Iraq Gains Independence, Speaks Mind on Blackwater

The planets have aligned and now Iraq won't allow Blackwater to operate in country.

The planets: The Bush goon squad pressure tactics are gone, the consciousness is high due in great part to Jeremy Scahill's book [1], Blackwater's hubris reached a peak in the unprovoked Nassor Square killing 17 people, Iraqi is finding it's sovereign voice.

All good news. But the reality is that the inertia of Bush's post-911 unleashing of the security industrial complex is force that will take generations to reverse. People trained to fire fully automatic weapons from speeding vehicles don't forget their skills, and yearn to use them. Hoards of wealth are still controlled in many private hands willing to pay for private armies. Mutual fears among rivals with private security forces feeds private army and arms races (Look at Mexico for example).

We need to build on this little victory to slowly roll back the growth of the private security state of the world.

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives

Sources:

1. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Privatized War is a Black(water) Box

Guest Writer L. Vincent Sebastian

The expansion of Blackwater USA to new locations in Illinois and California is a grave indicator that America is moving in the wrong direction with respect to private military and security contractors (See ~ Blackwater Grows as Support For Iraq Shrinks). The role of these contractors should shrink, not grow, due to a number of legal and moral problems.

Some of the controversies surrounding Blackwater and other private contractors have been covered here previously this year (see - June 26; March 11 (3-Part Series); and February 9). And today, controversy erupted anew when the Iraqi government ordered Blackwater to leave the country after the fatal shooting of eight Iraqi civilians following a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy (see "Iraq expels American security firm" by Robert H. Reid, Associated Press, September 17, 2007).

Questioned in response to this incident, American officials refused to explain the legal authority under which Blackwater operates in Iraq or say whether the company was complying with an order. The real problem here is one of accountability: Private security contractors operating on foreign soil are not really accountable to anyone. By and large, they operate beyond the control of U.S. military and are not subject to military law. At the same time, they have immunity from Iraqi law (akin to diplomatic immunity). Apparently, the only thing holding a contractor in check is the prospect that its client (the State Department in this case) will be dissatisfied and not renew its contract. But in the insider game of no-bid government contracts, how likely is this for the politically connected Blackwater?

Ultimately, the biggest problem with private contractors is a moral one that affects us all. As war becomes increasingly privatized (about 129,000 contractors are currently operating in Iraq), it becomes further removed and concealed from the attention of the American people. The historic role of our government as the legitimate perpetrator of a war shifts to one of manager-at-arms-length of a war carried out by third parties, the contractors. This further distances us, the public, from the war and its consequences, and separates us from the sense of buy-in, participation, oversight, and responsibility we all must have if war is to be waged.

Blackwater Grows as Support for Iraq War Shrinks

Guest Writer: L. Vincent Sebastian

With each passing month, more and more Americans are finding the Iraq war unacceptable and are calling for near-term troop redeployment and withdrawal. As for political progress in Iraq, the recent report of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said the Iraqi government has failed to meet 11 of 18 benchmarks set by the U.S. Congress earlier in the year, and has only partially met another four benchmarks. On the military side, the "surge" has had only mixed results and violence continues in most parts of the country. The widely anticipated report by Gen. Petraeus later this month will be mixed as well, giving both sides of the debate plenty of reasons to stick to their positions.

Against this backdrop of civil war in Iraq and political stalemate here at home, the private military contractor Blackwater is quietly expanding outward from its 7,000-acre headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina. Blackwater now has two new facilities in the works: a newly completed 80-acre compound in Mount Carroll, Illinois, and plans for an 800-acre facility in the hills outside San Diego, California. Groups of concerned citizens such as Blackwater Watch and Clearwater are keeping an eye on, and in some cases protesting, this expansion.

As Blackwater expands its geographic footprint, it is also growing the list of services it offers. The most recent new service is its training class to prepare law enforcement officers to handle active shooters such as the one who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. This five-day session will put trainees into simulated scenarios at a mock high school. While special tactical units such as SWAT teams are often part of large domestic law enforcement agencies, the direct involvement of a private military contractor in the training of police here at home is cause for concern. It blurs the line between our domestic police and our national defense, and unfortunately puts us one step closer to a militarized home front.

