Life During Wartime : Courts Release Terrorists!

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Political cartoon by Joshua Brown / Historians Against the War / The Rag Blog
Thanks to Dr. S.R. Keister /The Rag Blog

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Military Outsourcing: Of Exceptionally Dubious Value

A firearms and tactics instructor at Blackwater demonstrates a weapon in Moyock, N.C. Photo: Gerry Broome/AP.
Flushing Blackwater
By Jeremy Scahill / August 26, 2009

Blackwater, the private mercenary company owned by Erik Prince, has been thrust back into the spotlight by a series of stunning revelations about its role in covert US programs. Since at least 2002, Blackwater has worked for the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan on "black" contracts. On August 19, the New York Times revealed that the company was, in fact, a central part of a secret CIA assassination program that Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress. The paper then reported that Blackwater remains a key player in the widening air war in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it arms drone aircraft. These disclosures follow allegations--made under oath by former Blackwater employees--that Prince murdered or facilitated the murder of potential government informants and that he "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe."

In addition, Blackwater is being investigated by the Justice Department for possible crimes ranging from weapons smuggling to manslaughter and by the IRS for possible tax evasion. It is being sued in federal courts by scores of Iraqi civilians for alleged war crimes and extrajudicial killings. Two of its men have pleaded guilty to weapons-smuggling charges; another pleaded guilty to the unprovoked manslaughter of an Iraqi civilian, and five others have been indicted on similar counts. The US military is investigating Blackwater's killing of civilians in Afghanistan in May, and reports are emerging that the company may be implicated in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

And yet, despite these black marks, the Obama administration continues to keep Blackwater on the government's payroll. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Blackwater still works for the CIA, the State Department and the Defense Department to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and its continuing presence is an indicator of just how entrenched private corporations are in the US war machinery. The United States now deploys more private forces (74,000) than uniformed soldiers (57,000) in Afghanistan. While the majority of these contractors are not armed, a sizable number carry weapons, and their ranks are swelling. A recent Defense Department census reports that as of June 30, armed DoD contractors in Afghanistan had increased by 20 percent from the first quarter of 2009.

With the exception of a few legislators, notably Representatives Henry Waxman and Jan Schakowsky, Congress has left the use of private military contractors largely unmonitored. But the recent disclosures of Blackwater's covert activities may finally force Congress to take action. At the very least, the Obama administration should be required to disclose current and past federal contracts with all of Prince's companies and affiliates, including those registered offshore.

Congress can take Schakowsky's lead and ask the Obama administration why it is continuing to work with Blackwater. Schakowsky has called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to review all of the company's existing contracts and not to award any new ones to its many affiliates. Congressional intelligence committees should also conduct a wide-ranging investigation into Blackwater's involvement in the CIA assassination program. Were Blackwater operatives involved in actual killings? Who approved the company's involvement? Was Congress notified? How high up the chain of command did the covert relationship with the company go? Was Blackwater active on US soil? What role, if any, did/does Blackwater play in secretly transporting prisoners?

This investigation must include the sworn testimony of former top CIA officials who were later hired or paid by Blackwater. Among these are Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, the former number-three man at the agency, who gave Blackwater its first CIA contract and then served on the company's board, and J. Cofer Black, the former head of the CIA's counterterrorism unit, which ran the assassination program. Black later became the vice chair of Blackwater and ran Total Intelligence Solutions, Prince's private CIA. Total Intelligence has been simultaneously employed by the US government, foreign governments and private companies, an arrangement that may have created conflicts of interest that the House and Senate intelligence committees are obliged to investigate. Congress should also ask if national security is compromised when the knowledge, contacts and access possessed by former high-ranking CIA officials like Black and Krongard are placed on the open market.

John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has questioned whether Blackwater used its State Department clearance as cover to gather information for targeted killings. Kerry should hold hearings in which Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice would be compelled to testify on the matter. The oversight committees should probe allegations that Blackwater was involved in arms smuggling and extrajudicial killings in Iraq, while committees dealing with military affairs should investigate what impact Blackwater's actions in Iraq have had on the safety of US troops. An invaluable asset for these investigations could be the Commission on Wartime Contracting, established by Senators Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill. Finally, the Justice Department should probe the murder, smuggling and other allegations against Prince and his executives.

In all of this, Blackwater has proved itself to be a whack-a-mole: it keeps popping up. Despite the Iraqi government's ban on the company, its operatives remain in Iraq a full two years after the September 2007 Nisour Square massacre, in which seventeen Iraqi civilians were gunned down in Baghdad. This resilience means that the investigations into the company must be comprehensive and coordinated.

Lastly, it is a mistake to think that Blackwater is the only problem. In Iraq, for example, the Obama administration is replacing Blackwater with the private contractor Triple Canopy, which, in addition to hiring some of Blackwater's men, has its own questionable history, including allegations of shooting civilians and hiring forces from countries with a history of human rights abuses. Blackwater is but one fruit on the poisonous tree of military outsourcing. It is imperative that Congress confront the intimate linking of corporate profits to US wars and lethal, covert operations.

[Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!.]

Source / The Nation

The Rag Blog

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Blackwater Is Staying in Iraq, Against Iraqi Wishes

Blackwater Chief Executive Officer Erik Prince defends his company's performance in Iraq before the House oversight committee in 2007. Photo: Associated Press.
New Deal for Blackwater
By Jim McElhatton / March 17, 2009

Days after the Baghdad government decided it no longer wanted the company then known as Blackwater in Iraq, the State Department signed a $22.2 million deal in February to keep the embattled contractor working there through most of the summer, contract records show.

The decision keeps Blackwater - since renamed Xe - in Iraq months longer than anyone has suggested publicly, while raising questions about why the U.S. would pay a contractor for work in Iraq if it may not be able to operate there legally.

The State Department has been under pressure from Blackwater critics, including several in Congress, not to renew the company's contracts in Iraq. Much of the concern stems from a 2007 incident that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead and six former Blackwater guards facing manslaughter charges. One of the guards pleaded guilty, but the company was accused of no wrongdoing in the incident.

In late January, the Iraqi government said it would not renew Blackwater's operating license and that the company would have to leave as soon as a joint Iraqi-U.S. committee completes its work on guidelines for the operation of private security companies. State Department officials said they would honor the decision.

On Feb. 2, a department spokesman was asked whether officials planned to renew one of Blackwater's contracts past May. The spokesman, Robert Wood, said the department had told Blackwater "we did not plan to renew the company's existing task force orders for protective security details in Iraq."

But records available through a federal procurement database show that on that same day, the State Department approved a $22.2 million contract modification for Blackwater "security personnel" in Iraq, with a job completion date of Sept. 3, 2009.

"Why would you continue to use Blackwater when the Iraqi government has banned the highly controversial company and there are other choices?" asked Melanie Sloan, executive director of the nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

State Department spokesman Noel Clay said the contract modification involves aviation services. "The place of performance is Iraq, but it is totally different than the Baghdad one that expires in May," he said.

Ms. Sloan called the State Department's explanation of the Feb. 2 deal a "parsing of words" and said "they should just be straight with us."

Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrell declined to comment on the status of the company's work in Iraq or the Feb. 2 contract modification. She said the company was aware that the State Department had indicated that it did not plan to renew its contracts in Iraq but that Xe officials had not received specific information about leaving the country.

"We're following their direction," she said.

The Iraqi Embassy in Washington had no comment on the Blackwater contract when contacted on Monday.

The State Department has given clear indications for months that the Iraqi government might not be renewing Blackwater's operating license.

Harold W. Geisel, the State Department's inspector general, told the congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting at a Feb. 2 hearing that officials were awaiting the outcome of an FBI report into the 2007 shooting incident before deciding whether to keep Blackwater in Iraq.

"The issue is not only one of, well, what we would like to do, but it also is to some extent what the department can do," Mr. Geisel said of decisions about the future of Blackwater's role in Iraq, according to a transcript of the hearing.

"Blackwater had certain assets that the department determined the other contractors did not have," he said, citing the company's 24 aircraft as an example.

Nonetheless, Mr. Geisel said his office did "advise the department that they better start planning for when the Iraqis say this is it with Blackwater. And without getting into diplomatic negotiations, I believe the department is planning for this eventuality, which is clearly not too far off."

Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group that investigates federal contracting, said the State Department's decision to continue paying Blackwater for security in Iraq raises broader questions about federal procurement practices.

"This case highlights the fact that the U.S. government over-relies on contractors and that it isn't in a position to hold them accountable," he said. "Continuing to do new business with questionable actors flies in the face of spreading trust, peace and democracy around the world."

The contractor, based in North Carolina, recently underwent a big shake-up. The company changed its name to Xe, pronounced "zee," last month. Also, a subsidiary, Blackwater Lodge and Training Center, which secured the State Department's $22.2 million contract modification, was renamed.

Blackwater founder Erik Prince and company President Gary Jackson have resigned.

Mr. Prince has donated nearly a quarter-million dollars over the years to political causes. More than half of the donations went to the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican National Committee, according to a 2007 Democrat-led House committee report, citing data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Blackwater also had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying Congress, according to Senate records. It contributed between $10,001 and $25,000 to former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation. Mr. Clinton released the donor information last year to avoid conflict-of-interest questions about his fundraising activities and the duties of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as President Obama's secretary of state.

Despite any political good will that the company might have generated from its lobbying and political activities, it was unable to dodge fallout from the Sept. 16, 2007, shooting incident in Baghdad, in which prosecutors said six former guards went on an unprovoked rampage, shooting innocent Iraqi civilians.

Five of the former guards have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges, while a sixth pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter. Attorneys for the former guards say they fired in self-defense.

Source / Washington Times

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Dahr Jamail on Iraq : The Story Beneath the Story

A Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, which the US military now uses for most of its patrols in Iraq's Sadr City. Photo by Dahr Jamail / truthout.

'The political divides across the country run deep, and this thin, fresh, external skin of the lull in overall violence camouflages the plight of the average Iraqi.'

A Capped Volcano of Suffering

By Dahr Jamail / January 29, 2009

Baghdad today, on the eve of provincial elections, feels like it has emerged from several years of horrendous violence, but do not be misled. Every Iraqi I've spoken with feels it is tenuous, the still-fragile lull too young to trust.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees provides recent statistics showing that more Iraqis continue to flee their country than are returning. Two studies show the number of dead Iraqis to be between 1.2-1.4 million, and the number of those displaced to be nearly five million, or one in six Iraqis. During 2006 and 2008, scores of bodies were found on the streets of Baghdad and fished from the Tigris River as death squads and sectarian militias raged. All but one of my Iraqi friends and translators have either fled the country, or been killed. It is nearly impossible to meet a family that has not had a family member killed or wounded

Only within the last half-year has violence lessened, and street life returned to something akin to "normal," which means that as opposed to 50-250 Iraqi being slaughtered each day, now it is an average of one, sometimes two dozen per day.

The relative lull has allowed me to travel around Baghdad with relative ease, eat at restaurants, and even conduct interviews on the street; all of which was unheard of during my last visits to Iraq. I've been taking stock of what has changed, and what hasn't.

One of the first things I noted that has not changed did not occur in Iraq. Rather, when arriving in Amman, Jordan and exiting the airplane, I strode into customs to find a Jordanian man holding up a Blackwater USA sign, to be met by four rough looking middle-aged men. The next day, whilst flying into Baghdad, the commercial jet did a "soft-spiral" descent into Baghdad airport, unlike the hard corkscrew descent that they all did when I was last in Iraq, so as not to be shot at by resistance fighters just outside of the airport perimeter.

The infrastructure remains in shambles. The generator at my hotel is running more than it is shut off. Throughout Baghdad, there's an average of four hours of electricity per 24 hours, and people are left with no choice but to drink tap water, when it runs -- water heavily contaminated by waterborne diseases, fuel, sewage and sediment. Jobs are scarce, and people are suffering greatly. The anger about this seethes just beneath the surface everywhere I turn.

Previously, while these conditions were similar, there was still some hope that things might improve. That hope has shifted into a resignation of what is. A surrender into a daily life of trying to find enough money to buy food.

"In 2004 it cost me $1 to fill my car," my interpreter Ali told me yesterday as we drove to Fallujah. "Today it now costs $35. It used to be in Iraq a family could easily live off $500 for two months. Today we are lucky if that lasts a week, because the prices of everything have gone so high."

Beggars are present at most intersections. Where they are not, Iraqi children walk between the rows of cars carrying cigarettes, fruit, or sweets to sell to drivers stuck in the ever-present traffic.

Salah Salman, a day laborer in Sadr City I spoke with the other day, raged against the upcoming elections which are set for January 31. He spoke with me while we stood near a street strewn with garbage near a busy traffic circle.

"I'll not be voting for anyone. We cannot trust any of the candidates, just like during the elections of 2005. What have they done for us? What services have they provided our country? They have achieved nothing for us!"

Like the 2005 elections (and most elections across the globe, for that matter), there are thousands of politicians running on various platforms, from unifying Iraq, to bringing electricity, to improving security, to promoting reconciliation. Most Iraqis I have spoken with about the elections are not holding out much hope.

"New thieves will replace the current thieves," an Iraqi refugee in Amman told me before I flew into Baghdad.

Obvious differences are present. The most evident reason for the decline in US military casualties in Iraq over the last year is that there are clearly far fewer patrols being carried out by US forces, whereas before patrols roamed the streets incessantly. The patrols I do see are carried out in the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, which are mine-resistant beasts that slowly crawl through the congested streets of Baghdad.

Instead, Iraqi security forces abound. Speeding through the streets with blaring sirens are Iraqi Police in huge, brand new Ford and Chevrolet trucks, which have clearly found their new market since the US has tired of the gas-guzzling behemoths. Further, Iraqi military abound, roaming around in brand new Humvees of the ilk traded in by the US military's upgrade to MRAPs. So much security is deployed on the streets of Baghdad it is impossible to travel more than 15 minutes without finding another checkpoint. To live in Baghdad, like it is to live in many other Iraqi cities, is to live in a police state.

