The Blackwater Scandal

The New York Times reported Wednesday that the amount of money the State Department pays to private security contractors has skyrocketed to $4 billion, from just $1 billion four years ago. Unfortunately, the budget for oversight of the contracts has remained virtually unchanged, and few officials have been added to oversee the contracts. This leads to unsurprising reports like this one, from Reuters this week: "The State Department does not know specifically what it received for a billion-dollar contract with security firm DynCorp International to provide training services for Iraqi police, a U.S. watchdog agency said on Tuesday."

The added dimension to our 21st century crisis in military privatization is that the impunity legally given to companies like Blackwater also extends to possibly criminal acts of violence. The most well-known incident involving Blackwater was one that roiled Iraq—the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians on Sept. 16 in Baghdad, which American soldiers at the scene called "criminal event." There are many other cases of inexcusable violence, too, like the intoxicated Blackwater contractor who killed a bodyguard for Iraq's vice president last December.

None of these violations appears to be prosecutable by law. Blackwater likes to claim it's part of the U.S. Armed Forces when it's being sued in America, but in order to give itself immunity, the company alternately defines itself as an "independent contractor" when it comes to being subjected to the military's court martial system, thus rendering it immune from any prosecution. This slippery move is thanks to L. Paul Bremmer, who signed the order allowing it on his final day in Baghdad.

When asked about the Blackwater employee who killed the Iraqi vice president's bodyguard, Blackwater CEO Erik Prince said the company could fire or fine the employee, but not detain him. Asked if Blackwater helped the employee escape the country following the killing, Prince said "It could easily be."

How has the situation metastasized so incredibly, from the days when Truman and company sought to clamp down on fraud in the burgeoning military-industrial complex, to today, when the number of private security contractors in Iraq outnumbers U.S. troops, and as the CEOs of these companies bank billions of taxpayer dollars while some employees kill at will?

One obvious explanation is that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the initiator of ongoing congressional investigations, faces something Truman never did—an executive branch that aggressively opposes any intrusion whatsoever into how it awards these contracts. In response to increasing pressure to rein in Blackwater, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded this week only with a plan for sensitivity training for Blackwater employees. ( Spencer Ackerman offers an improved lesson plan, starting with "Don't drunkenly murder bodyguards of Iraqi dignitaries.")