Via
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq.
But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there
issued a threat: "that he could kill" the government’s chief
investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were
in Iraq,” according to department reports
.....
The shooting was a watershed moment in the American occupation of Iraq,
and was a factor in Iraq’s refusal the next year to agree to a treaty
allowing United States troops to stay in the country beyond 2011.