Contractors are visible flying overhead, often in their two-person Kiowa helicopters. They are running the security at the airport and in the Green Zone, which has been called the International Zone for some time now. The mercenary company Triple Canopy employs former Central American death squad members and various nationals from Uganda, a now mostly de-colonized country, to check ID badges at the countless checkpoints I walked through to obtain my mandatory press card inside the heavily fortified compound. Thus, the changing of the face is complete - Iraqi security forces and private contractor mercenaries are now the face of the US occupation of Iraq.

The political divides across the country run deep, and this thin, fresh, external skin of the lull in overall violence camouflages the plight of the average Iraqi. Prices of everything from bottled water to tomatoes have skyrocketed, while jobs have become increasingly scarce. While the major US news outlets have downgraded their staff in Iraq, or pulled out entirely because they feel Iraq is no longer an important story, for most Iraqis who remain here, there is no other option. Flee with no money and become a refugee, or remain and try to survive.

Will the elections bring a lasting stability? Or will groups who feel entitled to power that don't obtain it democratically resort again to violence that will shred what is left of this shattered country?

We shall soon find out.

[Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who grew up in Houston, is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq," (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for eight months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last four years.]

Source / truthout

Thanks to Bob Simmons / The Rag Blog

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Indictments Expected in 2007 Blackwater Shooting

This actually comes as quite a surprise, since we're dealing with the Bush administration and the myriad declarations of immunity that Jerry Bremer left behind in Baghdad. I won't be holding my breath expecting these men to serve any prison time, that's for sure.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Click on graphic to enlarge it. Graphic courtesy Washington Post. SOURCES: Staff reports, satellite image by DigitalGlobe via GoogleEarth | Photos By Sudarsan Raghavan, The Washington Post - October 04, 2007.
Blackwater Guards Indicted in Iraq Deaths
By Matt Apuzzo and Lara Jakes Jordan / December 5, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Five Blackwater Worldwide security guards have been indicted and a sixth was negotiating a plea with prosecutors for a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead and became an anti-American rallying cry for insurgents, people close to the case said Friday.

Prosecutors obtained the indictment late Thursday and had it put under seal until it is made public, perhaps as early as Monday. All who discussed the case did so on condition of anonymity because the matters remain sealed.

Six guards have been under investigation since a convoy of heavily armed Blackwater contractors opened fire in a crowded Baghdad intersection on Sept. 16, 2007. Witnesses say the shooting was unprovoked but Blackwater, hired by the State Department to guard U.S. diplomats, says its guards were ambushed by insurgents while responding to a car bombing.

Young children were among the victims and the shooting strained relations between the U.S. and Iraq. Following the shooting, Blackwater became the subject of congressional hearings in Washington and insurgent propaganda videos in Iraq.

The exact charges in the indictment were unclear, but the Justice Department has been considering manslaughter and assault charges against the guards for weeks. Prosecutors have also been considering bringing charges under a law, passed as part of a 1988 drug bill, that carries a mandatory 30-year prison sentence for using a machine gun in a crime of violence.

The Justice Department has ordered five of the six guards to surrender Monday to the FBI, but details of where and precisely what time were still being worked out Friday, according to those people close to the case.

The remaining guard has been negotiating to reduce the charges against him in return for cooperation. If completed, such a deal could provide prosecutors with a key witness against the other five. Others in the convoy have already testified before a federal grand jury about the shooting.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined comment.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said, "We've consistently said that we do not believe the guards acted unlawfully. If it is determined they did, we would support holding them accountable."

Regardless of the charges they bring, prosecutors will have a tough fight. The law is unclear on whether contractors can be charged in the U.S., or anywhere, for crimes committed overseas. The indictment sends the message that the Justice Department believes contractors do not operate with legal impunity in war zones.

Based at a sprawling compound in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater itself is not a target of the FBI investigation. Company officials have cooperated with the investigation.

To prosecute, authorities must argue that the guards can be charged under a law meant to cover soldiers and military contractors. Since Blackwater works for the State Department, not the military, it's unclear whether that law applies to its guards.

Further complicating the case, the State Department granted all the Blackwater guards limited immunity in exchange for their sworn statements shortly after the shooting. Prosecutors will need to show that they did not rely on those statements in building their case.

The State Department declined to comment and referred questions to the Justice Department.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Source / America On Line

The Rag Blog

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Blackwater Scandal Redux : Smuggling Prohibited Weapons in Dog Food Sacks

Blackwater insider: Company executives made the decision to smuggle the weapons and silencers in the dog food 'because it's a war over there and our guys need them.'
By Brian Ross and Jason Ryan / November 14, 2008

Also see 'Indictment drafted in Blackwater shooting' by Lara Jakes Jordan and Matt Apuzzo, Below.

A federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food, ABCNews.com has learned.

Under State Department rules, Blackwater is prohibited from using certain assault weapons and silencers in Iraq because they are considered "offensive" weapons inappropriate for Blackwater's role as a private security firm protecting US diplomatic missions.

"The only reason you need a silencer is if you want to assassinate someone," said former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou, an ABC News consultant.

Six Blackwater employees are under investigation by another federal grand jury, in Washington, D.C., in connection with the shooting deaths of at least 17 civilians in September, 2007 at a Baghdad traffic circle. Prosecutors are expected to return indictments in the next few weeks, according to people familiar with the case.

The investigation of the alleged dog food smuggling scheme began last year after two Blackwater employees were caught trying to sell stolen weapons in North Carolina. The two, Kenneth Cashwell and William "Max" Grumiaux pleaded guilty in February and became government witnesses, according to court documents.

Two other former employees tell ABCNews.com they also witnessed the dog food smuggling operation. They say the weapons were actually hidden inside large sacks of dog food, packaged at company headquarters in North Carolina and sent to Iraq for the company's 20 bomb-sniffing dogs.

Larger items, including M-4 assault weapons, were secreted on shipping pallets surrounded by stacks of dog food bags, the former employees said. The entire pallet would be wrapped in cellophane shrink wrap, the former employees said, making it less likely US Customs inspectors would look too closely.

Last year, a US Department of Commerce inspector at JFK airport in New York discovered an unlicensed two-way radio hidden in a dog food sack being shipped by Blackwater to Iraq, according to people familiar with the incident.

A Blackwater spokesperson, Anne Tyrrell, said certain arms shipmens were sent to Iraq surrounded by dog food "to secure them on the airplane and not to smuggle them." Tyrrell said she could not comment on specifics because of "the ongoing investigation" but she denied the company had done anything wrong.

In addition to the grand jury investigation, Blackwater sources say the company is facing a multi-million dollar fine for some 900 instances in which it violated State Department licensing requirements for the export of certain weapons.

Of the 900 cases, about 100 of them have been referred to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution, according to lawyers briefed on the case.

Last month, Blackwater hired a team of former federal law enforcement officials and defense experts that it said would review the company's compliance with export laws.

