Firm’s personnel were drawn into operations on ad-hoc basis

This article was written by R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick at The Washington Post on 11 Dec 2009.

Highly trained personnel employed with the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide sometimes operated side by side with CIA field officers in Iraq and Afghanistan as the agency undertook missions to kill or capture members of insurgent groups in those countries, according to a former government official and a source familiar with the operations.

The actions taken by the private personnel went beyond the protective role specified in a classified Blackwater contract with the CIA and included active participation in raids overseen by CIA or special forces personnel, these sources said. They emphasized that roles and responsibilities often are blurred or altered in a battlefield setting, and that Blackwater personnel were drawn into the operations on an ad-hoc basis because they were present and had the necessary skills.

Still, the involvement of Blackwater’s officers in raids is likely to raise new questions about the degree to which deadly actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were outsourced to contract personnel who operated without direct contractual authority or without the kind of oversight and accountability applied to CIA and military personnel.

CIA Director Leon Panetta earlier this year ordered the agency to terminate many of its contracts with Blackwater, but CIA officials said Thursday that Panetta has ordered a special internal review of the agency’s contracts with the company to ensure that its work is strictly security-related — a review that may wind up shining a new light on intelligence practices during the Bush administration.

The agency still relies on the firm, now named Xe Services, to provide security for agency employees and assets. Panetta told Congress in the summer that he had shut down a CIA assassination program that employed Blackwater personnel in a supporting role. The CIA has publicly stated that the program, which dated from President George W. Bush’s first term in office, was never fully implemented and that no one was killed. A House committee is investigating that program.

The CIA declined to comment yesterday on specific intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Xe Services, said Blackwater was never under contract to participate in covert raids with CIA or Special Forces troops “in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.” Corallo added: “Any allegation to the contrary by any news organization would be false.” The New York Times published on its Web site Thursday evening a story saying Blackwater guards had participated in clandestine CIA raids.

Several former CIA counterterrorism officials who were based in Washington at the time said CIA headquarters was not aware of such actions and did not authorize them. They said they knew of occasions when Blackwater personnel took part in firefights while protecting CIA officers undertaking lethal raids, but the officials characterized these actions as defensive, not offensive.

A former intelligence officer who managed covert teams overseas said contractors would have been authorized to use deadly force if fired upon. “That was clearly understood and part of the rules,” the official said.

The source familiar with the operations said that they had been reviewed and approved in advance by CIA lawyers, and that agency personnel typically played the dominant role in their planning. Some requests from the field for lethal raids were rejected at CIA headquarters because they posed excessive risks to the U.S. teams or to civilians, or because intelligence experts merely wanted to keep watching the prospective targets.

But when the time came to carry out those raids — often against figures who were thought to be al-Qaeda leaders — some CIA field officers assigned responsibilities among the available personnel without regard to which ones were contractors or federal employees, according to the source, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss classified operations.

That meant Blackwater personnel helped to kill some of the targets and did not merely defend the CIA officers taking part in the raids, the source said.

A former agency officer experienced in covert operations in the Middle East said it was common knowledge that military contractors would sometimes participate in missions alongside Special Forces and paramilitary teams. He said the arrangements were made locally and were “practical,” because the active-duty forces and contractors typically shared the same training and were used to working together.

For government employees, working with contractors offered ways to circumvent red tape, said the retired officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There was no bench strength with either the CIA or Special Forces, so sometimes they would turn to contractors, who often had lots of the same skills,” the former operative said.

Robert Baer, a former CIA officer, said such informal arrangements would undoubtedly lead to problems because they short-circuit normal chains of command. “Once you cede your authorities, people are no longer restrained by regulations and federal law,” Baer said. “There have been abuses; there’s no question about it.”

