At present Blackwater has a $217 million security contract through the State Department in Iraq which was just extended by the Obama administration indefinitely. It holds a $210 million State Department "security" contract in Afghanistan that runs through 2011 and another multi-million dollar contract with the Defense Department for "training" in Kabul. All of this is on top of Blackwater’s clandestine work for the CIA, including continued work on the drone bombing campaign in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This also does not take into account Blackwater’s lucrative domestic work training law enforcement and military forces inside the US at the company’s compounds in North Carolina, California and Illinois, nor the private "security" work it does for entities like the International Republican Institute, nor the work it does in training "Faith Based Organizations." It also does not include the contracts doled out to Erik Prince’s private CIA called Total Intelligence Solutions, which works for foreign governments and Fortune 500 corporations.
Then there is this fact: Blackwater was paid over $73 million for its federally-funded, no bid-security contracts with the Department of Homeland Security in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, billing taxpayers $950 per man per day, a spending decision the Bush administration called "the best value to the government." ACORN, meanwhile, only helped poor people who were suffering as a result of the government’s total and complete failure to respond to Katrina.
Meanwhile, a recent federal audit of Blackwater, compiled by the State Department and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, suggests the company may have to repay some $55 million to the government for allegedly failing to meet the terms of just one federal contract in Iraq, which, it is important to note, is $2 million more than the total money allotted by the federal government to ACORN over the past 15 years. (The company also cannot account for one federally funded "deep fat fryer" in Iraq, according to the audit).
Overall, Blackwater has raked in well over $1 billion since 2003 in security contracts alone — all of which were kicked off by a fat no-bid contract to guard L. Paul Bremer. Let’s also remember that Blackwater was estimated in Congressional hearings in 2007 to earn some 90% of its revenue from the federal government and Prince refused to disclose his salary, but said it was over $1 million. Blackwater has been or is being investigated by the US Congress, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the Justice Department and the IRS, among other agencies, for a range of issues from arms smuggling to manslaughter to tax evasion. One of its operatives pleaded guilty to killing an innocent, unarmed Iraqi civilian, while five others have been indicted on manslaughter and other charges over the 2007 Nisour Square massacre during which 17 Iraqi civilians were gunned down. The company is also facing a slew of civil lawsuits alleging war crimes and extrajudicial killings in Iraq.
Here is a question for those Democratic lawmakers that voted in support of the Defund ACORN Act: How do you justify making this a major league legislative priority while Blackwater continues to be armed and dangerous across the globe on the US government payroll? Where is the Defund Blackwater Act?