Sources:

The Virginian-Pilot, "Others not so neighborly to Blackwater as North Carolina", by JOANNE KIMBERLIN, , August 26, 2007.

Associated Press, "Blackwater Offers Classes to Combat Active Shooters", by MIKE BAKER, August 27, 2007.

CLICK for Related Pieces by L. V. Sebastian

Blackwater Trying to Gain Popular Appeal

The Spy Who Billed Me blog shares with us that Blackwater is now a NASCAR sponsor.

Blackwater is owned and operated by a christian fundamentalist ideologue (Erik D. Prince). Their stock in trade is the use of force, or they might say managing the risk of violence. Actually, it's both.

Blackwater has major contracts with the State Department and other federal agencies to provide security. What happens when there's a contract dispute? Are the contractors going to be more loyal to the agency they work for or to the contract? Who is their ultimate boss, the President of the United States or the CEO of Blackwater?

Well-paid federal employees, or members of the US military, they are far more likely to be loyal to the mission. The commercialization of our security forces is an unacceptable security risk.

Blackwater, and firms like it, are accumulating wealth and power. We need to stop them before they have the influence to force the hand of Congress. The sponsorship of NASCAR by Blackwater is an indication that they are trying to gain popular appeal in mainstream culture. We need to act before they gain un-stoppable momentum.

Blackwater Follows Bush-Cheney Playbook in Three Lawsuits

Guest Conributor: L. Vincent Sebastian

In recent years Blackwater USA, a private military and security contractor, has made the news on a number of fronts due to its involvement in the Iraq War, the global War on Terror, and other foreign policy/ military initiatives of the Bush Administration (see prior postings on Blackwater on this website). Tragic episodes in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of employees of Blackwater and its affiliates, and this in turn led to two high-profile lawsuits against Blackwater. A third lawsuit alleging corporate espionage was brought about by Blackwater against one of its former employees. In each of these suits, Blackwater has followed the three-pronged strategy used by the Bush administration of maintaining secrecy, bullying the opposition, and denying accountability to the bitter end. First, a brief review of the suits:

Lawsuit #1. In March, 2004, four Blackwater security guards were attacked and killed by a frenzied mob as they escorted a supply convoy through Fallujah, Iraq. The families of these employees then sued Blackwater, accusing the company of breaking its contractual obligations to the four men by sending them into hostile territory unprepared and failing to provide them with appropriate equipment such as armored vehicles or even a map. This lawsuit, which had made its way to the Supreme Court in a series of unsuccessful appeals by Blackwater, was recently sent to arbitration. Last month (May, 2007), a federal judge ordered the lawsuit to be decided behind closed doors, allowing Blackwater to avoid public examination of its practices in Iraq. Apparently, the employment contracts signed by these security guards contained an arbitration clause. Arbitration is a non-judicial process that has a number of advantages for Blackwater. There is no right to a trial by jury. The verdict is final and binding. There is no appeal. There is no right to discovery, which means the plaintiffs do not have the same access to internal documents, Blackwater documents. The proceedings are confidential and the outcome is confidential.

Lawsuit #2. Blackwater’s aviation division is being sued by the families of three U.S. soldiers who were killed in a plane crash in Afghanistan in November of 2004. This was a plane operated by Blackwater's aviation affiliate, Presidential Airways of Florida. All six people aboard died, the three Presidential civilian crewmen and the three soldiers. The plane was ferrying the men from an airfield in Bagram, Afghanistan, to Farah, Afghanistan, and was not flying a combat mission. According to the suit, Blackwater sent the men to their deaths in an under-equipped and poorly manned aircraft. The plane lacked even the most basic safety equipment. It had no global positioning system or radar. Its crew did not wear oxygen masks. And its two pilots, who had been in Afghanistan only two weeks and had never flown the route before, failed to take the basic step of filing a flight plan, which led to a delay in finding the wreckage. In late 2006, the National Transportation Safety Board found that unprofessional behavior by the Presidential Airways flight crew was a key cause of the crash. The Board concluded that the crew deliberately avoided the standard route and took a joy ride in another direction, eventually becoming trapped in a canyon and slamming into a mountainside. The unorthodox route contributed to a delay in locating the wreckage. Had rescuers reached the site sooner, one of the servicemen (Harley Miller) might have been saved, the investigators found. Last month (May, 2007), Blackwater was in federal appeals court in Miami today trying to get that case thrown out.

