Männer für's Grobe / Blackwater: CIA Assassins? By Jeremy Scahill
Söldner-Konzern Blackwater (neuer Name: "Xe") foltert und tötet im Auftrag des CIA - Abgründe der Bush-Ära tun sich auf. Mehrere Artikel
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CIA-Masche: Rent a killer!
Blackwater war mit Drecksarbeit bei Terroristenjagd beauftragt
Von René Heilig *
Mitarbeiter der umstrittenen privaten US-Sicherheitsfirma Blackwater sollten einen Teil der Drecksarbeit erledigen, die der US-Geheimdienst CIA mit seinem Liquidierungsprogramm begonnen hatte. Der Söldner-Konzern, der sich nun »Xe Services« nennt, half ab 2004 bei der Planung, beim Training und beim Überwachen des Liquidierungsprogramms.
»Idemas Leute feuerten ein paar Salven in die Zimmerdecke, dann trieben sie die Frauen in einen Raum zusammen ... Dem damals fünfzig Jahre alten Verfassungsrichter Mohammed Siddiq stülpte das Söldnerkommando einen Sack über den Kopf und fesselte seine Hände mit Kabelbindern auf dem Rücken. Sechs männlichen Verwandten und einem Handwerker erging es ebenso. Dann wurden die acht Männer in die Autos vor dem Haus gezerrt ... Als die afghanische Polizei den privaten Folterknast nach zwölf Tagen stürmte, hingen drei der Afghanen mit den Füßen nach oben an der Decke ...«
So schildert Franz Hutsch in »Exportschlager Tod« (Econ-Verlag) den nicht untypischen Einsatz eines US-Söldnerkommandos in Kabul. Als es zum Prozess kam, sagte der Söldner-Boss Idema: »Wir waren täglich per E-Mail, Fax und Telefon in direktem Kontakt mit dem Büro von Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld ... Sie wussten, was wir hier tun.«
Nicht nur das Verteidigungsministerium und dessen Geheimdienst DIA schickten solche Banden aus. Auch die CIA, die dem Präsidenten und dessen Geheimdienstkoordinator direkt unterstellt ist, ließ die gröbste Drecksarbeit von sogenannten Contractors - wie man Söldner lieber nennt - machen. Das berichtete die »New York Times« (NYT) und berief sich auf Mitarbeiter der früheren und der amtierenden US-Regierung. Demnach sollten Terroristenführer im Rahmen eines bereits vor Wochen aufgedeckten CIA-Geheimprogramms aufgespürt und ermordet werden. Doch, so die Behauptung, das Geheimprogramm hat trotz Millionen-Ausgaben nicht zur Festnahme oder Tötung eines Terroristen geführt.
Unter der Bush-Regierung waren von US-Geheimdiensten vermehrt Aufgaben an private Firmen vergeben worden, darunter auch die Befragung von Gefangenen. Derartige Praktiken lassen auch Erkenntnisse des deutschen BND-Untersuchungsausschusses in neuem Licht erscheinen. Im Zusammenhang mit verschiedenen Entführungsfällen war dort immer wieder die Rede von einem »Sam«, der ein tadelloses Deutsch gesprochen habe. Seine Identität konnte nie geklärt werden. Da aber in den US-Söldnerhaufen auch zahlreiche Bürger anderer Staaten zu finden sind, liegt der Verdacht nahe, »Sam« könnte Bürger der Bundesrepublik sein. Das wäre ein weiterer Grund, dass der Untersuchungsausschuss - wie von Linksfraktion und Grünen gefordert - seine Arbeit wieder aufnimmt.
Um das Programm so geheim wie möglich zu halten, habe die »Agency« die Verträge nicht mit Blackwater, sondern direkt mit Mitarbeitern der Firma geschlossen, unter anderem mit dem früheren Blackwater-Chef Erik Prince. Die Beschäftigung von offiziell Regierungsunabhängigen in einem Programm, in dem über Leben und Tod entschieden wird, habe in US-Behörden zu Bedenken hinsichtlich der Verantwortbarkeit solcher verdeckter Operationen geführt, sagten namentlich nicht genannte Regierungsmitarbeiter der NYT.
