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The Washington Post via MSNBC - Oct 3, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21111402/

Guards in Iraq cite frequent shootings

Companies don't report all the incidents, U.S. officials say

By Steve Fainaru

Washington - Most of the more than 100 private security companies in
Iraq open fire far more frequently than has been publicly acknowledged
and rarely report such incidents to U.S. or Iraqi authorities,
according to U.S. officials and current and former private security
company employees.

Violence caused by private security guards in Iraq has come under
scrutiny since a Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad involving employees of
Blackwater USA. The company's chairman, Erik Prince, told a
congressional committee Tuesday that Blackwater guards opened fire on
195 occasions during more than 16,000 missions in Iraq since 2005.

However, two former Blackwater security guards said they believed
employees fired more often than the company has disclosed. One, a
former Blackwater guard who spent nearly three years in Iraq, said his
20-man team averaged "four or five" shootings a week, or several times
the rate of 1.4 incidents a week reported by the company. The
underreporting of shooting incidents was routine in Iraq, according to
this former guard.

"The thing is, even the good companies, how many bad incidents occurred
where guys involved didn't say anything, because they didn't want to be
questioned, or have any downtime today to have to go over what happened
yesterday?" he said. "I'm sure there were some companies that just
didn't report anything."

The former Blackwater guards and other private security workers spoke on
condition of anonymity because of concerns they would be unable to
obtain future employment in the security industry. In addition,
Blackwater employees reportedly sign an agreement pledging not to
divulge confidential information; violations can result in a $250,000
fine imposed by the company.

Few comply fully Tens of thousands of private security guards operate in
Iraq under a multitude of contracts, each with its own regulations.
Defense and State Department contracts require security companies to
report all weapons discharges, but few comply fully, according to U.S.
officials and security company employees. Two company officials
familiar with the system estimated that as few as 15 percent of all
shooting incidents are reported, although both cautioned that it was
impossible to know exactly how many incidents go unreported.

Out of nearly 30 security companies under Defense Department authority,
only "a handful" have reported weapons discharges, said Maj. Kent
Lightner of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who monitors shooting
incidents involving security companies under military contracts.
Lightner said the lack of reporting undermines statistics the military
compiles on shooting incidents. Through May, the military had reported
207 such incidents over the previous 12 months.

"In my civilian life, if I were doing a process analysis on this thing,
I would say, 'You know what, these numbers are suspect in terms of which
companies are having the most incidents and what type of incidents they
are,' " Lightner said during a recent interview in Baghdad.

Col. Timothy Clapp, who preceded Lightner as director of the
Reconstruction Operations Center, which tracks the movements of private
security firms under Defense Department contracts, said reported
incidents were usually limited to a few companies, including two
British firms, Aegis Defence Services and ArmorGroup International.

Clapp said military officials became temporarily concerned last year
that Aegis, which protects Corps of Engineers officials on
reconstruction projects, was "out of control" because the company
reported so many incidents. But Clapp said the numbers were skewed
because Aegis conducts many more missions than other companies and
because other companies rarely or never report shooting incidents.

"In their contracts, it says they are supposed to report, but whether
they do or not is up to them," he said.

Lightner said responsibility for investigating shooting incidents
involving companies under Defense Department contracts falls first to
the company itself, then to the contracting officer.

Out of ammo U.S. officials and security company representatives said
they were especially concerned about firms that operate beyond the
radar of U.S. and Iraqi authorities. David Horner, who worked for
Crescent Security Group, a company based in Kuwait City, said that
after being attacked with a roadside bomb in a town north of Baghdad,
Crescent employees fired their automatic weapons preemptively whenever
they passed through the town.

"I know that I personally never saw anyone shoot at us, but we blazed
through that town all the time," said Horner, 55, a truck driver from
Visalia, Calif. "Personally I did not take aim at one person. But I
don't know what everybody else did. We'd come back at the end of the
day, and a lot of times we were out of ammo."

Horner said he did not believe any of the incidents were reported to the
military. He said he quit after one of Crescent's Iraqi employees fired
a belt-fed PK machine gun from the bed of Horner's truck and hit what
appeared to be two members of the Iraqi National Guard.

Out of ammo U.S. officials and security company representatives said
they were especially concerned about firms that operate beyond the
radar of U.S. and Iraqi authorities. David Horner, who worked for
Crescent Security Group, a company based in Kuwait City, said that
after being attacked with a roadside bomb in a town north of Baghdad,
Crescent employees fired their automatic weapons preemptively whenever
they passed through the town.

