Consider this post a combo-plate follow-up to Blackwater: the wages of Rummy and T.H.E. Terrorism Research Center. In it, I’m looking at Condi Rice (et al.)’s urgent attempts to separate her the State Department’s reputation from Blackwater’s, with an eye to guessing how well they may go, given who’ll be pushing back.
Last night ”op99″ commented on my B:twoR post,
… I’m sure we can breathe easier, now that La Condi has been told to get on the case. (Remember from her testimony before the 911 Commission how she never did anything of her own initiative ?)
Sure do, op99, and that makes this flurry of rectitude all the more intriguing, doesn’t it? Rather than the Manolo Queen’s suddenly feeling a whole buncha new ”best practices” impulses, I suspect they’re coming from, say, her deputy John Negroponte’s shop. Anyhow, someone with some actual management chops seems to have stepped in and gotten busy with ye olde edict quill — for no sooner had Condi’s “Panel on Personal Protective Services in Iraq” report (a 24-page pdf; its 19 recommendations more accessible here) hit her desk yesterday than it triggered a veritable landslide of orders.
“The whole goal here,” senior State Department official/panel leader Patrick Kennedy told McClatchy, “is to protect diplomats without having any adverse effect on the political dynamic there.” For instance,
Contractors will be required to fire only “aim shots,” that is, at a specific target, as opposed to shooting indiscriminately, as Blackwater employees are alleged to have done on Sept. 16; they must take into account the safety of bystanders; and they must act to minimize civilian casualties, Kennedy said in a telephone conference with reporters. The guidelines are copied from those the Defense Department uses with its private contractors, Kennedy said.
The panel also recommended: …
_ Increased cultural awareness training for contractors to familiarize them with Iraqi culture and with U.S. military and diplomatic operations. …
Aha. For their cultural-sensitivity training, Spencer Ackerman has some great lesson-planning suggestions.
Lesson One: Don’t drunkenly murder bodyguards of Iraqi dignitaries.
Lesson Two: Should Lesson One fail, don’t hire those who drunkenly murder bodyguards of Iraqi dignitaries.
Lesson Three: Don’t shoot people as they flee in terror from your orgy of destruction.
Lesson Four: Don’t force terrified civilians off the road with your reckless convoys.
Lesson Five: Don’t fire your weapons at members of the U.S. military.
Lesson Six: Don’t broadcast your orgy of destruction on YouTube while set to music meant to show what a bad ass you are.
The New York Times, Washington Post, and (briefly, but they’re distracted) Los Angeles Times cover the reining-in too, if in more ponderous language than Spencer’s.
NYT slips it into a John M. Broder-David Rohde story that begins:
Over the past four years, the amount of money the State Department pays to private security and law enforcement contractors has soared to nearly $4 billion a year from $1 billion, administration officials said Tuesday, but they said that the department had added few new officials to oversee the contracts.
It was the first time that the administration had outlined the ballooning scope of the contracts, and it provided a new indication of how the State Department’s efforts to monitor private companies had not kept pace. Auditors and outside exerts say the results have been vast cost overruns, poor contract performance and, in some cases, violence that has so far gone unpunished.
A vast majority of the money goes to companies like DynCorp International and Blackwater USA to protect diplomats overseas, train foreign police forces and assist in drug eradication programs. There are only 17 contract compliance officers at the State Department’s management bureau overseeing spending of the billions of dollars on these programs, officials said. …
(And as we learned last night, only two of them are in Iraq watching DynCorp overcharge us $29 million.)
WaPo’s Karen DeYoung notes:
In ordering the new rules, Rice appeared to reject earlier suggestions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that security contractors be placed under military control. U.S. commanders and officers in Iraq have sharply criticized the contractors, and North Carolina-based Blackwater in particular, for behaving like “cowboys” and undermining U.S. objectives for bringing stability to Iraq. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that Rice spoke to Gates yesterday before the rules were announced.
“She may also want to talk it through with him and see if they want to take further steps” after Gates returns to Washington from travel overseas, McCormack said.
She may indeed. She may need some pointers on what she’s got to do next:
Rice’s actions are unlikely to placate Democrats in Congress, where the House oversight committee has subpoenaed documents and held hearings on the security contractors as well as on charges that State has tolerated and concealed Iraqi government corruption. Although Rice resisted several invitations to testify before the committee, she has agreed to appear tomorrow.
Henry vs. Condi — blimey, popcorn sales will soar!
But now for the other pushback she’s apt to face . . . In day-before-yesterday’s T.H.E.TRC post (and earlier here), I followed some tendrils of Blackwater’s connections — via Total Intelligence Solutions, Inc.; the Lincoln Group; and the CIA old-boy network — to BushCo Central (for a much fuller treatment, see Ben Van Heuvelen’s The Bush administration’s ties to Blackwater in the Oct. 2 Salon). Then last night Raw Story’s Muriel Kane dug out another branch of the vine:
The firm that “coached” Blackwater CEO Eric [sic] Prince for a Congressional hearing previously represented Iraq intelligence launderer Ahmed Chalabi and is now working with AT&T to repair their image in the wake of their involvement in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.
