Security contractor laws not enforced, Blackwater president says

"Actually, there are quite a few federal laws that regulate [private security] contractors. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) creates jurisdiction for federal court trials, and the wrongdoing itself is covered under statutes like the War Crimes Act, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, the Anti-Torture Statute, the Defense Base Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and a whole raft of other domestic regulations, not to mention international prohibitions. The issue has never been about regulation; rather, it has always been about a lack of enforcement.
. . . Author Jeremy Scahill has called Blackwater’s founder a “Christian supremacist” and has claimed that he has created, 'a private army to defend Christendom around the world against secularists.'
. . . [Blackwater founder and CEO Erik] Prince is a practicing Roman Catholic and I assure you is no radical. His views, which others have inflated to serve their own agendas, are his own and he makes no effort to force them on anyone at Blackwater." [1]

"In his new best-selling book, 'Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army' (Nation), the writer Jeremy Scahill describes the company as the private and secretive Praetorian Guard of the Bush administration. He has called Blackwater, 'one of the greatest beneficiaries of the ‘war on terror,’ ' profiting from lucrative contracts with the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, and deploying battalions of secret soldiers in nine countries, notably Iraq and Afghanistan.
Gary Jackson, the president of Blackwater USA since October 2001, keeps a decidedly low profile, but he recently granted an interview to the author R. J. Hillhouse, who runs an unusual blog on security and intelligence called The Spy Who Billed Me. She is both skeptical and sympathetic toward private military contractors, which are dominated by companies like Blackwater, and often run by special-operations veterans like Mr. Jackson and retired C.I.A. officers." [2]

sources
[1] Hillhouse, R.J. (The Spy Who Billed Me). Exclusive Interview: Blackwater USA's President Gary Jackson. April 26, 2007.
[2] Weiner, Tim. (The New York Times). A Security Contractor Defends His Team, Which, He Says, Is Not a Private Army. April 29, 2007.

posted: tuesday, may 1, 2007, 4:04 PM ET

tags: iraq contractor blackwater gary jackson