US fails at enforcing prosecution of contractors

The US government has the legal authority to prosecute private contractors for crimes they commit in Iraq but often declines to use it, according to a report released today by a leading human rights group.The findings by Human Rights First come amid renewed uncertainty about whether employees of the US security company Blackwater can be prosecuted for a September shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead.

The Bush administration has warned that inconsistency in federal law may allow the contractors to evade charges, the New York Times reported today.

“The main obstacle to ending the culture of impunity among private security contractors is not shortcomings in the law but rather the lack of will to enforce the law,” today’s report states.

A seven-year-old law called the Military extraterrestrial jurisdiction act, or MEJA, provides the main mechanism to prosecute contractors for crimes committed outside the US.

But many in the capital have questioned whether MEJA’s specific application to Pentagon employees would exempt Blackwater, which was operating under a US state department contract when the September shooting occurred.

The human rights report rejects that argument, citing a congressional expansion of MEJA passed after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in 2004. That measure allows for prosecution of non-Pentagon employees who were “supporting the mission of the department of defence”.

The behaviour of contractors for Blackwater and other security firms has sparked resentment among Iraqi officials as well as civilians, many of whom consider the private guards unnecessarily violent.

“These violent attacks have created a culture of impunity that angers the local population, undermines the military mission, and promotes more abuse by contractors over time,” the report states.

The report found that since the war in Iraq began, only one US contractor has been charged with a violent crime under MEJA: an employee of KBR, formerly owned by Halliburton, who was accused of stabbing an Indian female colleague.

The House of Representatives already has approved a measure that would directly apply MEJA to Blackwater and its fellow contractors. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has introduced an expansion of MEJA in the Senate, but the bill has yet to see action.

Fallout from Blackwater’s legal and public relations troubles has hit British security companies in recent months.

The chief executive of ArmorGroup, the largest UK security firm operating in Iraq, left his post after reports of the September violence chilled the company’s profits and new contracts.

The human rights report singles out ArmorGroup and Aegis Defence Services, another UK-based contractor, for tracking incidents involving firearms use by their employees, in contrast with US companies that do not routinely keep such records

State Dept. retains manager of troubled embassy project

WASHINGTON — A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday.

James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department’s top management official.

“Mr. Golden is still . . . our project manager, and still is working with the contractor, at their base in Kuwait,” Kennedy said.

One State Department official with detailed knowledge of the unopened embassy expressed outrage that his superiors haven’t replaced Golden.

“I find it absolutely amazing that State senior management doesn’t seem to think it a trifle odd that two people under investigation . . . are still making all the management decisions under this same contract,” the official said in an e-mail. The official asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation by his superiors.

Golden and the Baghdad-based embassy construction coordinator, Mary French, have been implicated in a Justice Department criminal investigation into how embassy construction subcontracts were issued, according to current and former U.S. officials and congressional testimony.

Neither Golden nor French has been charged with any wrongdoing.

Construction and safety problems have plagued the Baghdad embassy, originally scheduled to open in September. Kennedy and other top department officials have declined to provide a firm date for when it will be ready to house nearly 1,000 U.S. diplomats and staff.

Kuwaiti-based First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co. is constructing the embassy, which will be the largest American embassy in the world once it’s completed.

Department officials defended the decision to leave Golden in place, saying it was necessary to provide continuity on the project. The department is working to overcome construction flaws that range from questions about the strength of blast walls to a fire-suppression system that failed inspection.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker banished Golden from Iraq after an incident last May in which a mortar round damaged a wall at the new embassy that was supposed to be blast resistant. Golden, along with First Kuwaiti, attempted to repair the damage before an investigation could be conducted, U.S. officials said.

Attempts to reach Golden for comment for this article were unsuccessful.

McClatchy first reported the criminal investigation into the embassy’s construction in mid-October.

New details were made public a month later during a congressional hearing, in which it became known that the State Department’s inspector general, Howard Krongard, had met personally with Golden and French despite warnings from his staff that such a personal meeting would “taint the investigation,” according to a congressional report.

The two embassy project managers weren’t mentioned by name in the report by majority Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Golden was referred to as a “person of interest” in the Justice investigation, and French as a “subject of investigation.”

But Krongard divulged their names publicly. “I would like to tell you what exactly I was doing, both with Mr. Golden and Ms. French,” he told the committee.

According to the committee’s report, Golden hasn’t returned to the United States or made himself available for a follow-up interview since the August meeting with Krongard. Krongard has since recused himself, at Justice’s request, from the embassy investigation.

Many details of the probe remain under wraps.

Chris Shays CT-04 Should resign…

 and go to work for Blackwater. I posted this video on my other site water-boarding and it makes me ill to watch it.

Fox News refuses to run pro-Constitution ad

Fox News has refused to air an ad produced by the Center for Constitutional Rights that criticizes the Bush administration for “destroying the Constitution” by the use of renditions, torture, and other tactics. The ad, “Rescue the Constitution,” which is narrated by actor Danny Glover.

In an email provided to Media Matters for Americaby the Center, Fox News account executive Erin Kelly told Owen Henkel, the Center’s e-communications manager, that Fox would not run the ad:

Hi Owen –

We cannot approve the spot with it being Danny Glover’s opinion that the Bush Administration is destroying the Constitution. If you have documentation that it is indeed being destroyed, we can look at that.

Sorry about that,

Erin

In 2005, Fox refused to run an ad critical of then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr., who had been nominated by President Bush to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Secrecy invoked on Abramoff lawsuits

The Bush administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The administration agreed last year to produce all responsive records about the visits “without redactions or claims of exemption,” according to a court order.

But in a court filing Friday night, administration lawyers said that sometime in the past year the Secret Service identified a category of highly sensitive documents that might contain information sought in a lawsuit about Abramoff’s trips to the White House.

The Justice Department declared that the contents of the “Sensitive Security Records” cannot be publicly revealed even though they could show whether Abramoff made more visits to the White House than those already acknowledged.

“The simple act of doing so … would reveal sensitive information about the methods used by the Secret Service to carry out its protective function,” the Justice Department argued.

Sensitive Security Records are created in the course of conducting more extensive background checks on certain visitors to the White House. In sworn statements accompanying the filing, two Secret Service officers said the extra attention is paid to some visitors because of the background, “the circumstances of the visits” or both.

The Justice Department said that releasing the information could allow people to figure out the protective activities of the Secret Service.

The filing came in a lawsuit by a conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch. Another private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also has requested Secret Service records of Abramoff’s White House visits, and on Friday, the Justice Department asked that the two suits be consolidated.

To date, the government has turned over Secret Service records referring to seven White House visits by Abramoff — six of them in the early months of the Bush administration in 2001 and the seventh in early 2004 just before Abramoff came under criminal investigation.

The White House has released little information about the visits, but none of them appears to involve a small group meeting with President Bush.

“This is an extraordinary development and it raises the specter that there were additional contacts with President Bush or other high White House officials that have yet to be disclosed,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “We’ve alleged that the government has committed misconduct in this litigation and frankly this is more fuel for that fire.”

The White House had no immediate comment Saturday.

Nearly two years ago, just after Abramoff had pleaded guilty in the influence peddling scandal, Bush told reporters, “I can’t say I didn’t ever meet” Abramoff, “but I meet a lot of people.”

“I don’t know him,” Bush said at the presidential news conference in January 2006. “I’ve never sat down with him and had a discussion with the guy.”

After Bush’s comments, Abramoff wrote an e-mail to the national editor of Washingtonian magazine saying that Bush had seen him “in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows.”

Time magazine reported that its reporters had been shown five photographs of Bush and Abramoff. Most of them, the magazine said, had “the formal look of photos taken at presidential receptions.”

The Justice Department probe of Abramoff and his team of lobbyists has led to convictions of a dozen people, including former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, former White House official David Safavian and former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles.

Abramoff is serving six years in prison on a criminal case out of Florida. He has not yet been sentenced on charges of mail fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion stemming from the influence-peddling scandal in Washington.