[NYTr] Bush Regime's Ties to Blackwater, Which Plans Fierce Defense

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

CNN - Oct 2, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/02/blackwater/

Blackwater chief refutes 'negative and baseless allegations'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chairman of military contractor Blackwater is
defending his company from "negative and baseless allegations"
surrounding a bloody day in Baghdad, telling a House committee that its
guards responded properly to an insurgent attack last month.

The Iraqi government says Blackwater contractors guarding a U.S.
Embassy convoy opened fire on civilians in western Baghdad on September
16, killing as many as 20 people.

And a report issued Monday by the Democratic majority staff of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee found the company has
inflicted "significant casualties and property damage" in Iraq while
guarding State Department officials.

Blackwater chairman Erik Prince is scheduled to appear before the
committee on Tuesday. In his opening statement, obtained by CNN, he
tells representatives his company and its employees are victims of a
"rush to judgment" about the Baghdad shootings.

"To the extent there was loss of innocent life, let me be clear that I
consider that tragic. Every life, whether American or Iraqi, is
precious," Prince says in his statement. But he adds that "based on
everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately
while operating in a very complex war zone on Sept. 16."

Prince, a former Navy SEAL officer, founded Blackwater in 1997. Its
business skyrocketed after al Qaeda's 2001 attacks on New York and
Washington and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, where the U.S.
government hired it to provide security in hostile areas.

In Iraq, the State Department has paid Blackwater more than $830
million to protect its officials since 2004, the House panel's report
concludes.

"Blackwater personnel are subject to regular attacks by terrorists and
other nefarious forces within Iraq. We are targets of the same ruthless
enemies that have killed more than 3,800 American military personnel
and thousands of innocent Iraqis," Prince says.

Blackwater has about 1,000 people, largely former American military
personnel, working in Iraq. The company has seen 30 employees killed
there during the 4-year-old war, but no one entrusted to their care has
been killed or seriously hurt, he says.

"There is no better evidence of the skill and dedication of these men,"
he says.

But the company has come under intense scrutiny since the shootings in
western Baghdad's Nisoor Square two weeks ago. They spurred an outcry
among Iraqi leaders and a debate over the accountability of contractors
-- who are not subject to Iraqi law for actions taken within their
contracts, due to an order by the U.S.-led occupation government in
2004.

raqi authorities have said Blackwater guards fired indiscriminately at
motorists in the square. But Prince says the convoy his contractors
were guarding came under attack from insurgents near the square and
says some of them were dressed in Iraqi police uniforms.

"There has been a rush to judgment based on inaccurate information, and
many public reports have wrongly pronounced Blackwater's guilt for the
deaths of varying numbers of civilians," he says. "Congress should not
accept these allegations as truth until it has the facts."

And he defends his company from concerns that his guards are reckless
in their use of deadly force, saying guards have opened fire during
only 56 of the 1,873 security details it has conducted so far in 2007.

The committee staff report states that Blackwater guards fired their
weapons 195 times between the beginning of 2005 through the second week
of September, an average of more than once a week.

Though the company's contractors are authorized to use force only
defensively, "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 says.

The report is also critical of the State Department. In cases where
Iraqis have been killed, "the State Department's primary response was
to ask Blackwater to make monetary payments to 'put the matter behind
us,' rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate
Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability."

"The most serious consequence faced by Blackwater personnel for
misconduct appears to be termination of their employment," the report
states.

In one case cited in Monday's report, a Blackwater guard who was
visibly drunk shot and killed a bodyguard of Iraqi Vice President Adel
Abdel Mahdi during a confrontation in the Green Zone on Christmas Eve
in 2006.

Blackwater hustled the guard out of the country within 36 hours, with
State Department approval, and the company later paid the Iraqi's
family $15,000, the report states.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told a Senate committee last
week that the incident is under investigation by the Justice
Department, but no charges have been filed against the man.

The report also questions whether the government is saving money by
hiring out its security work. It found the government pays the company
about $1,200 a day for each contractor on the job in Iraq -- between
six and nine times the pay and allowances of an Army sergeant.

The committee's chairman, California Democrat Henry Waxman, has been
investigating the use of private security contractors in Iraq.
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A majority staff report last week found Blackwater "delayed and
impeded" a probe into the 2004 killings of four of its employees in the
Iraqi city of Falluja -- a pivotal event in the 4-year-old war in Iraq
-- and that the slain men were sent into the insurgent-riddled city
without proper crew, equipment or maps.

Blackwater called the report "a one-sided version of this tragic
incident," and said that its contractors were "betrayed and directed
into a well-planned ambush.

[CNN's Suzanne Simons contributed to this report.]

                           ***

TIME Rag - Oct 1, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1667338,00.html

Blackwater Plans a Fierce Defense

By Adam Zagorin / Washington

"No individual protected by Blackwater has ever been killed or
seriously injured." So says Erik Prince, the 38-year-old former Navy
Seal whose security company finds itself at the center of a growing
debate over the use of private contractors in Iraq. Blackwater USA
Chairman Prince is scheduled on Tuesday to make his first-ever
appearance before Congress, along with three other witnesses who will
line up before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

A copy of Prince's prepared statement, obtained by TIME, shows he plans
a robust defense of his embattled firm, which has become a target for
Democrats and other critics of President Bush's unpopular war in Iraq.
Prince will point out that 30 employees of Blackwater or its affiliates
have lost their lives, with many more wounded or maimed. And, he will
cite U.S. ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker, who has publicly defended
Blackwater and argued that there is no practical alternative to the use
of private security forces in Iraq.

