agreement.

"2. Having executed the settlement agreement, the undersigned, on November 5, 2009, filed a stipulation of dismissal with prejudice in each of the above-captioned actions.

"3. Thereafter, plaintiffs’ counsel learned that two plaintiffs objected to the settlement agreement. Accordingly, on November 8, 2009, the undersigned filed a Withdrawal of Stipulation of Dismissal with Prejudice in each of the above-captioned cases.

"4. On November 30, 2009, the undersigned traveled to Istanbul and met personally with the two plaintiffs who had claimed they had not agreed to the settlement agreement. During these meetings, I was accompanied by Usama Fahum, an interpreter whom I confirmed is fluent in Arabic. With the assistance of Mr. Fahum, I fully explained the terms of the settlement agreement to these two plaintiffs. Thereafter, each plaintiff informed me that he fully understood the terms of the settlement, and that he desired to enter into the agreement. Each plaintiff then executed the agreement in my presence.

"5. All plaintiffs and claimants have now consented to and signed the settlement agreement with the defendants in my presence or in the presence of my representative.

"6. I have personally ascertained and am confident that all plaintiffs and claimants fully understand the terms of the settlement agreement and made a knowing and informed decision to enter into the agreement.

"7. The undersigned counsel has been duly authorized by all plaintiffs to withdraw the previously filed motions for relief from judgment pursuant to Rule 60(b) in each of the above-captioned cases.

"8. In light of the foregoing, the pending Rule 60(b) motions should be denied as moot, and each of the above-captioned cases should stand dismissed with prejudice. [...]"

2010/01/12 - Bail Hearing Set for Blackwater Contractor Charged with Murder

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:43:18 +0100

By Jessica Savage
Corpus Christi Caller Times
January 12, 2010

Corpus Christi - The Justin Cannon whom the government accuses of murder is known to friends and family as a patriot with a sense of humor, who still would be serving happily in the Army were it not for an injury.

The Corpus Christi resident and former Blackwater contractor is expected to appear in court Thursday for a judge to decide if he will be granted bail on federal murder charges. Otherwise, he will likely spend months behind bars while he awaits trial.

Cannon and former contractor Christopher Drotleff, 29, of Virginia Beach, Va., are charged in the May 5 shooting death of two Afghans. Both have said the shooting was in self-defense.

Federal agents arrested Cannon last week and booked him into Aransas County Detention Center where he was being held Tuesday.

His family said Cannon appears to be in good spirits, given the situation. Cannon’s release on bail will depend upon two factors: his ability to prove he is not a flight risk nor a danger to the community.

"I think that we stand in a good position." said defense attorney David Diaz, who has been hired to represent Cannon in this phase of the case.

Since Cannon’s arrest Jan. 7, friends and family have joined together in his defense, creating Web site RangerDefenseFund.com and Facebook page "Free Justin H. Cannon" to raise awareness about the case and money should bail be set.

"We are overwhelmed with the number of people who have expressed support," said Cannon’s father, Chuck. "I knew he had a number of friends, but I’m still surprised."

The charges against Cannon have gained worldwide attention. As that spotlight increases, supporters say they want the public to know the man they know: a hardworking American patriot with a great sense of humor.

Cannon reached a childhood dream in 2001 when he joined the Army. He served with the 75th Rangers in Afghanistan and later helped U.S. forces liberate Iraq in 2003. He lost friends in the war, but never his patriotism, family said.

At the end of his term, Cannon’s ability to continue serving in the military ended with a persistent back injury. It left Cannon wondering what else he could do to help.

At a friend’s suggestion, Cannon looked into contract work overseas. He was elated with the prospect, his father said.

"This gave him a chance to give back to his country again."

Cannon accepted a position in 2007 with Paravant, a subsidiary of Xe, the company formerly known as Blackwater. He became a weapons instructor for the Afghan National Army and was sent to Afghanistan.

On the night of May 5, Cannon, Drotleff and several contractors were traveling on a road in Kabul when a speeding car slammed into the first vehicle of their convoy. The impact caused the vehicle to flip.

Cannon and Drotleff, who were in another vehicle, got out to help. They said the car that caused the accident turned and started speeding toward them. Fearing for their lives, both opened fire, according to their account.

The shots killed two Afghan men in the vehicle and injured at least one other person, according to an indictment handed up by a Virginia grand jury.

Blackwater fired Cannon, Drotleff and two others days after the shooting,

The former workers have told the Associated Press that Blackwater tried to make them scapegoats. They said the company armed some of its workers in Afghanistan despite U.S. military documents that prohibited them from carrying guns.

Cannon’s father said his son still doesn’t understand why Blackwater fired him.

"He felt like he was defending himself, his fellow contractors and the interpreters they were transporting who were Afghans," he said.

Cannon moved back to Corpus Christi where he was working and planned to attend Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in the spring to pursue an interest in business.

Close friends of Cannon said they were in shock when they found out a Virginia grand jury had issued an indictment, charging Cannon and Drotleff with second-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges.

"When I look at Justin Cannon, I don’t see a murderer at all," said Shane O’Neal, who has known Cannon for three years. "I see him as a man who served his country."

The federal investigation is the latest push in the U.S. government’s attempt to increase oversight of contractor activities in war zones after a series of problems in Iraq strained relations between Washington and Baghdad. Several Blackwater contractors had been charged with 14 counts of manslaughter for their role in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square, but a judge dropped those charges two weeks ago.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

External link: http://www.caller.com/news/2010/jan/12/bail-hearing-set-for-blackwater-contractor-with/

2010/01/12 - Iraqis Say They Were Forced to Take Blackwater Settlement

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:49:00 +0100

By Liz Sly
Los Angeles Times
January 11, 2010

Reporting from Baghdad - Several victims of a 2007 shooting involving American private security guards employed by the firm formerly known as Blackwater alleged Sunday that they were coerced into reaching settlements, and they demanded that the Iraqi government intervene to have the agreements nullified.

The Iraqis said they were pressured by their own attorneys into accepting what they now believe are inadequate settlements because they were told the company was about to file for bankruptcy, that its chairman was going to be arrested and that the U.S. government was about to confiscate all of the firm's assets. This would be their last chance to get any compensation, the victims said they were told.

When criminal charges against the guards were dismissed by a U.S. federal judge on Dec. 31, the Iraqis concluded that they had been duped and that Blackwater, now called Xe, was not in the kind of legal and financial trouble they had been led to believe.

"We signed the papers to accept a settlement because we had psychological pressure and some of us were threatened," Mahdi Abdul Khodr, 45, told reporters Sunday at Iraq's parliament. He led a delegation comprising representatives of nine of the victims' families who petitioned Iraqi officials to exert pressure on the U.S. government to nullify the settlements.

Xe confirmed last week that it had reached out-of-court settlements in seven lawsuits filed in the September 2007 shooting in Nisoor Square that killed 17 Iraqis, as well as a string of other incidents in which company guards are alleged to have killed or injured Iraqis. Altogether, the suits covered 45 injured people and the families of 19 slain Iraqis who have all signed settlement agreements, according to court documents.

Civilian deaths

The Nisoor Square shootings were the bloodiest of numerous incidents in which Blackwater contractors are alleged to have fired on civilians, inflaming anti-U.S. sentiments and straining relations between the U.S. and Iraqi governments.

At least 14 civilians were killed and more than 20 injured when the guards opened fire in the busy square.

The charges against five guards accused in the shooting were thrown out on the grounds that the prosecution had built its case wrongly using statements the accused provided under immunity to State Department investigators.

The settlements were reached last fall in meetings at Baghdad's Rasheed Hotel, where the claimants say they were required to sign a paper, written in English, and make videotaped testimony in Arabic, relinquishing all future claims against the company. Though Xe has not disclosed the settlement amounts, media reports say they averaged between $20,000 and $30,000 for an injury and $100,000 for a death.

Peter White, the lawyer representing Xe in the civil suits, said the company was not present at any of the meetings and "never stated to any victims or their counsel that it would be filing for bankruptcy." All of the company's contact with the victims was through the plaintiffs' own lawyers, he said.

Susan Burke, the lawyer who represented the Iraqis in the civil case filed in Virginia, refused to comment Sunday, citing confidentiality agreements included as part of the settlements. She withdrew the civil suits last week.

After meeting with lawmakers, three members of the delegation described in separate interviews how they were summoned to the hotel and urged by their lawyers to accept the payouts. Burke was not at the meetings.

Fawzia Sharif, 53, whose husband, Ali Khalil, was among those killed at Nisoor Square, said Sunday that three Iraqi lawyers and one American attorney tried to persuade her to accept a settlement. She would not disclose the amount, but said it did not exceed the reported figures.

"At the beginning I refused," Sharif said. "They spent three hours sitting with us and beseeching us to sign. They planted despair in our hearts, saying they are going to announce bankruptcy and the government is going to confiscate all their assets and you will not get any amount at all if you do not sign."

"I feel I was deceived by them," she said. "They told me the company is going to go bankrupt and this was my last chance. But now I wonder, how could this happen to such a big company?"

Feeling coerced

Khodr, the head of the delegation, lost his left eye in the shooting and spent three months in the hospital. He said he accepted a $10,000 settlement because "they told me Blackwater was about to go into bankruptcy, that their manager will be sent to prison and the government will confiscate all their assets."

"I signed because I had financial difficulties and I needed the money," said Sami Hawas, 45, a former taxi driver who accepted $30,000. He also lost an eye, walks with difficulty because of leg injuries and hasn't worked since the shooting. "We don't know English and we don't know legal things. But now I think about it, it is not the amount I deserved."

Not all those who settled are unhappy. Hassan Jabar Salman, an attorney who suffered injuries to his back, shoulder and arm, said in a telephone interview Sunday that he received significantly more than the amounts being reported and that he is satisfied. Because he is a lawyer, he said, "I know how to negotiate."

An October ruling by a federal judge in the Virginia case suggests the Iraqis may have faced obstacles had they persisted. The ruling said that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated that the company could be sued in federal court, and it suggested that they refile using different arguments. That could have dragged the case out for several years, legal experts say.

"These lawsuits would not have been a piece of cake," said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School. "It would have been a real hassle and who knows what the outcome would be."

Though there have been no published reports suggesting Xe is in danger of bankruptcy, it is also highly unlikely that any court would dismiss the out-of-court settlements without proof of coercion or fraud, especially as the plaintiffs' own lawyers were present when they signed, said Robert Strassfeld, director of the Institute for Global Security Law and Policy at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

He described the amounts involved in the settlements as "disappointing," but added, "I was fairly pessimistic about the likelihood of ever achieving justice in this case."

A separate civil suit filed by several other victims of the Nisoor Square shootings is pending in a North Carolina court.

Times staff writer Raheem Salman contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-iraq-blackwater11-2010jan11,0,4877380.story

2010/01/10 - Iraqi in Blackwater Case Rejects Compensation Deal

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:10:25 +0100

By Katharine Houreld
Associated Press
January 10, 2010

Baghdad - An Iraqi injured by the U.S. private security firm once known as Blackwater will not accept a compensation deal for injuries he suffered after company employees opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square, he said Sunday.

Mahdi Abdul-Kadir was speaking about a civil lawsuit. It is separate from the criminal case brought against the company, whose dismissal has become a lightening rod for Iraqi resentment over the behavior of private security companies and prompted Iraqi politicians to denounce the U.S. justice system.

Abdul-Kadir said Blackwater's offer of compensation to those who had been injured or had family members killed was too low. He said he has asked the deputy speaker of Iraq's parliament to cancel the agreement that the plaintiff's lawyer Susan Burke reached Jan. 6.

"We have rejected the settlement because it is a small amount. We won't accept such an amount," he said.

He added that none of the plaintiffs had yet received any money from the group, now known as Xe Services. It is not clear how many, if any, other plaintiffs will follow Abdul-Kadir's lead and continue to fight the company in court.

Another plaintiff had said the company had offered $30,000 for each person wounded in the 2007 incident in Nisoor Square and $100,000 to the families of the 17 killed.

On Dec. 31, a U.S. federal judge threw out criminal charges against the company, citing mistakes by prosecutors. Many Iraqis saw the decision as a confirmation of a long-held suspicion that U.S. security contractors were above the law. The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case and U.S. senator John McCain expressed his hope that it would be appealed.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

External link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_IRAQ_BLACKWATER
_____________________________________________________________________

Most Iraq families ‘accept Blackwater compensation’

By Ammar Karim
Agence France Presse
January 10, 2010

Baghdad - All but one of the families of 17 Iraqis killed in a 2007 shooting by US security guards have accepted compensation from the Blackwater firm, a lawyer wounded in the attack said on Sunday.

Confirmation of the payouts comes less than two weeks after a US federal judge dismissed charges against five guards of the American private security firm accused of killing the civilians in an unprovoked attack.

"All of the families of the dead agreed, except for one family," said 42-year-old lawyer Hassan Jabbar Salman, who himself was injured in an arm, the chest and legs in the attack.

He said the family of each person killed in the Nisur Square shooting in central Baghdad was offered 100,000 dollars, while those wounded received between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars.

Salman declined to specify how much he was to receive in compensation, which has yet to be deposited in his bank account.

Investigators said shortly after the September 16, 2007, shooting that Salman's car alone was hit with 73 bullets.

"I agreed to drop the civil complaint, but the criminal complaint, US prosecutors are still handling it, and they have invited me to attend the trial," he told AFP.

Salman said a Blackwater lawyer met in late November with victims' families in Istanbul, where the settlement was reached.

Blackwater - which has since been renamed Xe - took the families' signatures and fingerprints and later also recorded video statements of them accepting the terms of the settlement, he said.

Since then, however, nine of the families have petitioned the office of Khaled al-Attiya, parliament's deputy speaker, for the deals to be nullified, saying they were forced to accept the deal under pressure.

"We were afraid, we signed the documents under duress," said 45-year-old Mehdi Abdul Khaddhar, a day labourer who lost one of his eyes in the shooting. "We were pressured."

The sole family member who has not accepted a settlement, Haitham al-Rubaie, said he had turned down Blackwater's repeated offers.

"I demand to prosecute them in a criminal court for the disaster they carried out," said the medical doctor, who lost his wife and a son in the shooting. "I've had enough of them underestimating the value of Iraqi blood."

Salman said that Rubaie had demanded 200 million dollars in compensation, while the doctor confirmed he wanted financial compensation but declined to specify a figure.

Copyright © 2010 AFP.

External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hPnVpRiQs4f29-xgmE1OF6cUH8Og

2010/01/10 - The Blackwater Killings in Afghanistan/U.S. vs. Cannon & Drotleff: Indictment

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:36:51 +0100

"U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
"U.S. vs. Justin Cannon & Christopher Drotleff

"Indictment

"The Grand Jury charges that:

"General Allegations

"At all times relevant to this Indictment:

"1. On or about May 5,2009, the defendants Justin H. Cannon and Christopher A. Drotleff were employed by the Armed Forces outside the United States, as defined in Title 18, United States Code, Section 3267(1)(A)(ii)(I), that is:

"a. Justin H. Cannon and Christopher A, Drotleff were Department of Defense contractors employed by Paravant LLC. Paravant LLC is a subsidiary of Xe (formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide), which was employed as a subcontractor for the prime contractor Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC as a part of the Defense Department Warfighter Focus contract #W900KK-07-D-0001. Pursuant to this contract, Justin H. Cannon and Christopher A, Drotleff provided training to the Afghan National Army for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in the use and maintenance of weapons and weapons systems. [...]

"[...] The General Allegations set forth in Paragraphs One through Four of this Indictment are realleged and expressly incorporated herein as if set out in full.

"On or about May 5,2009, the defendants, Justin H. Cannon and Christopher A. Drotleff, with malice aforethought, did unlawfully kill Rahib Mirza Moharnmad (a.k.a.Rahib Helaludin), which conduct would have constituted an offense under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1111 had it been engaged in within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction
of the United States, and did aid, abet, counsel, command, induce, and cause each other to commit the offense.
(In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1111, 2, and 3261(a)(l).) [...]"

2010/01/07 - 2 Ex-Blackwater Guards Charged in Afghan Killings

Fri, 8 Jan 2010 02:15:38 +0100

By Mike Baker & Devlin Barrett
Associated Press
January 7, 2010

Raleigh, N.C. - Two former Blackwater contractors were arrested Thursday on murder charges in the shootings of two Afghans after a traffic accident last year, according to a federal indictment.

The indictment unsealed hours after the arrests charges Justin Cannon, 27, and Chris Drotleff, 29, with second-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges. FBI agents arrested both of them without incident, said Peter Carr, a spokesman with the U.S. attorney's office in Virginia's eastern district.

Both men have told The Associated Press that they were justified in opening fire on a car that caused an accident in front of their vehicle, then turned and sped toward them. The indictment says the shooting at a Kabul intersection killed two people. At least one other person was injured.

"I feel comfortable firing my weapon any time I feel my life is in danger," Drotleff said in a recent interview. "That night, my life was 100 percent in danger."

Drotleff made a first court appearance Thursday afternoon and requested an attorney to be appointed. He was ordered held until a detention hearing next week. Officials said Cannon made an initial appearance in Texas.

The arrests came a day after Xe, the North Carolina-based company formerly known as Blackwater, settled a series of federal lawsuits alleging that illegal activity by the company led to the deaths of dozens of Iraqis. Those killings and other problems in Iraq have strained relations between Washington and Baghdad and led to the U.S. government's push to increase oversight of contractors in war zones.

U.S. officials have struggled to demonstrate that they have both the legal grounds and political fortitude to hold contractors accountable. Several Blackwater contractors had been charged with 14 counts of manslaughter for their role in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square, but a judge dropped those charges last week.

In another case, federal prosecutors have told a Seattle attorney they intend to charge another Blackwater contractor in the killing of an Iraqi guard in 2006.

The killings were among the violence cited by the lawsuits, which accused the company of cultivating a reckless culture that allowed innocent civilians to be killed. Plaintiffs' lawyers filed a motion late Wednesday requesting the seven lawsuits be dismissed after the settlement was reached.

The company said it was pleased with the settlement and ready to move on, declining to release its full terms. Xe declined to comment on Thursday's indictment other than to say that the men were fired and that the company "immediately and fully cooperated with the government's investigation."

Cannon, of Corpus Christi, Texas., and Drotleff, of Virginia Beach, Va., were among four contractors fired after the shooting for failing to comply with the terms of their contract with Paravant, a Xe subsidiary.

Steve McClain, another former contractor who was with Cannon and Drotleff during the shootings, told the AP he spent about 90 minutes before a Virginia grand jury this week detailing his recollections of what happened.

Cannon, Drotleff and McClain said in separate interviews with the AP over the past month that they were driving along a Kabul road on the night of May 5 when a speeding car slammed into the first vehicle of their convoy, causing it to flip.

Cannon and Drotleff were traveling in another vehicle and got out to help. They both said the car that caused the accident turned and started speeding toward them. Fearing for their lives, both opened fire, with Drotleff emptying a 16-round clip. Cannon was unsure how many shots were fired.

"My conscience is clear about it, but that doesn't really matter," Cannon said. "If someone's got an agenda, then there's nothing I can do about it."

The former workers complained that Blackwater tried to make them scapegoats. They said the company armed some of its workers in Afghanistan despite U.S. military documents that prohibited them from carrying guns. The contractors were in Kabul to help train the Afghan National Army.

McClain's termination letter from Blackwater cited violation of alcohol policy, and he said that topic was one focus of grand jury questioning.

"I wasn't drinking and I didn't witness (any of the other contractors) drinking that day," said McClain, 25, of California.

A fourth contractor at the scene, Amando Hamid, did not return messages seeking comment.

Barrett reported from Washington.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

External link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AFGHAN_CONTRACTOR_SHOOTING
___________________________________________________________________________________

Two ex-Blackwater staff charged with Afghan murders

From Agence France Presse
January 7, 2010

Washington - Two former Blackwater employees have been charged with the murder of two Afghans in Kabul last year and could face the death penalty, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Justin Cannon, 27, of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Christopher Drotleff, 29, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, have been charged with second-degree murder following the shooting deaths of the two Afghan nationals.

They were also charged with attempted murder, after a third person was wounded in the Kabul incident on May 5, when Cannon and Drotleff were working as contractors for the Department of Defense in Afghanistan.

Both men, who had provided training to the Afghan army in using and maintaining weapons systems, were arrested Thursday after the 13-count grand jury indictment, the statement added.

They face a total of eight charges each, including knowingly discharging a firearm to commit a crime.

Blackwater, a private security firm which has changed its name to Xe following a series of highly-publicized controversies in Iraq, is headquartered in North Carolina. The two men were employed by Paravant LLC which is a subsidiary of Xe.

The Department of Justice said the incident that led to the charges occurred at the intersection of two roads in the Afghan capital.

The two men who were shot dead were identified as Rahib Mirza Mohammad (also known as Rahib Helaludin) and Romal Mohammad Naiem. But there were few other details of what had happened.

Blackwater was once among the largest security firms operating in Iraq after the US-led invasion of 2003.

One week ago, a federal judge dismissed criminal charges against five Blackwater security guards accused of fatally shooting 14 people in Baghdad in September 2007.

Judge Ricardo Urbina said prosecutors violated the defendants' rights by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during a State Department probe to build their case.

Blackwater first came under scrutiny on March 31, 2004, when four of its employees were killed by an angry mob in Fallujah, then a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold.

On September 16, 2007, Blackwater guards opened fire with automatic weapons while escorting an American diplomatic convoy through Baghdad's Nisur Square. Blackwater said their guards had come under attack.

US media further reported this week that two Xe contractors had been among eight people killed in a suicide bombing at Khost base, in eastern Afghanistan, last week.

The reports pointed to a continued close relationship between the CIA and Blackwater.

The firm is believed to have participated in programs to kill top Al-Qaeda terrorists in 2004, and CIA "snatch and grab" missions to capture or kill insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the Central Intelligence Agency had appeared to distance itself from the firm in recent years.

Copyright © 2010 AFP.

External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gntFhrO9W2QS8cd-OUJinP29VAVA
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Two defense contractors indicted in shooting of Afghan citizens

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post
January 7, 2010

Two defense contractors working for a subsidiary of the former Blackwater Worldwide were charged today with shooting and killing two Afghan citizens in Kabul and wounding a third, the latest legal blow for the embattled company, prosecutors said Thursday.

Justin Cannon, 27, and Christopher Drotleff, 29, were indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Norfolk on charges including second-degree murder, attempted murder and firearms offenses. The indictment was unsealed Thursday afternoon.

Prosecutors said Cannon, of Corpus Christi, Tex., and Drotleff, of Virginia Beach, shot the three Afghan nationals near Jalalabad and Mosque roads in Kabul on May 3. At the time, the two men were Defense Department contractors working for Paravant LLC, a subsidiary of Xe Services LLC, as the former Blackwater is now known. Further details of the shootings were not immediately available.

Court documents said the two men were training the Afghan National Army in the use and maintenance of weapons and weapons systems. Paravant was a subcontractor to the main Pentagon contractor, Raytheon Technical Services Co. LLC.

The charges are another legal black eye for the former Blackwater, which has been under fire for a string of incidents in which its heavily armed guards have been accused of using excessive force overseas. They followed a rare piece of good news: A federal judge in the District dismissed criminal charges last week against five Blackwater security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi citizens in a shooting in a busy Baghdad square three years ago. The judge also sharply criticized the tactics of Justice Department prosecutors handling the case.

The controversy over Blackwater's tactics has focused on the company's actions during the Iraq war, where the North Carolina firm has provided security under a lucrative State Department contract. Thursday marked the first time employees of a Blackwater-affiliated company have been charged for their actions during the war in Afghanistan.

Mark Corallo, an Xe spokesman, said the company "immediately and fully cooperated with the government's investigation of this tragic incident and terminated the individuals involved for violating company policy." He said the company would not comment further.

The charges were unveiled Thursday, soon after a federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit filed against the former Blackwater over the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria acted after attorneys for about 70 Iraqis who sued Xe affirmed that every plaintiff had signed onto a financial settlement the plaintiffs originally reached with the company in November. The settlement almost collapsed when plaintiffs' attorneys tried to withdraw it, saying several Iraqi plaintiffs had not approved the agreement. They blamed a translation error.

"We are pleased that the original settlement has been affirmed by the plaintiffs,'' the company and plaintiffs' attorneys said Thursday in a joint statement. "This enables Xe's new management to move the company forward free of the costs and distraction of ongoing litigation, and provides some compensation to Iraqi families."

The September 2007 shooting, in which criminal charges were dismissed last week, also was a centerpiece of the civil lawsuit, which cited the incident and other shootings to accuse the company of "lawless behavior.'' Plaintiffs' attorneys singled out Erik Prince - the company's founder and a former Navy SEAL - for blame, saying he deliberately caused the deaths of more than 20 Iraqis between 2005 and 2007.

Attorneys for the former Blackwater denied the allegations against Prince, and Ellis had voiced deep skepticism about them at a hearing in August. In November, the judge ordered a hearing into the collapse of the settlement, saying he hoped the deal would survive.

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010703206.html

2010/01/07 - Blackwater Settles Civil Lawsuits Over Iraq Deaths

Fri, 8 Jan 2010 00:44:24 +0100

By Mike Baker
Associated Press
January 7, 2010

Raleigh, N.C. - The security firm formerly known as Blackwater has reached a settlement in a series of federal lawsuits in which dozens of Iraqis accused the company of cultivating a reckless culture that allowed innocent civilians to be killed.