The communications firm BKSH, a subsidiary of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, is run by a man with extremely close ties to the Bush Administration.
Before I go on, may I just say that the sound the letters BKSH make me hear is “baksheesh“? Anyhow, the guy Muriel Kane’s writing about is
Charlie Black, whose ties with the Bush family go back to 1972, when he and Karl Rove were jockeying for control of the College Republicans in a campaign so dirty that George H.W. Bush, then head of the Republican National Committee, had to step in and sort matters out. Black then worked for Ronald Reagan’s and George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaigns from 1976 to 1992. He served as an adviser to George W. Bush’s campaigns in 2000 and 2004 and is often quoted in news stories as an unofficial White House spokesman.
Click here for more on Burson-Marsteller, with whom Raw Story links up not only Chalabi but Francis Brooke, the Rendon Group (hint: sourcewatch.org’s entry includes the Hunter S. Thompson mot “When things turn weird, the weird turn pro”), and the good ol’ fake-news-planting Lincoln Group too. As Muriel Kane finds, “Because of Black’s personal ties to the Bush administration, it seems reasonable to wonder whether his lobbying assignments might be selected as much to help his friends there as his nominal clients.”
Well, yes, helping friends is BushCo’s best trick, and that’s quite a complex of pals and supporters-in-high-places that Erik Prince sports. So I somehow imagine that — no matter how Henry Waxman and Congress may (or some of them, not) holler and push — Condi Rice may be warier of these guys than anyone else.
And maybe she’d best not shove Blackwater away too rudely. Really, who knows what could fall out of her shoe-closet.
lotus
UPDATE: From TPM’s Spencer Ackerman: Breaking: Iraq Revokes All Contractor Immunity (actually, AFP broke the story here). Dang furriners’ll be as rude as they want to poor Blackwater, sniff snort.
UPDATE II: First State Department resignation over Blackwater. One turkey down, but quite a large flock to go.
Tags: Ahmad Chalabi, AT&T, Blackwater, Burson-Marsteller, Charlie Black, CIA, Condoleezza Rice, Congress, Defense Department, DynCorp, Erik Prince, Francis Brooke, George H.W. Bush, Henry Waxman, House oversight committee, Iraq, John Negroponte, Lincoln Group, Rendon Group, Republican National Committee, Robert M. Gates, Ronald Reagan, security contractors, State Department, terrorism, U.S. military, YouTube
October 24, 2007 at 12:46 pm
As Kevin Phillips and others have pointed out, the Bush family has spent generations networking U.S. intel ops and other key influencers, at least some of whose motives and activities might be out of the public’s view. Thanks for adding to the knowledge base on this subject.
October 24, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Much has been made of Blackwater’s “perfect” record in protecting diplomatic personnel in its charge – no one in their care has been killed, captured or even seriously injured.
That is less of an accomplishment when you consider the ground rules under which they operate:
1. The US government will pay you any sum you can imagine, without limit, to hire the most ruthless operators you can find and equip them with the best armor, air support, communications equipment and weaponry money can buy.
2. You will operate under NO rules of engagement and will be exempt from prosecution or discipline for any action you take, up to and including murder.
3. You are permitted, even encouraged, to initiate automatic weapons fire and launch grenades from your armored vehicles and from your escorting helicopters at any man, woman or child who approaches within 100 yards of you, whether they actually constitute a threat or not. Their presence near you is reason enough to kill them.
4.The mission of those in your care is to extend the hand of American friendship. Your mission is to kill anyone who gets close enough to grasp that hand.
October 24, 2007 at 1:14 pm
al-Scoots, the piled-up “knowledge base on this subject,” could we ever see it whole, probably challenges Everest.
I scraped together a wee handful of pebbles only — but if a few more of us have noted them now, that’s all to the good.
October 24, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Wow, riddenword. That nails it, all right.
Thank you!
October 24, 2007 at 6:00 pm
And here I thought our “diplomatic mission” was to protect and enhance the lives of the civilians in Iraq . So how has Blackwater – contractor for the diplomats – done on that front?
October 24, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Riddenword, I suspect that if B’water followed any type of rules of engagement, they would have dead protectees. To get a convoy safely through all the resentment they helped generate, they have to keep it moving – a stalled vehicle is screwed. I’m not defending it, but it is what it is. I predict B’water will be dropped, its personnel will be picked up by other contractors, and the deluge of mucky-mucks visiting will drop to a trickle.
October 25, 2007 at 8:06 am
[...] the State Department’s Director of Diplomatic Security since June 2005, which confirms my surmise that It was [John] Negroponte who carried to [Condoleezza] Rice the team’s recommendation [...]