Blackwater chief refutes 'negative and baseless allegations'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chairman of military contractor Blackwater is defending his company from "negative and baseless allegations" surrounding a bloody day in Baghdad, telling a House committee that its guards responded properly to an insurgent attack last month. The Iraqi government says Blackwater contractors guarding a U.S. Embassy convoy opened fire on civilians in western Baghdad on September 16, killing as many as 20 people. And a report issued Monday by the Democratic majority staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee found the company has inflicted "significant casualties and property damage" in Iraq while guarding State Department officials.
Blackwater chairman Erik Prince is scheduled to appear before the committee on Tuesday. In his opening statement, obtained by CNN, he tells representatives his company and its employees are victims of a "rush to judgment" about the Baghdad shootings. "To the extent there was loss of innocent life, let me be clear that I consider that tragic. Every life, whether American or Iraqi, is precious," Prince says in his statement. But he adds that "based on everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone on Sept. 16."
Prince, a former Navy SEAL officer, founded Blackwater in 1997. Its business skyrocketed after al Qaeda's 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, where the U.S. government hired it to provide security in hostile areas. In Iraq, the State Department has paid Blackwater more than $830 million to protect its officials since 2004, the House panel's report concludes... The committee staff report states that Blackwater guards fired their weapons 195 times between the beginning of 2005 through the second week of September, an average of more than once a week. Though the company's contractors are authorized to use force only defensively, "the vast majority of Blackwater weapons discharges are preemptive, with Blackwater forces firing first at a vehicle or suspicious individual prior to receiving any fire," the report says.
The report is also critical of the State Department. In cases where Iraqis have been killed, "the State Department's primary response was to ask Blackwater to make monetary payments to 'put the matter behind us,' rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability." In one case cited in Monday's report, a Blackwater guard who was visibly drunk shot and killed a bodyguard of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi during a confrontation in the Green Zone on Christmas Eve in 2006. Blackwater hustled the guard out of the country within 36 hours, with State Department approval, and the company later paid the Iraqi's family $15,000, the report states. The report also questions whether the government is saving money by hiring out its security work. It found the government pays the company about $1,200 a day for each contractor on the job in Iraq -- between six and nine times the pay and allowances of an Army sergeant.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/02/blackwater/
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