Today's House Hearing on Blackwater Security Firm in Iraq
CSPAN Channel 3 had the hearing today about the Blackwater Security firm in Iraq, which was held by the House Oversight Committee run by Congressman Henry Waxman, a Democrat who has usually used this committee to bash President Bush. Below are my comments, and at the bottom are yesterday's articles on Blackwater. Ignore the typos - I will fix them this weekend.
Here is an excerpt from the Committee notification email on the purpose of the hearing:
...the Oversight Committee is holding a hearing to examine the mission and performance of private military contractor Blackwater USA in Iraq and Afghanistan. Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, will testify as well as three State Department officials.
The hearing will provide members the opportunity to address three key questions: (1) Is Blackwater’s presence advancing or undermining U.S. efforts? (2) Has State Department responded appropriately to the shooting incidents involving Blackwater forces? (3) What are the costs to U.S. taxpayers for the reliance on Blackwater and other private military contractors?
When in Iraq, I periodically saw the Blackwater teams in the Presidential Palace, sometimes walking the resident 2004/2005 Ambassador John Negroponte (now Deputy Secretary of State) or Ambassador Khalizhad in or out of the building. We also could always tell when a high profile person was leaving or arriving in the Embassy area because Blackwater always flew a small helicopter over the route of the convoy. Once I was outside the compound of the Commission of Public Integrity carrying an AK-47 and found they don't like that as the helicopter immediately swooped down on me to inspect who I was.
I remember sitting at a lunch table with Blackwater guys once talking about their security runs on "Route Irish" which was the highway from the Greenzone to the Baghdad Airport, and one burly, tattoed gunfighter type said he loved it... "it is a target rich environment..." he said. Later, daytime trips for Coalition staff to the airport were stopped, and we had to go in nightime convoys in armored buses late at night. Other security firms included DynCorp, Triple Canopy, Erinys and UK's Aegis. During 2004-2005 there also was a firm that managed the British Gurkha's which manned the doorways and Embassy entrances. However, the State Dept. went to bid in 2005 and went for a lower bidder, Triple Canopy, who brought in all new, inexperienced Latin men from Peru, Columbia and other South Latin America countries. None of them spoke english, and I may write an entire separate article just about the fiasco that followed.
Blackwater guys used to come back from security runs in the afternoon, and put on skimpy swimsuits, arrange the chairs by Saddam's Palace Pool, and ogle the women who had to walk by to get to their trailers. That bachelor attitude changed after the State Dept. took over control of Iraq in 2004, and the late night parties by the pool had to close down at a 10pm curfew. Soon, most security firms moved into their own compounds in the Green Zone to escape State Dept. rules.
Each security firm had their own philosophy on how to conduct convoy security. Some, like the British firm Kroll, went low profile, wearing Iraqi type clothes and using British Range Rovers of various colors, rather than the standard black Suburban you seen in the movies. I went with them once on a run to see the head of the Board of Supreme Audit (like the GAO in the US) and they made me wear a scarf to cover up my army green armored vest.
In contrast, Blackwater believed in high profile, fast, aggressive driving, and were known for firing on Iraqis if their cars got to close to a convoy. Those signs (and a T-shirt I have) that say "Stay at least 100m away or you will be shot" in both english and arabic were true. It was not uncommon to hear racing noises and see two Blackwater suburbans careening around a corner side by side as part of their high profile method of "protection"
You can go to the Committee website and watch archived videos of all their hearings at:
www.oversight.house.gov
Below are my comments as the hearing progresses.
Henry Waxman is reading his opening statement.
The committee also wants to know how much contractors make. My experience in auditing large construction firms is that profits are HIDDEN in many different places, rather than a publicly embarrassing number. For instance, a contract might say they get 3% of the total for small tools, but there is not requirement that those funds be actually spent, or the tools be accounted for, or that they be used for the next contract. Additionally, I once found at Bechtel that the contract would say they get to claim expenses for the amounts specified by their personnel manual for retirement. But, when I asked (this was in the 1970's for an oil company), I found that they got the amount the manual said (about 11% of wages) but there was no requirement to actually have a retirement plan with actual expenses. It turned out that Bechtel was an employee owned company and instead of retirement funds, the employees received bonuses. So, what if the bonuses were only 7% and the firm kept the other 4% of wages for "profit". We weren't allowed to find out since the contract did not specify the 11% actually be paid out. The process was used because project managers (this was at ARCO) could make themselves look good by agreeing to contracts with low stated profits like 6%, but the contractor was getting much bigger internal profits by hiding them in various accounts.
