[NYTr] Blackwater Covered Up 195 Shootings and More

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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AlterNet - Oct 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/benen/64134/

Blackwater Covered Up 195 Shootings and More

By Steve Benen

[This post, written by Steve Benen, originally appeared on The
Carpetbagger Report]

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a
hearing tomorrow on Blackwater's activities in Iraq, and by all
indications, lawmakers will have plenty to talk about.

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 prepared for 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."

And when it comes to alleged Blackwater malfeasance, that's really just
scratching the surface.

The committee's majority staff, led by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.),
will release a report on Blackwater's activities to coincide with
tomorrow's hearing, and the document will no doubt raise plenty of
questions, including a look at the extent to which Bush's State
Department covered up the company's killings.

Indeed, given the revelations of the past few weeks, Blackwater seems to
have reached a unique point in our discourse, one in which a corporate
name is so scandalous, it automatically represents outrage and
indignity. There are a few -- Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton -- and with
each passing day, Blackwater is taking its place. Indeed, in some ways,
it may be the most scandalous of all.

The Speaker's office has a detailed post documenting information being
made available to the rest of the House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform.

Previously undisclosed information reveals (1) Blackwater has
engaged in 195 "escalation of force" incidents since 2005, an average
of 1.4 per week, including over 160 incidents in which Blackwater forces
fired first; (2) after a drunken Blackwater contractor shot the guard
of the Iraqi Vice President, the State Department allowed the
contractor to leave Iraq and advised Blackwater on the size of the
payment needed "to help them resolve this"; and (3) Blackwater, which
has received over $1 billion in federal contracts since 2001, is
charging the federal government over $1,200 per day for each
"protective security specialist" employed by the company.

Moreover, Josh Marshall has a doozy, highlighting a State Department
report that largely exonerates Blackwater personnel involved with the
Sept. 16 Baghdad shootings. The report, apparently, was written by
Blackwater.

The report was written out of the State Department's Bureau of
Diplomatic Security, the folks who hired Blackwater to provide
security for US diplomats in Iraq. But it turns out that the State
Department employee who interviewed the Blackwater folks and wrote the
report, Darren Hanner ... well, he wasn't a State Department employee.
He was another contractor from Blackwater.

So yes, you've got that right. We've now reached what can only be
called the alpha and the omega of contracting accountability breakdown
ridiculousness. We're outsourcing our investigations of Blackwater to
Blackwater.

And yet, through it all, the U.S. keeps awarding Blackwater more and
more lucrative contracts.

Stay tuned.

[Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The
Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's
Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo,
Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the
Guardian. 

(c) 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.