On this second anniversary of the siege of Fallujah, the families of the four Blackwater contractors, whose ambush led to the Fallujah invasion, have filed a ground breaking lawsuit.
The families are charging the company with wrongful death, and also fraud. Blackwater has fought to have the case dismissed by claiming that all liability lies not with the company but the U.S. government.
Links and more after the fold.
Clearly, the administration has not dealt with the issues of contractors working in Iraq (or they won't because it benefits them not to), as was demonstrated recently when a student stumped Bush by asking how he proposes to bring private military contractors under a system of law... and he was
clueless.
With this lawsuit, there is hope for accountability afterall, thanks to the families of the slain Blackwater contractors. Jeremy Scahill wrote about the lawsuit in The Nation and sees it as "the first whack at the giant's legs, and if it's successful, it will reverberate around the war profiteer community".
Read Jeremy Scahill's article in The Nation titled Blood is Thicker than Blackwater.
In studying this case, Jeremy Scahill sheds light on the pyramid schemes that exist in these war zones.
Jeremy also talked about the article and lawsuit during a Democracy Now! TV/radio broadcast yesterday, along with the lawyer for the families, Marc Miles which you can read/view/listen-to here.
--- here are some excerpts of Jeremy Scahill speaking during the interview:
... The lawsuit alleges, it's not just wrongful death, it's also fraud. The lawsuit alleges that these men were defrauded, because Blackwater failed to provide them with the basic minimal guarantees of their contract, among them that they would be in armored vehicles, that they would have heavy weapons, something like a SAW Mach 46 machine gun that could fire up to 850 rounds per minute, and it's very key. The State Department regulations call for six people to be on a security detail in Iraq, because of the security situation, while these men were sent out with only four.
And to understand what all of these shortcomings that day resulted in, you have to go back to March 31, 2004, and actually Marc Miles, the lawyer, can talk about some things that happened before that, as well. But when these four men ended up in Fallujah that day, they were in Pajero jeeps that were not armored at all. They didn't have a rear gunner. And so, literally, the people that killed them were able to walk up and open fire on them. Had they had a rear gunner, had they had armored vehicles, a very strong case could be made that they never would have been killed.
...
Now, back in the United States, these killings were taken as a threat or a challenge to America's resolve in the White House and immediately became a sort of turning point in the war. It was the event that sparked the U.S. siege of Fallujah, in which hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis were killed, many of them who had nothing to do with this whatsoever -- women, children, others.
...
But while the families were grieving, Blackwater viewed it as a profit opportunity. The day after the killings, Erik Prince hired the Alexander Strategy Group -- it's a now-disgraced lobbying firm, but it once was very powerful; it was Tom DeLay's private lobbying firm, basically -- hired the Alexander Strategy Group to manage the newfound fame of Blackwater. And by the end of the year, the company's president, Gary Jackson, was bragging of what he called a "staggering" 600% growth, and so Blackwater's prospects were very, very strong while the families were grieving.
...
And so, we have seen Blackwater really sort of embody the war profiteering in this war on terror. These four guys were sent out without armor, without the adequate guns, without adequate personnel, and Blackwater takes it as a moment to say, `Hey, we're famous now. Let's take this opportunity.' Now, just recently, last month, Cofer Black, who is a former C.I.A. and State Department official that Blackwater hired up, was in the country of Jordan announcing that Blackwater was interested in essentially farming out its services to the highest bidder to engage in overt combat missions. Blackwater is scooping up lucrative Homeland Security contracts. They made a killing off of New Orleans. They charged the government $400,000 for 14 guys, $400,000 for 22 days in September. In studying this case, you sort of look at the pyramid scheme that exists in these war zones, where Blackwater is paying these guys $600. At the top, the federal government could be getting billed as much as like $2,000 -- $1,500 to $2,000 for these men.
Scott Helvenston was getting paid $600 a day. Blackwater, in turn, was billing a Kuwaiti company more than $800 for Scott Helvenston's services, and then that Kuwaiti company, in turn, billed a Cypriot company called E.S.S., which was the company that provides catering services to military operations, basically the U.S. military bases. And then the reports are that E.S.S. had a contract with Halliburton -- with K.B.R., the subsidiary of Halliburton. K.B.R. has denied any relationship to this and won't talk about it anymore. But it just shows sort of the breakdown. It goes through multiple hands, at least three or four layers per contract.
And so, in that whole pyramid scheme, what you saw was Blackwater had a subcontract with this Kuwaiti company, and the Kuwaiti company had the contract with E.S.S., so the contract with E.S.S., the company that provides the catering services, said explicitly because there is *a very serious security situation in Fallujah -- it actually names Fallujah as one of the cities -- these men need to be traveling in armored vehicles. And it goes through all the other ones. There should be three men per team. Well, Blackwater then, when they cut their subcontract with this Kuwaiti company for this deal, kept intact the entire part of the contract that went over the security provisions, except for one word: armored. They deleted the word "armored". And Marc Miles says that in doing that, Blackwater was able to save $1.5 million."