Plaintiffs' attorney Susan Burke filed a motion in federal court late Wednesday requesting the cases be dismissed. The seven lawsuits cited a pattern of illegal activity, including several killings such as the 2007 shooting in Iraq's capital that left 17 Iraqis dead and strained relationships between Washington and Baghdad.

Burke didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday. Blackwater, now known as Xe, released a statement saying the company was "pleased" that the settlement, in the works for months, had been affirmed.

"This enables Xe's new management to move the company forward free of the costs and distraction of ongoing litigation, and provides some compensation to Iraqi families," the company said.

Hassan Jabir, a lawyer who was wounded in the 2007 shooting, said that all of the victims' families and people who were injured agreed to the settlement and met with lawyers at a Baghdad hotel about a week ago. He hailed the settlement as a win for the plaintiffs.

"I feel like I achieved victory against the Blackwater firm," Jabir said.

Not all the plaintiffs appeared happy with the decision. Sami Hawas Hamoud Abu al-Iz also was wounded during the 2007 Nisoor Square incident along with his son. His mother was killed. He said the agreement came after the plaintiffs were told by their lawyers that there was a risk that they might not receive anything.

"All the victims' families signed the settlement papers under pressure, after we were informed that the Blackwater firm is broke and if you don't sign, you will get nothing," he said.

He said the firm offered $30,000 for each person who was wounded and $100,000 to the families of people who died.

The lawsuits sought compensation for deaths and injuries. Unlike federal probes that have specifically targeted company contractors for their actions, the civil lawsuits accused the Moyock, N.C.-based company - and founder Erik Prince - of producing a climate in which it was acceptable for innocent Iraqis to die.

"Mr. Prince personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army ... to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians," one of the lawsuits said.

The full terms of the settlement were not released, and Blackwater declined to discuss them.

Relief from the lawsuits was a second major legal development for a company that has been beleaguered by federal, congressional and civil scrutiny. A federal judge last week dismissed charges against the Blackwater contractors that were involved in the Nisoor Square shooting.

That decision enraged many Iraqis, who saw it as proof of what they long suspected - that security contractors were above the law. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday vowed to seek punishment of the Blackwater guards, saying that Iraq would not "abandon our right to punish this firm."

The lawsuits covered that shooting and more, including the 2006 killing of an Iraqi guard, the February 2007 killings of three people guarding the Iraqi Media Network and another shooting that attorneys said left three people dead a week before the killings at Nisoor Square.

Blackwater changed its name to Xe last year, saying its brand had been tarnished by its work in Iraq. The company had contracts with the U.S. government to provide security for diplomats and other figures in Iraq, though executives have said the company is shifting its focus away from that type of work. Iraqi leaders last year refused to provide Blackwater a license to operate there.

Associated Press Writer Saad Abdul-Kadir contributed to this report from Baghdad.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

External link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BLACKWATER_SETTLEMENT
_____________________________________________________________________________

U.N. Experts Urge Iraq, U.S. to Pursue Blackwater Case

By Stephanie Nebehay
Reuters
January 7, 2010

Geneva - U.N. human rights experts called on Iraq and the United States on Thursday to ensure that the 2007 killing of at least 14 Iraqi civilians, which has been blamed on Blackwater security guards, be prosecuted.

Iraq said on Monday it would launch lawsuits in U.S. and Iraqi courts against the U.S. security firm for the Baghdad killings, rejecting a U.S. judge's decision last week to throw out the charges.

In a statement, the United Nations working group on the use of mercenaries said the case underscored the need for "credible oversight" of private security companies working for the United States and other governments in war zones.

Baghdad and Washington must cooperate to resolve the killings committed at a Baghdad traffic circle in September 2007, with "those responsible fully held accountable," it said.

The Blackwater incident highlighted the Pentagon's growing use of private forces in war zones and, for Iraqis, came to symbolize what they saw as a disregard for their lives on the part of foreign forces in the country.

Private guards protecting U.S. personnel were given immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

"We respect the independence of the United States judiciary and the requirements for due process, but are very concerned that the recent decision to dismiss the case against Blackwater guards may lead to a situation where no one would be accountable for grave human rights violations," said Shaista Shameem, who chairs the U.N. group of independent experts.

The Iraqi government and victims' families felt that they had no recourse to justice, she added.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said prosecutors had wrongly used statements the guards made to State Department investigators under threat of job loss - thereby violating their constitutional rights.

The five guards were charged a year ago with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and one weapons violation count. The U.N. working group said 17 people had been killed and a further 20 injured.

The guards from Blackwater, which has renamed itself Xe Services, say they fired in self-defense in the incident. But witnesses and victims say the guards, escorting a heavily armed convoy of U.S. diplomats through Baghdad traffic, shot indiscriminately.

"Credible oversight and accountability of private security companies working on the behalf of the United States and other governments remain essential to avoid these alleged violations to be unpunished in future," Shameem said.

The 47-member-state U.N. Human Rights Council has asked the experts to report by September on a possible international treaty to regulate private military and security companies.

A treaty would "provide an avenue of redress to victims," Shameem said.

Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Noah Barkin.

© Copyright 2010 Thomson Reuters

External link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6063LS20100107

2010/01/04 - Iraq Will File Lawsuits Against Blackwater

Mon, 4 Jan 2010 23:38:04 +0100

By Missy Ryan
Reuters
January 4, 2010

Baghdad - Iraq said on Monday it would launch lawsuits in U.S. and Iraqi courts against a U.S. security firm accused in the 2007 killing of civilians in Baghdad, rejecting a U.S. judge's decision to throw out charges.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki "confirmed that the Iraqi government will undertake a lawsuit in Iraq and the United States against American security company Blackwater," his office said in a statement.

The Iraqi government "rejects the ruling issued by the American court acquitting the company of the crime of killing a number of citizens," Maliki said.

Last week, a U.S. federal judge threw out charges against five guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle in September 2007, saying the defendants' constitutional rights had been violated.

The Blackwater incident came to symbolize for Iraqis what they saw as foreigners' disregard for their lives after private guards protecting U.S. personnel were given immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

That immunity was lifted in a bilateral agreement that came into effect from last year. It is not clear how an Iraqi case against the guards, or Xe itself, would get around the immunity that was in place in 2007.

The Iraqi government called the U.S. court ruling "unacceptable and unjust" and promised to support a lawsuit in U.S. courts filed by victims of the shooting or their relatives.

The guards from Blackwater, now called Xe Services, say they fired in self-defense in the incident, which occurred during some of the worst sectarian violence in Iraq. But witnesses and victims say the guards, escorting a heavily armed convoy through Baghdad traffic, shot indiscriminately.

The five guards were charged in a U.S. federal court with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 of attempting to commit manslaughter and one weapons violation. A sixth Blackwater guard pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

The U.S. ruling comes at a sensitive time for Iraqi politicians, trying to demonstrate their independence from foreign influence and their security credentials ahead of national polls in March.

The U.S. State Department has relied heavily on Blackwater since 2003 to protect diplomats and other officials. But Iraq revoked the firm's license following the 2007 shooting.

External link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6032CS20100104
_____________________________________________________________

Judge weighs misconduct finding in Blackwater case

By Matt Apuzzo
Associated Press
January 4, 2010

Washington - Prosecutors who mishandled the investigation into a deadly 2007 Blackwater Worldwide shooting face a possible misconduct citation from a judge who says they withheld evidence and violated the guards' constitutional rights.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina admonished the Justice Department last week for its "reckless" handling of the investigation into a shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead. He threw out manslaughter and weapons charges against five security guards and, in a footnote, said he was also considering whether the repeated government missteps amounted to misconduct.

Such a ruling would be an embarrassing cap to a politically sensitive investigation and a black eye to a department that is still dealing with the fallout from last year's botched corruption case against former Sen. Ted Stevens. In that case, a judge wiped away the senator's conviction and appointed a lawyer to investigate prosecutors for withholding evidence from defense attorneys.

If Urbina rules the Blackwater prosecutors committed misconduct, it would touch off an internal Justice Department investigation and could lead to sanctions against the government or the individual prosecutors.

Blackwater guards were hired to protect diplomats in Iraq. The shooting unfolded in a crowded intersection, where Blackwater said its guards were ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. Prosecutors said the heavily armored Blackwater convoy used machine guns and grenades to unleash a wild, unprovoked assault on innocent civilians.

The Blackwater case fell apart because prosecutors built the investigation around State Department interviews the guards gave immediately after the shooting. Under an agreement commonly made following police shootings, the interviews were to be used only for the State Department investigation, not for criminal prosecution.

Urbina also cited prosecutors for withholding evidence from the grand jury. For instance, after a key witness told prosecutors he never saw Blackwater guard Donald Ball open fire, prosecutors blacked out that statement before presenting it to the grand jury. Grand jurors have the final say on whether to charge people.

Prosecutors also withheld the fact that four other Blackwater guards said they were attacked within seconds of entering the intersection. A prosecutor told the judge he withheld that evidence because he believed the witnesses were hostile to the government, according to the court ruling.

Ball's attorney, Steven McCool, asked for the misconduct ruling but would not comment Monday because the request remains sealed. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd had no comment.

The five guards are 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.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

External link: http://tinyurl.com/yzsftcj

2010/01/02 - Blackwater Dismissal Risks Hurting Iraq Relations

Sat, 2 Jan 2010 14:01:41 +0100

By August Cole
Wall Street Journal
January 2, 2010

The dismissal of charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused by the Justice Department of recklessly shooting in a Baghdad traffic circle in 2007 potentially strains U.S.-Iraqi relations at a critical moment and raises new questions for the Obama administration about effective legal oversight of battlefield contractors.

The shooting enraged Iraqi politicians and created a diplomatic firestorm for the Bush administration. Now, U.S. combat troops are out of Iraqi cities and a broader drawdown is under way.

The dismissal of charges comes as the U.S. marked its first month since the war began in 2003 in which no American forces died in combat in Iraq, according to the Associated Press. Three U.S. troops died in December as a result of noncombat-related incidents.

In Baghdad Friday, the ruling was met with outrage on the streets and pledges by the government to continue to prosecute a case against Blackwater, though it was unclear what legal remedy remained.

"Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the Blackwater guards committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement, the AP reported. He didn't elaborate on what steps the government planned to take to pursue the case.

In its first year, the Obama administration has tried to dial back government use of contractors, from Defense Department back offices to State Department aid projects overseas. This has proved difficult in areas such as security and intelligence.

"Blackwater highlights the chasm that developed in the Clinton and Bush years between contractors and the ability of our government to serve the national interest," said Janine Wedel, a professor at George Mason University and a fellow at the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington.

In September 2007, a Blackwater security convoy working for the State Department was involved in a shooting incident at Baghdad's Nisoor Square, a busy traffic circle, that left 17 Iraqis dead. In December 2008, the Justice Department unsealed a 35-count indictment and charged five of the guards with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations for their alleged role in the shooting.

The case was seen in Iraq as a key test of the U.S.'s desire and ability to hold American security contractors accountable at a time when they had immunity from Iraqi law. That immunity is gone, in large part due to a new U.S.-Iraqi agreement covering U.S. contractors, government civilians and military personnel following the incident.

On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed the charges against the men, citing flaws in how the government handled the case. The judge said prosecutors incorrectly relied on statements the guards gave soon after the incident that U.S. law bars from being used later against the defendants.

"The explanations offered by the prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants' compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility," he wrote in a 90-page opinion.

All five guards - Donald Ball, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten, and Paul Slough - were in their 20s when the shooting happened in 2007. A sixth guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, 35 years old at the time of the incident, had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement that the department is disappointed with the decision and is "reviewing the opinion and considering our options."

The judge's decision gives Blackwater's parent company, renamed Xe Services LLC last year, a legal break as its security business is shrinking.

Xe's President and CEO, Joseph Yorio, said in a statement that he welcomed the dismissal: "With this decision, we feel we can move forward and continue to assist the United States in its mission to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan find a peaceful, democratic future." The State Department last year replaced Blackwater with another U.S. security firm after the Iraqi government effectively barred it from security work there. But the loss of the contract, accounting for about a third of the company's revenue, was a setback. Xe's remaining security work is far smaller and involves mostly protecting Central Intelligence Agency bases and officials overseas.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

External link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126229226969112429.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Iraq outraged as Blackwater case is dropped

By Guy Adams
The Independent
January 2, 2010

Saying it was "astonished" by a US court's decision to drop manslaughter charges against private security guards who were accused of killing 17 civilians caught up in a Baghdad traffic jam, the Iraqi government yesterday promised to continue its battle to secure justice for the victims of "people who like to shoot unarmed people".

Wejdan Mikhail, the country's Human Rights Minister, said she would now support efforts to bring civil charges against the Blackwater employees accused of firing automatic weapons and throwing hand grenades at cars negotiating a roundabout in Nisur Square just over two years ago.

A judge in Washington ruled late on Thursday that the high-profile case, which sparked allegations of a culture of lawlessness and unaccountability at Blackwater and other private security firms in Iraq, should be thrown out due to an apparent legal technicality.

The five men, who pleaded not guilty and claimed they acted in self defence, will not face a trial for manslaughter, after Ricardo Urbina, a federal judge, decided that there had been "procedural errors" in the way evidence against them was collected.

Ms Mikhail has demanded a meeting with US embassy officials in Baghdad to hear an explanation of why the criminal case was dropped. "I don't understand why the judge took this decision," she told the news agency AFP. "They killed innocent Iraqi people that were just in their cars without any weapons. I am very astonished. So many innocent Iraqis - young, students - were shot by someone who liked to shoot unarmed people."

The bloodbath, which occurred in September 2007, threw an uncomfortable spotlight on the Bush government's policy of using private security firms (many of which had links with the Republican administration) in war zones.

Investigators concluded that the guards, who were escorting a convoy of armoured vehicles, indiscriminately fired on locals stuck in a traffic jam. They claimed to have been responding to incoming fire, but there is little evidence that any victims were armed.

The decision was welcomed by Blackwater, which lost its US government contracts in Baghdad after the killings and has subsequently changed its name to Xe. But General Ray Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said the ruling will heighten hostility faced by security workers and troops in Iraq.

Left-leaning US politicians described it as an affront to human rights. "A question I've been asking for a long time is, 'Can private military contractors actually get away with murder?'" said Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives who has sponsored legislation to outlaw the use of private contractors in war zones. "This indicates that the answer is yes."

External link: http://tinyurl.com/yfybske
____________________________________

‘They Kept Pumping Bullets Into Us’

By Firas Al-Atraqchi
Al Jazeera
January 2, 2010

The Iraqi government is under increasing pressure to aggressively pursue the prosecution of American military personnel accused of killing Iraqis.

The recent decision by Ricardo Urbina, a district judge, to dismiss charges against five security contractors accused of gunning down 17 Iraqis, including women and children, in September 2007 has re-ignited deep discord among Iraqis, and fuelled suspicions that US personnel operate in a lawless void while in Iraq.

An Iraqi investigation into the incident two years ago contradicted Blackwater claims that its contractors had fired in self-defence after coming under attack in central Baghdad. In January 2008, the Iraqi government barred Blackwater from providing security detail to US diplomatic staff in the country, citing the firm's use of excessive force.

A US congressional investigation into Blackwater operations appeared to corroborate Baghdad's accusations that the firm routinely used "excessive" and "pre-emptive" force. In November 2007, FBI investigators found that 14 of the 17 killings had been "unjustified" and violated "deadly force rules" for security contractors operating in Iraq.

However, Urbina threw out the case last week saying that US justice department prosecutors had improperly used sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity.

While the Iraqi government said it regretted the judge's decision and vowed to appeal the ruling, ordinary Iraqis are left wondering at the apparent double standards of a legal system which could pioneer rendition, imprisonment and torture based on far less evidence, but fumble a case like this.

However, Mohammed Kinani, whose nine-year-old son Ali was killed in the shooting, told Al Jazeera that Urbina's dismissal does not signal the end of the criminal or civil cases brought against Blackwater.

"The FBI has been investigating this case for 27 months and there are witnesses to the event as well as forensic evidence which indicate that this is not the end of the road," he said.

‘Utter devastation’

Kinani, his sister, her three children and Kinani's son were in a car in Nisour Square on September 14 when Blackwater guards instructed them to stop.

"A few minutes after several cars in the square stopped, they opened fire on us," Kinani said.

"My son was hit, my sister was lightly injured, my car was hit by dozens of rounds. A man in front of me was killed and lying in a pool of his own blood and every few moments they would fire on him again ... they continued pumping bullets into us.

"They utterly devastated everything in front of them. As if they were bent on revenge."

Haitham Ahmed, whose wife and son were killed in the shooting, told the Associated Press that the way the prosecution handled the case raises doubts over whether the US justice system could deliver a fair verdict.

"If a judge ... dismissed the trial, that is ridiculous and the whole thing has been but a farce," he said.

Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraqi-American who is currently writing a book about the "illegal occupation of Iraq", says that Iraqis have largely given up on waiting for justice "or democracy, for that matter", from Washington.

"There are over 1.3 million dead Iraqis who deserve justice. There are over 5 million displaced Iraqis who have the right of return to a safe country who deserve justice. What the United States has to understand is that without justice, there will be no peace," she says.

Immunity to impunity?

But Blackwater Worldwide, since renamed Xe Services, is not the only security contractor operating in Iraq.

Since the US-led invasion and occupation in 2003, more than 100 private security firms have set up shop in Iraq, many of their names and mandates unknown to the media.

All have been granted immunity from Iraqi prosecution under an agreement signed by Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority head, and the Iraqi Governing Council, an interim political body established after the fall of Baghdad, in 2004.

Despite the handing of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, 2004, this immunity exemption remains in effect today.

In fact, private security firms in Iraq, much like Blackwater, took over major tasks and operations, which had previously been primarily assigned to US forces. The hope at the time had been that US forces would remain in their barracks, avoid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and ambushes, reduce the body count, and keep the US public firmly behind the war. In effect, private security firms become the de facto military presence in Iraq - outnumbering the official count of non-US military "coalition" forces.

As of November 2007, Blackwater had earned more than $485mn in government contracts.

"Iraqis are certainly aware - far more aware than Americans - that there are numerous groups, armies, and militias working under the occupation to devastate Iraqi society and terrorise them. Blackwater and its henchmen are known in Iraq; in March 2008, Iraqi doctors in Falluja named an outbreak of severe malarial infection 'Blackwater Fever' because it's so lethal," says Wasfi.

Cursory investigations

The US government has no means of monitoring who the private security contractors are, what they do or how much they are paid and, in June 2009, a US congressional Wartime Contracting Commission found that the US military had failed to provide adequate oversight of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iraqis have grown tired of the explanations repeatedly offered as justification for the killing of civilians and say US investigators have only offered cursory investigations, usually siding with the accounts of private security firms.

Amnesty International USA has also been critical of the way the US government has handled accusations of impropriety by private security contractors, saying that "the US justice department has largely failed in its obligation to prosecute US contractors for serious human rights violations, and worse, it appears to have taken steps to undermine access to justice".

In his ruling, Judge Urbina said that lead prosecutor Ken Kohl and others "purposefully flouted the advice" of senior justice department officials who told them not to use the statements that he eventually ruled as impermissible.

Whether the prosecution's faux pas was the result of incompetence or willful sabotage is immaterial at this point; the Blackwater case was seen as a test of future Iraq-US relations, particularly given that US combat troops are to fully withdraw from Iraq by 2011.

The case also marked the culmination of years of frustrated efforts by Iraqi civilians and politicians to hold accountable not only private contractors, but the US military as well, for excessive use of force.

Kinani says his family is still distraught about the killing of his son but that he derives strength from knowing that the Nisour Square incident not only brought Iraq's Shias and Sunnis together but also revealed what ordinary civilians were facing under occupation.

"The killings in Nisour Square woke the Iraqi and US authorities to the horrors of what such security firms were doing in Iraq," he said, "and motivated them to take legal action."

External link: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/01/2010128143176494.html

2010/01/01 - Iraq Dismayed by Blackwater Dismissal

Fri, 1 Jan 2010 19:05:10 +0100

By Matt Apuzzo
Associated Press
January 1, 2010

A federal judge cited repeated government missteps in dismissing all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in a case that inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed the case against the guards accused of the shooting in a crowded Baghdad intersection in 2007.

The shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead. The Iraqi government wanted the guards to face trial in Iraq and officials there said they would closely watch how the U.S. judicial system handled the case.

Urbina said the 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. Urbina said that violated the guards' constitutional rights. He dismissed the government's explanations as "contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility."

"We're obviously disappointed by the decision," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said. "We're still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options."

Prosecutors can appeal the ruling.

Ali al-Dabagh, the Iraqi government spokesman, said in a statement Friday that the government was dismayed by the court's dismissal of the case.

"The Iraqi government regrets the decision," he said. "Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the guards of Blackwater committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force."

"The Iraqi government will follow up its procedures strictly and firmly to pursue the criminals of the above named company and to preserve the rights of the Iraqi citizens who were victims or the families who suffered losses from this crime."

Dr. Haitham Ahmed, whose wife and son were killed in the shooting, said the decision casts doubt on the integrity of the entire U.S. justice system.

"If a judge ... dismissed the trial, that is ridiculous and the whole thing has been but a farce," Ahmed said. "The rights of our victims and the rights of the innocent people should not be wasted."

Dozens of Iraqis, including the estates of some of the victims allegedly killed by Blackwater employees, filed a separate lawsuit last year alleging that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings. The civil case is still before a Virginia court.

Blackwater contractors had been hired to guard U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said insurgents ambushed them in a traffic circle. Prosecutors said the men unleashed an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.

The shooting led to the unraveling of the North Carolina-based company, which since has replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services.

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.

Defense attorneys said the guards were thrilled by the ruling after more than two years of scrutiny.

"It's tremendously gratifying to see the court allow us to celebrate the new year the way it has," said attorney Bill Coffield, who represents Liberty. "It really invigorates your belief in our court system."

"It's indescribable," said Ball's attorney, Steven McCool. "It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off his shoulders. Here's a guy that's a decorated war hero who we maintain should never have been charged in the first place."

The five guards had been charged with manslaughter and weapons violations. The charges carried mandatory 30-year prison terms.

Urbina's ruling does not resolve whether the shooting was proper. Rather, the 90-page opinion underscores some of the conflicting evidence in the case. Some Blackwater guards told prosecutors they were concerned about the shooting and offered to cooperate. Others said the convoy had been attacked. By the time the FBI began investigating, Nisoor Square had been picked clean of bullets that might have proven whether there had been a firefight or a massacre.

The Iraqi government has refused to grant Blackwater a license to continue operating in the country, prompting the State Department to refuse to renew its contracts with the company.

In a statement released by its president, Joseph Yorio, the company said it was happy to have the shooting behind it.

"Like the people they were protecting, our Xe professionals were working for a free, safe and democratic Iraq for the Iraqi people," Yorio said. "With this decision, we feel we can move forward and continue to assist the United States in its mission to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan find a peaceful, democratic future."

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said, "I do worry about it, because clearly there were innocent people killed in that attack ... it is heart-wrenching."

The case against the five men fell apart because, after the shooting, the State Department ordered the guards to explain what happened. In exchange for those statements, the State Department promised the statements would not be used in a criminal case. Such limited immunity deals are common in police departments so officers involved in shootings cannot hold up internal investigations by refusing to cooperate.

The five guards told investigators they fired their weapons, an admission that was crucial because forensic evidence could not determine who had fired.

Because of the immunity deal, prosecutors had to build their case without those statements, a high legal hurdle that Urbina said the Justice Department failed to clear. Prosecutors read those statements, reviewed them in the investigation and used them to question witnesses and get search warrants, Urbina said. Key witnesses also reviewed the statements and the grand jury heard evidence that had been tainted by those statements, the judge said.

The Justice Department set up a process to avoid those problems, but Urbina said lead prosecutor Ken Kohl and others "purposefully flouted the advice" of senior Justice Department officials telling them not to use the statements.

It was unclear what the ruling means for a sixth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, who turned on his former colleagues and pleaded guilty to killing one Iraqi and wounding another. Had he gone to trial, the case against him would likely have fallen apart, but it's unclear whether Urbina will let him out of his plea deal.

By Associated Press Writer Matt Apuzzo; AP Writers Bushra Juhi and Rebecca Santana in Baghdad contributed to this report.

© MMX The Associated Press.

External link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/01/world/main6044525.shtml
_______________________________________________________________________

Iraq criticizes dismissal of charges in Blackwater shootings

From Cable News Network
January 1, 2010

Baghdad, Iraq - The Iraqi government on Friday criticized the dismissal of charges against five Blackwater security guards, saying they murdered 17 innocent civilians.

An Iraqi man who was wounded in the same 2007 incident said the U.S. federal judge's dismissal of manslaughter charges showed "disregard for Iraqi blood."

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina found Thursday that prosecutors wrongly used the guards' own statements against them.

"The Iraqi government regrets the U.S. federal judge's decision to drop the charges against the Blackwater security guards who caused the death of 17 innocent Iraqi civilians in Nusour Square on September 16th, 2007," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Friday.

Al-Dabbagh added that "investigations carried out by specialized Iraqi authorities unequivocally found that the Blackwater guards committed murder and broke use-of-force rules when there was no threat requiring the use of force."

The bloodbath in Baghdad's Nusour Square, which also left two dozen wounded, led Iraq's government to place limits on security contractors hired by Blackwater, now known as Xe, and other firms.

Among the wounded was Hassan Jaber Salman, a lawyer.

"It was a big disappointment when we heard about dropping the charges against the five Blackwater contractors," Salman said. "We were expecting that American justice system is fair and independent. It's clear that the justice system in America is unjust and unfair. What happened is disregard for Iraqi blood."

