OT: State to Blackwater: Nothing You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You in a Court of Law
- From: Fartus Ignitus <fartusignitus@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:40:52 -0700
Jeremy Scahill| BIO | I'M A FAN OF THIS BLOGGER
State to Blackwater: Nothing You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You
in a Court of Law
Posted October 30, 2007 | 05:53 PM (EST)
Apparently there is one set of rights for Blackwater mercenaries and
another for the rest of us. Normally when a group of people alleged to
have gunned down 17 civilians in a lawless shooting spree are
questioned, investigators will tell them something along the lines of:
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be
used against you in a court of law." But that is not what the
Blackwater operatives involved in the September 16 Nisour Square
shooting in Iraq were told. Most of the Blackwater shooters were
questioned by State Department Diplomatic Security investigators with
the understanding that their statements and information gleaned from
them could not be used to bring criminal charges against them, nor
could they be introduced as evidence. In other words, "Anything you
say can't and won't be used against you in a court of law."
ABC News obtained copies of sworn statements given by Blackwater
guards in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, all of which
begin, "I understand this statement is being given in furtherance of
an official administrative inquiry," and that, "I further understand
that neither my statements nor any information or evidence gained by
reason of my statements can be used against me in a criminal
proceeding." Constitutional law expert Michael Ratner, president of
the Center for Constitutional Rights, says the offering of so-called
"use immunity" agreements by the State Department is "very irregular,"
adding he could not recall a precedent for it. In normal
circumstances, Ratner said, such immunity is only granted after a
Grand Jury or Congressional committee has been convened and the party
has invoked their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. It
would then be authorized by either a judge or the committee.
Military law expert Scott Horton of Human Rights First says, "What the
State Department has done in this case is inconsistent with proper law
enforcement standards. It is likely to undermine an ultimate
prosecution, if not make it impossible. In this sense, the objective
of the State Department in doing this is exposed to question. It seems
less to be to collect the facts than to immunize Blackwater and its
employees. By purporting to grant immunity, the State Department draws
itself more deeply into the wrongdoing and adopts a posture vis-a-vis
Blackwater that appears downright conspiratorial. This will make the
fruits of its investigation a tough sell."
Ratner says that while what was offered the Blackwater operatives is
not immunity from prosecution, prosecutors would need to prove they
did not use the sworn statements as part of their investigation. "Even
though the person can be prosecuted if independent evidence is relied
upon, often this is hard to demonstrate," he says. As an example of
the problems such immunity can pose, Ratner points to the case of
Oliver North. "He had been granted 'use immunity' and was then
prosecuted, supposedly on the basis of independent evidence," Ratner
says. "However, his conviction was reversed in the court of appeals
because it could not be demonstrated that all of the evidence against
him had an independent source outside of his own testimony."
Aside from the fundamental problem that there is quite possibly no
legal framework for charging the Blackwater shooters under any legal
system--US civilian law, military law or Iraqi law--legal analysts and
a former federal prosecutor say the State Department has already
tainted the Nisour Square criminal investigation in several ways. The
FBI was not dispatched to investigate the case until two weeks after
the shootings occurred, meaning that the initial investigation was in
the hands of a non-law enforcement agency that just happens to be
Blackwater's employer. By the time actual law enforcement, the FBI,
was sent to Baghdad, the crime scene had been tainted and some of the
perpetrators questioned with the alleged immunity provision. "To rely
on non-law enforcement to conduct sensitive law enforcement activities
makes no sense if you want impartial justice," says Melanie Sloan, a
former federal prosecutor who currently serves as Executive Director
of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "This
investigation has already taken so long and it looks like the State
Department has impeded the possibility of a successful criminal
investigation." The Washington Post reported that "Some of the
Blackwater guards have subsequently refused to be interviewed by the
FBI, citing promises of immunity from State."
This is hardly the first indication that the government's
investigation of the Nisour Square shootings was lacking in integrity
and impartiality. The State Department's initial report on the
shooting was drafted by a Blackwater contractor on official US
government stationary. The FBI team initially dispatched to Baghdad to
investigate Blackwater was to be guarded by Blackwater until Sen.
Patrick Leahy raised questions about the arrangement forcing the
Bureau to announce it would be guarded by official personnel and not
personnel from the same company it was investigating.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story (aside from the loss of
Iraqi civilian life) is that even if Blackwater was not so politically
connected to the White House and even if there was a truly independent
US Justice Department and even if immunity had not been offered and
even if there was an aggressive investigation, it may all be totally
irrelevant. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently
dispatched a team to Baghdad led by veteran diplomat Patrick Kennedy
to review the department's private security force, the team returned
with the conclusion that it "is unaware of any basis for holding non-
Department of Defense contractors accountable under US law."
While there are currently moves afoot in the US Congress to adjust
language in the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to allow
for prosecutions of State Department contractor crimes in US civilian
courts and although there is a debate over whether the court martial
system could be applied, the reality is that the political will to
prosecute contractors has been totally absent since day one of the
Iraq occupation. Not a single armed contractor has ever been
prosecuted for crimes committed in Iraq--not under US civilian law,
not under military law and certainly not in Iraqi courts, which have
been banned by the US occupation authorities from going after private
contractors.
What is so often lost in this new debate on accountability and
oversight is this fact: private contractors now outnumber regular
soldiers on the Iraq battlefield. The military--with its massive
bureaucracy--has been unable or unwilling to effectively monitor the
actions of its soldiers and prosecute them for crimes. Who will
effectively oversee the 180,000-strong shadow corporate army? Will FBI
teams really be running around Iraq chasing allegations (ever
increasing) of contractor crimes and misconduct? Who will guard the
investigators? Who will interview Iraqi witnesses? Where will the
funding come from? Who will arrest the heavily-armed mercenary alleged
to have committed a crime, particularly when he was doing exactly what
he was supposed to do in keeping VIP US officials alive in Iraq?
While there may be some token prosecutions that stem from the recent
uptick in reporting on contractor crimes in Iraq, the reality is that
without private forces from Blackwater and its ilk, the US occupation
of Iraq would be untenable. Nothing will be done that would actually
jeopardize the use of such forces in the war zone. While Blackwater's
conduct in Iraq is horrifying, it is important to remember that US
ambassadors--all four who have served under the Iraq occupation--owe
their lives to Blackwater's shoot-first-and-never-ask-questions cowboy
tactics. They are the reason the company can brag it has never lost an
American life it was protecting. Blackwater does its job and while it
is essential to prosecute its operatives for their crimes, the
ultimately responsible party is the entity that hired them and
deployed them armed and dangerous in Iraq.
.
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