Most important, from the standpoint of the company's many critics,
Prince will declare that "Blackwater believes that more can and should
be done to increase accountability, oversight and transparency," and
that he looks forward to working with both Congress and the
Administration to achieve that. He also points out, again citing U.S.
government data, that Blackwater has conducted 1,873 security details
in 2007, with only 56 incidents during which weapons were discharged —
less than 3%.

And Prince will forcefully defend the company's personnel who were
involved in a September 16 incident in Baghdad that left some 11 Iraqis
dead and ignited the latest controversy. "Based on everything we
currently know," he says, pending the result of an official inquiry,
"the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very
complex war zone."

Prince's arguments are unlikely to go down well with committee chairman
Henry Waxman, who has emerged as the company's leading Congressional
critic. On Monday, Waxman's staff released a blistering assessment of
the company and its performance, alleging that Blackwater employees had
shot innocent Iraqis and had paid off one victim's family to appease
State Department officials who had wanted to put the "unfortunate
matter" behind them. The 15-page report said the firm's staff has been
involved in at least 195 shooting incidents since 2005, firing the
first shot more than 80% of the time. It added that, over the same time
period, Blackwater has dismissed 122 employees, about one-seventh of
its workforce in Iraq, claiming drug or alcohol use, violent conduct,
misuse of weapons, and other untoward behavior.

Republicans have rejected this largely negative picture, and urged a
postponement of Tuesday's hearing until official inquiries into the
company's actions are complete. Representative Thomas Davis of
Virginia, the top Republican on the House panel , defended the company,
saying, "The Blackwater contract is hardly an open-ended license for
out-of-control 'cowboys' to shoot up Baghdad."

In a related development, the FBI will send agents to Iraq to probe the
Sept. 16 shootings. A company spokesman said in response: "Blackwater
USA welcomes today's announcement regarding the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's review of the September 16 incident in western Baghdad.
Blackwater USA has always supported strong contractor accountability,
and this latest step is a positive move in that direction. We look
forward to cooperating fully with the Bureau's inquiry."

                               ***

Salon - Oct 2, 2007
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/02/blackwater_bush/index_np.html

The Bush administration's ties to Blackwater

Blamed in the deaths of Iraqi civilians, the private security firm has
long ties to the White House and prominent Republicans, including Ken
Starr.

By Ben Van Heuvelen

When Blackwater contractors guarding a U.S. State Department convoy
allegedly killed 11 unarmed Iraqi civilians on September 16, it was
only the latest in a series of controversial shooting incidents
associated with the private security firm. Blackwater has a reputation
for being quick on the draw. Since 2005, the North Carolina-based
company, which has about 1,000 contractors in Iraq, has reported 195
"escalation of force incidents"; in 156 of those cases Blackwater guns
fired first. According to the New York Times, Blackwater guards were
twice as likely as employees of two other firms protecting State
Department personnel in Iraq to be involved in shooting incidents.

On Tuesday morning, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will be holding a hearing on
the U.S. military's use of private contractors. When Waxman announced
plans for the hearing last week, the State Department directed
Blackwater not to give any information or testimony without its
sign-off. After a public spat between Rep. Waxman and Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, the State Department relented. Blackwater CEO
and founder Erik Prince is now scheduled to testify at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

But the attempt to shield Prince was apparently not the first time
State had protected Blackwater. A report issued by Waxman on Monday
alleges that State helped Blackwater cover up Iraqi fatalities. In
December 2006, State arranged for the company to pay $15,000 to the
family of an Iraqi guard who was shot and killed by a drunken
Blackwater employee. In another shooting death, the payment was $5,000.
As CNN reported Monday, the State Department also allowed a Blackwater
employee to write State's initial "spot report" on the September 16
shooting incident -- a report that did not mention civilian casualties
and claimed contractors were responding to an insurgent attack on a
convoy.

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. From 2001 to 2007, 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. Below is a list of some of Blackwater's luminaries
with their professional -- and political -- resumes.[...]

                          ***

Salon - Oct 2, 2007
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/02/blackwater/index_np.html


The dark truth about Blackwater

Outsourcing the war to private military contractors such as Blackwater
has shattered the United States' moral authority and its ability to win
the nation's wars -- including Iraq.

By P.W. Singer

On Sept. 16, 2007, a convoy of Blackwater contractors guarding State
Department employees entered a crowded square near the Mansour district
in Baghdad, Iraq. But versions of what caused the ensuing bloodshed
diverge. Employees from the firm claim they were attacked by gunmen and
responded within the rules of engagement, fighting their way out of the
square after one of their vehicles was disabled. Iraqi police and
witnesses instead report that the contractors opened fire first,
shooting at a small car driven by a couple with their child that did
not get out of the convoy's way as traffic slowed. At some point in the
20-minute gunfight, Iraqi police and army forces stationed in
watchtowers above the square also began firing. Other Iraqi security
forces and Blackwater quick-reaction forces soon reportedly joined the
battle. There are also reports that one Blackwater employee may even
have pointed his weapon at his fellow contractors, in an effort to get
them to cease firing.

Since then, the Iraqi and U.S. governments have launched separate
investigations, likely ensuring that the differing versions of the
story will never meet. The only thing agreed upon is the consequences:
After a reported 20 Iraqi civilians were killed, including the couple
and their child, who was subsequently burned to the mother's body after
the car caught fire, the Iraqi government and populace exploded with
anger. [...]