Urbina found that the government's case was built largely on "statements compelled under a threat of job loss" during a State Department investigation of the shootings, violating the Fifth Amendment rights of the five men charged.

"In their zeal to bring charges against the defendant in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation," Urbina wrote in a 90-page decision.

Federal prosecutors "repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors assigned to the case," the judge said.

In the ruling, which followed three weeks of hearings, Urbina said the explanations prosecutors and federal agents offered for using the guards' statements were "all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility."

"In short, the government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants' statements or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt," he wrote.

There was no immediate response to the decision from the Justice Department, which can appeal the ruling or seek new indictments against the men.

The men were guarding a State Department convoy moving through western Baghdad when the shooting began. The company said its contractors came under attack, but Iraqi authorities called the gunfire unprovoked and indiscriminate.

Each of the now-former guards - Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, Donald Ball and Nicholas Slatten - faced 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and one count of using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. Prosecutors requested that charges against Slatten be dropped in November, but Thursday's ruling dismissed the counts against all five.

"We're obviously pleased at the decision dismissing the entire indictment and are very happy that these courageous young men can begin the new year without this unfair cloud hanging over them," said Slough's lawyer, Mark Hulkower.

A sixth guard involved in the shootings, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty in 2008 to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.

CNN's Jomana Karadsheh and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

© 2009 Cable News Network.

External link: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/01/iraq.blackwater.charges/
____________________________________________________________________________

Iraq ‘to appeal Blackwater verdict’

From Al Jazeera
January 1, 2010

The Iraqi government will push to appeal a US court ruling dismissing charges of murder against five security guards of the private Blackwater firm, an official has told Al Jazeera.

Saad al-Muttalibi, an adviser to the Iraqi council of ministers, said on Friday that if the guards did not receive a just sentence for the killing of 14 Iraqis in 2007, the issue would complicate relations between Iraq and the United States.

"This matter will be appealed in the American court and if not resolved correctly, this will definitely add another strain on the relationship between Iraq and the United States," he said.

"The legality or the procedures of the court case should not stop the criminals from facing justice and receiving a just sentence.

"This is very bad ... for the overall look of the United States outside its borders. It's very important for the Americans to realise that this will work against their interests in Iraq and other places."

Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman, said in a statement: "The Iraqi government will follow up on this issue in strength and resolution to bring those murderers of Blackwater to accountability in order to return the rights of iraqi people who are the victims of this crime."

He said "the investigations carried out by the specialised Iraqi authorities confirmed with no doubt that the guards of Blackwater company have committed a criminal murder act and they have violated the combat environment rule to use force while there was no threat against them".

Promise of immunity

Ricardo Urbina, a district judge, dismissed the charges against the five men on Thursday, saying US justice department prosecutors improperly built their case on sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity.

Urbina said the government's explanations were "contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility".

The September 2007 shooting in Baghdad's busy Nisour Square left at least 14 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.

The Iraqi government wanted the guards to stand trial in Iraq and officials there said they would closely watch how the US judicial system handled the case.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the US justice department, said the department was "obviously disappointed by the decision".

Prosecutors can appeal the 90-page ruling and Boyd said the department was "still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options".

Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan explained that the judge did say that the case can be brought back to court without prejudice but it was going to be difficult for the justice department to build the case from scratch without using the defendants' statements.

Contract extended

Blackwater Worldwide, which had been hired to guard US diplomats in Iraq at the time, has since changed its management and name to Xe Services.

Despite a string of investigations following the deadly shooting and in spite of an Iraqi government ban on the company, the US state department extended a contract with a subsidiary of the firm in September to continue providing security to US diplomats in the country.

The five guards, Donald Ball, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nick Slatten and Paul Slough, all formerly in the US military, had been charged with manslaughter and weapons charges, which carried mandatory 30-year prison terms.

It was unclear what the ruling means for a sixth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, who had pleaded guilty to killing one Iraqi and wounding another.

Defence lawyers said the guards were thrilled by the ruling after more than two years of scrutiny.

"It's tremendously gratifying to see the court allow us to celebrate the New Year the way it has," said lawyer Bill Coffield, who represents Liberty.

"It really invigorates your belief in our court system."

Ball's lawyer, Steven McCool, said "it feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off" his client's shoulders".

"Here's a guy that's a decorated war hero who we maintain should never have been charged in the first place," he added.

Urbina's ruling does not say whether the shooting was proper, only that the government improperly used evidence to build the case.

‘Self-defence’

The guards claimed to have acted in self-defence after a convoy they were protecting near Nisour Square came under attack.

Witnesses, however, said the men unleashed an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.

After the shooting, the US state department had ordered the guards to explain what happened.

Investigators promised the men that their statements were to be used only for the internal inquiry and would not be used in a criminal case.

Such limited immunity deals are common in police departments so officers involved in shootings cannot hold up internal investigations by refusing to co-operate.

The deal meant that prosecutors had to build their case without using those statements, something Urbina said the justice department failed to do.

Prosecutors read those statements, reviewed them in the investigation and used them to get search warrants, Urbina said.

External link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/01/201011101136634433.html
_______________________________________________________________________________

Judge throws out Blackwater guards’ charges in Iraqi deaths
The private contractors are accused of killing 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in a 2007 case that sparked an outcry. A judge says using statements from the Americans was a violation of their rights.

By David G. Savage
Los Angeles Times
January 1, 2010

Reporting from Washington - A federal judge in Washington on Thursday dismissed criminal charges against five Blackwater security guards accused of killing 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in an incident that strained U.S.-Iraqi relations and sparked an outcry over the military's use of private contractors.

The judge did not rule on the substance of the charges against the security guards, but instead decided that prosecutors had wrongly relied on what the guards told State Department investigators shortly after the incident. As government contractors, the Blackwater employees were required to speak to an investigator after a shooting.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said that the use of these statements - which were given with a promise of immunity - violated the defendants' rights against compelled self-incrimination.

"In their zeal to bring charges against the defendants ... the government used compelled statements to guide its charging decisions ... and ultimately, to obtain the indictment in this case," the judge wrote in a 90-page opinion.

The efforts of prosecutors and investigators to show that their case did not hinge on compelled testimony "were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility," Urbina wrote.

Because the indictment was thrown out on legal grounds, the government could bring an appeal. It could also re-charge the guards, although a new prosecution could be difficult given the judge's finding that the case was so thoroughly tainted.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said, "We're disappointed by the decision." He added that the department was "still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has in the past sponsored legislation that would prohibit the hire of private military contractors, said she was dismayed by the news.

"A question I've been asking for a long time is, 'Can these private military contractors actually get away with murder'" Schakowsky said. "This indicates that the answer is yes."

"There's a long history of these kinds of companies being able to operate with impunity," she said.

The news of the dismissal reached Baghdad late Thursday night, prompting warnings that it could further damage U.S.-Iraqi relations.

"The message is these people are protected by the American administration," said Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman. "These people were backed by the State Department. ... We are entering the new year with a bad message."

Othman warned: "People won't be satisfied on the political or popular level."

The five guards in the case were Paul Slough of Keller, Texas; Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, Tenn.; Evan Liberty of Rochester, N.H.; Dustin Heard of Maryville, Tenn.; and Donald Ball of West Valley City, Utah. Each had been charged with multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter and firearms violations.

A sixth guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to one count of voluntary manslaughter and helped authorities confirm the details of the incident. It is unclear what effect the judge's decision will have on Ridgeway's case.

The guards maintained that they had fired their weapons in response to an attack by insurgents. But according to U.S. prosecutors and an Iraqi government investigation, the shooting was unprovoked.

An FBI investigation found that at least 14 of the 17 Iraqis killed were shot without cause.

The September 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square, which also wounded 20, put a harsh spotlight on the role of private security guards in the war there. Blackwater guards were hired to provide protection for U.S. officials, but they were not bound by all of the same rules and procedures as the U.S. military.

Before the incident, Blackwater guards had been involved in other shootings and were faulted for firing at unarmed civilians.

In their defense, the five guards in the Nisoor Square case said they were responding to reports of an explosive device detonating nearby as a convoy of U.S. officials approached the area.

The guards "were defending themselves and their comrades who were being shot at and receiving fire from Iraqis they believed to be enemy insurgents," said defense attorney David Schertler at the time of their indictment in December 2007.

Government prosecutors disputed that the guards were returning fire.

"None of the victims of this shooting was armed," said Jeffrey A. Taylor, the U.S. attorney in Washington, when he announced the indictment. "None was an insurgent."

The five guards were not charged with murder but instead with voluntary manslaughter and firearms offenses.

Urbina, who was appointed by President Clinton, has a reputation as a liberal judge. Last year, he ordered the government to free 17 Chinese Uighurs who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison. The government refused, however, and the U.S. appeals court reversed his order.

In the Blackwater case, the judge convened a hearing in October to determine whether the indictment was tainted by the statements the guards had given during their initial interviews. The hearing stretched over three weeks.

He concluded Thursday that the "defendants' compelled statements pervaded nearly every aspect of the government's investigation and prosecution."

For that reason, the entire indictment must be dismissed, he said. In his opinion, Judge Urbina cited the case of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, whose conviction in the Iran-Contra case was overturned on similar grounds in 1990.

North was forced to testify under immunity before Congress, and he was later indicted and convicted by a special prosecutor. Although North's actual words were not used against him, the U.S. appeals court said that the entire case was tainted because prosecutors were aware of his testimony.

Schakowsky, who had not yet read Urbina's decision, said she would "investigate how various arms of the government tripped over themselves in this case."

"We're going to have to understand how this happened," she said.

Schakowsky said she worried that the dismissal of charges in the Blackwater case would send a message to the rest of the world that the U.S. military and contractors will not be held accountable for crimes. She pointed out that soldiers and civilian contractors are often indistinguishable in war zones.

"I'll be interested to see how the government of Iraq responds to this decision," she said. "I think it will fuel anti-American sentiment."

One survivor of the incident, a cabdriver named Bara Sadoun Ismail, who was shot twice, still held out hope that the guards would eventually be prosecuted.

"I don't think it's true that these five people have been released for lack of evidence," he said. "The American justice [system] works. There is just delay."

Separately, Blackwater and its founder, Erik Prince, have been sued in federal court by the victims of the Nisoor Square shooting.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the suit, the complaint alleged that Blackwater and Prince "created and fostered a culture of lawlessness among [Blackwater] employees, encouraging them to act in the company's financial interests at the expense of innocent human life."

Blackwater, which has changed its name to Xe Services, is seeking to have the suit dismissed.

Times staff writers Ned Parker in Baghdad and Kate Linthicum in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/la-na-blackwater1-2010jan01,0,1469598.story

2009/12/31 - Judge Dismisses All Charges in Blackwater Shooting

Fri, 1 Jan 2010 00:28:58 +0100

By Matt Apuzzo
Associated Press
December 31, 2009

Washington - A federal judge dismissed all charges Thursday against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in a crowded Baghdad intersection in 2007.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said Justice Department prosecutors improperly built their case on sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity. Urbina said the government's explanations were "contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility."

The decision throws out a case steeped in international politics. The September 2007 shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad. The Iraqi government wanted the guards to face trial in Iraq and officials there said they would closely watch how the U.S. judicial system handled the case.

"We're obviously disappointed by the decision," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said. "We're still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options."

Prosecutors can appeal the 90-page ruling.

Blackwater contractors had been hired to guard U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The shooting led to the unraveling of the North Carolina-based company, which since has changed its management and changed its name to Xe Services.

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.

Defense attorneys said the guards were thrilled by the ruling after more than two years of scrutiny.

"It's tremendously gratifying to see the court allow us to celebrate the new year the way it has," said attorney Bill Coffield, who represents Liberty. "It really invigorates your belief in our court system."

"It's indescribable," said Ball's attorney, Steven McCool. "It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off his shoulders. Here's a guy that's a decorated war hero who we maintain should never have been charged in the first place."

Urbina's ruling does not say whether the shooting was proper, only that the government improperly used evidence to build the case. After the shooting, the State Department ordered the guards to explain what happened.

Investigators promised the men that their statements were to be used only for the internal inquiry and would not be used in a criminal case. Such limited immunity deals are common in police departments so officers involved in shootings cannot hold up internal investigations by refusing to cooperate.

The deal meant that prosecutors had to build their case without using those statements. Urbina said the Justice Department failed to do so. Prosecutors read those statements, reviewed them in the investigation and used them to get search warrants, Urbina said.

The five guards had been charged with manslaughter and weapons charges. The charges carried mandatory 30-year prison terms.

It was unclear what the ruling means for a sixth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, who turned on his former colleagues and pleaded guilty to killing one Iraqi and wounding another.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

External link: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=9457712
___________________________________________________________

Judge dismisses all charges in Blackwater shooting

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post
December 31, 2009

A federal judge on Thursday threw out charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 people in a 2007 shooting in downtown Baghdad.

In a 90-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled that the government violated the guards' rights by using their immunized statements to help the investigation. The ruling comes after a lengthy set of hearings that examined whether federal prosecutors and agents improperly used such statements that the guards gave to State Department investigators following the shooting on Sept. 16, 2007.

"The explanations offered by prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants' compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility," Urbina wrote.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said, "We're obviously disappointed by the decision. We're still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options."

The five guards - Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball - are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations in the killing of 14 civilians and the wounding of 20 others.

The Justice Department alleges that the guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square while in a convoy. One guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded guilty and was expected to testify against the others. Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, had a contract to provide security for the State Department in Iraq.

Mark Hulkhower, the defense lawyer representing Slough, said he was obviously pleased. "We are very gratified by the judge's thoughtful and reasoned opinion and we are very happy that Mr. Slough can start the New Year without this cloud hanging over his head."

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123101936.html

2009/10/08 - Civil & Criminal Case Exhibits: "Dear Mr. Thessin [...]"

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:04:06 +0100

Letter by Keith H. Johnson

"[...] We represent Donald Wayne Ball, Dustin L. Heard, Evan Shawn Liberty, Nicholas Abram Slatten, and Paul Alvin Slough, respectively, all of whom have been named as defendants in the above-captioned lawsuit pending in North Carolina state court. Each of these five individuals entered into an ‘Independent Contractor Service Agreement’ with Blackwater/Xe, pursuant to which they performed security services in Iraq under a contract between the U.S. State Department and Blackwater/Xe (hereinafter, these defendants collectively will be referred to as the ‘ICs’). We are writing on behalf of these individuals to formally request certification under the Westfall Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2679. In accordance with the regulations promulgated by the Attorney General, which set forth the procedures for seeking certification [...], an attested copy of the complaint and summonses are enclosed with this letter. [...]

"[...] Westfall Act certification - which results in removal to federal court and substitution of the United States as the defendant - is required when: (1) a statutorily defined ‘employee [] of the government’ is sued, (2) for allegedly tortious acts undertaken within the scope of employment. [...] As explained in further detail below, both of these factors are satisfied in this case. [...]"

2009/12/10 - Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:58:33 +0100

By James Risen & Mark Mazzetti
New York Times
December 10, 2009

Washington - Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities - clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.

The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called "snatch and grab" operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.

Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.

Separately, former Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on some C.I.A. flights transporting detainees in the years after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

The secret missions illuminate a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than government officials had acknowledged. Blackwater’s partnership with the C.I.A. has been enormously profitable for the North Carolina-based company, and became even closer after several top agency officials joined Blackwater.

"It became a very brotherly relationship," said one former top C.I.A. officer. "There was a feeling that Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency."

George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, would not comment on Blackwater’s ties to the agency. But he said the C.I.A. employs contractors to "enhance the skills of our own work force, just as American law permits."

"Contractors give you flexibility in shaping and managing your talent mix - especially in the short term - but the accountability’s still yours," he said.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Blackwater, said Thursday that it was never under contract to participate in clandestine raids with the C.I.A. or with Special Operations personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.

Blackwater’s role in the secret operations raises concerns about the extent to which private security companies, hired for defensive guard duty, have joined in offensive military and intelligence operations.

Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said in an interview that "the use of contractors in intelligence and paramilitary operations is a scandal waiting to be examined." While he declined to comment on specific operations, Mr. Holt said that the use of contractors in such operations "got way out of hand." He added, "It’s been very troubling to a lot of people."

Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, has come under intense criticism for what Iraqis have described as reckless conduct by its security guards, and the company lost its lucrative State Department contract to provide diplomatic security for the United States Embassy in Baghdad earlier this year after a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

Blackwater’s ties to the C.I.A. have emerged in recent months, beginning with disclosures in The New York Times that the agency had hired the company as part of a program to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and to assist in the C.I.A.’s Predator drone program in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, recently initiated an internal review examining all Blackwater contracts with the agency to ensure that the company was performing no missions that were "operational in nature," according to one government official.

Five former Blackwater employees and four current and former American intelligence officials interviewed for this article would speak only on condition of anonymity because Blackwater’s activities for the agency were secret and former employees feared repercussions from the company. The Blackwater employees said they participated in the raids or had direct knowledge of them.

Along with the former officials, they provided few details about the targets of the raids in Iraq and Afghanistan, although they said that many of the Iraq raids were directed against members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. To corroborate the claims of the company’s involvement, a former Blackwater security guard provided photographs to The Times that he said he took during the raids. They showed detainees and armed men whom he and a former company official identified as Blackwater employees. The former intelligence officials said that Blackwater’s work with the C.I.A. in Iraq and Afghanistan had grown out of its early contracts with the spy agency to provide security for the C.I.A. stations in both countries.

In the spring of 2002, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, offered to help the spy agency guard its makeshift Afghan station in the Ariana Hotel in Kabul. Not long after Mr. Prince signed the security contract with Alvin B. Krongard, then the C.I.A.’s third-ranking official, dozens of Blackwater personnel - many of them former members of units of the Navy Seals or Army Delta Force - were sent to provide perimeter security for the C.I.A. station.

But the company’s role soon changed as Blackwater operatives began accompanying C.I.A. case officers on missions, according to former employees and intelligence officials.

A similar progression happened in Iraq, where Blackwater was first hired for "static security" of the Baghdad station. In addition, Blackwater was charged with providing personal security for C.I.A. officers wherever they traveled in the two countries. That meant that Blackwater personnel accompanied the officers even on offensive operations sometimes begun in conjunction with Delta Force or Navy Seals teams.

A former senior C.I.A. official said that Blackwater’s role expanded in 2005 as the Iraqi insurgency intensified. Fearful of the death or capture of one of its officers, the agency banned officers from leaving the Green Zone in Baghdad without security escorts, the official said.

That gave Blackwater greater influence over C.I.A. clandestine operations, since company personnel helped decide the safest way to conduct the missions.

The former American intelligence officials said that Blackwater guards were supposed to only provide perimeter security during raids, leaving it up to C.I.A. officers and Special Operations military personnel to capture or kill suspected insurgents or other targets.

"They were supposed to be the outer layer of the onion, out on the perimeter," said one former Blackwater official of the security guards. Instead, "they were the drivers and the gunslingers," said one former intelligence official.

But in the chaos of the operations, the roles of Blackwater, C.I.A., and military personnel sometimes merged. Former C.I.A. officials said that Blackwater guards often appeared eager to get directly involved in the operations. Experts said that the C.I.A.’s use of contractors in clandestine operations falls into a legal gray area because of the vagueness of language laying out what tasks only government employees may perform.

P.W. Singer, an expert in contracting at the Brookings Institution, said that the types of jobs that have been outsourced in recent years make a mockery of regulations about "inherently governmental" functions.

"We keep finding functions that have been outsourced that common sense, let alone U.S. government policy, would argue should not have been handed over to a private company," he said. "And yet we do it again, and again, and again."

According to one former Blackwater manager, the company’s involvement with the C.I.A. raids was "widely known" by Blackwater executives. "It was virtually continuous, and hundreds of guys were involved, rotating in and out," over a period of several years, the former Blackwater manager said.

One former Blackwater guard recalled a meeting in Baghdad in 2004 in which Erik Prince addressed a group of Blackwater guards working with the C.I.A. At the meeting in an air hangar used by Blackwater, the guard said, Mr. Prince encouraged the Blackwater personnel "to do whatever it takes" to help the C.I.A. with the intensifying insurgency, the former guard recalled.

But it is not clear whether top C.I.A. officials in Washington knew or approved of the involvement by Blackwater officials in raids or whether only lower-level officials in Baghdad were aware of what happened on the ground.

The new details of Blackwater’s involvement in Iraq come at a time when the House Intelligence Committee is investigating the company’s role in the C.I.A.’s assassination program, and a federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating a wide range of allegations of illegal activity by Blackwater and its personnel, including gun running to Iraq.

Several former Blackwater personnel said that Blackwater guards involved in the C.I.A. raids used weapons, including sawed-off M-4 automatic weapons with silencers, that were not approved for use by private contractors. In separate interviews, former Blackwater security personnel also said they were handpicked by senior Blackwater officials on several occasions to participate in secret flights transporting detainees around war zones.

They said that during the flights, teams of about 10 Blackwater personnel provided security over the detainees.

"A group of individuals were selected who could manage detainees without the use of lethal force," said one former Blackwater guard who participated in one of the flights.

Intelligence officials deny that the agency has ever used Blackwater to fly high-value detainees in and out of secret C.I.A. prisons that were shut down earlier this year. Mr. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesman, said that company personnel were never involved in C.I.A. "rendition flights," which transferred terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation.

Barclay Walsh contributed research.

External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/us/politics/11blackwater.html

2009/12/02 - Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 00:16:03 +0100

By Adam Ciralsky
Vanity Fair
December 2, 2009 (January 2010 Edition)

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.

Iput myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky missions," says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. "But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus." Prince - the founder of Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military contractor - is royally steamed. He wants to vent. And he wants you to hear him vent.

Erik Prince has an image problem - the kind that’s impervious to a Madison Avenue makeover. The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, and a former navy seal, he has had the distinction of being vilified recently both in life and in art. In Washington, Prince has become a scapegoat for some of the Bush administration’s misadventures in Iraq - though Blackwater’s own deeds have also come in for withering criticism. Congressmen and lawyers, human-rights groups and pundits, have described Prince as a war profiteer, one who has assembled a rogue fighting force capable of toppling governments. His employees have been repeatedly accused of using excessive, even deadly force in Iraq; many Iraqis, in fact, have died during encounters with Blackwater. And in November, as a North Carolina grand jury was considering a raft of charges against the company, as a half-dozen civil suits were brewing in Virginia, and as five former Blackwater staffers were preparing for trial for their roles in the deaths of 17 Iraqis, The New York Times reported in a page-one story that Prince’s firm, in the aftermath of the tragedy, had sought to bribe Iraqi officials for their compliance, charges which Prince calls "lies … undocumented, unsubstantiated [and] anonymous." (So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in suicide bombings in Pakistan.)

In Hollywood, meanwhile, a town that loves nothing so much as a good villain, Prince, with his blond crop and Daniel Craig mien, has become the screenwriters’ darling. In the film State of Play, a Blackwater clone (PointCorp.) uses its network of mercenaries for illegal surveillance and murder. On the Fox series 24, Jon Voight has played Jonas Hodges, a thinly veiled version of Prince, whose company (Starkwood) helps an African warlord procure nerve gas for use against U.S. targets.

But the truth about Prince may be orders of magnitude stranger than fiction. For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life. Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into "denied areas" - places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating - to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009 - by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials - Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition - the very attributes that have galvanized his critics - also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence. (Full disclosure: In the 1990s, before becoming a journalist for CBS and then NBC News, I was a C.I.A. attorney. My contract was not renewed, under contentious circumstances.)

But Prince, with a new administration in power, and foes closing in, is finally coming in from the cold. This past fall, though he infrequently grants interviews, he decided it was time to tell his side of the story—to respond to the array of accusations, to reveal exactly what he has been doing in the shadows of the U.S. government, and to present his rationale. He also hoped to convey why he’s going to walk away from it all.

To that end, he invited Vanity Fair to his training camp in North Carolina, to his Virginia offices, and to his Afghan outposts. It seemed like a propitious time to tag along.

Split Personality

Erik Prince can be a difficult man to wrap your mind around - an amalgam of contradictory caricatures. He has been branded a "Christian supremacist" who sanctions the murder of Iraqi civilians, yet he has built mosques at his overseas bases and supports a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan. He and his family have long backed conservative causes, funded right-wing political candidates, and befriended evangelicals, but he calls himself a libertarian and is a practicing Roman Catholic. Sometimes considered arrogant and reclusive - Howard Hughes without the O.C.D. - he nonetheless enters competitions that combine mountain-biking, beach running, ocean kayaking, and rappelling.

The common denominator is a relentless intensity that seems to have no Off switch. Seated in the back of a Boeing 777 en route to Afghanistan, Prince leafs through Defense News while the film Taken beams from the in-flight entertainment system. In the movie, Liam Neeson plays a retired C.I.A. officer who mounts an aggressive rescue effort after his daughter is kidnapped in Paris. Neeson’s character warns his daughter’s captors:

If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills … skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you [don’t] let my daughter go now … I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Prince comments, "I used that movie as a teaching tool for my girls." (The father of seven, Prince remarried after his first wife died of cancer in 2003.) "I wanted them to understand the dangers out there. And I wanted them to know how I would respond."

You can’t escape the impression that Prince sees himself as somehow destined, his mission anointed. It comes out even in the most personal of stories. During the flight, he tells of being in Kabul in September 2008 and receiving a two a.m. call from his wife, Joanna. Prince’s son Charlie, one year old at the time, had fallen into the family swimming pool. Charlie’s brother Christian, then 12, pulled him out of the water, purple and motionless, and successfully performed CPR. Christian and three siblings, it turns out, had recently received Red Cross certification at the Blackwater training camp.