Andrew Howell, Blackwater's general counsel, said, "Ongoing reviews by the Department of Justice, State and Commerce have highlighted the need for a significant and systems-wide initiative."

Another former Blackwater insider who talked with ABCNews.com said company executives made the decision to smuggle the weapons and silencers in the dog food "because it's a war over there and our guys need them."

Despite four separate federal grand jury investigations of its operations, Blackwater's contract to provide security services for the US State Department was renewed earlier this year. The contract pays Blackwater $250 million a year and runs for five years.

Source / ABC News

Indictment drafted in Blackwater shooting
By Lara Jakes Jordan and Matt Apuzzo / November 14, 2008

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have drafted an indictment against six Blackwater Worldwide security guards in last year's deadly Baghdad shootings of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The draft is being reviewed by senior Justice Department officials but no charging decisions have been made. A decision is not expected until at least later this month, people close to the case said.

Also still undecided is whether the Justice Department would charge the guards with manslaughter or assault, according to the people, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

It's possible that prosecutors ultimately will seek charges against as few as three of the guards, whose identities are still secret. Depending on the charges, an indictment would carry maximum sentences of five to 20 years.

An indictment would send the message that the Justice Department believes U.S. contractors do not operate with legal impunity in war zones. It's an untested legal theory, since the law is murky on whether contractors could be charged in U.S. courts, or anywhere, for crimes committed overseas.

The indictment against the Blackwater guards would be filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, even though the shootings occurred 6,200 miles away.

Blackwater guards opened fire in a busy intersection Sept. 16, 2007, in what witnesses said was an unprovoked attack. Young children were among the 17 civilians killed. The shootings outraged Iraqis and embarrassed the United States, further straining relations between the two nations.

Blackwater is adamant that its guards, who protect U.S. diplomats, were ambushed by insurgents in Baghdad's Nisoor Square.

Based in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater itself is not a target of the investigation. The company has pledged to cooperate with the investigation and said it wants to decrease its reliance on the security business.

On Friday, Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said "it would be inappropriate to comment" on the draft indictment.

She added: "Based on the information available to us, however, we do not believe criminal violations occurred. If it is determined that an individual acted improperly, Blackwater would support holding that person accountable."

Blackwater has been at the forefront of the debate over the use of contractors in war zones.

Capitol Hill lawmakers have described Blackwater guards as mercenaries. Human rights groups have sued the company. And Iraq's government is pushing for more authority to prosecute U.S. contractors in its own courts.

Among the issues under discussion at the Justice Department is whether prosecutors have authority to bring the case. The largest security contractor in Iraq, Blackwater operates in a legal gray area. Its guards are immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts and U.S. law does not normally apply to crimes committed overseas.

To prosecute, authorities must argue that the guards can be charged under a law meant to cover soldiers and military contractors. Since Blackwater works for the State Department, not the military, it's unclear whether that law applies to its guards.

It would be the first such case of its kind. The Justice Department recently lost a similar case against former Marine Jose Luis Nazario Jr., who was charged in Riverside, Calif., with killing four unarmed Iraqi detainees. Jurors questioned whether such cases should even be brought in civilian courts.

"I don't think we had any business doing that," juror Nicole Peters said at the time. She wiped away tears after the August verdict and later hugged the defendant. "I thought it was unfair to us and to him."

Prosecutors will also face challenges over the evidence. Before the FBI began investigating the shooting, the State Department granted limited immunity to Blackwater guards who talked to investigators. The Justice Department will need to prove that its case was not influenced by any evidence gathered under that immunity deal.

Attorneys for six Blackwater guards made those arguments and more at a September meeting with top Justice Department officials. The lawyers urged prosecutors not to indict.

A decision before January about whether to indict the guards would mean that President-elect Barack Obama's incoming Justice Department team would not inherit the politically sensitive choice. But the legal hurdles will remain in a case that could drag on for a year or longer.

In December 2007, several months after the shootings, the Pentagon and the State Department agreed to give the military in Iraq more control over Blackwater and other private security contractors. Five months later, in April, the State Department renewed its multimillion-dollar contract with Blackwater for the third year of its five-year life.

Blackwater has been paid nearly $1.25 billion in federal business since 2000.

Source / AP / Google News

The Rag Blog

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Gustav: Another Chance for BushCo to Shine

CNN Breaking News, 6:09 PM PDT, 30 August 2008: "Mayor Ray Nagin orders New Orleans evacuated, calling Hurricane Gustav 'the mother of all storms.'"

And more CNN Breaking News, 8:14 AM PDT, 31 August 2008: "President Bush, Vice President Cheney to skip Republican convention because of Hurricane Gustav, White House says."

Blackwater Gearing Up for Hurricane Gustav
By R.J. Hillhouse / August 29, 2008

Gustav Blackwater Worldwide is currently seeking qualified law enforcement officers and security personnel to potentially deploy to provide security in the possible aftermath of Hurricane Gustav. This is the first time Blackwater has mobilized under its controversial Homeland Security contracts. Blackwater did deploy security personnel to assist New Orleans in wake of Hurricane Katrina and this resulted in great controversy since it was the first time a private military corporation had deployed on US soil.

Blackwater issued the following call for personnel late Friday afternoon:

Blackwater is compiling a list of qualified security personnel for possible deployment into areas affected by Hurricane Gustav. Applicants must meet all items listed under the respective Officer posting and be US citizens. Contract length is TBD.

Law Enforcement Officers (all criteria must apply)

1. Current sworn [may be full time, part time or reserve]

2. With arrest powers

3. Armed status (must indicate Armed and/or Semi Auto. Revolver only not accepted) expiration must be greater than 60 days out

4. Departmental credentials (not just a badge)

Armed Security Officers (all criteria must apply)

Only from the following states: OR, WA, CA, NV, NM, AZ, TX, FL, GA, SC, NC, VA, MD, IL, OK

1. Current/active/licensed/registered armed security officer

2. All training verification [unarmed and armed certificates of completion]

3. Current state issued face card indicting armed status [expiration must be greater than 60 days out]

Applicants will be required to provide an electronic copy of the above required credentials/documents, recent photo within the last six months with response to this AD prior to consideration for deployment.

Personnel who meet the above qualifications and are interested, please send resumes and files to: 25505@blackwaterusa2.hrmdirect.com

Source / The Spy Who Billed Me


And there's this:

Gustav is gathering strength, heading towards Gulf Coast states
By Joe Sudbay (DC) August 30, 2008

From the National Hurricane Center:

DATA FROM AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE CONTINUED TO INCREASE AND ARE NOW NEAR 120 MPH...195 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. GUSTAV IS A DANGEROUS CATEGORY THREE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE. GUSTAV IS EXPECTED TO PASS OVER WESTERN CUBA AS A MAJOR HURRICANE...AND COULD REACH CATEGORY FOUR STATUS BEFORE MAKING LANDFALL THERE. ADDITIONAL STRENGTHENING IS POSSIBLE OVER THE SOUTHERN GULF OF MEXICO

And, the latest projected track has it hitting the coast of Louisiana in the very early hours of Tuesday:


Scott McClellan thinks this good be good for the Republican Party. Seriously:

"If it's a major hurricane, I think that they certainly need to show they learned lessons from three years ago, both from a policy and perception standpoint," McClellan said.

