Ali Gharib, AntiWar.com, September 29, 2007
A U.S.-based private security firm received a contract worth up to 92 million dollars from the Department of Defense amid hard questions about its involvement in two separate violent incidents in Iraq.
“Blackwater has been a contractor in the past with the department and could certainly be in the future,” said the U.S.’s top-ranking military officer, General Peter Pace, at an afternoon press conference here.
The future arrived just two hours later when the Pentagon released a new list of contracts – Presidential Airways, the aviation unit of parent company Blackwater, was awarded the contract to fly Department of Defense passengers and cargo between locations around central Asia.
The announcement comes as a cloud of suspicion is gathering around the “professional military” firm for its actions as a State Department security contractor in Iraq in which at least eight Iraqis and possibly as many as 28 were killed, including a woman and child.
Last week, the Iraqi government announced that it had revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in the country.