The CIA’s new review of its Blackwater dealings is only the latest in a series of investigations focused on the firm. Five Blackwater guards are on trial in federal court in the District on manslaughter and other charges in connection with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007. The guards’ attorneys contend that the government does not have jurisdiction to bring such charges and that the guards’ conduct was justified. The Justice Department said in November that it would drop charges against one of the guards. A sixth guard pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and is expected to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

The company is also named in a separate civil case in federal court in Virginia in which 70 Iraqi civilians are alleging that the company engaged in “lawless behavior” and that it covered up killings and hired mercenaries. Attorneys for the company have denied the allegations and sought to dismiss the lawsuit.

In an interview with the magazine Vanity Fair this month, Blackwater’s founder and principal owner, Erik Prince — whose conservative leanings are widely known — depicted those who revealed the company’s links to the CIA as motivated in part by politics. “People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it,” he said.

By Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Prosecutors say they’ll drop manslaughter charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide contractors charged in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting.

In court documents Friday, prosecutors said they have asked that the case against Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., be dropped.

The request itself was sealed, so it’s unclear why the case was being dropped. But it could be a bad sign for the government. After the shooting, some guards spoke to investigators under the promise of immunity. Prosecutors have been arguing behind closed doors that the immunity deal did not taint the case.

Five guards, all military veterans, face charges in the shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead. Prosecutors say the shooting was unprovoked, but Blackwater says its convoy was ambushed.

By Del Quentin Wilber

Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal judge blocked the public Wednesday from attending a critical set of pretrial hearings in the prosecution of five U.S. security contractors accused of killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007.

The hearings, which are expected to last through next week, will examine whether the government improperly used immunized statements by the Blackwater Worldwide security guards in its investigation. The guards gave the statements to the State Department shortly after the controversial shooting Sept. 16, 2007, in a busy Baghdad square.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said Wednesday that he was closing the hearings because he wanted to shield witnesses and potential jurors from pretrial publicity. He said he wanted to ensure the guards a fair trial.

The hearings in the District’s federal court were not listed on the public docket, and filings by prosecutors and defense attorneys over the immunity issue have been sealed. A Washington Post reporter learned about the hearings several weeks ago and was told they would be open to the public. Last week, a court clerk told The Post that Urbina intended to close the hearings.

In a letter Tuesday, The Post asked Urbina to reconsider. Post attorney James McLaughlin said the court should have put the proceedings on the open docket and given the public an earlier chance to challenge the basis for the closure of the hearing. He said concerns about the impact of pretrial publicity were “highly speculative” unless supported by factual findings in open court.

Urbina denied The Post’s request. He said the rights of the five guards to a fair trial outweighed the public’s interest in attending the proceedings. He said he was concerned about how news accounts of the statements might affect witnesses, some as far away as Baghdad.

The judge added that he did not see a way to partially open the hearings because they will deal heavily with grand jury information. Grand jury proceedings are, by law, kept secret.

The five guards — Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball — are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations in the killing of 14 civilians and the wounding of 20 others. The Justice Department alleges that the guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square while in a convoy. One guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against the others.

Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, had a contract to provide security for the State Department in Iraq.

The Justice Department’s investigation has been complicated by many factors.

Agents and prosecutors were barred from gleaning information from immunized statements the guards gave to officials with the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security. When officials took the statements from the guards, the State Department was under pressure to quickly assess what happened.

The proceedings underway, known as Kastigar hearings, will probe how well investigators gathered evidence without being tainted by those immunized statements. If the judge finds the government’s case is tainted, he might throw out the indictment.

To read this article at the Washington Post website click here.

By Anthony Shadid

Washington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD, Oct. 6 — In a dramatic illustration of shifting authority in the Green Zone, once an American preserve here, Iraqi soldiers confronted a security detail contracted by the U.S. government, detained four of the guards and beat them in a standoff last week that lasted at least two hours, according to Iraqi officials, the company and the U.S. Embassy.

The U.S. military negotiated the guards’ release several hours later, the U.S. Embassy said, and the four men were flown out of Iraq, for fear that charges might be filed against them.

Philip Frayne, an embassy spokesman, confirmed that an incident occurred at one of the fortified entrances to the Green Zone but said no American diplomats were in the convoy. “Information is still in the process of being gathered and evaluated,” he said.

