Blackwater, the controversial private defense contractor that first drew major attention after killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square in 2007, has hired former Attorney General John Ashcroft to help pursue lucrative government contracts.
In an attempt to shed its image as a company of steroid-injected, drug-induced frat boys gone wild, Blackwater, now called Xe, has hired the former George W. Bush subordinate to “reassure government officials” of its “newfound rectitude,” according to Wired’s Spencer Ackerman. Blackwater changed its name to Xe in 2009 in a move to alter its negative image, enhanced in the 2007 Nissor Square Massacre. That shooting spree compounded the company’s damaging persona, preceded by an incident in Fallujah during 2004 in which of four of its employees were killed, dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Ashcroft will head Blackwater’s “subcommittee on governance,” a move that will “maximize governance, compliance and accountability,” a company statement read, according to The Atlantic Wire. The company also stated the move will help “promote the highest degrees of ethics and professionalism within the private security industry” with the goal of aiming “to set the bar for industry standards against which all other companies will be measured.”
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