WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday tightened control of US private security firm Blackwater's operations in Iraq following the recommendations of a probe into a Baghdad shootout last month.
Based on initial findings of the investigation into the September 16 incident in which at least 10 Iraqis civilians were killed, Rice directed "actions to improve operational accountability and control" of Blackwater's activities, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Under new measures, security agents from the State Department's diplomatic security bureau will accompany every convoy of Blackwater, which is in charge of protecting US diplomats and dignitaries in the insurgency-wracked nation.
The US authorities will also record all Blackwater radio transmissions which they currently monitor, man video cameras in the company's security vehicles and begin archiving electronic tracking and movement data, McCormack said.
Rice also directed an expansion of Blackwater's communications links to US military units operating in the same area.
"We are putting in place more robust assets to make sure that the management reporting and accountability function works as best as it possibly can," McCormack told reporters.
The State Department is sending additional agents from its diplomatic security bureau to Baghdad following the tightened procedures as a result of the initial probe by one of several parallel processes reviewing Washington's use of private security guards.
"The secretary wants to ensure that we have the best possible management controls and the best possible management feedback loop that we can have," McCormack said.
A New York Times report on Wednesday citing witnesses, Iraqi investigators and a US official said that as many as 17 people were killed and 24 wounded when Blackwater employees opened fire in central Baghdad on September 16.
Blackwater maintains its men were legitimately responding to an ambush while protecting a US State Department convoy, but they are accused of firing indiscriminately into crowded Nisoor Square.
A senior US military official told the Washington Post newspaper that Blackwater security guards involved in the shootout were "obviously wrong."
The unnamed official said the US military reports from the scene of the incident suggested the US private security firm was to blame for the deaths, and that its employees in Iraq were trigger-happy.
"It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," the official was quoted saying by the newspaper Friday.
The State Department said Thursday it had ceded the lead role in the investigation of Blackwater, accused of involvement in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq, to the FBI.
Lawmakers had criticized the State Department for a lack of oversight of Blackwater, which reportedly has received US government contracts worth more than a billion dollars since 2001.
In one incident cited by a US Congress panel, a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed a guard of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Blackwater should leave the country because of an "abundance of evidence" against the firm, amid growing anger among Iraqis that "above-the-law" security contractors are continuing to operate in Iraq.
The legal status of the shadowy security companies working independently of the US military in war zones is unclear and legally untested.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
