After listening to the hearings this afternoon, the one phrase that bothered me most is when Chairman Waxman referred to the State Department as 'enabling' Blackwater's bad behaviour; instead, the Chairman ought to have called it as it really is:
The US State Department is not merely 'enabling' Blackwater's illegality but is an active 'co-conspirator' in Blackwater's illegal behaviour.
The number of dead found at the other end of the thousands of Blackwater mercenary forces may never be known, but, we do know of one for certain.
In December 2006, one of the drunken murderers at Blackwater shot someone to death; the State Department and Blackwater conspired to remove the murderer from Iraqi jurisdiction; the State Department and Blackwater negotiated among themselves the proper payment to be made to the victim's family in order to make it 'all go away'. As Chairman Waxman stated:
The State Department advised Blackwater how much to pay the family to make the problem go away and then allowed the contractor to leave Iraq just 36 hours after the shooting. Incredibly, internal e-mails documented the debate over the size of the payment. The charge d’affaire recommended a $250,000 payment but this was cut to $15,000 because the diplomatic security service said Iraqis would try to get themselves killed for such a large payout.
Background
This diary only focuses on this single murder and leaves unasked similar questions about the September 16, 2007 massacre, and the hundreds of other incidents where shots were fired into crowds, where Blackwater forces working with the CIA and Special Forces of the Defense Department in targeted assassinations, or whether Blackwater assisted in the use of Chemical Weapons in Fallujah. Those are mere conjectures and absent the arrest and interrogation of John Negroponte, Donald Rumsfeld, and other senior members of the Bush Crime Family past and present, will not be proven or disproven.
In other words, absent a New Nuremberg Trial for Bush Crime Family, the full details will remain unknown. The First Nuremberg Trial introduced the concept of 'co-conspirator' to International Law, and a New Trial will be able to apply those same laws and concepts to the modern war-criminals.
Briefly, an excerpt from a recent article on conspiracy at Nuremberg. Perhaps it would be best if we all read it:
Roosevelt and Churchill met in Quebec in mid-September 1944 and reportedly saw eye-to-eye both on Morgenthau's policy of crippling the German economy, and on the advantages of summary execution. When word of this impending policy leaked to the press, however, there was widespread criticism of such a harsh and vindictive plan, and, always sensitive to the political winds, Roosevelt retreated, leaving the matter an open question. Stimson, joined by Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, took the opportunity to press the case for a trial, drafting for the President (though it was never sent to him) a plan that answered several troublesome issues: how to deal with a huge number of possible defendants whose individual trials would far exceed the Allies' capacity; and how to reach atrocities that had taken place before the war or apart from military action and thus were not war crimes, and were, in addition, directed by a government against its own citizens and thus arguably beyond the scope of traditionally understood international law.
Stimson urged that the objective of prosecution should be "not only to punish the individual criminals, but also to expose and condemn the criminal purpose behind each individual outrage," expanding the world's focus from individual crimes to "the results of a purposeful and systematic pattern created by [Nazi leaders] to the end of achieving world domination." This emphasis on the concerted effort of the Nazis--the forest rather than the trees--was to dominate U.S. thinking in both the planning and the eventual conduct of the trial at Nuremberg.
The proposal developed in the War Department was to conduct an initial trial on a charge of conspiracy, a uniquely Anglo-American legal concept that defines the plotting of a crime by two or more people as a crime separate from the one they intend to commit. A person is guilty of conspiracy if he does even a single overt act in furtherance of it, and evidence of one conspirator's evil acts can be used against all the other defendants, including those who did not participate in those acts or even know of them, so long as each defendant played some overt role toward the accomplishment of the conspiracy's overall objective. No one had ever before suggested that conspiracy was a crime under international law.
...
The proposal encountered opposition from the Army's Judge Advocate General, and from the Justice Department, but through negotiation and subtle redrafting of contentious points, Stimson, Secretary of State Hull, and Attorney General Francis Biddle were able to present a memorandum to President Roosevelt on January 22, 1945 that contained the essence of the conspiracy/criminal organization theory, as well as the two-stage system of trials. The memo barely mentioned the word "conspiracy," but spoke of a "premeditated criminal plan or enterprise, which either contemplated or necessarily involved" the commission of "mass murders, imprisonments, expulsions and deportations of populations; the starvation, torture and inhuman treatment of civilians; the wholesale looting of public and private property on a scale unparalleled in history; and, after initiation of 'total' war, its prosecution with utter ruthless disregard for the laws and customs of war."
source: Special Issue of Boston College International and Comparative Law Review NUREMBERG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO INTERNATIONAL LAW Winter, 2007
But, we do have domestic law. Or, better stated, we could have domestic law. The Supreme Court's landmark decision on conspiracy came soon after Nuremberg. The name of the case is Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640 (1946), and cases from that point pointed to 'Pinkerton liability'.
Briefly, the elements of a criminal conspiracy require an an agreement between parties to achieve an unlawful objective. There is an 'intent' requirement for the parties to enter into and agree to commit the elements of the underlying crime. There is a 'knowledge' requirement by the defendant(s) of the existence of the conspiracy, and finally, there needs to be the commission of an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.
Conclusion
In this case, Blackwater and the State Department agreed to remove the drunken murderer from Iraqi jurisdiction and to pay off the victim's family in order for 'it all to go away. The email conversations between the State Department and Blackwater fulfill the 'knowledge' requirement, and the payment to the victim family fulfills the final element, an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.
The underlying crime need not be proven in order for conspiracy liability to hold.
Note: This conspiracy is in addition to the Bush Crime Family's other criminal conspiracies. It has been argued that the Bush Crime Family has already violated one aspect of Federal Law dealing with 'conspiracy' in his lies leading to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq:
The President's deceit is not only an abuse of power; it is a federal crime. Specifically, it is a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States.
If anyone from Chairman Waxman's office is visiting the site today, I urge you to urge the Chairman to adjust his language.