I Am Not My Brother's Keeper, says Buzzy's Bro, Howard Krongard...

Rep. Cummings: “This is a September 5th email that Eric Prince sent to your brother. It says, quote: ‘Welcome and thank you for accepting the invitation to be a member of the board.’ My question is this: did you know that your brother, Buzzy Krongard, was on Blackwater’s advisory board?”
Krongard: “Sir, I dispute that, as far as I know that is not correct. This is, you asked me to comment on this letter. Sir, my brother served honorably as a captain in the United States Marine Corps. He served as the Executive Director of the CIA. He has been involved in a lot of activities involving security. So it’s no surprise that someone like Erik Prince would invite him to continue to support ’security, peace, and freedom.’ There is nothing in here that suggests that my brohter accepted this July 26th invitation, what you have now shown me is an email form Erik Prince to a large number of people that I assume were all people who received this. I don’t see anything in here that suggests my brother accepted or attended, and as far as I know he did neither.”
Rep. Cummings: “Well let me go on, then, because I do think the letter indicates that he did accept. But Mr. Krongard, this is one of the most high profile issues facing the State Department, and your testimony today is that you didn’t know your own brother is on the Blackwater board. I find that very difficult to believe - let me ask you this, Mr. Krongard, did you know where your brother is this week, do you know?”
Krongard: “No sir, I don’t.”
Rep. Cummings: “According to this email, Mr. Prince invited your brother to be at a board meeting to discuss strategic planning. And this meeting is taking place right now, in Williamsburg, Virginia, this week as we speak. Staff contacted the hotel to speak to your brother and the hotel confirmed that he was scheduled to be there. Did you know that?”
Krongard: “No sir, I did not.”
Rep. Cummings: “And so, if your brother is a board member, which you said he’s not, but if he is - since I know you’re sensitive to conflict - would you agree that you should recuse yourself of anything dealing with Blackwater investigations?”
Krongard: “Yes, sir. And that was why - first of all, by the nature of my brother’s work, you should understand that we have never discussed his work or my work, so I had no reason to even think that he had any involvement with Blackwater. But, when these things surfaced, I called him and I asked him directly, he has told me he does have any involvement, he does not have any financial interest. If you’re telling me he does absolutely I would recuse myself.”
Rep. Cummings: “You will recuse yourself?”
Krongard: “Absolutely.”
Rep. Cummings: “Immediately?”
Krongard: “Absolutely.”

uh-oh...

Buzzy Krongard was the director of the bank that placed “puts” on airline stock shortly before 9/11. This was reported by the San Francisco Gate Newspaper. His protoge, Charles Schattuck, left the same bank and became CEO of Constellation energy on September 12, 2001. Constellation Energy had a seat at the Cheney task force and was able to “fasttrack” re-licensing of a fleet of aging nuclear power plants on the east coast?

Heck of Job Brownie is put in charge of a fleet of aging nukes? Keeps me up late at night.

The bank they both worked at was Brown Brothers Harriman which Prescott Bush was a part owner along with the usual cast of Good Shepherds, Bonesmen from Yale....check this information out to know for sure what is going on here.

Blackwater fact-finders threatened?
By Warren P. Strobel - McClatchy Washington Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, September 29, 2007

Aides to State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard threatened two investigators with retaliation this week if they cooperate with a congressional probe into Krongard's office, the chairman of a House of Representatives panel and other U.S. officials said Friday.

The allegations are the latest in a growing uproar surrounding Krongard. Current and former officials in his office charge that he impeded investigations into alleged arms smuggling by employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA and into faulty construction of the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Krongard has denied the charges and is due to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee next month. In a statement e-mailed to reporters Friday, his office said it was cooperating with investigators.

"The Office of the Inspector General has cooperated with and will continue to cooperate with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's investigation," the statement said. "Furthermore, the OIG will continue to make any OIG employee available to speak with the committee, if they choose."

Officials at the State Department and other agencies said support for Krongard appeared to be slipping and it remained uncertain if he could keep his job. They spoke on condition of anonymity, because Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hasn't made a final decision in the matter.

The probe into Krongard's office is being led by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the House oversight committee.

The two investigators said they were threatened with retaliation -- perhaps including losing their jobs -- if they cooperated, Waxman said in a letter to Krongard.

According to the letter, Krongard's congressional liaison told one of the two, Special Agent Ronald A. Militana, "Howard can fire you. It would affect your ability to get another job."

In a telephone interview, Militana confirmed that he has filed a complaint with Waxman's panel and said the congressman's letter quoted him accurately. He declined to comment further.

