John Kerry vs. Blackwater Xe

It turns out that expanding your contracts with the government after killing people and paying hush money can attract congressional scrutiny. The New York Times:

Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter on Wednesday that his committee was told by a top State Department official that the company had engaged in “broad violations” of export laws and that the unlicensed shipments “went beyond weapons for personal use.”

In the letter, Senator Kerry asked the State Department’s acting inspector general to begin an investigation into the “continued fitness” of Xe Services to carry out contract work for the State Department. The letter cited a report in The New York Times last week that Blackwater executives had approved of a plan to make secret payments to Iraqi officials after Blackwater employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.