Email Shows State Officials Doing Blackwater Damage ControlIn addition to Blackwater’s Erik Prince, the House oversight committee will hear testimony from top State Department officials — including the Iraq coordinator, David Satterfield — about Blackwater’s contracts with State. Material found by the committee’s Democratic staff suggests that State officials helped create an environment where Blackwater guards could use deadly force with minimum reprisal.
After an infamous December incident wherein a drunken Blackwater contractor shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, one U.S. embassy official wrote to another:
Will you be following in up Blackwater [sic] to do all possible to ensure that a sizable compensation is forthcoming? If we are to avoid this whole thing becoming even worse, I think a prompt pledge and apology — even if they want to claim it was accidental — would be the best way to assure the Iraqis don’t take steps, such as telling Blackwater that they are no longer allowed to work in Iraq.
In State’s defense, an embassy cable from Secretary Condoleezza Rice argued “strongly” that “justice had to be done.” But justice is a relative thing. When embassy officials proposed the price for the guard’s life be pegged at either $100,000 or $250,000, a State diplomatic-security official countered with $15,000. The figure needed to be lower, the diplomatic-security official contended, so Iraqis wouldn’t “try to get killed to set up their family financially.” Two days after the shooting, Blackwater and State agreed that the guard’s family should receive $15,000. Ultimately, Blackwater got the shooter out of Iraq and back to the U.S., with the assistance of State’s diplomatic security service.
