Halliburton/State Department Rape Stories

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/31378

Halliburton/State Department Rape Stories Get Worse and Worse
Thu, 2008-02-28
By David Swanson

I just interviewed Tracy Barker for an hour.

You can find the clip at http://www.thepeoplespeakradio.net/audio/2008/#february

She is one in a string of sexual assault and harrassment victims who suffered what they did while employed by Halliburton in Iraq.

Her particular story is the worst I've heard and far worse than I had thought before conducting the interview. She was initially harassed sexually in the Green Zone in Baghdad. When she reported on her supervisor to a Halliburton ethics line, they simply told her supervisor.

When she transfered to Basra the environment was intensely worse and the sexual harassment constant. She attempted to report to Halliburton;s human resources office in Kuwait but was caught and brought back.

She was assaulted by a State Department employee who attempted to rape her. She was then denied medical attention and locked up and cut off from outside communication. She was offered sleeping pills to help her anxiety, and then woke up with her supervisor naked on top of her.

No one in any of these cases has been prosecuted criminally. No one has been disciplined by the State Department or Halliburton.

The State Department offered Barker money (our money!) to drop a civil suit, which she refused.

Halliburton has forced a civil suit into arbitration.

A caller to the program asked why Congress doesn't do something. But how can Congress compel the Justice Department to do anything, while impeachment is off the table?

Great Seal Secrets Revealed!

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iQ-yr_Rooq8JyWd9Q8oDFYQhvyFQD8UP9IHG0

Great Seal Secrets Revealed!
By MATTHEW LEE
2-13-8

WASHINGTON (AP) — Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America's oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked ... if you believe the government, that is.

The keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the familiar emblem on the back of the $1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure.

It is rather the nation's stamp of authority, sovereignty and power, gracing our cash and embossing the most important of documents from its home at the State Department, which has held it since the days of Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state.

Not that the Seal's symbols — the all-seeing eye, the unfinished pyramid, the Latin phrases, the bald eagle clutching an olive branch and arrows and the number 13 — aren't powerful.

They are, historians say. Yet their meanings have been misidentified, misunderstood and misrepresented almost since the Continental Congress first commissioned the Seal in 1776.

It would be another six years before the original design was approved and another 128 before it evolved into its current form. Along the way, a movement to decipher the Seal's meaning with ancient Egyptian, mystical and otherwise otherworldly explanations has gained currency.

The Internet age has seen an explosion in such conspiracy theories, many which have now been ingrained in public consciousness through the popular "National Treasure" movie franchise that serves up a combination of Masonic lore and historical myths in blockbuster Hollywood fashion.

Among them:

_That the Seal proves the domination of the United States by a powerful, quasi-religious cult. The Ancient Scottish Rite of Freemasonry is a perennial favorite of conspiracy theorists as some Founding Fathers were Masons and the Seal uses several Masonic symbols.

_That the Seal draws on Satanism or polytheistic ritual to promote a universal new world order under which Earth would be ruled by a single omnipotent government.

_That repeated references to 13 — the number of steps in the unfinished pyramid, stars in the constellation over the eagle's head, arrows in the eagle's claw, stripes on the eagle's shield, letters in the phrase "Annuit Coeptis" — demonstrate the power of 13 American families.

_That there are two seals: one in which the eagle's head faces the arrows for times of war and another in which the eagle's head faces the olive branch for times of peace.

All rubbish, according to historians, who say the Seal's symbolism is far less ominous or revelatory than many believe.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Seal's 66th and current custodian, on Tuesday inaugurated a new exhibition to commemorate its 225th birthday and trace the history and evolution of the symbolism.

"This exhibit honoring the Great Seal affirms our continued belief in the values of our founding," she said. "The Great Seal symbolizes the unity, strength and independence of a new nation, the United States of America."

The Seal will remain at the State Department but the interactive exhibit is designed to travel and curators hope it will dispel the rumors and educate Americans about the real meaning of the symbols.

Among the highlights:

_That known Masons like the first U.S. president, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin had no role in designing the final seal, which uses elements of traditional heraldry, such as the unfinished pyramid to symbolize a work in progress, arrows for war and an olive branch for peace. Masons share some of those symbols, but they have never been exclusively the domain of the order.

