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Some farces, it turns out, can be avoided. The FBI team traveling to Iraq at the behest of the State Department to assist in the investigation of Blackwater’s September 16 shooting at Nisour Square was supposed to be guarded by… Blackwater. (Shades of Darrell Issa’s threat hover over that one.) However, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security realized yesterday that the ensuing conflict of interest would be just too egregious.

Under Blackwater’s State Department contract, the company provides security for all official travel outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that security for the team would be handled by the department’s Diplomatic Security Service.

Of course, the DSS needed a bit of prompting, which is perhaps to be expected after chief Richard Griffin’s vigorous defense of Blackwater on Tuesday. In a letter, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) urged (pdf) Condoleezza Rice to step back from the precipice of absurdity.

But other absurdities linger.

Today the House is expected to vote on a bill pushed by Rep. David Price (D-NC) that would, among other things, bring State Department security contractors — Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp — under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, thereby clarifying that they would be subject to U.S. criminal penalties for wrongdoing (according to U.S. law) committed overseas. The bill has the support of the private-security industry and is less strict than rival legislation supported by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). (Price represents Blackwater’s home state of North Carolina.)

But that’s not stopping the White House from opposing Price’s bill.

In a statement this morning, the Bush administration said it has “grave concerns” about the bill but supports accountability and would be willing to work with Congress to change the legislation.

Among its concerns, the White House calls the bill “vague” about who would be subject to U.S. law, resulting in “extreme litigation.”

It says the bill’s outcome could threaten ongoing national security activities abroad.

It also says forcing the FBI to operate overseas infringes on the powers of the executive branch. And it says the bill would burden the Department of Defense, forcing that agency to help the FBI even as it conducts a war.

You would think that the private-security lobby would be the ones most concerned about “extreme litigation,” but apparently the White House knows better.

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