NYT : State Dept. Plans Tighter Control of Security Firm

State Dept. Plans Tighter Control of Security Firm

By JOHN M. BRODER | October 6, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — The State Department, seeking to retain its relationship with Blackwater USA while trying to bring the company’s armed guards under tighter control, said Friday that it would now send its own personnel as monitors on all Blackwater security convoys in and around Baghdad.

The department will also install video cameras in Blackwater armored vehicles to produce a record of all operations that could be used in investigations of the use of force by private security contractors. The State Department will also save recordings of all radio transmissions between Blackwater convoys and military and civilian agencies supervising them in Iraq.

In outlining the measures announced Friday, a State Department spokesman said they had been approved by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice based on the initial recommendations of Patrick F. Kennedy, the department’s director of management policy. Mr. Kennedy is the leader of a team Ms. Rice appointed to look at the way Blackwater and other private security contractors operate in Iraq.

Mr. Kennedy had originally selected Blackwater to provide security for top American civilian officials in Baghdad, when he served as chief of staff to L. Paul Bremer III, the administrator of the United States occupation authority in 2003 and 2004, Mr. Bremer said in an interview on Friday. That mission grew into a $1.2 billion multiyear security contract with the State Department for the company.

Blackwater is one of three private companies providing security services to the State Department in Iraq, running heavily-armed escorts every time a prominent American civilian leaves the protected Green Zone. The requirement for ride-along monitors does not apply to the other two security contractors, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, the State Department said. Blackwater runs roughly 60 security convoys a week in central Iraq.

The State Department measures announced on Friday are the first concrete response by the American government to the violent episode on Sept. 16 in central Baghdad involving several Blackwater teams that left as many as 17 Iraqis dead. Officials said the State Department would send dozens of its diplomatic security service agents to Baghdad so that there would be enough people in place to accompany every Blackwater convoy.

The State Department was facing new questions on Friday about its handling of another case, involving a former Blackwater guard who is suspected of shooting a bodyguard to an Iraqi vice president while drunk last Christmas Eve.

The former guard, Andrew J. Moonen, now lives in Seattle after being dismissed from Blackwater and sent home from Iraq 36 hours after the shooting, with the approval and help of the State Department.

But within weeks of losing his job at Blackwater, Mr. Moonen was hired by a Defense Department contractor and sent to Kuwait to work on logistics related to the Iraq war, a spokesman for the contractor, Combat Support Associates, said Friday. Mr. Moonen worked for the company from February until August of this year, said the spokesman, Paul Gennaro.

The company apparently did not know that Mr. Moonen had lost his job because of the December episode in Baghdad. Mr. Moonen’s lawyer said that his dismissal was based on reports that he had handled a weapon while drunk, not for shooting the guard, for which he has not been charged.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the Democratic chairman of a House committee investigating Blackwater, raised the matter in a letter to Ms. Rice on Friday. “I am writing to express concern that the State Department may have failed to report important facts about a private military contractor’s killing of a guard for the Iraqi vice president and thereby facilitated the hiring of that individual to work on another contract in support of the Iraq war only two months after the homicide.”

Mr. Waxman noted that Erik D. Prince, the founder of Blackwater, told the House committee on Tuesday that he would see to it that Mr. Moonen’s security clearance was revoked and that he would not be allowed to work in any further security or war-related capacity. Mr. Waxman asked Secretary Rice to provide an explanation for Mr. Moonen’s quick re-employment by a Pentagon contractor in the Middle East.

Mr. Moonen’s identity was first disclosed by The New York Times on Thursday. CNN reported first on Friday that a Pentagon contractor had hired him in February.

The State Department’s chief spokesman, Sean McCormack, said that the additional restrictions on Blackwater’s operations could come as Mr. Kennedy’s inquiry proceeds. But the department was not, for the moment, considering ending its contract with Blackwater, Mr. McCormack said, although he did not preclude such a move as the ultimate outcome of the investigation.

Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who has been critical of what she calls the administration’s inappropriate use of thousands of unaccountable private security contractors in Iraq, mocked the decision to send monitors along with Blackwater teams.

“This just shows how much they want to keep Blackwater on the payroll,” she said. “They’re going to have to send dozens and dozens of agents to baby-sit these Blackwater units.” She has introduced legislation to end the use of all security contractors in Iraq, replacing them with full-time government employees.

Accounts of the Sept. 16 confrontation in Baghdad differ widely, with Blackwater executives saying that their guards came under attack, while Iraqi government officials and civilian witnesses say that the Blackwater gunmen opened fire without provocation. There are several investigations of the shootings, including one by the F.B.I. that has the potential to result in criminal charges.

Mr. McCormack would not say how many of the State Department’s diplomatic security agents were already in Iraq, but the department’s security service employs 1,450 officers worldwide. In Iraq alone, there are now nearly that number of private security guards protecting diplomats and other civilians for the department, with roughly 1,000 employed by Blackwater and about 400 by the other two companies.

Mr. McCormack said the new actions apply only to Blackwater because it is the only company operating in and around Baghdad, where the pace of operations and the number of violent attacks are greater than elsewhere.

He also said the decision to put monitors and cameras in Blackwater vehicles did not mean that the department had lost faith in the company.

“Our diplomats trust these contractors, in the north, in the south, as well as in the Baghdad area, with their lives,” Mr. McCormack said. “So it is not a matter of trust. One might say this is a good way to be able to protect all involved, in the case that there is an incident, that you do have at the very least some objective baseline account of what went on.”

The new State Department measures for Blackwater in Iraq came as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said this week that he was inclined to increase oversight of the 7,300 private security guards that the Pentagon employs in Iraq. The Pentagon does not use Blackwater contractors for security in Iraq.

Mr. Gates told reporters traveling with him in South America on Wednesday that a team of officials he sent to Iraq to examine the use of security contractors had submitted several recommendations, including having field commanders exercise existing military law more aggressively to punish contractors who commit crimes.

“There was some concern on the part of our commanders,” Mr. Gates said, “that contractors who did things wrong were just sent home and further action wasn’t taken against them.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.