_That the phrase "Novus Ordo Seclorum" below the Roman numerals for 1776 at the base of the pyramid translates as "A New Order of the Ages" that began with independence and does not imply the United States will be the lynchpin of a sinister "New World Order."

_That the words "Annuit Coeptis" ("Providence favors") and the eye of providence that hovers over the pyramid refer to unexpected interventions of fate that assisted the colonists in creating a new country.

_That the references to 13 refer to the number of colonies that formed the original United States.

"People are just not aware of the complexity and intent of the symbolism and what our Founding Fathers were trying to do with it," said Priscilla Linn, senior curator at the U.S. Diplomacy Center. "The hidden treasure in the Seal is the courage and presence of mind of the people who created it and created these values for the whole country."

Sacrificing Bhutto to prop up Musharraf?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/novak/719606,CST-EDT-NOVAK31.article

Sacrificing Bhutto to prop up Musharraf?
December 31, 2007
BY ROBERT NOVAK
Sun-Times Columnist

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto followed urgent pleas to the State Department for the last two months by her representatives for better security protection. The U.S. reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing assurance that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not let anything happen to her.

That attitude led Bhutto's agent to inform a high-ranking State Department official that her camp no longer viewed the backstage U.S. effort to broker power sharing between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Bhutto as a good-faith effort toward democracy. It was, according to the written complaint, an attempt to preserve the politically endangered Musharraf as President Bush's man in Islamabad.

Bush confirmed that judgment Thursday when he urged that the Jan. 8 election be held in furtherance of Pakistani ''democracy.'' That may be Musharraf's position, but it definitely is not that of his critics. They say an election would be a sham with Bhutto dead, no successor named to head her Pakistan People's Party, and Saudi-backed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif boycotting the balloting.

The Bush administration months ago decided to broker power sharing with the deeply unpopular Musharraf and the popular Bhutto. That decision was based on Pakistan's strategic importance as a sanctuary for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. Bush was in a quandary. Bhutto was much tougher than Musharraf on Islamist extremists, but Bush had heavily invested in Musharraf.

When I last saw Bhutto in August in Manhattan, she was deeply concerned about U.S. ambivalence but asked me not to write about it. She had not heard from Musharraf for three weeks after their secret July meeting in Abu Dhabi. She feared the Pakistani strongman was not being prodded from Washington.

Next came Musharraf's state of emergency and purge of Pakistan's Supreme Court to guarantee legality of his questionable election as president. According to Bhutto's advisers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Bhutto to go along with that process in return for concessions from Musharraf. Bhutto agreed but got nothing in return.

The unsuccessful Oct. 18 attempt on Bhutto's life followed the regime's rejection of her requested security protection when she returned from eight years in exile. The Pakistani government vetoed FBI assistance in investigating the attack. On Oct. 26, Bhutto sent an e-mail to Mark Siegel, her friend and Washington spokesman, to be made public only in the event of her death.

''I would hold Musharraf responsible,'' Bhutto said. ''I have been made to feel insecure by his minions.'' She listed obstruction to her ''taking private cars or using tinted windows,'' using jammers against roadside bombs and being surrounded by police cars. ''Without him [Musharraf],'' she said, those requests could not have been blocked.

In early December, a former Pakistani official supporting Bhutto visited a senior U.S. government official to renew her security requests. He got a brush-off, a mind-set reflected Dec. 6 in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, was asked to respond to fears by nonpartisan American observers of a rigged election. His reply: ''I do think they can have a good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a transparent and a fair election. It's not going to be a perfect election.'' Boucher's words echoed through corridors of power in Islamabad. The Americans' not demanding perfection signaled they would settle for less. Without Benazir Bhutto around, it is apt to be a lot less.

A more sinister fallout of a free hand from Washington for Pakistan might be Bhutto's murder. Neither her shooting last Thursday nor the attempt on her life Oct. 18 bore the classic al-Qaida trademark. After the carnage, government trucks used streams of water to clean up the blood and in the process destroy forensic evidence. If not too late, would an investigation by the FBI still be in order?

Musharraf's critics say an election would be a sham with Bhutto dead.