Opening statements continue - Congressman Darrell Issa, R, from San Diego, is saying that the meeting should focus on finding how Blackwater should be monitored, and not as a platform to attack the War in Iraq. He did make a good point, saying that there were more than 1500 private security workers in Iraq (I assume that is just Blackwater), and that once we wind down in Iraq, we don't need them, thus we shouldn't replace temporary contractors with permanent security forces when they won't be needed in a few months or years.
My comment: The State Dept. doesn't pay well, so they get young, inexperienced RSO (Regional Security Officers) staff who can't compare to the Blackwater types in experience. Additionally, the RSO and the State Dept. are not warriors, and are not used to being in conflict areas, so they don't have the battle experience, and are VERY risk averse. For instance, when State took over from Paul Bremer in 2004, they mandated that all existing staff turn in any guns and weapons (we all had captured AK-47's, etc.) which was not viewed favorably by the staff. Some people quit because they didn't trust the State Dept. to protect them. To illustrate how risk averse the State Dept. is, they mandated that no one could use the high diving board at the Palace Pool because the water depth in the pool did not meet US safety standards. So, the diving board was wrapped in yellow "crime scene" tape and no one could use it. State also mandated that no one could carry guns and be drinking on the Palace grounds - another reason why the security firms moved off the Palace premises.
State also doesn't want military to protect embassies, so as not to appear "warlike", thus plain clothes contractors are the only solution.
Democrat Dennis Kucinich from Ohio is now ranting with statistics, and then saying "this illustrates why the War in Iraq is a disaster..." and doesn't provide any Blackwater specific questions. - just what Issa was warning about.
While I was working at the Commission on Public Integrity in Baghdad in 2005, one of the Iraqis I worked with had his car's radiator shot out by a US security firm, and could never get compensation for it. He said he was behind a convoy and apparently, without warning, they fired on him.
The founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, is now talking. "No individual protected by Blackwater has ever been killed" he says. While Prince is reading his statement, one of the Congressmen is flipping through a newspaper and reading it. Another is sitting and reading email on his Blackberry. "Weapons were discharged in less than 3% of security missions", Prince says.
Waxman starts with questions, talking about the issue of using the US military for security rather than contractors like Blackwater. My comment is that the military and State are like oil and water - they hate each other. They wouldn't cooperate in policy meetings that I saw, and many military officers had higher level education and training than the average State Dept. person, so the military didn't respect them at all.
Waxman continues, talking about a Blackwater plane crash in Afghanistan and whether they act like "cowboys". Prince dissents. Waxman goes on, reading details from a crash report which has nothing to do with Blackwater in Iraq. Prince says that the main clients in Iraq were the US State Dept. officials, officials from the Iraq Reconstruction program (where I worked) and "Codels" which are Congressional trips to Iraq. It was not uncommon for me to be walking in the Embassy halls and encounter a swarm of security guys with a Congressman or Senator, including both Kerry and Lieberman who I saw.
Prince is asked by North Carolina Republican Congressman McHenry(Blackwater is based in NC) how many missions in 2007 and how many "incidents" occurred, and said that there were 1873 missions (or trips) and 56 incidents where weapons were involved. In 2006, they had 6256 missions, and only 38 return fire incidents. Blackwater started under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA under Paul Bremer) in 2004 (or maybe '03) and continued with the State Dept. when they took over responsibility for Iraq in July, 2004.
Ranking congressman Tom Davis (R) continued with questions:
Blackwater earns their fees by billing on a "man day" basis. The contract is on a firm fixed price for most components (i.e. a specific amount per day per position, I assume) and some are cost plus like insurance. There are many penalty clauses in the contract related to being fully manned, etc. "We are very responsive to how the State Dept. wants things...if our person doesn't work out for the State Dept. there are only two decisions - Window or Aisle", says Prince, referring to seat selections on the plane leaving Baghdad.
