PDA

View Full Version : State Department Helped Blackwater Cover-Up Illegal Activites



Gold9472
10-02-2007, 07:49 AM
Report Depicts Recklessness at Blackwater

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/washington/01cnd-blackwater.html?ex=1191902400&en=eacf12349ae6b5bd&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY

By DAVID STOUT and JOHN M. BRODER
Published: October 1, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — Guards working in Iraq for Blackwater USA have shot innocent Iraqi civilians and have sought to cover up the incidents, sometimes with the help of the State Department, a report to a Congressional committee said today.

The report, based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents, depicts the security contractor as being staffed with reckless, shoot-first guards who were not always sober and did not always stop to see who or what was hit by their bullets.

In one incident, the State Department and Blackwater agreed to pay $15,000 to the family of a man killed by “a drunken Blackwater contractor,” the report said. As a State Department official wrote, “We would like to help them resolve this so we can continue with our protective mission.”

The report was compiled by the Democratic majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on Blackwater activities on Tuesday. That hearing is sure to be contentious now that the chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, and other members have the staff’s findings to study.

A Blackwater spokeswoman, Anne Tyrrell, had no immediate comment. “We look forward to setting the record straight,” she told The Associated Press. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder and chairman, is to testify before Mr. Waxman’s panel. The State Department said several of its senior officials would address the issues in the report at the hearing on Tuesday.

The report is likely to raise questions not only about the wisdom of employing private security forces in Iraq, but also about the basic American mission in the country.

Blackwater guards have engaged in nearly 200 incidents of gunfire in Iraq since 2005, and in the vast majority of cases Blackwater people fired their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the injured, the report found.

The shootings logged by Blackwater were more than those by the other two private military contractors combined, the committee found. Blackwater has more than twice the number of contractors than the other two combined. The other contractors are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.

“Blackwater also has the highest incidence of shooting first, although all three companies shoot first in more than half of all escalation-of-forces incidents,” the staff report said.

And the State Department’s own documents “raise serious questions” about how department officials responded to reports of Blackwater killings of Iraqis, the report said.

“There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation,” the committee staff wrote.

Moreover, contrary to the terms of its contract, Blackwater sometimes engaged in offensive operations with the American military, instead of confining itself to its protective mission, the staff found.

The report also raised questions about the cost-effectiveness of using Blackwater forces instead of United States troops. Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day per guard, “equivalent to $445,000 per year, or six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier,” the report said.

The incident involving “a drunken Blackwater contractor” arose when the employee killed a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president, Adil Abd-al-Mahdi, in December 2006. State Department officials allowed Blackwater to take the shooter out of Iraq less than 36 hours later.

Then the State Department charge d’affaires recommended that Blackwater make “a sizable payment” and an “apology” in an effort to “avoid this whole thing becoming even worse,” the report went on. The State Department official suggested a $250,000 payment to the guard’s family, but the department’s Diplomatic Security Service said that was too much and could cause Iraqis to “try to get killed.” In the end, $15,000 was agreed upon. The report adds credence to complaints from Iraqi officials, American military officers and Blackwater’s competitors that company guards have adopted an aggressive, trigger-happy approach and displayed disregard for Iraqi life.

In late March 2004, four Americans working for Blackwater were ambushed and killed, and an enraged mob then jubilantly dragged the burned bodies through the streets of downtown Falluja, hanging at least two corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

The Congressional report, based on 437 internal Blackwater incident reports as well as internal State Department correspondence, says that that Blackwater’s use of force “is frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage.” It notes that Blackwater’s contract authorizes it to use lethal force only to prevent “imminent and grave danger” to themselves or the people they are paid to protect.

“In practice, however,” the report says, “the vast majority of Blackwater weapons discharges are pre-emptive, with Blackwater forces firing first at a vehicle or suspicious individual prior to receiving any fire.” Among the incidents cited in the report:

On Oct. 24, 2005, Blackwater guards fired on a car that failed to heed a warning to stop. In the gunfire, a civilian bystander was hit in the head with a bullet, but Blackwater personnel did not stop. Blackwater officials reported the incident as a “probable killing” but there is no evidence the company offered compensation to the victim’s family.

