Guards in Iraq Cite Frequent Shootings

U.S. officials and security company representatives said they were especially concerned about firms that operate beyond the radar of U.S. and Iraqi authorities. David Horner, who worked for Crescent Security Group, a company based in Kuwait City, said that after being attacked with a roadside bomb in a town north of Baghdad, Crescent employees fired their automatic weapons preemptively whenever they passed through the town.

"I know that I personally never saw anyone shoot at us, but we blazed through that town all the time," said Horner, 55, a truck driver from Visalia, Calif. "Personally I did not take aim at one person. But I don't know what everybody else did. We'd come back at the end of the day, and a lot of times we were out of ammo."

Horner said he did not believe any of the incidents were reported to the military. He said he quit after one of Crescent's Iraqi employees fired a belt-fed PK machine gun from the bed of Horner's truck and hit what appeared to be two members of the Iraqi National Guard.

"I was like, 'Oh man, we shot some of our own guys,' " Horner said. He said he consulted with the Crescent team leader as the two Iraqis writhed in pain, one shot in the legs, the other with "a bullet or two in his shoulder." Soldiers from a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint were approaching to investigate.

"Let's get the [expletive] out of here," Horner quoted the team leader as saying before the Crescent team drove off.

"That was my last mission," Horner said. "I wasn't over there to wreck somebody's life. There was too much cowboying going on. I really didn't know if we had made things worse over there. More than likely we did; that was my feeling."

Crescent officials have denied any wrongdoing to the military after the company was forced to suspend operations in Iraq this year because of weapons violations.

Private security guards said the question of whether to shoot often depends on split-second decisions that can mean life or death not only for them but also for those around them. Most incidents, they said, occur when a vehicle comes close to a security convoy, forcing guards to determine whether the vehicle represents a potential car bomb or merely an erratic driver.

In the Sept. 16 incident, Iraqi witnesses have said Blackwater guards fired on a white sedan carrying a doctor and her adult son after the car failed to slow down as it approached a traffic circle. In May, a Blackwater team shot and killed a civilian driver outside the Interior Ministry; the guards told investigators that the car had driven too close to their convoy and appeared to represent a threat.

CPA Memorandum 17, signed in June 2004 by L. Paul Bremer, the departing chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran the occupation, describes the "binding Rules for the Use of Force that must be adhered to by all PSC [private security companies], their officers and employees." The memo prescribes a series of graduated steps, including verbal warnings, physical restraint and displaying weapons. In recent years, security guards have resorted to firing pen flares, throwing water bottles, using air horns and sirens, and displaying signs warning drivers to maintain a safe distance.

In practice, the rules of force often vary from company to company and even team to team, said current and former guards. One former Blackwater guard said the rules of force for Blackwater employees on State Department contracts -- including those involved in the Sept. 16 incident -- differed from those for Blackwater guards on non-State contracts.

State Department contracts advise employees to fire "aimed shots," as outlined in CPA Memorandum 17, according to the former employee. Those shots were often designed to disable the oncoming vehicle. But the rules, which were crafted to minimize civilian casualties, also preclude firing warning shots into the air or into the ground, tactics that also might alert a driver who had strayed too close.