But there are intimations of a higher power at work as the story continues. Desperate to get home, Prince scrapped one itinerary, which called for a stay-over at the Marriott in Islamabad, and found a direct flight. That night, at the time Prince would have been checking in, terrorists struck the hotel with a truck bomb, killing more than 50. Prince says simply, "Christian saved Charlie’s life and Charlie saved mine." At times, his sense of his own place in history can border on the evangelical. When pressed about suggestions that he’s a mercenary - a term he loathes - he rattles off the names of other freelance military figures, even citing Lafayette, the colonists’ ally during the Revolutionary War.

Prince’s default mode is one of readiness. He is clenched-jawed and tightly wound. He cannot stand down. Waiting in the security line at Dulles airport just hours before, Prince had delivered a little homily: "Every time an American goes through security, I want them to pause for a moment and think, What is my government doing to inconvenience the terrorists? Rendition teams, Predator drones, assassination squads. That’s all part of it."

Such brazenness is not lost on a listener, nor is the fact that Prince himself is quite familiar with some of these tactics. In fact Prince, like other contractors, has drawn fire for running a company that some call a "body shop" - many of its staffers having departed military or intelligence posts to take similar jobs at much higher salaries, paid mainly by Uncle Sam. And to get those jobs done - protecting, defending, and killing, if required - Prince has had to employ the services of some decorated vets as well as some ruthless types, snipers and spies among them.

Erik Prince flies coach internationally. It’s not just economical ("Why should I pay for business? Fly coach, you arrive at the same time") but also less likely to draw undue attention. He considers himself a marked man. Prince describes the diplomats and dignitaries Blackwater protects as "Al Jazeera–worthy," meaning that, in his view, "bin Laden and his acolytes would love to kill them in a spectacular fashion and have it broadcast on televisions worldwide."

Stepping off the plane at Kabul’s international airport, Prince is treated as if he, too, were Al Jazeera–worthy. He is immediately shuffled into a waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves, and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s tactical-operations center.

Once in the van, Prince’s team gives him a security briefing. Using satellite photos of the area, they review the route to Blackwater’s compound and point out where weapons and ammunition are stored inside the vehicle. The men warn him that in the event that they are incapacitated or killed in an ambush Prince should assume control of the weapons and push the red button near the emergency brake, which will send out a silent alarm and call in reinforcements.

Black Hawks and Zeppelins

Blackwater’s origins were humble, bordering on the primordial. The company took form in the dismal peat bogs of Moyock, North Carolina - not exactly a hotbed of the defense-contracting world.

In 1995, Prince’s father, Edgar, died of a heart attack (the Evangelical James C. Dobson, founder of the socially conservative Focus on the Family, delivered the eulogy at the funeral). Edgar Prince left behind a vibrant auto-parts manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, with 4,500 employees and a line of products ranging from a lighted sun visor to a programmable garage-door opener. At the time, 25-year-old Erik was serving as a navy seal (he saw service in Haiti, the Middle East, and Bosnia), and neither he nor his sisters were in a position to take over the business. They sold Prince Automotive for $1.35 billion.

Erik Prince and some of his navy friends, it so happens, had been kicking around the idea of opening a full-service training compound to replace the usual patchwork of such facilities. In 1996, Prince took an honorable discharge and began buying up land in North Carolina. "The idea was not to be a defense contractor per se," Prince says, touring the grounds of what looks and feels like a Disneyland for alpha males. "I just wanted a first-rate training facility for law enforcement, the military, and, in particular, the special-operations community."

Business was slow. The navy seals came early - January 1998 - but they didn’t come often, and by the time the Blackwater Lodge and Training Center officially opened, that May, Prince’s friends and advisers thought he was throwing good money after bad. "A lot of people said, ‘This is a rich kid’s hunting lodge,’" Prince explains. "They could not figure out what I was doing."

Today, the site is the flagship for a network of facilities that train some 30,000 attendees a year. Prince, who owns an unmanned, zeppelin-esque airship and spent $45 million to build a fleet of customized, bomb-proof armored personnel carriers, often commutes to the lodge by air, piloting a Cessna Caravan from his home in Virginia. The training center has a private landing strip. Its hangars shelter a petting zoo of aircraft: Bell 412 helicopters (used to tail or shuttle diplomats in Iraq), Black Hawk helicopters (currently being modified to accommodate the security requests of a Gulf State client), a Dash 8 airplane (the type that ferries troops in Afghanistan). Amid the 52 firing ranges are virtual villages designed for addressing every conceivable real-world threat: small town squares, littered with blown-up cars, are situated near railway crossings and maritime mock-ups. At one junction, swat teams fire handguns, sniper rifles, and shotguns; at another, police officers tear around the world’s longest tactical-driving track, dodging simulated roadside bombs.

In keeping with the company’s original name, the central complex, constructed of stone, glass, concrete, and logs, actually resembles a lodge, an REI store on steroids. Here and there are distinctive touches, such as door handles crafted from imitation gun barrels. Where other companies might have Us Weekly lying about the lobby, Blackwater has counterterror magazines with cover stories such as "How to Destroy Al Qaeda."

In fact, it was al-Qaeda that put Blackwater on the map. In the aftermath of the group’s October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in Yemen, the navy turned to Prince, among others, for help in re-training its sailors to fend off attackers at close range. (To date, the company says, it has put some 125,000 navy personnel through its programs.) In addition to providing a cash infusion, the navy contract helped Blackwater build a database of retired military men - many of them special-forces veterans - who could be called upon to serve as instructors.

When al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. mainland on 9/11, Prince says, he was struck with the urge to either re-enlist or join the C.I.A. He says he actually applied. "I was rejected," he admits, grinning at the irony of courting the very agency that would later woo him. "They said I didn’t have enough hard skills, enough time in the field." Undeterred, he decided to turn his Rolodex into a roll call for what would in essence become a private army.

After the terror attacks, Prince’s company toiled, even reveled, in relative obscurity, taking on assignments in Afghanistan and, after the U.S. invasion, in Iraq. Then came March 31, 2004. That was the day insurgents ambushed four of its employees in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. The men were shot, their bodies set on fire by a mob. The charred, hacked-up remains of two of them were left hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates.

"It was absolutely gut-wrenching," Prince recalls. "I had been in the military, and no one under my command had ever died. At Blackwater, we had never even had a firearms training accident. Now all of a sudden four of my guys aren’t just killed, but desecrated." Three months later an edict from coalition authorities in Baghdad declared private contractors immune from Iraqi law.

Subsequently, the contractors’ families sued Blackwater, contending the company had failed to protect their loved ones. Blackwater countersued the families for breaching contracts that forbid the men or their estates from filing such lawsuits; the company also claimed that, because it operates as an extension of the military, it cannot be held responsible for deaths in a war zone. (After five years, the case remains unresolved.) In 2007, a congressional investigation into the incident concluded that the employees had been sent into an insurgent stronghold "without sufficient preparation, resources, and support." Blackwater called the report a "one-sided" version of a "tragic incident."

After Fallujah, Blackwater became a household name. Its primary mission in Iraq had been to protect American dignitaries, and it did so, in part, by projecting an image of invincibility, sending heavily armed men in armored Suburbans racing through the streets of Baghdad with sirens blaring. The show of swagger and firepower, which alienated both the locals and the U.S. military, helped contribute to the allegations of excessive force. As the war dragged on, charges against the firm mounted. In one case, a contractor shot and killed an Iraqi father of six who was standing along the roadside in Hillah. (Prince later told Congress that the contractor was fired for trying to cover up the incident.) In another, a Blackwater firearms technician was accused of drinking too much at a party in the Green Zone and killing a bodyguard assigned to protect Iraq’s vice president. The technician was fired but not prosecuted and later settled a wrongful-death suit with the man’s family.

Those episodes, however, paled in comparison with the events of September 16, 2007, when a phalanx of Blackwater bodyguards emerged from their four-car convoy at a Baghdad intersection called Nisour Square and opened fire. When the smoke cleared, 17 Iraqi civilians lay dead. After 15 months of investigation, the Justice Department charged six with voluntary manslaughter and other offenses, insisting that the use of force was not only unjustified but unprovoked. One guard pleaded guilty and, in a trial set for February, is expected to testify against the others, all of whom maintain their innocence. The New York Times recently reported that in the wake of the shootings the company’s top executives authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi higher-ups in order to buy their silence - a claim Prince dismisses as "false," insisting "[there was] zero plan or discussion of bribing any officials."

Nisour Square had disastrous repercussions for Blackwater. Its role in Iraq was curtailed, its revenue dropping 40 percent. Today, Prince claims, he is shelling out $2 million a month in legal fees to cope with a spate of civil lawsuits as well as what he calls a "giant proctological exam" by nearly a dozen federal agencies. "We used to spend money on R&D to develop better capabilities to serve the U.S. government," says Prince. "Now we pay lawyers."

Does he ever. In North Carolina, a federal grand jury is investigating various allegations, including the illegal transport of assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in dog-food sacks. (Blackwater denied this, but confirmed hiding weapons on pallets of dog food to protect against theft by "corrupt foreign customs agents.") In Virginia, two ex-employees have filed affidavits claiming that Prince and Blackwater may have murdered or ordered the murder of people suspected of cooperating with U.S. authorities investigating the company - charges which Blackwater has characterized as "scandalous and baseless." One of the men also asserted in filings that company employees ran a sex and wife-swapping ring, allegations which Blackwater has called "anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive."

Meanwhile, last February, Prince mounted an expensive rebranding campaign. Following the infamous ValuJet crash, in 1996, ValuJet disappeared into AirTran, after a merger, and moved on to a happy new life. Prince, likewise, decided to retire the Blackwater name and replace it with the name Xe, short for Xenon - an inert, non-combustible gas that, in keeping with his political leanings, sits on the far right of the periodic table. Still, Prince and other top company officials continued to use the name Blackwater among themselves. And as events would soon prove, the company’s reputation would remain as combustible as ever.

Spies and Whispers

Last June, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta met in a closed session with the House and Senate intelligence committees to brief them on a covert-action program, which the agency had long concealed from Congress. Panetta explained that he had learned of the existence of the operation only the day before and had promptly shut it down. The reason, C.I.A. spokesman Paul Gimigliano now explains: "It hadn’t taken any terrorists off the street." During the meeting, according to two attendees, Panetta named both Erik Prince and Blackwater as key participants in the program. (When asked to verify this account, Gimigliano notes that "Director Panetta treats as confidential discussions with Congress that take place behind closed doors.") Soon thereafter, Prince says, he began fielding inquisitive calls from people he characterizes as far outside the circle of trust.

It took three weeks for details, however sketchy, to surface. In July, The Wall Street Journal described the program as "an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives." The agency reportedly planned to accomplish this task by dispatching small hit teams overseas. Lawmakers, who couldn’t exactly quibble with the mission’s objective, were in high dudgeon over having been kept in the dark. (Former C.I.A. officials reportedly saw the matter differently, characterizing the program as "more aspirational than operational" and implying that it had never progressed far enough to justify briefing the Hill.)

On August 20, the gloves came off. The New York Times published a story headlined cia sought blackwater’s help to kill jihadists. The Washington Post concurred: cia hired firm for assassin program. Prince confesses to feeling betrayed. "I don’t understand how a program this sensitive leaks," he says. "And to ‘out’ me on top of it?" The next day, the Times went further, revealing Blackwater’s role in the use of aerial drones to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders: "At hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan ... the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency."

Erik Prince, almost overnight, had undergone a second rebranding of sorts, this one not of his own making. The war profiteer had become a merchant of death, with a license to kill on the ground and in the air. "I’m an easy target," he says. "I’m from a Republican family and I own this company outright. Our competitors have nameless, faceless management teams."

Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there is a double standard at play. "The left complained about how [C.I.A. operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it." As in the Plame case, though, the leaks prompted C.I.A. attorneys to send a referral to the Justice Department, requesting that a criminal investigation be undertaken to identify those responsible for providing highly classified information to the media.

By focusing so intently on Blackwater, Congress and the press overlooked the elephant in the room. Prince wasn’t merely a contractor; he was, insiders say, a full-blown asset. Three sources with direct knowledge of the relationship say that the C.I.A.’s National Resources Division recruited Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special skills or unusual access to targets of interest. As assets go, Prince would have been quite a catch. He had more cash, transport, matériel, and personnel at his disposal than almost anyone Langley would have run in its 62-year history.

The C.I.A. won’t comment further on such assertions, but Prince himself is slightly more forthcoming. "I was looking at creating a small, focused capability," he says, "just like Donovan did years ago" - the reference being to William "Wild Bill" Donovan, who, in World War II, served as the head of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the modern C.I.A. (Prince’s youngest son, Charles Donovan - the one who fell into the pool - is named after Wild Bill.) Two sources familiar with the arrangement say that Prince’s handlers obtained provisional operational approval from senior management to recruit Prince and later generated a "201 file," which would have put him on the agency’s books as a vetted asset. It’s not at all clear who was running whom, since Prince says that, unlike many other assets, he did much of his work on spec, claiming to have used personal funds to road-test the viability of certain operations. "I grew up around the auto industry," Prince explains. "Customers would say to my dad, ‘We have this need.’ He would then use his own money to create prototypes to fulfill those needs. He took the ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach."

According to two sources familiar with his work, Prince was developing unconventional means of penetrating "hard target" countries - where the C.I.A. has great difficulty working either because there are no stations from which to operate or because local intelligence services have the wherewithal to frustrate the agency’s designs. "I made no money whatsoever off this work," Prince contends. He is unwilling to specify the exact nature of his forays. "I’m painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket." (His pocket is deep: according to The Wall Street Journal, Blackwater had revenues of more than $600 million in 2008.)

Clutch Cargo

The Afghan countryside, from a speeding perch at 200 knots, whizzes by in a khaki haze. The terrain is rendered all the more nondescript by the fact that Erik Prince is riding less than 200 feet above it. The back of the airplane, a small, Spanish-built eads casa C-212, is open, revealing Prince in silhouette against a blue sky. Wearing Oakleys, tactical pants, and a white polo shirt, he looks strikingly boyish.

As the crew chief initiates a countdown sequence, Prince adjusts his harness and moves into position. When the "go" order comes, a young G.I. beside him cuts a tether, and Prince pushes a pallet out the tail chute. Black parachutes deploy and the aircraft lunges forward from the sudden weight differential. The cargo - provisions and munitions - drops inside the perimeter of a forward operating base (fob) belonging to an elite Special Forces squad.

Five days a week, Blackwater’s aviation arm - with its unabashedly 60s-spook name, Presidential Airways - flies low-altitude sorties to some of the most remote outposts in Afghanistan. Since 2006, Prince’s company has been conscripted to offer this "turnkey" service for U.S. troops, flying thousands of delivery runs. Blackwater also provides security for U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and his staff, and trains narcotics and Afghan special police units.

Once back on terra firma, Prince, a BlackBerry on one hip and a 9-mm. on the other, does a sweep around one of Blackwater’s bases in northeast Afghanistan, pointing out buildings recently hit by mortar fire. As a drone circles overhead, its camera presumably trained on the surroundings, Prince climbs a guard tower and peers down at a spot where two of his contractors were nearly killed last July by an improvised explosive device. "Not counting civilian checkpoints," he says, "this is the closest base to the [Pakistani] border." His voice takes on a melodramatic solemnity. "Who else has built a fob along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?" It doesn’t quite have the ring of Lawrence of Arabia’s "To Aqaba!," but you get the picture.

Going "Low-Pro"

Blackwater has been in Afghanistan since 2002. At the time, the C.I.A.’s executive director, A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard, responding to his operatives’ complaints of being "worried sick about the Afghans’ coming over the fence or opening the doors," enlisted the company to offer protection for the agency’s Kabul station. Going "low-pro," or low-profile, paid off: not a single C.I.A. employee, according to sources close to the company, died in Afghanistan while under Blackwater’s protection. (Talk about a tight-knit bunch. Krongard would later serve as an unpaid adviser to Blackwater’s board, until 2007. And his brother Howard "Cookie" Krongard - the State Department’s inspector general - had to recuse himself from Blackwater-related oversight matters after his brother’s involvement with the company surfaced. Buzzy, in response, stepped down.)

As the agency’s confidence in Blackwater grew, so did the company’s responsibilities, expanding from static protection to mobile security - shadowing agency personnel, ever wary of suicide bombers, ambushes, and roadside devices, as they moved about the country. By 2005, Blackwater, accustomed to guarding C.I.A. personnel, was starting to look a little bit like the C.I.A. itself. Enrique "Ric" Prado joined Blackwater after serving as chief of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). A short time later, Prado’s boss, J. Cofer Black, the head of the CTC, moved over to Blackwater, too. He was followed, in turn, by his superior, Rob Richer, second-in-command of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Of the three, Cofer Black had the outsize reputation. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book Bush at War, on September 13, 2001, Black had promised President Bush that when the C.I.A. was through with al-Qaeda "they will have flies walking across their eyeballs." According to Woodward, "Black became known in Bush’s inner circle as the ‘flies-on-the-eyeballs guy.’" Richer and Black soon helped start a new company, Total Intelligence Solutions (which collects data to help businesses assess risks overseas), but in 2008 both men left Blackwater, as did company president Gary Jackson this year.

Off and on, Black and Richer’s onetime partner Ric Prado, first with the C.I.A., then as a Blackwater employee, worked quietly with Prince as his vice president of "special programs" to provide the agency with what every intelligence service wants: plausible deniability. Shortly after 9/11, President Bush had issued a "lethal finding," giving the C.I.A. the go-ahead to kill or capture al-Qaeda members. (Under an executive order issued by President Gerald Ford, it had been illegal since 1976 for U.S. intelligence operatives to conduct assassinations.) As a seasoned case officer, Prado helped implement the order by putting together a small team of "blue-badgers," as government agents are known. Their job was threefold: find, fix, and finish. Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off. When the time came to train the hit squad, the agency, insiders say, turned to Prince. Wary of attracting undue attention, the team practiced not at the company’s North Carolina compound but at Prince’s own domain, an hour outside Washington, D.C. The property looks like an outpost of the landed gentry, with pastures and horses, but also features less traditional accents, such as an indoor firing range. Once again, Prince has Wild Bill on his mind, observing that "the O.S.S. trained during World War II on a country estate."

Among the team’s targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al-Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency’s radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The C.I.A. team supposedly went in "dark," meaning they did not notify their own station - much less the German government - of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down. Another target, the source says, was A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who shared nuclear know-how with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The C.I.A. team supposedly tracked him in Dubai. In both cases, the source insists, the authorities in Washington chose not to pull the trigger. Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged. (Says agency spokesman Gimigliano, "[The] C.I.A. hasn’t discussed - despite some mischaracterizations that have appeared in the public domain - the substance of this effort or earlier ones.")

The source familiar with the Darkazanli and Khan missions bristles at public comments that current and former C.I.A. officials have made: "They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will."

When Prado left the C.I.A., in 2004, he effectively took the program with him, after a short hiatus. By that point, according to sources familiar with the plan, Prince was already an agency asset, and the pair had begun working to privatize matters by changing the team’s composition from blue-badgers to a combination of "green-badgers" (C.I.A. contractors) and third-country nationals (unaware of the C.I.A. connection). Blackwater officials insist that company resources and manpower were never directly utilized - these were supposedly off-the-books initiatives done on Prince’s own dime, for which he was later reimbursed - and that despite their close ties to the C.I.A. neither Cofer Black nor Rob Richer took part. As Prince puts it, "We were building a unilateral, unattributable capability. If it went bad, we weren’t expecting the chief of station, the ambassador, or anyone to bail us out." He insists that, had the team deployed, the agency would have had full operational control. Instead, due to what he calls "institutional osteoporosis," the second iteration of the assassination program lost steam.

Sometime after 2006, the C.I.A. would take another shot at the program, according to an insider who was familiar with the plan. "Everyone found some reason not to participate," says the insider. "There was a sick-out. People would say to management, ‘I have a family, I have other obligations.’ This is the fucking C.I.A. They were supposed to lead the charge after al-Qaeda and they couldn’t find the people to do it." Others with knowledge of the program are far more charitable and question why any right-thinking officer would sign up for an assassination program at a time when their colleagues - who had thought they had legal cover to engage in another sensitive effort, the "enhanced interrogations" program at secret C.I.A. sites in foreign countries - were finding themselves in legal limbo.

America and Erik Prince, it seems, have been slow to extract themselves from the assassination business. Beyond the killer drones flown with Blackwater’s help along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (President Obama has reportedly authorized more than three dozen such hits), Prince claims he and a team of foreign nationals helped find and fix a target in October 2008, then left the finishing to others. "In Syria," he says, "we did the signals intelligence to geo-locate the bad guys in a very denied area." Subsequently, a U.S. Special Forces team launched a helicopter-borne assault to hunt down al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah. Ghadiyah, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al-Mazidih, was said to have been killed along with six others - though doubts have emerged about whether Ghadiyah was even there that day, as detailed in a recent Vanity Fair Web story by Reese Ehrlich and Peter Coyote.

And up until two months ago - when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug - he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their mission: non-disclosable.

Exit Strategy

Flying out of Kabul, Prince does a slow burn, returning to the topic of how exposed he has felt since press accounts revealed his role in the assassination program. The firestorm that began in August has continued to smolder and may indeed have his handlers wondering whether Prince himself is more of a liability than an asset. He says he can’t understand why they would shut down certain high-risk, high-payoff collection efforts against some of America’s most implacable enemies for fear that his involvement could, given the political climate, result in their compromise.

He is incredulous that U.S. officials seem willing, in effect, to cut off their nose to spite their face. "I’ve been overtly and covertly serving America since I started in the armed services," Prince observes. After 12 years building the company, he says he intends to turn it over to its employees and a board, and exit defense contracting altogether. An internal power struggle is said to be under way among those seeking to define the direction and underlying mission of a post-Prince Blackwater.

He insists, simply, "I’m through."

In the past, Prince has entertained the idea of building a pre-positioning ship - complete with security personnel, doctors, helicopters, medicine, food, and fuel - and stationing it off the coast of Africa to provide "relief with teeth" to the continent’s trouble spots or to curb piracy off Somalia. At one point, he considered creating a rapidly deployable brigade that could be farmed out, for a fee, to a foreign government.

For the time being, however, Prince contends that his plans are far more modest. "I’m going to teach high school," he says, straight-faced. "History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too."

External link: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/01/blackwater-201001

2009/11/26 - Lawyers: Government Misconduct in Blackwater Case

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:03:00 +0100

By Pete Yost
Associated Press
November 26, 2009

Washington - Defense lawyers are alleging misconduct by Justice Department prosecutors in the case against one of five Blackwater security guards accused in the killings of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.

Recent pretrial proceedings that took place behind closed doors led the Justice Department to seek dismissal of charges against Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., one of the five guards accused in the shootings in busy Nisoor Square in September 2007.

In a one-paragraph filing a week ago, the department disclosed that it wants to preserve the possibility of filing a new set of charges against Slatten.

On Wednesday, Slatten's lawyers said in court papers they want to stop the Justice Department from doing so and that the issue should be aired in a public court hearing.

The recent secret hearings focused on whether statements some of the guards gave to the State Department after the killings in Baghdad under a grant of immunity tainted the government's subsequent criminal case. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina has yet to rule.

In its court filing Wednesday, Slatten's defense team called the U.S. government's handling of the charges against Slatten "a disturbing case of prosecutorial misconduct, undermining the integrity of the judicial process."

The case against Slatten became untenable, not merely because of a fundamental lack of evidence against him, but also because the trial team repeatedly mischaracterized the testimony of witnesses and excluded evidence that ran in Slatten's favor from the grand jury that indicted him, Slatten's lawyers wrote in asking for a public hearing before the judge.

"The collapse of the government's case against Mr. Slatten should be as public as the baseless allegations against him," Slatten's lawyers added. "He should not be required to endure the government's repeated public mischaracterization of the evidence while non-public proceedings tell a very different story."

In a court filing late Wednesday, the Justice Department declined to comment on the substance of the defense allegations. The department said only that the allegations involve what transpired at the recent closed court hearings. The prosecutors said Slatten's lawyers had acted inappropriately by putting their court papers on the public record and the Justice Department asked Urbina to disregard Slatten's motion for a hearing.

Slatten was an Army sniper who served two tours in Iraq before joining Blackwater. Since the shooting, Blackwater, headquartered in Moyock, N.C., has renamed itself Xe Corp. and has undergone management changes.

The case against the guards is set for trial in February. Prosecutors were aggressive in their charges, using an anti-machine gun law to attach 30-year mandatory prison sentences to the case. And though authorities can't say for sure exactly which guards shot which victims, all five guards are charged with 14 counts of manslaughter.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press.

External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gEkqkbr5Pndf7Tzj86eSqaSbPHSAD9C79K601

2009/11/20 - US to Drop Shooting Case Against Blackwater Guard

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:50:41 +0100

By Matt Apuzzo
Associated Press
November 20, 2009

Washington - The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents Friday.

The shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad. It touched off a string of investigations that ultimately led the State Department to cancel the company's lucrative contract to guard diplomats in Iraq.

Iraqis have said they're watching closely to see how the U.S. judicial system handles the five men accused of unleashing an unprovoked attack on civilians with machine guns and grenades.

The court documents filed Friday say only that prosecutors have asked that the case against Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., be dropped.

Prosecutors filed the request in a way that gives them the ability to file new charges against Slatten later. There is no indication in the documents whether they intend to. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said Friday he could not say whether new charges would be filed.