Im Januar 2009 wurde Blackwater die Lizenz für die Arbeit in Irak entzogen. Grund war eine Schießerei im September 2007. Dabei sollen mehrere Contractors auf irakische Zivilisten gefeuert und 17 getötet haben.
* Aus: Neues Deutschland, 21. August 2009
CIA privatisiert Terrorjagd
Von Rüdiger Göbel **
Die Regierung von US-Präsident George W. Bush hat im Rahmen ihres selbsternannten Antiterrorkrieges nicht nur die Befragung von Gefangenen an skrupelose Privatfirmen ausgelagert, sondern auch die Jagd auf Al-Qaida. So hat der US-Geheimdienst CIA Mitarbeiter der berüchtigten Söldnerfirma Blackwater vor fünf Jahren für ein geheimes Programm zur Erschießung von Terrorverdächtigen angeheuert. Sie halfen einem Bericht der New York Times zufolge bei der Planung, beim Training und bei der Überwachung der Jagd auf mutmaßliche Al-Qaida-Mitglieder. Ziel war es, »Terroristenführer« aufzuspüren und zu töten. Das berichtete die US-Zeitung in ihrer Donnerstagausgabe unter Berufung auf namentlich nicht genannte Mitglieder der früheren und heutigen US-Regierung. Offensichtlich wurden Millionen Dollar allerdings in den Sand gesetzt. Das Geheimprogramm hat den Angaben zufolge weder zur Festnahme noch zur Ermordung eines Verdächtigen geführt. Die Kooperation sei mittlerweile eingestellt.
Die CIA hat die Verträge nicht mit dem Militärunternehmen selbst, sondern direkt mit einzelnen Blackwater-Mitarbeitern geschlossen, unter anderem auch mit Erik Prince. Dem Gründer und langjährigen Chef dieser mächtigsten Privatarmee der Welt droht eine Anklage wegen Mordes. Zwei ehemalige Angestellte der vor allem im Irak operierenden Söldnerfirma beschuldigten ihren einstigen Boß unter Eid vor einem Gericht im US-Bundesstaat Virginia, die Ermordung eines Kritikers innerhalb des Unternehmens in die Wege geleitet zu haben (siehe jW vom 7. August). Weltweit bekannt wurde die eher diskret operierende Privatarmee, als vier ihrer Angehörigen im Frühjahr 2004 in der irakischen Widerstandshochburg Falludscha nach einer Schießerei gelyncht worden waren. Im September 2007 töteten Blackwater-Bedienstete im Zentrum von Bagdad 17 Zivilisten.
Das Outsourcing von Mordprogrammen sei für CIA-Direktor Leon Panetta ein Hauptgrund gewesen, den US-Kongreß auf einer Dringlichkeitssitzung im Juni über das Geheimprojekt zu informieren. Einzelheiten seien vor seiner Amtszeit von der CIA jahrelang zurückgehalten worden, berichtete die New York Times weiter. Der Geheimdienstausschuss des Repräsentantenhauses habe im Juli schließlich eine Untersuchung eingeleitet, um zu klären, ob die Regierung des damaligen Präsidenten George W. Bush gegen die Pflicht verstoßen hat, den Kongreß zu informieren. Der frühere Vizepräsident Dick Cheney soll CIA-Agenten 2002 erklärt haben, der Geheimdienst müsse den Kongreß nicht informieren, weil er ja bereits autorisiert sei, Al-Qaida-Führer zu töten.
Einer von US-Präsident Gerald R. Ford 1976 unterzeichneten »executive order« zufolge ist es der CIA ausdrücklich verboten, Mordanschläge durchzuführen. Damals war bekannt geworden, daß der US-Geheimdienst Attentate auf den kubanischen Staatschef Fidel Castro und andere ausländische Politiker initiiert hatte. Die Bush-Administration stellte sich auf den Standpunkt, daß die Ermordung von Al-Qaida-Mitgliedern dasselbe sei wie das Töten eines feindlichen Soldaten im Kampf. Daher gelte im Antiterrorkrieg das Liquidierungsverbot für die CIA nicht.