Witnesses testify in Blackwater lawsuit

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071128/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/blackwater_prosecutions

Witnesses testify in Blackwater lawsuit
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Nov 28, 2007

A federal grand jury investigating Blackwater Worldwide heard witnesses Tuesday as a private lawsuit accused the government contractor's bodyguards of ignoring orders and abandoning their posts shortly before taking part in a Baghdad shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

Filed this week in U.S. District Court in Washington, the civil complaint also accuses North Carolina-based Blackwater of failing to give drug tests to its guards in Baghdad — even though an estimated one in four of them was using steroids or other "judgment altering substances."

A Blackwater spokeswoman said Tuesday its employees are banned from using steroids or other enhancement drugs but declined to comment on the other charges detailed in the 18-page lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed Monday on behalf of five Iraqis who were killed and two who were injured during the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. The shootings enraged the Iraqi government, and the Justice Department is investigating whether it can bring criminal charges in the case, even though the State Department promised limited immunity to the Blackwater guards.

Justice Department national security prosecutors Kenneth Kohl and Stephen Ponticiello, both of whom are handling the Blackwater case, spent much of Tuesday afternoon in the grand jury room, which is off limits to the public. Two witnesses also spent hours behind closed doors in the District of Columbia's federal courthouse. One of them emerged sporadically to speak with an attorney, who refused to identify himself, his law firm or his client.

When the grand jury was dismissed for the day, the men left without commenting, as did Kohl.

Before the shootings in Baghdad last September, the three teams of an estimated dozen Blackwater bodyguards had already dropped off the State Department official they were tasked with protecting when they headed to Nisoor Square, according to the lawsuit filed by lawyers working with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Blackwater and State Department personnel staffing a tactical operations center "expressly directed the Blackwater shooters to stay with the official and refrain from leaving the secure area," the complaint says. "Reasonable discovery will establish that the Blackwater shooters ignored those directives."

Additionally, the lawsuit notes: "One of Blackwater's own shooters tried to stop his colleagues from indiscriminately firing upon the crowd of innocent civilians but he was unsuccessful in his efforts."

The civil complaint offers new details of the incident that has strained relations between the United States and Iraq, which is demanding the right to launch its own prosecution of the Blackwater bodyguards.

The Justice Department says it likely will be months before it decides whether it can prosecute the guards, and it is trying now to pinpoint how many shooters in the Blackwater convoy could face charges. A senior U.S. law enforcement official confirmed Tuesday that government investigators are looking at whether the Blackwater guards were authorized to be in the square at the time of the shooting. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

In an interview, lead plaintiff attorney Susan L. Burke said private investigators turned up the new evidence through interviews with people in Iraq and the United States "who would have reason to know." Those people do not include government officials, Burke said, and she declined to comment when asked if they include Blackwater employees.

The civil lawsuit does not specify how much money the victims and their families are seeking from Blackwater, its 11 subsidiaries and founder, Erik Prince, all of whom are named as defendants.

"We're looking for compensatory (damages) because the people who were killed were the breadwinners in their families," Burke said. "And we're looking for punitive in a manner that suffices to change the corporation's conduct. We have a real interest in holding them accountable for what were completely avoidable deaths."

The lawsuit also accuses Blackwater of routinely sending its guards into Baghdad despite knowing that at least 25 percent of them were using steroids or other "judgment-altering substances." Attorneys estimated that Blackwater employs about 600 guards in Iraq. The company "did not conduct drug-testing of any of its shooters before sending them equipped with heavy weapons into the streets of Baghdad," the lawsuit states.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said Blackwater employees are tested for drug use before they are hired and later given random quarterly tests. She said use of steroids and other performance enhancement drugs "are absolutely in violation of our policy."

"Blackwater has very strict policies concerning drug use, and if anyone were known to be in violation of them they would be immediately fired," Tyrrell said.

She declined comment on whether the bodyguards ignored their orders and abandoned their posts, or on other details outlined in the lawsuit.

Blackwater's contract with the State Department to protect diplomats in Iraq expires in May, and there are questions whether it will remain as the primary contractor for diplomatic bodyguards. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said his Cabinet is drafting legislation that would force the State Department to replace Blackwater with another security company.