I can agree with that. State wasn't very tolerant if you didn't follow their rules. One contractor got drunk and fell asleep on a bench by the pool. A passing State Dept. official had him sent home the next day. Another drunk contractor was driving a girl home after a party and hit a divider - they also sent him home the next day. I would bet that more than 50% of any security contractors sent home were sent because they got caught drunk in a public area by the State Dept. RSO or military. (They had many late night parties).
Prince said they have fired 122 employees for cause, including poor discipline, etc.
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D) discussed a situation in December, 2006 when a Blackwater contractor was drunk and shot and killed a guard to an Iraqi VP. She focused on the one incident and what happened to the contractor, whether he was prosecuted by the Iraqi justice system, etc. "In America," she says, "a similar crime would result in an arrest and prosecution by the local police", but that didn't happen in Iraq. The employee was sent home. Prince said they fired the man and fined him, but had no jurisdiction to hold him. The Justice department has been investigating, but nothing happened in the last 10 months. Maloney compared it also to the US Military, where a similar incident would result in a court martial.
I think she has a good point... but, that would be with a fair, quick justice system, and Iraq doesn't have one. Actually, being rather jaundiced, they probably could have let him be arrested in Iraq, pay a bribe and got a release by the Iraqi police in the same day. I wonder how Congresswoman Maloney would react if she had a staffer or relative arrested in Tijuana by the police for a crime - would she want to rely on the Mexican justice system and jails, or try to get the person sent back to the US????
Democrats criticized Blackwater for a standard of "not staying there" to assist wounded Iraqis after an incident. Republicans point out that the protection service priority is to protect the officials in the vehicles and get away from attackers, thus reducing the possibility of the officials being wounded in a second attack.
Another Democrat goes back to the 2006 drunk's incident.
The trend of the hearing seems to be that Republicans get details out about the success of Blackwater, and Democrats focus on a few, specific & isolated incidents to make them look bad (out of over 6000 missions in 2006). The hearing has been going for 2 over 2 hours and they still haven't mentioned the recent firing incident in Iraq.
Florida Congressman Mica asked Prince to discuss why security work should be done by the contractors vs the military. One good point from Prince was to encourage the Congress to do a "accurate activity based cost analysis of the true cost of providing a trained military person vs the costs for the security contractor". Basically, Blackwater only hires experienced and trained ex military and police forces, thus they have little training cost. But, the military has to provide the full initial training cost and equipment and transportation, feeding, etc. and all those costs should be compared to the manday rate for security firms.
Democrat Kucinich starts accusing Blackwater TWICE of getting a no-bid contract, and Prince replied that they got the contract "off the GSA schedule", and explains that GSA is considered a bid contract because they already had filed standard rates, etc. and the State Dept. had a choice of other GSA contractors but chose Blackwater. Kucinish keeps saying "you got a no bid contract" for later contracts, and each time, Prince said it came from the GSA pricing schedule. I agree with Prince - I had to look for supplies on the GSA schedules, and it basically is like an open catalog where each firm, including accounting firms, specified their rates in the open. A competitor could see those, and revise their rates down if they wanted. The selection from the GSA database was made by the customer (State Dept.), thus it WAS a competitive bidding process.
Congressman Chris Shays (R-CT) lambasted other Congressmen for criticizing Blackwater when they had never gone to Iraq or Afghanistan. Shays said he has been to Iraq 18 times, vs others in Congress who never have been there and had no idea of the risks, and went on and commended Blackwater for taking the risks to protect State Dept officials.
Prince said there are 170 security firms in Iraq, and Blackwater many times gets blamed for an incident caused by the others.
Waxman starts again, saying that maybe the military should be doing security, and others say they aren't trained to protect civilians.
Rep. John Tierney (R) quotes Ann Exline-Star saying that security firms are judged by their customers (i.e. State Dept.) by whether they arrive back from a trip without being harmed, and NOT judged by whether they are winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis. I knew Exline-Star when she was there in 2004 - she was a Sr. Advisor in the Reconstruction Office working to rebuild the Iraqi stockmarket. She went on many convoys into the Red Zone to visit the stock exchange and other Iraqi agencies.
