Peter King spent the last two days looking for radical Islam under every rock. But The Nation's Jeremy Scahill thinks King missed a pretty prominent advocate of sharia law--Blackwater. Specifically, Blackwater's former general counsel, Joseph Schmitz.
Almost as soon as Schmitz left the inspector general's post at the Pentagon in order to join Blackwater, he had to deal with the November 2004 crash of Blackwater 61. The Army had found that neither the plane nor the pilots were in any condition to fly, and the NTSB found that the pilots were basically frolicking at the controls. And yet, when several widows sued Blackwater for wrongful death, Schmitz claimed that sharia made Blackwater immune.
In 2008, in attempting to have the case thrown out of federal court in Florida, Schmitz argued that because the crash occurred in Afghanistan, Sharia law should be applied. Conveniently, Sharia law does not hold a company responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their work.
And yet, last year Schmitz co-authored a Center for Security Policy report on the threat sharia posed to national security. I'd like to know how he could write that with a straight face--or where you can get balls big enough to take such a stand after trying to duck a lawsuit by hiding behind sharia.
Fortunately, the judge let the case continue--under American law. Blackwater ended up settling the case for an undisclosed amount. Scahill wonders--loudly--how King can call people whose links to radical Islam are pretty much nonexistent and not call someone who actually argued in favor of sharia law in open court.
However, in reading 60 Minutes' piece on Blackwater 61, it's hard not to conclude that even if Schmitz' argument in favor of sharia held water, Blackwater would still be in hot water. Not only were the pilots poorly trained, but Blackwater didn't have any way of tracking the plane and had no one on the ground. It only found out about the crash when a sergeant waiting for the plane to arrive told his superiors that it was running way late. It took a Blackwater rescue team two days to reach the crash site--and by then, one of the passengers had died of exposure. I'd like to imagine how Schmitz could argue that wasn't Blackwater's responsibility.