If Blackwater Couldn’t Keep Benazir Bhutto Safe, Why Is State Still Contracting with Them?

When Erik Prince testified before the Oversight Committee on October 2, 2007, he boasted that no one under Blackwater’s protection had ever been seriously hurt or killed.

No individual protected by Blackwater has ever been killed or seriously injured. There is no better evidence of the skill and dedication of these men.

At precisely the same time as Prince was making that boast, Blackwater was negotiating a protection deal that would not end so successfully.

The Nation has previously reported on Blackwater’s work for the CIA and JSOC in Pakistan. New documents reveal a history of activity relating to Pakistan by Blackwater. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto worked with the company when she returned to Pakistan to campaign for the 2008 elections, according to the documents. In October 2007, when media reports emerged that Bhutto had hired “American security,” senior Blackwater official Robert Richer wrote to company executives, “We need to watch this carefully from a number of angles. If our name surfaces, the Pakistani press reaction will be very important. How that plays through the Muslim world will also need tracking.” Richer wrote that “we should be prepared to [sic] a communique from an affiliate of Al-Qaida if our name surfaces (BW). That will impact the security profile.” Clearly a word is missing in the e-mail or there is a typo that leaves unclear what Richer meant when he mentioned the Al Qaeda communiqué. Bhutto was assassinated two months later. Blackwater officials subsequently scheduled a meeting with her family representatives in Washington, in January 2008.

This detail–though not surprising–raises more questions than offer answers. Like what the hell word is that is missing before “communique”? Was Blackwater proposing to mitigate the PR problem of public association with Bhutto just as scrutiny over the Nissour Square massacre was most intense by inventing a fake communique, of some sort, from al Qaeda? (Elsewhere in Scahill’s piece, he describes a training course Blackwater offered on al Qaeda tactics, including propaganda. So presumably, they considered themselves experts in creating fake al Qaeda propaganda.

And if Blackwater had a previously unrevealed failure–a really costly, spectacular one–then why is State Department still contracting with them for such protective services? Not least given that Blackwater would presumably be protecting people in Afghanistan against some of the same creeps who presumably bested Blackwater when they assassinated Bhutto?

Moreover, given that the State Department gave Blackwater follow-on contracts after Blackwater failed to keep Bhutto safe, then have they at least done a real assessment of what went wrong? Last we heard from Blackwater publicly, they had a purportedly perfect record. But they don’t. And no one told us that. If we’re going to give another $120,000,000 to Blackwater, have we at least studied, first, what went wrong with Blackwater’s notable failure with Bhutto?

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  1. TarheelDem says:

    Might the missing word be “forge””? No that would be too direct. “Create” “obtain” “negotiate” “purloin”?

    And might Blackwater be receiving contracts for the same reason that J. Edgar Hoover was FBI Director-for-life. Or might it be extortion instead of blackmail?

    • TarheelDem says:

      Condi Rice was behind the effort to ease Musharraf out of the presidency by having Benezir Bhutto run a popular campaign to restore (at least for a while) confidence in the government. I believe that Bhutto trusted that Blackwater was working for US interests and consequently would do their jobs.

  2. TarheelDem says:

    Another possibility is “intercept”. If it became public knowledge that Blackwater was the security detail for Bhutto, likely Blackwater thought that the danger from its enemies could destroy its reputation by creating incentives that otherwise wouldn’t be there for an attack on Bhutto.

    In other words, elefino.

  3. Stephen says:

    Blackwater, Xe, Cheney’s hit squad, now Barry’s so called “executive privilege” to assassinate American citizens, with drone attacks and collateral murder here and there. This is getting outa hand by golly.

  4. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    …he describes a training course Blackwater offered on al Qaeda tactics, including propaganda. So presumably, they considered themselves experts in creating fake al Qaeda propaganda.

    And if Blackwater had a previously unrevealed failure–a really costly, spectacular one–then why is State Department still contracting with them for such protective services?