Republican John Duncan started comparing the daily $1000 rate for Blackwater to that of military personnel, including a 4-star General who got paid "$455 per day in a 30 day month" or $13,650 per month. This same info was in the Orlando Sentinel yesterday from a NY Times article. I WAS AMAZED that neither one understood basic accounting and used these misleading figures. The problem is that the Blackwater rate is a "fully loaded" rate including transportation, food, etc. while the military figures were only for basic wages, not food, lodging, transportation, benefits, etc. I would guess that the rate only applied for days spent in Iraq, and not time back home, while US military go home, and get paid the same salary for non-conflict work. Additionally, the military wage "per day" was based upon dividing a monthly wage by 30 days, not normal work days, while the Blackwater rate was most likely for working days, and not weekends or days off. Prince said that security professionals only get paid for days in hot zones, thus the average is $500 per day, and the full $1000 rate includes uniforms, body armor, equipment, training, travel, insurance, sometimes food (I bet their contract included a provision that the State Dept. provide room and board, so those expenses aren't included in the quoted rates.
Duncan and the Orlando Sentinel and the NY Times should all be ashamed for using inaccurate comparison data.
In comparison, a local Lake County government agency pays their CPA firm $176 per HOUR ( or $1408 per day) for a partner's time, and over $85 per hour for a basic auditor's time (which is $680 per 8-hour day),and that doesn't include working in Iraq.
Rep Michael Turner from Ohio asked a very good question of Prince. He wanted to discuss comparing the military's limitations in purchasing equipment vs how Blackwater would do it. Prince said the DoD always wants to spend enough to solve a 120% solution of a problem, while Blackwater would purchase equipment off the street right away without delaying procurement and supplies while developing the ultimate solution four years down the road. Remember when the issue of armor for Humvees came up - I saw local military welding heavy steel into turrets for Humvee gunners while the DoD spent time researching the best way to armor a Humvee and it took over a year for armored Humvees to reach Iraq. Recently I read where there is a technology for detecting explosives like ied's, and the soldiers in the field want it, but DoD won't release it until "fully tested".
Rep Diane Watson starting railing at Rush Limbaugh and military critics, which had nothing to do with Blackwater or the hearings. She wanted Rush to "apologize" for a quote that had nothing to do with Blackwater. Then she rambled on about perhaps that the military should get better pay "so their families don't have to go on welfare...".
Issa asks "Is it reasonable to expect the State Dept. to buy attack helicopters and gunships to protect diplomats...". Issa also asked if the State Dept. did their own convoy security, would they have to hire experienced military personnel like Blackwater does, and Prince said "yes".
Issa brought out that Prince's sister is the wife of Rich DeVos, founder of the Amway company, and they are Republican's. She was past Chair of the Michigan Republican party and big contributors to recent election campaigns. However, Prince pointed out that his company is non-partisan, although he is a Republican.
As a side note, there was a detail of marines stationed in the basement of the Embassy - there were about 18 of them, and they rotated out about every six months. There job was to protect the embassy if attacked - they didn't work in the gates or door entrances, and practiced constantly to extract the Ambassador to a safe area. The joke was that about once a week the PA system would announce that the marines were practicing a security drill in the South wing, which is where the embassy staff were, and they never practiced in the North wing where all the civilians, Ministry Sr. Advisors and reconstruction staff worked. One group was specially trained in conflict area defense, and I have souvenir coins they sold to raise money for a charity. Occasionally, you would see them running through the hallway carrying a 50 caliber machine gun during a drill. When I left Iraq, I took all my left over stuff like power converters, coffee machine, etc. down to them in the basement because they were enlisted people without much income to buy those things, and they grabbed them right up.
NC Rep. Patrick McHenry (from Blackwater's home state) led a very good analysis of the true cost of providing military vs contractor security forces. McHenry and Prince both talked about the fact that for every soldier "in the field", there might be 8-10 support people back in the administrative areas or in the US> In contrast, Prince said his firm has only 50 administrators managing 1000 "operators" or field security personnel. Thus his ratio is like 1/20th of a person in support for every person in the field. That is an enormous spread, and indicates how really expensive it must be to support each soldier.
I know that the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (see SIGIR.mil) had only about 25 auditors in Baghdad, and about 125 staff people back in the US, which gives you an idea of how lopsided support costs are in the government.
