Paul Kiel October 31, 2007, 9:44 AM

The State Department explores new frontiers of lawlessness.

Two days ago, the AP broke the story that the State Department had offered immunity to Blackwater guards for their statements following the September 16th Nisour Square shootings that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

The State Department didn’t have an immediate reply to the story and seemed to be caught off guard. A “senior State Department official” told ABC that “If anyone gave such immunity it was done so without consulting senior leadership at State.” Immunity? Who authorized such a thing?

But apparently such a move wasn’t so unprecedented. In fact, it was “routine,” reports the AP:

Limited immunity has been routinely offered to private security contractors involved in shootings in Iraq, State Department officials said Tuesday, denying such actions jeopardized criminal prosecution of Blackwater USA guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians….

At the State Department, [State Department spokesman Sean] McCormack said “these kinds of issues are not new.” He said Justice Department officials “can take steps to work around” any limited immunity agreements. “They provide limited protections that would not preclude a successful criminal prosecution,” he said.

A second senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry, said the agency has for years required its security contractors to give written statements within hours of any so-called “use of deadly force” in Iraq.

Waivers granting a security worker limited immunity — by barring those statements in a criminal case against the worker — are a “routine part” of the investigations by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the official said.

So now the full scope of the lawlessness which State Department contractors in Iraq enjoy becomes clear. Not only do those contractors operate in a legal gray zone apparently beyond the reach of current law, but the State Department routinely offered immunity to guards involved in incidents in order to get their version of the story, making the prospect of prosecution all the more improbable.

Of course, the State Department has been energetically pooh-poohing the whole immunity issue altogether. Criminal prosecution is still possible they say. But as law enforcement officials have pointed out again and again, such “use” immunity means that prosecutors are given the additional burden of proving that they did not use the information gleaned from the bodyguards’ statements in bringing the charges. So the FBI’s investigation of that incident is most likely going nowhere.

All this is changing, of course. The Iraqi government is rushing through its repeal of immunity for American contractors from Iraqi law. And the Pentagon and State Department have finally agreed that State Department security convoys in Iraq will now fall under military control. But it took the contractors’ equivalent of the Abu Ghraib scandal to force such a change in policy.

Iraq Contractors, Must Read