The request itself was sealed, so it's unclear why the case was being dropped. But it could be a bad sign for the government. After the shooting, some guards spoke to investigators under the promise of immunity. Prosecutors have been arguing behind closed doors that the immunity deal did not taint the case.

Five guards, all military veterans, face charges in the shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead. Prosecutors say the shooting was unprovoked but Blackwater says its convoy was ambushed. A sixth pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Slatten's attorney, Thomas Connolly, said he could not comment on the filing but said Slatten has maintained his innocence all along.

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112003169.html

2009/11/19 - Fine and Inquiry Possible for Blackwater Successor

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:39:51 +0100

By Mark Mazzetti & James Risen
New York Times
November 19, 2009

Washington - The international security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide is facing large government fines for unlicensed arms shipments to Iraq, as a key Congressional committee is asking for a separate investigation into whether the company bribed Iraqi officials.

In talks likely to result in millions of dollars in penalties, executives from the company, now known as Xe Services, are negotiating with government regulators over years of violations of export laws. According to government officials and former company employees, many of the violations involve arms shipments to Iraq, to outfit company security guards operating inside the country.

In addition, former company officials say that other penalties could result from violations of licensing requirements for the transfer of other forms of military technology and training expertise to foreign countries.

Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter on Wednesday that his committee was told by a top State Department official that the company had engaged in "broad violations" of export laws and that the unlicensed shipments "went beyond weapons for personal use."

In the letter, Senator Kerry asked the State Department’s acting inspector general to begin an investigation into the "continued fitness" of Xe Services to carry out contract work for the State Department. The letter cited a report in The New York Times last week that Blackwater executives had approved of a plan to make secret payments to Iraqi officials after Blackwater employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the company, said, "Only The New York Times would write a story based on a letter from a senator who based his letter on a New York Times story based on the allegations of unnamed sources."

The State Department has terminated most of Xe Services’ contracts for work in Iraq, yet continues to pay the company millions of dollars to protect diplomats in Afghanistan. It contends that it has had difficulty finding another company with the experience and the equipment necessary to replace Xe.

The settlement talks over the export violations could result in stiff financial penalties, not criminal charges. However, as the talks continue, federal prosecutors in North Carolina, where Xe is based, are separately intensifying their investigation into a broad array of accusations of criminal activities carried out by company executives, including weapons smuggling, money laundering and tax evasion, according to lawyers and others familiar with the inquiry.

A former Blackwater employee said in an interview that he had spoken to prosecutors in Raleigh about approximately $1 million in payments the company arranged after the deadly Baghdad shooting, in Nisour Square. The payments were intended to silence criticism by Iraqi officials after the shootings and to help secure an operating license for the company, according to former company employees.

Last year, the company issued a press release acknowledging "numerous mistakes" in its adherence to export laws, but said the bulk of the violations had been "failures of paperwork and timeliness while supporting the United States and its allies, not nefarious smuggling or aid to enemies."

The company also announced the creation of a board of outside experts to oversee its compliance with the export regulations.

One member of the board, Asa Hutchinson, a former House member and administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency, declined to give details about Xe’s compliance status and said he was not privy to the company’s negotiations with the government over past violations.

He said that the board reported regularly to the State Department about the company’s compliance with export laws.

A spokesman for the Commerce Department, which is working with the State Department in the settlement negotiations, declined to comment on the talks. Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, said, "It is department policy not to comment on compliance actions until the matter has been resolved."

The government’s investigations into the company’s weapons shipments to Iraq have been under way for several years, and so far have led to guilty pleas on criminal charges by two former Blackwater employees, Kenneth Cashwell of Virginia Beach, Va., and Ellsworth Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C.

In January 2008, they were sentenced to three years of probation and $1,000 fines for possession of stolen firearms shipped overseas. The sentences were believed to have been lenient because the men were cooperating with prosecutors on a broader investigation of Blackwater. The company said at the time that the men had been fired in 2005 and that it was Blackwater officials who had turned them in to the authorities.

Prosecutors in North Carolina have reportedly investigated whether some of the weapons shipped to Iraq were sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has long fought Turkey in the hope of gaining an independent Kurdistan. Turkey considers the group a terrorist organization, and Turkish officials reportedly complained to the United States about American weapons seized from the group, prompting an investigation into whether the weapons began with Blackwater.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/world/middleeast/19blackwater.html

2009/11/12 - Iraq Probes 'Blackwater Bribes'

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:22:26 +0100

From BBC News
November 12, 2009

Iraq has ordered an investigation into whether the US security firm Blackwater paid bribes to officials following the fatal shootings of 17 people in 2007.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told CNN that he had asked the appropriate commanders to look into the matter.

The decision came after former top Blackwater executives told the New York Times they had sent $1m to its office in Iraq in a bid to silence criticism.

But the executives said they did not know if any payments had been made.

At the time of the incident, which occurred in Baghdad's Nisoor Square, Blackwater provided diplomatic security for the US embassy and needed a licence from the interior ministry to continue doing so.

The Iraqi government pressed Washington to withdraw Blackwater from the country, but the security firm's US contract was renewed in 2008. Despite being denied a new operating licence earlier this year, a subsidiary continues to provide air support for US diplomats in Iraq.

'Baseless allegations'

The former executives of Blackwater Worldwide, now renamed Xe, told the New York Times that the payments to interior ministry officials in an attempt to assuage their anger were approved by senior executives at the company in December 2007.

Two of the executives said they were directly involved in discussions about the bribes, while the other two said they were only told about them.

Talk of the payments, which would have been illegal under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, caused a deep rift within the company, they added.

They said that when vice-chairman Cofer Black, a former top CIA and State Department official, learned of the plan from another Blackwater manager he confronted Erik Prince, the company's chairman and founder, who allegedly did not deny it. Mr Black resigned the following year.

Mr Black has denied that he had confronted Mr Prince "or any other Blackwater official regarding any allegations of bribing Iraqi officials and was unaware of any plot or guidance for Blackwater to bribe Iraqi officials".

Mr Jackson, who resigned as president earlier this year, criticised the newspaper when contacted and said: "I don't care what you write."

A spokesman for the company said it disputed the "baseless allegations" and would not comment on former employees.

Senior State Department officials have said diplomats were not aware of any bribes for Iraqi officials, but that they did support compensation payments to victims' families and survivors.

'Indiscriminate'

Speaking after the allegations were published, Mr Bolani said he had ordered senior interior ministry officials to look into them.

"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 told CNN.

"Blackwater is company which caused a major national tragedy. The Nisoor incident was a very difficult one and no-one can ever forget it. But the Iraqi government was committed and acted responsibly for the sake of the Iraqi people and for the reputation of Iraq," he added.

Five Blackwater guards involved in the Nisoor Square shootings are due to face trial on federal manslaughter charges in February in Washington. A sixth guard pleaded guilty in December.

Donald Ball, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nick Slatten and Paul Slough - all of whom are decorated military veterans - say they were acting in self-defence, but witnesses and family members of those killed maintain that the shooting on 16 September 2007 was unprovoked.

Iraqi investigators said the guards had fired their automatic weapons indiscriminately, and even launched grenades at a nearby school.

Afterwards, the Iraqi government described the guards as "criminals", and declared that Blackwater was a challenge to its sovereignty.

External link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8356734.stm

2009/11/11 - Blackwater Said to Pursue Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:09:13 +0100

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

2009/11/10 - Settlement Falls Through in Blackwater Civil Suit

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:45:29 +0100

By Matthew Barakat
Associated Press
November 10, 2009

Alexandria, Va. - A settlement in a civil suit against the government contractor once known as Blackwater has apparently fallen apart after a plaintiff's lawyer said a faulty translation prompted the decision to settle. But lawyers for the company argue that a deal's a deal.

Dozens of Iraqis, including the estates of victims allegedly killed by Blackwater employees, sued the North Carolina-based company earlier this year, alleging that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings.

The two sides reached a settlement late last week, and the plaintiffs filed papers to dismiss the case. Terms were not disclosed, though one document states each side will pay its own attorneys' fees.

But the plaintiffs' lawyer, Susan Burke, said Tuesday that the decision to settle was based on a conversation with clients that was mistranslated. She wants to have the lawsuit reinstated.

Lawyers for the company, now known as Xe, say a deal's a deal and they want the settlement to stand.

Last month, a federal judge tossed out the plaintiffs' complaint, saying he would only allow the case to be refiled if they believed they could prove that Blackwater employees intentionally killed and beat innocent Iraqis. He said that allegations of acting recklessly or fostering a culture of lawlessness were insufficient to sustain a case under the relevant federal law.

The plaintiffs did refile their case, alleging that the company's founder, Erik Prince, and other Blackwater executives had "an intent to deploy a private army to kill and injure innocent Iraqis."

Blackwater held a contract to protect State Department diplomats stationed in Iraq.

The company has said the lawsuit "is much more about attracting media attention than about bringing legitimate claims to court."

Five Blackwater security guards are also facing criminal charges for allegedly killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007. Those shootings are included among the allegations in the civil suit.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press.

External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hy2QyKtV5tXkSMrUcl6xMBnOuE2wD9BSUTO00

2009/10/28 - Ex-Blackwater Guard Evades Shooting Blame

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 23:36:58 +0100

By Rick Anderson
Seattle Weekly
October 28, 2009

For all the spilled ink and spent cyberspace that chronicled his adventures, former Blackwater guard Andrew Moonen remains a free man walking after he shot and killed an Iraqi vice presidential guard in Baghdad's Green Zone three years ago. A lawsuit by the victim's widow, filed in March, ran into a legal buzzsaw and Moonen was later dropped as a defendant. Last week, though a federal judge refused to dismiss a war crimes lawsuit against Blackwater - now called Xe (as in "zee") - Moonen is no longer a target of that or any other suit, his Seattle attorney said yesterday.

The Seattle soldier of fortune was fired by Blackwater and sent home without his Christmas bonus after killing Raheem Khalaf Sa'adoon, 32, father of two, on Christmas Eve, 2006. Some called it a drunken murder, Moonen said it was self defense. At last report, the former civilian contractor had found meaningful work as a state prison guard in Monroe.

His attorney, Stewart Riley, sounds confident that's the end of it. "Mr. Moonen," Riley says, "is not a defendant in any civil case at this time and I do not anticipate that he will become a defendant in any civil case in the future." As for those rumored criminal charges? (Riley in January said the Justice Department intended to indict Moonen). "I do not know the answer to that question," the attorney says now.

External link: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2009/10/ex-blackwater_guard_evades_sho.php

2009/10/26 - Blackwater Lawyers Seek Military Guard

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:21:43 +0100

By Mike Scarcella
The National Law Journal
October 26, 2009

Criminal defense lawyers and their investigators routinely venture into rough neighborhoods to interview witnesses and gather evidence. But there's probably little concern about sniper attacks, mortar fire and roadside bombs.

Those are the fears of a group of private defense lawyers who want to travel to Iraq to conduct their own investigation amid the prosecution of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards, charged with voluntary manslaughter in the killing of 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in a shootout in 2007.

The lawyers are demanding the government provide a security detail. The Justice Department is fighting the request, calling it "radical" and unnecessary. For the government, the stakes are high going forward as more and more foreign-based criminal allegations end up in federal district courts in the United States.

In court papers filed earlier this month in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Blackwater legal team filed a motion arguing the government should be compelled to provide the same protection accorded the federal prosecutors and civilian FBI agents who spent weeks in Iraq before the Blackwater guards were indicted.

"The experiences of the prosecutors and the FBI in Iraq, and the substantial government resources devoted to their security, illustrate an obvious truth: American lawyers and investigators working in Baghdad face mortal danger," wrote Steptoe & Johnson LLP partner Mark Hulkower. "They require professional protection to assure their survival and to enable them to perform their work."

Justice lawyers fired back last week, saying the defense attorneys should rely on any number of private security contractors working in Iraq. Granting the request would mark an "unprecedented and unwarranted" exercise of judicial authority, according to Justice attorneys.

Judge Ricardo Urbina has said a chief concern for him is the safety of the lawyers. But several defense lawyers who are following the Blackwater criminal litigation said it's unlikely that Urbina will rule in favor of the defense team, which includes David Schertler of Schertler & Onorato and Thomas Connolly of Wiltshire & Grannis, both of Washington. "If they want armed bodyguards, by golly, there's lot of folks who do that," said Puckett & Faraj military lawyer Neal Puckett of Alexandria, Va., who has traveled to Iraq twice and owns his own body armor and Kevlar helmet. He said he doesn't see any basis in law or necessity for granting the defense request.

Defense lawyers, he said, travel at their own risk.

The government's case against the Blackwater guards stems from a shooting in Iraq in Baghdad's Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007. The indicted guards, contractors for the State Department, were part of a convoy that stopped in a busy intersection. Prosecutors allege the indicted Blackwater contractors were unprovoked when they opened fire.

The prosecution is the first under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to be filed against non-Defense Department private contractors. North Carolina-based Blackwater, now called Xe Services LLC, is still under contract with the State Department. The defense lawyers, however, said in court papers that the company "has no ability of any kind" to provide security in Iraq. The contract is set to expire in January.

Since June, the defense lawyers in the case have been talking with Justice attorneys about access to witnesses and evidence in Iraq. On Sept. 2, the lawyers received a letter from a U.S. embassy official in Iraq that said the government would not take responsibility for providing security. Blackwater didn't return calls seeking comment.

At a Sept. 14 hearing in federal district court in Washington, Hulkower made what a federal prosecutor called an "emotional" pitch for security. "It's not as if we are commercial vendors looking to make a sale in Iraq and, therefore, the Department of State gives us the form of contractors and says 'be careful if you go over, here's a list,' " Hulkower said, according to a transcript. The two sides are part of the same process, he said, and if the government gets a military escort "[why] can't we just have the same thing?"

Assistant U.S. attorney Jonathan Malis, responding to Hulkower's argument, said in the hearing that the Blackwater case poses no circumstances any different from other violent areas where lawyers travel.

The defendants are willing to reimburse or defray the costs of government-provided security. The lawyers say the dispute does not concern cost but the government's "unwillingness" to assist the defense with security measures.

Urbina said in court last month that his concern is not money since "[I] imagine the defendants are prepared to pay something to assist the taxpayers in supporting this protective effort." Urbina said his primary concern was one of safety. "[I]f the defense has to pay for it, then the defense has to pay for it, but under no circumstance will I feel comfortable if any representative of the defense team or the government, for that matter, is detailed out to Iraq with less than the maximum amount of protection appropriate for the situation," Urbina said in court.

Justice lawyers said in court papers filed on Oct. 19 that, if Urbina grants the defense request, the judge would eventually find himself presiding over technical security disputes, such as whether a government convoy of three vehicles is sufficient when the government investigators traveled in a convoy of four.

"Even putting aside the constitutional implications, it would be extraordinary and risky for the court to accept the defendants' invitation effectively to involve itself in the tactically employment of the U.S. military," Paul Ahern of the Justice Department's Federal Programs Branch said in court papers.

Justice lawyers question why the defense lawyers even want a military escort in the first place. Private security contractors have greater freedom to travel than the military and can operate with "reduced visibility."

One lawyer watching the case said a ruling against the defense lawyers' request could work in their benefit as an advocacy tool - a showing that the government is unable to provide security. "If it's denied, they'll say there's no way for someone to conduct an investigation in Iraq without hiring private security," said Miller & Chevalier partner George Clarke III, who has represented Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainees. "The defense wants to show these guys play a critical and important function to a wide variety of people in a combat zone."

External link: http://tinyurl.com/yzo4pj9

2009/10/22 - Judge Tosses Lawsuits against Blackwater, now Xe

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:11:04 +0200

By Matthew Barakat
Associated Press
October 22, 2009

A federal judge on Wednesday tossed out a series of lawsuits filed by alleged Iraqi victims of the contractor once known as Blackwater USA, but is allowing the plaintiffs to refile their claims.

In a 56-page ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria, Va., dismissed claims filed by 64 plaintiffs - including the estates of 19 people who died - who says Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings. The lawsuits also claim the company, now known as Xe, "fostered a culture of lawlessness" while it held a State Department contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

Ellis is allowing most of the plaintiffs to refile, but only if they will be able to prove that employees engaged in intentional killings and beatings. He said a pattern of recklessness or a culture of lawlessness is not enough to sustain an allegation of war crimes under the federal law that governs the issue, the Alien Tort Statute.

Xe's lawyers had argued that the lawsuits should be dismissed under any circumstances because the allegations involve political questions that cannot be resolved by the judiciary and because private entities cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute. Ellis rejected those arguments.

Both sides said they were pleased with the ruling. Plaintiffs' lawyer Susan Burke said she will refile. She has said in previous hearings that she will be able to prove that Blackwater's actions were intentional, not just reckless.

Xe spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke said in a statement that "we are confident that they (plaintiffs) will not be able to meet the high standard specified in Judge Ellis' opinion."

The ruling comes as a federal judge in Washington is considering what evidence to allow in a criminal prosecution of five Blackwater security guards accused of killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.

External link: http://www.thesunnews.com/606/story/1127476.html

2009/10/14 - Judge Blocks Public From Blackwater Hearings

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:23:40 +0200

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post
October 14, 2009

A federal judge Wednesday blocked the public from attending a critical set of pretrial hearings in the prosecution of five U.S. security contractors accused of killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in a 2007 shooting.

The hearings, which are expected to last through Friday of next week, will examine whether the government improperly used immunized statements by the Blackwater Worldwide security guards in its investigation. The guards gave the statements to the State Department shortly after the controversial shooting Sept. 16, 2007, in a busy Baghdad square.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said Wednesday that he was closing the hearings because he wanted to shield witnesses and potential jurors from pretrial publicity. He also cited concerns about the disclosure of grand jury material. Urbina said he wanted to ensure the guards received a fair trial.

The hearings in the District's federal court were not listed on the public docket and pleadings filed by prosecutors and defense lawyers over the immunity issue have been sealed. A Washington Post reporter learned about the hearings several weeks ago and was told they would be open to the public. Last week, a court clerk told The Post that Urbina intended to close the hearings. On the courtroom wall, the docket listed only a "sealed" matter as taking place Wednesday in Urbina's courtroom.

In a letter Tuesday, The Post asked Urbina to reconsider closing the proceedings. Washington Post attorney James A. McLaughlin said that the court should have put the proceedings on the public docket and given the public an earlier chance to challenge the basis for closure of the hearings. He said concerns about the impact of pretrial publicity were "highly speculative" unless supported by factual findings in open court.

At a brief hearing Wednesday, Urbina denied The Post's request to open the hearings. He said the rights of the five guards to a fair trial outweighed the public's interest in attending the proceedings. He said he was concerned about how press accounts of the guards' immunized statements might affect witnesses, some as far away as Baghdad.

The judge added that he did not see a way to partially open the hearings because they will deal heavily with grand jury information. Grand jury proceedings are generally kept secret.

The judge said the court would work harder to ensure that future hearings were placed on the public docket.

The five guards - Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball - are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations in the killing of 14 civilians and the wounding 20 others. The Justice Department alleges that the guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square while in a convoy. One guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against the others.

Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, had a contract to provide security for the State Department in Iraq.

The charges were brought under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows U.S. prosecutors to charge American service members, their family members and those employed by the military for illegal acts committed overseas.

The Justice Department's investigation has been complicated by many factors. FBI agents have required tight security while trying to find witnesses and gathering forensic evidence in Baghdad.

Agents and prosecutors were also barred from gleaning any information from immunized statements the guards gave to officials with the State Department' Bureau of Diplomatic Security. When officials took the statements from the guards, the State Department was under pressure to quickly assess what happened in the controversial shooting.

The proceedings underway in the District's federal court, known as Kastigar hearings, will probe how well investigators gathered evidence without being tainted by those immunized statements. If the judge finds the government's case is tainted, he might be forced to throw out the indictment.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/14/AR2009101401956.html

2009/10/11 - New Civil Lawsuit: Estate of Sa’adi Husein vs. Erik Prince

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:54:28 +0200

Estate of Sa’adi Ali Abbas Husein et al vs. Erik Prince
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Case No.: 1:09-cv-01048-TSE-IDD
Filed on September 16th, 2009

Recent Filings:

September 16th, 2009 - Complaint & Jury Demand

"[...] 3. Plaintiff is the Estate of Sa’adi Ali Abbas Husein. Before being shot and killed by Mr. Prince’s employees, Mr. Husein was a 52-year old citizen of Baghdad, Iraq. He was shot and killed on September 16, 2007. [...]

"[...] 10. On or about September 16, 2007, Mr. Prince’s heavily armed employees drove into Nisoor Square in Baghdad and opened fue on innocent civilians stopped in traffic.

"11. Sa’adi Ali Abbas Husein was one of those struck and killed by the wanton shooting of Mr. Prince’s employees.

"12. Mr. Prince is personally responsible for the assaults on Mr. Husein because the egregious misconduct of Mr. Prince and his employees was not an isolated or aberrational act. Rather, as will be shown by reasonable discovery, Mr. Prince personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army, including but not limited to the shooters at Nisoor Square, to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians.

"13. Mr. Prince personally intended that his private army of men kill and wound innocent Iraqis, including Mr. Husein. [...]"

2009/09/18 - New Civil Lawsuit: Adil Shikhayiss et al vs. Erik Prince: Civil Complaint

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:31:12 +0200

Adil Shikhayiss et al vs. Erik Prince
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Case No.: 1:09-cv-01017-TSE-IDD
Filed on September 9th, 2009

Recent Filings:

September 9th, 2009 - Civil Complaint

"[...] 3. Plaintiff Adil Lafta Miza'el Shikhayiss is a 37-year old citizen of Baghdad, Iraq. He was shot in the left leg on September 9, 2007.

"4. Plaintiff Mahdi Mohammed Salih Mahdi Al Sa'adi is a 35-year old citizen of Baghdad, Iraq. He was shot in the head on September 9, 2007.

"5. Plaintiff Ammar Ali Mahdi Abood Al Sa'adi is a 33-year old citizen of Baghdad, Iraq. He was assaulted by gunfire on September 9, 2007.

"6. Ali Mahdi Abood Al Sa'adi is a 61-year old citizen of Baghdad. He was assaulted on September 9, 2009. [...]

"[...] 8. Defendant Erik Prince is a resident of McLean, Virginia, with business offices at 1650 Tysons Boulevard, McLean, Virginia 22102.

"9. Defendant Erik Prince created various corporate entities to serve as his alter ego. Mr. Prince created these corporate alter egos to obscure and hide his wrongdoing. He personally controls all actions by the corporate entities. These corporate entities do not abide by any corporate formalities. Funds are intermingled among the companies. Mr. Prince adds or subtracts funds from any given company to suit his own purposes without regard to any corporate formalities. [...]

"[...] 14. Mr. Prince is personally responsible for the assaults on Plaintiffs because Mr. Liberty’s egregious misconduct was not an isolated or aberrational act. Rather, as will be shown by reasonable discovery, Mr. Prince personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army, including but not limited to Mr. Liberty, to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians.

"15. Mr. Prince personally intended that his private army of men kill and wound innocent Iraqis, including Plaintiffs here.

"16. Not all men employed by Mr. Prince participated in this private army intent on killing innocent Iraqis, but a substantial number did so. Those who killed and wounded innocent Iraqis tended to rise higher in Mr. Prince's organization than those who abided by the rule of law.

"17. Mr. Prince was well aware that his men, including his top executives in Moyock, North Carolina, viewed shooting innocent Iraqis as sport. [...]"

2009/09/16 - Another Lawsuit Targets Founder of Blackwater

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:59:27 +0200

By Bill Sizemore
The Virginian-Pilot
September 16th, 2009

Yet another civil lawsuit accuses Blackwater guards of driving through the streets of Baghdad randomly shooting innocent Iraqis.

The latest case accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of personally directing murders from a 24-hour remote monitoring "war room" at the private military company's Moyock, N.C., headquarters.

Prince "personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army ... to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians," alleges the suit, filed by four Iraqi citizens.

Prince was well aware that his men, including top executives, "viewed shooting innocent Iraqis as sport," the suit says. In fact, "those who killed and wounded innocent Iraqis tended to rise higher in Mr. Prince's organization than those who abided by the rule of law."

Prince's top executives openly discussed "laying Hajjis out on cardboard" and "bragged about their collective role in killing those of the Islamic faith," the suit alleges.

On more than one occasion, the suit says, Prince's men went "night hunting" in helicopters after 10 p.m. over the streets of Baghdad, wearing night goggles, killing at random.

The lawsuit says Prince caused murders to occur on at least 11 occasions, including one and perhaps more in the United States.

The suit describes one case in which a young man, not identified in the court papers, died after photographing Anna Bundy, a Blackwater executive, packaging illegal weaponry outfitted with silencers for shipment to Iraq.

One employee is said to have warned the young man that such photographs "are what get people killed." Lawyers for the plaintiffs plan to use the legal discovery process to learn whether Prince participated in the events leading to his death.

The latest suit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, is the sixth civil case brought against Prince and his company, now known as Xe, by the Washington law firm Burke O'Neil on behalf of more than 60 Iraqis or their estates.

Many of them were injured or killed two years ago today - Sept. 16, 2007 - in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in a shooting incident that left 17 Iraqis dead and ultimately led to the loss of Blackwater's diplomatic security contract.

Five former Blackwater guards face criminal charges of voluntary manslaughter in that incident. Last week, federal prosecutors filed papers alleging a yearlong pattern of hostile action against Iraqis by the defendants leading up to that shooting.

In one episode described in those papers, one of the five defendants, Evan Liberty, allegedly drove through Baghdad on Sept. 9, 2007, a week before the Nisoor Square incident, randomly shooting Iraqis through the porthole of an armored vehicle.