The State Department declined to comment on the case Tuesday, citing standard policy on pending legal matters. Deputy spokesman Tom Casey referred questions on the matter "to those involved in the lawsuit."
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

Blackwater's loopholes

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-scahill15nov15,0,4689055.story

Blackwater's loopholes
Prosecuting private security contractors for shooting Iraqi civilians might be impossible.
By Jeremy Scahill
November 15, 2007

Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 killing of 17 Iraqi civilians by operatives of the Blackwater security company have concluded that 14 were victims of unjustified and unprovoked shootings. Some died in a hail of bullets as they fled. The investigators also have rejected assertions by Blackwater that its forces were defending themselves, saying there is no evidence to support that claim.

This initial glimpse into the evidence uncovered by the FBI bolsters the Iraqi government's claim (made within hours of the shootings in Baghdad's Nisoor Square) that the killings were criminal, as well as the findings of a U.S. military investigation that called all 17 of the killings unjustified. But that raises a crucial and complicated question: Who will prosecute the killers?

The answer may be no one. That certainly seemed to be the view of veteran diplomat Patrick Kennedy, who recently reviewed the State Department's use of private security. Kennedy and his team came back from Baghdad concluding that they were "unaware of any basis for holding non-Department of Defense contractors accountable under U.S. law."

Although the FBI conclusions appear damning, each of the three potential avenues for prosecuting Blackwater have fatal flaws:

U.S. civilian law: The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 provides for prosecution in federal court of U.S. contractors for crimes committed overseas. The problem is that this law only applies to contractors working for or directly accompanying the U.S. military. Blackwater works for the State Department in Iraq as "diplomatic security," which is separate from military operations. Legislation has been introduced that would expand the act to apply to all contractors, but not retroactively. The Justice Department might argue that the Blackwater guards were indeed accompanying the military, but courts could well throw out such a case.

U.S. military law: In late 2006, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) inserted an amendment in the Defense Authorization Act that places all U.S. contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the court-martial system. But this has not been tested, and the Department of Defense has shown no desire to use this option against any security contractors -- let alone ones who aren't working for the military. Facing a military prosecution, Blackwater could even get support from civil libertarians, who would see it as a creep toward applying military law to civilians.

Iraqi law: The Iraqi government wants to prosecute the Blackwater shooters in its courts, but that isn't going to happen. The day before L. Paul Bremer III ended his tenure as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in June 2004, he issued Order 17. It grants all contractors sweeping immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. There is a provision that allows the U.S. to lift immunity in individual cases, but Washington would never hand over a U.S. citizen to an Iraqi court.

"These legal loopholes amount, in practice, to a license to kill with impunity," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is suing Blackwater for wrongful death and war crimes in federal court over the shootings. "There is no genuine deterrence to acting unlawfully."

Even if the Justice Department moves forward, the investigation was contaminated from the start. The State Department's initial report on the shooting was drafted by a Blackwater contractor on U.S. government stationery. Two weeks passed before the FBI was dispatched to investigate; for two weeks, the only people looking into this crime were from a non-law-enforcment agency, the State Department, which had potential culpability of its own.

Then there is this fact: The State Department inspector general, Howard Krongard, who previously has been accused of impeding investigations into Blackwater, has direct family ties to the company. His brother, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, former CIA executive director, this year joined Blackwater's advisory board as a paid consultant. While at the CIA, Krongard played a role in Blackwater's first soldier-for-hire contract in Afghanistan in 2002.

Late last month, it emerged that the State Department had granted "limited use immunity" to some Blackwater operatives involved in the shootings before taking their statements. The result? Some Blackwater agents reportedly have refused to answer FBI questions, and those statements cannot be used as evidence, nor can any charges be based on them.

The immunity-for-statements deal calls the State Department's motivation into question, says military law expert Scott Horton of Human Rights First. "It seems less to be to collect the facts than to immunize Blackwater and its employees." This makes prosecution in any venue difficult, if not impossible.

The Bush administration has overseen a radical privatization of the U.S. war machine. There are now more private contractors in Iraq -- tens of thousands of them armed -- than U.S. troops. At the same time, the White House has militarized the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, staffing it with private warriors from Blackwater, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy. This force, conceived as a small-scale bodyguard operation for U.S. diplomats, now constitutes a paramilitary squad thousands strong, seemingly accountable to no one.

