Blackwater

Blackwater Faulted In Military Reports From Shooting Scene

By Sudarsan Raghavan, Joshua Partlow and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 5, 2007; A01

BAGHDAD, Oct. 4 -- U.S. military reports from the scene of the Sept. 16 shooting incident involving the security firm Blackwater USA indicate that its guards opened fire without provocation and used excessive force against Iraqi civilians, according to a senior U.S. military official.

The reports came to light as an Interior Ministry official and five eyewitnesses described a second deadly shooting minutes after the incident in Nisoor Square. The same Blackwater security guards, after driving about 150 yards away from the square, fired into a crush of cars, killing one person and injuring two, the Iraqi official said.

The U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the shooting incident in Nisoor Square, in which hospital records say at least 14 people were killed and 18 were wounded.

"It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," said the U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident remains the subject of several investigations. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. And none of the IP or any of the local security forces fired back at them," he added, using a military abbreviation for the Iraqi police. The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired grenade launchers in addition to machine guns, the official said.

The company has said its guards acted appropriately after being attacked. Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince, in previously unpublicized remarks prepared for delivery at a congressional hearing Tuesday, said the Blackwater guards "came under small-arms fire" and "returned fire at threatening targets."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack hinted Thursday that Blackwater guards could face legal proceedings. Announcing a decision to have FBI agents lead a State Department inquiry into the shootings, he said it was "a hedge against the possibility that an investigation leads to the point where there may need to be a referral" to U.S. prosecutors.

In response to the shootings, the Pentagon is also conducting a broad review of its relationship with the private security contractors it employs. The military has issued about 7,000 weapons permits to private contractors, the senior U.S. military official said, but has stopped issuing new permits until it can review who has the weapons and how they have been used.

Many U.S. military officials are critical of Blackwater because its guards have a reputation for reckless behavior that officials say reflects poorly on American troops in Iraq. Iraqi citizens often do not distinguish between U.S. soldiers in Humvees and Blackwater guards in armored vehicles.

"They tend to overreact to a lot of things. They maneuver around town very aggressively, they've got weapons pointed at people, they cut people off, of course their speeds -- I mean a whole bunch of things they do fairly consistently. But when it comes to shooting and firing, they tend to shoot quicker than others," the U.S. military official said.

U.S. soldiers have reviewed statements from eyewitnesses and video footage recorded at Nisoor Square, the official said. Members of a U.S. unit working with Iraqi police were present in the area at the time of the shootings. U.S. soldiers also helped ferry victims to hospitals.

Blackwater, whose primary task in Iraq is to protect U.S. diplomats, has been unwilling to share information about the incident with the U.S. military, the official said, adding that military officials went to Blackwater's compound in the Green Zone but were denied access to company managers.

Anne Tyrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said the company was "cooperating with all investigations" and deferred further comment until they are complete.

The prepared testimony of Blackwater Chairman Prince is the company's fullest accounting to date of the events at Nisoor Square. Portions of the remarks dealing with the incident were left out of his testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after the Justice Department, on the morning of the hearing, warned that the incident was under investigation and should not be discussed in public session.

The testimony said that after a Blackwater team delivered a U.S. government official to a Baghdad destination, a "very large" car bomb exploded "in close proximity to their location." After the team "secured its principal and requested support for its evacuation," a second Blackwater team proceeded to an intersection "approximately one mile away from the explosion site to secure a route of egress" for the first team.

When the second team arrived at Nisoor Square, it said, "they came under small-arms fire and notified the first team to proceed along a different route. The vehicle team still in the intersection continued to receive fire, and some team members returned fire at threatening targets. Among the threats identified were men with AK-47s firing on the convoy, as well as approaching vehicles that appeared to be suicide car bombers."

The team attempted to leave, but "one of their vehicles was disabled by enemy fire" and eventually had to be towed. "Some of those firing on this Blackwater team appeared to be wearing Iraqi National Police uniforms, or portions of such uniforms. As the withdrawal occurred, the Blackwater vehicles remained under fire from such personnel."

According to Prince's prepared testimony, which cautioned that his "current understanding" remained incomplete, only five members of the 20-member team ever discharged their weapons "in response to the threat." Blackwater helicopters "did assist in directing the teams to safety, but contrary to some reports, no one in the helicopters discharged any weapons."

In the testimony he did deliver, Prince said that "based on everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone." He said that there was a "rush to judgment based on inaccurate information, and many public reports have wrongly pronounced Blackwater's guilt for the death of varying numbers of civilians."

McCormack, the State Department spokesman, did not say under which U.S. laws Blackwater employees could face prosecution. Contractors are immune from Iraqi law under an order issued by the U.S. occupation government in 2004. Although Defense Department contractors are liable under U.S. military codes, the extent to which those working for State are within the jurisdiction of U.S. civilian courts remains "murky," the head of the department's diplomatic security operations said in congressional testimony Tuesday.

