Blackwater News
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Since the revelation earlier this week of allegations by two former employees of security firm Blackwater that its owner was complicit in murder in order to cover up the deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians, explosive charges have continued to emerge.
The criminal activities of the firm first came under scrutiny after a group of the firm’s members who were tasked to guard US diplomats in Iraq opened fire on civilians in Baghdad on September 2007, killing 17 people.
Top executives at Blackwater secretly approved $1 million for Iraqi officials to keep quiet after the company's security guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in September 2007, The New York Times reports.
Despite news reports that the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater has seen its contracts dry up and its influence wane, the company continues to do brisk business in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the Obama administration may be too afraid of the firm to do anything about it, says investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.
Blackwater: CIA Assassins? Now the New York Times is reporting that in 2004 the CIA hired Blackwater "as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda."
Blackwater’s got loads of legal troubles. Five employees await trial in the U.S. on charges stemming from the Nisoor shootings. The company has also faced accusations from crew members aboard its warship McArthur, which was outfitted to fight pirates but has yet to win a contract. Three McArthur crewmen reported harassment, reprisals and physical abuse at the hands of drunken superiors.
Two former employees of Blackwater have accused the private US security firm and its founder of killing Iraqis for fun, smuggling weapons and deceiving the State Department.
Farid Walid, who was shot in Nisour Square two years ago during a massacre that killed 17 Iraqis, told The Times: 'Everybody here knows of cases where Blackwater guards shot innocent people without a second thought.
A group of five private security guards, who allegedly killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, are expected to surrender to the FBI in Salt Lake City in Utah Monday morning, after they were ordered to do so within 24 hours, media reports said.
Employees of U.S. security firm Blackwater who shot and killed Iraqi civilians should face the death sentence, relatives of some victims said on Sunday.
Private security guards in Iraq, whose armored convoys once barreled through the streets with impunity, could face being thrown into crowded and violent Iraqi jails once their era of legal immunity ends on January 1.
A proposal by security contractor Blackwater has divided residents of this sleepy mountain village into two camps: Those who welcome the company's plans to build a firing range here and critics who want to keep it out of town.
....It has hired a bipartisan stable of big-name Washington lawyers, lobbyists and press advisers, including the public relations powerhouse Burson-Marsteller, which was brought in briefly, but at a critical moment, to help Blackwater’s chairman, Erik D. Prince, prepare for his first Congressional hearing.
Washington, DC - Bush administration investigators from the State Department promised Blackwater bodyguards involved in a massacre last month of 17 Iraqi civilians that their statements would not be used to prosecute them.
Seventeen Iraqis were killed Sep. 16, and another 27 wounded at Nisoor square in western Baghdad when mercenaries from the company opened fire on them. Dozens of witnesses said that, contrary to Blackwater claims, the mercenaries had not come under attack.
Founded in 1998 by former Navy Seals, Blackwater USA says it has prepared tens of thousands of security personnel to work in hot spots around the world. At its complex in North Carolina, it has shooting ranges for high-powered weapons, buildings for simulating hostage rescue missions and a bunkhouse for trainees.
"This is a lie, Bush gave them immunity before they went over there." Kelly M.
Founded in 1998 by former Navy Seals, Blackwater USA says it has prepared tens of thousands of security personnel to work in hot spots around the world. At its complex in North Carolina, it has shooting ranges for high-powered weapons, buildings for simulating hostage rescue missions and a bunkhouse for trainees.
"This is a lie, Bush gave them immunity before they went over there." Kelly M.
Troubled military contractor Blackwater USA is likely to be eased out of its role of guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq in the aftermath of a shooting last month that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead,...
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney grills Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the Pentagon's missing trillions, DynCorp's slave trade, and the 9/11 wargames.
House Hearing on FY06 Dept. of Defense Budget, March 11, 2005.
Troubled military contractor Blackwater USA is likely to be eased out of its role of guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq in the aftermath of a shooting last month that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.....
Blackwater USA, the security firm that has come under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill after a September 16 incident in which it allegedly opened fire on Iraqi civilians and killed 17, was accused on Monday by a senior Democratic lawmaker of evading tens of millions of dollars in federal taxes.
Baghdad- The Iraqi Government did not release any statements calling for compensations from Blackwater, the US security company....................
The Iraqi government wants U.S. security firm Blackwater to pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed in a shooting, a senior government source said on Tuesday.
Janessa Gans, a visiting political science professor at Principia College who served as a US official in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, opened fire on the private security contractor Blackwater in Saturday's edition of the Los Angeles Times.
“We're going to stop them,” Filner, D-San Diego, told the demonstrators who gathered about a mile from the site of the proposed training camp. “Blackwater is a black mark on American democracy.”
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said an investigation set up by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki found no evidence that the U.S. security firm had come under fire during the incident.
An Iraqi police officer who was directing traffic at Baghdad's Nusoor Square on September 16 said Blackwater guards "became the terrorists" that Sunday afternoon when they opened fire on civilians, an incident the Iraqi government said was unprovoked.
Blackwater is more than just what is called a “private army”, an appellation that makes it appear to be merely another capitalist business operation. But, it is more than that
Seven House Republicans have urged Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) to postpone an expected hearing this week about Blackwater USA until the State Department and a separate commission release reports about the most recent incident involving the North Carolina-based security firm in which Iraqi civilians were killed.
Blackwater USA triggered a major battle in the Iraq war by sending an unprepared team of security guards into an insurgent stronghold, a move that led to their horrific deaths and a violent response by U.S. forces, according to a congressional investigation...
Blackwater is accused of withholding documents and then trying to get the Pentagon to retroactively classify them so the company wouldn't have to turn them over to Congress.
The State Department said Thursday that Blackwater USA security personnel had been involved in 56 shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq so far this year. It was the first time the Bush administration had made such data public.
The US State Department will send a team to Iraq next week to evaluate security measures for US diplomats after a deadly shooting involving Blackwater USA, spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday.
Democratic Congressional leaders should demand, Republican leaders should support, and President Bush should accept the naming of a special prosecutor in the Blackwater case as a condition of confirming a new attorney general.
US and Iraq investigations into powerful private security group Blackwater USA are multiplying as more questions are raised about the firm's actions in a Baghdad shooting that left at least 10 Iraqis dead.
The US State Department is preventing a House committee from disclosing information that could "embarrass" Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki regarding an investigation of alleged corruption within his government, a lawmaker alleges in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
Why doesn't the Iraqi government have the explicit legal power to expel or adjudicate the U.S.-contracted troops that are killing its citizens?
The American security contractor Blackwater USA has been involved in a far higher rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other security firms providing similar services to the State Department, according to Bush administration officials and industry officials.
With more than $800 million in contracts, Blackwater USA, led by Erik Prince, is among the biggest companies providing armed guards for U.S. officials and government contractors in Iraq.
Blackwater is back in the news again -- TIME Magazine's Adam Zagorin and Brian Bennett have copies of a document that show that the North Carolina private security company's employees shot and killed eight Iraqis in a firefight.
As Democrats weigh new limits on the private security firms in Iraq, one of the party’s presidential hopefuls on Monday pushed President Bush to shed new light on war contractors before Congress does so first.
Reports: Weapons linked to employees may have gone to terrorist groups
Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.
......The U.S. embassy in Baghdad relies heavily on Blackwater security to guard its personnel as they visit government ministries and other sites around Iraq.
The Iraqi government said Tuesday it would review the status of private security companies as anger over the alleged involvement of Blackwater USA in a fatal shooting of civilians threatened to spread to other firms providing protection for dignitaries and Westerners on Iraq's...