Rep. Betty McCullum (D) described CPA Order 17 which allowed immunity to US contractors from prosecution by Iraqi police and laws. (There were about 100 CPA orders - I have copies - they were new laws for Iraq issued by the CPA and Paul Bremer, and one of them established the anti-corruption commission, and another established an inspector general program in all the Iraqi Ministries.) She focused on the issue of either removing immunity (not good - Prince said " I doubt any US person would get a fair trial in the Iraqi Justice field."), but the other is to somehow provide a mechanism to try the individual (like the December , 2006 drunk who killed a guard) in the US, which did not happen in that case. I think that idea is reasonable and not let some drunk wacko get off without a trial.
Waxman spent time in a memo and in discussions talking about Blackwater being a Republican firm and was rather blatant. Issa took issue with that, and another Rep. asked when the first Blackwater federal contract was received, and it was in 1998 when CLINTON was still in office. Blackwaters early contracts were really small and were for training individual Navy Seal and other military small groups until the USS Cole was bombed in 2000, when he got a large contract to train Navy personnel how to protect ships from terrorists. It seems that this wasn't a company that got started and grew from favors from Republicans or networking with them - it was all based upon reputation in the security field. Waxman looked fairly foolish for making a big deal about Prince's connections to his Republican sister.
Another Democrat tried to imply that Blackwater could take their knowledge and work for enemy foreign countries. In each case he brought up, Prince responded that the contract was approved for and/or paid for by the US State Dept., and not the foreign country, so they were working for the US Government interests.
Another Democrat, Peter Welch, started on the issue of the annual salary of a military security sgt paid $45,000 a year vs an annualized cost of $440,000 for a Blackwater operator. I have no idea how he got that, but again, he is comparing a fully loaded Blackwater cost for providing a person in the field to only the salary of a military person without any overhead costs, benefits, room and board, etc. This to me is violating an accuracy ethics issue and inaccurate comparisons of apples to oranges shouldn't be allowed without challenge. Prince should have stopped him cold and not go on until he clarified the difference in comparisons each time they brought it up.
Later, Welch started comparing the $180k annual salary of General Petreaus to the salary of Prince, who said it was over a million dollars. Again, comparing apples to oranges, because military get free housing, cheap food, etc.
Welch was really obnoxious and aggressive. He focused on one contract where Blackwater made a profit of 10%, and tried to extend it to the entire group of contracts that BW had. Prince needed better counseling on stopping these guys with misleading math and clarifying the apples vs oranges.
After 5.5 hours, the grilling of Blackwater was over. Prince did a good job of answering issues, and I don't think the Democrats really scored any points.
Next, the committee started with witnesses from the State Dept. including Ambassador David Satterfield, who was Deputy Chief of Mission in the Baghdad Embassy when I was there. He was very sharp, businesslike and people didn't mess with him.
After Prince left, about 80% of the committee members left, while the others continued with questions for the three State Dept. reps. They were much more guarded in their answers, and repeated some of the facts stated by Prince earlier.
Both Waxman and another Congressman pressed Satterfield to say yes or no that State investigated a 2005 Blackwater shooting. Satterfield refused to answer, saying they would answer later in writing with accurate details. He stood up to them.
Later, one of the Congressmen returned, and repeated questions asked earlier, and we had to listen again to all the info regarding the original 2004 sole source $300-million contract to Blackwater for "urgent and compelling" reasons. That is because State Dept. took over Iraq after Paul Bremer left, and they only started arriving in June, 2004 (I was already there working under DoD and CPA), and I guess they immediately realized they didn't have staff to provide security and let the contract quickly to get security people there. The Congressman wouldn't let up, partially because I don't think State gave that background on the last minute arrival. Bremer and his staff all left BEFORE the end of June, and State was sitting there with full responsibility for Iraq. The State pre, Willaim Moser, explained pretty clearly that the next contract was competitively bid for 2005. It wasn't like they gave a three year contract (unlike DoD gave KBR for support services which I think was a 3-year contract).