Lawsuit #3. On Feb. 21, 2006 Blackwater filed a lawsuit against former employee Curtis Smith, claiming that Smith gave trade secrets (an accounting system) to Covenant Special Projects, a rival security company in Northern Virginia where Smith now works. Blackwater actually has an affidavit from Smith in which he admits giving away trade secrets. Smith claims, however, that the statement was induced under duress and intimidation in a Blackwater conference room where he was confined against his will. After Blackwater filed suit, Smith countersued Blackwater and its executive vice president, William Mathews, alleging that his affidavit was extracted under duress. The day after Blackwater’s lawsuit was filed, Virginia Beach police raided Smith's home, authorized by a search warrant issued on suspicion of computer fraud and computer trespass, which are criminal offenses. According to the police report, the raid yielded a computer, related equipment and papers. But to date, Smith has not been charged with any crime. This criminal investigation is continuing as the civil case unfolds. Smith says that trade secret in question is a generic technique that uses simple accounting principles and that he gave up no confidential information. Moreover, he says, Blackwater has made it difficult for him to defend himself by failing to specify the trade secrets he is alleged to have stolen, saying that the information is classified. It so happens that the leader of the police raid, Maj. Jon Worthington of the Camden County, VA Sheriff's Office, moonlights as an instructor on Blackwater's Moyock, NC compound, and that the Virginia Beach Police Department leases a training facility there.

The move of the Fallujah lawsuit to arbitration will keep Blackwater away from the light of a courtroom, where many had expected to learn details about this firm and the private army it fields in Iraq and elsewhere. What is interesting is that Blackwater did not make much of disputing the specific allegations of the Fallujah lawsuit. Instead, Blackwater attorneys (which have included former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr and current White House Counsel Fred Fielding) argued that the company should not face scrutiny in civilian courts because the contracting industry is an extension of the military. That is, they took the legal approach that says, “We can’t be sued.” Blackwater argued in both the Fallujah and Afghanistan suits that it is part of the U.S. “total force” and therefore should be entitled to the same immunity from civilian litigation for wrongful death, for casualties in a war zone, enjoyed by the US military. (In February 2006, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld classified Blackwater and other contractors as legitimate parts of the total force making up the U.S. war machine.)

Blackwater has also tried to block the testimony of witnesses who worked for Blackwater and who are thought to have information that would show that questionable activities took place in the days leading up to the four men being killed in Fallujah. In particular, Blackwater was able to block the deposition of a former Blackwater manager, claiming that this former employee potentially was in possession of information that, if it was revealed publicly, could damage the national security of the United States.

At the same time, however, Blackwater’s lobbyists and PR specialists at the Alexander Strategy Group (the Republican lobbying firm operated by senior staffers of former Rep.Tom DeLay) were in the media proclaiming how it would be inappropriate to apply the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the court-martial system, to Blackwater operatives, because they are civilians. So, Blackwater wants it both ways: the secrecy and immunity enjoyed by the military, but not the military’s system of accountability.

Blackwater uses a secrecy-at-all-costs approach to doing business not only with the courts, but also with the U.S. Congress. “(The Fallujah) incident was a bit of a wake up call to many people to not only the extent of the private security contracting but the questions surrounding it,” said North Carolina Rep. David Price, who helped add increased contracting oversight measures to the defense authorization bill approved recently by the House. Blackwater is notoriously reticent to discuss the details of its business, and Congress has struggled at times to get answers about Blackwater and others in the private military contracting industry. Blackwater has repeatedly refused to turn over documents related to deadly incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has stone-walled to the point of telling Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the House Government Oversight Committee, that they cannot provide him with documents because they are classified.

