Today, West Michigan native Erik Prince, who is the founder and CEO of the controversial mercenary corporation Blackwater USA, testified in Congress before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Prince--a former Navy SEAL who hails from the politically-connected Prince family of Holland--has a history rooted in rightwing politics, interning in the White House of the President George H.W. Bush and at the Family Research Council. Shortly after his father Edgar Prince died unexpectedly in the mid-1990s, Erik Prince founded Blackwater USA and quickly grew the company to become the most prominent "private security" (mercenary) corporation contracted by the United States.
Blackwater USA has drawn the attention of various investigative journalists since March of 2004 when four of its men were killed by insurgents in Fallujah. Since that time, journalist Jeremy Scahill has written numerous articles and a book on the company, exploring its role in Iraq as well as post-Katrina New Orleans. However, it is Blackwater's involvement in a recent massacre of at least eleven Iraq civilians on September 17 that has the company in the news again. Erik Prince has for years sought to maintain a low public profile, rarely granting interviews and only occasionally speaking out in public about his company, as he did earlier this year in a "guest column" published in West Michigan's largest newspaper (The Grand Rapids Press) after the paper published a feature articles on Blackwater. However, with the recent shooting Blackwater USA has drawn increased criticism.
Erik Prince himself was asked to appear before today's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and delivered sworn testimony in response to questions from the Committee. Prince began by reading a prepared statement in which Prince described Blackwater's work as "supporting our country" along with the obligatory appeals to the ideals of patriotism and service. He asserted that Blackwater USA has never lost an individual in its protection, although thirty of its own mercenaries have been killed. Prince explained that while his company is already legally accountable for its actions under a variety of statutes, treaties, and jurisdictions, that the company supports further oversight. Prince rejected media claims that Blackwater USA responded inappropriately on September 17 arguing that "Blackwater and its people have been the subject of negative and baseless allegations reported as truth." Prince further stated that "to the extent that there was loss of innocent life, let me be clear that I consider that tragic. Every life, whether American or Iraqi, is precious." He claimed that while it is appropriate to discuss greater oversight of Blackwater USA "...it is quite another to attack the very brave men and women who voluntarily risk their lives on the front-lines each day serving in a very difficult situation at the request of their country and in defense of human life."
While Prince spoke of a specific incident and framed the shooting in the larger context Blackwater's operations, the Committee raised questions about this larger context. Prince said that of the 1,873 diplomatic security operations conducted by the company since January of 2007, weapons were shot in less than 3% of operations and in less than 1% of the 6,500 diplomatic security operations conducted in 2006. However, Committee Chair Henry Waxman issued a memorandum to the Committee revealing that Blackwater has engaged in 195 "escalation of force" incidents since 2005 (an average of 1.4 per week), including 160 in which Blackwater USA fired first. According to Waxman, Blackwater's own documents show 16 Iraqi casualties and 162 incidents of property damage as a result of its actions. With regard to its State Department contracts, Blackwater reports more shooting incidents than two other contracted companies--DynCorp and Triple Canopy--combined. Waxman's memo also raised questions about incidents in which a drunken Blackwater employee shot the guard of the Iraqi Vice President and brought up the fact that the company is charging the federal government $1,200 per day for each "protective security specialist" employed by the company.
Following Prince's statement, the hearing began with questions about a November 27, 2004 incident in Afghanistan when a plane flown by Blackwater personnel and carrying three US service members crashed. An NTSB investigation concluded that the pilot acted unprofessionally. Prince defended the pilot, arguing that conditions were rough and that he was unaware of the pilot's level of experience. He further stated that the company was never fined as it was pilot, not corporate error.
The conversation quickly segued into questions about the company's work in Iraq. Prince explained that the company is ultimately accountable to the State Department and that while it has different "rules of engagement" than the United States military, it has defined procedures. Prince said that Blackwater's vehicles have instructions in Arabic for other drivers to stay 100 meters away. Failing that, if a car approaches, Blackwater will provide further warnings using hand signals, then firing non-lethal weaponry, then shooting the radiator, then the windshield, and finally the driver. Prince also said that he could not defend the actions of a drunken Blackwater USA employee who shot and killed a guard to the Iraqi vice president. Under questioning from the Committee over how Blackwater handled the shooting--the company fired him and shipped him out of the country--Prince said that all Blackwater could do was fire the employee and pass the information along to the State Department.
Throughout the hearing, Prince mentioned that Blackwater USA had none of its protected dignitaries killed. Responding to questions about the deaths of Iraqi civilians, Prince said that Blackwater USA has never killed Iraqi civilians. Prince blamed deaths in incidents involving Blackwater USA on ricocheting bullets. Prince admitted that in one incident the company was encouraged to make a $5,000 payment for the accidental death of an Iraqi.
