August 4, 2009: For many years, Blackwater Worldwide (now Xe Services) had a contract with the U.S. State Department to protect their personnel in Iraq. For six years, Blackwater, using many former special operations personnel, saw to it no State Department personnel were killed, even though the State Department had more personnel in Iraq than in any other country. But Blackwater lost the contract this year, because of incidents where the Blackwater security personnel killed Iraqi civilians while responding to attacks on the State Department staff being guarded.
DynCorp replaced Blackwater, and will use the same kind of people to continue guarding State Department personnel in Iraq. The State Department pays about $1.2 billion a year for these security services in Iraq.
