[Peace-discuss] PRESS RELEASE: Congress Must Investigate the Mishandling of Blackwater Case and Enact the "Stop Outsourcing Security Act"

Tue Jan 12 17:19:05 CST 2010

[Passing along this from Barbara Kessel.]

[PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL LISTS]
Letter on web here: http://www.StopBlackwater.net
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Open Letter To Congress

NEWS RELEASE

No Private Armies - http://NoPrivateArmies.org
CONTACT: Dan Kenney, Co-Coordinator
No Private Armies
Chicago, Illinois
dkenney53 at hotmail.com / 815-793-0950

Citizens' Oversight Projects Committee - http://CitizensOversight.org and
http://StopBlackwater.net
CONTACT: Raymond Lutz, COPS Coordinator
San Diego County, California
raylutz at citizensoversight.org / 619-447-3246

Blackwater/Xe Watch - http://xewatch.info
CONTACT: Christian Stalberg, Coordinator
Raleigh, North Carolina
cstalberg at xewatch.info / 919-801-0734

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

January 12, 2010

Dismissal of Case Against Blackwater Contractors Condemned

Congress Must Investigate the Mishandling of Blackwater Case and Enact the
"Stop Outsourcing Security Act", Coalition Groups Agree in an Open Letter to
Congress

SAN DIEGO, CHICAGO, RALEIGH, NC (Jan 12, 2010) - A coalition of citizen
groups opposing outsourced security services published an "Open Letter to
Congress" calling for an investigation into the mishandling of the case
involving Blackwater and the killing of 17 unarmed civilians in Nisour
Square, Baghdad on September 16, 2007. Blackwater (now Xe Services LLC) was
asked to leave the country by Iraqi officials after the event, and later six
Blackwater contractors were charged with manslaughter. On New Year's Eve,
2009, Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled the case a mistrial due to mishandling by
the Justice Department.

Judge Ricardo Urbina's 90-page opinion makes it clear that the trial team
repeatedly refused to heed the warnings of Raymond Hulser, a Deputy Chief in
the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, who was assigned as
the "taint attorney."

The coalition's letter urges Congress to conduct a full scale investigation
into why the trial team used defendant statements despite repeated advice
not to "rely on any information derived from the defendants' September 16
oral interview statements." The group also asserts that the Department of
Justice may have had motivation to taint this case from the start.

"Considering all of the millions of tax payer dollars that have gone into
funding Blackwater, as well as paying for all of the various investigations
into their illegal and unethical activities, the citizens of the United
States deserve to know the truth," said Dan Kenney, co-coordinator of No
Private Armies.

"The latest allegations of Blackwater/Xe personnel having committed murder
again, this time in Afghanistan, underscores the fact that this mercenary is
still unregulated, out of control and an ongoing liability to the interests
of the United States and its legitimate military personnel," Christian
Stalberg said, coordinator of "Xe Watch" at the site of Xe/Blackwater
headquarters in North Carolina. "The fact that the world sees Blackwater/Xe
as literally having gotten away with murder sends the worst possible message
about justice and the rule of law, i.e.
that we're hyprocrites. Why Congress doesn't act can only mean that now the
legislative branch of government oversight has been compromised. We already
know that the executive branch has...that is a forgone conclusion."

"We worked hard to stop Blackwater from expansion in San Diego County and we
learned about the character of the company, and the fact that it is simply a
mistake to deploy these for-profit forces into the theater of battle around
the world," Raymond Lutz said, coordinator of Citizens'
Oversight Projects (COPs), operator of the Stop Blackwater.net website.
Lutz worked with the community to stop the 824-acre training camp in Potrero
(near San Diego) to limit their expansion in Otay Mesa along the Cal-Mex
border, and most recently to stop the Blackwater/Xe contract with
Southwestern College District. "We must pull the funding on war profiteers
like Blackwater. We must stop them for good."

The Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership of the United States Naval
Academy held a conference in April, 2009, entitled "Ethics and Military
Contractors: Examining the Public-Private Partnership" and their researchers
slammed the use of private contractors. Stockdale Center of Ethics Fellow
Dr. Susan Marble Barranca said (regarding private military
contractors) "Respectfully, the question should not be why should they not
allowed to continue to operate, but why have they been allowed to operate at
all."