On June 25, 2005, a Blackwater team in Hillah fatally shot an Iraqi man, a father of six, in the chest. The victim’s family complained to the State Department, which said in an internal report that the Blackwater gunmen initially failed to report the killing and tried to cover it up.

On Sept. 24, 2006, a Blackwater convoy with four vehicles was driving the wrong way on a road in Hillah when a red Opel failed to get out of the way. The Opel skidded into one of the Blackwater vehicles, disabling it. The Opel then hit a telephone pole and burst into flames. The Blackwater team scooped up its people and equipment from the disabled vehicle and fled the scene without attempting to help the occupants of the burning car.

On Nov. 28, 2005, a Blackwater motorcade traveling to and from the Iraqi oil ministry collided with 18 different vehicles. According to an internal Blackwater report of the incident, the statements from employees were “invalid, inaccurate, and at best, dishonest.” Two Blackwater employees were dismissed, but there was no other apparent action taken as a result.

AuGmENTor
10-02-2007, 08:12 AM
The report also raised questions about the cost-effectiveness of using Blackwater forces instead of United States troops. Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day per guard, “equivalent to $445,000 per year, or six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier,” the report said.


YOUR tax dollars hard at work! Fuck these guys. Maybe this will be the snowball that leads to them being accountable. But I doubt it...

Gold9472
10-02-2007, 12:32 PM
Man Bush chose to lead Pentagon contracting probes left under fire to become Blackwater COO

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Blackwater_USA_linked_to_Bush_administration_1002. html

Jason Rhyne and Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday October 2, 2007

The private security firm Blackwater USA, which has faced mounting criticism following an incident earlier this month in which armed guards from the group purportedly killed 11 unarmed Iraqi civilians, has numerous links to the White House as well as many current and former Republicans.

The connections include the firm's chief operating officer Joseph Schmitz, who was tapped by President Bush in 2002 to "oversee and police the Pentagon's military contracts as the Defense Department's Inspector General."

The relevation was first reported by Ben Van Heuvelen in Salon.

Serving until 2005, Schmitz went on to preside over "the largest increase of military-contracting spending in history" and joined Blackwater just a month after his departure from the Pentagon, according to Van Heuvelen.

"The resignation comes after Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) sent Schmitz several letters this summer informing him that he was the focus of a congressional inquiry into whether he had blocked two criminal investigations last year," according to a 2005 article in the LA Times.

Then-Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Grassley "accused Schmitz of fabricating an official Pentagon news release, planning an expensive junket to Germany and hiding information from Congress. Schmitz is the senior Pentagon official charged with investigating waste, fraud and abuse."

CEO testifies in Congress today
Blackwater CEO Erik Prince will testify today before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in a hearing centered on the use of private contractors in Iraq -- but the appearance was at first contested by the State Department, who Van Heuvelen said "directed Blackwater not to give any information or testimony without its sign-off." Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice later agreed that Prince could testify.

"The ties between State and Blackwater are only part of a web of relationships that Blackwater has maintained with the Bush administration and with prominent Republicans," the story continues.

"From 2001 to 2007," says Salon, "the firm has increased its annual federal contracts from less than $1 million to more than $1 billion, all while employees passed through a turnstile between Blackwater and the administration, several leaving important posts in the Pentagon and the CIA to take jobs at the security company."

Von Heuvelen goes on to detail additional links between the firm's "luminaries" and the Bush administration and Republican party, including:

Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, who has donated "roughly $300,000 to Republican candidates and political action committees. Through his Freiheit Foundation, he also gave $500,000 to Prison Fellowship Ministries, run by former Nixon official Charles Colson, in 2000."
J. Cofer Black, Blackwater Vice Chairman, a 28-year veteran of the CIA Van Heuvelen describes as "one of the more prominent faces associated with the Bush administration's interrogation and extraordinary rendition policies." Black is also a senior adviser to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Rob Richer, Vice President for Intelligence, who is the former head of the CIA Near East Division. "In 2003," according to Salon "he briefed President Bush on the nascent Iraqi insurgency. In late 2004, he became the associate deputy director in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, making him the second-ranking official for clandestine operations."
Fred Fielding, a former outside counsel for the firm, who "has had a long career as a lawyer to prominent Republicans. From 1970 to 1972, he was an associate White House counsel in the Nixon administration; from 1972 to 1974, he was present for the denouement of that administration as deputy White House counsel." Fielding is a former counsel to President Reagan and current White House counsel to President Bush.
Ken Starr, another counsel to Blackwater, who was hired by the firm in 2006, is best known "as the Independent Counsel who investigated Bill Clinton. He revealed the intimate details of Clinton's affair with intern Monica Lewinsky in the infamous Starr Report and set in motion Clinton's impeachment by Congress."
Hired guards were involved in more than one shooting per week
Private guns-for-hire from Blackwater USA fired their weapons nearly 200 times while working in Iraq, and in four-of-five incidents the security contractors fired the first shots, according to a new Democratic-sponsored congressional report.