Laut New York Times ist es unklar, ob die Blackwater-Mitarbeiter mit der Liquidierung von Terrorverdächtigen direkt betraut waren oder ob sie lediglich ein entsprechendes Trainingsprogramm überwachen sollten. Nach wie vor ist es als »geheim« eingestuft. Die Sprecherin der Söldnerfirma, die inzwischen unter dem Namen »Xe Services« firmiert, war für eine Stellungnahme zunächst nicht zu erreichen.
** Aus: junge Welt, 21. August 2009
Mordsprofite
Von Olaf Standke ***
Der Gründer des Söldnerkonzerns Blackwater muss sich gerade vor Gericht mit den eidesstattlichen Erklärungen ehemaliger Angestellter herumschlagen, er habe wiederholt tödliche Übergriffe von Wachmännern in Irak vertuscht und Morde befohlen, um missliebige Zeugen zu beseitigen. Kein Wunder, dass Eric Prince glaubte, über dem Gesetz zu stehen. Hat doch auch die CIA seine Firma für ein Geheimprogramm zur Liquidierung von Terrorverdächtigen engagiert, wie die »New York Times« jetzt enthüllte. Die größte private Sicherheits- und Militärfirma der USA, die sich inzwischen Xe Services nennt, verdiente Milliarden Dollar an den Feldzügen der Bush-Regierung - und revanchierte sich mit Großspenden an die Republikaner. Sie wurde zum Synonym für die Privatisierung des Krieges und die Aushöhlung des staatlichen Gewaltmonopols. Der weltweite Umsatz solcher Unternehmen wird auf jährlich über 200 Milliarden Dollar geschätzt. Und je mehr Kriege und Konflikte es gibt, je länger sie dauern, desto rentabler wird der Markt für ihre tödlichen Dienstleistungen. Sie haben kein Interesse an Krisenprävention und politischen Konfliktlösungen, sie machen Profit auf Kosten des Friedens. Statt obskurer staatlicher Aufträge brauchen sie verbindliche völkerrechtliche Auflagen und strenge rechtsstaatliche Kontrolle.
*** Aus: Neues Deutschland, 21. August 2009 (Kommentar)
Blackwater: CIA Assassins?
By Jeremy Scahill ****
In April 2002, the CIA paid Blackwater more than $5
million to deploy a small team of men inside
Afghanistan during the early stages of US operations in
the country. A month later, Erik Prince, the company's
owner and a former Navy SEAL, flew to Afghanistan as
part of the original twenty-man Blackwater contingent.
Blackwater worked for the CIA at its station in Kabul
as well as in Shkin, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border, where they operated out of a mud fortress known
as the Alamo. It was the beginning of a long
relationship between Blackwater, Prince and the CIA.
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."
According to the Times, "it is unclear whether the CIA
had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill
Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and
surveillance."
The Times reports that "the CIA did not have a formal
contract with Blackwater for this program but instead
had individual agreements with top company officials,
including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically
connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir
to a family fortune." A retired intelligence officer
"intimately familiar with the assassination program"
told the Washington Post, "Outsourcing gave the agency
more protection in case something went wrong." The Post
reported that Blackwater "was given operational
responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders and
was awarded millions of dollars for training and
weaponry, but the program was canceled before any
missions were conducted."
"What the agency was doing with Blackwater scares the
hell out of me," said Jack Rice, a former CIA field
operator who worked for the directorate of operations,
which runs covert paramilitary activities for the CIA.
"When the agency actually cedes all oversight and power
to a private organization, an organization like
Blackwater, most importantly they lose control and
don't understand what's going on," Rice told The
Nation. "What makes it even worse is that you then can
turn around and have deniability. They can say, 'It
wasn't us, we weren't the ones making the decisions.'