He also suggested that McCain could benefit politically from such a scenario: It would allow Bush to mount an effective GOP response to a disaster while removing the unpopular president from the convention roster.

"It could be a two-fer," McClellan said.

Source / America Blog

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Charges Likely Against Blackwater Guards in Shooting of Iraqi Citizens

An Iraqi policeman inspects a car that was destroyed when Blackwater security guards opened fire in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians. Photo by Khalid Mohammed / AP.
'An Iraqi government investigation concluded that the security contractors fired without provocation'
By Del Quentin Wilber and Karen DeYoung / August 17, 2008

Federal prosecutors have sent target letters to six Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a September shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, indicating a high likelihood the Justice Department will seek to indict at least some of the men, according to three sources close to the case.

The guards, all former U.S. military personnel, were working as security contractors for the State Department, assigned to protect U.S. diplomats and other non-military officials in Iraq. The shooting occurred when their convoy arrived at a busy square in central Baghdad and guards tried to stop traffic.

Blackwater has said its personnel acted in self-defense.

The sources said that any charges against the guards would likely be brought under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which has previously been used to prosecute only the cases referred to the Justice Department by the Defense Department for crimes committed by military personnel and contractors overseas. Legal experts have questioned whether contractors working for the State Department can be prosecuted under its provisions.

The sources cautioned that prosecutors are still weighing evidence gathered in a 10-month investigation that began shortly after the shootings. A federal grand jury has heard testimony from about three dozen witnesses since November, including U.S. and Blackwater officials and Iraqis, according to two of the sources.

Target letters, often considered a prelude to indictment, offer suspects the opportunity to contest evidence brought before the grand jury and give their own version of events. The letters were sent this summer, although the sources, who agreed to discuss the case only on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity, said a final decision on whether to indict may not be made until October, about a year after the incident.

The U.S. attorney's office in Washington and the Justice Department's National Security Division are leading the investigation. Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, declined to comment, as did Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd. A spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, which investigated the shooting on the ground in Iraq in the weeks after the incident, also declined to comment.

Anne E. Tyrell, a spokeswoman for North Carolina-based Blackwater, said that the company believes the guards fired their weapons "in response to a hostile threat" and is monitoring the investigation closely.

"If it is determined that an individual acted improperly, Blackwater would support holding that person accountable," Tyrell said in a statement. "But at this stage, without being able to review evidence collected in an ongoing investigation, we will not prejudge the actions of any individual. The company is cooperating fully with ongoing investigations and believes that accountability is important."

Earlier reports on the investigation indicated that the FBI had focused on three Blackwater guards among a larger but unknown number present at the time of the Sept. 16 incident in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. None has been publicly identified, and authorities did not say which six received the target letters.

The shooting, and the perceived failure to hold anyone accountable for it, has fueled congressional dissatisfaction with the government's use of private security contractors in a combat zone. Contractors working for the Defense Department are now explicitly liable for crimes under laws covering the military, but several efforts in Congress to extend that jurisdiction to State Department contractors have failed.

The incident also angered Iraqi political leaders. U.S. contractors have been exempt from Iraqi law under a decree imposed by the U.S. occupation administration in 2003.

Seeking to respond to widespread fury among Iraqis over the Nisoor Square incident, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted in negotiations over a new bilateral security agreement with the United States that all contractors come under Iraqi legal jurisdiction. Facing pressure to finalize an agreement by the end of the year, the Bush administration agreed to meet the Iraqi demand, according to officials close to the discussions. But the administration continues to insist on immunity from Iraqi law for military and official Defense Department personnel, the officials said.

Blackwater is one of three U.S. security firms under contract with the State Department to provide personal security in Iraq. The State Department in May extended Blackwater's contract for another year, saying that while the case was still under investigation it had no enforceable cause to cancel it.

Lawyers for the Blackwater guards have argued in ongoing discussions with prosecutors that the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, known as MEJA, can be applied only to contractors working for the Defense Department, two sources said. That position appeared to be buttressed by the Congressional Budget Office, which said in a report on contractors in Iraq released last week that MEJA "does not apply to civilians working . . . for federal departments or agencies other than DOD [the Department of Defense]."

Legislative proposals to extend MEJA's provisions beyond the Defense Department -- which have been repeatedly opposed by the White House -- have made the same point.

But the question has never been tested in court. Some outside legal experts said that prosecutors would be able to make a compelling argument that MEJA covers Blackwater guards involved in the shooting under a 2005 amendment that expanded MEJA's provisions to include contractors "supporting the mission of the Department of Defense."

"You are dealing with a military environment," said Scott Silliman, a law professor at Duke University who specializes in national security matters. "If the contractors were not there, those State Department folks would be guarded by the military. Prosecutors could argue to the judge that those facts fit within the definition of furthering the [Defense Department] mission in Iraq."

Among other possible complications in potential legal action against the Blackwater contractors are interviews some of the guards gave to officials from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security immediately after the incident. The interviews were conducted under legal protections against self-incrimination granted to government employees, and the guards were informed that they could not be used by FBI investigators or in a potential prosecution.

Several former prosecutors and defense attorneys said that the government would have a difficult time proving the case even if it overcame the jurisdictional question. They noted the hurdles facing prosecutors in domestic police shooting cases, adding that such cases are exceedingly hard to win.

Trying to convince jurors that guards committed a crime by opening fire in a war zone "makes it an exponentially tougher case to prove" than a bad police shooting, said George Parry, a former federal and state prosecutor in Pennsylvania who handled law enforcement shootings as a prosecutor and defense attorney. Parry does not represent anyone in the Blackwater matter.

The former prosecutors and defense attorneys said defense lawyers would work hard to put jurors inside the war zone and portray the guards as having to make split-second decisions in an environment where insurgents dress like civilians and attacks could occur anywhere, at any moment. Witnesses in such situations also often contradict each other, and evidence gathered in Baghdad may not meet the same forensic standards that jurors are used to seeing in the United States, the lawyers said.

The Nisoor Square incident took place on a Tuesday afternoon. A Blackwater team arrived in several vehicles at the intersection -- accounts differ as to why they were there -- and tried to stop traffic. Shooting erupted, leaving numerous Iraqis dead and wounded. Blackwater officials have said the guards came under fire; investigations by the U.S. military and the Iraqi government -- and initial findings by the FBI -- concluded that no one fired except the contractors.

Source / Washington Post

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DEA Uses Blackwater to Raid Medical Marijuana Providers

Blackwater does the DEA's job in Culver City, Cal.
'I guess none of their usual buddies were available'
By Rebecca Saltzman

Last week the DEA raided a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City, Cal., spending hours on site detaining employees and ultimately leaving the facility in disarray. This is unfortunately not an unusal story. Since 2005, the DEA has raided dozens of state-sanctioned dispensaries in California.

