Legal Status and Oversight
The Iraqi Government revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq on September 17, 2007 after an incident involving a shootout that took place in Nisour Square which caused the death of seventeen Iraqis. The fatalities occurred while a Blackwater Private Security Detail (PSD) was escorting a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with United States Agency for International Development officials. The license was reinstated by the American government in April 2008, but in early 2009 the Iraqis announced that they have refused to extend that license. In 2009, FBI investigators were unable to match the bullets from the shooting to those guns carried by Blackwater contractors, leaving open the possibility that insurgents also fired at the victims. In a 2010 interview, Erik Prince, the company's founder, said the government is looking for dirt to support what he dismisses as “baseless” accusations that run the gamut from negligence, racial discrimination, prostitution, wrongful death, murder, and the smuggling of weapons into Iraq in dog-food containers. He pointed out that current and former executive have been regularly deposed by federal agencies.
Prince argued in September 2007 that there was a “rush to judgment” about Blackwater, due to "inaccurate information".
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