Of the three lawsuits discussed above, Blackwater wants only one of them to go to court: the one that it initiated (against its former employee). Here, the corporation has sought to intimidate an individual through a coerced affidavit and a “police” raid carried out by one of its part-time employees. But even here, Blackwater continues its national security-based argument for secrecy.

Other recent commentary: The Bush administration has engaged in private contracting on a scale previously unimagined, and we need to have a handle on it (Rep. David Price). “We're spending an awful lot of money on these companies, and people still can't define their role” (John Pike, a military analyst with think tank GlobalSecurity.org). “The losers in this development are ultimately the American people,” (Jeremy Scahill, author of “Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army”).

End Notes: How connected is Blackwater to the Bush administration and to the Republican Party? In addition to the connections mentioned above, consider the following.

* Since February 2005, J. Cofer Black has been Vice Chairman of Blackwater USA. From December 2002 to November 2004 he was the U.S. Department of State Coordinator for Counterterrorism with the rank of Ambassador at Large. He was a key figure in the rendition program, the government-sanctioned “kidnap-and-torture” program, where suspected terrorist prisoners are sent to third-country locations to be interrogated. Black is also chairman of a new privatized intelligence company called Total Intelligence Solutions that is being bankrolled by Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater. Recently, presidential candidate Mitt Romney tapped Black to be his senior advisor on counter-terrorism.

* Mitt Romney grew up in Michigan and is the son of former Michigan governor George Wilcken Romney (1907 -1995). The elder Romney was the chairman of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962 and was the Republican Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969. He was also a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 but lost to Richard Nixon.

* Erik Prince, the head and founder of Blackwater, also grew up in Michigan where his father, Edgar Prince (died 1995) founded a company in 1965 called Prince Manufacturing (Prince Automotive) in Holland, Michigan, which serviced the auto industry. Revenue from this company was used to fuel the rise of the religious right in America. The elder Prince gave seed money to Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council, where Erik Prince was once an intern. The Prince’s were also significant bankrollers of James Dobson and his group Focus on the Family. Erik Prince was a Navy SEAL (one of the wealthiest people ever to join the SEALS) prior to founding Blackwater. His reason for founding Blackwater was to anticipate government outsourcing of training and firearm-related activity. This closely followed a Halliburton study commissioned by Dick Cheney (as George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense) on how to further privatize the military bureaucracy.

Sources:

“Afghanistan: Families Sue Private Contractor Over Soldiers' Deaths”
Kristin Collins, The News & Observer, June 14, 2005

“Crew's behavior is blamed for '04 plane crash in Afghanistan”
Bill Sizemore, The Virginian-Pilot, December 7, 2006

“The Rise of Blackwater”
Sandip Roy, New America Media, April 24, 2007

“US: Blackwater lawsuit accuses ex-employee of stealing secrets”
Bill Sizemore, The Virginian-Pilot, May 10, 2007

“Pivotal Family Lawsuit Against Blackwater USA Blocked from Court -- and Moved to Panel with Company Ties”, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! May 23, 2007

“Blackwater lawsuit over U.S. security contractors killed in Iraq headed for private arbitration” Mike Baker, May 26, 2007

Privatizing the War in Iraq

Guest Writer: L. Vincent Sebastian

This article summarizes some of the issues surrounding private armed forces involved in the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. It draws from the sources referenced at the end.

With the casualty count growing daily and troops stretched thin on the ground, the Bush administration is looking to mercenaries to help control Iraq. The practice of using mercenaries to fight wars is not new, but has become increasingly popular in recent years. During the first Gulf War, one out of every 50 to 60 soldiers on the battlefield was a mercenary. The number had climbed up to one in ten during the Bosnian conflict. Currently in Iraq, more than 40 percent of the total occupying force comprises private contractors. For President Bush and his political allies, war has become just another industry to be outsourced, with contractors providing a backdoor means of expanding the occupation through the deployment of private armies.

