Blackwater Lawsuit

  Harley Miller

The indictment of five Blackwater guards for allegedly killing 17 Iraqis in 2007 - including one with his hands up - begs the question of whether ex-Seattle Blackwater guard Andrew Mullen will separately be indicted. The Justice Department is not yet saying whether its investigation and legal options will lead to charges, but the drunken Mullen and his victim, government bodyguard Raheem Khalif Hulaichi, were the only witnesses to the 2006 Christmastime shooting in Baghdad and Mullen says it was self defense.

However, the widow of a Spokane Army man, Harley Miller, and her co-plaintiffs are continuing a so-far successful three-year legal assault on Blackwater in the federal courts, after Miller, whose mother lives in Seattle, and five others died in a Blackwater Airlines crash in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving, 2004. Blackwater's "cowboy" pilots - one who used to fly Forest Service water tankers fighting fires in Central Washington - are accused of being reckless and inexperienced.

As a transcript of their final radio chatter showed, the pilots, in a matter of a few minutes, went from saying, "I swear to God they wouldn't pay me if they knew how much fun this was," to "Come on baby, come on baby, you can make it," as their turboprop transport made a failed emergency climb and crashed into a peak bordering the Bamian Valley.

The lawsuit, filed by Sarah Miller of Spokane - the lead plaintiff is Jeanette McMahon, an ex-Army colonel and widow of  Lt.Col. Michael McMahon, one of the highest-ranking U.S. officers in Afghanistan who was killed in the crash - withstood Blackwater's attempt to have the suit dismissed in 2005 and beat back a renewed dismissal effort on Sept. 11 this year.

Blackwater's legion of lawyers fire off new motions at every turn - a war of writs that currently focuses on efforts by Miller and the others to obtain corporate internal documents. Blackwater, according to the latest filings, refused to turn over documents or even "participate" in the discovery effort. The exasperated plaintiffs have now asked the court "to compel Defendants to participate in discovery and to refrain from filing any additional motions to dismiss" the case, at least for now. Blackwater's response? It's filing a new motion to dismiss.