[NYTr] Blackwater behind much of the Weapons Smuggling in Iraq?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP - Sep 21, 2007
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070922/D8RQ8HDG0.html

Feds Target Blackwater in Weapons Probe

By MATTHEW LEE

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal prosecutors are investigating whether
employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally
smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market
and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization,
officials said Friday.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Raleigh, N.C., is handling the
investigation with help from Pentagon and State Department auditors,
who have concluded there is enough evidence to file charges, the
officials told The Associated Press. Blackwater is based in Moyock, N.C.

A spokeswoman for Blackwater did not return calls seeking comment
Friday. The U.S. attorney for the eastern district of North Carolina,
George Holding, declined to comment, as did Pentagon and State
Department spokesmen.

Officials with knowledge of the case said it is active, although at an
early stage. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to the
sensitivity of the matter, which has heightened since 11 Iraqis were
killed Sunday in a shooting involving Blackwater contractors protecting
a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Baghdad.

The officials could not say whether the investigation would result in
indictments, how many Blackwater employees are involved or if the
company itself, which has won hundreds of millions of dollars in
government security contracts since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is under
scrutiny.

In Saturday's editions, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported that
two former Blackwater employees - Kenneth Wayne Cashwell of Virginia
Beach, Va., and William Ellsworth "Max" Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C. -
are cooperating with federal investigators.

Cashwell and Grumiaux pleaded guilty in early 2007 to possession of
stolen firearms that had been shipped in interstate or foreign
commerce, and aided and abetted another in doing so, according to court
papers viewed by The Associated Press. In their plea agreements, which
call for a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine,
the men agreed to testify in any future proceedings.

Calls to defense attorneys were not immediately returned Friday
evening, and calls to the telephone listings for both men also were not
returned.

The News & Observer, citing unidentified sources, reported that the
probe was looking at whether Blackwater had shipped unlicensed
automatic weapons and military goods to Iraq without a license.

The paper's report that the company itself was under investigation
could not be confirmed by the AP.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered a review of
security practices for U.S. diplomats in Iraq following a deadly
incident involving Blackwater USA guards protecting an embassy convoy.

Rice's announcement came as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad resumed limited
diplomatic convoys under the protection of Blackwater outside the
heavily fortified Green Zone after a suspension because of the weekend
incident in that city.

In the United States, officials in Washington said the smuggling
investigation grew from internal Pentagon and State Department
inquiries into U.S. weapons that had gone missing in Iraq. It gained
steam after Turkish authorities protested to the U.S. in July that they
had seized American arms from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or
PKK, rebels.

The Turks provided serial numbers of the weapons to U.S. investigators,
said a Turkish official.

The Pentagon said in late July it was looking into the Turkish
complaints and a U.S. official said FBI agents had traveled to Turkey
in recent months to look into cases of missing U.S. weapons in Iraq.

Investigators are determining whether the alleged Blackwater weapons
match those taken from the PKK.

It was not clear if Blackwater employees suspected of selling to the
black market knew the weapons they allegedly sold to middlemen might
wind up with the PKK. If they did, possible charges against them could
be more serious than theft or illegal weapons sales, officials said.

The PKK, which is fighting for an independent Kurdistan, is banned in
Turkey, which has a restive Kurdish population and is considered a
"foreign terrorist organization" by the State Department. That
designation bars U.S. citizens or those in U.S. jurisdictions from
supporting the group in any way.

The North Carolina investigation was first brought to light by State
Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, who mentioned it, perhaps
inadvertently, this week while denying he had improperly blocked fraud
and corruption probes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Krongard was accused in a letter by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.,
chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, of
politically motivated malfeasance, including refusing to cooperate with
an investigation into alleged weapons smuggling by a large,
unidentified State Department contractor.

In response, Krongard said in a written statement that he "made one of
my best investigators available to help Assistant U.S. Attorneys in
North Carolina in their investigation into alleged smuggling of weapons
into Iraq by a contractor."

His statement went further than Waxman's letter because it identified
the state in which the investigation was taking place. Blackwater is
the biggest of the State Department's three private security
contractors.

The other two, Dyncorp and Triple Canopy, are based in Washington's
northern Virginias suburbs, outside the jurisdiction of the North
Carolina's attorneys.

[Associated Press writers Mike Baker in Raleigh and Desmond Butler and
Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington contributed to this report.]

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All right reserved