That's the best of both worlds. It's analogous to what
we hear about torture that was being done in the name
of Americans, when we simply handed somebody over to
the Syrians or the Egyptians or others and then we turn
around and say, 'We're not torturing people.'"
Reached by telephone, Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky,
a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that
because of her oath of secrecy on sensitive
intelligence issues, she could neither confirm nor deny
that Congress was aware of Blackwater's involvement in
this program before the Times report. Schakowsky also
declined to comment on whether Blackwater came up at a
June briefing by CIA director Leon Panetta, which she
attended. That briefing sparked calls for an
investigation into whether Vice President Dick Cheney
ordered the CIA to conceal an assassination program
from Congress.
"What we know now, if this is true, is that Blackwater
was part of the highest level, the innermost circle
strategizing and exercising strategy within the Bush
administration," Schakowsky told The Nation. "Erik
Prince operated at the highest and most secret level of
the government. Clearly Prince was more trusted than
the US Congress because Vice President Cheney made the
decision not to brief Congress. This shows that there
was absolutely no space whatsoever between the Bush
administration and Blackwater."
As The Nation has reported, Blackwater continues to
operate on the US government payroll in both Iraq and
Afghanistan, where it works for the State Department
and the Defense Department. The CIA will not confirm
whether Blackwater continues to work for the agency
(or, for that matter, if it ever has).
Blackwater's work for the CIA was the result of
meetings in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 between
Prince and Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, then-executive
director of the CIA, the agency's number-three man.
Krongard and Prince, according to a former Blackwater
executive interviewed by The Nation, "were good
buddies." In a 2006 interview for my book, Blackwater:
The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army,
Krongard said that the company was hired to provide
security for the CIA in Afghanistan. "Blackwater got a
contract because they were the first people that could
get people on the ground," Krongard said. "The only
concern we had was getting the best security for our
people. If we thought Martians could provide it, I
guess we would have gone after them."
The relationship between Krongard and Prince apparently
got chummier after the contract was signed. One former
Blackwater executive said in 2006, "Krongard came down
and visited Blackwater [at company headquarters in
North Carolina], and I had to take his kids around and
let them shoot on the firing range a number of times."
That visit took place after the CIA contract was
signed, according to the former executive, and Krongard
"may have come down just to see the company that he had
just hired."
The relationship between Blackwater and the CIA quickly
evolved. Shortly after Prince arrived in Afghanistan in
May 2002, according to a former Blackwater executive
who was with Prince, the Blackwater owner focused on
winning more business with government agencies,
providing private soldiers for hire. In 2002 Prince,
along with former CIA operative Jamie Smith, created
Blackwater Security Consulting, which would put former
Navy SEALs and other special ops on the market.
Prince subsequently tried to join the CIA but was
reportedly denied when his polygraph test came back
inconclusive. Still, he maintained close ties with the
agency. He reportedly was given a "green badge" that
permitted him access to most CIA stations. "He's over
there [at CIA headquarters] regularly, probably once a
month or so," a CIA source told Harper's journalist Ken
Silverstein in 2006. "He meets with senior people,
especially in the [directorate of operations]."
Prince would also go on to hire many senior Bush-era
CIA officials to work at Blackwater. In July 2007 Buzzy
Krongard joined the company's board; Prince offered him
a $3,500 honorarium per meeting attended plus all
expenses paid. "Your experience and insight would be
ideal to help our team determine where we are and where
we are going," Prince wrote in a letter to Krongard. At
the time his brother, Howard "Cookie" Krongard, was the
State Department inspector general responsible for
overseeing Blackwater's work for the State Department.
In September 2007 California Democratic Representative
Henry Waxman accused Cookie Krongard of impeding a
Justice Department investigation into Blackwater over
allegations the company was illegally smuggling weapons
into Iraq.