I am done... fini - below are background articles on Blackwater
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Here is a New York Times article from
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-09-28-296300785_x.htm
Five Blackwater incidents in question
By Anne Gearan, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON — Five cases this year in which private Blackwater USA security guards killed Iraqi civilians are at the core of a U.S. review of how the hired protection forces guard diplomats in Iraq, officials said Friday.
Iraqi authorities are also concerned about a sixth incident in which Blackwater guards allegedly threw frozen bottles of water at civilian cars, breaking windshields. No one was killed.
The United States has not made conclusive findings about the incidents, which include a Sept. 16 case in which at least 11 Iraqis died. A State Department official said investigators are not aware of others. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiries are in progress.
The United States is conducting several inquiries spawned by the deadly Baghdad shooting this month involving the private security contractor that protects U.S. diplomats and others in Iraq.
The Sept. 16 killings outraged many Iraqis, who have long resented the presence of armed Western security contractors, considering them an arrogant mercenary force that abuses Iraqis in their own country.
Blackwater is the largest of three private companies contracted by the State Department to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq.
The State Department has counted 56 shooting incidents involving Blackwater guards in Iraq this year. All will be reviewed as part of a comprehensive inquiry ordered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but the five fatal shootings involving Iraqi civilians are paramount, two officials said.
Rice announced Friday that she has brought in outside military, diplomatic and security advisers to help guide the inquiry.
"My instructions to the panel are simple," Rice said. "Their review should be serious, probing and comprehensive. Once they have established baseline facts, I look forward to hearing their recommendations on how to protect our people while furthering our foreign policy objectives."
The broad review ordered by Rice will begin in earnest this weekend. Retired Gen. George Joulwan, a former NATO commander in Europe, and Stapleton Roy, a retired veteran diplomat, will help lead the diplomatic review. Rice also brought in a former State Department and intelligence official, Eric Boswell.
Led by Patrick Kennedy, one of the most senior management experts in the U.S. foreign service, the panel will present an interim report by Oct. 5.
As of last week, Blackwater had protected U.S. diplomatic convoys 1,873 times this year, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte said Thursday. Guards fired 56 times.
The five incidents involving civilians were previously identified by Iraqi authorities, who are also looking into whether the shootings were out of bounds.
Separately, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has sent a fact-finding team to Baghdad to investigate conditions involving private contractors working for the Pentagon and to consult with military officers there.
Meanwhile, a top aide to Gates' No. 2 general in Iraq told reporters Friday that he has seen private security guards "overreact" but stressed that security contractors fill a vital role.
"Are they quicker with the trigger? Are they quicker to wave a weapon, brandish a weapon, other tactics, cutting people off?" asked Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson, chief of staff for Iraq No. 2 commander Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno. That's a "tough assessment," he said.
"I have seen them, in my opinion, overreact but that does not mean it's consistently the case," Anderson said. He spoke to a Pentagon press conference by video from Baghdad.
"I can certainly say I've seen them do some tactics that I thought were over the top. But that's something we've got to keep working out, what their reason, what their rationale was for that, what kind of procedures are going to follow in this country to make sure we don't have incidents like occurred last week."
There are not enough uniformed military to perform all the jobs that the Iraq war requires, and several companies provide contract workers to wash clothes, drive trucks and a host of other tasks.
Witness accounts of the Sept. 16 incident vary widely.
American witnesses, including the Blackwater guards, insist the convoy was attacked before the protective detail opened fire while Iraqi witnesses say the gunshots were unprovoked.
A joint U.S.-Iraqi commission is working on a common set of facts about the incident and look at ways to clarify the regulations under which private security guards operate in Iraq.
Kennedy's review will look beyond the Sept. 16 incident to assess what general changes may be required in the State Department's security program, including rules of engagement that govern contractors.
On another investigative front, tension is growing between Rep. Henry Waxman's congressional oversight committee and Howard Krongard, the State Department inspector general.
On Friday, Waxman accused senior State Department staff of threatening employees attempting to cooperate with the committee's probe into allegations Krongard interfered with ongoing probes.
Ron Militana and Brian Rubendall, both special agents in Krongard's office, were informed there would be consequences if they spoke out.
"'Howard could retaliate and you would have no recourse,'" Militana was told, according to a letter from Waxman to Krongard.
Militana kept notes of the Sept. 25 meeting, which he gave to Waxman's staff.
Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said it is not clear whether Krongard directed that the threats be made.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Krongard plans to testify before Waxman's committee "and clarify any concerns."
Casey said he had not read Waxman's letter, but the department would be concerned if individuals were being told not to assist a congressional inquiry.
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Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek and Richard Lardner contributed to this report.
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from:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2007/Blackwater-Private-Security23sep07.htm
Blackwater
Risky Business
The Deadly Game of Private Security
JOHN F. BURNS / New York Times 23sep2007
Also see:
Private Contractors Now Outnumber U.S. Troops in Iraq: 180,000 to 160,000
Los Angeles Times 4jul2007
blackwater
CAMBRIDGE, England — On a stifling summer’s day in Baghdad a couple of years ago, a senior American officer bound for a visit to troops in the Iraqi hinterland was preparing to board an army Black Hawk at the helicopter landing zone in Baghdad’s Green Zone command compound.
With undisguised disdain, he fixed his gaze across the concrete toward two smaller helicopters taking off from a hangar operated by Blackwater USA — the private security company whose men, while guarding an American diplomatic convoy, were involved last week in a Baghdad shootout that killed at least eight people and, according to an Iraqi government report, as many as 20.
In a style now familiar to many living beneath Baghdad’s skies, a Blackwater sharpshooter in khaki pants, with matching T-shirt and flak jacket, sat sideways on the right side of each chopper, leaning well outside the craft. With their automatic weapons gripped for battle, their feet planted on the helicopter’s metal skids, and only a slim strap securing them to the craft, the men looked as if they were self-consciously re-creating the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Blackwater defends its low-flying, ready-to-shoot posture as a powerful deterrent to attacks on American officials being moved through the capital’s streets. But that posture has become, to the company’s critics, a hallmark of its muscle-bound showiness.
As the Blackwater machines cleared the landing zone’s fence that day, the American officer leaned toward a companion and, over the thwump-thwump of the Black Hawk’s rotors, voiced his contempt. “If I’ve got one ambition left here,” he said, “it’s to see one of those showboats fall out.”
From the moment Blackwater arrived in Iraq in 2003, on the heels of the American invasion, much about its operations has seemed tinged with an aggressive machismo that has led its critics, including many in the American military, to dismiss its operatives — and counterparts from at least 25 other private security companies, with a combined manpower estimated between 20,000 and 30,000 — as “cowboys,” “hired guns,” and other, still harsher, terms.
Partly, the disparagement stems from the contempt with which professional military men have traditionally viewed mercenaries — especially those who earn, like some contractors in Baghdad, as much as $1,000 a day for skills and risks that bring about the lowest-paid American soldier a tenth of that. Not even four-star generals earn as much.
The security contractors’ advocates counter by pointing to the guards’ expertise. The highest-paid learned their skills in units like the Navy Seals, the Army’s Delta Force, and equivalent units in the British, Australian, South African and other militaries.
With rare exceptions, the men look and sound the part, with tattooed forearms, close-cropped hair or shaven heads, and a taciturn manner that discourages any but the most cryptic exchanges with outsiders. The value of their skills, their proponents say, is indicated by the Pentagon’s willingness to pay Special Forces’ re-enlistment bonuses of as much as $150,000. But that much and more can be a single year’s salary with companies like Blackwater.
There is no avoiding the fact that these bodyguards do work that is both extremely hazardous, and indispensable. Blackwater’s involves a State Department contract to protect American officials, including the ambassador.
Such officials are among the most endangered individuals in Iraq; nevertheless, no senior American officials have been assassinated, while the murder of senior Iraqi officials has become almost commonplace.
Together with other security contractors — notably the American companies DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, and the British-run Aegis Security and Erinys International — Blackwater operates in a nightmarish landscape.
No trip outside the Green Zone is remotely safe. The enemy lurks everywhere among the population. Attackers show no mercy for innocent bystanders, who commonly outnumber intended targets. Each mission carries the threat of roadside bombs, suicide attacks by explosives-packed cars and trucks, and ambushes by insurgents.
Reliable figures are elusive, but figures quoted by security industry insiders suggest that more than 100 contractors in Iraq have been killed, and scores of others wounded.