Douglas Ebner, a spokesman for Falls Church-based DynCorp International, said the men involved in the Sept. 28 incident were employed by the company. He said that they were mistreated and that the company “has strongly voiced our deep concerns regarding this incident both with the State Department and with Iraqi authorities.”

A senior Iraqi officer with the Baghdad Brigade, the Iraqi army unit charged with guarding the Green Zone, also confirmed the incident but denied that the men were beaten. He said the confrontation escalated because no interpreter was available.

“The problem is that the PSDs,” an abbreviation that has entered Iraqi slang as a catchall term for contractors’ convoys, “don’t understand that sovereignty is in the hands of Iraqis now,” the officer said. “These groups still consider themselves above the law.”

Before a U.S.-Iraqi agreement took effect Jan. 1, regulating the U.S. presence here and outlining an eventual American withdrawal, contractors were immune from the Iraqi legal process under an order signed by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, in June 2004. At the time, it was unclear whether contractors were covered under U.S. military or civilian law.

The result was that not a single private security contractor was charged with a crime despite dozens of suspicious shootings involving Iraqi civilians. The legacy has made contractors one of the most loathed groups in today’s Iraq. In one of the worst incidents, heavily armed guards for the North Carolina-based firm then known as Blackwater opened fire on Iraqis in a crowded street on Sept. 16, 2007, killing 17 civilians, after the guards’ convoy reportedly came under fire.

Under the agreement, some U.S. contractors retain their immunity, but the Iraqi government, as it did in the case of Blackwater, can revoke or refuse to renew operating licenses.

An account of last week’s incident that appeared to be written by a DynCorp employee was forwarded by e-mail to The Washington Post. Several people said the details of the account seemed accurate, but Ebner said he could not confirm who authored it.

According to the account, the last vehicle of a convoy was stopped at an entrance to the Green Zone. Iraqi guards tried to get the private security guards to turn over smoke grenades. One of the private guards tried to find out who was in charge and started shouting at an Iraqi captain. A member of the contractor team then tried to photograph the captain, who grabbed the camera.

The Iraqi officer with the Baghdad Brigade said the security contractor hit the captain, although the account denied that. The incident quickly escalated, according to the account and the Iraqi officer.

“This is where the wheels fell off,” the account said.

“Our opinion is that they were being aggressive against us 100 percent,” the senior Iraqi officer said in the interview. “That’s not me as an Iraqi talking. That’s me as a professional soldier.”

The captain then fired two shots in the air, the account said. An Iraqi colonel arrived, along with at least five vehicles of Iraqi army personnel, eventually numbering about 80 soldiers. The security contractors refused to get out of their Suburban, and the colonel ordered a tank to run over the vehicle.

When asked whether a tank was ordered to crush the Suburban, the senior Iraqi officer replied, “No comment.”

Before the tank did so, the account said, the contractors got out, one of them at gunpoint. The men were cuffed and beaten, according to the Iraqi officer and the account.

“The Iraqis loaded them into their vehicles, putting one in the trunk/boot of the vehicle. They then drove away to an Iraqi base with an Iraqi sitting on the hood waving his arms up and down, screaming a victory cry,” the account said.

At the base, the account said, the men were beaten, some of them with a bar used for weights in a gym. One of their assailants was an Iraqi general, who repeatedly punched one of the men, then took part in the negotiations over their release, it said.

One “was beaten so bad that he was covered in blood and began projectile vomiting from the head injuries he was receiving,” the account said.

The Iraqi official denied that the contractors were hurt in custody.

“Trust me,” he said, “we didn’t beat them up.”

The account ended with a warning.

“In the past, people could shoot and not worry about the ramifications. Now, people must think, analyze the situation and make appropriate decisions,” it read. “Unfortunately, not all people are capable of doing that and many of them still see bad guys behind every bush, which just isn’t the case anymore.”

Special correspondent Qais Mizher contributed to this report.