Blackwater is facing increased scrutiny since a Sept. 16 incident in which the company's security personnel killed between 11 and 20 Iraqi citizens during an incident in which Iraqi investigators say the private contractors were unprovoked before opening fire on the crowd.

The Democratic staff of the House Oversight Committee released a 15-page report Monday that examined Blackwater's actions in Iraq based on incident reports compiled by the company and other government documents.

The report found that since 2005 Blackwater guards were involved in 195 "escalation of force" incidents in Iraq during which they fired their weapons, an average of 1.4 per week. In more than 80 percent of those cases Blackwater guards fired first, according to the report, in an apparent violation of the company's mandate allowing only defensive fire to prevent "imminent and grave danger."

"In practice, however, the vast majority of Blackwater weapons discharges are preemptive, with Blackwater forces firing first at a vehicle or suspicious individual prior to receiving any fire," the report notes.

Blackwater has received more than $832 million in contracts from the State Department to guard diplomats and embassy officials in Baghdad, but the new report reveals that State has done little to reign in or punish rogue contractors.

"There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater's actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company's high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation," the Democratic staffers write.

At a hearing Tuesday, Blackwater owner Erick Prince will testify along with several State Department officials at an Oversight Committee hearing investigating the Sept. 16 shooting along with other incidents unearthed by the committee. Several Republicans requested a delay in the hearings until internal State Department investigations conclude. The FBI says it is beginning its own investigation into the shooting as well.

The controversy apparently has not eliminated Blackwater's ability to secure government contracts. On Friday, the Pentagon announced that a Blackwater subsidiary, Presidential Airways Inc., would receive a $92 million contract for air transportation services in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

Monday's report shows that the State Department not only didn't seek criminal repercussions against rogue guards, in at least one instance the US government acted in concert with Blackwater to help an employee return stateside after he had killed an Iraqi guard.

"Even in cases involving the death of Iraqis, it appears that the State Department's primary response was to ask Blackwater to make monetary payments to 'put the matter behind us,'" the report says. "The most serious consequence faced by Blackwater personnel for misconduct appears to be termination of their employment."

During the company's time in Iraq, it has fired 122 contractors for problems ranging from violent behavior, to alcohol abuse, to inappropriate use of weapons, according to the report.

The Oversight report pointed to a shooting on Christmas Eve last year in which an apparently drunk Blackwater contractor shot and killed a security guard to Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's top aide called the incident "murder," and last month's shooting rekindled Iraqis' anger over the Dec. 24, 2006 event.

Blackwater fired the contractor and arranged to have him evacuated from the country; two days later he flew from Baghdad to Jordan, where he returned to the US with the "authority of the DOS [Department of State] Regional Security Officer," according to the report. US Embassy officials worked with Blackwater in arranging a $15,000 payment to the family of the slain guard.

"According to the State Department, the incident is still under investigation by the Justice Department," the report notes. "However, given the passage of nine months with no charges filed, it is unclear whether there is any serious effort to pursue a prosecution in this matter."

AuGmENTor
10-02-2007, 01:18 PM
During the company's time in Iraq, it has fired 122 contractors for problems ranging from violent behavior, to alcohol abuse, to inappropriate use of weapons, according to the report.

The Oversight report pointed to a shooting on Christmas Eve last year in which an apparently drunk Blackwater contractor shot and killed a security guard to Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's top aide called the incident "murder," and last month's shooting rekindled Iraqis' anger over the Dec. 24, 2006 event.


Sounds like murder to me... Also sounds like something our government would pay hundreds of millions in funding to.