Back to Black(water)?

Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent has an important piece out this morning on the fact that the private security firm Xe, nee Blackwater, is going to bid to renew its contract providing protection for State Department diplomats. The government's response to this intention seems, at best, slightly incoherent at this point. Spencer writes:

A spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which manages the WPPS contract, said he could not answer TWI's questions about the department's relationship with private security companies in Afghanistan by press time, although he said he hoped to provide responses later this week. Representatives of U.S. Central Command, which controls U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, referred questions about the military's coordination with private security companies in Afghanistan to the State Department. Spokespeople for the U.S. military command in Afghanistan did not reply to requests for comment about its relationship with private security companies.

On Friday, CNN obtained a letter penned by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urging the secretary "not to enter into further contracts with Xe and to immediately review any existing contracts." As a senator and candidate for president, Clinton pledged to ban private security firms from contracting with the government, but reversed herself at her confirmation hearing to become secretary of state in January.

I'm not sure I'm really in a place to determine whether or not the State Department should or shouldn't be using private security firms, especially given that the military doesn't consider diplomatic security as part of its purview, so I'm not entirely sure what the alternatives would be. But it seems undeniable that the incidents that Xe/Blackwater has been involved in, including the Nisour Square shootings, and the lack of accountability for Blackwater employees involved in other killings, should be factored in as part of an evaluation of Xe's performance. For an assignment like diplomatic security, keeping diplomats safe and alive is important. But avoiding huge disruptions to the environments in which those diplomats work has to be part of the job as well. If Xe can't avoid those disruptions, it's not clear that the company can actually do the entire job State is hiring for.