Breaking From the NY Times...
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Blackwater, now known as XE, is run by christian fundamentalist whack job Erik Prince. This story is very huge, but the final puzzle piece has not yet fallen. The Blackwater/XE employees who have come forward only know of where the money was diverted, not it's final destination, or the actual recipients.
Four former Blackwater executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then the company’s president, had approved the bribes, and the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where Blackwater maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.
The press was so bad in those two months following the massacre, that Blackwater had to act. They didn't reform, they hatched bribery plots, trying to find Iraqi officials who cared more about a nice cash payout than justice for the seventeen dead citizens that they were elected to represent.
The story is just crossing the wires. Let's just hope this doesn't get diverted to Joe Lieberman's Subcommittee and the truth shall come out. These folks need to go to prison, starting at the rotten head at the top.