"I am appalled by these reports," Waxman wrote to Krongard. "Your office is supposed to be an example of how to protect whistle-blowers, not an example of how to persecute them."

Militana and the other investigator, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Brian Rubendall, were among those pressing for an investigation into whether employees of Blackwater were illegally shipping automatic weapons and other military goods to Iraq without a license. Rubendall couldn't be reached for comment.

McClatchy Newspapers reported last week that two Blackwater employees have pleaded guilty in Greenville, N.C., to weapons charges and are cooperating with federal officials.

Blackwater, which has received roughly $835 million in State Department contracts, mostly to guard U.S. civilians in Iraq, is under intense scrutiny after a series of violent incidents involving its contractors. In the most recent, Blackwater teams were involved in a shooting at a busy Baghdad traffic circle Sept. 16 that killed 11 Iraqis.

According to an e-mail obtained by Waxman's committee, Krongard intervened when federal prosecutors asked for help from his office in investigating the Blackwater arms-smuggling allegations.

The investigations division of the inspector general's office "is directed to stop IMMEDIATELY any work on these contracts until I receive a briefing from the (assistant U.S. attorney) regarding the details of this investigation. SA Militana, ASAIC Rubendall and any others involved are to be directed by you not to proceed in any manner until the briefing takes place," Krongard wrote to a subordinate July 11.

Krongard denied those allegations on Sept. 18 and said he had made "one of my best investigators" available to help the Justice Department.

That investigator, Waxman wrote Friday, was Militana.

Several current and former State Department officials have sought whistle-blower protection after complaining about how Krongard conducted the inspector general's office, according to a U.S. official who requested anonymity.

In another development, Blackwater USA apparently has stopped its expansion projects, a likely result of fallout from the multiple investigations, the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer reported today.

On Wednesday, the North Carolina-based contractor canceled a $5.5 million deal to buy 1,800 acres of farmland near Fort Bragg, where it was going to set up a training ground for soldiers and corporate executives.

The fallout from the Baghdad shooting, combined with Tuesday's scheduled testimony before Congress by Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince, prompted Blackwater to put all new projects on hold, said the president of the firm that had agreed to sell the land to Blackwater.

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For the Love of Blackwater

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-hillah8oct08,0,6701931,full.story?coll=la-tot-topstories

From the Los Angeles Times
Iraqis tell of guards' reckless behavior
Residents of Hillah await answers and justice in the slayings of two men. They believe those responsible for the deaths were Blackwater employees.
By Tina Susman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 8, 2007

BAGHDAD — The young biology student pulled his car to the side of the busy traffic circle when he saw a fast-moving line of SUVs approaching from behind. As they flew past, he recalls, the lead vehicle appeared to intentionally smash into his sedan. But the worst was yet to come.

As the convoy sped off, a gunner inside the last sport utility vehicle sprayed the traffic circle with bullets. Pedestrians ran for cover. Seated in the car closest to the SUV, student Ali Karem Fakhri Hilal thrust his hands into the air to show he was unarmed.

But four cars behind him, Hussein Salih Mohammed Rabee, a retired businessman active in a local peace committee, was fatally wounded.

Nearly two months after the Aug. 13 shooting in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, nobody has been held accountable for Rabee's death. His sons say the provincial police commander and a U.S. Army officer told them that Blackwater USA, the same company accused of killing as many as 17 Iraqis at a Baghdad traffic circle Sept. 16, was responsible. Hillah residents held a protest outside the office of an American nongovernmental agency known to use Blackwater guards, waving banners and demanding Blackwater be brought to justice.

But like most Iraqis affected by shootings involving private security firms, Rabee's relatives have hit the shield that protects the companies. It is almost impossible for Iraqis to prove who did the shooting; even if they can, the security firms claim immunity from prosecution.

The Rabee family's story shows the futility of trying to press charges against foreign companies, which have been accused of causing scores of deaths and injuries in Iraq. They operate with virtual impunity as they tear through crowded city streets. The unmarked convoys push slow-moving vehicles out of their way, fire at anyone who is perceived as a threat, and make it clear their priority is to protect their high-profile wards.

Blackwater, which guards State Department officials, the U.S. ambassador and others, has a perfect record in that regard. It has not lost a client in Iraq.

"This company killed my father and left him on the street," said one of Rabee's sons, Bahaa Hussein Salih Rabee, the head of the physics department at Babil University in Hillah.