Here are a few of the comments on the case from the lawyer for the families, Marc Miles:
... "It's important and it's groundbreaking and it's precedent-setting, because we're working in such a unique situation here, where we have private American companies working within a war zone. The problem is that they're working outside of the military structure, and therefore they're not subject to court-martial or any particular chain of command, while at the same time they're working within a country, such as Iraq, which really doesn't have a civil justice system or a police force, which would be able to hold American private security contractors accountable or liable for any of the conduct that they do over there. So what this lawsuit is about, it's about creating accountability for those firms, those private military firms that are working in Iraq, and it's also not only about holding Blackwater accountable for these four deaths, but it's also about sending a message to the other private security firms out there that they cannot cut costs to increase their bottom line and put lives at risk.,
On the issue of "did they know what they were getting into", Marc has this to say:
Blackwater said that they would be operating in armored vehicles. They told them that they would be operating in teams of no less than six, where you would have three individuals in each vehicle -- a driver, a navigator and a rear gunner who has a 180-degree view of the rear to protect from behind. They were told that they were able to do a risk assessment of every trip, and if the threat was too dangerous, that they could decline the mission. They were told that they were able to do a pre-trip inspection of the routes and be able to familiarize themselves with the area before going on routes.
And so, did they assume the risk? Yes. But they assumed it based upon certain representations by Blackwater. Those were all misrepresentation. They were not provided with the six folks that they were supposed to have in each vehicle. They were not provided with the armored vehicles or able to do the pre-trip inspection or the risk assessment. And so, they didn't know what they were getting into.
And it all stems back to the point: if these folks had known that Blackwater was going to cut costs and was going to not provide them with everything that they were promised, would they have still done it? And I think we can look to a situation such as a new firefighter. A new firefighter goes through the academy, is shown all these big hook-and-ladder trucks and pumpers and engines, all this equipment, and then is told to run into a burning building where a family is inside, but is given nothing other than a squirt gun. Okay, that may be an overbroad analogy there, but the same principle applies. They knew what they were getting into based upon the representations by Blackwater. They didn't find out that they were lied to until they got into Baghdad and basically had no option but to go forward.
Here Marc Miles talks about how the contractors were not supplied maps, and how they might have lived had they known where they were going:
And so, what happened that particular day from the evidence that I've accumulated is that they were basically told to escort three flatbed trucks, which I understand were going to pick up some kitchen equipment, far different from what Scott Helvenston had been told, that he would be guarding an ambassador. Instead, kitchen equipment, actually empty trucks that were going to get kitchen equipment.
So they were to escort these two E.S.S. trucks from a city of Taji to an army base, which is on the west side of Fallujah. And so, what happened is they set out on their mission, but because they didn't have G.P.S., because they didn't have maps of the area, because they weren't able to do a pre-trip inspection of the route, they didn't necessarily know where they were going, so they essentially got lost. And, in fact, the first day that they set out, they were so lost and it was getting late that they ended up staying at an army base on the east side of Fallujah.
From what I understand, and folks that we have talked to, they had asked for a map shortly before going out on their mission, and basically the individual who was in charge of handing out the maps said, "It's too late for a map now," and sent them on their way. And that's the type of conduct at Blackwater that we're dealing with. They got so lost that first day that they had to spend the night in a different camp, somewhere that they weren't even intending on going. And at that point, they were on the east side of Fallujah.
Now, they were ultimately to get to the other side of Fallujah. Unfortunately, what they didn't know was that there was a much safer route that took them around the north side of Fallujah. They could have easily traveled this route in a single day, and it would have been extremely less dangerous. But because they didn't have a map, they didn't have G.P.S., and, in fact, funny story, I think they had G.P.S. units, but Blackwater didn't provide them with the maps to go in the G.P.S. units for the Middle East. So, essentially, they had G.P.S. units for the United States, which doesn't do a lot of good over there. Anyway, there was a safer route that they could take north of the city that would take them about three hours to get to the other side. But instead, they missed that turnoff, and they ended up driving straight through the center of Fallujah, and it was as they got through the middle of town that they got stuck in traffic, that they were ultimately ambushed.
In closing, Marc Miles sums up the case as an extremely important accountability issue that reaches beyond Blackwater:
This is about holding Blackwater accountable and about creating accountable and sending a message to other private military firms operating over there. The real problem here is that we have corporate America involved. And so, corporate America is primarily concerned with their bottom line. And that may work for some companies that are manufacturing staples or shoes or something along those lines, but what Blackwater doesn't understand here is that the commodity that they're dealing with is not a paper clip or a staple, but it's actually human life, and so what we want to do is we want to create a situation where these companies are held accountable. Blackwater and this lawsuit is going to be the first of its kind, and it's going to go forward, and we're going to go into trial and prove all of the allegations that we've set forward. But I can imagine that there may be other lawsuits to follow if these companies don't shape up and actually realize what they're dealing with here."
Wouldn't it be great to see this discussed on the Sunday talk shows? I can dream.