During nearly four hours of testimony and questioning, Prince boldly declared that in Iraq his men have acted “appropriately at all times” and denied the company had ever killed innocent civilians. His hand never trembled, and he showed no sign of breaking a sweat. To say he was cool under fire would be an understatement. Prince was defiant.
“You do admit that Blackwater personnel have shot and killed innocent civilians, don’t you?” Illinois Democrat Danny Davis asked Prince.
“No, sir. I disagree with that,” Prince shot back. “I think there’s been times when guys are using defensive force to protect themselves, to protect the packages, trying to get away from danger. There could be ricochets, there are traffic accidents, yes. This is war.”
Prince added smugly, “We do not have the luxury of staying behind to do that terrorist crime-scene investigation to figure out what happened.”
The assertion by Prince that no innocents had been killed by Blackwater was simply unbelievable. And not just according to the eyewitnesses and survivors of the Nisour Square shootings and other deadly Blackwater actions. According to a report prepared by Waxman’s staff, from 2005 to the time of the hearing, Blackwater operatives in Iraq opened fire on at least 195 occasions.
112
In more than 80 percent of these instances, Blackwater fired first. These statistics were based on Blackwater’s own reporting. But some alleged the company was underreporting its statistics. A former Blackwater operative who spent nearly three years in Iraq told the
Washington Post
his twenty-man team averaged “four or five” shootings a week—several times the rate of 1.4 incidents per week that Blackwater claimed.
113
Waxman’s report also described an incident in which “Blackwater forces shot a civilian bystander in the head. In another, State Department officials report that Blackwater sought to cover up a shooting that killed an apparently innocent bystander.”
114
Not surprisingly, Prince said he supported the continuation of Order 17 in Iraq, the Bremer-era decree immunizing forces like Blackwater from prosecution in Iraqi courts. At one point, Prince was asked whether Blackwater operated under the same “rules of engagement” as the military. “Yes, they’re essentially the same,” Prince said—before fumbling for words and admitting, “Well, well, sorry, Department of Defense rules for contractors. We do not have the same as a U.S. soldier at all.”
The truth is that while scores of U.S. soldiers had been court-martialed on murder-related charges in Iraq, not a single Blackwater contractor had ever been charged with a crime under any legal system—U.S. civilian law, military law, or Iraqi law. Prince said that Blackwater operatives who “don’t hold to the standard, they have one decision to make: window or aisle” on their return flight home. Indeed, that and being fired seem to have been the only consequences faced by Prince’s men for their actions in Iraq. In all, Blackwater had terminated more than 120 of its operatives in Iraq—more than one-seventh of its deployment at the time of the hearing.
115
On this point, the committee focused on one incident at length: the Christmas Eve killing of the bodyguard to the Iraqi vice president. Prince confirmed that Blackwater had whisked him out of Iraq and fired him, and said the company had fined him and then billed the man for his return plane ticket. Prince said he did not know if the man had been charged with any crime (he hadn’t). “If he lived in America, he would have been arrested, and he would be facing criminal charges,” Democrat Carolyn Maloney told Prince. “If he was a member of our military, he would be under a court-martial. But it appears to me that Blackwater has special rules.” Prince said, “As a private organization, we can’t do any more. We can’t flog him, we can’t incarcerate him.” Maloney told Prince, “Well, in America, if you committed a crime, you don’t pack them up and ship them out of the country in two days.”
When asked directly whether this was a murder, which Iraqi officials had alleged, Prince said, “It was a guy that put himself in a bad situation.” Pressed further, Prince consulted with his advisers and said, “Beyond watching detective shows on TV, sir, I am not a lawyer, so I can’t determine whether it would be a manslaughter, a negligent homicide, I don’t know. I don’t know how to nuance that. But I do know he broke our rules, he put himself in a bad situation and something very tragic happened.”
The committee also released an internal e-mail from a Blackwater employee to a colleague just after the shooting, noting that an Iraqi TV report had erroneously attributed the killing of the bodyguard to a U.S. soldier. “At least the ID of the shooter will take the heat off us,” the Blackwater employee wrote. Representative Elijah Cummings concluded, “In other words, he was saying: ‘Wow, everyone thinks it was the military and not Blackwater. What great news for us. What a silver lining.’” Prince responded, “I don’t believe that false story lasted in the media for more than a few hours, sir.”
This exchange would set off a discussion about one of the main questions of the hearing: was Blackwater hurting the U.S. military’s stated counterinsurgency program in Iraq?
“It does appear from some of the evidence here that Blackwater and other companies sometimes, at least, conduct their missions in ways that lead exactly in the opposite direction that General Petraeus wants to go,” Democrat John Tierney told Prince. “That doesn’t mean you’re not fulfilling your contractual obligations.” Tierney then read numerous comments from U.S. military officials and counterinsurgency experts raising questions about Blackwater’s actions having a blowback effect on official U.S. troops.
Tierney quoted Army Col. Peter Mansoor: “If they push traffic off the roads or if they shoot up a car that looks suspicious, they may be operating within their contract, but it is to the detriment of the mission, which is to bring the people over to our side.” He quoted retired Army officer Ralph Peters: “Armed contractors do harm COIN—counterinsurgency efforts. Just ask the troops in Iraq.” Brig. Gen. Karl Horst: “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There is no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them when they escalate force. They shoot people and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.” And Col. Thomas X. Hammes: “The problem is in protecting the principal, they had to be very aggressive. And each time they went out they had to offend locals, forcing them to the side of the road, being overpowering and intimidating, at times running vehicles off the road, making enemies each time they went out. So they were actually getting that contract exactly as we asked them to—it was at the same time hurting our counterinsurgency effort.”