He and another brother, Safa, a businessman living in Britain, say that they met with the provincial police commander, Brig. Gen. Qais Hamza Mamouri, and U.S. Army Lt. Col. Thomas Roth days after Rabee's death. Both expressed their condolences, but explained there was nothing they could do because of Blackwater's immunity.

"I said why? He was innocent," Safa Rabee said by telephone Friday, his voice still shaking with rage as he discussed his father's death. "He was everything to me and to my family."

Mamouri denied telling the family that Blackwater was involved.

Roth did not respond directly to questions. However, his public relations officer, Maj. Dave Butler of the Army's 4th Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, said in an e-mail response, "Based on Blackwater's ongoing investigation, we cannot comment on any incidents allegedly involving Blackwater."

Memos prepared for last week's U.S. congressional hearings into Blackwater, and based on company and State Department reports, say the three security firms under State Department contract in Iraq -- Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp International -- were involved in at least 306 shootings between Jan. 1, 2005, and April 20, 2007. Blackwater was involved in 168, DynCorp, 102, and Triple Canopy, 36.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell did not respond to e-mail and telephone queries about the Aug. 13, 2007, incident, which was not cited in the memos.

Two other events in Hillah were mentioned, including one on June 25, 2005, that left an Iraqi man, a father of six, dead. In that case, the Blackwater guards involved did not report the shooting and tried to cover it up, according to copies of e-mail communications at the time. The State Department recommended that Blackwater pay the bereaved family $5,000 in compensation.

Mamouri said that because of the company's high profile, Hillah residents assume that if there is a problem with a private security convoy it must be Blackwater.

But Safa Rabee, who flew to Iraq immediately after the shooting, said he hadn't heard of Blackwater until Mamouri mentioned it after his father's death. He said he took note of the name to research it on the Internet.

One State Department employee in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said most Blackwater guards were well-behaved and simply doing the job they were hired to do: protect clients in a dangerous environment. Their duties "are not conducive to keeping everyone alive," said the official, but that does not make all Blackwater guards demons.

"They're getting this bad rap for being the guys from the Wild, Wild West."

For Iraqis, that reputation was sealed by the Sept. 16 shootings in Baghdad. Blackwater guards say they fired in self-defense, but Iraqi witnesses say the barrage of gunfire was unprovoked and typical of security companies' actions when slowed by heavy traffic.

Some Washington lawmakers are pushing legislation that would force contractors to answer to U.S. laws when operating overseas, but that won't help people such as the Rabees, or the family of Iraqi police Lt. Qusay Adil Jabir. Luay Adil Jabir says his brother Qusay was killed in June 2006 in Hillah after a convoy of SUVs fired on the marked police truck he was in.

The driver lost control, sending the truck rolling over into oncoming traffic. The crash, not the gunfire, killed Jabir. His brother says the family never learned which private security company was to blame.

"Of course, I'm mad," he said. "If it was a civilian car, maybe they might have had a reason to be suspicious of it, but it was a marked, blue and white police vehicle."

Rabee's family is equally bewildered and bitter. Rabee, 72, had retired a year earlier. His sons provided a copy of the ID card he carried from a peace committee on which he was serving.

Official documents and witness accounts say the shooting took place about 12:30 p.m. Traffic was moving slowly around the downtown traffic circle, but drivers pulled over when they saw the SUVs. They knew better than to get in the way of the convoys that frequently streaked through town, said Hilal, the biology student.

Hilal, 23, said the first SUV drove straight at him, hit his car, and then moved on.

"There was space enough for him to pass," Hilal said. "There was no reason for him to be suspicious of me."

He said he had seen such convoys fire into the air to disperse crowds, but never fire directly at cars and people as this one did.

When the shooting stopped and the convoy disappeared, people rushed toward Rabee, who had opened his car door and was slumped in the street. Blood poured from his left leg.

Bahaa Rabee rushed to his father's side after the hospital telephoned him. Even as he lay dying, Rabee was able to give a statement to police in which he described feeling bullets pelting his car. "I don't know why," he said. "I want to file a complaint."

A forensic report says he died of a gunshot wound. Burn marks on his chest show that doctors tried to revive him using a defibrillator.

Safa Rabee says the U.S. military offered him and his family financial compensation, but they do not want money. "I said, do you think $100 million can return my father? Do you think that can help?" he recalled telling the Army officer.

Hilal said the repairs to his car cost $3,500, but he also is not concerned about compensation.

"The most important thing is that justice be done, because an innocent man lost his life," he said.

tina.susman@latimes.com

A special correspondent in Hillah contributed to this report.