Against this, critics point to a pattern of recklessness in the use of deadly force, of a kind that the Iraqi government, and some Iraqi witnesses, have alleged — and Blackwater has denied — in the episode last Sunday in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. While Blackwater armored vehicles accompanying diplomats were sent to close off traffic into the square, a car entering it failed to heed an Iraqi policeman’s signal to stop, and it came under fire that killed the driver, a passenger and a baby in her arms. There is dispute over the ensuing gunfight, and whether Blackwater personnel, insurgents or nearby Iraqi troops caused the deaths.
An Iraqi government probe later found Blackwater “100 percent guilty” in the killings, and government leaders demanded an end to Blackwater activities. Blackwater responded that its contractors fired in self-defense. After a four-day suspension, a compromise on Friday allowed Blackwater to resume “essential missions” while an Iraqi-American commission investigates.
To those who have watched the private security companies’ operations for the past four years, the only real surprise was that the crisis was so long in coming. The seeds were sown in the first year of the American occupation, when a decree by the American administrator L. Paul Bremer III exempted security companies and their employees from accountability under Iraqi law for deaths and injuries caused in the execution of their duties. Although Congress in 2005 instructed the Pentagon to bring contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, no action has been taken, leaving the contractors in a legal no-man’s land — in effect, at liberty to treat all Iraq as a free-fire zone.
No official records have been made public of how many innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed by contractors. But a glimpse at the scale was offered by one American general who kept his own tally, Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst of the Third Infantry Division; he told The Washington Post in 2005 that he had tracked at least a dozen shootings of civilians in Baghdad between May and July that year, with six Iraqis killed.
“These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff,” the paper quoted the general as saying. “There’s no authority over them.”
But critics say the heart of the problem lies in an attitude that the security contractors share with the American military, one that elevates “force protection” to something approaching an absolute. This, the critics say, has the effect of valuing the saving of American lives above avoiding risk to innocent Iraqis. The attitude has its origins in Vietnam, where the appalling American combat losses left succeeding generations of American commanders with an instinct to apply rapid increments of firepower — what the military calls “escalation of force” — with the goal of sparing American casualties.
After some of the most damaging incidents in Iraq, especially the killing by marines of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November 2005, the American command ordered new restraints on force escalation that had the effect of sharply cutting incidents in which troops opened fire on civilians.
But the change appeared to have scant impact on security contractors, whose attitudes, unconstrained by concern at being held accountable under law, continued to cast a pall of fear and resentment among Iraqis.
This has had the effect — as officers like General Horst have said — of undermining Iraqi trust in the American forces, and in the wider American enterprise in Iraq, since many Iraqis who survive or witness negligent shootings make no distinction between an American in uniform and one in the paramilitary guise of a contractor.
Contractors say the high profile of their armored convoys, coupled with the covert nature of the insurgents, places a premium on high mobility and rapid response — driving at high speed and in a bullying manner through city traffic and driving on the wrong side of boulevards and expressways, always ready to resort instantly, at the first hint of threat, to heavy firepower.
It is a formula fraught with potential for error. To be overtaken on Baghdad’s airport road by a private security convoy driving at 120 miles an hour, with contractors leaning out of windows or part-opened doors with leveled weapons, waving their fists in a frantic pantomime, is a heart-stopping experience even for other Westerners in armored cars with guards of their own. For ordinary Iraqis, with no weapons and no armoring, it can be pure terror.
At their worst, some contractors have made Iraq into a grim playground for acting out tendencies that have gone beyond bullying. In a Virginia civil court case against Triple Canopy last month, two former employees claimed that their supervisor — like his accusers, a veteran of the United States military — shot randomly into two Iraqi civilian vehicles on the airport road in Baghdad last year, after telling them that he wanted to “kill somebody” before leaving the country on vacation. The supervisor denied it.
Just why some contractors resort to such extremes is a study in war and the ways in which it plumbs the darker sides of human nature. In the military units where they acquired their weapons and tactical skills, the men who cause mayhem on the streets and highways of Iraq were subject to tight constraints — as one former soldier who does security work in Iraq and did not want to be identified expressed it in a private note to this reporter:
“Being motivated, and also somehow restrained, by the trappings of history, and by being part of something large, collective, and, one
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