But this time was different. We’re used to the DEA calling in help from various federal agencies and local law enforcement. But I guess none of their usual buddies were available yesterday because from the picture below, which appeared in the LA Times today, it looks like they had to resort to calling in Blackwater:

The DEA often likes to say that medical marijuana is not their top priority (though at the height of the raids last year, they were raiding an average of one dispensary per week). They like to argue that medical marijuana raids do not take resources away from other drug interdiction. Yet this photo [above] makes me wonder - if they have sufficient resources to shut down meth labs and to bust medical marijuana providers, why do they need the help of Blackwater, a private agency?

Yet another reason we need Congress to hold oversight hearings on DEA medical marijuana activities. Good to know that House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers is concerned about this issue and has already begun to question the DEA on its actions.

Source / Americans for Safe Access / Posted August 1, 2008

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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Security Was Not Part of the Master Plan, Ever

Blackwater's Not Going Anywhere
By Jeremy Scahill / July 30, 2008

It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush Administration's favorite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina whence they came. Or at least that's how it is being portrayed in the media.

This story broke on July 21, when the Associated Press ran an article based on lengthy interviews with Blackwater's top guns. Since then, the story has picked up considerable steam and generated a tremendous amount of buzz online and in the press. After all, Blackwater has long been a key part of the US occupation and has been at the center of several high-profile scandals and deadly incidents. Add to that its owner's ties to the White House and the radical religious right in the United States and it is clear why this is news. On top of that, Barack Obama-a critic of Blackwater-had just completed a tour of Iraq, where he was touting his "withdrawal plan."

Among the headlines: "Blackwater Plans Exit From Guard Work," "Blackwater Getting Out Of Security Business," "Blackwater Sounds Retreat From Private Security Business," and "Blackwater to Leave Security Business." One blogger slapped this headline on his post: "Blackwater, Worst Organization Since SS, To End Mercenary Work."

Frankly, this is a whole lot of hype.

Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Even if-and this is a big if-the company pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, here is the cold, hard fact: business has never been better for Blackwater, and its future looks bright. More on this in a moment.

Back to the matter at hand:

Complaining that negative media attention and Congressional and criminal investigations are hurting business and that the Blackwater name had become a catch-all target for antiwar protesters, the company's brass told the AP Blackwater was shifting its focus to its other areas of government contracting, like law enforcement and military training, as well as logistics.

"The experience we've had would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at risk," said Erik Prince, Blackwater's reclusive, 39-year-old founder and owner. Company president Gary Jackson said Blackwater has become like the "Coca-Cola" of war contractors, a brand representing all private companies servicing the Iraq occupation. Jackson charged the company had been falsely portrayed in the media, saying, "If [the media] could get it right, we might stay in the business."

All of this sounds a bit like whining on a children's playground.

Shame on journalists for not recognizing the noble work of the gallant heroes and patriots (who happen to be paid much more than US troops, have not been subjected to any system of law and can leave the war zone any moment they choose) and forcing Blackwater to consider abandoning its (very profitable, billion-dollar) charitable humanitarian campaign in Iraq. Remember, according to Blackwater, it is not a mercenary organization, it is a "Peace and Stability" operation employing "Global Stabilization Professionals."

While they were at it, Jackson and Prince should have blamed those wretched seventeen Iraqi civilians who had the audacity to step in front of the bullets flying out of Blackwater's weapons in Baghdad's Nisour Square last September. After all, following those killings, Erik Prince told the US Congress that the only innocent people his men may have killed or injured in Iraq died as a result of "ricochets" and "traffic accidents." If that is true, Nisour Square might have been the most lethal jaywalking incident in world history.

As for the current hype, the day after the AP story broke, Blackwater's longtime spokesperson Anne Tyrrell was quick to clarify the matter. Blackwater, she said, has no immediate plans to exit the security business. "As long as we're asked, we'll do it," she said. Meanwhile, the State Department, which renewed Blackwater's contract for another year in April, says it has received no communication from the company indicating it is not going to continue on in Iraq. "They have not indicated to us that they are attempting to get out of our current contract," said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy.

As of 2005-2006, according to the company, about half of Blackwater's business was made up of its security work in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and post-Katrina New Orleans. Today, Jackson says it is about 30 percent. "If I could get it down to 2 percent or 1 percent, I would go there," he said in the interview.

Blackwater, like all companies operating in US war zones, is following political developments very closely. The company may be bracing for a possible shift in policy should Obama win in November. Blackwater could be contemplating resignation before termination. On the other hand, Obama has sent mixed messages on the future of war contractors under his Iraq policy. While he has been very critical of the war industry in general-and Blackwater specifically-he has also indicated he will not "rule out" using private armed contractors at least for a time in Iraq.

Perhaps Blackwater has already gotten what it needed from Iraq: more than a billion dollars in contracts and a bad-ass reputation, which has served it well. In May, Blackwater boasted of "two successive quarters of unprecedented growth." Among its current initiatives:

Erik Prince's private spy agency, Total Intelligence Solutions, is now open for business, placing capabilities once the sovereign realm of governments on the open market. Run by three veteran CIA operatives, the company offers "CIA-type services" to Fortune 1000 companies and governments.

Blackwater was asked by the Pentagon to bid for a share of a whopping $15 billion contract to "fight terrorists with drug-trade ties" in a US program that targets countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The New York Times said it could be the company's "biggest job" ever.

Blackwater is wrapping up work on its own armored vehicle, the Grizzly, as well as its Polar Airship 400, a surveillance blimp Blackwater wants to market to the Department of Homeland security for use in monitoring the US-Mexico border.

On top of this, Blackwater affiliate Greystone Ltd., registered offshore in Barbados, is an old-fashioned mercenary operation offering "personnel from the best militaries throughout the world" for hire by governments and private organizations. It also boasts of a "multi-national peacekeeping program," with forces "specializing in crowd control and less than lethal techniques and military personnel for the less stable areas of operation." Greystone's name has been conspicuously absent in this current news cycle.

At the end of the day, maybe this is just a story, a whole lot of hype and a dash of misdirection from a pretty savvy company. Safe money would dictate that Blackwater plans on continuing to be, well, Blackwater.

Consider this: the other day Blackwater president Gary Jackson told the AP, "Security was not part of the master plan, ever."

Interesting claim. It was, in fact, Jackson himself who, back at the beginning of the Iraq occupation, described his goal for Blackwater as such: "I would like to have the largest, most professional private army in the world."

Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!.

Source / The Nation

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Outsourcing the Iraq War

Mercenary recruiters turn to Latin America
By Eric Stoner

In October, Erik Prince, the 39-year-old CEO of Blackwater Worldwide, a leading private security company operating in Iraq, went into damage-control mode. Blackwater employees in Baghdad’s Nisour Square had killed 17 Iraqi civilians the previous month, causing an uproar and the suspension of official diplomatic convoys throughout the country for four days. Making the rounds with the media and testifying before Congress, Prince repeatedly said that his employees are not mercenaries, as critics contend. Citing the definition of a mercenary as “a professional soldier working for a foreign government,” Prince told the House Oversight Committee that in contrast, Blackwater’s employees are “Americans working for America, protecting Americans.”

