Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

Blackwater’s presence on Iraqi streets days after Maliki called for its expulsion served as a potent symbol of the utter lack of Iraqi sovereignty. Maliki quickly found himself under heavy U.S. pressure to back off his initial demands of expulsion and prosecution. While Rice immediately called the Iraqi prime minister to apologize, she made a point of emphasizing publicly that “we need protection for our diplomats.” 82A few days later, Tahseen Sheikhly, a representative of Maliki’s government, stated, “If we drive out this company immediately, there will be a security vacuum. That would cause a big imbalance in the security situation.” 83Given the carnage of September 16, it was a difficult statement to wrap one’s head around.

In a telling 180-degree turn, Maliki swiftly agreed to withhold judgment on Blackwater’s status, pending the conclusion of a “joint” U.S.-Iraqi investigation. But he was also under intense pressure from Iraqis, with leading political and resistance figures demanding that Blackwater leave immediately. Clearly aware of this, while visiting the United States a week after the shootings, Maliki went so far as to call the situation “a serious challenge to the sovereignty of Iraq” that “cannot be accepted.” 84

Despite Maliki’s wavering, back in Baghdad there seemed to be great and genuine determination to bring the perpetrators of the Nisour Square slaughter to justice. An investigative team made up of officials from Iraq’s Interior, National Security, and Defense ministries said in a preliminary report that “the murder of citizens in cold blood in the Nisour area by Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against civilians just like any other terrorist operation.” 85But, as with other deadly incidents, Iraqi investigators claimed that they had received little or no information from the U.S. government and were being denied access to the Blackwater operatives involved in the shootings. A U.S. official appeared to dismiss the validity of the Iraqi investigation, telling the New York Times , “There is only the joint investigation that we have with the Iraqis.” 86

Still, Iraqi officials announced their intent to bring criminal charges against the Blackwater forces involved in the shooting, and the Iraqi ministries’ report stated, “The criminals will be referred to the Iraqi court system.” 87Abdul Sattar Ghafour Bairaqdar, a member of Iraq’s Supreme Judiciary Council, the country’s highest court, declared, “This company is subject to Iraqi law, and the crime committed was on Iraqi territory, and the Iraqi judiciary is responsible for tackling the case.” 88

Unfortunately, things were not quite so simple.

On June 27, 2004, the day before Bremer skulked out of Baghdad, he issued a decree known as Order 17. 89This directive granted sweeping immunity to private contractors working for the United States in Iraq, effectively barring the Iraqi government from prosecuting contractor crimes in domestic courts. The timing was curious, given that Bremer was leaving after allegedly “handing over sovereignty” to the Iraqi government. The immunity conferred by Order 17 continues to this day and was firmly in effect at the time of Nisour Square. Industry representatives and U.S. officials have long argued that Iraq does not have a fair and stable judiciary system in place to handle prosecutions of foreign private contractors. Regardless of the legitimacy of that claim, if the United States took contractor crimes seriously, it would have pursued avenues of alternative prosecution or sanction of alleged killers—if for no other reason than to show the Iraqis that the United States would not simply shrug off their concern and outrage. But the fact is that not a single armed contractor, for Blackwater or any other firm, has ever been charged in any court anywhere with any crime against an Iraqi. As a result, these forces operate in a climate of total impunity, which some observers allege is deliberate and serves a larger purpose for the occupation. “The fact that they have immunity means that there is not even the possibility of them fearing any consequences for acts of killing and brutalization,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “None of this is by chance; their very purpose is to brutalize and strike fear into the people of Iraq.” 90

At the time of the Nisour Square shooting, Blackwater was one of more than 170 mercenary firms offering their services in Iraq. While it was viewed widely as the most elite of these companies, there were two U.S. competitors, DynCorp and Triple Canopy, that would gladly have stepped in to fill its shoes in one of the most lucrative private security contracts in modern history. But what happened behind the scenes in the days and weeks after September 16 spoke volumes as to how deeply embedded Blackwater was in the occupation apparatus and how important Erik Prince’s company had become to the White House. Blackwater “has a client who will support them no matter what they do,” H.C. Lawrence Smith, deputy director of the industry-funded Private Security Company Association of Iraq, told the Washington Post shortly after Nisour Square. 91

The dirty open secret in Washington was that Blackwater had done its job in Iraq: to keep the most hated U.S. occupation officials alive by any means necessary. “What they told me was, ‘Our mission is to protect the principal at all costs. If that means pissing off the Iraqis, too bad,’” recalled former U.S. occupation adviser Ann Exline Starr, who was protected in Iraq by both Blackwater and DynCorp. 92This “mission” encouraged conduct that placed U.S. lives at an infinitely higher premium than those of Iraqi civilians, even in cases where the only Iraqi crime was driving too close to a VIP convoy protected by Blackwater guards. “Those guys guard my back,” Ambassador Ryan Crocker said shortly after Nisour Square. “And I have to say they do it extremely well. I continue to have high regard for the individuals who work for Blackwater.” 93He was hardly alone in coming to the company’s defense. “Zero individuals that Blackwater has protected have been killed” in Iraq, said Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry, who represents Blackwater’s home state of North Carolina. “That is, I think, the operable number here.” 94“That’s a perfect record,” said Connecticut Republican Chris Shays, asserting Blackwater didn’t “get any credit for it for some reason.” 95

As media scrutiny of the Nisour Square shootings intensified and Congressional Democrats woke up to the activities of Blackwater in Iraq, it appeared for a moment as though the company’s days in Iraq were numbered. Even on a practical level, U.S. officials had to be concerned at the prospect of Washington’s bodyguards becoming greater targets than the personnel they were tasked with keeping alive.

A few days after Nisour Square, another scandal involving Blackwater erupted, this one centered in Washington and highlighting the close relationship between the company and the Bush administration. Allegations surfaced that weapons brought into Iraq by Blackwater may have ended up in the hands of the Kurdish militant group the PKK, which is designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the State Department. 96According to a September 18 letter sent by Representative Henry Waxman to State Department Inspector General Howard “Cookie” Krongard, a federal investigation into whether Blackwater “was illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq” was obstructed by Krongard, who, Waxman charged, was a “partisan” operative with close ties to the Bush administration. 97

Waxman cited a July 2007 e-mail from Krongard in which he ordered his staff to “stop IMMEDIATELY” cooperating with the federal prosecutor investigating Blackwater until Krongard himself could speak to him. Waxman said Krongard’s actions had caused “weeks of delay” and that by subsequently assigning a media relations staffer instead of an investigator to aid the prosecutor, Krongard had “impeded the investigation.” 98It was later revealed that Krongard’s brother, Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, had accepted a position as a paid adviser to Blackwater, a position from which he resigned after Waxman’s committee exposed it. 99(As discussed in Chapter 3, Alvin Krongard, who served as the number-three man at the CIA, was a player in helping Blackwater win its first private security contract in Afghanistan in 2002.) Howard Krongard subsequently resigned from his State Department post in late 2007. 100Blackwater, for its part, denied that it was “in any way associated or complicit in unlawful arms activities” and said it was cooperating in the federal investigation. 101