The Mysterious Death of the Nisour Square Trial

Thursday, a federal judge dismissed all charges against five Blackwater employees who slaughtered between fourteen (technically seventeen) civilians in a crowded Baghdad intersection in broad daylight.   How exactly that happened is a long story, that I should probably begin with the shooting itself, referred to as the Nisour Square massacre.  Here is just one of the many accounts of the shooting from the traffic guard who was present:

ALI KHALAF SALMAN: [translated] But when he turned his face towards traffic, he heard this woman crying, “My son! My son!” And then he ran into that direction, and he saw her son, who was a medical student. He was all covered in blood. He said he went—when he heard the woman crying, he went towards that direction, and he tried to help the medical student who was covered in blood, help him out of the car. But the mother inside was holding tight to her son. And he raised his hand to stop—

SUSAN BURKE: Stop the shooting.

ALI KHALAF SALMAN: [translated] Stop the shooting. He was telling them, “Don’t shoot, please.” He said, while he raised his hand and asking them not to shoot, this time the man in the fourth car shot the mother dead. A machine gun. He said, the car was number four in line. And then, when the person in car number four, a security man, started shooting, he shot the mother dead. And the cars in front of this car, the civilian cars, actually, they spread around to the sides. I think they were scared.

And he said the doctor’s car was an automatic car. Because he died behind the wheel, the car started moving by itself, because it was an automatic car, towards the square. And at this moment, they started shooting the car with big machine guns, and the car exploded.

There’s more, but I think you get the idea.  The Army, the FBI, and Iraqi investigators all concluded that at least fourteen were completely unprovoked.  The other three didn’t actually pose a threat and nobody but the Blackwater employees was armed,  but they’re allowed a great deal of leeway on opening fire on things.  Additionally, a former Blackwater employee gave some disturbing sworn testimony about possible motives for the shootings.  The prosecution stated:

In addition to verbal expressions of hatred towards Iraqi civilians, the defendants engaged in unprovoked and aggressive behavior toward unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. In so doing, the defendants routinely acted in disregard of the use of force policies that they were required to follow as a condition of their employment as Blackwater guards.

[…]

This evidence tends to establish that the defendants fired at innocent Iraqis not because they actually believed that they were in imminent danger of serious bodily injury and actually believed that they had no alternative to the use of deadly force, but rather that they fired at innocent Iraqi civilians because of their hostility toward Iraqis and their grave indifference to the harm that their actions would cause.

So how did the charges get dismissed?   They had immunity before the trial even began.  They were “compelled” to make sworn statements that included the language: “I further understand that neither my statements nor any information or evidence gained by reason of my statements can be used against me in a criminal proceeding,”  effectively turning the Fifth Amendment on its head.   To further ensure that there would be no convictions, higher-ups in the State Department  went to extraordinary lengths to taint the evidence with these statements.   This is how military law expert Scott Horton described it:

What the State Department has done in this case is inconsistent with proper law enforcement standards. It is likely to undermine an ultimate prosecution, if not make it impossible. In this sense, the objective of the State Department in doing this is exposed to question. It seems less to be to collect the facts than to immunize Blackwater and its employees. By purporting to grant immunity, the State Department draws itself more deeply into the wrongdoing and adopts a posture vis-a-vis Blackwater that appears downright conspiratorial.

The State Department Inspector General at the time was a guy named Howard Krongard who’s brother “Buzzy” Krongard was the former number three at the CIA and, at the time of this investigation, was on the advisory board of Blackwater.  Howard Krongard ended up having to testify before a House oversight committee regarding his role in sabotaging investigations against a number of contractors, including Blackwater:

According to a letter, a federal prosecutor asked Krongard’s investigators to assist in the probe of the security contractor, but Krongard sent an e-mail to a senior staff member directing the assistance to “stop IMMEDIATELY” and to wait until he spoke to the prosecutor.

After weeks of delay, [Committee Chair Henry] Waxman said, Krongard asked someone on his media relations staff _ not an investigator _ to assist the federal prosecutors. “This unorthodox arrangement has reportedly impeded the investigation,” Waxman said.

POGO noted an entire network of shady individuals connected to Blackwater and “Buzzy” Krongard including Joseph E. Schmittz, a former DoD Inspector General who was forced to resign in disgrace following similar wrongdoings.  Conspiratorial indeed.

This isn’t something that you would think could be turned into a partisan issue, and indeed, John McCain made a plea to the DoJ to appeal the ruling on his recent visit to Iraq.  Freep had a much different reaction, with one poster going so far as to suggest that Blackwater be put, “in charge of airport and airline security instead of Joe Isuzu Obama and Janet ‘Barney Fife’ Napolitano?”

pic via