Blackwater Killed State Dept Probe by Threatening to Literally Kill the Investigator

According to a scoop from the New York Times’ James Risen, the private security firm Blackwater stopped a State Department probe into its operations in Iraq by threatening the chief investigator.

Per newly released documents, Blackwater’s top manager warned “that he could kill” the investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq.”

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad sided with Blackwater in the dispute over the investigation. Upon returning to the U.S. the investigator wrote a report accusing Blackwater of wagging the embassy’s dog. “Blackwater contractors saw themselves as above the law,” he alleged. “The contractors, instead of Department officials, are in command and in control.”

The investigation was halted only a few weeks before Blackwater guards shot and killed seventeen civilians in Baghdad, a pivotal moment in the deterioration of U.S.-Iraqi relations and one that factored into the Status of Forces Agreement the next year that called for the removal of U.S. troops from the country. Multiple guards involved in the incident have or are standing trial in the U.S.

[h/t New York Times]

[Image via Shannon Stapleton / Reuters]

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