Citizens and groups are invited to endorse the letter at
www.StopBlackwater.net

BACKGROUND

Opinion of United States District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, 2009-12-31:
http://www.copswiki.org/w/bin/view/Common/M911

"Judge Drops Charges From Blackwater Deaths in Iraq," New York Times,
2009-12-31 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01blackwater.html

"FBI Concludes Blackwater Killings Unjustified," Washington Post,
2007-11-14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/14/AR2007111401
435.html

OPEN LETTER TO CONGRESS BELOW
###
===========================================
January 12, 2010

Open Letter to U.S. Congress
Investigate the Mishandling of Blackwater Case Enact the Stop Outsourcing
Security Act.

On December 31, 2009, United States District Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed
all criminal charges against five Blackwater security guards accused of
killing 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square of Baghdad on September
16th 2007. The contractors had been indicted for 14 counts of manslaughter,
20 counts of attempting to commit manslaughter and one count of weapons
violation. In his decision the Judge did not rule on the substance of the
charges against the security guards, but on the prosecutorial misconduct of
the U.S. attorney Kenneth Kohl and the trial team.

Judge Urbina's 90-page opinion does not dispute the investigations by the
Iraqi police, the U.S. Army, and the F.B.I. The Iraqi and U.S.
investigators found that the guards of the Raven 23 convoy had
indiscriminately fired on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified
assault in the crowded Nisour Square of Baghdad on September 16, 2007.
Witnesses and reports stated some of the victims were shot in the back
trying to flee the scene. A nine year old boy riding in the back seat of his
father's car was shot in the head and died. None of the investigators were
able to find any physical evidence to support the guards' contentions that
they had been fired upon. The F.B.I. stated in their report that the
Blackwater guards recklessly violated American rules for the use of lethal
force. The U.S. military investigators went further saying that all the
deaths were unjustified and potentially criminal. Iraqi authorities called
the shootings "deliberate murder."

Judge Urbina labeled the misconduct of the trial team, headed by Assistant
U.S. attorney Kenneth Kohl, as a "reckless violation of the defendants'
constitutional rights." This violation occurred when U.S.
Attorney Kohl and Department of Justice trial lawyer Stephen Ponticello
built their case around the written statements made by the contractors
immediately following the shooting. The Judge stated, "In short, the
government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of
defendants' statements or that such use was harmless beyond reasonable
doubt. Accordingly, the court must dismiss the indictment against all the
defendants."

However, in the background section of the opinion, it becomes obvious that
this violation could have been avoided. Judge Urbina describes in detail the
many instances where Kohl and the trial team ignored the directives and
warnings of Raymond Hulser, a Deputy Chief in the Public Integrity Section
of the Criminal Division, who was assigned as the "taint attorney." His
responsibility was to prevent prosecutors and investigators handling the
investigation from using statements that could contaminate the case causing
it to be dismissed.

On page 82 of the written opinion, Judge Urbina points out that the
government's attempts to characterize Kohl's failure to heed the warnings
and directives of Hulser as a mere "miscommunication" are "simply
implausible."

Judge Urbina writes, "These inconsistent, extraordinary explanations (given
in interviews by Kenneth Kohl) smack of post hoc rationalization and are
simply implausible." He continued, "The only conclusion the court can draw
from this evidence is that Kohl and the rest of the trial team purposefully
flouted the advice of the taint team when obtaining the substance of the
defendants' compelled statements, and in so doing, knowingly endangered the
viability of the prosecution."

Rep. Jan Schkowsky (D - IL) said in the Los Angeles Times, "We're going to
have to understand how this happened." The Iraqi families and the U.S.
citizens that are funding companies like Blackwater, as well as paying for
the investigations, have a right to know the motivation behind such reckless
misconduct by a seasoned U.S. Attorney.

An adviser to the Iraqi council of ministers said, "This (the dismissal of
the case) is very bad for the overall look of the United States outside its
borders. It's very important for the Americans to realize that this will
work against their interests in Iraq and other places."

Given the prosecutorial misconduct of this case, the tragedy of the shooting
incident and the larger trend of private security contractors, we call upon
the U.S. Congress to take the following actions:

1. Conduct a Congressional investigation into the prosecutorial misconduct
of U.S. Attorney Kenneth Kohl and the trial team. Judge Urbina's decision
describes in detail the many times the investigators and prosecutors seemed
determined to sabotage the case from the beginning. It is also known that
senior officials of the Justice Department did not want this case to go to
trial. According to Scott Horton, international law expert and contributor
to Harper's, reported one Congressman who was present at early briefings of
the case held on Capitol Hill said the Justice Department prosecutors
assigned to the case were behaving like defense lawyers building a case to
defend the Blackwater employees, not prosecute them. A Congressional
investigation is needed to verify and explain the Justice Department's
actions and motivations in this case.

