g and indiscriminate shooting of Iraqi civilians, causing a major rift between the United States and the Nouri al-Maliki government.

Crocker is known by his former State colleagues as a "no nonsense" diplomat. He served as head of the Kuwait-Iraq Task Force after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

Crocker was reportedly told by political appointees in the Bush administration, in no uncertain terms, that he was to keep his hands off Blackwater, even though as Chief of Mission in Baghdad, he is authorized to yank the country clearance for any American government employee or government contractor in Iraq.

Blackwater has close ties to the Bush administration. Its founder and owner, Erik Prince, is a major GOP contributor. Prince's father, the late Edgar Prince, was a major bank roller of the Family Research Council. Blackwater's Vice Chairman Cofer Black, a former counter-terrorism official in the CIA and State Department, is now a major adviser to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The Prince Group's Joseph Schmitz, the son of far right-wing GOP Congressman John Schmitz, Sr., is the former Pentagon Inspector General under Donald Rumsfeld. Schmitz's brother, John Schmitz, Jr., is a former staffer for President George H. W. Bush and married to the sister of Columba Bush, Jeb Bush's wife. The Schmitz's sister is Mary Kay Letourneau, the schoolteacher convicted for having sex with an under aged male student who she later married after her prison term.

Prince's sister, Betsy DeVos, is married to Dick DeVos, unsuccessful GOP candidate for governor of Michigan and an heir to the Amway fortune of his father, Richard DeVos. The elder DeVos previously served as President for the Council for National Policy (CNP), a right-wing group that held a secret conclave this past weekend in a Salt Lake City hotel, where Vice President Dick Cheney spoke. The CNP was formed by right-wingers as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Blackwater's interests are also being looked out for by State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, the brother of former CIA Executive Director A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. Howard Krongard's intercession on behalf of Blackwater is the subject of hearings this week by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman.

Blackwater's expansion into the Defense and State Department operations in Iraq would not have been possible without the conflicts of interests exhibited by Howard Krongard and Joseph Schmitz as the Inspectors General for the two departments most responsible for Blackwater's sweetheart no-bid contracts in Iraq.