Security Contractors in Iraq Under Scrutiny After Shootings

In May, Asadi sent a brief letter to registered security companies warning them to obey local laws or risk having their licenses revoked. "The cancellation will be circulated to all state offices, with the aim of shunning any dealing with you," he wrote. On May 27, after the shootings in Baghdad, Horst called a meeting with representatives of security firms and police officials at the U.S. Embassy.

"We had a dialogue about propriety and conduct and consequences management," Horst said. "Our philosophy is 'make no new enemies,' and that's what I tried to impress upon these guys. They don't have to think about the consequences of what they do, but we do."

The next day, the sometimes contentious relationship between security companies and the U.S. military burst into the open. Marines in the western province of Anbar detained 19 security contractors from another North Carolina-based outfit, Zapata Engineering, who allegedly shot at U.S. forces near Fallujah.

Horst said his soldiers had had a run-in earlier that day with the same 19 workers. The contractors -- 16 Americans and three Iraqis -- were traveling west from Baghdad in a convoy of white Suburbans. As they passed the Abu Ghraib prison, whose perimeter is guarded by Horst's soldiers, they were shooting indiscriminately at the sides of the road, the general said.

"They were doing what we call 'clearing by fire,' " Horst said. "They were shooting everything they see. They blow through here and they shot at our guys and they just kept going. No one was shooting back."

The shooting of Ismael in Irbil came six weeks later. Police said the convoy of Suburbans quickly proceeded from the scene to a base operated by the U.S. Agency for International Development that is guarded by DynCorp International, an American firm.

An investigation by U.S. officials concluded that "the evidence clearly indicates the vehicle was fired on from the rear by an as yet unknown party and not from the front by the" security company, according to a July 15 report filed with Kurdish security officials.

The report offered "working theories" to explain the shooting, including the possibility that it resulted from an insurgent ambush in which the Ismaels' Land Cruiser was simply "in the wrong place at the wrong time," or an attempt to assassinate Bayez Ismael, a Kurdistan Democratic Party official.

Abdullah Ali, director of the Irbil security police, called the U.S. report "three pages of lies to try to cover up that their company was involved."

"We looked at all the evidence," he continued. "Witnesses only saw a shot from the front. And we found his hair and blood towards the back window, which supports that. We are 1 million percent sure."

In an e-mail response to questions, DynCorp spokesman Gregory Lagana pointed to the embassy investigation. "We have confirmed that our people in the Irbil area did not leave their compound that day," he wrote.