This from the office of the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Henry Waxman: “Previously undisclosed information reveals (1) Blackwater has engaged in 195 ‘escalation of force’ incidents since 2005, an average of 1.4 per week, including over 160 incidents in which Blackwater forces fired first; (2) after a drunken Blackwater contractor shot the guard of the Iraqi Vice President, the State Department allowed the contractor to leave Iraq and advised Blackwater on the size of the payment needed ‘to help them resolve this’; and (3) Blackwater, which has received over $1 billion in federal contracts since 2001, is charging the federal government over $1,200 per day for each ‘protective security specialist’ employed by the company.” Memo available here.
