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Blackwater USA was the unanimous choice for Story of the Day. Erik Prince, founder and chief executive of the paramilitary firm that supplies bodyguards for State Department personnel in Iraq, appeared at hearings on Capitol Hill. All three networks led with his testimony before a House panel; all three assigned their Pentagon correspondent to the story. And all three used the same exchange in which Prince denied involvement in the deaths of a dozen-or-so Iraqis in last month's firefight in the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. "You do admit that Blackwater personnel have shot and killed innocent civilians, don't you?" asked Rep Danny Davis (D-IL). "No, sir. I disagree with that," replied the former USNavy SEAL, before qualifying his denial to admit deaths from bullet ricochets and traffic accidents.

The accusations against Blackwater were considerably more serious than car crashes and ricochets. ABC's Jonathan Karl (subscription required) quoted from the Congressional investigation that found Blackwater guards firing weapons on 200 separate occasions, "almost never stopping to see if anybody was killed or wounded." Prince insisted that his guards "use deadly force only in self-defense," noted NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. ABC's Karl characterized the portrayal of Blackwater as "a band of out-of-control mercenaries;" NBC's Miklaszewski used the phrase "trigger happy cowboys;" CBS' David Martin "out-of-control guns for hire." All three reporters included the tale of last Christmas Eve in Baghdad's Green Zone, when a bodyguard for Iraq's Vice President was killed by a drunken Blackwater hand--he was sent home and lost his job but was never prosecuted.

From Baghdad, CBS' Elizabeth Palmer pointed out that "there has not been a single prosecution of a foreign security contractor since the invasion." That may change, she speculated, as Iraq's Minister of the Interior has asked for the names of the bodyguards involved in Mansour: "He says if there is a trial, it should be in Iraq." ABC's Karl reported that Blackwater's $400K billing for each bodyguard is less costly than the State Department's $500K estimate for each member of its federal Diplomatic Security Service. In all, Karl calculated, Blackwater USA has been paid more than $1bn in government contracts since 2001.

Andrew Tyndall 10/3/07 10:22:40 pm

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