The latest civil suit is an apparent outgrowth of that event. The plaintiffs are four Iraqis who operated a shop in Baghdad and were allegedly injured by Liberty's "wanton shooting."

Xe had no immediate comment on the new allegations.

External link: http://hamptonroads.com/2009/09/another-lawsuit-targets-founder-blackwater

2009/09/15 - U.S. vs. Jeremy Ridgeway: Legal Update

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:48:49 +0200

U.S. vs. Jeremy P. Ridgeway
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Case-No.: 1:08-cr-00341-RMU-1
Filed on November 18th, 2008

Recent Filings:

September 14th, 2009 - Order

"[...] It is this 14th day of September 2009 ordered a status hearing in the above-captioned case shall take place on April 6, 2010 at 10:15. So ordered. [...]"

2009/09/13 - Prosecutors in Iraq Case See Pattern by Guards

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:53:32 +0200

By James Risen
New York Times
September 13, 2009

Washington - Private security guards who worked for Blackwater repeatedly shot wildly into the streets of Baghdad without regard for civilians long before they were involved in a 2007 shooting episode that left at least 14 Iraqis dead, federal prosecutors charge in a new court document.

While traveling through Baghdad in heavily armored vehicles, at least one of the guards, under contract with the State Department to provide security for United States Embassy personnel, fired an automatic weapon "without aiming" while another deliberately fired into the streets to "instigate gun battles in a manner that was inconsistent with the use of force and escalation of force policies that governed all Blackwater personnel in Iraq," the federal prosecutors stated.

The new accusations were included in a document filed by prosecutors last week in the criminal case against five former Blackwater guards who have been charged with manslaughter in federal court in Washington in connection with the shootings in Nisour Square, in Baghdad, on Sept. 16, 2007.

The guards have pleaded not guilty and have argued that they did not fire their weapons with criminal intent in the Nisour Square case.

The prosecutors are trying to prove that the shootings were part of a larger pattern of reckless behavior.

"These prior bad acts are relevant to establish that the defendants specifically intended to kill or seriously injure the Iraqi civilians that they fired upon at Nisour Square," the court document says.

Part of the evidence relates to the states of mind of the Blackwater guards, and whether statements they allegedly made about killing Iraqis were factors in the shootings. The document says, for example, that one of the guards, Nicholas Slatten, told people that "he wanted to kill as many Iraqis as he could as payback for 9/11 and he repeatedly boasted about the number of Iraqis he had shot."

The new allegations also seem to raise questions about whether there was adequate oversight of the security details by either Blackwater or the State Department.

Defense lawyers have not formally responded to the government’s latest document, and a defense lawyer for one of the guards reached on Sunday declined to comment. Previously, the defense stated that the government’s evidence was weak and that its case was without merit. The trial is set to begin in February.

The guards were indicted by a federal grand jury last December after a criminal investigation by the F.B.I. in Iraq and were arraigned in federal court in Washington in January. The case involves by far the bloodiest episode in Iraq linked to private security guards protecting American diplomats, and it has transformed the debate in both Washington and Baghdad over the proper role of private contractors in a war zone.

The Blackwater guards, assigned to a four-vehicle convoy known as Raven 23, drove into a traffic circle at Nisour Square in downtown Baghdad around noon that day and opened fire with a sniper rifle, machine guns and grenade launchers.

After the episode, Blackwater officials said that the guards had been responding to fire from insurgents, but prosecutors charge that they fired on unarmed civilians, including many who were shot in their cars while they were trying to flee.

The government points to specific prior incidents to make the case that the Nisour Square shootings were not isolated. In May 2007, one guard, Evan Liberty, fired his automatic weapon without aiming from the turret of a Blackwater vehicle near Amanat City Hall in Baghdad, according to the document.

That September, it states, Mr. Liberty was driving a vehicle near the same city hall and fired an automatic weapon without aiming and while still trying to drive. That second incident occurred just one week before the Nisour Square shootings.

Mr. Liberty and two other guards, Paul Slough and Mr. Slatten, were also said to have routinely thrown frozen water bottles, frozen oranges and other items at unarmed civilians and vehicles as they drove through Baghdad, "in an attempt to break automobile windows, injure and harass people, and for sport," the court document states.

The two other guards named in the case are Dustin L. Heard and Donald W. Ball.

The document does not specify the source or sources of information for the new accusations. But in prosecuting the men, federal lawyers appear to be relying heavily on testimony from a sixth guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, who has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the government.

Blackwater, which has changed its name to Xe Services, has not been charged in the case, but the shooting aftermath has hurt the company’s business deeply. This year, Xe (pronounced "zee") lost its contract to provide diplomatic security for United States Embassy officials in Baghdad, and its longstanding, but more secret, ties to the Central Intelligence Agency have come under new scrutiny as well.

The shootings have caused a deep-seated political reaction in Iraq against private security contractors, leading the Iraqi government to demand successfully that the United States agree to make the contractors subject to Iraqi law.

Previously, the contractors had been granted immunity from Iraqi law, even while it was unclear which American laws governed their behavior.

The company also faces a civil lawsuit filed in the United States on behalf of the Iraqi victims that day.

This summer, Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, told Congress that he had found that during the Bush administration, the agency had once considered using Blackwater in a covert assassination program.

Officials have said that the plan was never implemented. But the company still has other contracts with the C.I.A., including one that calls for Xe’s personnel to handle and load bombs and rockets on Predator drones at secret bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/world/middleeast/14contractors.html

2009/09/02 - US Extends Iraq Contract for Blackwater Firm

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 22:35:37 +0200

By Matthew Lee
Associated Press
September 2, 2009

Washington - The State Department said Wednesday it has extended a contract for protecting U.S, diplomats in Iraq with a subsidiary of the security firm once known as Blackwater USA even though the company doesn't have a license to operate in the country.

Spokesman Ian Kelly said the contract with Presidential Airways to provide air support for U.S. diplomats had been temporarily extended because the firm chosen to replace it is not yet ready to take over. The contract had been due to expire on Sept. 3 and be taken over a day later by DynCorp International, he said.

"DynCorp came to us and asked for additional time," Kelly told reporters. DynCorp's request for additional time was made last week, he said, adding that the Iraqi government had been informed of the decision and had not registered objections.

Iraqi officials in Baghdad could not immediately be reached for comment.

Presidential is the air wing of Xe Services, which used to be known as Blackwater. The Iraqi government refused to grant the company an operating license earlier this year amid continued outrage over a 2007 lethal firefight involving some of its employees in Baghdad.

One senior State Department official said that providing helicopter air support for American diplomats in Iraq - transporting them and overflying their convoys - is a "complex challenge" and that a slower transition to DynCorp taking over ... is in the best interest of the government.

"We unilaterally extended the current task order ... to ensure the continued security and safety of U.S.personnel in Iraq," the official said.

Kelly said DynCorp needed the extra time to get more equipment on the ground in Iraq but could not say how long the extension, which was first reported by ABC News on its Web site, would last.

Other officials said they did not expect it to go beyond six months. Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the contract publicly.

The State Department informed Blackwater in January that it would not renew its contracts to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq because of the Iraqi government's refusal to grant it an operating license.

The Presidential Airways contract was the last of those contracts to expire. Blackwater guards stopped protecting American diplomats in al Hillah, Najaf and Karbala, all south of Baghdad, in August.

Iraqis had long complained about incidents involving Blackwater's ground operations. Then a shooting by Blackwater guards in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September 2007 left 17 civilians dead, further strained relations between Baghdad and Washington and led U.S. prosecutors to bring charges against the Blackwater contractors involved.

The incident prompted a wide-ranging review of the State Department's security practices in Iraq and its dependence on contractors like Blackwater, which was most recently in the news last month when it was revealed that the CIA had turned to the firm when it revived a now-defunct plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004.

Once the extended Presidential Airways contract expires, the company will no longer be used in Iraq by the department, which has turned to DynCorp and another private security firm, Triple Canopy, to handle diplomatic protective services in the country.

But Xe continues to provide security for diplomats in other nations, most notably in Afghanistan.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press.

External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g4OiK8Bkks3epqQ-eXeiSGX6cu7gD9AFCMEG1

2009/08/30 - Blackwater Tapped Foreigners on Secret CIA Program

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:18:22 +0200

By Adam Goldman & Pamela Hess
Associated Press
August 30, 2009

Washington - When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA.

With Blackwater's lucrative government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots around the world, company officials offered the services of foreigners supposedly skilled at tracking terrorists in lawless regions and countries where the CIA had no working relationships with the government.

Blackwater told the CIA that it "could put people on the ground to provide the surveillance and support - all of the things you need to conduct an operation," a former senior CIA official familiar with the secret program told The Associated Press.

But the CIA's use of the private contractor as part of its now-abandoned plan to dispatch death squads skirted concerns now re-emerging with recent disclosures about Blackwater's role.

The former senior CIA official said he had doubts during his tenure about whether Blackwater's foreign recruits had mastered the necessary skills to pull off such a high-stakes operation. Blackwater's later hiring of several senior CIA officials who were involved in or aware of the secret program, including one of the men who ran the operation, showed the blurred lines of using a private contractor for such a highly classified and dangerous project.

While Blackwater won the government's confidence by handling security and training operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2004 decision by CIA officials to entrust the North Carolina-based company with such a sensitive overseas operation struck some former agency officials as highly unusual.

"The question remains: Why do we need Blackwater?" said Charles Faddis, a former department chief at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center who retired in 2008 and was not involved in the secret program. "I remain mystified. This is quintessential CIA work. You wonder what it means that the CIA has to rely on Blackwater? Why are we still funding the CIA?"

The former senior CIA official who had knowledge of the program explained that "you wouldn't want to have American fingerprints on it."

The former official and several other current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information remains classified.

Xe spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke did not respond to questions seeking comment. Blackwater altered its corporate name to Xe Services after a series of use-of-force controversies, including a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad by five company security guards that left 17 civilians dead.

The former senior CIA official said that close to a dozen Blackwater "surrogates" were recruited to join the death squad program. The recruits, the former official said, were not told they were working for the CIA. The official did not know how Blackwater found them.

The program reportedly cost millions of dollars over an eight-year span. A precise figure is not available because of the agency's classified budget.

The operation had several lives under four successive CIA directors: George Tenet started the program during the Bush administration, but canceled it, another former CIA official said, because there were too many risks involved.

The operation was revived under Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, who ran the agency from 2004 to 2006. Michael Hayden, who served from 2006 to 2009, downgraded the program to intelligence-gathering only. Leon Panetta, the current director, killed the operation in June.

The former senior CIA official said that after the death squad project was revived under Goss in 2004, there were serious questions about whether Blackwater's operatives had demonstrated the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance and maintain fictitious identities with credible-appearing faked documents.

Their need to provide rock-solid cover stories was essential, the former official said, adding that they had to have a "damn good reason to be there."

A spokesman for Goss declined comment.

The former senior CIA official said that during his tenure it was unlikely that the Blackwater recruits would have been involved directly in the mechanics of the killings. Instead, they were learning how to spy on targets and operate discreetly.

The trainees never got a chance to prove themselves. They were never provided a target and no operation was ever approved. CIA spokesman George Little said the program yielded no successes.

The CIA started planning for its death squad project shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The agency wanted the ability to target terrorists at close range, providing an alternative to air strikes that ran the risk of accidentally killing civilians.

Another former senior intelligence official said the use of Blackwater was not the only plan considered to kill or capture terrorists.

Blackwater long has had a close and intertwined relationship with the CIA. Several senior agency leaders have taken up positions with the company. Among them were J. Cofer Black, once the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, who would have had operational involvement with the secret plan in the early 2000s. Others included Robert Richer, a former deputy director for operations, and Alvin B. Krongard, a former CIA executive director.

Another Blackwater hire was Enrique "Ric" Prado, a former operations chief at the Counterterrorism Center. Prado ran the death squad program when it was started up under Tenet, three former intelligence officials said.

According to one former official, Jose A. Rodriquez Jr., who ran the CIA's clandestine service and was instrumental in reviving the program, reached out to Prado, then working at Blackwater. The two men had previously worked together in Latin America and then at the Counterterrorism Center, the former officials said.

After joining Blackwater, according to The New York Times, Prado was involved in the 2004 negotiations between Blackwater officials and the CIA over its involvement in the death squad operation. According to the Times report, Prado, who at one point was Blackwater's vice president of special programs, worked with Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, to sign agreements with the CIA to participate in the program.

Prado did not return messages left at his home or with his business partner, Joseph E. Fluet. The pair recently formed The Constellation Consulting Group, an international intelligence and security firm based in northern Virginia.

At the time that Blackwater began working with the CIA on the death squad operation in 2004, the CIA had in place a long-standing policy mandating that senior officials leaving the agency could not go to work for private firms for a year after their departure. In 2007, Hayden toughened requirements for the entire agency, mandating an 18-month hold on security clearances for all departing employees who leave prior to retirement.

Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group in Washington, said "the revolving door is a very accepted practice" between government and private industry, but added that "to be able to bring people in from the CIA, there is a possibility that it gives you a competitive advantage in receiving awards from that agency."

When Panetta terminated the CIA's death squad program in June, he informed congressional intelligence committees about its existence in an emergency briefing.

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating whether the CIA broke the law by not quickly informing Congress about the secret program.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press.

External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jUYIQzuMD55oCy3UG7v6wITLOBewD9ADAC700

2009/08/29 - Blackwater Founder Accused in Court of Intent to Kill

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:02:55 +0200

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post
August 29, 2009

The founder of Blackwater USA deliberately caused the deaths of innocent civilians in a series of shootings in Iraq, attorneys for Iraqis suing the security contractor told a federal judge Friday.

The attorneys singled out Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who is the company's owner, for blame in the deaths of more than 20 Iraqis between 2005 and 2007. Six former Blackwater guards were criminally charged in 14 of the shootings, and family members and victims' estates sued Prince, Blackwater (now called Xe Services LLC) and a group of related companies.

"The person responsible for these deaths is Mr. Prince,'' Susan L. Burke, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. "He had the intent, he provided the weapons, he provided the instructions, and they were done by his agents and they were war crimes.''

Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed deep skepticism about the claims. "Are you accusing Mr. Prince of saying 'I want our boys to go out and shoot innocent civilians?''' he asked the attorneys."These are certainly allegations of not engaging in very nice conduct, but where are the elements that meet the elements of murder? I don't have any doubt that you can infer malice. What you can't infer, as far as I can tell, is intent to kill these people.''

Attorneysfor the former Blackwater company denied the allegations at the hearing, which was called to consider their motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Ellis said he would issue a ruling "promptly.''

The hearing - combative in its words but respectful in tone - was the latest fallout from Blackwater's controversial actions in Iraq. The North Carolina company, which has provided security under a lucrative State Department contract, has come under scrutiny for a string of incidents in which its heavily armed guards were accused of using excessive force.

The deadliest was a September 2007 shooting in central Baghdad in which Blackwater guards opened fire on Iraqis in a crowded street, killing 17 civilians. The company has said the guards' convoy came under fire. Five former Blackwater guards have been indicted on federal charges in 14 of those shootings. A sixth guard pleaded guilty.

The lawsuit cites that incident and other shootings to accuse the company of "lawless behavior." A consolidation of five earlier lawsuits, it says the company covered up killings and hired known mercenaries. In sworn affidavits recently filed by the plaintiffs' attorneys, two anonymous former Blackwater employees also say - without citing evidence - that the company may have conspired to murder witnesses in the criminal probe.

Attorneys for Blackwater say the lawsuit should be dismissed on a variety of legal grounds and that although the deaths were tragic, the guards were closely supervised by U.S. government officials. The allegations "go far beyond describing the harm allegedly suffered by Plaintiffs,'' the Blackwater attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss. "They include an encyclopedia of vituperative assertions.''

The Blackwater attorneys are also calling on the judge to strike the affidavits from the former employees from the court record, calling them "scandalous and baseless" and designed to get publicity. Ellis has yet to rule on that motion.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/28/AR2009082803782.html

2009/08/24 - Memo Reveals Details of Blackwater Targeted Killings Program

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:42:10 +0200

By Gabor Steingart
Der Spiegel
August 24, 2009

Part 1: Memo Reveals Details of Blackwater Targeted Killings Program

A US district court will decide this week whether one of the darkest chapters of the Bush era, the relationship between the administration and the private security company Blackwater, should be reexamined. Former Blackwater employees want to shine light on the company's shadowy activities.

Susan Burke supported the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, during the 2008 US presidential campaign. But now that Obama is in office, she finds her views diverging widely from his.

Obama is opposed to investigating the excesses of the administration of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Burke, an attorney, favors an investigation. Obama has thus far avoided answering the question of whether the US Constitution was violated in Bush's so-called "war on terror." Burke wants an investigation to focus on precisely this question. Obama is looking forward, while Burke is looking back.

What Burke sees when she looks into the rearview mirror is indeed ugly. She sees 17 dead, including women and children, lying on Nisoor Square in Baghdad, killed on Sept. 16, 2007 by mercenaries working for Blackwater, a private American security firm. She sees Blackwater employee Andrew Moonen who, after a Christmas party in 2006, drove through Baghdad, heavily armed, and shot a man for no reason. She hears the shot, fired from a Blackwater helicopter, that killed an innocent man on Baghdad's Wathba Square on Sept. 9, 2007.

But most of all, Burke sees Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder and former owner. In her suit, she refers to him as a "modern-day merchant of death," and she alleges that the 40-year-old created a "culture of lawlessness and unaccountability" at Blackwater, where the "excessive and unnecessary use of deadly force" was commonplace. In her motion, Burke also accuses Blackwater of war crimes. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria, Virginia, will now decide whether to take on Burke's civil suit.

Committed In the Name of America

The political world will also have to make some decisions. The first question is whether the US government will make public on Monday the most comprehensive report to date on the treatment of terrorism suspects. That alone would trigger a political hurricane in Washington, says former CIA Director Porter Goss. It would also make it much more difficult for the government to rebuff calls for it to finally investigate all the alleged illegal activity carried out in the fight against terrorism.

It was not until the end of June that US Attorney General Eric Holder read the report, which was prepared by the CIA's inspector general in 2004. But then he spent a full two days in his office in Washington D.C. studying the document. When he had finished reading it, he apparently stood at the window for a long time, staring out at Constitution Avenue. Horrified over what had been done in the name of America, Holder looked into the possibility of appointing a special prosecutor. Sources in Washington say that he has now achieved his goal, which puts him more squarely in Burke's camp than Obama's.

Blackwater characterizes Burke's accusations as "scandalous and baseless," and claims that the cases she cites were isolated incidents. According to Blackwater attorneys, "no diplomat under the protection of this service died or even was injured during the entire duration of the contract."

Symbol of an Era

Prince, who earlier in his career claimed to have "the heart of a warrior," is intent on preventing the civil suit from going to trial. To that end, he has hired a team of lawyers working for the law firm of Mayer Brown, which also represents 89 companies on Fortune magazine's list of the top 500 US companies ranked by revenues.

Peter White, the head of the Mayer Brown team, plans to convince the judges in Alexandria this week that the Blackwater case isn't a case at all. In his written response to Burke's lawsuit, White argues that any public disclosure of Blackwater's methods would endanger its personnel in war zones, and her suit should be dismissed.

White also argues that if there is any culpability, it rests with the individuals who committed the acts in question, not the entire company. He points to unsuccessful lawsuits that were filed against US corporations after the Vietnam War, including the case of Vietnamese plaintiffs who tried and failed to sue the US multinational corporation Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of the defoliant Agent Orange. In one respect, the comparison is apt: Blackwater has become a symbol of an entire era, just as Agent Orange was a potent symbol of the Vietnam War.

Outsourcing War

After the al-Qaida attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney began using large numbers of private security contractors for the first time. The mercenaries were intended to make up for a lack of manpower, especially in the area of personal security, as well as to perform the dirty work, such as interrogating detainees, thereby leaving US military personnel untainted. Erik Prince's company turned into an empire practically overnight, collecting more than $1 billion (€700 million) in revenues from US taxpayers. Seventy percent of Blackwater's contracts with the government were no-bid contracts.

The company's most important personnel, its fighters, who were known internally as "shooters," were recruited around the world, including from places like the Philippines and Latin America. In 2007, the company proudly changed its name to Blackwater Worldwide.

The advantage of privatizing the war was obvious for the Bush administration. Blackwater contractors are cheaper than regular US soldiers. When they were killed, their widows received only minor compensation, while the US military pays lifelong survivor benefits. Besides, Blackwater employees died quietly - in other words, they were never part of the official death statistics, which was convenient for the president.

With the end of the Bush administration, Blackwater received fewer contracts and the company changed its name to Xe Services. But its founder's most determined adversary, Susan Burke, continued her fight.

‘A Christian Crusader’

Burke now plans to call 40 witnesses to testify against Prince. If the court agrees to hear her suit on Friday, eyewitnesses to the various killings will be summoned from Baghdad. In the United States, Burke, who made a name for herself defending detainees subjected to abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, will ask the court to subpoena several former Blackwater employees, including a former executive.

Two affidavits that have been filed in the Alexandria court contain serious allegations against company founder Erik Prince. The men who signed the affidavits, fearing that their lives could be put in danger if their identities were revealed, are identified anonymously as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2.

In his affidavit, John Doe 1, who served in Iraq, writes that he "personally observed multiple incidents of Blackwater personnel intentionally using excessive and unjustified deadly force."

John Doe 2, who worked for Prince, writes that the former head of Blackwater "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe." He claims that company employees treated the killing of Iraqis as sport.

The Blackwater attorney questions the validity of these witnesses, saying that much of what they claim is based on hearsay. The fact that the witnesses are remaining anonymous, says White, makes it impossible to verify their credibility. He calls the tactics "unfair" and highly prejudicial to defendants.

But the key witnesses' fear of retaliation is considerable, which also has something to do with the fact that Prince has powerful friends in the government, particularly inside the CIA.

Part 2: Assassination Teams and Extraordinary Renditions

In addition to working for government departments, Blackwater also worked directly for the intelligence agency, as the new CIA director recently confirmed in a closed-door hearing in the US Congress. And in a memo SPIEGEL has obtained, two other former employees describe, for the first time, the details of this covert collaboration.

The two informants are referred to as "Source A" and "Source B" in the internal memo. According to Source B, Blackwater, working on behalf of the CIA, flew terror suspects from Guantanamo to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, where the detainees apparently faced "special treatment" in secret prisons.

The intelligence service commissioned Blackwater and its subsidiaries to transport terror suspects from Guantanamo to interrogations at secret prison camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The paper identifies aircraft movements and unveils how the flights were disguised. The memo reads: "The CIA hired Blackwater to conduct extraordinary renditions" and "Blackwater flew the rendition targets from Fort Perry and Cuba to Kandahar, Afghanistan."

‘The CIA Hired Blackwater’

According to the informant, some of the flights were provided by two other companies Prince owned, Presidential Airways and Aviation Worldwide, which were given special clearance in 2003 by the US Defense Department to conduct such flights. Source B even knew the tail numbers of the aircraft that were allegedly involved: N962BW, N964BW and N968BW.

The flights also involved Satelles Solutions, another Prince subsidiary, which operates a training and recruitment camp in the Philippines designed to accommodate about 1,000 soldiers.

According to Source A, Blackwater also helped out the CIA with another controversial activity during the Bush years. In the memo, Source A writes: "The CIA hired Blackwater to conduct targeted killings in Afghanistan."

In June Leon Panetta, Obama's new CIA director, told lawmakers in a closed-door hearing on Capitol Hill about a secret program to kill or capture al-Qaida operatives that was begun eight years ago. The purpose of the so-called assassination program was to recruit and train special forces to assassinate senior al-Qaida leaders.

Authority to Kill

According to Panetta, Cheney asked the CIA not to disclose the covert program to Congress. The argument that was used at the time was that when combating terrorism, the CIA has the authority to kill without special congressional approval. The program, however, never quite went beyond the training phase, according to CIA testimony before the US Senate.

The memo by the two sources gets more specific. Source A names five people who were allegedly involved in the development of assassination teams, including a man who left Blackwater in mid-2005 and last worked as the head of the Blackwater's OGA division. The acronym stands for "Other Government Agencies," which included the connection to the CIA. The other men on the source's list are a former member of Blackwater's paratrooper unit, an employee of Blackwater Security Consulting who, according to the memo, was designated as a "hit man" within the unit and Alvin Bernard Krongard, the most senior employee on the list, who the source claims was responsible for assembling the teams. "Krongard set up the teams," the paper claims.

But the memo does not specify whether agreements were made with individuals or the company itself, or what Krongard's role was exactly. The latter is particularly difficult to determine, given that Krongard has worked on both sides of the desk. From March 2001 to September 2004, Krongard served as the CIA's executive director, under then-CIA Director George Tenet. After leaving office, he switched to the private sector, joining Blackwater's advisory board.

‘We Are Not Inclined to Comment’

SPIEGEL confronted the company, the CIA and Krongard with the contents of the memo last Wednesday, but they had declined to comment by Friday. A CIA spokesman was unwilling to confirm or deny cooperation with Blackwater with regard to the assassination program or the secret detainee transports. "We do not comment on our contractual relationships," the spokesman said. He did note, however, that the details of the memo included "mistakes," although he chose not to elaborate.

Stacy DeLuke, the spokeswoman of Xe Services (as Blackwater is now called), answered in an e-mail: "Due to the sensitive nature of these allegations, we are not inclined to comment at this time." Krongard's assistant Cathy Davis said: "I received your e-mail and confirm receipt by Mr. Krongard as well," but did not respond to questions about Krongard's role.

