Odds & Ends on Blackwater

The Malta Independent Online reports:


A European Parliament working document drawn up by Giovanni Claudio Fava has claimed “Malta is the operational base of Blackwater, the organiser of private military militia which are increasingly taking on more and more roles which used to be undertaken by US forces in Iraq and elsewhere”.

American left-wing and anti-war media are in full cry about the underhand and subtle changes, which have made Blackwater the new symbol of American claimed supremacy, carried out by forces other than the regular military.

California Democratic Senator Henry Waxman has been holding a number of hearings on the spread of Blackwater but even they, the more anti-war media claims, have held back from seeing the whole wide picture.

Thus the four-hour interrogation of Blackwater director Eric Prince got lost in details, even discovering for instance a December 2006 “arrangement” negotiated by the State Department as compensation for an Iraqi policeman killed by a Blackwater employee.

But it was only Republican Darrell Issa from California who documented the intimate links between Prince and the Bush administration. On the eve of the hearings, Oliver North, the former colonel who had been condemned for exchanging arms with cocaine in the fight against communism in Nicaragua, accused Senator Waxman of a huge “witch-hunt”.

Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, argued that since the military functions had been privatised, it was in Blackwater’s interest to prolong the war, rather than end it.

An article on Salon.com carried the charges by Jeremy Scahill that the Christian fundamentalists behind Blackwater were the hard core in favour of the war of George Bush and Dick Cheney and their “patron”, former Secretary of State George Schultz.

Eric Prince’s parents, Edgar Prince and his wife Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, through their foundation finance the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secret society which met in Salt Lake City on 28 September to hear Dick Cjheney argue the case for an attack on Iran.

Prince Senior is one of the pillars of Christian Coalition of Gary Bauer and of the Family Research Council of James Dobson.

Eric Prince, through his own foundation, the Freiheit Foundation, finances Christendom College, the Institute for World Politics, Crisis Magazine and the Prison Fellowship of Chuck Colson. Prince also finances the Legionnaires du Christ and Christian Freedom International.

When still 27 years old, Eric Prince founded Blackwater USA. He and those who soon joined him have profited from the more than $1,000 million they have taken as contracts from 2000 to 2006.

In 2004, Cofer Black passed from CIA to the State Department and thence became Blackwater’s vice-president. While still in the CIA, Black was in charge of the “special extraditions” organising the secret transfer of prisoners from Iraq or Afghanistan to countries less rigid against the practice of torture, such as Poland, Romania, Egypt, and so on.

These planes, which travelled between Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan often made stopovers in many European countries such as the UK, Italy, France, Germany and Malta many times without the countries themselves being informed what was going on.

Now the Swiss procurator Dick Marty has sent documents regarding the “CIA’s flying prisons” to the European Parliament and names two Blackwater subsidiaries – Presidential Airways and Aviation Worldwide Services.

The Giovanni Claudio Fava document on behalf of the European Parliament says the two companies used CASA C-212 planes, usually used to transport paratroops and big cargoes and also able to land on improvised landing spots.

Blackwater's Eric Prince: "I Won't Allow Iraqis to Arrest My Employees"

The Washington Times reports:

A defiant Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince said yesterday he will not allow Iraqi authorities to arrest his contractors and try them in Iraq's faulty justice system.

"We will not let our people be taken by the Iraqis," Mr. Prince told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. At least 17 of 20 Blackwater guards being investigated for their roles in a Sept. 16 shooting incident are still in a secure compound in Baghdad's Green Zone and carrying out limited duties.

Two or three others have been allowed by the State Department to leave the country as part of their scheduled rotation out of Iraq and are expected to return.

"In an ideal sense, if there was wrongdoing, there could be a trial brought in the Iraqi court system. But that would imply that there is a valid Iraqi court system where Westerners could get a fair trial. That is not the case right now," said Mr. Prince.

Mr. Prince also expressed his disappointment that the State Department has not come to the company's defense, even though it has never lost a State Department client in years of protecting them.

"For the last week and a half, we have heard nothing from the State Department," said Mr. Prince. "From their senior levels, their PR folks, we've heard nothing — radio silence.

"It is disappointing for us. We have performed to the line, letter and verse of their 1,000-page contract," he said. "Our guys take significant risk for them. They've taken a pounding these last three years."

A number of Blackwater contractors, most of whom come from military and law-enforcement backgrounds, have been killed in action or grievously wounded in Iraq while running more than 16,500 security missions in the past three years.

Iraq's government, outraged by the Sept. 16 incident in which up to 17 Iraqis were killed as Blackwater staff tried to clear a crowded traffic circle, has accused the U.S. firm of unprovoked and random killings. Blackwater says its men were defending themselves after coming under fire.

The State Department has since ordered that cameras be placed in Blackwater security vehicles and that Diplomatic Security agents accompany Blackwater staff on missions. Mr. Prince said his company had recommended both those steps in 2005 and that the proposals were "buried" by the department.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki demanded yesterday that Blackwater leave Iraq and pay $8 million to the family of each of the 17 victims. Iraqi Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim said the American guards responsible should stand trial in Iraq, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Mr. Prince, a 38-year-old former Navy SEAL, said if there was any evidence of wrongdoing, his employees could be tried in the United States by a jury of their peers under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

He said the hostility toward Blackwater was partly driven by partisan politics from the Democrat-led Congress and the news media.

"The far left was unsuccessful in attacking [Army Gen. David H.] Petraeus and defunding the war, forcing a pullback of the U.S. troops," he said. "I think part of the strategy might be to undermine some other part of the support infrastructure, and that would be contractors that are an important part of the supporting package there in Iraq."

He said the scrutiny by Congress, which Democrats say is aimed at better oversight, may have backfired.

"What has happened in the last six to nine months is we've seen the U.S. government, [Department of Defense] in particular, awarding a lot more work to non-U.S. companies ... because it is harder to drag those guys before Congress," Mr. Prince said.

"And there is less oversight, there is less accountability, there is less visibility into those operations."

Mr. Prince has been caught in a partisan crossfire since shortly after last year's election, when a trial lawyer targeting Blackwater lobbied then-House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, for hearings on the "extremely Republican" company.

Mr. Prince emphasized that his guards are proven professionals, recruited on the basis of their prior military, special operations and law-enforcement experiences.

"They go through extensive vetting, training, 160 plus hours of security training, psychological evaluations, security clearances, background checks" and cultural training, he said.

Iraqis and other expatriate security companies on the ground in Iraq have complained that Blackwater guards have been overly and unnecessarily aggressive in their attitudes.