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Pentagon's IG Takes Job at
Contractor
Washington Post
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 1, 2005; Page D03
The Pentagon's inspector general will be leaving his post Sept. 9 to take a
top job at the parent company for Blackwater USA, one of the largest private
security firms in Iraq, the Defense Department said yesterday.
Joseph E. Schmitz has been the IG since March 2002, heading an office of
1,250 military and civilian officers and employees, with a mandate to prevent
waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon. Its work included an extensive review
of a controversial plan for leasing Boeing Co. jets as Air Force tankers. A top
Pentagon procurement officer and a Boeing official went to prison in that
case.
Schmitz's new job will be chief operating officer and general counsel for
the Prince Group, a firm that's divided between Michigan-based Prince
Manufacturing and North Carolina-based Blackwater.
Blackwater, founded in 1997, came to prominence after the U.S. invasion of
Iraq in 2003 when the company was selected to provide personal security for L.
Paul Bremer, who ran the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. Last year,
four of the company's employees were shot and killed in Fallujah and their
bodies were strung up from a bridge. Family members of the victims have sued
the company, alleging negligence. Paul Behrends, a spokesman for Blackwater,
said he is unaware of Schmitz's office undertaking any investigations of the
company. "Joe has run the process of transitioning from the government to the
private sector through the appropriate channels. There's no conflict of
interest," he said.
But Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government
Oversight, said, "The inspector general is a standard-bearer for ethics and
integrity for the Pentagon. To see a person who has been holding that position
cash in on his public service and go work for one of their contractors is
tremendously disappointing," she said. Schmitz will be based in McLean for
Prince.
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