The hearing addressed three key questions: (1) Is Blackwater's presence advancing or undermining U.S. efforts? (2) Has State Department responded appropriately to the shooting incidents involving Blackwater forces? (3) What are the costs to U.S. taxpayers for the reliance on Blackwater and other private military contractors?
The hearings were held to make inquiry into questionable practices and specific incidents involving Blackwater. The Committee put together a compendium that focused on performance, costs, and contract disputes. For instance:
* Blackwater has been involved in 195 "escalation of force" incidents since 2005, an average of 1.4 shooting incidents per week. From January 2005 to April 2007, Blackwater employees used their weapons 168 times, compared to 102 times for rival DynCorp and 36 for rival Triple Canopy during that same time frame.
According to the majority staff, Blackwater operatives fired the first shot in 80 percent of those cases, though its contract with the State Department only permits the use of "defensive" force.
* A single Blackwater security contractor costs the government $1,222 every day to guard U.S. civilian personnel, or $445,000 per year. That's six times the cost of getting a U.S. Army soldier to perform the same function. As P.W. Singer observed last week, private security companies increasingly exist to free up tasks for U.S. troops, ensuring a sort of dependence on contracting occurs for a military coping with the strain of deployments for two wars.
* The State Department's attitude to Blackwater shootings is most often a directive to compensate the victim's family, "rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability."
* Blackwater's initial contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, in 2003, was a no-bid contract. So was its 2004 successor. On that one, Blackwater stood to earn a maximum of $338 million, but actually received $488 million from State between June 2004 and June 2006. In total, Blackwater has earned upwards of $1 billion in government contracts since 2001.
In his opening remarks, Dennis Kucinich made a strong statement by pointing out that
If war is privatized, private contractors have a vested interest in keeping the war going. The longer the war goes on the more money they make.
When he had the opportunity to question Mr. Prince himself he focused on the Blackwater Contracts, which have been controversial due to the fact that the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) called Blackwater's contracts with State -- and before that with the Coalition Provisional Authority -- "no-bid contracts," as well as Prince's powerful ties to the Republican Party.
Prince disputed both issues. Denying the influence of political ties on contracts and arguing that according to the GSA, the contracts themselves are not considered "no-bid". Later, however, he corrected part of his statement saying
Prince, after conferring with aides, said that "one of the contracts I said was GSA schedule was in fact sole-source." He said he didn't know anything further and would get information to the committee about which contract that was and why.
Here's the video of Kucinich questioning Prince:
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