October 02, 2007
Blackwater CEO Confident -- And For Good Reason
In his testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Blackwater USA chief Erik Prince defended his employees as patriotic veterans tasked with protecting Americans in hostile zones.
"Blackwater personnel supporting our overseas missions are all military and law enforcement veterans, many of whom have recent military deployments," said Prince, who founded Blackwater and is himself a former Navy SEAL. "No individual ever protected by Blackwater has ever been killed or seriously injured. There is no better evidence of the skill and dedication of these men."
The Democrats on the panel cited various reports in their portrayal of Blackwater as a lawless army whose hired guns have killed innocent civilians without repercussions. Indeed, Blackwater, which has a contract with the State Department, is not beholden to either Iraqi law or U.S. military law. And that's because Congress either forgot or did not bother to make it so.
Blackwater is under the gun because of a Sept. 16 incident involving its employees that concluded with the deaths of several Iraqi civilians. The Iraqi government initially sought to bar Blackwater from the country, but was apparently talked down by State Department officials, including Condoleezza Rice. The State Department and Iraqi government opened investigations into the shootings, and yesterday the FBI announced it, too, had begun a probe.
"Based on everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone on Sept. 16," Prince told the committee. That's as far as the hearing got into the incident, however, since the committee agreed to postpone discussion of the shooting pending the investigation results.
Democrats on the panel cited Blackwater contractors' reputations as "cowboys" in the war zone, and several brought up other incidents in which Blackwater has been involved.
Chairman Henry Waxman asked Prince about a November 2004 incident in which a plane flown by Blackwater pilots crashed in Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of the three U.S. military personnel on board. A joint report by the Army and Air Force as well as a report by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the pilots were "flying a non-standard route low through the valley for fun," and that they were unfamiliar with the route. The reports also found that one of the passengers survived, but died 10 hours later of exposure while he lay alone near the crash site. (Read the committee's write-up here.)
Asked to explain the incident, Prince disagreed that the pilots were behaving recklessly, and responded, "Anytime you have an accident it's an accident. Something could have been done better."
Prince added that Blackwater's pilots were doing what the U.S. military could not in the hilly and rough environment of Afghanistan, and noted that Blackwater had just received a new contract for nearly $92 million to continue missions there.
Said Waxman, "I want to see if you're getting a stick as well as all these carrots."
A bipartisan amendment attached to DOD appropriations last year brought all the Pentagon's military contractors in Iraq under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. The amendment did not cover contractors working for the State Department, however. After the Sept. 16 incident, the 2006 amendment's sponsors said they would now try to push for an amendment making all U.S. contractors subject to the UCMJ.
In the meantime, it is unclear what will become of the Blackwater employees involved in that shooting if they are found to have acted negligently or maliciously. In one of his final acts as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Ambassador Paul Bremer issued an order exempting U.S. contractors from Iraqi law. The employees' actions could maybe, possibly be prosecutable under American civilian or military law, but with a lot of legal leapfrogging. It's not clear how much of a stomach a U.S. prosecutor or the U.S. military would have for the fight, and considering it hasn't happened yet after more than four years of reported abuses, Balkinization's David Luban writes, it's unlikely.
If Prince seemed incredibly confident during his grilling today, that may be why.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney flagged a recently reported incident in which a drunken Blackwater employee shot dead a bodyguard for one of Iraq's vice presidents. The employee, now fired, hasn't been charged in the Christmas Eve shooting. Maloney asked why Blackwater whisked him out of the country so quickly, rather than force the employee to cooperate with an investigation.
"In America, if you've committed a crime you don't pack him up and ship him out in two days. You would've done an investigation," she said. "Why did you send him away when an investigation would have just begun?"
"Again, he was fired," Prince responded evenly. "We as a private company could not detain him. We could fire him." Prince noted that the man was arrested by the Air Force and that DOJ began an investigation, but DOJ has not commented on the status of that probe.
"I am concerned about the accountability and really the unfairness of this," Maloney replied. "And I am concerned" that the incidents "are undermining the mission in Iraq, and hurting our relationship with Iraqis."
If there's a reason to take another look at U.S. contractors in Iraq, that is it. The problem, as Luban and others have noted, is that contractors aren't tasked with the "hearts and minds" leg of the mission in Iraq.
Contractors also aren't going away anytime soon. In written answers before his confirmation hearing in January, Gen. David Petraeus made specific mention of the more than 20,000 private security contractors there as key to achieving the U.S. mission of stabilizing Iraq:
"Tens of thousands of ministry security forces and tens of thousands of civilian (often third country) contracted guard forces protect key sites in Baghdad (including, for example, the US Embassy, MNSTC-I HQs [Multi National Security Transition Command - Iraq headquarters], the Ministry of Oil, etc.) that MNF-I [Multi-National Force-Iraq] and the Iraqi government would otherwise have to detail soldiers or police to protect. These forces, again, number in the tens of thousands -- and although by no means all are of high capability and some are undoubtedly compromised, they do secure hundreds of sites that otherwise would require coalition or Iraqi military or police forces."
The U.S. military is dependent on the services of private contractors -- they outnumber U.S. forces in Iraq -- but the question now is how to make them conform to the rule of law, even as getting Iraqis to do so is high on the to-do list there. The Brookings Institution's Peter Singer, who has studied the matter closely, believes the U.S. government has to "go back to the drawing board."
Private security contractors in Iraq are resented by Iraqis as well as by U.S. military personnel for their reportedly cocky attitudes and generous paychecks. But the high pay does not come without risk, as Prince noted in his testimony. In 2005, "FRONTLINE" examined their role in Iraq; watch the program here.
Posted at 4:50 PM
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Afghanistan, Asia, Congress, Crime, David Petraeus, House, Iraq, Middle East, Military
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