{"id":198554,"date":"2007-10-30T23:20:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-31T04:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/10\/30\/what-the-blackwater-immunity-deal-means\/"},"modified":"2007-10-30T23:20:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-31T04:20:00","slug":"what-the-blackwater-immunity-deal-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/10\/30\/what-the-blackwater-immunity-deal-means\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Blackwater Immunity Deal Means"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/story?id=3795318&amp;page=1\">ABC News has the text of the Blackwater immunity deal<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I understand this statement is being given in furtherance of an official administrative inquiry,&#8221; and that, &#8220;I further understand that neither my statements nor any information or evidence gained by reason of my statements can be used against me in a criminal proceeding, except that if I knowingly and willfully provide false statements or information, I may be criminally prosecuted for that action under 18 United States Code, Section 1001.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While the State Department claims that this still allows for prosecution, the case clearly indicates otherwise, particularly in the DC Circuit Court, where this would almost certainly be heard.<\/p>\n<p>Josh Marshall called on &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/archives\/057449.php\">a highly knowledgeable source<\/a>&#8220;, and their assessment was that &#8220;Use Immunity&#8221;, pretty much eliminates the possibility of presecution:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Prosecutors, &#8220;would then have to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">prove<\/span> that every piece of evidence used in the prosecution was obtained completely independent of the employees&#8217; statements.&#8221; (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/li>\n<li>The DC circuit has an even more extreme view, where the prosecution, &#8220;would also have to show that none of their witnesses<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> had heard what the employees said<\/span> in their immunized statements.&#8221;prosecution was obtained completely independent of the employees&#8217; statements.&#8221; (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Additionally, even if there was no authorization and the immunity was granted in error, the courts, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">particularly the DC Circuit<\/span>, generally still treat it as if it were.<\/p>\n<p>I call coverup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ABC News has the text of the Blackwater immunity deal: I understand this statement is being given in furtherance of an official administrative inquiry,&#8221; and that, &#8220;I further understand that neither my statements nor any information or evidence gained by reason of my statements can be used against me in a criminal proceeding, except that &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1063,972,1179,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-iraq","category-justice","category-mercenaries","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}