In his State of the Union address in last month, Bush mentioned a major new initiative in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps. Bush said: “Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them.” But this is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input. Private contractors constitute the second-largest force in Iraq, about 100,000 strong, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The number of private soldiers (armed security contractors) has more than doubled in the last two years, up from 20,000 in the first quarter of 2005. This is an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation.

This expansion is paid for with taxpayer dollars, of course. Obviously, the training of U.S. military personnel is paid for by our tax dollars. However, once skilled and experienced soldiers becomes eligible for discharge, private, for-profit corporations such as Blackwater USA (see footnote below) may recruit them away from the military, offering salaries much higher than those paid by the military. The average pay for a contractor on “active duty” is $500 to $600 a day, and may be as much as $1,000 a day, which is far more than that of military personnel. This is a strong incentive. One contractor said that he is regularly approached by far younger, low-paid U.S. servicemen, who ask about jobs at Blackwater.

The problem is that firms such a Blackwater rely primarily on large, taxpayer-funded U.S. government contracts to stay in business, not on the business of private sector customers or clients. Blackwater has a $300-million, no-bid contract (from 2003) with the State Department to guard diplomats in Iraq. Thus, tax dollars are used first to pay to train the troops, then to pay them a lot more to do basically the same job with a private contracting firm, and finally to pay hefty profits to the contracting firm.

While Blackwater is known in some quarters for its professionalism (it sees itself as the FedEx of defense and homeland security operations), the credentials of other firms are more questionable. Consider Aegis Defense Services, for example. Aegis was awarded a $293 million contract from the U.S. government to provide security in Iraq, despite the fact that its principal (Tim Spicer) was suspected of being involved in the 2004 coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, for which his former business associate (Simon Mann) was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in Zimbabwe; and despite the fact that Aegis had no previous experience in Iraq and didn't have the resources to fulfill the contract. The controversial nature of this contract got the attention of Congress, and eventually the Pentagon admitted that its contracting officer was completely unaware of Spicer's background. Aegis’s first DOD audit in 2005 was damning, including the charge that the company was trying to ramp up so fast to meet the contract requirements they were hiring poorly vetted Iraqis and giving them passes to the Green Zone. The company also came under scrutiny when videos of Aegis contractors indiscriminately firing at civilian cars surfaced on the Internet. Despite this, Aegis continues to carry out extensive contracting operations in Iraq.

The role of private contractor personnel is ambiguous and controversial. Typically, they are bodyguards (for diplomats and other officials), or are armed guards hired to protect oil wells or to provide security for airports or along transportation corridors. These private soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints. In the first years of the war, there were no rules limiting contractors’ use of force in Iraq. They could shoot to kill, but had little accountability. If contractors misbehaved – as they did at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison – they rarely faced charges. Why? Because private contractors are not legally considered combatants. Military law applies to the troops, but not to contractors, even though contractors are frequently in the same combat situations as the troops – where life and death decisions are made. The military can take disciplinary action and/or bring criminal charges against U.S. troops – but not against contractors – that break rules, regulations, and laws (including the Geneva Conventions) that govern troop conduct during times of war.

U.S. military officials have expressed concern about combat situations in which contractors open fire. Recently, the State Department imposed restrictions discouraging contractors from firing warning shots. As a consequence, private military firms have recently shifted their focused to “peacekeeping” duties (in part, to improve their image). But, there are still frequent reports of contractors running Iraqis off the road or injuring or killing innocent people. In carrying out their assignments, contractors can be very aggressive, offending locals and making enemies each time they go out (from a statement by retired Marine colonel T. X. Hammes). Ultimately, a contractor’s paid mission may not be fully consistent with that of the U.S. military, and may not support the broader interests of the U.S. counterinsurgency.

At the same time, the contractor’s work is as risky or riskier than that of the U.S. troops, and may make the jobs of both more difficult. The prospect of private armed security guards moving around combat zones adds a level of uncertainty and complexity for the troops (“Is that SUV coming toward us friend or foe?”). On many occasions, contractors have been fired upon by U.S. soldiers and Marines at checkpoints. Contractors are also targets for insurgents and militia in Iraq, as seen in early 2004 when four Blackwater employees were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Fallouja. Multiple execution-style killings of contractors have taken place since then, the most recent just hours before Bush’s State of the Union address last month.

