Blackwater’s been out of the news recently, but it doesn’t mean things haven’t been happening for the company. There’s the whole messy tale of Cookie and Buzzy Krongard that has come to light…
The brothers’ parallel career arcs crossed disastrously last week when Cookie, at a House oversight committee hearing to clear up a number of troubling allegations about his performance as inspector general, misremembered a fraternal conversation that had occurred a few weeks earlier and testified emphatically that Buzzy was not affiliated with the State Department’s troublesome contractor Blackwater Worldwide. (See below and the following page for a recap by committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.) During a hearing recess, Buzzy, who had been watching his brother’s mistaken testimony on C-SPAN, reminded Cookie by phone that he had indeed recently joined a Blackwater advisory board and added that he’d just participated in his first board meeting. Cookie came back to the hearing and quickly corrected his testimony. While insisting that he is not his brother’s keeper, Cookie has now recused himself from Blackwater-related oversight. Buzzy, meanwhile, has stepped down reluctantly from the security contractor’s board in order to minimize any appearance of conflict-of-interest. The committee has invited both brothers to clear up additional misunderstandings at their witness table next week.
And that’s just for starters. Blackwater’s legal troubles are just getting started.
Remember that recently-impaneled grand jury looking at Blackwater’s Nisour Square shootings? Turns out it’s not just about Blackwater.
Four years into the occupation, prosecutors are attempting to build the first criminal case against private security companies — who up until now worked in a system rigged to ensure unaccountability.The Washington Post:
The Washington grand jury has issued subpoenas to several private security firms, including Blackwater, a legal source briefed on the probe said yesterday. Authorities are seeking company “after-action” reports and other documents that may shed light on specific incidents, he said.
The source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, declined to say which incidents have been targeted, but he said the investigation ranges well beyond Blackwater. Private security companies in Iraq “have been shooting a lot of people,” he said.
That’s an understatement.
There’s no word from the piece about which non-Blackwater firms are in the grand jury’s crosshairs, nor which incidents are potentially criminal. As the paper reports, the Iraqi government claims it knows more than 20 potential criminal incidents involving private security companies — most of which it lays at the feet of Blackwater — but whether that list has anything to do with the grand jury’s focus is unknown.
Now this is a serious problem for not just Blackwater. This means possibly the entire PMC industry now faces intense scrutiny and possible criminal charges. I have been saying all along that Blackwater is just the tip of the bloody iceberg.
We’re about to see the rest of that iceberg come crashing down. You would think that the PMC industry would be a little more careful about shooting into crowds of Iraqis.
Iraqi authorities on Monday detained at least 33 foreigners, including two men with U.S. Department of Defense-issued identification cards, in connection with a shooting incident in central Baghdad that injured a woman, the U.S. military said.
The arrests were the latest sign of growing Iraqi impatience with the activities of private security guards in the wake of the September killings of 17 Iraqi civilians by guards working for the Blackwater security company.
Also on Monday, the governor of Muthanna province said U.S. troops were no longer welcomed in the town of Samawa after U.S. troops opened fire on civilians there Sunday. Two people were reported dead in that incident on Sunday; a hospital worker said a third died Monday.
“We don’t want the American troops to enter Samawa, and we will oppose if they enter,” said the governor, Ahmed Marzook al Salal, who suspended cooperation with U.S. reconstruction efforts Sunday to protest the shooting. “We were handed responsibility for security a year ago, and we are not in need of the American troops.”
Details of Monday’s incident in Baghdad were murky. According to the Iraqi police, a private-security company opened fire on a woman as she crossed the street in the busy shopping district of Karrada. Two men also were injured, Iraqi police said.
Iraqi officers at a nearby police checkpoint witnessed the incident, chased down the convoy and detained everyone in the vehicles, including passengers who weren’t security guards, according to a spokesman for the Iraqi military official who oversees the Baghdad security plan. They also seized the vehicles.
It was the first time that Iraqi police had detained foreigners after such an incident.
The U.S. military identified the detained men as employees of ALMCO, a Dubai-based company that has contracts with the U.S. military to provide catering and life-support functions for the Multi-National Security Transition Command, as well as a contract with the Joint Contracting Command to build a courthouse.
The Iraqis are growing more bold. They are telling us “Yankee go home!” What happens when the Iraqis decide we all need to go home? What then?
The threat to the PMC industry is growing. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, and yet in the halls of power somebody is working to actually try to bring these killers down. How far will this grand jury get in a Bush Justice Department?
We’re about to see.