The U.S. government disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.
The warnings were conveyed in letters and memorandums from defense and legal experts and in high-level discussions between U.S. and Iraqi officials. They reflected growing concern about the lack of control over the tens of thousands of private guards in Iraq, the largest private security force ever employed by the United States in wartime.
Neither the Pentagon nor the State Department took substantive action to regulate private security companies until Blackwater guards opened fire Sept. 16 at a Baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and provoking protests over the role of security contractors in Iraq....
On Feb. 7, 2006, Blackwater guards allegedly killed three Kurdish civilians outside the northern city of Kirkuk....
...On Christmas Eve 2006, a Blackwater employee killed the bodyguard of an Iraqi vice president in the Green Zone. Six weeks later, a Blackwater sniper killed three security guards for the state-run media network. On May 24, a Blackwater team shot and killed a civilian driver outside the Interior Ministry gates, sparking an armed standoff between the Blackwater guards and Iraqi security forces in downtown Baghdad.
By June 6, concerns about Blackwater had reached Iraq's National Intelligence Committee....
..."We set this thing up for failure from the beginning," said T.X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel who advised the new Iraqi army from January to March 2004. He added that private security guards regularly infuriated his Iraqi staff with their aggressive tactics and that he reported the problems "up the chain of command."
"We're just sorting it out now," Hammes said. "I still think, from a pure counterinsurgency standpoint, armed contractors are an inherently bad idea, because you cannot control the quality, you cannot control the action on the ground, but you're held responsible for everything they do."....
...The State Department investigated previous Blackwater shootings and found no indication of wrongdoing, according to a senior official involved in security
matters....
...The Defense Department has paid $2.7 billion for private security since 2003... The State Department has paid $2.4 billion for private security in Iraq -- including $1 billion to Blackwater -- since 2003.... On Sept. 30, 2006, Congress passed a provision aimed at giving the military authority over all contractors in Iraq, including Blackwater. But the provision has not been implemented by the
Pentagon.....
...In previous wars, the Pentagon had prohibited contractors from participating in combat. But in Iraq, military planners rewrote the policy to match the reality on the ground. On Sept. 20, 2005, the military issued an order authorizing contractors to use deadly force to protect people and assets. In June 2006, the order was codified as an "interim rule" in the Federal Register. It took effect immediately without public debate.....
...But neither the military nor the State Department set guidelines for regulating tens of thousands of hired guns on the battlefield. Oversight was left to overburdened government contracting officers or the companies themselves, which conducted their own investigations when a shooting incident occurred. Dozens of security companies operated under layers of subcontracts that often made their activities all but impossible to track. They were accountable to no one for violent incidents, according to U.S. officials and security company representatives familiar with the contracting arrangements.
U.S. officials often turned to the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, a trade group funded by the security companies....
..."It violates all the best lessons of what goes into good policy and smart business," said Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow... The association sometimes resisted regulation....
...On June 27, 2004, one day before he left Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, administrator of the now-defunct U.S. occupation government, signed CPA Order 17, a decree granting contractors immunity from Iraqi law.... The February 2006 shooting incident in Kirkuk had damaged U.S.-Iraqi relations.... Ali, the provincial council president.... "sent official letters to the American and the British consulates and met them in my office to find out who the murderers were. They didn't do anything or give me clear answers. They only said, 'The ones who did it were from the Blackwater company.' "
A Blackwater spokeswoman did not respond to e-mails or phone messages seeking comment. U.S. officials said they could not recall the incident....
..."Contractors are . . . subject to oversight and accountability for their actions on the basis of U.S. law and regulation." ....
re The State Department investigated...and found no indication of wrongdoing - Remember - the Inspector General for the State Department was Howard "Cookie" Krongard, who was impeding the investigations into Blackwater, where his brother, former CIA executive director Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, sat on the Advisory Panel.
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