Tierney told Prince, “So when we look at Blackwater’s own records that show that you regularly move traffic off the roads and you shoot up cars—in over 160 incidents of firing on suspicious cars—we can see, I think, why the tactics you use in carrying out your contract might mitigate [
sic
] against what we’re trying to do in the insurgency.”
“I understand the challenges that the military faces there,” Prince responded, adding, “We strive for perfection, but we don’t get to choose when the bad guys attack us. You know, the bad guys have figured out—the terrorists have figured out how to make a precision weapon with a car, load it with explosives with a suicidal driver.”
Representatives also raised the issue of cost, pointing out that each Blackwater operative cost taxpayers $1,222 per day. “We know that sergeants in the military generally cost the government between $50,000 to $70,000 per year,” Waxman said. “We also know that a comparable position at Blackwater costs the federal government over $400,000, six times as much.” Prince was confronted with Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s statement a week earlier on the issue of the disparity in pay between soldiers and private forces. “I worry that sometimes the salaries they are able to pay in fact lures some of our soldiers out of the service to go to work for them,” Gates had said, adding that he was seeking legal advice on whether a “noncompete” clause could be put into security contracts. Prince said it would be “fine” with him but asserted that “it would be upsetting to a lot of soldiers if they didn’t have the ability to use the skills they learned in the military in the private sector.”
Toward the end of the hearing, it was noted that General Petraeus makes about $180,000 a year. When asked his own salary, Prince said he didn’t know exactly and then, when pressed, offered that it was “more than $1 million.” He estimated that about 90 percent of the business of the Prince Group empire (Blackwater’s parent company) comes from federal contracts. He wouldn’t say how much the company had made for its work in Iraq, but “as an example” he said under some contracts Blackwater earns a profit margin of about 10 percent, which one Congressman remarked could mean more than $100 million. Prince adamantly refused to answer the profit question directly. “We’re a private company,” he said. “The key word there is ‘private.’”
Connecticut Democrat Christopher Murphy, incredulous, asked, “How can you say that information isn’t relevant?” adding, “my constituents pay 90 percent of your salary.” Finally, Prince quipped, “I’m not a financially driven guy.”
While Blackwater’s actions in Iraq over the past four years have consistently resulted in an escalation of violence and bloodshed there, many of the most infamous incidents involving the company were not discussed or only brought up in passing at the hearing. Some of the Democrats on the committee appeared to be reading their briefing papers while Prince was testifying, giving the impression that they were ill-prepared to address Blackwater’s central role in the U.S. war machine. Prince did face some tough and important questions, but often his answers were left to stand with no credible follow-up or challenge. All the while, the very reason Prince found himself before Congress that day and the reason the world watched his testimony—the Nisour Square massacre—went undiscussed, the Iraqi victims unmentioned.
The Republicans did their best to portray the hearing as a witch-hunt and heaped praise on Prince for his patriotism and service. “This is not about Blackwater,” said conservative California Republican Darrell Issa. “What we are hearing today is, in fact, a repeat of the
MoveOn.org
attack on General Petraeus’s patriotism.” Several Republicans thanked Prince for keeping them alive when they toured Iraq, the irony of how this could impact their impartiality apparently lost on them.
It wasn’t lost on Massachusetts Democrat Stephen Lynch. He said in his trips to Iraq, he too had been protected by Blackwater, which he acknowledged “did a very, very good job.” He added, “I find myself right now with this committee having a difficult time criticizing those employees, because I am in their debt . . . which brings me to my problem. If I have a problem criticizing Blackwater and criticizing the employees and some of the times that you have fouled up, what about the State Department?” Lynch questioned how any effective investigations into Blackwater’s conduct could be expected when Blackwater itself is responsible for the safety of those tasked with investigating the company. “The State Department employees, you protect them every single day. You protect their physical well-being, you transport them, you escort them. And I am sure there is a heavy debt of gratitude on the part of the State Department for your service,” Lynch told Prince. “And yet they are the very same people who are in our system responsible for holding you accountable in every respect with your contract and the conduct of your employees. . . . That is an impossible conflict for them to resolve.” Prince never addressed the matter because Lynch’s time expired. But Lynch’s point was an important one. According to the Oversight Committee’s investigation, “There is no evidence” that “the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation.”
116
Indeed, the State Department had not only failed to effectively investigate or rein in Blackwater; there was evidence that it had done the reverse, covering for the company when it landed in the hot seat.
As the duration of the hearing neared four hours, Prince was asked if he wanted to take a break or deal with the remaining questions. “I’ll take them, and then let’s be done,” he shot back. Moments later, Prince’s lawyer shot up from his chair behind the Blackwater chief and frantically directed a “T” for “time” with his hands toward the committee. With that, the hearing came to an end. Prince stood up, grabbed the paper with his name on it from the table, and marched with his entourage from the room.
There is no question the Justice Department’s intervention at the eleventh hour took some of the heat off Prince over Nisour Square. “He gave a very self-serving testimony to us,” said Waxman. “I can understand that that’s what he wanted to do. That was in his interest to do it.”
117
Blackwater clearly felt its man had won the day. Emboldened by Prince’s defiant appearance before Congress, Blackwater would launch a new PR campaign to defend its image, and its star would be Prince himself. Far from facing the heat of a critical media, Prince would find friendly faces and softball questions as he met the press. Shortly after his Congressional testimony, Prince’s longtime friend archconservative California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher compared the Blackwater chief to another controversial figure who had once been forced to raise his right hand before Congress. “Prince,” Rohrabacher said, “is on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was.”
118