Prince hired several other former CIA officials to run
what amounted to his own private CIA. Most notable
among these was J. Cofer Black, who was running the
CIA's counterterrorism operations and leading the hunt
for Osama bin Laden when Blackwater was initially hired
by the CIA in 2002. Black left the government in 2005
and took a job at Blackwater running Prince's private
intelligence company, Total Intelligence Solutions.
While at the CIA, Black ran the "extraordinary
rendition" program and coordinated the CIA "Jawbreaker"
team sent into Afghanistan to kill or capture bin Laden
and senior Al Qaeda leaders. In the days immediately
after 9/11, he told Bush that his men would aim to kill
Al Qaeda operatives. "When we're through with them,
they will have flies walking across their eyeballs,"
Black promised Bush. When Black told Bush the operation
would not be bloodless, the president reportedly said,
"Let's go. That's war. That's what we're here to win."
Before the CIA Jawbreaker team deployed on September
27, 2001, Black gave his men direct and macabre
directions: "I don't want bin Laden and his thugs
captured, I want them dead.... They must be killed. I
want to see photos of their heads on pikes. I want bin
Laden's head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice.
I want to be able to show bin Laden's head to the
president. I promised him I would do that." According
to CIA operative Gary Schroen, a member of the
Jawbreaker team, it was the first time in his
thirty-year career he had been ordered to assassinate
an adversary rather than attempt a capture.
In September 2002, five months after Blackwater's first
known contract with the CIA in Afghanistan, Black
testified to Congress about the new "operational
flexibility" employed in the "war on terror." "There
was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11," Black
said. "After 9/11 the gloves come off." Black outlined
a "no-limits, aggressive, relentless, worldwide pursuit
of any terrorist who threatens us," saying it "is the
only way to go and is the bottom line." Black would
later brag, in 2004, that "over 70 percent" of Al
Qaeda's leadership had been arrested, detained or
killed, and that "more than 3,400 of their operatives
and supporters have also been detained and put out of
an action." The Times reports that the Blackwater-CIA
assassination program "did not successfully capture or
kill any terrorist suspects."
In addition to Black, Total Intelligence's executives
include CEO Robert Richer, the former associate deputy
director of the CIA's Directorate of Operations and
second-ranking official in charge of clandestine
operations. From 1999 to 2004, Richer was head of the
CIA's Near East and South Asia Division, where he ran
covert operations in the Middle East and South Asia. As
part of his duties, he was the CIA liaison with
Jordan's King Abdullah, a key US ally and Blackwater
client, and briefed George W. Bush on the burgeoning
Iraqi resistance in its early stages.
Total Intelligence's chief operating officer is Enrique
"Ric" Prado, a twenty-four-year CIA veteran and former
senior executive officer in the Directorate of
Operations. He spent more than a decade working in the
CIA's Counterterrorist Center and ten years with the
CIA's "paramilitary" Special Operations Group.
Total Intelligence is run out of an office on the ninth
floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington,
Virginia. Its Global Fusion Center, complete with
large-screen TVs broadcasting international news
channels and computer stations staffed by analysts
surfing the web, "operates around the clock every day
of the year" and is modeled after the CIA's
counterterrorist center, once run by Black. The firm
employs at least sixty-five full-time staff--some
estimates say it's closer to 100. "Total Intel brings
the...skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives
directly to the board room," Black said when the
company launched.
Representative Schakowsky says the House Intelligence
Committee is investigating the CIA assassination
program and will probe alleged links to Blackwater.
"The presidential memos (often referred to as
'findings') authorizing covert action like the lethal
activities of the CIA and Blackwater have not yet
surfaced," says Ray McGovern, a retired
twenty-seven-year CIA analyst who once served as George
H.W. Bush's national security briefer. "They will, in
due course, if knowledgeable sources continue to put
the Constitution and courage above secrecy oaths."