    Excellent question.
    Eerie, too, the way those Osama bin Laden videos hit the US just the week before the 2004 election, in view of this passage.

  5. WilliamOckham says:

    The missing word is “issue”. I’ll put $50 on it. “Issue” is almost the only verb anyone ever uses with the noun “communique”.

    • phred says:

      Oops, should have finished the thread first, you beat me to it. My initial reaction was receive. Admittedly that suggests either that they were in cahoots with Al Qaeda (tin foil territory) or it was a tongue in cheek manner of saying they could expect to be on the receiving end of an attack.

    • fatster says:

      I left more info on the Pentagon child porn story for you back on the “Women Enjoying Sex . . . ” thread, Mary.

      • bobschacht says:

        Apparently, this title enables her to speak freely to the public. Those who are formally nominated for a position that needs to be approved by Congress traditionally enter a “zone of silence” during the confirmation process. As an adviser, she can participate in campaign appearances and advocate for consumers while she staffs up her office.

        I’m not sure what the difference is if Obama were to make her an interim appointee, however.

        Bob in AZ

    • bmaz says:

      What a sick joke. It is not that I do not appreciate whatever Warren could get accomplished, I truly do. It is the flailing limp dick bullshit contortions the Obama White House is going through to NOT install Warren with any power of her own, coupled with their sheer desperation to find some avenue to fraudulently sell linkage with Warren to morons that might fall for it. It is really stunning at the root level. Warren should tell them to go fuck themselves.

      • prostratedragon says:

        It is really stunning at the root level. Warren should tell them to go fuck themselves.

        It is, and she should. But I found myself wondering whether by playing out the lame spectacle where everyone can see it, she’s not doing a small service. Had she just walked before it became “necessary” to leak this trash, some would never have believed it was Obama’s fault.

        (Whether it’s his unwillingness to take on the GOP assholes in the Senate or a refusal to strut the courage of his own convictions matters not at this point, the time for such niceties is over.)

      • BayStateLibrul says:

        Warren is one nifty lady.

        Political processes are the great white whales on the Potomac.

        Obama just harpooned Moby Dick…

        Resist the Captain Ahab approach…

  6. ThingsComeUndone says:

    What they had that contract heck they were probably in on it the CIA has no reason to want a popular leader in Pakistan.

  7. eCAHNomics says:

    How do we know that Blackwater’s real job was keeping Bhutto safe? Maybe it was the opposite and they were wildly successful. How the hell are we, the great unwashed, ever to know what the real agenda of the USG is.

    • hackworth1 says:

      I don’t think Cheney had much use for Bhutto, except perhaps as a temporary distraction. Like Dick Said, sometimes Yoo got to go to the Dark Side.

      • TarheelDem says:

        Cheney and Condi were on opposite sides on this decision. Since Blackwater was Cheney’s friends, what better way to undercut Condi’s policy.

  8. Sharkbabe says:

    Cheney was tired of the Pakistani chick.

    The “security” racket (at every level) exists to a) fuck up b) create more insecurity thereby c) further profit thereupon.

  9. JMLagain says:

    I always wondered who it was who told Bhutto to stand up again as was reported in the initial accounts of the murder.

  10. Citizen92 says:

    Present State Department #3 man, Pat Kennedy, holds these answers. Pat is a career civil service official at State and has risen to heights under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Hillary Clinton.

    Pat was called up to do damage control after Nisour Square and his panel produced what appeared to be a whitewash.

    A panel commissioned by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the wake of the September 16 shootings concluded as well that even if a private security guard committed cold-blooded murder, there may be no legal basis for prosecuting the guard in the US court system.

    The panel’s report, drafted by Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s director of management policy, concluded, “The panel is unaware of any basis for holding non-Department of Defense contractors accountable under US law.”

    The panel also recommended a series of toothless requirements governing security contractors, including having agents from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security accompany security convoys, and placing video recording, audio, and tracking equipment inside the vehicles.

