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Erik Prince, the secretive 38-year-old owner of the leading US mercenary firm, Blackwater USA, has seldom appeared in public. He has never held a press conference and is only known to have given one television interview -- to Fox News shortly after 9/11.
When Congress called him to testify last February, he dispatched his lawyer. But on October 2, Prince found himself in front of a Congressional committee, TV cameras trained on his boyish face. The official focus of the hearing, convened by Henry Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was on two questions that should have been asked long ago: whether the government’s heavy reliance on private security contractors is serving US interests in Iraq and whether the specific conduct of Blackwater has advanced or impeded US efforts.
The testimony of Erik Prince, the mysterious 38-year old owner of
Blackwater USA, left more questions than answers as to the company's
lawless behavior in Iraq, and what to do about its past deeds and its
future.
[Republished at PFP with Agence Global permission:
What put Prince in the hot seat was the infamous Nisour Square
shootings in Baghdad on September 16, in which as many as twenty-eight
Iraqi civilians may have been killed. Waxman said the Justice
Department asked him not to take testimony on the incident because it
was the subject of an FBI investigation.
In Prince’s prepared
testimony, he said that people should wait for the results of the State
Department investigation “for a complete understanding of that event.”
But the investigative process so far has hardly been impartial.
Just
hours before Prince’s testimony, CNN reported that the State
Department’s initial report on the shooting was drafted by a Blackwater
contractor, Darren Hanner. The next day came the news that the FBI team
assigned to investigate the incident in Baghdad had contracted with
Blackwater itself to provide security for their investigation.
At
the hearing Prince boldly declared that in Iraq his men have acted
“appropriately at all times” and appeared to deny the company had ever
killed innocent civilians, only acknowledging that some may have died
as a result of “ricochets” and “traffic accidents.”
This assertion by
Prince is simply unbelievable. According to a report prepared by
Waxman’s staff, since 2005 Blackwater operatives in Iraq have opened
fire on at least 195 occasions. In more than 80 percent of these
instances, Blackwater fired first.
Not surprisingly,
Prince said he supported the continuation of Order 17 in Iraq, the
Bremer-era decree immunizing forces like Blackwater from prosecution in
Iraqi courts. Prince said that Blackwater operatives who “don’t hold to
the standard, they have one decision to make: window or aisle” on their
return flight home. In all, Blackwater has terminated more than 120 of
its operatives in Iraq. Given that being fired and sent home have been
the only disciplinary consequences faced by Blackwater employees in
Iraq, it is worth asking: What exactly did these 120 men do to earn
this punishment? Perhaps it’s time for the Justice Department to open
120 more investigations.
Waxman’s committee scrutinized
one incident: the alleged killing of a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice
president by a drunken Blackwater contractor on Christmas Eve 2006
inside the Green Zone. Prince confirmed that Blackwater had whisked him
out of Iraq and fired him, and said the company fined him and billed
the man for his return plane ticket. “If he lived in America, he would
have been arrested, and he would be facing criminal charges,” Democrat
Carolyn Maloney told Prince. “If he was a member of our military, he
would be under a court-martial. But it appears to me that Blackwater
has special rules.” Prince said, “As a private organization we can’t do
any more. We can’t flog him, we can’t incarcerate him.” When asked
directly whether this was a murder, which Iraqi officials have alleged,
Prince consulted with his advisers, made a joke about only knowing
about such things from crime dramas on TV and described the incident as
“a guy that put himself in a bad situation” where “something very
tragic happened.”
According to the committee report, after
the killing, the State Department chargé d’affaires recommended that
Blackwater make a “sizable payment” to the guard’s family. The official
suggested $250,000 but the department’s diplomatic security service
said this was too much and could cause Iraqis to “try to get killed.”
In the end, the State Department and Blackwater reportedly agreed on a
$15,000 payment.
A pattern is emerging from the
Congressional investigation into Blackwater: the State Department
urging the company to pay what amounts to hush money to victims’
families while facilitating the return home of contractors involved in
deadly incidents for which not a single one has faced prosecution.
According to the committee’s investigation, “There is no evidence” 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.”
Jeremy Scahill is a
Contributing Writer for The Nation magazine, a correspondent for
Democracy Now, and the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s
Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
Agence
Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, Le Monde
diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mark
Hertsgaard, Rami G. Khouri, Peter Kwong,Tom Porteous, Patrick Seale and
Immanuel Wallerstein.
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Released: 04 October 2007
Word Count: 785
Rights & Permissions Contact: Agence Global, 1.336.686.9002, rights@agenceglobal.com
-------------------
Writings 
Erik Prince, the secretive 38-year-old owner of the leading US mercenary firm, Blackwater USA, has seldom appeared in public. He has never held a press conference and is only known to have given one television interview -- to Fox News shortly after 9/11. 
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