The Democrat slated to be the U.S. House’s lead watchdog next year demanded answers Thursday about why Blackwater USA was paid so much for security work in Iraq — and why, in fact, the North Carolina company was paid at all.
Taxpayers paid exorbitant prices for Blackwater’s services, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman wrote in a letter to outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Waxman said it wasn’t clear precisely how much taxpayers overpaid because the Army hasn’t provided answers to questions first raised two years ago,

The California congressman said that Blackwater’s services were not just pricey, but prohibited, because the Army never authorized Blackwater or any other Halliburton subcontractors to guard convoys or carry weapons. Houston-based Halliburton has been paid at least $16 billion to provide food, lodging and other support for troops in Iraq, and $2.4 billion to work on Iraqi oil infrastructure.

Waxman demanded “whether and how the Army intends to recover taxpayer funds paid to Halliburton and Blackwater for services prohibited under [Halliburton's] contract.”

The high cost of private military contractors and the use of multiple layers of subcontractors surfaced after four Blackwater men were massacred in Fallujah in March 2004. Wesley Batalona, Scott Helvenston, Michael Teague and Jerry Zovko were guarding a convoy for ESS, a food supplier to the military, when they were ambushed. A mob dragged their charred corpses through the streets and hung the remains of two from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The grotesque images were broadcast around the world and triggered a deadlier phase of the war.

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