Feb. 25, 2010 — -- A Senate committee Wednesday lambasted the private military company formerly known as Blackwater, accusing the firm of engaging in "reckless use of weapons," hiding its identity to score government contracts, and harming America's war effort in Afghanistan.
Investigators for the Senate Armed Services Committee say they also found that Blackwater contractors in Afghanistan secured more than 500 weapons from the U.S. military, even though company employees were not authorized to carry weapons there, and that the military signed over some of the weapons to a contractor who used a fake name borrowed from a character in the TV cartoon "South Park."
The hearing was part of an on-going investigation by the Armed Services Committee into the role of contractors in Afghanistan, and focused on a shooting incident involving two Blackwater security trainers. The trainers, Justin Cannon and Scott Drotleff, who were working for Paravant, a subsidiary of Blackwater's successor company, Xe Services, are accused of killing two Afghan civilians in May 2009. Both face federal charges of murder, but maintain their innocence.
Both Paravant and Xe are owned by Erik Prince, the owner and founder of Blackwater. Blackwater changed its name to Xe in early 2009 after the company was involved in a series of deadly incidents in Iraq.
In Afghanistan, Xe offshoot Paravant was operating as a subcontractor to Raytheon, providing weapons training to the Afghan National Army.
During Wednesday's hearing, committee chairman Carl Levin, D.-Mich., reported that a Paravant executive who acted as point man with Raytheon after the May 2009 shooting incident had told Senate investigators that Paravant routinely disregarded policies and rules in Afghanistan.
"Paravant had no regard for policies, rules, or adherence to regulations in country," said Sen. Levin, quoting James Sierawski of Paravant and Xe. Sierawski, who was interviewed by investigators after his name turned up on internal emails connected to the shooting, is apparently still employed by Paravant and Xe.