"I know that I personally never saw anyone shoot at us, but we blazed
through that town all the time," said Horner, 55, a truck driver from
Visalia, Calif. "Personally I did not take aim at one person. But I
don't know what everybody else did. We'd come back at the end of the
day, and a lot of times we were out of ammo."

Horner said he did not believe any of the incidents were reported to the
military. He said he quit after one of Crescent's Iraqi employees fired
a belt-fed PK machine gun from the bed of Horner's truck and hit what
appeared to be two members of the Iraqi National Guard.

"I was like, 'Oh man, we shot some of our own guys,' " Horner said. He
said he consulted with the Crescent team leader as the two Iraqis
writhed in pain, one shot in the legs, the other with "a bullet or two
in his shoulder." Soldiers from a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint were
approaching to investigate.

"Let's get the [expletive] out of here," Horner quoted the team leader
as saying before the Crescent team drove off.

"That was my last mission," Horner said. "I wasn't over there to wreck
somebody's life. There was too much cowboying going on. I really didn't
know if we had made things worse over there. More than likely we did;
that was my feeling."

Split-second decision Crescent officials have denied any wrongdoing to
the military after the company was forced to suspend operations in Iraq
this year because of weapons violations.

Private security guards said the question of whether to shoot often
depends on split-second decisions that can mean life or death not only
for them but also for those around them. Most incidents, they said,
occur when a vehicle comes close to a security convoy, forcing guards
to determine whether the vehicle represents a potential car bomb or
merely an erratic driver.

In the Sept. 16 incident, Iraqi witnesses have said Blackwater guards
fired on a white sedan carrying a doctor and her adult son after the
car failed to slow down as it approached a traffic circle. In May, a
Blackwater team shot and killed a civilian driver outside the Interior
Ministry; the guards told investigators that the car had driven too
close to their convoy and appeared to represent a threat.

CPA Memorandum 17, signed in June 2004 by L. Paul Bremer, the departing
chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran the occupation,
describes the "binding Rules for the Use of Force that must be adhered
to by all PSC [private security companies], their officers and
employees." The memo prescribes a series of graduated steps, including
verbal warnings, physical restraint and displaying weapons. In recent
years, security guards have resorted to firing pen flares, throwing
water bottles, using air horns and sirens, and displaying signs warning
drivers to maintain a safe distance.

In practice, the rules of force often vary from company to company and
even team to team, said current and former guards. One former
Blackwater guard said the rules of force for Blackwater employees on
State Department contracts - including those involved in the Sept. 16
incident - differed from those for Blackwater guards on non-State
contracts.

'Aimed shots' State Department contracts advise employees to fire "aimed
shots," as outlined in CPA Memorandum 17, according to the former
employee. Those shots were often designed to disable the oncoming
vehicle. But the rules, which were crafted to minimize civilian
casualties, also preclude firing warning shots into the air or into the
ground, tactics that also might alert a driver who had strayed too
close.

"From the State Department perspective, they're looking at it as a
liability thing: What happens to that round when it goes downrange,"
said one of the former Blackwater security guards. "I was like: 'Look,
give them a chance. Not every Iraqi in a car that's near you is a bad
guy.' The guy whose car you shoot up today is also the guy who could be
planting an IED [improvised explosive device] tomorrow. And the only
reason he changed sides now is the car that took him 10 years of life
savings to buy, now you've destroyed it."

Of the 195 incidents cited by Prince and the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, 162 resulted in property damage, according
to a memo released Monday by the committee.

Procedures for reporting shooting incidents also often varied,
according to current and former guards. "It's almost like a case of
cover your ass," the former Blackwater guard said. "It's like, 'These
guys did this, they filled out this report, we have documentation on
it, and unless anybody else says anything, it's in this file here.'"

Lightner, the Army major who monitors shooting incidents, said he
thought the number of reported incidents was in some ways
insignificant. "Other than entertainment value, I don't see why I need
to be all that worried about the number of incidents, as long as they
were legitimate," he said. "If they were incidents of wrongdoing, then
that's a different story."

Lightner said he usually accepted the company's version of events. "If
they're reporting firing a weapon, and there's no wrongdoing, and they
operated according to the law, then God bless 'em, drive on," he said.
"If Aegis sends me a report and says, 'Bad guys shot at us, we shot
back and dropped two of them,' I'm not going to investigate. I'm not
going to worry about it, unless somebody comes back and says, 'Yeah,
they dropped two children, or they dropped a woman.'"

[Staff writer Alec Klein and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington
contributed to this report.]

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