The allegations have triggered growing unease on Capitol Hill, where senators want to know more about the covert assassination program. Last Friday, it was also revealed that Blackwater assisted in drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In a letter to fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky urged the secretary of state "not to enter into further contracts with Xe and to immediately review any existing contracts."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

External link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,644571,00.html

2009/08/22 - Reports Revive Debate on Contractor Use

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:34:28 +0200

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post
August 22, 2009

The disclosure that the CIA once hired Blackwater USA for elements of an assassination program has brought back into focus the wide range of intelligence and military activities that are being contracted out to private firms.

Some lawmakers have balked at the shift of intelligence operations away from government employees. This week, Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said she has "believed for a long time that the intelligence community is overreliant on contractors to carry out its work." She called it a particular problem "when contractors are used to carry out activities that are inherently governmental."

That phrase, though, is subject to interpretation, and the Office of Management and Budget stipulates that agencies in the executive branch have a good deal of discretion. Moreover, there is no legal prohibition to contracting out what may appear to be a government function.

On Wednesday, after news reports surfaced about the CIA's hiring of Blackwater, former agency director Michael V. Hayden noted that the definition of an "inherently government activity" is quite narrow.

"Actual intelligence analysis, actual intelligence collection are permissible activities for contractors under current OMB guidance," Hayden said.

Hayden did not comment directly on the reports about Blackwater and the assassination program targeting suspected top members of al-Qaeda, but he and current CIA personnel have defended the use of contractors.

"The CIA views contractors as essential to the accomplishment of its mission, bringing unique skills that the agency may need only for limited periods of time," spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in a statement.

He added that contractors provide additional capabilities to staff officers and provide "within the laws and regulations ... the flexibility required by the changing priorities of intelligence."

In the case of assassination operations, which officials say never passed the planning stage, the involvement of Blackwater has exacerbated the frustration of Democratic lawmakers and others critical of the use of contractors in intelligence work.

Of the scores of private security contractors that have worked for U.S. military and government agencies, Blackwater gained the most notoriety because of accusations its personnel used excessive force against civilians in Iraq. The Justice Department investigated the North Carolina company, now known as Xe Services LLC, for the alleged role of its employees in the slayings of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007. Five Blackwater guards were indicted last year in connection with those deaths.

The founder of the privately held firm, Erik Prince, is a major financial backer of Republican political candidates and causes. After the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, his company won numerous lucrative contracts to provide protection for U.S. personnel, including a $21 million no-bid contract to protect L. Paul Bremer, head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

The next year, Blackwater secured a $1 billion, five-year State Department contract to guard U.S. diplomats and other dignitaries worldwide.

The precise dollar amount of Xe's business with other government agencies is difficult to determine. But "Master of War," an investigative book on Blackwater by journalist Suzanne Simons published this year, put the sum at $2 billion since 1997 - not including the company's classified contracts with the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer who has written several books on intelligence, on Friday criticized the choice of Blackwater in assassination operations.

"It's one thing, albeit often misguided, for the agency to outsource certain tasks to contractors," he wrote on Time magazine's Web site. "It's quite another to involve a company like Blackwater in even just the planning and training of targeted killings, akin to the CIA going to the Mafia to draw up a plan to kill Castro."

Hayden said that about 30 percent of CIA employees are contractors, down from a much higher percentage several years ago. But contracting in the intelligence community remains widespread.

L-3, the giant military contractor, says on its Web site that its Intelligence Solutions Division has 2,300 employees at more than 28 sites worldwide. It is advertising this month to hire personnel for eight military intelligence jobs in Afghanistan, including a senior intelligence analyst with 10 years of Defense Department or other government agency experience and a Top Secret clearance.

Meanwhile, Raytheon, the corporation that supplies many technical elements of the Predator drones, is advertising for a technician to help "troubleshoot" the surveillance camera used on the unmanned vehicles.

A senior Senate staff aide familiar with defense matters said yesterday that such technicians are needed "because the equipment is so advanced" that the best workers are those from the companies that helped build the drones and not from the military.

Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/08/21/ST2009082103686.html

2009/08/21 - Blackwater Disclosure Adds to CIA Worries

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:18:22 +0200

By R. Jeffrey Smith & Joby Warrick
Washington Post
August 21, 2009

The disclosure Wednesday of the CIA's decision five years ago to let a private security contractor help manage its sensitive effort to kill senior al-Qaeda members drew congressional criticism Thursday on the eve of key decisions by the Obama administration that current and former intelligence officials fear could compound the spy agency's political troubles.

Those decisions include the expected release Monday of newly declassified portions of a 2004 CIA report that questions the legality and effectiveness of the agency's harsh interrogations at secret prisons. Additionally, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. may order a probe of possible criminal actions by CIA officers and contractors during those interrogations.

"In September, you are going to have a hurricane coming through Washington that is aimed right at the intelligence community," warned Porter J. Goss, the CIA's director from September 2004 to May 2006. He noted that a Justice Department inquiry is also pending into whether laws were broken when CIA officers destroyed videotapes of the harsh interrogations.

Democratic House and Senate lawmakers and staff members have already described as inappropriate the Bush administration's decision to hand management and training responsibility for the CIA's "targeted killing" efforts to Blackwater USA, and they have reiterated their intent to press for speedier and more complete disclosure by the agency of such activities in the future. CIA Director Leon E. Panetta terminated the program in June, shortly before telling Congress about its existence.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the intelligence committee, sharpened her previous criticism of the program. "It is clear to me that the failure to notify before now constituted a violation of law," she said in a statement Thursday.

She said she could not address the program's parameters but emphasized that it "had, in fact, gone beyond the simple planning stage."

"I have believed for a long time that the Intelligence Community is over-reliant on contractors to carry out its work," she said. "This is especially a problem when contractors are used to carry out activities that are inherently governmental."

Democrats have previously pushed to ban the use of contractors to conduct interrogations, and some suggested Thursday that the restriction should extend to hit squads. "There is still too much being done by contractors that ought to be done by government employees," said a congressional staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the CIA program remains classified.

Goss said he had not been fully briefed on the details of the CIA activities in question, many of which are classified, so he could not confirm the reported involvement of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm did not return a phone call Thursday, but two former intelligence officers familiar with the effort said the company had received millions of dollars for helping train and equip teams to undertake the killings.

Goss alluded to that effort, stating that "my standing orders were 'field-forward' mission."

"We wanted to catch the people who brought down the trade centers and killed innocent people and wanted to kill more," he said. "And we wanted to have every possible legal means at our disposal that we could to deal with them. That was certainly in my vision statement, and that is the briefing that was given to members of Congress" during his tenure.

"In my view, we should constantly be looking at all our options in terms of national security," Goss said. "Suppose you got a high-value guy, a terrorist, part of al-Qaeda, a radical fundamentalist trained to kill innocent people, who you cannot talk down from the tree. What happens when you actually find that guy? Do you send the FBI? That's probably not the best option for the tribal areas" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Political controversy over conducting lethal activities overseas stems from the fact that "we have not resolved the basic rules of engagement for covert forces in the world today," Goss said. "It keeps getting pushed by the prevailing political winds." He added that the CIA, when confronted by a particularly tough problem involving a shortage of manpower, too much regulation or political indecision, has "a tendency to say, 'Let's see if we can farm this out.' That does not mean we are trying to evade a law, but to get the mission done in a creditable way."

One motive the CIA might have for hiring contractors may be to add personnel without officially enlarging its bureaucracy, Goss said. "But it's also the case that there are some folks at retirement age who still feel like they have some horsepower left, so they go off into a consulting business and make themselves available."

A former intelligence official familiar with the effort said the decision to outsource a substantial portion of the program stemmed partly from the agency's close ties to Blackwater, which hired several of the agency's top executives, including former CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black and former deputy director for operations Robert Richer.

A second former intelligence official intimately familiar with Blackwater's role said that there was never a formal contract, but rather a verbal agreement between top executives of the company and the agency. The former official said that the agreement covered only Blackwater's expenses and overhead, with no additional profit for the firm. "No one made a dime off of this," the former official said.

Michael V. Hayden, Goss's successor as CIA director, also declined Thursday to comment on Blackwater's involvement in the targeted killing program but told reporters that the use of contractors had ended by the time he became head of the agency in 2006. At the time he learned about it, he said, the initiative was still in the planning stages and "never reached either the political or the legal threshold" that would have triggered a mandatory congressional briefing.

"Somewhere in that mix, I probably would have gone down to talk to Congress, but ... the threshold I probably would have first crossed was a political one, not a legal one," Hayden said. There was no specific legal requirement, he said, but "the fact was that this was maybe of a bit of a different flavor than the kinds of things we had briefed the Hill on in the past."

Presidential aides, as well as CIA officials, have said they fear that heightened controversy over the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts will push the Obama administration into a partisan debate it has sought to avoid.

The release of the CIA report Monday - on a date picked by a federal judge in New York in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union - will come as the president settles into his holiday at Martha's Vineyard, increasing the likelihood that it will draw attention during a political lull.

Hayden said he expects the report's release to damage CIA morale, even though some passages will bolster CIA assertions that the harsh interrogations had helped the country learn about "the basic infrastructure of al-Qaeda" and plan its counterattack.

Holder, speaking at a news conference in Washington, said the Justice Department has worked closely with the CIA in an effort to release only those portions of the report that will not compromise national security. "We will not be doing anything that will endanger the American people," Holder said.

Staff writers Ben Pershing, Anne E. Kornblut and Carrie Johnson contributed to this report.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/20/AR2009082004064.html

2009/08/19 - C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:32:40 +0200

By Mark Mazzetti
New York Times
August 19, 2009

Washington - The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.

It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.

Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.

Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq.

It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license.

Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program.

Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta’s decision on the assassination program was "clear and straightforward."

"Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so," Mr. Gimigliano said. "He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it."

A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress. "It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for," she said.

The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta’s predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed.

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.

One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny.

"It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin," the official said. "It went well beyond that."

Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.’s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.

In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said.

Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.

C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.

An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians.

The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.

But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.

Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs.

But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot.

"I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted," said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.

Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html

2009/08/17 - Blackwater Armed and Dangerous in Iraq

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:13:28 +0200

By Jeremy Scahill
National Public Radio
August 17, 2009

Despite the Iraqi government's announcement earlier this year that it had canceled Blackwater's operating license, the US State Department continues to allow Blackwater operatives in Iraq to remain armed. A State Department official told The Nation that Blackwater (which recently renamed itself Xe Services) is now operating in Iraq under the name "US Training Center" and will continue its armed presence in the country until at least September 3. That means Blackwater will have been in Iraq nearly two years after its operatives killed seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square.

"Authorized personnel under that task order are permitted to continue carrying weapons until that time," said a State Department diplomatic security official who spoke on condition that his name not be used. He added: "The purpose and mission of the Department of State's private security contractors is limited to protection of US diplomats and diplomatic facilities only and is defensive in nature."

That last point will come as little comfort to Iraqis. The Blackwater operatives involved with the Nisour Square killings on September 16, 2007, were operating under that very description. "The public perception in Iraq is that Blackwater is no longer operating in the country; that they were kicked out and their license revoked," says Raed Jarrar, the Iraq consultant at the American Friends Service Committee. "The public perception is that they are gone already. This is very disturbing."

The State Department's confirmation of Blackwater's continued armed presence in Iraq comes a week after a former Blackwater employee alleged in a sworn statement that the company's owner, Erik Prince, views his company's role as fighting a Christian crusade to "eliminate" Muslims and Islam globally, alleging that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

According to the State Department, Blackwater's sole remaining contract for diplomatic security in Iraq is an aviation contract. As The Nation recently reported, the Obama administration extended that contract on July 31, increasing Blackwater's payment by $20 million and bringing the total paid by the State Department to Blackwater for its "aviation services" in Iraq to $187 million. Blackwater has also been paid over $1 billion by the State Department for "diplomatic security." The large, publicly traded company DynCorp is scheduled to take over Blackwater's aviation contract in September, while Triple Canopy will get the lion's share of the protective security work in Iraq.

On January 28, the Iraqi government announced that it was not issuing Blackwater a license to operate in Iraq, saying the company needed to leave once private security companies were officially placed under the jurisdiction of Iraqi law, as outlined in the Status of Forces Agreement. "Those companies that don't have licenses, such as Blackwater, should leave Iraq immediately," declared Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf. Despite these declarations, Blackwater remained. "Why were they allowed to stay for seven months without any operating license?" asks Jarrar.

The language of the Status of Forces Agreement that took effect January 1, 2009, technically places Defense Department contractors under the jurisdiction of Iraqi law, but it appears to exempt State Department contractors such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp from Iraqi jurisdiction. Whether that has played a role in Blackwater's continued presence in Iraq is unclear. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other officials "gave a lot of lip service after the Nisour Square massacre, promising to prosecute Blackwater and ban them from Iraq, but they've done nothing," says Jarrar. "It seems they were deliberately deceiving the public without actually holding the State Department or Blackwater accountable."

A week after Nisour Square, Maliki's government said it would ban the company. "The Iraqi government is responsible for its citizens, and it cannot be accepted for a security company to carry out a killing," Maliki said on September 23, 2007. "There are serious challenges to the sovereignty of Iraq." (The Iraqi government did not respond to a request for comment.)

Meanwhile, Blackwater continues to have a substantial presence in Afghanistan as well. There it also operates under the banner of US Training Center on a diplomatic security contract for the State Department's Worldwide Personal Protection Program. It also works for the Department of Defense under the banner of Paravant LLC, another Prince-owned company. Four Paravant operatives are under investigation by the US military over the shooting deaths of two Afghan civilians in May.

Blackwater is bidding on more contracts in Afghanistan, which is increasingly becoming the new gold mine for the war industry. Nearly 70,000 contractors are now deployed in Afghanistan on the US government payroll, meaning there are now more contractors than US soldiers (48,000) in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's Interior Ministry has licensed nearly forty private security companies who collectively employ 23,000 people in Afghanistan. These companies also control 17,000 weapons there. In addition to those hired by the State Department, the US Department of Defense has about 4,300 security contractors in Afghanistan, and these numbers are steadily increasing. In the second quarter of 2009, the Obama administration increased the number of armed private contractors in Afghanistan by 29 percent.

"I'm not surprised that this transition is happening," says Sonali Kolhatkar, author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence. "We were warned before the election of Obama that Afghanistan was going to be the top war priority, so it is not surprising that Washington would dedicate much of its war machinery to Afghanistan." As for Blackwater, she says: "If they build the same record of killing civilians in Afghanistan that they had in Iraq, it will cement the Afghan resistance even further against the US occupation."

On August 6, Representative Jan Schakowsky wrote letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates citing Blackwater's "history of abuse" and called on Clinton and Gates "not to award further contracts to Xe and its affiliates and to review all existing contracts with this company." Neither department has responded to Schakowsky.

External link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111946211

2009/08/08 - Congresswoman: U.S. Ties With Xe, Formerly Blackwater, Must End

Sun, 9 Aug 2009 00:03:45 +0200

By Charley Keyes
Cable Network News
August 8, 2009

Washington - A member of Congress Friday called on the State Department to stop doing business with Xe, the North Carolina-based security company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton whether the State Department had just signed a new $20 million dollar contract with Xe for Iraq, saying she is "very concerned" that the State Department may be signing new security contracts with Xe, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I urge you not to enter into further contracts with Xe and to immediately review any existing contracts," the letter said, according to a copy provided to CNN. "The behavior and actions of both the company's leadership and a number of individuals employed by the company have harmed our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan and endangered the lives and welfare of our troops and diplomatic personnel serving overseas."

The State Department decided in January not to renew a personnel protection contract with Blackwater, as the company was then known, when it expired in May. That decision came amidst an investigation by both U.S. and Iraqi authorities of a 2007 shooting involving Blackwater guards in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqis were killed. The company has repeatedly denied any wrong-doing.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request Friday for reaction to Schakowsky's questions and criticism. The State Department had said that it would continue a Blackwater air-support contract after the much-larger personnel protection contract ended.

Xe spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke told CNN that, "Right now we have no contracts with the State Department in Iraq."

DeLuke said the company would review calls for bids to provide security for U.S. officials in Afghanistan.

"The thing is we are totally open to bidding on some of the contracts that may come up in Afghanistan just like anyone else," DeLuke said in a telephone interview.

The Nation magazine released an article Friday that said the State Department had signed a new contract for Iraq with Xe for $20 million to extend an earlier aviation contract.

"The State Department contract is scheduled to run through September 3. In May, the State Department announced it was not renewing Blackwater's Iraq contract, and the Iraqi government has refused to issue the company an operating license," the article said.

The controversy over the role of Blackwater in Iraq was revived earlier this week by a lawsuit filed in Virginia by two former employees accusing Blackwater guards of smuggling weapons and using excessive force in Iraq. And the lawsuit claims Blackwater founder Erik Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe."

Xe said in a statement that it would respond "to the anonymous unsubstantiated and offensive assertions put forward by the plaintiffs," in a brief to be filed August 17.

Blackwater changed its name to Xe in February.

External link: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/08/07/iraq.blackwater.xe/

2009/08/07 - Iraqis Speak of Random Killings Committed by Private Blackwater Guards

Sat, 8 Aug 2009 23:34:17 +0200

By Oliver August
The Times
August 7, 2009

Guards employed by Blackwater, the US security company, shot Iraqis and killed victims in allegedly unprovoked and random attacks, it was claimed yesterday.

A Virginia court also received sworn statements from former Blackwater employees yesterday alleging that Erik Prince, the company’s founder, "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe".

They also accused the company of following a policy of deliberate killings and arms dealing and of employing people unfit or improperly trained to handle lethal weaponry.

In Baghdad yesterday, some Iraqis said they believed that the case was a last chance for justice and an opportunity for America to divorce the behaviour of its military from the private guards.

Farid Walid, who was shot in Nisour Square two years ago during a massacre that killed 17 Iraqis, said: "Everybody here knows of cases where Blackwater guards shot innocent people without a second thought. They are a symbol of the occupation. Nobody will forget. But Iraqis might think at least a little differently of America if the killers are put in prison."

Mr Walid is among several Iraqis behind an attempt to take Blackwater to court in the US, helped by an American lawyer, Susan Burke, and her local legal team.

Umm Sajjad, whose husband was allegedly shot by Blackwater guards, said: "The US forces have come to our neighbourhood many times and they never harmed anybody. It was Blackwater that wanted to harm people."

Her husband was working as a security guard at the Iraqi Media Network, a state broadcaster, when a Blackwater convoy passed them one day in 2007. She says that without warning, the Iraqis were fired upon and three of them were killed. The Blackwater convoy never stopped or sent anyone to check what happened.

Umm Sajjad said: "I was told that there was no exchange of fire or any other reason to provoke them to shoot at my husband and his colleagues. They were on a high building but they didn’t have weapons in their hands."

Other families have tales of shootings allegedly committed by Blackwater, which has since changed its name.

Abu Suhad lost his daughter in 2007 when she was driving her car near the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in central Baghdad. He said: "Eyewitnesses told me that four white Blackwater cars went by her. Three were already past when the last one shot her in the head at close range and killed her. The eyewitnesses said they were very bewildered why they shot her. The bullet came from the driver’s window, which means that he got next to her when he shot her. The bullet entered from under the ear and left from the upper side of her skull. There were bits of her hair and skin on the car roof."

Mr Walid remembers the Nisour Square shooting on September 16, 2007 - for Iraqis one of the blacker days of the US occupation. Claiming to have come under fire, Blackwater guards stopped in the middle of a large roundabout and began shooting in all directions.

"I left my car and ran away to hide in a petrol station, which was made of concrete. The shooting was so heavy it was like rain," he said. "I saw lots of people getting shot. The driver who had been in front of me died and his wife fell out of the car. Her child was killed as well. The shooting went on for about ten minutes."

Iraqis still find it hard to believe that companies such as Blackwater were given such free rein. Until the start of this year its employees were immune from prosecution in the country.

In another alleged incident involving the company, Ali Husamaldeen was walking in Wathba Square, central Baghdad, on September 9, 2007, when he was felled by a single gunshot. Passers-by reported a Blackwater helicopter overhead, from which they say the fatal shot was fired. According to his mother, Umm Ali, her son was unarmed and in no way a threat.

Leqaa al-Yaseen, an MP, said: "I believe the US authorities have the main responsibility for what happened because Blackwater came to Iraq with their permission. Regarding Blackwater smuggling weapons into Iraq, that suggests the US forces didn’t know about it at the time. But I think they did know.

"The tragedies that happened to our Iraqi people at Nisour Square and other places are not separate from the US forces in Iraq. The US Government is trying to avoid responsibility by blaming private companies."

Officials in Baghdad have told The Times that they are continuing to investigate allegations similar to those made in the US against Blackwater.

Major-General Fathel al-Barwari, commander of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces, said he was gathering evidence of illegal weapons trading by the company. As a result, Blackwater could also face criminal prosecution in Iraq, where it is now banned, but other companies connected to Mr Prince still operate.

Tahseen Al-Shekhli, for the defence ministry in Baghdad, said: "If the allegations of illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq are proven, the Iraqi authorities will definitely take legal measures against this company."

The Iraqi Government has tightened up rules for private security companies in recent years.

External link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6742135.ece
_______________________________________________________________________________

US Still Paying Blackwater Millions

By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation
August 7, 2009

Just days before two former Blackwater employees alleged in sworn statements filed in federal court that the company's owner, Erik Prince, "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," the Obama administration extended a contract with Blackwater for more than $20 million for "security services" in Iraq, according to federal contract data obtained by The Nation. The State Department contract is scheduled to run through September 3. In May, the State Department announced it was not renewing Blackwater's Iraq contract, and the Iraqi government has refused to issue the company an operating license.

"They are still there, but we are transitioning them out," a State Department official told The Nation. According to the State Department, the $20 million represents an increase on an aviation contract that predates the Obama administration.

Despite its scandal-plagued track record, Blackwater (which has rebranded itself as Xe) continues to have a presence in Iraq, trains Afghan forces on US contracts and provides government-funded training for military and law enforcement inside the United States. The company is also actively bidding on other government contracts, including in Afghanistan, where the number of private contractors is swelling. According to federal contracting records reviewed by The Nation, since President Barack Obama took office in January the State Department has contracted with Blackwater for more than $174 million in "security services" alone in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of millions more in "aviation services." Much of this money stems from existing contracts from the Bush era that have been continued by the Obama administration. While Obama certainly inherited a mess when it came to Blackwater's entrenchment in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has continued the widespread use of armed private contractors in both countries. Blackwater's role may be slowly shrinking, but its work is continuing through companies such as DynCorp and Triple Canopy.

"These contracts with Blackwater need to stop," says Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat and a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. "There's already enough evidence of gross misconduct and serious additional allegations against the company and its owner to negate any possibility that this company should have a presence in Iraq, Afghanistan or any conflict zone - or any contract with the US government."

On July 24 the Army signed an $8.9 million contract with Blackwater's aviation wing, Presidential Airways, for aviation services at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Bagram, home to a massive - and expanding - US-run prison, has been the subject of intense criticism from the ACLU and human rights groups for holdings hundreds of prisoners without charges and denying them habeas corpus and access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Blackwater aviation contract for Afghanistan is described as "Air Charter for Things" and "Nonscheduled Chartered Passenger Air Transportation." The military signed an additional $1.4 million contract that day for "Nonscheduled" passenger transportation in Afghanistan. These payments are part of aviation contracts dating back to the Bush era, and continued under Obama, that have brought Blackwater tens of millions of dollars in Afghanistan since January. In May, Blackwater operatives on contract with the Department of Defense allegedly killed an unarmed Afghan civilian and wounded two others. Moreover, Presidential Airways is being sued by the families of US soldiers killed in a suspicious crash in Afghanistan in November 2004.

The sworn affidavits from the former Blackwater employees, first reported by The Nation on August 3, have sparked renewed calls on Capitol Hill for the Obama administration to cancel all business with Blackwater. "I believe that the behavior of Xe, its leadership, and many of its employees, puts our government and military personnel, as well as our military and diplomatic objectives, at serious risk," Schakowsky wrote in an August 6 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Given this company's history of abuse and in light of recent allegations, I urge you not to award further contracts to Xe and its affiliates and to review all existing contracts with this company." Schakowsky sent a similar letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Meanwhile, VoteVets.org, a leading veterans' organization, has called on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate the allegations contained in the sworn declarations submitted in the Eastern District of Virginia on August 3. VoteVets.org, which has more than 100,000 members, also appealed to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to "immediately hold hearings, and make recommendations on a new legal structure" to hold private military contractors accountable for alleged crimes.

"Given the charges made against Xe and Erik Prince in these sworn statements, which include smuggling and use of illegal arms inside of Iraq, as well as the encouraged murder of innocent Iraqis, it is essential that these loopholes be closed, retroactively, so that Xe, Prince, and his employees cannot escape proper prosecution in the United States now or in the future," wrote the group's chair Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran, in a letter to Senator John Kerry and other lawmakers. "It is absolutely crucial that we show Iraqis and the rest of the world that no matter who you are or how big your company is, you will be held accountable for your conduct - especially when in a war zone. Failure to do so only emboldens our enemy, and gives them yet another tool to recruit more insurgents and terrorists that target our men and women in harm's way."

For its part, Blackwater/Xe issued a statement responding to the sworn statements of two of its former employees. The company called the allegations "unsubstantiated and offensive assertions." It said the lawyers representing alleged Iraqi victims of Blackwater "have chosen to slander Mr. Prince rather than raise legal arguments or actual facts that will be considered by a court of law. We are happy to engage them there."