As the number of U.S. (and coalition) troop deaths rises, contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll. The non-counting of contractors is certainly politically expedient since the official number hides some of the human costs of war. As of the first quarter of 2005, there were an estimated 240 deaths among some 20,000 armed private security contractors in Iraq. This number was not obtained from military sources, but from the Department of Labor (through Freedom of Information Act requests), which tracks the number of contractors that have been killed because the federal government has a program to insure contractors who service the US military abroad (an outgrowth of the Defense Base Act). More than 600 families of contractors in Iraq have filed for these benefits. Contractor firms such as Blackwater are under no obligation to make public the identities of those killed or details of the deaths.

Yet, 240 deaths (as of early 2005) is an underestimate of true number of contractors killed because it accounts for only contractors that are eligible for federal benefits inside the United States. Many of the 48,000 U.S.-funded mercenaries in Iraq are not Americans, and their deaths are not tracked by the Labor Department.

Blackwater and other U.S.-based military contractors have created a private military melting pot by hiring not only Americans, but also mercenaries from Bosnia, Chile, Colombia, the Filipeans, and South Africa. Many of these soldiers-for-hire are veterans of repressive military regimes, including that of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and South Africa’s former apartheid government. Other recruits are impoverished former military personnel desperate for a paying job (Blackwater has a recruitment center in the Philippines).

Foreign mercenaries are typically paid much less than their American counterparts. One firm pays Filipino mercenaries $60,000-$80,000 a year, half of what it pays American mercenaries with equivalent qualifications and for the same assignments (although this is still more than the salaries of most active duty U.S. military personnel).

But it is ultimately the U.S. taxpayer who foots the bill, as illustrated by the following scenario reported by Sonni Efron with comments from Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) (Los Angeles Times, July 2005). The U.S. government has funded “Plan Colombia”, a counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics program that includes training and support for the Colombian police and military. We have been training foreign nationals – who then take that training and market it to private companies, who pay them three or four times as much as we are paying soldiers. American taxpayers are paying for the training of those Colombian soldiers. When they leave to take more lucrative jobs, perhaps with an American military contractor, they take that training with them. So then we are paying to train that person's replacement. And then we are paying the bill to the private military contractors.

The fact that U.S. firms recruit foreign nationals does not sit well with their home countries. South Africa’s Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act prohibits South African citizens from direct participation as a combatant in armed conflict for private gain. Michelle Bachelet, Chile's defense minister, has ordered an investigation into whether such recruitment is legal under Chilean laws. And, Blackwater's recruitment activities in the Philippines have triggered severe criticism and massive protests there.

* Footnote: Blackwater USA has a 6,000 acre para-military training facility as part of its corporate headquarters, in Moyock, North Carolina, just south of the Virginia border. This training center was founded in 1996 to fulfill the “anticipated demand” for government outsourcing of firearms and related security training. Blackwater has trained more than 50,000 military and law enforcement personnel. The firm also has additional offices in Baghdad, Iraq, and Kuwait City, Kuwait.

Sources:

Bill Berkowitz, “Mercenaries ‘R’ Us”, AlterNet, March 24, 2004.

Amy Goodman, “Our mercenaries in Iraq: Interview with Jeremy Scahill”, Democracy Now! January 26th, 2007.

Mark Hemingway, “Warriors for Hire: Blackwater USA and the rise of private military contractors”, Weekly Standard, v. 012(14), December 18, 2006.

Jeremy Scahill, “Our mercenaries in Iraq” Op Ed, Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2007.

Sourcewatch: A project of the Center for Media & Democracy

Ann Scott Tyson, “Private Security Workers Living On Edge in Iraq”, Washington Post, April 23, 2005.

Photo credits:

Private Security Near Landcruiser

Blackwater USA Helicopter: Agence France Presse—Getty Images.