Although Blackwater's operatives must be held accountable, this is not just a case of rooting out "bad apples." These forces were deployed without any accountability structure or effective oversight; their mission was to keep U.S. officials alive by any means necessary. Blackwater has done that job, but we may never know how many Iraqis have died as a result. The investigation must determine which operatives killed the Iraqis on Sept. 16, but it can't stop there. It must extend to those who hired them and deployed them, armed, dangerous and apparently above the law.

Jeremy Scahill is the author of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army."

Blackwater ‘may be worse than Abu Ghraib’

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13008.html

Blackwater ‘may be worse than Abu Ghraib’
Posted September 26th, 2007

To describe the ongoing Blackwater scandal as a fiasco would be a dramatic understatement. Not only do we have a situation in which private security contractors stand accused of killing Iraqi civilians without provocation, we also have deep divisions brewing between the Pentagon and the State Department, coupled by State stonewalling a congressional investigation.

A confrontation between the U.S. military and the State Department is unfolding over the involvement of Blackwater USA in the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square Sept. 16, bringing to the surface long-simmering tensions between the military and private security companies in Iraq, according to U.S. military and government officials.

In high-level meetings over the past several days, U.S. military officials have pressed State Department officials to assert more control over Blackwater, which operates under the department’s authority, said a U.S. government official with knowledge of the discussions. “The military is very sensitive to its relationship that they’ve built with the Iraqis being altered or even severely degraded by actions such as this event,” the official said.

“This is a nightmare,” said a senior U.S. military official. “We had guys who saw the aftermath, and it was very bad. This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib, and it comes at a time when we’re trying to have an impact for the long term.”

At this point, the State Department seems to be treating Blackwater contractors as the agency’s own private army, accountable to no one outside the department. The Maliki government believes Blackwater is a criminal enterprise, the Iraqi people resent Blackwater’s presence, the Pentagon believes Blackwater is lying about the Sept. 16 incident in Nisoor Square, and congressional Democrats have questions about what has transpired — which the State Department refuses to answer.

This is a debacle so severe and humiliating, only the Bush administration could pull it off.

David Kurtz offers this helpful timeline of events that sets the stage for where we are now.

Sun, Sept. 16: Blackwater incident in which 11 Iraqi civilians are killed after State Department convoy reportedly comes under fire, an account disputed by the Iraqis.

Mon, Sept. 17: Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee announces his committee will investigate the Blackwater incident.

Tue, Sept. 18: The American Embassy in Baghdad suspends diplomatic convoys outside the Green Zone.

Wed, Sept. 19: In a phone call, Acting Assistant Secretary of State William Moser warns Blackwater that no information regarding the Blackwater contract can be released without State’s prior written approval.

Thu, Sept. 20: Moser repeats the warning in a second call to Blackwater, and State sends Blackwater a follow-up letter again asserting again that the information possessed by Blackwater belongs to State and cannot be disclosed.

Fri, Sept. 21: The four-day suspension of State Department convoys ends and Blackwater resumes business. Secretary of State Condi Rice announces that her department will undertake a “full and complete review” of diplomatic security in Iraq.

And while it’s certainly nice of Rice to suddenly take an interest in accountability, Congress, which has oversight responsibility and is paying the bills for all of this, believes a bipartisan review on Capitol Hill will produce a more accurate picture of what’s transpired.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice not only refuses to cooperate, her office has also ordered Blackwater not to answer any questions from lawmakers.

The State Department has interceded in a congressional investigation of Blackwater USA, the private security firm accused of killing Iraqi civilians last week, ordering the company not to disclose information about its Iraq operations without approval from the Bush administration, according to documents revealed Tuesday.

In a letter sent to a senior Blackwater executive Thursday, a State Department contracting official ordered the company “to make no disclosure of the documents or information” about its work in Iraq without permission.

I appreciate the fact that outrage fatigue is inevitable when dealing with the Bush gang, but this is truly ridiculous. We have American taxpayers financing a private security army, whose members stand accused of slaughtering civilians. The Secretary of State believes no one should ask any questions about this, and those who do must be ignored. It’s pure lunacy.

The State Department’s cooperation with a congressional inquiry is not optional. Rice can’t simply refuse to divulge information, and ordering others to remain silent is getting fairly close to the obstruction-of-justice line.

When these guys act like they have something to hide, it’s almost always because they have something to hide. Stay tuned.