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Highest Bidder Wins

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Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization

Officials in Washington said the smuggling investigation grew from internal Pentagon and State Department inquiries into U.S. weapons that had gone missing in Iraq. It gained steam after Turkish authorities protested to the U.S. in July that they had seized American arms from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels … The PKK, which is fighting for an independent Kurdistan, is banned in Turkey, which has a restive Kurdish population and is considered a “foreign terrorist organization” by the State Department. That designation bars U.S. citizens or those in U.S. jurisdictions from supporting the group in any way.

Blackwater first came to the public’s attention in March 2004, when a mob dragged the bodies of four slain Blackwater contractors through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq. The men had gone into Fallujah without maps or armor and with fewer men than their contract called for … Blackwater was working as the bottom layer of a series of subcontractors that ultimately reported to contracting giant Halliburton. In December, the U.S. Army ordered Halliburton to refund the Army $20 million because it had no permission to use Blackwater for its missions.

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