Blackwater and other security firms providing personal security under contract to the State Department have been implicated in a number of previous Iraqi civilian deaths, injuries and property damage incidents in recent years, but no one has ever been prosecuted in the incidents.

Andrew J. Moonen, 27, a former Blackwater employee from Kalispell, Mont., was identified Thursday as the primary suspect in the killing of an Iraqi vice president's bodyguard last Christmas Eve inside the Green Zone. Lawyer Stewart P. Riley confirmed that he was representing the U.S. Army veteran but declined to say whether Moonen had been interviewed by investigators. The New York Times revealed Moonen's identity.

"I want to underscore that he has cooperated from the very beginning and has never stopped cooperating," Riley said.

Eyewitnesses to the events of Sept. 16 said the Blackwater convoy, after leaving Nisoor Square, headed north and drove into a knot of cars trying to go down a side road to avoid the square.

"They came at a high speed," said Uday Khalid, 25, a policeman. "They just wanted to escape. They were shooting their way out. They were yelling and shouting."

One Iraqi driver slammed on his brakes and tried to turn around, as did other cars. But a Blackwater guard "immediately opened fire on them," said Amar Kurdi, 30, a policeman who tried to manage the traffic to allow the convoy to pass through.

Kurdi said that he saw only the guards from the rearmost Blackwater vehicle shooting. But the Iraqi Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is close to the Iraqi government's investigation of the incident, said guards fired from all four vehicles.

The Blackwater guards fired warning shots whenever one of the police officers tried to help the injured, the officers said. "We tried to help the people who were shot, but they wouldn't let us," said Mahdi Daoud, 29, another policeman guarding a civil defense compound.

Moments later, the road cleared and the convoy sped away.

DeYoung reported from Washington. Staff writers Steve Fainaru in El Cerrito, Calif., and Ann Scott Tyson in Washington, and special correspondents Saad al-Izzi and K.I. Ibrahim contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday ordered federal agents to ride with Blackwater USA escorts of U.S. diplomatic convoys in Baghdad to tighten oversight after a shooting in which private guards are accused of killing 13 Iraqi civilians.


She also ordered video cameras installed in Blackwater vehicles.

"It's like we've woken up to the fact the emperor has no clothes, but now we're just putting a scarf on it," said Singer, an expert in military contracting.

He said some reports had shown that the Justice Department had had as many as 20 suspected crimes referred to it, but only one had been prosecuted.

"They just disappear into the black hole of DOJ," Singer said. "The bill does its best to sort of force the hand of the executive branch to do something about contractors, but at end of the day, the ball will be in the executive branch's hands to act or not."

Jim Schmitt, senior vice president of ArmorGroup of North America, a private security contractor, agreed.

"The actual application . . . is only effective if there's a mechanism to create the oversight," Schmitt said. "If we create the law on books and don't have resources, it's very difficult for the law to be enforced."

He said most contractors already operated under the assumption that any crimes committed could send their workers before American juries.

"For our company, it has very little impact," he said. "We've lost individuals in Iraq, but we've never had a breach of law."

Congress decided two years ago that all private security contractors working with the Defense Department should come under the U.S. criminal code.

The bill approved Thursday would expand that to all security contractors, a significant move given the extensive bodyguard work done for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The bill also would require the Bush administration to set up specialized FBI offices in Iraq and Afghanistan to investigate suspected misdeeds.

Amendments approved this week require the Justice Department to give Congress a report on all allegations of misdeeds reported to the agency and how it handled them.

The White House said Wednesday that it supports accountability but "strongly opposes" the bill, calling the jurisdiction vague and saying the FBI offices would stretch the agency too thin. It expressed concerns that the bill would hurt intelligence operations if contractors were exposed through investigations.

It also questioned whether Congress was infringing on the powers of the executive branch.

BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi officials are negotiating Baghdad's demand that security company Blackwater USA be expelled from the country within six months, and American diplomats appear to be working on how to fill the security gap if the company is phased out.

The talks about Blackwater's future in Iraq flow from recommendations in an Iraqi government report on the incident Sept. 16 when, Iraqi officials determined, Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation in Baghdad's Nisoor Square and killed 17 Iraqi citizens.

The Iraqi investigators issued five recommendations to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has since sent them to the U.S. Embassy as demands for action.

Point No. 2 in the report says:

"The Iraqi government should demand that the United States stops using the services of Blackwater in Iraqi within six months and replace it with a new, more disciplined organization that would be answerable to Iraqi laws."

Sami al-Askari, a top aide to al-Maliki, said that point in the Iraqi list of demands was nonnegotiable.

"I believe the government has been clear. There have been attacks on the lives of Iraqi citizens on the part of that company (Blackwater). It must be expelled. The government has given six months for its expulsion and it's left to the U.S. Embassy to determine with Blackwater when to terminate the contract. The American administration must find another company," he told AP.

Why are they negotiating if it is "nonnegotiable?" I mean Iraq is supposed to sovereign; so if they say the company has got to go; then what else is there for the US to say except Ok?