[News] Blackwater Said to Approve Iraqi Payoffs After Shootings

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html?_r=1&emc=na
November 11, 2009


Blackwater Said to Approve Iraqi Payoffs After Shootings

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazzetti/index.html?inline=nyt-per>MARK 
MAZZETTI and 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/james_risen/index.html?inline=nyt-per>JAMES 
RISEN

WASHINGTON ­ Top executives at 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/blackwater_usa/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Blackwater 
Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 
million to Iraqi officials that were intended to 
silence their criticism and buy their support 
after a September 2007 episode in which 
Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi 
civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 
2007, the officials said, as protests over the 
deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked 
long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless 
practices by the security company’s employees. 
American and Iraqi investigators had already 
concluded that the shootings were unjustified, 
top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s 
ouster from the country and company officials 
feared that Blackwater might be refused an 
operating license it would need to retain its 
contracts with the State Department and private 
clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Four former Blackwater executives said in 
interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then the 
company’s president, had approved the bribes, and 
the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where 
Blackwater maintains an operations hub, to a top 
manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said 
they did not know whether the cash was delivered 
to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.

Blackwater’s strategy of buying off the 
government officials, which would have been 
illegal under American law, created a deep rift 
inside the company, according to the former 
executives. They said that Cofer Black, who was 
then the company’s vice chairman and a former top 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>C.I.A. 
and State Department official, learned of the 
plan from another Blackwater manager while he was 
in Baghdad discussing compensation for families 
of the shooting victims with United States Embassy officials.

Alarmed about the secret payments, Mr. Black cut 
short his talks and left Iraq. Soon after 
returning to the United States, he confronted 
Erik Prince, the company’s chairman and founder, 
who did not dispute that there was a bribery 
plan, according to a former Blackwater executive 
familiar with the meeting. Mr. Black resigned the following year.

Stacy DeLuke, a company spokeswoman, dismissed 
the allegations as “baseless” and said the 
company would not comment about former employees. 
Mr. Black did not respond to telephone calls and 
e-mail messages seeking comment.

Reached by phone, Mr. Jackson, who resigned as 
president of Blackwater early this year, 
criticized The New York Times and said, “I don’t care what you write.”

The four former Blackwater executives, who had 
held high-ranking posts at the company, would 
speak only on condition of anonymity. Two of them 
said they took part in talks about the payments; 
the two others said they had been told by several 
Blackwater officials about the discussions. In 
agreeing to describe those conversations, the 
four officials said that they were troubled by a 
pattern of questionable conduct by Blackwater, 
which had led them to leave the company.

Blackwater continued operating as the prime 
contractor providing security for the United 
States Embassy in Baghdad until spring, when the 
Iraqi government said it would deny the company 
an operating license. The State Department 
replaced Blackwater with a rival company in May, 
but Blackwater still does some work for the 
department in Iraq on a temporary basis.

Five Blackwater guards involved in the shooting 
are 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/world/americas/09iht-09blackwater.18506761.html>facing 
federal manslaughter charges and their trial is 
scheduled to start in February in Washington. A 
sixth guard pleaded guilty in December. 
Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, has never 
faced criminal charges in the case, although the 
Iraqi victims brought a civil lawsuit in federal 
court against the company and Mr. Prince.

Separately, a federal grand jury in North 
Carolina, where Blackwater has its headquarters, 
has been conducting a lengthy investigation into 
the company. One of the former executives said 
that he had told federal prosecutors there about 
the plan to pay Iraqi officials to drop their 
inquiries into the Nisour Square case. If 
Blackwater followed through, the company or its 
officials could face charges of obstruction of 
justice and violating the Foreign Corrupt 
Practices Act, which bans bribes to foreign officials.

Officials at the United States Attorney’s Office 
in Raleigh declined to comment on their 
investigation, and it is not clear whether the 
payment scheme is a focus of the grand jury.

Federal prosecutors in North Carolina have 
interviewed a number of former Blackwater 
employees about a variety of issues, including 
allegations of weapons smuggling, according to 
several former Blackwater workers who say they 
have testified before the grand jury or been 
interviewed by prosecutors, as well as lawyers 
familiar with the matter. Two former employees 
have pleaded guilty to weapons charges and are 
believed to be cooperating with prosecutors.

Since 2001, Blackwater has undergone explosive 
growth, not only from security contracts in Iraq 
and Afghanistan, but also from classified work 
for the Central Intelligence Agency that included 
taking part in a now-defunct program to 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html>assassinate 
leaders of Al Qaeda and to 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html>load 
missiles on Predator drones.

The Nisour Square shooting was the bloodiest and 
most controversial episode involving Blackwater 
in the Iraq war. At midday 
on<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/world/middleeast/03firefight.html> 
Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire 
on Iraqi civilians in the midst of the crowded 
intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in 
ways that investigators later claimed was 
indiscriminate and even launching grenades into a 
nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded.

The matter set off an international outcry and 
intense debates in Iraq and the United States 
over the role of private contractors in war 
zones. Many Iraqis condemned Blackwater, which 
they had long seen as an arrogant, rogue 
operation, and Prime Minister 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/nuri_kamal_al-maliki/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Nuri 
Kamal al-Maliki declared that the Blackwater 
shooting was a challenge to his nation’s 
sovereignty. His government opened investigations 
into the episode and previous fatal shootings by 
Blackwater guards, and threatened to bar the 
company from operating in the country.

Those responses deeply worried Blackwater 
officials. Before the Nisour Square shootings, 
the company had operated in Iraq without a 
license largely because the Iraqi government had 
never enforced the rules. Being blocked from the 
country would have been costly ­ the State 
Department deal was Blackwater’s single biggest 
contract. From 2004 through today, the company 
has collected more than $1.5 billion for its work 
protecting American diplomats and providing air 
transportation for them inside Iraq.

“It would hurt us,” Mr. Prince, the chairman, 
said in an interview in January about losing the 
diplomatic security contract. “It would not be a 
mortal blow, but it would hurt us.”

The former Blackwater executives said it was not 
clear who proposed paying off Iraqi officials. 
But after Mr. Jackson, the former company 
president, approved the plan, the cash for the 
payoffs was taken from Amman and given to Rich 
Garner, then a top manager in Iraq, the former 
executives said. One of those executives said 
that officials in Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which 
is responsible for operating licenses, were the intended recipients.

Mr. Garner, who still works for Blackwater, could 
not be reached for comment. The former executives 
said they did not know whether Mr. Garner was 
involved in decisions about the bribery scheme.

At that time, Mr. Black was in a series of 
discussions with Patricia A. Butenis, the deputy 
chief of mission at the American Embassy in 
Baghdad, about compensation payments to the 
Nisour Square victims. According to former 
Blackwater officials, Mr. Black was furious when 
he learned that the payoff money was being 
funneled into Iraq, and he swiftly broke off the talks with Ms. Butenis.

“We are out of here,” Mr. Black told a colleague, 
one former executive said. After returning to the 
United States, Mr. Black and Robert Richer, who 
had also joined Blackwater after a C.I.A. career, 
separately confronted Mr. Prince with their 
concerns about the plan, one former Blackwater executive said.

Mr. Richer left Blackwater in February 2008, 
followed by Mr. Black several months later, amid 
a battle inside Blackwater between former C.I.A. 
officers working at the company’s office outside 
Washington and executives at Blackwater’s headquarters in North Carolina.

The former officials said that Mr. Black, Mr. 
Richer and others believed that Blackwater had 
cultivated a cowboy culture that was contemptuous 
of government rules and regulations, and that 
some of the company’s leaders ­ former members of 
the 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/us_navy/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Navy 
Seals including Mr. Prince and Mr. Jackson ­ had 
pushed the boundaries of legality. Contacted by 
telephone, Mr. Richer would not discuss specifics of why he left the company.

A senior State Department official said that 
American diplomats were not aware of any payoffs 
to Iraqi officials. Ms. Butenis, now the United 
States ambassador to Sri Lanka, declined to 
comment for this article. But other State 
Department officials confirmed that embassy 
officials had met with Blackwater executives to 
encourage them to compensate the victims of Nisour Square.

The United States military had a well-established 
program for paying families of civilian victims 
of American military operations, but at the time 
of the Nisour Square shooting, the State 
Department did not have a similar program, officials said.

In interviews, three Iraqis wounded in Nisour 
Square said that Blackwater had made payments of 
several thousand dollars to them and other 
victims. Still, some of them joined the civil 
lawsuit against Blackwater. Settlement talks 
collapsed Tuesday, according to Susan Burke, a lawyer for the victims.

Even after the furor that was set off by the 
shootings, State Department officials made it 
clear that they did not believe they could 
operate in Baghdad without Blackwater, and Iraqi 
officials eventually dropped their public demands 
for the company’s immediate ouster.

Raed Jarrar, the Iraq consultant to the American 
Friends Service Committee, said in a recent 
interview that the Maliki government had gone too 
easy on Blackwater. “They had two different 
messages,” he said. “The Iraqi public, and even 
the Iraqi Parliament, was told that all private 
contractors would be pulled out of the country, 
while the contractors and the State Department were told the opposite.”

In late 2008, the Bush administration and the 
Iraqi government hammered out an agreement 
governing the role of security contractors in 
Iraq. Under the new rules, security contractors 
lost their immunity from Iraqi laws, which had 
been granted in 2004 by 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/l_paul_iii_bremer/index.html?inline=nyt-per>L. 
Paul Bremer III, the head of the Coalition 
Provisional Authority, which ran the country 
after the start of the American-led war. The 
Iraqi government also made it mandatory for 
security contractors to obtain licenses to operate in the country.

In March 2009, the Iraqis said that Blackwater 
would not be awarded a license. Two months later, 
the State Department replaced the company with a 
competing security contractor, Triple Canopy.

Barclay Walsh contributed research from 
Washington, and Mohammed Hussein from Baghdad.




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