Blackwater Strikes Back
The Times report comes as Prince and his Blackwater
empire are facing the prospect of a potentially
explosive civil trial over the killing of Iraqi
civilians. Attorney Susan Burke and the Center for
Constitutional Rights (CCR), who are suing Prince and
his companies on behalf of their Iraqi victims, have
alleged that Prince is "equivalent to a top mafia boss
who is responsible for all the day-to-day crimes
committed at his direction and behest." If the case
proceeds, the process of discovery could blow the lid
off some of the darkest secrets of the powerful
security contractor and its secretive owner. Burke and
CCR are suing Prince and his companies directly rather
than his individual employees because they say Prince
"wholly owns and personally controls all Defendants."
Burke also alleges that Prince has committed
"violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act, a federal statute permitting private
parties to seek redress from criminal enterprises who
damage their property." Among the allegations are war
crimes, extra-judicial killings and assault and battery
of Iraqis.
Since the first case was filed by Iraqi civilians
against Prince and Blackwater over the killing of
seventeen Iraqis at Baghdad's Nisour Square on
September 16, 2007, the company's high-powered lawyers
have fought feverishly to have that and four other
cases dismissed. Now, facing a crucial August 28
hearing in federal court in Virginia, they are putting
forward a new argument: instead of Prince and
Blackwater standing trial, the US government should be
the defendant.
In a motion filed August 12, Blackwater's lawyers asked
federal Judge T.S. Ellis III to order "that the United
States 'be substituted as the party defendant,' in
place of all of the current Defendants." In his motion,
Blackwater lawyer Peter White of the powerhouse firm
Mayer Brown argued that the company was working for the
State Department in Iraq and therefore was on official
business when the alleged killings and injuries of
Iraqis took place. White cites the 1988 Westfall Act,
which prohibits suits against government employees for
their actions on behalf of the government and states
that the government will assume liability for any
lawsuits against employees.
Federal tort law defines "employees" in this context as
"persons acting on behalf of a federal agency in an
official capacity, temporarily or permanently in the
service of the United States, whether with or without
compensation." The fact that the defendants are
"corporate entities" in this instance, White claims,
"does not alter that conclusion." In the motion,
Blackwater's attorneys note that the company, which
recently renamed itself Xe Services, now does business
with the government under the name US Training Center
(USTC).
"The idea that the United States government should
accept liability for the unprovoked criminal
manslaughter of seventeen innocent Iraqis by Blackwater
mercenaries, and place it on the back of taxpayers, is
corporate animism run amok," says Ralph Nader, who has
spent his entire career fighting against corporate
personhood. "If Blackwater wants to be treated like a
person, then its latest mutation, USTC, should be
prosecuted, convicted and given the equivalent penalty
of corporate capital punishment by revoking its charter
and terminating its corporate operations."
The Westfall Act was passed in 1988 as an amendment to
the Federal Torts Claim Act "to protect federal
employees from personal liability for common law torts
committed within the scope of their employment, while
providing persons injured by the common law torts of
federal employees with an appropriate remedy against
the United States." After Westfall, the government
assumed legal responsibility for suits filed against
federal employees and made the sole remedy for victims
suits against the government.
Blackwater has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to
intervene in the case and to assume liability for the
allegations against Blackwater. If that were to happen,
legal experts say, the case would be dead in the water.
"It's clear that if they win this motion and the
government is substituted, since the wrongs occurred in
a foreign country, the government is absolutely immune
and the case will be dismissed," says Alan Morrison, a
former federal prosecutor who is now the associate dean
for public interest at George Washington Law School.
"This is an effort [by Blackwater and Prince] to
absolve themselves...of any liability for the alleged
wrongs to the plaintiffs." He adds: "A gigantic,
for-profit corporation is seeking to use this statute,
designed to protect government employees, to shield
themselves from any responsibility for the deaths and
injuries" of Iraqis.
"When Blackwater chooses to interpose itself in the
middle and to make profit off these individual
employees in the relationship with the government, the
notion that Blackwater itself, a corporation, could be
an employee is unusual to say the least," says
Morrison. "Why would Congress want to, in effect,
transfer liability from a large, well-heeled
corporation like Blackwater to the United States
taxpayers for this kind of conduct? What they'd be
saying [if Blackwater's interpretation of the Westfall
Act is accepted] is they would have wanted to assume
liability for that which they didn't have any liability
in the first place."
