Blackwater Well-Positioned to Stymie Official Inquiries, Regulation

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Blackwater Well-Positioned to Stymie Official Inquiries, Regulation
By Spencer Ackerman - September 19, 2007, 12:10PM


Blackwater doesn't just operate in a legal black hole in Iraq. The private-security firm has grown expert in protecting itself from oversight and regulation in Washington as well.

Over at POGO, Nick Schwellenbach connects Blackwater to House oversight committee chairman Henry Waxman's investigation of Howard Krongard, the State Department inspector general whom Waxman alleges stifled numerous corruption probes in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of those probes involved an alleged Blackwater scheme to funnel weapons into Iraq, and, Schwellenbach notes, it wouldn't be so difficult for Blackwater to know how to get around an IG probe. Its parent company, the Prince Group, recently hired the Pentagon's ex-IG, Joseph Schmitz.

Indeed, all throughout Blackwater are ways to get around government oversight: Cofer Black, the company's vice chairman, used to work at the CIA with A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, formerly CIA's executive director. And, yes, you read that last name correctly: Krongard of CIA is the brother of the current State Department IG. Think Schmitz or Black knew which numbers to call in the event of a State inquiry into the company?

That's not all.

Roll Call reports (sub. req.) that Blackwater and its private-security colleagues are investing heavily in lobbyists to prevent Congress from passing legislation regulating their war-zone activities.

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business for the United States government in this country and/or abroad.

And delay paying them for their alleged services for like twenty years.

They are so connected to this admin.

nose from the corporate butt.

Lack of funding.
Blackwater is not like auto industry, the agriculture industry or any other industry that actually makes things that consumers buy.
They are entirely dependent on fat government contracts. Not only does that give them the money to carry out their mercenary missions, but also provides for their teams of lobbyists, etc. (I wouldn't put it beyond Blackwater to outright bribe officials as well).

But the Mahdi Army might give it a go

and are not going anywhere