Accountability Time for Contractors?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


When a federal judge recently tossed out the Justice Department’s case against five Blackwater contractors accused of massacring Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, the episode raised troubling questions of accountability—or lack thereof. These questions are by no means new. Jurisdictional uncertainty over crimes committed by contractors overseas has persisted for years, even as the federal government has dramatically ramped up its reliance on military contractors and security firms in Iraq and Afghanistan. But if a trio of Democratic lawmakers have their way, the legal grey area could become black and white.

On Tuesday, Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), along with Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), introduced bills intended to clarify the legal authority over contractors, who are currently subject to a patchwork of statutes. The legislation expands on the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), which provides criminal jurisdiction over personnel “employed by or accompanying the armed forces” and primarily applies to DOD employees and contractors. The Blackwater contractors were being prosecuted under MEJA, though their lawyers had argued that the law didn’t apply to them since they were on the payroll of the State Department, not the Pentagon. (The case was dismissed not on these grounds, but because the judge concluded that government lawyers had built their prosecutions on statements the contractors were compelled to make when they were debriefed by State Department officials following the shooting. The Justice Department is expected to appeal the decision.) 

The new legislation, dubbed the Civilian Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, would eliminate any doubt over whether personnel working for other agencies, including the State Department and the US Agency for International Development—both of which rely heavily on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan—can be held criminally accountable in US courts. “The overseas contractor loophole has compromised the rule of law and imperiled our nation’s moral authority. We simply must close it,” Price said in a statement. Leahy said: “No one should be above the law, certainly not American employees and contractors representing this great nation throughout the world.”

Efforts to clarify the legal jurisdiction over non-DoD contractors have stalled in the past, including those by then Senator Barack Obama, who on the campaign trail declared, “we cannot win a fight for hearts and minds when we outsource critical missions to unaccountable contractors.” For Leahy and his colleagues, the immediate question is whether they can win enough hearts and minds to successfully navigate this bill through Congress.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate