Scahill: Blackwater still getting millions in federal contracts

Journalist Jeremy Scahill, who earlier this week revealed charges by two former employees of security contractor Blackwater (now Xe) that range from murder to providing child prostitutes for its employees in Iraq, is now taking aim at the US government’s continued use of Blackwater’s services.
The State Department announced last January that it would not be renewing Blackwater’s contract for security services in Iraq when it expired in May. According to Scahill’s latest article in The Nation, however, the Obama administration has just extended the contract through September 3. A State Department official explained, “They are still there, but we are transitioning them out.”
Although it does not include the most recent figures, fedspending.org provides information on Blackwater contracts through the first few months of 2008. It shows the firm receiving an astonishing total of $1.2 billion for fiscal years 2005, 2006, and 2007 alone.
The Washington Post suggested in January, “Some critics attribute Blackwater’s success to the political connections of owner Erik Prince, a big contributor to conservative and Christian causes. As the Post reported, in 2007, Prince ‘was a White House intern under President George H.W. Bush. His political donations over the past two decades total almost $263,000 to Pat Buchanan, Oliver North, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and former senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, among others. His sister, Betsy DeVos, is former chairwoman of the Republican party in Michigan.’”
Records reviewed by The Nation show that the State Department has contracted with Blackwater for some $200 million since January, much of it representing a continuation of Bush-era contracts. Other Bush-era contracts have been extended by the Army, despite the growing number of serious allegations and lawsuits against the firm. LinkHere

Ex-employees claim Blackwater pimped out young Iraqi girls

Since the revelation earlier this week of allegations by two former employees of security firm Blackwater that its owner was complicit in murder in order to cover up the deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians, explosive charges have continued to emerge.
Perhaps the most shocking of those charges — quoted by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Thursday from the employees’ sworn declarations — is that Blackwater was guilty of using child prostitutes at its compound in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and that owner Erik Prince knew of this activity and did nothing to stop it.
The declarations describe Blackwater as “having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the ‘Blackwater Man Camp’ in exchange for one American dollar.” They add even though Prince frequently visited this camp, he “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.”
One of the statements also charges that “Prince’s North Carolina operations had an ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring, which was participated in by many of Mr. Prince’s top executives.”
According to the two former employees, Blackwater supervisors in Iraq sometimes sent men back to the United States for wanting to “kill ragheads,” excessive drinking, steroid use, or failure to follow weapon safety procedures, but “Mr. Prince and his executives would send them back” with a reprimand to the supervisor for costing the firm money. Blackwater even fired “those mental health professionals who were not willing to endorse deployments of unfit men.”
The former employees additionally state that Prince was engaged in illegal arms dealing, money laundering, and tax evasion, that he created “a web of companies in order to obscure wrong-doing, fraud, and other crimes,” and that Blackwater’s chief financial officer had “resigned … stating he was not willing to go to jail for Erik Prince.”
Prince has repeatedly insisted his company has done nothing wrong and Blackwater — now renamed Xe — continues to fulfill its contracts with the United States government. LinkHere

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