(Updated) Blackwater's Dark Prince Speaks

The publicity-shy chairman of military contractor Blackwater USA told a House committee today that his controversial company is the victim of "negative and baseless allegations" surrounding a bloody melee in Baghdad last month in which his employees killed at least 11 people and wounded dozens more.

Blackwater chairman Erik Prince, in an opening statement to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, declared that he and his employees are victims of a "rush to judgment" about the September 16 shootings in Baghdad's Nisour Square.

"Blackwater and its people have been the subject of negative and baseless allegations reported as truth," Prince said, noting that 30 Blackwater employees have lost their lives in Iraq.

The appearance by Prince, a 38-year-old former Navy SEAL and messianic right-winger with close ties to the White House and Pentagon, comes on the heels of a blistering new report prepared by the committee's Democratic majority staff.

It found Blackwater employees have engaged in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, in a vast majority of cases firing their weapons first and firing from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded. It also found that the State Department has exercised virtually no oversight and in some cases helped cover up incidents.

In at least two cases, including the notorious Christmas Eve 2006 shooting death of a bodyguard for one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, Blackwater paid victims' family members who complained.

(Meanwhile, CNN reported that the State Department's initial report on the Nisour Square incident was written by a Blackwater contractor working in the U.S. Embassy security detail.)

Prior to the hearing, the Justice Department asked Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Prince to not discuss the bloody Nisour Square firefight because of a pending FBI investigation, but this did not stop the California Democrat from reeling off a list of other allegations against Blackwater that he called "troubling."

"Privatizing is working exceptionally well for Blackwater,'' said Waxman. "The question for this hearing is whether outsourcing to Blackwater is a good deal to the American taxpayer, whether it's a good deal for the military and whether it's serving our national interest in Iraq.''

Meanwhile, Republican committee members were less inclined to call out Prince.

Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina -- where Blackwater is headquartered -- castigated Democrats for holding what he called "a knee-jerk congressional hearing," adding, "contracting is the liberal cause du jour."

"Congress needs to know what went on over there, but there should not be a rush to judgment,'' said Representative Dan Burton of Indiana Republican. "There has not been one congressman or one public official that's been killed while under the protection of these people, and that should account for something.''

Representative Darrell Issa of California took a different tack, trying to shift the focus to defending "General Petraeus and the men and women who do their job," while throwing in a veiled treat to Waxman that if he went to Iraq Blackwater personnel might fail to protect him.

The committee report adds further evidence to complaints by the Iraq government, some American officials and even Blackwater’s competitors, Triple Canopy and DynCorp, that company guards have taken a trigger-happy approach to their work and have repeatedly acted with reckless disregard for Iraqi life.

The actions have further exacerbated tensions between occupiers and occupied and embarrassed the White House at a time when it has tried to paint an upbeat portrait of conditions in the capital and brought heightened scrutiny on security contractors who operate with impunity and beyond the law.

The report concludes that the State Department has let Blackwater employees run amok:

"There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting episodes involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation."

The State Department, which has paid Blackwayer over $830 million, would not comment on the report. In addition to the FBI, it is conducting three separate investigations of the shootings.

Blackwater has reported more shootings than the other two companies combined, but it also currently has twice as many employees in Iraq as the other two companies combined.

The company has dismissed 122 of its employees over the past three years, about one-seventh of its total in-country workforce, for misuse of weapons, drug or alcohol abuse, lewd conduct or violent behavior, according to the report.

Prince noted that he considered any loss of innocent life in the Nisour Square incident to be tragic:

"Every life, whether American or Iraqi, is precious . . . [but] based on everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone."

In the notorious Christmas Eve incident, an unidentified 26-year-old off-duty Blackwater firearms technician killed a bodyguard for one of the two Iraqi vice presidents and was so drunk after the shooting that another group of guards working for Triple Canopy had to wrest his pistol from him.

Iraqi police detained the man but determined that he was too drunk to be interviewed. Within 36 hours, according to the report, Blackwater fired the man for possessing a firearm while drunk and arranged with the State Department to fly him back to the U.S., angering Iraqi officials who believed the shooting was murder.

Acting U.S. Ambassador Margaret Scobey suggested that Blackwater claim that the shooting was an accident, apologize for it and pay the dead man’s family $250,000 in an effort to keep the Iraqi government from barring Blackwater, according to the report. Blackwater eventually paid the family $15,000.

Committee Democrats kept coming back to the incident with Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York telling Prince:

"Well, in America, if you committed a crime, you don’t pack them up and ship them out of the country in two days. If you’re really concerned about accountability, which you testified in your testimony, you would have gone in and done a thorough investigation."

Prince, who remained unflappable replied:

"Again, he was fired. The Justice Department was investigating. In Baghdad, there is a Justice Department office there. He didn’t have a job with us any more. We, as a private company, cannot detain him. We can fire, we can fine, but we can’t do anything else."

Meanwhile, the Senate yesterday gave final approval by a 92-3 vote to a defense policy bill that included the establishment of an independent commission to investigate private contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill, which must be reconciled with a House version, faces a veto threat by President Bush because it includes an expansion of federal hate-crimes laws.