Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

• Blackwater does not have “a valid contract” with the United States: “The Anti-Pinkerton Act… prohibits the United States from doing business with ‘[a]n individual employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, or similar organization.’ The legislative history of the Act makes it clear that a ‘similar organization’ means any mercenary or quasi-mercenary organization. Blackwater constitutes such a ‘similar organization’ and therefore lacks any valid contractual relationships with the United States.” (Ironically, a few months after the suit was filed, Blackwater vice president Martin Strong actually compared Blackwater’s work directly to Pinkerton’s. “Well, I can remember a time when Abraham Lincoln tried to get to his inaugural and he couldn’t find anybody to protect him except for the Pinkertons, who were a private-sector solution to protecting the new president of the United States,” he said. “This has been going on for a long, long time.” 171)

Blackwater publicly declined to respond to the allegations in the suit, citing ongoing government investigations, but its spokesperson, Anne Tyrrell, said Blackwater “will defend itself vigorously.” 172Erik Prince, however, went on the attack—against the Iraqi victims’ lawyers. “The lawyers, the trial lawyers that filed this lawsuit are the same guys that defended the World Trade Center bombings in 1993, the blind sheikh, and defended a bunch of killers of FBI agents and other cops,” Prince said on CNN two days after the suit was filed. “So this is very much a politically motivated lawsuit, for media attention.” 173In fact, Prince was dead wrong. CCR did not represent “the blind sheikh,” nor did it “defend” the 1993 WTC bombing. But Prince’s spin was promptly adopted by his right-wing defenders and disseminated in the media.

A few days later, J. Michael Waller, vice president of the Center for Security Policy—a hard-line conservative think tank with deep connections to the Bush administration—wrote an op-ed in the New York Post called “Lawyers for Terror.” 174In it, he accused CCR and Michael Ratner of having “a four-decade record of aiding and abetting terrorists, spies and cop-killers” and said they “specialize in defending the enemies of American society.” Waller wrote, “As we await the facts to establish responsibility for the Sept. 16 tragedy in Nisour Square, we must demand answers to another question: Of the million-plus lawyers in the United States they could have chosen to sue Blackwater, how did ordinary Iraqis manage to pick the few who aid cop-killers and terrorists?”

Ratner said these claims were “transparent attempts to try and divert attention from Blackwater’s actions in Iraq and particularly its role in the Nisour killings. I don’t think character attacks fool anyone. Such attempts at character assassination are a smokescreen to cover up the killings. At trial the facts will speak for themselves and the truth will be revealed.” 175

On December 19, 2007, CCR and Burke filed yet another lawsuit against Blackwater. This one stemmed from Blackwater’s alleged killing of five Iraqis on September 9 in Baghdad’s Watahba Square, one week before the Nisour Square killings. “Blackwater shooters shot, without justification, and killed five innocent civilians,” the suit alleged. “Numerous other innocent civilians were… injured in the incident.” 176Burke filed the case on behalf of the family of Ali Hussamaldeen Albazzaz. “This gentleman was a rug merchant, and he was gunned down for absolutely no reason, leaving behind a twenty-day-old baby daughter and family. It is again another instance in which Blackwater shooters shot first, asked questions later,” Burke alleged. 177

Despite the massive controversy surrounding Blackwater, its forces—and lucrative contracts—remained firmly in place on the ground in Iraq. One Blackwater employee described to the New York Times a conversation company representatives had with the State Department’s Gregory Starr in November 2007. “He said Blackwater has not lost the contract here in Iraq, and that it entirely depends on our actions from here on out.” 178On December 3, Blackwater posted job listings for “security specialists” and snipers as a result of its State Department diplomatic security “contract expansion.” 179

Rather than hiding out and hoping for the scandals to fade, Blackwater launched a major rebranding campaign, changing its name to Blackwater Worldwide and softening its logo: once a bear paw in the site of a sniper scope, it would become a bear claw wrapped in two half ovals—sort of like the outline of a globe, with a United Nations feel. Its overhauled website boasted of a corporate vision “guided by integrity, innovation, and a desire for a safer world.” 180Blackwater operatives were referred to as “global stabilization professionals.” Prince did a series of interviews, many of them conducted by mainstream journalists who were fawning and uncritical, in which he spun Blackwater as a patriotic extension of the military, often repeating almost verbatim his carefully crafted lines. He was named number eleven in Details magazine’s “Power 50,” the men “who control your viewing patterns, your buying habits, your anxieties, your lust… the people who have taken over the space in your head.” 181

In one of the company’s most bizarre actions in this period, on December 1, Blackwater paratroopers staged a dramatic aerial landing, complete with Blackwater flags and parachutes—not in Baghdad or Kabul but in San Diego at Qualcomm Stadium during the halftime show at the San Diego State/BYU football game. The company also sponsored a NASCAR racer and teamed up with gun manufacturer Sig Sauer to create a Blackwater Special Edition full-sized 9-millimeter pistol with the company logo on the grip. It came with a limited lifetime warranty. For $18, parents could purchase infant onesies from the Blackwater ProShop emblazoned with the firm’s logo. 182

During his media blitz, Prince indicated that Blackwater might quit Iraq. “We see the security market diminishing,” he told the Wall Street Journal in October. 183One way of looking at it was that Blackwater had gotten what it needed out of its Iraq work. As Prince told Congress, “If the government doesn’t want us to do this, we will go do something else.” 184While its name had become mud in the human rights world, Blackwater had not only already made big money in Iraq; it had secured a reputation as a company that kept U.S. officials in an extremely hostile war zone alive by any means necessary. It’s an image that could serve Blackwater well as it expands globally.

Prince vowed that in the future Blackwater “is going to be more of a full spectrum” operation. 185Amid the cornucopia of scandals, Blackwater was bidding for a share of a five-year $15 billion contract with the Pentagon to “fight terrorists with drug-trade ties.” 186This “war on drugs” contract would put Blackwater in the same league as the godfathers of the war business, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.

In addition to its ongoing robust business in law enforcement, military, and homeland security training, Blackwater is branching out. Among its current projects and initiatives: 187

• 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 “multinational peacekeeping program,” with forces “specializing in crowd control and less than lethal techniques and military personnel for the less stable areas of operation.”