    Their report also advised that the mercenaries undergo training to increase their “cultural awareness.” According to the State DeparI tment’s own records, which likely underestimate such violent incidents, since the beginning of the year Blackwater guards have been deployed on 1,873 missions and have discharged weapons in the course of 56 of these. Sensitivity training is unlikely to alter this behavior.

    I’ve worked with Pat. I respect Pat. But I believe he was enlisted to clean up a nasty bag of tricks and I hope he hasn’t become the David Marguiles of State.

    • bmaz says:

      Well, State set the table for those very conclusions by intentionally walling off the shooters and complicitly injecting Garrity Statements into the equation so that the shooters were effectively immunized.

  11. Mason says:

    And if Blackwater had a previously unrevealed failure–a really costly, spectacular one–then why is State Department still contracting with them for such protective services? Not least given that Blackwater would presumably be protecting people in Afghanistan against some of the same creeps who presumably bested Blackwater when they assassinated Bhutto?

    Because the State Department paid Blackwater to assassinate Bhutto.

  12. jackie says:

    I bet they know a lot of the same people…

    ‘Washington’s bureaucratic turf wars are a dismal reality of politics in Beltwayistan, but are now threatening national policy, as competing agendas threaten policies extending far beyond the continental U.S.

    In two of the most notable recent examples, the Kazakh “Giffengate” corruption case and attempts to extradite notorious “Lord of War” Viktor Bout to the United States, eager federal officials in both cases are running up against other government elements content to let both cases lie fallow, notably the CIA and Pentagon.’

    http://oilprice.com/Geo-Politics/North-America/Washington-Turf-Wars.html

  13. EternalVigilance says:

    As others have already suggested, that Bhutto was the only one paying Blackwater, and that her safety was their highest business priority, are both unfounded assumptions.

    But in general, the answer to most questions “why does X continue to brazenly steal $10**n’s from the taxpayers by funding their business associate Y’s illegal/immoral/inept/ineffective Z?” is the same as “why does a dog lick his balls?”

  14. alinaustex says:

    Why would elements of the Pakistani government not be able to protect Mrs Bhutto without XE being involved ? How much might former and current elements of the Pakistani government who hold a grudge still against Mrs Bhutto’s Daddy want to have a ‘fall guy ” for her successful assasination? Its long been considered ‘conventional wisdom ” that elements of the Pakistani government (ISI ) not only support Taleban & al Qa’ida activities all over the AFPAK operational area -but that these same elements would not want the Bhutto clan back in power especially if Mrs Bhutto was bringing democratic governance . And perhaps this would be away to have a ‘twofer” for the Pakistani opposition elements -in that Mrs Bhutto was removed and that a strategic asset for the West ie XE was to be made the scapegoat for her killing. Its worth remembering that much of what happens in the “Stans” is directly attributable to the long term struggle for regional dominance between Pakistan & India -and some elements of the Pakistani government ( either current of former) look at the Taleban/alQa’ida as tactical means to a strategic end -to frustrate Indian aspirations- Kashmir being one example.
    But really “WTF” over- who really knows why XE was potentially left holding the bag for Mrs Bhutto’s untimely demise .
    Wasn’t the UN supposed to be doing an investigation of the Bhutto assasination – if so was a report issued ?

  15. wigwam says:

    If we’re going to give another $120,000,000 to Blackwater, have we at least studied, first, what went wrong with Blackwater’s notable failure with Bhutto?

    Failure? I’m not so sure.

    • klynn says:

      I asked myself the same question. Would want to know who suggested she hire BW for her security?

      I do not think she woke up one morning and said, I’ll hire BW to protect me.”

  16. wavpeac says:

    protecting whom? I think after reading the article it’s pretty clear that our shadow government is working for people “formerly known as prince”. Symbols, XE, Monsanto…Bhutto was not a failure. I think it ended exactly as our shadow government wanted. We are in deep doo doo.

  17. bobInpacifica says:

    Maybe it was Blackwater’s ultimate job not to protect Bhutto.

    Serves several purposes. Gets her out of the way for the ISI. Sends a message back to politicians in the US.