The notorious private security company Blackwater, which now calls itself Xe Services, has become the center of a growing storm. In sworn statements filed in a US federal court on Aug. 3, two former employees allege that the company’s founder and owner Erik Prince either murdered or arranged the murder of witnesses who were cooperating with federal investigators.
For fear of ending up in the same boat, the men’s identities have been concealed, so statements were made in the names of John Doe 1 and John Doe 2. The story that was initially broken by author and journalist Jeremy Scahill in The Nation has been picked up by most mainstream television networks and newspapers and is being intensely debated.
John Doe 1 is an ex-marine who was sent by Blackwater to Iraq to guard American government personnel and now has a laundry list of accusations against his former employer. He says the company smuggled weapons into Iraq hidden in bags of dog food, which were used by persons not properly vetted by the State Department to kill or injure Iraqi civilians. He says his colleagues fired upon vehicles without stopping to check whether civilians were alive or in need of medical care and failed to report such incidents to either the Iraqi authorities or the State Department.
John Doe 2 says he worked for Blackwater for four years and has been threatened by the company’s management with “death and violence.” In addition, he says, “based on information provided to me by former colleagues, it appears that Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct.” He further accused Prince of setting up a web of companies to obscure wrongdoing, fraud and other crimes, including money laundering, illegal arms dealing and tax evasion.
In the same statement John Doe 2 alleges that Prince views himself as a Christian Crusader, tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe and to that end he intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, “knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis.”
Many of these men, he says, used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.” He claims that Prince’s executives considered the killing of Iraqis as a sport, while company employees would regularly use such racist or derogatory terms such as “raghead” when referring to Arabs. He also accuses Blackwater of providing its employees with weaponry designed for maximum kill that had not been approved by the US authorities.
Lastly, he says Prince was a frequent visitor to the company’s “man camp” in Iraq’s Green Zone and failed to stop his men drinking heavily, taking steroids, and using prostitutes including “child prostitutes.”
Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who sits on a House committee that has been investigating Blackwater’s activities for the past five years, says if the allegations are true then “Blackwater has been a criminal enterprise defrauding taxpayers and murdering innocent civilians.”
“Blackwater is a law unto itself, both internationally and domestically,” he said. “The question is why they operated with impunity. In addition to Blackwater, we should be questioning their patrons in the previous administration who funded and employed this organization. Blackwater wouldn’t exist without federal patronage; these allegations should be thoroughly investigated.”
The company has denied the allegations, adding that it will respond formally on Aug. 17 in a federal court within the Eastern District of Virginia.
The reclusive Prince and his company were embroiled in scandal after scandal before these latest revelations. In 2007, Prince was called before Congress to be questioned on circumstances surrounding the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians by a Blackwater security detail. In September of that year, federal prosecutors launched an investigation into employees of Blackwater accused of smuggling weapons into Iraq that were later allegedly transferred to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the US and other countries consider to be a terrorist organization.
Yet despite its murky reputation, the Obama administration has signed contracts with Blackwater for security services in Iraq and Afghanistan to the tune of $174 million plus untold millions more for aviation services. Just last month, Blackwater’s Presidential Airways received a US Army contract for aviation services in Afghanistan worth $ 8.9 million.
At the same time, the company feels free to bid for further US government contracts and is currently doing so. In the heat of war perhaps former President Bush can be forgiven for seeking the help of one of his evangelical cronies without too much oversight but what excuse does President Obama have for his failure to be discerning?
Even if the John Doe allegations turn out to be exaggerated it is well documented that Blackwater thugs have been involved in hundreds of shooting incidents inside Iraq, including the killing of a vice president’s security guard that resulted in the inebriated killer being quickly shipped out of the country and allowed to walk free. Isn’t it time that the families of those victims were given their day in court so they can seek justice? The problem is so-called US contractors were given immunity from prosecution but this should not prevent their boss Erik Prince being called to account in an American court.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, Jeremy Scahill characterized Prince as “a guy who comes from the powerhouse of the radical religious right” who viewed Blackwater as a neo-Crusader force from the beginning. “And then we have his force employed in Iraq as part of a war against a Muslim nation that George Bush characterized as a crusade,” he said.
Congresswoman Rep. Jan Schakowsky D-Illinois has urged US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not to enter into further contracts with Xe and to immediately review any existing contracts. In a letter copied to CNN, she says, “the behavior and actions of both the company’s leadership and a number of individuals employed by the company have harmed our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan and endangered the lives and welfare of our troops and diplomatic personnel serving overseas.” Good for her! But why isn’t Congress in its entirety up in arms when America’s reputation as a force for good is, surely, at stake?