The Justice Department has not yet issued a position in
this case. "Unfortunately, there's nothing we can
provide in regard to your inquiry at this time," an
official wrote in an e-mail. Earlier, in response to
questions from The Nation, a Justice Department
spokesperson sent a memo filed by the department
earlier this year in a similar case against Blackwater
in federal court in Florida, in which the department
had rejected the company's attempt to make the
government responsible. "Defendants' request for
Westfall Act certification should be denied because
only natural persons can be considered 'employee[s] of
the government,'" Assistant Attorney General Tony West
wrote on June 8 in a thirty-five-page filing opposing
Blackwater's motion.
Several legal experts interviewed by The Nation said
they could not foresee the Justice Department
intervening on Blackwater's behalf. But the Westfall
Act has been used by attorneys general in both the Bush
and Obama administrations to attempt to absolve senior
Bush officials of liability for their alleged role in
crimes and to make the government liable. On June 26
Holder's office intervened in a lawsuit filed by CCR
against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
twenty-three other military and medical officials "for
their role in the illegal detention, torture, inhumane
conditions and ultimate deaths" of two Guantanamo
prisoners.
Citing the Westfall Act, Tony West wrote that "the type
of activities alleged against the individual defendants
were 'foreseeable' and were 'a direct outgrowth' of
their responsibility to detain and gather intelligence
from suspected enemy combatants." In defending the
government's position, West cited case law stating that
"genocide, torture, forced relocation, and cruel,
inhuman, and degrading treatment by individual
defendants employed by Department of Defense and State
Department were within scope of employment" and similar
cases justifying CIA torture as part of official duty.
"It is essentially saying torture is all in a day's
work when it comes to holding people in military
detention," says Shane Kadidal, who heads the
Guantanamo project at CCR. In that case, the issue was
not whether Rumsfeld and the others were "employees"
but whether they were doing official business.
Blackwater's argument is a tougher sell, says Morrison.
"Does it hold water?" he asks. "It holds Blackwater."
Meanwhile, in another development, Prince's lawyers
have responded to explosive allegations made against
Prince by two former employees. In sworn affidavits
submitted by lawyers representing the Iraqis suing
Blackwater, the two alleged that Prince may have
murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who
were cooperating with federal authorities investigating
the company. One of the former employees alleges that
Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked
with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the
globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and
rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." They also
charge that Prince was profiting from illegal weapons
smuggling. In a motion filed August 10, Prince's
lawyers asked Judge Ellis to strike from the record the
sworn statements of the two former employees, saying
that "the conclusory allegations they contain are
inadmissible on multiple grounds, including lack of
foundation, hearsay, irrelevance, and unfair
prejudice." They charge that the lawyers suing
Blackwater are attempting to "use this litigation as a
'megaphone' to increase their ability to influence the
public's perceptions regarding the use of contractors
in military battlefield situations, the Iraq War, and
most particularly about Erik Prince and the other
defendants. Unsubstantiated statements made in filings
in this Court become 'newsworthy' simply because they
appear in those filings." The lawyers characterize the
allegations as "scandalous, baseless, inadmissible, and
highly prejudicial." Interestingly, nowhere do Prince's
lawyers say flatly that the allegations are untrue.
As the cases against Prince move forward, the company
continues to do a robust business with the federal
government, particularly in Afghanistan. Schakowsky has
called for a review of all of the companies' current
contracts, and she has called on Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to
stop awarding the company contracts. The "Obama
administration should at the very least cancel and
debar [Blackwater's] present and pending government
contracts," says Nader. "Otherwise corporate crimes,
privileges and immunities continue to pay and pay and
pay." About Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at
The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful
Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an
award-winning investigative journalist and
correspondent for the national radio and TV program
Democracy Now!
**** Aus: The Nation, August 20, 2009; www.thenation.com
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