[Peace-discuss] Blackwater

[Brussel Morton K.]

Iraq Contractor in Shooting Case Makes Comeback
     By James Risen
     The New York Times

     Saturday 10 May 2008

     Washington - Last fall, Blackwater Worldwide was in deep peril.

     Guards for the security company were involved in a shooting in  
September that left at least 17 Iraqis dead at a Baghdad  
intersection. Outrage over the killings prompted the Iraqi government  
to demand Blackwater's ouster from the country, and led to a criminal  
investigation by the F.B.I., a series of internal investigations by  
the State Department and the Pentagon, and high-profile Congressional  
hearings.

     But after an intense public and private lobbying campaign,  
Blackwater appears to be back to business as usual.

     The State Department has just renewed its contract to provide  
security for American diplomats in Iraq for at least another year.  
Threats by the Iraqi government to strip Western contractors of their  
immunity from Iraqi law have gone nowhere. No charges have been  
brought in the United States against any Blackwater guard in the  
September shooting, either, and the F.B.I. agents in Baghdad charged  
with investigating whether Blackwater guards have committed any  
crimes under United States law are sometimes protected as they travel  
through Baghdad by Blackwater guards.

     The chief reason for the company's survival? State Department  
officials said Friday that they did not believe they had any  
alternative to Blackwater, which supplies about 800 guards to the  
department to provide security for diplomats in Baghdad. Officials  
say only three companies in the world meet their requirements for  
protective services in Iraq, and the other two do not have the  
capability to take on Blackwater's role in Baghdad. After the  
shooting in September, the State Department did not even open talks  
with the other two companies, DynCorp International and Triple  
Canopy, to see if they could take over from Blackwater, which is  
based in North Carolina.

     "We cannot operate without private security firms in Iraq," said  
Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management. "If  
the contractors were removed, we would have to leave Iraq."

     Still, serious risks remain for Blackwater and at least some of  
its current and former personnel. A federal grand jury continues to  
consider evidence in the Baghdad shooting. Although the company is  
not likely to face any criminal charges, people involved in the case  
say that some Blackwater guards involved in the shooting are  
cooperating with the F.B.I. as it pursues evidence against other guards.

     Separately, a former Blackwater guard is under criminal  
investigation for the December 2006 shooting death of an Iraqi guard  
for an Iraqi vice president, and may soon face federal charges. In a  
third case, two former Blackwater workers pleaded guilty to weapons- 
related charges, but both received sentences that included no jail  
time in return for their cooperation with federal prosecutors in a  
broader investigation.

     A House committee has also asked the Internal Revenue Service to  
begin an inquiry into whether Blackwater has designated its guards as  
independent contractors rather than employees to in order to avoid  
paying and withholding federal taxes. The State Department renewed  
the security contract for only one year - just long enough to take  
the company into the start of the next administration. And  
Blackwater's political connections to the Bush administration may not  
serve it well if the Democrats win the White House in November.

     Given the furor that surrounded Blackwater after the September  
shooting in Baghdad, critics say the decision to renew the company's  
contract in Iraq is a sign of the Bush administration's inability to  
curb its reliance on outside contractors in the war.

     "The shooting incident was like a hammer blow, but where are the  
consequences?" said Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings  
Institute and author of "Corporate Warriors," a book about  
contractors in Iraq. "I think it points to the fact that the  
dependence on contractors is like a drug addiction. They just can't  
help themselves."

     Representative Henry Waxman, California Democrat who is chairman  
of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has  
been investigating Blackwater on several fronts, said, "I can't  
understand why Blackwater's contract was renewed. It seems to me the  
administration should have looked for others who could do the job,  
including the U.S. military."

     In the past administration officials have dismissed the notion  
of using military personnel to guard diplomats.

     Founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, a former member of the Navy  
Seals and heir to a family fortune made in the auto parts industry,  
Blackwater began to generate controversy in Iraq long before last  
September's shooting. Blackwater had developed a reputation among  
both Iraqis and American military personnel as a company that  
flaunted a quick-draw image that led its security personnel to take  
overly aggressive actions to protect the people they were paid to guard.

     Last year the State Department acknowledged that Blackwater had  
been involved in significantly more shootings per convoy mission than  
DynCorp and Triple Canopy, which provide security for the State  
Department outside Baghdad.

     The shooting death of the bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president  
in 2006 rankled the Iraqi government well before last September's  
shooting. An off-duty Blackwater guard who American and Iraqi  
officials said had been drinking heavily was the sole suspect. The  
off-duty Blackwater guard, Andrew J. Moonen, who no longer works for  
the company and who is a former Army paratrooper, is now under  
criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in Seattle. Although  
Mr. Moonen has not been charged, his lawyer, Stewart Riley of  
Seattle, said that he had recently been in contact about the case  
with prosecutors from the United States Attorney's Office in Seattle.

     People familiar with the case said they believed that the  
Justice Department had recently concluded that it had found a way to  
skirt some of the jurisdictional problems that in the past made it  
difficult to bring charges in American courts for crimes committed by  
contractors in Iraq.

     "I think they may come to a decision on what to do with this  
case in the next three or four months," said one person familiar with  
the matter. Mr. Riley says that Mr. Moonen maintains his innocence in  
the shooting.

     In addition, a wrongful death lawsuit against Blackwater filed  
by the families of four Blackwater guards killed in Falluja, Iraq, in  
2004 - an event that prompted the first major battle in Falluja  
between the American military and insurgents that year - is also  
still pending.

     A federal appeals court is expected to rule this year on whether  
the families can proceed with their lawsuit or be forced into  
arbitration with Blackwater, an outcome the company prefers,  
according to the families' lawyer, Daniel Callahan of California.

     Donna Zovko of Cleveland, the mother of Jerko Gerald Zovko, one  
of the Blackwater guards, says Blackwater has stonewalled the families.

     "It is 1,501 days since he was killed, and I don't know one- 
tenth of what happened to him, and no one seems to care," Mrs. Zovko  
said in an interview.

     Given so many headlines about his company, Mr. Prince until  
recently seemed eager to tell his side of the story, and there were  
reports that he planned to write a book. But on Friday, Anne Tyrrell,  
a Blackwater spokeswoman, said Mr. Prince's book project had been put  
on hold.

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