Blackwater reportedly OK’d $1m bribe to Iraq after 17 died
Security firm feared losing future contracts
WASHINGTON - Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the shootings stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by Blackwater’s employees.
Company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Four former Blackwater executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, then the company’s president, had approved the bribes and that the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where Blackwater maintains an operations hub, to a manager in Iraq.
The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.
Blackwater’s strategy of buying off the government officials, which would have been illegal under American law, created a rift inside the company, according to the former executives.
They said that Cofer Black, who was then the company’s vice chairman and a former CIA and State Department official, learned of the plan from another Blackwater manager while he was in Baghdad discussing compensation for families of the shooting victims with US officials.
Alarmed about the secret payments, Black ended his talks. Soon after returning to the United States, he confronted Erik Prince, the company’s chairman and founder, who did not dispute that there was a bribery plan, according to a former Blackwater executive.
Black resigned the following year.
Stacy DeLuke, a company spokeswoman, dismissed the allegations as “baseless.’’