What Blackwater/Xe's statement did not flatly say is that the allegations are untrue. "I would have expected a crisp denial," says military law expert Scott Horton, who has followed this case closely. "The statement had the look of a denial to it, without actually refuting the specific allegations. I can understand why from the perspective of a corporate public affairs officer - just repeating the allegations would be harmful and would add to their credibility."

Blackwater also claims that the accusations "hold no water" because, even though the two former employees said that they had already provided similar information to federal prosecutors, no further Blackwater operatives or officials have been indicted. The company claims that according to the US attorney, the indictment of five Blackwater employees for the September 2007 Nisour Square shootings is "very narrow in its allegation" and does not charge "the entire Blackwater organization in Baghdad."

But, as Blackwater certainly knows, there are multiple prosecutors looking into its activities on a wide range of issues, and more than one grand jury can be seated at any given time. Simply because indictments were not announced regarding other actions when the Nisour Square charges were brought by the Justice Department does not mean Prince, Blackwater and its management are in the clear.

"We know that the federal criminal investigation is still ongoing, so this prosecutor's statement was not really anything definitive," says Horton. "Second, the presumption in US law is that, with fairly rare exceptions, crimes are committed by natural persons, not by legal entities like corporations. A corporation might be fined, for instance, but if it's deeply entangled in criminal dealings, it's the officers who would be prosecuted. Among other things, of course, it's impossible to put a corporation in the slammer. So saying that Blackwater wasn't charged with any crime really doesn't mean much."

Blackwater says it will formally respond to the allegations against Prince and Blackwater in a legal motion on August 17 in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Prince and the company are being sued for war crimes and other alleged crimes by Susan Burke and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

On August 5, Blackwater's lawyers filed a motion with the court reiterating their request for a gag order to be placed on the plaintiffs and their lawyers. That motion largely consisted of quotes from two recent Nation magazine articles covering the case, including one about the allegations against Prince. Despite the fact that the affidavits of "John Doe #1" and "John Doe #2" were public, Blackwater accused the lawyers of "providing this information" to the media. Blackwater's lawyers charged that the plaintiffs' attorneys comments to The Nation were intended "to fuel this one-sided media coverage and to taint the jury pool against [Erik Prince and Blackwater]," adding that The Nation articles and the "coordinated media campaign" of the lawyers "demonstrate a clear need for an Order restraining extrajudicial commentary by the parties and their counsel." On August 7, Judge T.S. Ellis III, a Reagan appointee, denied Blackwater's motion.

External link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill2

2009/08/05 - Blackwater Chief Accused of Murder, Gun-Running

Thu, 6 Aug 2009 15:53:33 +0200

By Justin Rood
ABC News
August 5, 2009

The head of Blackwater and his employees may have killed or ordered the killing of people suspected of cooperating with federal investigators probing their activities, according to an anonymous affidavit filed in federal court Monday.

The affidavit, one of two filed Monday, makes an extraordinary bundle of claims about the former Blackwater CEO, Erik Prince, and his employees. The existence of the documents was first reported by the Nation magazine Tuesday.

They were filed as part of a civil suit against Prince and Blackwater by several Iraqis, which accuse the firm and owner of war crimes, wrongful death and more.

The men gave the affidavits as "John Doe" and "John Doe 2," saying they feared for their safety. "Mr. Prince's management has personally threatened me with death and violence," wrote Doe 2. He says also that others told him "Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered" one or more people who had cooperated with the feds, or were planning to.

But allegations of murder just scratch the surface: the two men - one alleges he is an ex-Marine, the other says he shared his allegations with a federal grand jury - claim far more. John Doe 2 claims routine murderous violence against Iraqis, a wife-swapping sex ring, use of child prostitutes, gun-running and more by Blackwater employees. John Doe 2 describes Prince as viewing himself as "a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," who intentionally sent like-minded mercenaries to Iraq "to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis."

In a statement Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the firm - since renamed "Xe" - said the allegations were "unsubstantiated and offensive." Stacy DeLuke accused the plaintiffs' lawyers of having "chosen inappropriately to argue their case in the media." A lawyer for Prince and Blackwater, Peter Hugh White, declined to comment on the affidavits.

Blackwater

The company has been the target of at least four grand jury investigations and accusations of tax fraud, improper use of force, arms trafficking and overbilling. The firm has denied any wrongdoing.

In February, Blackwater changed its name to Xe. Prince stepped down as its president in March. He is still the company's owner and the chairman of its board of directors. The firm no longer enjoys a billion-dollar contract to protect State Department personnel in Iraq, as it once did, although it still provides aviation services for U.S. government personnel there. The Iraqi government has tried unsuccessfully to boot Blackwater personnel from operating in its country.

The victims on whose behalf the affidavits were introduced include Iraqis who died in the infamous 2007 Nisoor Square fiasco, in which Blackwater guards opened fire on Iraqi civilians and 17 people died. They are being represented in this suit by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Washington, D.C-based lawyer Susan Burke. Both declined to discuss the affidavits. In his affidavit, "John Doe 1" alleges that Blackwater personnel routinely attacked and killed innocent Iraqis who posed no security threat, sometimes without informing the State Department of the incidents, and that they sometimes used powerful automatic weaponry that was barred by their State Department contract. He also said that Blackwater personnel destroyed videos that showed them conducting criminal acts of violence.

"John Doe 2" alleges that Blackwater personnel used hand grenades and grenade launchers, and that Prince obtained exploding bullets for his men to use. Such weaponry and ammunition were barred by the firm's contract with State.

"Doe 2" also claims that Blackwater executives at the company's North Carolina headquarters ran a "wife-swapping and sex ring," which caused so many interoffice disputes Prince ordered an internal investigation into the scheme. Additionally, he says that Blackwater personnel overseas used child prostitutes.

Erik Prince

Both men allege that Prince and his employees smuggled illegal weapons into Iraq. "Doe 2" says that he did so using his subsidiary, Presidential Airlines, which continues to hold a State Department contract.

"It is obvious that Plaintiffs have chosen to slander Mr. Prince rather than raise legal arguments or actual facts that will be considered by a court of law," said Xe's DeLuke. "We question the judgement of anyone who relies upon and reiterate anonymous declarations."

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

External link: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=8258915&page=1
_______________________________________________________________

Blackwater boss and guards accused of murder and ‘killing Iraqis for fun’
Founder of security firm saw himself as a Christian Crusader whose task was to eliminate Muslims, former employees allege.

By Deborah Haynes
The Times
August 5, 2009

Two former employees of Blackwater have accused the private US security firm and its founder of killing Iraqis for fun, smuggling weapons and deceiving the State Department.

The men, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation - one claimed that Blackwater management threatened to kill him - also claimed they had learnt that at least one person who has or planned to speak out against the US firm and its founder Erik Prince was "killed in mysterious circumstances".

The claims were made in sworn statements filed in a court in Virginia earlier this week as part of a civil lawsuit by families of several Iraqis allegedly killed by Blackwater guards.

The ex-Blackwater workers, a former Marine identified as John Doe No 1 and another man identified as John Doe No 2, are American citizens.

John Doe No 2 makes a series of accusations against Mr Prince. He says the Blackwater Worldwide boss "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe", according to his declaration posted, along with a series of other legal documents, on the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) website.

"To that end, Mr Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades."

He adds that "on several occasions after my departure from Mr Prince's employ, Mr Prince's management has personally threatened me with death or violence. In addition, based on information provided to me by former colleagues it appears that Mr Prince and his employees murdered or had murdered one or more persons who have provided information or were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct."

Susan Burke, a private lawyer working with the CCR, is acting against Blackwater in five separate civil cases. She filed the documents in opposing a motion by Blackwater to dismiss the cases.

"The plaintiffs are challenging Mr Prince’s callous scheme to kill, repeatedly, innocent Iraqis," Ms Burke’s motion reads.

The two men allege that Blackwater smuggled weapons into Iraq either on Mr Prince’s private planes or concealed in bags of dog food.

They say that some of the weapons were illegal. John Doe No 2 lists hand grenades and hand grenade launchers. John Doe No 1 names an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, known as a "saw".

He also recounts three incidents in which he says he witnessed Blackwater guards needlessly kill or injure Iraqi civilians.

In one case, John Doe No 1 says the convoy he was in pulled over to fix a flat tyre on a vehicle. A civilian car with two people inside drove by. He says that one of the other Blackwater employees began firing into the car. "From my vantage point, it was clear that XXX was clearly injuring and likely killing the passenger and likely injuring the driver as well."

John Doe No 1 also alleges that the State Department was kept in the dark or deliberately misled about such incidents.

John Doe No 2 claims that "going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game".

Blackwater, which is based in North Carolina, had a multimillion-dollar contract to protect the US Embassy in Baghdad and other State Department officials.

Washington did not renew the contract after it expired in May. The Iraqi Government was highly critical of Blackwater after the shooting in September 2007 of 17 civilians, which did severe damage to the reputation of foreign private security companies in the country.

Blackwater, recently renamed Xe, issued a statement yesterday saying it would respond "to the anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive assertions put forward by the plaintiffs", in a brief to be filed on August 17, according to CNN’s website. A comment was not available from the company. A hearing on the case is due on August 28.

External link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6740142.ece

2009/08/04 - Ex-Guards’ Statements Implicate Blackwater Founder in Iraq Crimes

Wed, 5 Aug 2009 17:52:15 +0200

From Cable Network News
August 4, 2009

Two former Blackwater employees have made statements against Blackwater Worldwide and its founder Erik Prince, accusing the security company and its former CEO of murder and other serious crimes in Iraq, according to court documents filed this week.

The sworn affidavits by an ex-Marine who joined Blackwater and another employee - listed in the documents as "John Doe No. 1" and "John Doe No. 2" - are part of a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Virginia against Prince on behalf of Iraqi families who say they lost loved ones at the hands of his company.

Blackwater, recently renamed Xe, issued a statement Tuesday, saying it would respond "to the anonymous unsubstantiated and offensive assertions put forward by the plaintiffs," in a brief to be filed August 17.

The company had a security contract for operations in Iraq under the U.S. State Department until May, when the federal government declined to renew the contract. The decision did not affect other contracts Blackwater has with the State Department, a senior State department official told CNN earlier this year.

Several of the plaintiffs are connected to a September 2007 shooting incident in Baghdad in which the Iraqi government says security guards, then employed by Blackwater, fired upon and killed 17 Iraqi civilians.

The affidavits by the two witnesses, who did not want to be identified in the court documents filed Monday for fear of retaliatory "violence," paint a menacing portrait of Prince, who recently resigned from his company.

"First, he views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe. ... Second, Mr. Prince is motivated by greed," says John Doe No. 2. "He sought every opportunity to deploy men to Iraq in order to earn more money from the United States government."

He refers to another incident when he "first arrived in Baghdad" in which he saw fellow employees pulling weapons out of a shipment of dog food - the allegation being smuggling.

John Doe No. 1 describes witnessing one incident in Baquba, where a Blackwater employee allegedly fired into a passing single-passenger vehicle without provocation. He says he's heard of similar instances of excessive or deadly force from other Blackwater employees.

However, neither gives clear details about the incidents they describe, such as specific dates or locations.

The court documents filed Tuesday are in response to a defense motion to dismiss the suit. The suit says the affidavits were also submitted to the Justice Department, which is engaged in an ongoing investigation into the Blackwater case. No criminal charges have been filed against Prince.

"It is obvious that Plaintiffs have chosen to slander Mr. Prince rather than raise legal arguments or actual facts that will be considered by a court of law. We are happy to engage them there," the company statement said. "We question the judgment of anyone who relies upon and [reiterates] anonymous declarations."

Earlier this year, five former Blackwater security guards pleaded not guilty to federal charges of manslaughter and other serious crimes stemming from a September 16, 2007, shooting. Their trial is set for February 2010.

External link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/04/iraq.blackwater.lawsuit/
_________________________________________________________________

Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder

By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation
August 4, 2009

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

These allegations, and a series of other charges, are contained in sworn affidavits, given under penalty of perjury, filed late at night on August 3 in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of a seventy-page motion by lawyers for Iraqi civilians suing Blackwater for alleged war crimes and other misconduct. Susan Burke, a private attorney working in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is suing Blackwater in five separate civil cases filed in the Washington, DC, area. They were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions. Burke filed the August 3 motion in response to Blackwater's motion to dismiss the case. Blackwater asserts that Prince and the company are innocent of any wrongdoing and that they were professionally performing their duties on behalf of their employer, the US State Department.

The former employee, identified in the court documents as "John Doe #2," is a former member of Blackwater's management team, according to a source close to the case. Doe #2 alleges in a sworn declaration that, based on information provided to him by former colleagues, "it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct." John Doe #2 says he worked at Blackwater for four years; his identity is concealed in the sworn declaration because he "fear[s] violence against me in retaliation for submitting this Declaration." He also alleges, "On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince's employ, Mr. Prince's management has personally threatened me with death and violence."

In a separate sworn statement, the former US marine who worked for Blackwater in Iraq alleges that he has "learned from my Blackwater colleagues and former colleagues that one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information about Erik Prince and Blackwater have been killed in suspicious circumstances." Identified as "John Doe #1," he says he "joined Blackwater and deployed to Iraq to guard State Department and other American government personnel." It is not clear if Doe #1 is still working with the company as he states he is "scheduled to deploy in the immediate future to Iraq." Like Doe #2, he states that he fears "violence" against him for "submitting this Declaration." No further details on the alleged murder(s) are provided.

"Mr. Prince feared, and continues to fear, that the federal authorities will detect and prosecute his various criminal deeds," states Doe #2. "On more than one occasion, Mr. Prince and his top managers gave orders to destroy emails and other documents. Many incriminating videotapes, documents and emails have been shredded and destroyed."

The Nation cannot independently verify the identities of the two individuals, their roles at Blackwater or what motivated them to provide sworn testimony in these civil cases. Both individuals state that they have previously cooperated with federal prosecutors conducting a criminal inquiry into Blackwater.

"It's a pending investigation, so we cannot comment on any matters in front of a Grand Jury or if a Grand Jury even exists on these matters," John Roth, the spokesperson for the US Attorney's office in the District of Columbia, told The Nation. "It would be a crime if we did that." Asked specifically about whether there is a criminal investigation into Prince regarding the murder allegations and other charges, Roth said: "We would not be able to comment on what we are or are not doing in regards to any possible investigation involving an uncharged individual."

The Nation repeatedly attempted to contact spokespeople for Prince or his companies at numerous email addresses and telephone numbers. When a company representative was reached by phone and asked to comment, she said, "Unfortunately no one can help you in that area." The representative then said that she would pass along The Nation's request. As this article goes to press, no company representative has responded further to The Nation.

Doe #2 states in the declaration that he has also provided the information contained in his statement "in grand jury proceedings convened by the United States Department of Justice." Federal prosecutors convened a grand jury in the aftermath of the September 16, 2007, Nisour Square shootings in Baghdad, which left seventeen Iraqis dead. Five Blackwater employees are awaiting trial on several manslaughter charges and a sixth, Jeremy Ridgeway, has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter and is cooperating with prosecutors. It is not clear whether Doe #2 testified in front of the Nisour Square grand jury or in front of a separate grand jury.

The two declarations are each five pages long and contain a series of devastating allegations concerning Erik Prince and his network of companies, which now operate under the banner of Xe Services LLC. Among those leveled by Doe #2 is that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe":

"To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

"Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to ‘lay Hajiis out on cardboard.’ Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as ‘ragheads’ or ‘hajiis.’"

Among the additional allegations made by Doe #1 is that "Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq." He states that he personally witnessed weapons being "pulled out" from dog food bags. Doe #2 alleges that "Prince and his employees arranged for the weapons to be polywrapped and smuggled into Iraq on Mr. Prince's private planes, which operated under the name Presidential Airlines," adding that Prince "generated substantial revenues from participating in the illegal arms trade."

Doe #2 states: "Using his various companies, [Prince] procured and distributed various weapons, including unlawful weapons such as sawed off semi-automatic machine guns with silencers, through unlawful channels of distribution." Blackwater "was not abiding by the terms of the contract with the State Department and was deceiving the State Department," according to Doe #1.

This is not the first time an allegation has surfaced that Blackwater used dog food bags to smuggle weapons into Iraq. ABC News's Brian Ross reported in November 2008 that a "federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food." Another former Blackwater employee has also confirmed this information to The Nation.

Both individuals allege that Prince and Blackwater deployed individuals to Iraq who, in the words of Doe #1, "were not properly vetted and cleared by the State Department." Doe #2 adds that "Prince ignored the advice and pleas from certain employees, who sought to stop the unnecessary killing of innocent Iraqis." Doe #2 further states that some Blackwater officials overseas refused to deploy "unfit men" and sent them back to the US. Among the reasons cited by Doe #2 were "the men making statements about wanting to deploy to Iraq to 'kill ragheads' or achieve 'kills' or 'body counts,'" as well as "excessive drinking" and "steroid use." However, when the men returned to the US, according to Doe #2, "Prince and his executives would send them back to be deployed in Iraq with an express instruction to the concerned employees located overseas that they needed to 'stop costing the company money.'"

Doe #2 also says Prince "repeatedly ignored the assessments done by mental health professionals, and instead terminated those mental health professionals who were not willing to endorse deployments of unfit men." He says Prince and then-company president Gary Jackson "hid from Department of State the fact that they were deploying men to Iraq over the objections of mental health professionals and security professionals in the field," saying they "knew the men being deployed were not suitable candidates for carrying lethal weaponry, but did not care because deployments meant more money."

Doe #1 states that "Blackwater knew that certain of its personnel intentionally used excessive and unjustified deadly force, and in some instances used unauthorized weapons, to kill or seriously injure innocent Iraqi civilians." He concludes, "Blackwater did nothing to stop this misconduct." Doe #1 states that he "personally observed multiple incidents of Blackwater personnel intentionally using unnecessary, excessive and unjustified deadly force." He then cites several specific examples of Blackwater personnel firing at civilians, killing or "seriously" wounding them, and then failing to report the incidents to the State Department.

Doe #1 also alleges that "all of these incidents of excessive force were initially videotaped and voice recorded," but that "Immediately after the day concluded, we would watch the video in a session called a 'hot wash.' Immediately after the hotwashing, the video was erased to prevent anyone other than Blackwater personnel seeing what had actually occurred." Blackwater, he says, "did not provide the video to the State Department."

Doe #2 expands on the issue of unconventional weapons, alleging Prince "made available to his employees in Iraq various weapons not authorized by the United States contracting authorities, such as hand grenades and hand grenade launchers. Mr. Prince's employees repeatedly used this illegal weaponry in Iraq, unnecessarily killing scores of innocent Iraqis." Specifically, he alleges that Prince "obtained illegal ammunition from an American company called LeMas. This company sold ammunition designed to explode after penetrating within the human body. Mr. Prince's employees repeatedly used this illegal ammunition in Iraq to inflict maximum damage on Iraqis."

Blackwater has gone through an intricate rebranding process in the twelve years it has been in business, changing its name and logo several times. Prince also has created more than a dozen affiliate companies, some of which are registered offshore and whose operations are shrouded in secrecy. According to Doe #2, "Prince created and operated this web of companies in order to obscure wrongdoing, fraud and other crimes."

"For example, Mr. Prince transferred funds from one company (Blackwater) to another (Greystone) whenever necessary to avoid detection of his money laundering and tax evasion schemes." He added: "Mr. Prince contributed his personal wealth to fund the operations of the Prince companies whenever he deemed such funding necessary. Likewise, Mr. Prince took funds out of the Prince companies and placed the funds in his personal accounts at will."

Briefed on the substance of these allegations by The Nation, Congressman Dennis Kucinich replied, "If these allegations are true, Blackwater has been a criminal enterprise defrauding taxpayers and murdering innocent civilians." Kucinich is on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and has been investigating Prince and Blackwater since 2004.

"Blackwater is a law unto itself, both internationally and domestically. The question is why they operated with impunity. In addition to Blackwater, we should be questioning their patrons in the previous administration who funded and employed this organization. Blackwater wouldn't exist without federal patronage; these allegations should be thoroughly investigated," Kucinich said.

A hearing before Judge Ellis in the civil cases against Blackwater is scheduled for August 7.

External link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill

2009/07/23 - Blackwater Seeks Gag Order

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:38:26 +0200

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

2009/07/22 - Estate of Himoud Abtan/Sabah Salman Hassoon et al vs. Xe, Erik Prince et al: Legal Update

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:45:03 +0200

Estate of Himoud Saed Abtan et al vs. Erik Prince, Xe, Blackwater Worldwide et al
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Case No.: 1:09-cv-617-LMB-TRJ
Filed on June 2nd, 2009
Consolidated with Civil Suit IV on June 2nd, 2009

&

Estate of Sabah Salman Hassoon et al vs. Erik Prince, XE, Blackwater Worldwide et al
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Case No.: 1:09-cv-618-LMB-IDD
Filed on June 2nd, 2009

(Same Motion as in Abtan vs. Prince)

Recent Filings:

July 20th, 2009 - Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Plantiffs’ First Amended Complaint

"[...] Pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), 12(b)(6), and 17(b)(3), Defendants hereby move to dismiss Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint. Dismissal is required for the following reasons: (1) Plaintiffs fail to state a claim under the Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. § 1350) or the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-62, 1964), and without these claims there is no basis for federal jurisdiction; (2) the Complaint presents nonjusticiable political questions; (3) Plaintiffs fail to state a claim under applicable Iraqi law; (4) Plaintiffs’ claims must be dismissed under the government contractor defense; (5) Plaintiffs’ claims are barred by absolute immunity; (6) Plaintiffs have not established capacity to sue; (7) Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim against certain Defendants; and (8) Plaintiffs have sued a non-legal entity.

"The grounds for Defendants’ Motion are set forth more fully in the accompanying Memorandum of Law. [...]"

2009/07/21 - East Virginia Civil Suits: Order to Consolidate

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:41:39 +0200

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia

In Re: Blackwater Alien Tort Claims Act Litigation

"[...] It appears from a review of the record that this case presents certain legal issues essentially identical to those presented in four additional civil matters also pending in this division, namely 1:09cv616, 1:09cv617, 1:09cv618 and 1:09cv645. It also appears that all of the plaintiffs in these five related matters are represented by the same counsel, as are all of the defendants.

"Accordingly, for the reasons stated from the Bench, and for purposes of judicial economy, It is hereby ordered that civil actions 1:09cv616, 1:09cv617, 1:09cv618 and 1:09cv645, which actions are currently assigned to other judges in this division, are reassigned to the undersigned district judge for the limited purpose of discovery and pre-trial motions.

"It is further ordered that this matter is consolidated with 1:09cv616, 1:09cv617, 1:09cv618 and 1:09cv645 for all pretrial purposes, including discovery and dispositive motions. Whether the matters will ultimately require separate trials to be presided over by the originally assigned judges is a question that will be addressed at a later date. [...]

"It is further ordered that defendants’ motion to stay discovery [...] is granted and discovery in each of these five consolidated civil actions is accordingly stayed pending resolution of the motions to dismiss filed by defendants in these matters.

"It is further ordered that a hearing on all motions to dismiss filed by defendants in these five consolidated civil actions is scheduled for 2:00 p.m., Friday, August 28, 2009. [...]"

2009/07/14 - Estate of Raheem Sa’adoon vs. Erik Prince, XE et al: Legal Update

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:09:36 +0200

Estate of Raheem Khalaf Sa’adoon vs. Erik Prince, XE, Blackwater Worldwide et al
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Case No.: 1:09-cv-615-TSE-IDD
Filed on June 2nd, 2009

Recent Filing:

July 13th, 2009 - Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs’ Complaint

"[...] Pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), 12(b)(6), 17(b)(3), and 21, Defendants hereby move to dismiss Plaintiffs’ Complaint. Dismissal is required for the following reasons: (1) Plaintiffs fail to state a claim under the Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. § 1350) and without this claim there is no basis for federal jurisdiction; (2) the Complaint presents nonjusticiable political questions; (3) Plaintiffs fail to state a claim under applicable Iraqi law; (4) Plaintiffs’ claims must be dismissed under the government contractor defense; (5) Plaintiffs’ claims are barred by absolute immunity; (6) Plaintiffs have not established capacity to sue; (7) Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim against certain Defendants; and (8) Plaintiffs have sued a non-legal entity.

"The grounds for Defendants’ Motion are set forth in the accompanying Memorandum of Law. [...]"

2009/07/14 - Estate of Husain Rabea et al vs. Erik Prince, Xe et al: Legal Update

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:50:03 +0200

Estate of Husain Salih Rabea & Ali Kareem Fakhri vs. Erik Prince, Xe, Blackwater Worldwide et al
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Case No.: 1:09-cv-00645-CMH-JFA
Filed on June 10th, 2009

Recent Filing:

July 13th, 2009 - Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs’ Complaint

"[...] Pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), 12(b)(6), 17(b)(3), and 21, Defendants hereby move to dismiss Plaintiffs’ Complaint. Dismissal is required for the following reasons: (1) Plaintiffs fail to state a claim under the Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. § 1350) and without this claim there is no basis for federal jurisdiction; (2) the Complaint presents nonjusticiable political questions; (3) Plaintiffs fail to state a claim under applicable Iraqi law; (4) Plaintiffs’ claims must be dismissed under the government contractor defense; (5) Plaintiffs’ claims are barred by absolute immunity; (6) Plaintiffs have not established capacity to sue; (7) Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim against certain Defendants; and (8) Plaintiffs have sued a non-legal entity.

"The grounds for Defendants’ Motion are set forth in the accompanying Memorandum of Law. [...]"