Blackwater Bribery Scheme Alleged

Security contractor Blackwater Worldwide hatched a plan to pay off Iraqi officials to silence their criticism of the slaughter of 17 Iraqis by Blackwater mercenaries, the New York Times reports.

The Times, citing four unnamed former executives at the controversial contractor that provided guns for hire to the U.S. during the height of the Iraq war, reports that Blackwater officials authorized $1 million in bribes for Iraqi critics. The money was routed through a Blackwater hub in Jordan, but the former officials didn't know whether it ever reached the Iraqi officials.

Cash payments were approved in December 2007, as Iraqis protested the shootings in Nisour Square in Baghdad, and Iraqi officials were calling for the security firm's ejection from the country, an ejection that threatened Blackwater's multimillion dollar contracts to protect State Department officials and private clients.

The former officials tell the Times that Gary Jackson, then Blackwater's president, approved the bribery scheme, which would have been illegal.

Not everyone at the company was on board with the plan, the Times reports. Cofer Black, then the company's vice chairman and a former top CIA official, heard of the payments while in Baghdad talking about compensation for the families of the slain with U.S. Embassy officials. He cut short the trip, left Iraq and confronted company founder Erik Prince, who didn't deny the scheme allegation.

Black resigned the following year.

Jackson resigned as president early this year and told the Times, "I don't care what you write."

A company spokeswoman called the charges baseless.

The Iraqi government said in the spring, two years after calls began for the company's ouster, that it would deny Blackwater an operating license, and the company has been replaced with a rival contractor as provider of security at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad--a role traditionally filled by the U.S. Marines.

But Blackwater employees are still in Iraq on an aviation contract worth $200 million, The Nation reports. The Obama administration recently extended that contract.

Blackwater also works with the State Department, the CIA and the Defense Department in Afghanistan.

Five mercenaries involved in the shooting face federal manslaughter charges arising from the shooting incident. Their trial is set to begin in February.

Blackwater and Prince are being sued by the families of the shooting victims.