This statement would come as a surprise—and a slap in the face—to the thousands of Latin Americans and others from outside the United States whom the company has hired to fill its contracts in Iraq since the war began. Greystone Limited, a Blackwater affiliate set up in 2004 in the tax haven of Barbados, has recruited Iraq security guards from countries throughout Latin America, including Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama, as journalist Jeremy Scahill has reported.

But Blackwater is far from the only such company hiring “third-country nationals,” or employees who are not from the United States or Iraq. In the interest of improving profit margins, private military firms in Iraq are increasingly turning to the developing world for armed guards. Peter Singer, a leading expert on the private security industry at the Brookings Institution, has estimated that there are citizens from 30 countries employed as security contractors in Iraq. While ex-soldiers from the Balkans, Fiji, Nepal, the Philippines, South Africa, and Uganda are all common in Iraq, Latin America has proven to be a particularly fertile recruiting ground for these companies.

Latin America, says Adam Isacson, director of programs at the Center for International Policy, is a predictable site for U.S. mercenary companies to recruit personnel. In “what other region of the world are you going to find reasonably westernized people with military experience, in some cases with combat experience, who will work for low wages, who speak a language that a lot of our own military personnel speak,” he asks, noting that the U.S. Army is about a quarter Latino and that Latin America accounts for about 40% of U.S. military training programs worldwide. “It’s their natural ground to find people with military experience for whom $1,000 a month is a lot of money.”

One of the first people to recognize the role that Latin America could play in the booming new mercenary industry was José Miguel Pizarro Ovalle, a former arms broker. Indeed, it was Pizarro who “opened the door” for these firms to recruit in the region, as José Luis Gómez del Prado, head of the United Nations Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, told Mother Jones magazine. A dual citizen of Chile and the United States, Pizarro served in the militaries of both countries and to this day defends the Pinochet dictatorship. After leaving the Marines as a translator for the U.S. Southern Command in 1999, Pizarro decided to cash in on his unique connections and began facilitating arms deals between Latin American militaries and U.S. manufacturers. Shortly after the United States invaded Iraq, he set his eyes on a new lucrative business opportunity: the provision of Chileans to mercenary companies.

In October 2003, Pizarro traveled to Blackwater’s headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, to pitch the idea. Prince was receptive during their meeting and gave him the go-ahead. Pizarro returned immediately to Chile and placed a discreet ad in El Mercurio, the Santiago daily, looking for former military officers for “work abroad.” More than 1,000 applicants quickly responded, and by February 2004, Blackwater’s first batch of Chilean commandos, 77 of them, was on its way to Iraq. Offering the unusually high salary of about $3,000 per month, Blackwater began hiring a steady stream of Pizarro’s men for the “static protection” of State Department and Coalition Provisional Authority buildings. The Chileans were still a relative bargain, considering that former U.S. or British special forces can be paid as much as $1,000 per day in Iraq, according to The New York Times.

Pizarro soon branched out and began providing Chileans to Triple Canopy, another large private military company in Iraq, offering salaries of only $1,000 per month. This paltry sum—though an enormous amount for many Latin Americans—has since become the going rate for recruits throughout the region. All told, Pizarro says he contracted 756 Chileans for the two companies, and possibly others, while he was in business, Scahill reported. The actual number of Chileans in Iraq is undoubtedly higher, since mercenary firms also operate there clandestinely. Chilean senator Alejandro Navarro, an outspoken critic of the private war industry, has estimated that about 2,200 Chileans have been to Iraq and that 1,000 remain there, according to the Buenos Aires–based newspaper Página 12 and Chile’s Santiago Times.

The money may have been good for Pizarro, but controversy was never far behind. In order to skirt Chilean law, which prohibits “the act of providing or offering the services of private armed guards, in any form or designation, by any natural or artificial person,” Pizarro hired Chileans for Blackwater through Neskowin, a firm he set up in Uruguay, while using a different company called Global Guards, registered in Panama, for his business with Triple Canopy. And since paramilitary activity is also banned in Chile, the limited training that recruits received often took place either in Amman, Jordan, or in Iraq, once the Chileans arrived, as the UN Working Group found.

Reports surfaced shortly after this paramilitary pipeline between Chile and Iraq began flowing that Pizarro was posting flyers on military bases and using e-mail to lure active-duty military personnel to the private sector. One Chilean contractor who went to Iraq through one of Pizarro’s companies told the UN Working Group that 17 of his fellow active-duty soldiers “had requested leave to be recruited.”

Given the recent history of repressive regimes throughout the region, it is likely that many Latin Americans working for private military firms in Iraq have been responsible for human rights abuses in their home countries. For instance, Louis E. V. Nevaer reported in 2004: “Newspapers in Chile have estimated that approximately 37 Chileans in Iraq are seasoned veterans of the Pinochet era.” Some argue that this is merely a result of poor vetting, while others do not see it as an accident. As Tito Tricot, a former political prisoner who was tortured under the dictatorship in Chile, told Scahill, the Chileans working for these firms in Iraq “are valued for their expertise in kidnapping, torturing, and killing defenseless civilians.”

“What should be a national shame,” Tricot added, “turns into a market asset due to the privatization of the Iraq war.” In the end, Pizarro was fined and sentenced to 61 days in jail for his recruitment activity, a punishment that is not likely to dissuade many from following in his shoes. Nonetheless, he has appealed the sentence and is currently walking free. Meanwhile, Triple Canopy, which according to State Department figures relies far more on foreign hiring than Blackwater, filled its contract to protect the U.S. Embassy and other sites in Baghdad’s Green Zone by hiring recruits almost exclusively from Latin America (especially El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Honduras), as Foreign Policy magazine noted. In 2005, a local subsidiary of Chicago-based Your Solutions began recruiting for the company in Honduras.

The company trained its recruits—including a group of Chileans who entered the country with tourist visas—at the former military base in Lepaterique. Located just outside Tegucigalpa, the base is a notorious legacy of the Contra war, having been used by Washington in the 1980s to train Nicaraguan counter-insurgents, as well as Honduras’s infamous Battalion 316 death squad. Echoing this gruesome past, one Triple Canopy trainee explained that he and his fellow recruits were instructed “to be heartless when it was up to us to kill someone, even if it was a child,” Agence France-Presse reported. After only several months in operation, the Honduran government fined Your Solutions and kicked the company out of the country for violating the law, which prohibits the training of foreign soldiers on its soil. Nevertheless, before the ax fell, Triple Canopy trained and sent at least 189 Hondurans and 105 Chileans to Iraq, according to the UN Working Group.

In the spring of 2003, public opinion in Latin America was vehemently, and overwhelmingly, opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Despite significant pressure from the Bush administration, only a handful of countries in the region joined the so-called Coalition of the Willing, contributing a combined total of slightly more than 1,000 soldiers to the U.S.-led war effort. While Latin America government officials’ recalcitrance on the war may have dealt a diplomatic blow to the United States, it did not stop thousands of poor ex-soldiers and former police officers throughout the region from performing essentially military functions in Iraq—under a corporate logo rather than their country’s flag.