At various points, Prince was questioned about oversight and accountability. In his opening statements, Prince mentioned that he believes Blackwater is held accountable via a number of legal frameworks including the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the War Crimes Act. However, in detailed questioning about these laws, Prince seemed unclear as to whether or not they really governed his company's conduct. He further said that contractors could not get a fair trial in Iraq when questioned about contractors' immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law.
During the hearing Prince was also questioned by Congressman Dennis Kucinich about how Blackwater was able to obtain so many military contracts. After showing a chart detailing the growth of Blackwater's contracts from $25 million in 2003 to $593 million in 2006, Kucinich asked if the company had ever contacted the White House, to which Prince replied "not to my knowledge." In continuing this line of questioning, Kucinich asked if the DeVoses--the wealthy West Michigan family to whom Prince's sister Betsy DeVos is married into--had contacted the White House on behalf of Blackwater. Kucinich combined this question with another one about no-bid contracts, and Prince made no comment on the DeVoses, instead choosing to answer that he did not know if other companies were being considered for similar contracts. The DeVos family came up again when Congressman Darrell Issa asked Prince if his sister was Betsty DeVos, describing her as a "pioneer" fundraiser for Bush and characterizing Blackwater as "Republican-leaning," to which Prince replied that his company is "non-partisan" and that it "affiliates with America."
Here's some worthwhile comments in response to the hearing by journalist Jeremy Scahill who has covered Blackwater over the past few years:
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Erik Prince is a man who has never held a press conference. He’s only known to have given one television interview, and that was on Fox News shortly after 9/11. He’s a guy whose company has gone after people, reporters, journalists, who have taken his photo. This is a man who’s incredibly secretive and has tried to avoid having his face in the public spotlight. In fact, the last time he was invited to testify in front of the Congress, it was in February, and instead of showing up himself, he dispatched his lawyer Andrew Howell. So this was a major day, where you see the mercenary king of the United States appearing not just before Congress, but before the cameras of the world. He certainly was uneasy having to do that, but he probably faced a choice himself, and that was to either show up on his own volition or to face a subpoena, where he would have been required to show up.
When Erik Prince stepped into the room, he was mobbed by photographers, and he came in, not with an army of armed mercenaries, but with an army of lawyers and advisers. And one of the people with him was Barbara Comstock, who’s a well-known Republican operative and a crisis management consultant. Blackwater had the first and second rows basically empty behind Mr. Prince, with the exception of his team of advisers and his consiglieri, and an unidentified man on several occasions during the course of the hearing himself interrupted the hearings and asked Henry Waxman to be able to consult with Prince. And then, what would result from that is that Erik Prince would turn around, and his advisers and lawyers would pile around him like a sports team plotting out their next play. It was very dramatic.
And I think that the issue here is that the Democrats really, I feel, dropped the ball on many of the most important issues surrounding Blackwater. Yes, there were some important questions raised. But for the most part, they steered away from some of the most devastating and violent incidents involving the company. The ambush at Fallujah in March of 2004, for instance, wasn’t addressed at all, except in passing. And there were a number of family members of the four Blackwater operatives who were killed in that incident. That’s a crucial one for the Congress to investigate, not only because of the allegations that Blackwater sent those four men into Fallujah in unarmored vehicles, short two men, and without heavy weapons, but because of the enormous price that Iraqi civilians paid for the deaths of those four corporate employees, the Bush administration ordering the leveling of Fallujah and, of course, the inflammation of the Iraqi resistance. There are a number of other incidents that never came up in the hearing.
I think that what needs to happen is that Erik Prince needs to become a more frequent visitor to Capitol Hill than his industry lobbyists have been over the past several years, and his visits should always begin with his right hand raised and cameras in front of him.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, the Fallujah attack that killed the four Blackwater employees, we have rarely heard in the corporate media that, in fact, Blackwater is being sued by the families of those Blackwater employees.
JEREMY SCAHILL: That’s right. And Henry Waxman's committee last week released a devastating study that essentially said that Blackwater was responsible for what happened that day, by sending the men out ill-prepared into what was arguably the most dangerous city in the world.
And the lawsuit of those four families basically boils down to this: they say that they tried, after that incident, to get information from Blackwater as to how their loved ones ended up in that city undermanned, under-armed and in these softskin vehicles, as is the term in the industry. And they say that only after months of stonewalling by Blackwater and being told that if they wanted to see the company's report on the incident that they would have to sue, that they did just that. And so, in January of 2005, they filed this lawsuit against Blackwater, charging that the company was responsible for the deaths.
I, myself, went to a mercenary conference last summer and ran into Erik Prince, and I tried to question him on some of the decisions that were made surrounding that mission. I tried to ask him why those men were there, not in armored vehicles, in a city where the US military wouldn’t even go in, not to mention without armored vehicles, and why he has refused to answer the questions of those families. He wouldn’t answer my questions at the American Enterprise Institute. And I found it quite disturbing that not a single member of Congress, when they had Erik Prince under oath, asked him about that, as well.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/03/1349239