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Benazir Bhutto, pictured in a campaign poster, might be alive today if Washington politics didn’t prevent Blackwater from responding to her request for security help. Photo: SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images

SIDEBAR

Life-and-Death Repercussions of Blackwater Trashing

Nobody with credibility has questioned the professionalism of Blackwater’s famed diplomatic security personnel, who have performed nearly 20,000 missions in Iraq without losing a single person under their protection. A highly distorted book by a brash writer for The Nation, the hotly disputed and unproven allegations raised in the Fallujah lawsuit, and the questionable propagandistic pronouncements of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior following the September 2007 Nisoor Square incident are the three principal playbooks that resonate in the critics’ echo chamber against the company.

But those in need of first-class security protection continue to turn to Blackwater. Every single congressman and senator visiting Iraq continues to benefit from Blackwater protection. The State Department has resisted the Iraqi government’s repeated demands that Blackwater’s diplomatic security detail leave the country.

Serviam has learned that former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, while campaigning for president in 2007, had asked for Blackwater to protect her from feared assassination. Highly placed sources tell Serviam that State Department officials, concerned about all the negative publicity from the Waxman hearings and the lawsuit, thought the company had become too controversial and vetoed the request.

Just weeks later, on December 27, 2007, Bhutto was assassinated.

Back to “Oversight Abuse: When Trial Lawyers Drive Congressional Hearings”

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From the January/February 2008 issue of Serviam.