The unprecedented privatization of the war in Iraq has given rise to a private military industry that was all but nonexistent 20 years ago. In the 1991 Gulf War, for example, there was one contractor for every 60 soldiers on the ground. While the exact number of private personnel in Iraq today is likely higher than official estimates, at least 180,000 private contractors are working there, according to recent government figures cited in the Los Angeles Times. As Scahill noted in congressional testimony, this makes the U.S. military—with roughly 160,000 troops in the country—the “junior partner in the coalition that’s occupying Iraq.”

Not only are far more contractors operating in war zones than in the past, but they are now responsible for many tasks that used to be carried out exclusively by the military. One of the most controversial roles being outsourced is armed protection for convoys, government facilities and diplomats. According to the Private Security Company Association of Iraq there are more than 180 such companies in operation that now employ 70,000 armed private security contractors in the country, and that number is only growing.

Established in 2005 to monitor this new industry, the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries has warned that these so-called “security guards” are “in fact private soldiers militarily armed,” and that the companies that employ them in Iraq constitute “new expressions of mercenarism in the twenty-first century.”

One of those mercenaries was Mario Urquía, a 30-year veteran of the special forces in Honduras. Hired by Triple Canopy, Urquía guarded the U.S. Embassy in Iraq for a year and claims the company promised him U.S. citizenship once he completed his contract. Not only did that prove false, but he also says that he was never paid. “Not a single penny,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune. Urquía filed a complaint against Your Solutions with the Honduran authorities, as have at least 16 others, but his case is not being pursued because he is not currently in the country. After receiving death threats for sharing his story with the Honduran press and exposing those involved in Your Solutions’ operations there, Urquía was forced to flee the country.

Another Honduran guard badly injured his foot while in Iraq. Despite signing a contract that states the employer is responsible for providing medical and hospital insurance, he was not declared unfit for work and forced to man his lookout tower on crutches. Stories like these are not unique for those in the region who have worked for private security companies. According to the UN Working Group, the Hondurans who went to Iraq with Triple Canopy reported “irregularities in contracts, harsh working conditions with excessive working hours, wages partially paid or unpaid, ill-treatment and isolation, and lack of basic necessities such as medical treatment and sanitation.”

In a recent statement, Triple Canopy said it no longer recruits from either Honduras or Chile, but “continues to hire security personnel from Latin America to work in Iraq because they are diligent workers, reliable, professional and in some instances specifically requested by our U.S. government customers.” Since 2005, when the company was booted out of Honduras, most its recruits have come from Peru. In February 2007, one of Triple Canopy’s subcontractors indicated that the company had 1,130 Peruvians working in Iraq at the time. The stories of exploitation that they bring home, however, vary little from those of Hondurans and others. One group of five guards, for example, has filed a complaint against the company for sending them to work in Baghdad’s Red Zone, despite being hired to protect the Green Zone. Another guard says that for six days he was held in custody and isolation in degrading conditions after telling his supervisors that he planned on returning home.

Peruvian contractors, much like those from other countries, have little legal recourse when something goes wrong. Their contracts stipulate that they voluntarily accept every risk “known and unknown,” and exonerate Triple Canopy from any liability even if the contractor is harmed by the company itself. Often signing their contracts in a rush on the way to the airport, the Peruvians are also likely unaware that any claims against the company must be filed in a court in Virginia, where Triple Canopy is headquartered. In fact, in some countries security contractors have said that they were given a contract to sign only once they were on the plane, at which point they realized that their salary would be much less than promised.

While private security outfits have run into trouble in some countries, many others continue with business as usual. “Not only has this phenomenon not stopped,” says Amada Benavides de Pérez, a member of the UN Working Group, but recruitment in Latin America actually “has been increasing.” To address this problem, Benavides proposes a two-pronged strategy: strengthening laws at both the national and international level, and passing a regional treaty, similar to the 1977 convention against mercenaries that exists for Africa.

In the end, however, it comes down to supply and demand. Without reversing the radical privatization agenda that has taken hold in Washington, the U.S. war machine will inevitably continue to rely on private forces. Indeed, it is in the interest of pro-war U.S. policy makers to outsource the human costs of war for as long as possible.

[Eric Stoner is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and Yahoo News. He recently served as a researcher on the revised, updated version of Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books, 2008). This article was published by the North American Congress on Latin America.]

Source. / NACLA / Posted July 1, 2008

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Blackwater Plane Crash Defense : Use Islamic Law

On Nov. 27, 2004, a Presidential Airlines flight, known as "Blackwater Flight 61 crashed into a mountain in Afghanistan, killing all six on board: three crew members and three U.S. soldiers. The families of the soldiers have sued the contractor. Photo: National Transportation Safety Board
Want "Blackwater 61" lawsuit
determined by religious doctrine
by Joseph Neff and Jay Price / June 19, 2008

RALEIGH - To defend itself against a lawsuit by the widows of three American soldiers who died on one of its planes in Afghanistan, a sister company of the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using Islamic law, known as Shari'a.

The lawsuit "is governed by the law of Afghanistan," Presidential Airways argued in a Florida federal court. "Afghan law is largely religion-based and evidences a strong concern for ensuring moral responsibility, and deterring violations of obligations within its borders."

If the judge agrees, it would essentially end the lawsuit over a botched flight supporting the U.S. military. Shari'a law does not hold a company responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their work.

Erik Prince, who owns Blackwater and Presidential Airways, briefly discussed the lawsuit in a meeting Wednesday with editors and reporters at The News & Observer. Prince was asked to justify having a case involving an American company working for the U.S. government decided by Afghan law.

"Where did the crash occur?" Prince said. "Afghanistan."

Joseph Schmitz, Prince's general counsel, said Presidential Airways was asking the federal judge to follow past U.S. cases where courts have applied another country's laws to resolve damages that occurred overseas.

The crash of Blackwater Flight 61 occurred in the rugged mountains of central Afghanistan in 2004, killing three soldiers and the three-man crew.

The widows of the soldiers sued Presidential Airways, Blackwater's sister company, which was under contract with the U.S. military to fly cargo and personnel around Afghanistan.

Presidential Airways argued that the lawsuit must be dismissed; legal doctrine holds that soldiers cannot sue the government, and the company was acting as an agent of the government.

Last year, a series of federal judges dismissed that argument.

In April, Presidential asked a federal judge in Florida to dismiss the lawsuit because the case is controlled by Afghanistan's Islamic law. If the judge agrees that Afghan law applies, the lawsuit would be dismissed. The company also plans to ask a judge to dismiss the lawsuit on the constitutional grounds that a court should not interfere in military decision-making.

The National Transportation Safety Board has blamed the crash on Presidential for its "failure to require its flight crews to file and fly a defined route" and for not providing oversight to make sure its crews followed company policies and Pentagon and federal aviation safety regulations.

Source. / newsobserver.com

Speaking of Blackwater: Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater is Still in Charge, Deadly, Above the Law and Out of Control / AlterNet / June 19, 2008

Thanks to Ted Samsel / The Rag Blog

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