2. Our military personnel are bestowed with a special responsibility to use
lethal force in the course of their work and are held to a higher standard
of conduct as a result, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The
current trend to outsource military operations to private contractors
eliminates that higher standard, resolving it instead through corporate
contract provisions and civilian law which is far from the higher standard
of conduct implied by the authority to use lethal force. The indictments in
this case specifically stated that Blackwater Worldwide, the primary
contractor in the matter, had no responsibility for the events, despite the
fact that the guards were trained by Blackwater and working according to the
"culture" of the firm.
Blackwater (Xe Services) must be held accountable for their involvement in
this event and other events, and the U.S. Congress should grapple with the
shortcoming of current contract law when applied to actors in combat zones
using lethal force who would otherwise be subject to the UCMJ.

3. The U.S. Congress should cancel and cut off all funding of contracts with
Blackwater (Xe Services) and with all of their affiliates. This should
include all contracts now in effect under the Department of Defense, the
Department of State, Homeland Security, The Drug Enforcement Agency, and the
CIA. In addition to the above incident, Blackwater and its owner Erik Prince
are named in two other Grand Jury investigations involving the company's
possible smuggling of weapons into Iraq and tax evasion. The company may
face charges for obstruction of justice related to the shooting incident in
Nisour Square. In August of 2008 Rep. Henry Waxman, then chair of the House
Oversight and Government reform Committee, called on then candidate Obama to
cancel Blackwater's contracts if elected President. Candidate Hillary
Clinton also said that Blackwater contracts should be canceled. We agree
with Rep. Waxman when he said, "I don't see any reason to have a contract
with Blackwater. They haven't lived up to their contract and we shouldn't be
having these private military contracts. We should use our own military."

4. This decision also puts the U.S. in breach of its treaty obligations to
prosecute this case, which was an international law obligation. Now if the
U.S. cannot, for the technical reasons set forth in the ruling, prosecute
the case, the U.S. is required to waive the immunity and surrender these
individuals to the Iraqi authorities for prosecution.
Congress should ensure that our Government satisfies all of our
international obligations as they pertain to this case.

5. Reintroduce and swiftly enact the "Stop Outsourcing Security Act"
(known as House Resolution 4102 in the 110th Congress) which cites that
a) the United States is increasingly relying on private security
contractors, b) one quarter of these contractors are third-party nationals,
c) these contractors operate at cross-purposes with our larger mission and
undermine the mission, jeopardizing the safety of American troops, d) events
such as the Nisour Square massacre have negatively affected the relationship
of our country with other countries in those areas, e) security contracts
suffer from inadequate oversight,
f) Congress does not even have access to security contracts, and g) the use
of private security contractors for mission critical functions should be
phased out.

The bill required that a) personnel at any United States diplomatic or
consular mission in Iraq are provided security services only by Federal
Government personnel, b) the military will transition away from the use of
private contractors for mission critical or emergency essential functions in
all conflict zones in which Congress has authorized the use of force, c)
contracts with security contractors shall be open to inspection by Congress,
d) no contracts shall be renewed during the transition period unless those
companies have a clean record, and e) that the defense department fully
document the number and disposition of all security contractors.

When reintroducing this bill, Congress should insure the scope is adequately
broad to include recent revelations of "black-ops" CIA activities, and to
update it to include regions and operations of relevance today, including
domestic and foreign training operations, which is a core-competency of our
military and must not be relegated to for-profit firms.

The safety of our soldiers and our citizens, as well as citizens in Iraq and
Afghanistan, can no longer be put into risk by the careless actions of hired
military and security companies like Blackwater. Legal loopholes that
provide immunity for all contractors, regardless of how murderous their
actions may be, continue the pattern of inadequate accountability. We ask
you how much longer will you allow those whom we fund to get away with
murder in our name?

BY THE UNDERSIGNED:

No Private Armies: Dan Kenney & Mary Shesgreen, co-coordinators of
NoPrivateArmies.org Chicago Area (IL)

Voices For Creative Non-Violence: Kathy Kelly http://vcnv.org

Stop Blackwater: Raymond Lutz, coordinator, StopBlackwater.net (San Diego,
CA)

CitizensOversight.org (San Diego, CA)

Blackwater Watch: Christian Stalberg, XeWatch.info (NC)

Peace Resource Center: Carol Jahnkow, director, prcsd.org (San Diego, CA)

Citizens Against Private Armies (Riverside County, CA)

NC Stop Torture Now

ADD YOUR NAME OF ENDORSEMENT BY VISITING http://www.StopBlackwater.net

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