As outrageous as the incident at Nisour Square was in September, during which Blackwater guards opened fire on Iraqi civilians, the administration’s handling of the incident has been almost as offensive.
Shortly after the shootings, the State Department launched its own investigation, through its Bureau of Diplomatic Security, apparently with the intent of whitewashing the whole thing. State officials spoke with Blackwater forces about what transpired, but in the process, promised immunity from prosecution to the bodyguards.
State Department investigators offered Blackwater USA security guards immunity during an inquiry into last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad — a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute the company’s employees involved in the episode, government officials said Monday.
The State Department investigators from the agency’s investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the officials said. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, they added.
Talk about making a tragic situation worse. The FBI is trying to investigate what to do to those involved in the Nisour Square shootings, but FBI officials may now have difficulty (rather, more difficulties) bringing charges against Blackwater officials who are legally protected by the State Department’s immunity offer.
Of course, it’s not at all clear the State Department has the authority to even grant immunity in the first place — that’s supposed to be the purview of the Justice Department. For that matter, it’s still unclear exactly who in the State Department signed off on this idea, and under what circumstances.
Complicating matters, some Blackwater guards have decided not to cooperate with the FBI investigation at all.
Some of the Blackwater guards have subsequently refused to be interviewed by the FBI, citing promises of immunity from State, one law enforcement official said. The restrictions on the FBI’s use of their initial statements do not preclude prosecution by the Justice Department using other evidence, the official said, but “they make things a lot more complicated and difficult.”
To be sure, the broader dynamic of accountability was messy to begin with. Iraqis can’t charge Blackwater guards with violating Iraqi laws, and even before the immunity revelations, it wasn’t clear if U.S. law could be applied, either.
But the notion that the State Department took it upon itself to simply extend immunity to private guards who gunned down innocent civilians is breathtaking.
As Satyam noted, “While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Congress last week she ‘regrets’ the lack of oversight of Blackwater, she neglected to mention that she granted the Blackwater guards prosecutorial immunity after the shootings.”
It was a fairly significant detail.