Defending Backwater Private Security Contractors in Iraq is the last thing I thought I'd be doing with my first few diaries on Daily Kos, but after the fold, that's what I intend to do. I wrote a diary yesterday that outlined some aspects of what is being referred to as a
groundbreaking lawsuit, brought before the courts by the families of the four Blackwater contractors that were slain and hung from a bridge.
The families are alleging wrongful death and fraud. The case was originally filed in Wake County Superior Court in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was later moved to federal court. At present, the company and the plaintiffs are contesting which court should hear the case. Also, Blackwater has recently filed a motion to dismiss the case, providing copies of contracts signed by the four saying they would assume any risks from working under "volatile, hostile and extremely dangerous circumstances."
Why do I feel this case is so important? More after the fold.
The reasons I think this case is important:
* this case exposes the lack of accountability for the tens of thousands of contractors we have in Iraq
* this case continues the pressure on Rumsfeld to define how he proposes to bring private military contractors under a system of law
* the tragic mishaps the day of the ambush lead to the invasion of Fallujah, where 600 Iraqis were killed, and that's quite an effect
* Blackwater used the incident to market their services, and it worked, profits went up over 600 percent afterwards, and it's just sickening that negligence could pay off in such a big way.
I think this tragedy can't be investigated enough.
I've noticed that, in general, there is very little sympathy for the contractors that go to Iraq. Mostly the attitude is, "they know what they're getting into", "they are making a boatload of cash and the real soldiers resent them", "if they weren't greedy they wouldn't be in the dangerous position to begin with". Not a lot of sympathy. And I confess that I felt that way for the most part in regards to war contractors. But then I listened to one of the mothers of the four slain contractors, Katy Helvenston, talk about her son, Scott Helvenston, during her first-ever live radio interview. Read on and you'll find not all contractors are greedy and opportunistic, some are just like so many of our soldiers that really, really need money and just don't have a lot of options.
Scott Halverson was a Navy Seal, the youngest Navy Seal ever, going through the program at age 17. His father died when Scott was 7, and money was always an issue in the household. Scott ended up joining the military where he served as a Navy Seal for about twelve years. When he resigned from the Navy, things got tough, money-wise. Katy Halverson talked about the fact that there aren't a lot of jobs out there for ex-Special Forces with good pay, and Scott had two kids to support.
Generally, many ex-Special Forces guys get security work that doesn't pay all that great, so Scott kept looking for better paying work. And he did get some. He was Demi Moore's personal trainer for the movie G.I. Jane, and had a small part in the film. And he was also on a Survivor type program called Combat Missions produced by Mark Burnett. His mother said that at that point in his life, Scott was desperate for money.
When those opportunities ended, Scott chose Blackwater, because they had a two-month contract, and his goal was to make some good money for the family, and be back home in two months, where he had another job waiting for him.
It wasn't long before Scott noticed problems at Blackwater, it was as early as the training-period he had concerns with the quality of the training. And he had the guts to say that there could be improvements to the instructor... which his instructor didn't like. The instructor was a guy named Justin McQuown, and he was outraged that Scott could have the audacity to even suggest a better way. As it turns out, Justin McQuown is very much part of this lawsuit.
After Scott went to the Middle East, he was in Kuwait a week or so, then on to Bagdad, to find out that Justin McQuown is now his boss there as well. A couple days before Scott was murdered, Justin McQuown got in an altercation with Scott, which resulted in Justin forcing Scott to give up his gun. That night, Scott was ordered to change teams and go into Fallujah. Originally, he was told he was going to be security for Ambassador Paul Bremmer.
At this point Scott had only been in Iraq for 48 hours, and within that time period, he found himself with a new team, which he said were nice guys, but he was concerned all the same as he had never worked with them or met them before, and they were heading out on a dangerous mission. They were then ordered into Fallujah... short a tail gunner, supplied with no armor, no heavy firepower, and no maps.
To read further about how grossly ill-equipped for this journey they were, please take a look at my previous diary.
I believe Scott Halverson is one of the good guys, and his mother is no different than other mothers, like Cindy Sheehan, who are trying to get answers about the loss of their children in Iraq. Katy's challenging this administration's accountability, and can use all the support we can give her in getting answers about what happened to her son. She has talked directly to the head of Blackwater, Erik Prince, who told her that her would get her a copy of the incident report, and her son's contract etc., but she never got it.
Katy knows a lot, she spoke to Scott through email. In the interview, they spoke of one email that Scott wrote the night before he left Kuwait to go to Baghdad. It was an email to the president and upper management of Blackwater, and the subject of that email was "extreme unprofessionalism." In this email, Scott talked about Justin McQuown, who he refers to as "Justin Shrek." Scott apparently thought his actual name was "Shrek" because that's what everyone called him. He reported Justin as being, "very manipulative, duplicative, immature and unprofessional." In that email, Scott reports that his new team leader tried to talk Justin McQuown out of reassigning Scott at the last minute... which according to their lawyer, is unheard of. Katy tells us that the email ends with, "Scott sort of making all these apologetics". He basically says, `I'm not the kind of guy who would normally complain about anything, but this has gotten so extreme that I want to raise this with you.'
All the information posted here is from an interview where Katy Halverson spoke with Marc Miles (the lawyer for the families of the contractors) and Jeremy Scahill (the writer of The Nation article "Blood is Thicker than Blackwater"), during a Democracy Now! broadcast this past Thursday... well worth your attention.
This case is a really complicated, and cases like these are rarely successful, but, it was important to file and it's an important case. I don't know of any other investigation into accountability of the contracting firms in Iraq that have the potential to reverberate throughout the contractor community as this case.
Can the families of the slain contractors establish gross negligence and fraud? That's the big question. But as Marc Miles, the families' legal council explains: "What Blackwater is trying to do is to sweep all of their wrongful conduct into the Defense Base Act', what they're trying to do is to say, 'Look--we can do anything we want and not be held accountable. We can send our men out to die so that we can pad our bottom line, and if anybody comes back at us, we have insurance.' It's essentially insurance to kill."
These families could use all the support they can get in challenging Blackwater. They got mine.
Updates will follow.