In Washington DC this week, the Democratic Staff Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) will begin what some analysts and Capitol Hill operatives are saying will be a series of investigations into Blackwater USA. The hearings kick off on Tuesday when former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer III appears before the committee. Bremer, who served as the proconsul in Baghdad from 2003-2004, was protected by Blackwater under an initial $21 million no-bid contract. Blackwater subsequently won a $300 million State Department contract to provide diplomatic security and has guarded Ambassadors John Negroponte and Zalmay Khalilzad, as well as several regional occupation offices in Iraq. On Wednesday, the hearings will focus in on the high-profile ambush of a Blackwater convoy in Fallujah on March 31, 2004. Four Blackwater contractors were killed, their bodies burned and hung from a bridge. That event marked a turning point in the war that sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Fallujah and emboldened the Iraqi resistance that haunts occupation forces to this day. Appearing at the hearing will be the mothers of the four contractors killed. They have filed a ground-breaking wrongful death lawsuit against Blackwater. Also asked to appear is Blackwater's secretive CEO and founder, Erik Prince. Congressional sources, however, are predicting that Prince will send a representative instead of appearing himself. READ JEREMY SCAHILL'S ARTICLE ON THE LAWSUIT: "BLOOD IS THICKER THAN BLACKWATER." At issue will also be the system of subcontracting in Iraq and who exactly the four Blackwater contractor's were working for the day they were killed. In addition, representatives of the massive war contractors KBR and Fluor, as well as military officials will testify. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), chair of the Senate Foreign Rleations Committee, have both indicated in recent days their intent to investigate private armies and other war contractors.
