Employees of Blackwater USA have engaged in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, in the vast majority of cases firing their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded, according to a new report from Congress.
In at least two cases, the company paid victims' family members who complained, and sought to cover up other episodes, the congressional report said. It said State Department officials approved the payments in the hope of keeping the shootings quiet.
In one case last year, the department helped Blackwater spirit an employee out of Iraq less than 36 hours after the employee, while drunk, killed a bodyguard for one of Iraq's two vice presidents on Christmas Eve.
TRIGGER-HAPPY
The report -- prepared by the Democratic majority staff of the House of Representatives' Com-mittee on Oversight and Govern-ment Reform -- adds weight to complaints from Iraqi officials, US military officers and Blackwater's competitors that company guards have taken an aggressive, trigger-happy approach to their work and have repeatedly acted with reckless disregard for Iraqi life.
But the report is also harshly critical of the State Department for exercising virtually no restraint or supervision of the private security company's 861 employees in Iraq.
"There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater's actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company's high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation," the report states.
Neither the State Department nor Blackwater would comment on Monday about the 15-page report, but both said their representatives would address it yesterday in testimony before the committee.
The report -- based on 437 internal Blackwater incident reports as well as internal State Department correspondence -- said that Blackwater's use of force was "frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage."
In the case of the Christmas Eve killing, the report states that the acting ambassador at the US embassy suggested paying the slain bodyguard's family US$250,000, but a lower-ranking official said that such a high payment "could cause incidents with people trying to get killed by our guys to financially guarantee their family's future."
Blackwater ultimately paid the dead man's family US$15,000.
DRUNK
The Blackwater employee under investigation in that killing was so drunk after fleeing the shooting that another group of guards took away the loaded pistol he was fumbling with, the report said.
The guards, employees of Triple Canopy -- another contractor -- returned the weapon to the man, who smelled of alcohol, and escorted him away from their guard post in the fortified Green Zone, the report said.
Shortly afterward, the police detained the man, a 26-year-old whom the report did not name, at the Blackwater camp inside the Green Zone, but found he was too intoxicated to be interviewed.
Within 36 hours, the report said, Blackwater fired the man for possessing a firearm while drunk and arranged with the State Department to fly him back to the US, angering Iraqi officials who said the shooting was murder.
According to the report, the episode began between 10:30pm and 11:30pm on Dec. 24 when the off-duty Blackwater employee, who witnesses said had been drinking heavily, passed through a gate near Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki's compound in the Green Zone.
When confronted by bodyguards to Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi, the Blackwater employee fired his Glock 9mm pistol, hitting Raheem Khalif, three times. Khalif, 32, later died at a US military hospital.
The Blackwater employee fled to the Triple Canopy guard post, where he told the guards that he had been in a gunfight with Iraqis who were chasing him and shooting at him.
The next day, the Blackwater employee told US Army investigators that he had fired in self-defense after the Iraqi bodyguard shot at him. On Dec. 26, Blackwater flew the man out of Iraq to Jordan, and then to the US.
Also see story:
US between the devil and deep blue sea in Iraq
Apps and Web sites that use artificial intelligence (AI) to undress women in photos are soaring in popularity, researchers said. In September alone, 24 million people visited undressing Web sites, the social network analysis company Graphika said. Many of these undressing, or “nudify,” services use popular social networks for marketing, Graphika said. For instance, since the beginning of this year, the number of links advertising undressing apps increased more than 2,400 percent on social media, including on X and Reddit, the researchers said. The services use AI to recreate an image so that the person is nude. Many of the services only
IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL: About 80 percent of Russians approve of Putin, a survey shows, but that might be misleading due to his intolerance to criticism Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday moved to prolong his repressive and unyielding grip on Russia for at least another six years, announcing his candidacy in the presidential election in March that he is all but certain to win. Putin still commands wide support after nearly a quarter-century in power, despite starting an immensely costly war in Ukraine that has taken thousands of his people’s lives, provoked repeated attacks inside Russia — including one on the Kremlin itself — and corroded its aura of invincibility. A short-lived rebellion in June by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin raised widespread speculation that Putin could be
JUMPING BAIL: The democracy advocate said made the decision after ‘considering the situation in Hong Kong, my personal safety, my physical and mental health’ Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow (周庭), who was jailed over her role in massive 2019 protests, on Sunday said she had moved to Canada and would not return to meet her bail conditions. Chow was one of the best-known young faces of the 2012, 2014 and 2019 protest movements against Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian rule in Hong Kong. She spent about seven months behind bars for her role in a protest outside Hong Kong police headquarters in 2019, when huge crowds rallied week after week in the most serious challenge to China’s rule since Hong Kong’s 1997 handover. On Sunday
TAKING STOCK: It was not yet clear how damaging the espionage, dating to 1981, has been, as authorities are still assessing the situation, the State Department said A former US ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested and charged with spying for Cuba over a 40-year span, the US Department of Justice announced on Monday, detailing a shock betrayal by a suspect who called the US “the enemy.” US Attorney General Merrick Garland laid out the allegations against Victor Manuel Rocha, a onetime member of the White House’s National Security Council now accused of using his positions within the government to support Cuba’s “clandestine intelligence-gathering mission” against the US. The charges against Rocha, 73, expose “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign
RSS