[NYTr] Blackwater shooting marked by chaos, dispute among guards

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The International Herald Tribune - Sep 28, 2007
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=7670633


Blackwater shooting marked by chaos and dispute among guards

By James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise

BAGHDAD: Participants in a contentious Baghdad security operation this
month have told U.S. investigators that during the operation, at least
one guard continued firing on civilians while colleagues urgently
called for a cease-fire.

At least one guard apparently also drew a weapon on a fellow guard who
did not stop shooting, a U.S. official said.

The operation, by the private firm Blackwater USA, began as a mission
to evacuate senior U.S. officials after an explosion near where they
were meeting, several officials said. Some officials have questioned
the wisdom of evacuating the Americans from a secure compound, saying
the area should instead have been locked down.

These new details of the episode on Sept. 16, in which at least eight
civilians were killed, including a woman and an infant, were provided
by a U.S. official who was briefed on the U.S. investigation by someone
who helped conduct it, and by Americans who had spoken directly with
two guards involved in the episode. Their accounts were broadly
consistent.

A spokeswoman for Blackwater, Anne Tyrrell, said she could not confirm
any of the details provided by the Americans.

The accounts provided the first glimpse into the official U.S.
investigation of the shooting, which has angered Iraqi officials and
prompted calls by the Iraqi government to ban Blackwater from working
in Iraq, and brought new scrutiny of the widespread use of private
security contractors here.

The U.S. official said that by Wednesday morning, U.S. investigators
still had not responded to multiple requests for information by Iraqi
officials investigating the episode. The official also said that
Blackwater had been conducting its own investigation but had been
ordered by the United States to stop that work.

Tyrrell confirmed that the company had conducted an investigation of
its own, but said, "No government entity has discouraged us from doing
so."

An Iraqi investigation had concluded that the Blackwater guards shot
without provocation. But the U.S. official said that the guards have
told U.S. investigators that they believed that they fired in response
to enemy gunfire.

The Blackwater compound, rimmed by concrete blast walls and concertina
wire in the Green Zone in central Baghdad, has been under tight
control. Participants in the Sept. 16 security operation have been
ordered not to speak about the episode. But word of the disagreement on
the street has slowly made its way through the community of private
security contractors.

The episode began around 11:50 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 16. Diplomats with
the U.S. Agency for International Development were meeting in a guarded
compound about a mile northeast of Nisour Square, where the shooting
took place.

A bomb exploded on the median of a road a few hundred yards away from
the meeting, causing no injuries to the Americans but prompting a
fateful decision to evacuate. One U.S. official who knew about the
meeting cast doubt on the decision to move the diplomats out of a
secure compound.

"It raises the first question of why didn't they just stay in place,
since they are safe in the compound," the official said.

"Usually the concept would be, if an IED detonates in the street, you
would wait 15 to 30 minutes, until things calmed down," he said, using
the abbreviation for "improvised explosive device."

But instead of waiting, a Blackwater convoy began carrying the
diplomats south, toward the Green Zone. Because their route would pass
through Nisour Square, another convoy drove there to block traffic and
ensure that the diplomats would be able to pass.

At least four sport utility vehicles stopped in lanes of traffic that
were entering the square from the south and west. Some of the guards
got out of their vehicles and took positions on the street, according
to the official familiar with the report on the U.S. investigation.

At 12:08 p.m., at least one guard began to fire in the direction of a
car, killing its driver. A traffic policeman said that he walked toward
the car but more shots were fired, killing a woman in the passenger
seat who was holding an infant.

There are three versions of why the shooting started. The Blackwater
guards have told investigators they believed that they were being fired
on, the official familiar with the report said.

A preliminary Iraqi investigation has concluded that there was no enemy
fire, but some Iraqi witnesses have said that Iraqi commandos in nearby
guard towers may have been shooting as well, possibly leading
Blackwater guards to believe that militants were firing at them.

After the family was shot, a type of grenade or flare was fired into
the car, setting it ablaze, according to some accounts. Other Iraqis
were also killed as the shooting continued. Iraqi officials have given
several death counts, ranging from eight to 20, with perhaps several
dozen wounded. U.S. officials have said that no Americans were hurt.

At some point during the shooting, one or more Blackwater guards called
for a cease-fire, according to the U.S. official. The word cease-fire
"was supposedly called out several times," the official said. "They had
an on-site difference of opinion," he said.

In the end, a Blackwater guard "got on another one about the situation
and supposedly pointed a weapon," the official said.

"That's what prompted this internal altercation," the official said.

The official added that in the urgent moments of a shooting events
could often become confused, and cautioned against leaping to hasty
conclusions about who was to blame. Blackwater logs 56 shootings

The State Department said Blackwater USA security personnel had been
involved in 56 shootings while guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq so far
this year, James Risen reported from Washington.

The statement Thursday was the first time the Bush administration had
made such data public. The State Department did not release comparable
2007 numbers for other security companies, but the Blackwater numbers
show a far higher rate of shootings per convoy mission than were
experienced in 2006 by one of the company's primary competitors,
DynCorp International. DynCorp reported 10 cases in about 1,500 convoy
runs last year.

Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune