Facing scathing criticism from Democrats questioning the U.S. government’s reliance on private security firms in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the chairman of Blackwater USA rejected accusations Tuesday that his company employs “cowboys” who are doing more harm than good.
Erik Prince, 38, a former Navy SEAL who started Blackwater about 11 years ago, said during a hearing on Capitol Hill that his company has been wrongly painted as a band of mercenaries and has faced “baseless allegations of wrongdoing.”
Blackwater, which has long been viewed suspiciously by Iraqis, is facing increased scrutiny in Washington after a Sept. 16 shootout in Baghdad involving Blackwater guards left 11 dead. The FBI as well as the State and Defense Departments are conducting investigations into the shootings.
The Iraqi government has accused Blackwater of shooting at civilians indiscriminately and moved last month to bar the security firm from the country.
On Tuesday, several Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said they wondered whether Blackwater employees have a different set of rules — impervious to oversight and facing scant repercussions for wrongdoing. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) was one of several Democrats to ask Prince about an incident after a Christmas party in the Green Zone last year in which an intoxicated Blackwater contractor shot and killed the bodyguard of an Iraqi vice president. Maloney noted that the Blackwater employee was spirited out of the country about 36 hours after the incident and has faced no charges.
“If he lived in America, he would have been arrested, and he would be facing criminal charges,” Maloney said. “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 portrayed his company as a collection of “Americans working for America.”
30 Blackwater workers killed
While acknowledging some mistakes may have been made by his employees while carrying out their duties in the two war zones, he touted his hired guns as courageous men with an exemplary record in protecting U.S. officials in the war zone. He said the intoxicated employee in the Christmas incident was fired and fined several thousand dollars.
Prince said 30 Blackwater contractors have been killed in the line of duty and hundreds more have been injured.
Meanwhile, none of the high-profile officials Blackwater is charged with protecting — including diplomats and members of Congress — has been killed or seriously injured.
“To the extent there is any loss of innocent life ever, let me be clear that I consider that tragic,” Prince said. “Every life, whether American or Iraqi, is precious. I stress to the committee and to the American public, however, that I believe we acted appropriately at all times.”
Scope of hearing scaled back
Prince had been expected to testify about the Sept. 16 incident, but the Justice Department made a last-minute request to the chairman of the committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), that the panel stay away from probing into details of the incident until the FBI completes its investigation.
Blackwater had $204,000 in government contracts in 2000, but the company has grown into a behemoth of private security contracting in Iraq, winning more than $1 billion in federal contracts since 2001.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) protested that Waxman’s staff had included information about Prince’s political contributions to the Republican party as well as his family’s ties to the GOP in a report on Blackwater released this week. The report noted that Prince, who in the late 1980s served as an intern in President George H.W. Bush’s White House, has donated more than $160,000 to the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The Sept. 16 shooting as well as several other incidents in which innocent Iraqis purportedly were injured or killed has led many Democratic lawmakers to raise questions about the role private security is playing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Privatizing is working exceptionally well for Blackwater,” Waxman said.
“The question … is whether outsourcing to Blackwater is a good deal to the American taxpayer, whether it’s a good deal for the military and whether it’s serving our national interest in Iraq,” Waxman said.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who is not on the oversight committee but was invited by Waxman to attend the hearing, said she would introduce legislation to phase out contractors.
The legislation would prohibit the use of private contractors for military, security, law enforcement and armed-rescue functions after 2012 unless the president tells Congress why the military is unable to perform those functions.
With about 137,000 employees of private contractors in Iraq, there are almost as many such personnel on the ground as U.S. troops — staffing levels that are the result of a smaller military in the years since the Cold War.
Contractors are being used for a variety of needs to keep the wars humming, from laundry services to providing security details for U.S. diplomats and other U.S. government officials.
Democratic lawmakers questioned Prince about the company’s handling of several incidents in which Blackwater workers were accused of violence against innocent Iraqi civilians but faced, at worse, being fired.
Prince said his company acted appropriately by terminating the employee in the Christmas shooting and paying $20,000 to the family of the Iraqi security guard.
“We as a private organization can’t do anything more,” Prince said. “We can’t flog him; we can’t incarcerate him.”
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BLACKWATER PERSPECTIVES
‘I stress to the committee and to the American public … that I believe we acted appropriately at all times.’
‘If we put 1,000 guys out in the field, humans make mistakes and they do stupid things sometimes. We try to catch those as much as we can.’
— Erik Prince, Blackwater USA chairman (right)
‘For me, personally, it was the farthest thing from the truth. … They did a dance around a lot of questions. … He wasn’t answering anything.’
— Danica Zovko, mother of Jerry Zovko, one of four Blackwater employees killed and mutilated in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. She listened to Prince’s testimony Tuesday
‘Blackwater, I want to say, has a reputation of being a bit of a cowboy. But I know we absolutely need protective security contractors.’
— Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.)
‘We’re not getting our money’s worth when we have so many complaints about innocent people being shot. And it’s unclear whether they’re actually being investigated by the State Department, because we haven’t had any cooperation.’
— Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), committee chairman (left)
— Tribune news services
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amadhani@tribune.com
