Rice puts cameras on Blackwater convoys

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday ordered tighter controls on U.S. security contractor Blackwater, including putting cameras on its convoys, after last month's deadly shootings in Iraq.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said dozens of diplomatic security agents would also be sent to Iraq to accompany each convoy protected by Blackwater guards.

The firm, which guards U.S. diplomats in Baghdad, has come under intense scrutiny in the U.S. Congress and is under investigation over the September 16 shootings in Baghdad that killed 11 Iraqis.

"These (measures) are not meant to signal that the review or the investigation of the 16 September incident is heading in any particular direction," said McCormack.

The new measures will apply only to Blackwater and not to two other key State Department security contractors in Iraq, Triple Canopy and DynCorp, McCormack said.

Rice took the actions after receiving an initial report by a special panel she sent to Baghdad to look into the September 16 incident and review overall rules for security contractors. McCormack said more recommendations would follow.

Special agents would begin immediately accompanying Blackwater when the firm transports U.S. diplomatic personnel outside the fortified international zone, McCormack said.

RECORD OF INCIDENTS

Video cameras and other recording devices would be loaded onto convoy vehicles and there would be increased communication between privately secured convoys and the U.S. military.

"The idea here is if you have an incident, you have a record."

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the company had encouraged the new measures.

"Blackwater has always supported increased accountability and transparency for the industry," she said in an e-mail.

Blackwater, which has earned more than a billion dollars from U.S. government contracts since 2001, has defended its work in Iraq and says it acted "appropriately" during the September 16 shootings. Iraq's government insists there was a crime.

Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said Iraq and Washington would do a "radical review" of an order passed by the U.S. occupation authority in 2004 that exempted security contractors from prosecution under Iraqi law.

He said the order probably needed to be rescinded and the Iraqi government had the power to take that action.

"It's a huge sovereignty issue we need to sort out and sort out quickly," he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

There are differing versions of what happened on September 16. U.S. military reports from the scene of the shooting indicated Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation and used excessive force, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince, said in remarks prepared for a congressional hearing this week that his men came under small-arms fire and "returned fire at threatening targets."

"Some of those firing on this Blackwater team appeared to be wearing Iraqi National Police uniforms, or portions of such uniforms. As the withdrawal occurred, the Blackwater vehicles remained under fire from such personnel," said Prince in the remarks obtained by Reuters but which were deleted from the testimony he ultimately delivered.

Blackwater has also been named in other shooting incidents involving Iraqi civilians and the State Department has been criticized by lawmakers for insufficient oversight.

In a letter to Rice on Friday, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman said the State Department failed to report "important facts" about a Blackwater employee accused of being drunk and killing a guard for Iraq's vice president last Christmas Eve.

The employee, who has not been charged, was fired by Blackwater and sent back to the United States. Two months later, Waxman said, he was employed to work on another U.S. government contract in Kuwait.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray)