The State Department is conducting three separate investigations of the shooting, and on Monday the F.B.I. said it was sending a team to Baghdad to compile evidence for possible criminal prosecution.  Neither the State Department nor Blackwater would comment on Monday about the 15-page report, but both said their representatives would address it on Tuesday in testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose Democratic staff produced the document. Based on 437 internal Blackwater incident reports as well as internal State Department correspondence, the report said Blackwater’s use of force was “frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage.”  Among those scheduled to testify Tuesday are Erik Prince, a press-shy former Navy Seal who founded Blackwater a decade ago, and several top State Department officials.  The committee report places a significant share of the blame for Blackwater’s record in Iraq on the State Department, which has paid Blackwater more than $832 million for security services in Iraq and elsewhere, under a diplomatic security contract it shares with two other companies, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.  Blackwater has reported more shootings than the other two companies combined, but it also currently has twice as many employees in Iraq as the other two companies combined.  In the case of the Christmas Eve killing, the report says that an official of the United States Embassy in Iraq suggested paying the slain bodyguard’s family $250,000, but a lower-ranking official said that such a high payment “could cause incidents with people trying to get killed by our guys to financially guarantee their family’s future.” Blackwater ultimately paid the dead man’s family $15,000.  In another fatal shooting cited by the committee, an unidentified State Department official in Baghdad urged Blackwater to pay the victim’s family $5,000. The official wrote, “I hope we can put this unfortunate matter behind us quickly.”  The committee report also cited three other shootings in which Blackwater officials filed misleading reports or otherwise tried to cover up the shootings.  Since mid-2006, Blackwater has been responsible for guarding American diplomats in and around Baghdad, while DynCorp has been responsible for the northern part of the country and Triple Canopy for the south.  State Department officials said last week that Blackwater had run more than 1,800 escort convoys for American diplomats and other senior civilians this year and its employees had discharged their weapons 57 times. Blackwater was involved in 195 instances of gunfire from 2005 until early September, a rate of 1.4 shootings a week, the report says. In 163 of those cases, Blackwater gunmen fired first.  The report also says Blackwater gunmen engaged in offensive operations alongside uniformed American military personnel in violation of their State Department contract, which states that Blackwater guards are to use their weapons only for defensive purposes.  It notes that Blackwater’s contract authorizes its employees to use lethal force only to prevent “imminent and grave danger” to themselves or to the people they are paid to protect. “In practice, however,” the report says, “the vast majority of Blackwater weapons discharges are pre-emptive, with Blackwater forces firing first at a vehicle or suspicious individual prior to receiving any fire.”  The report cites two instances in which Blackwater gunmen engaged in tactical military operations. One was a firefight in Najaf in 2004 during which Blackwater employees set up a machine gun alongside American and Spanish forces. Later that year, a Blackwater helicopter helped an American military squad secure a mosque from which sniper fire had been detected.  Blackwater has dismissed 122 of its employees over the past three years for misuse of weapons, drug or alcohol abuse, lewd conduct or violent behavior, according to the report. It has also terminated workers for insubordination, failure to report incidents or lying about them, and publicly embarrassing the company. One employee was dismissed for showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.  The Senate on Monday gave final approval, 92 to 3, to a defense policy bill that included the establishment of an independent commission to investigate private contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill, which must be reconciled with a House version, faces a veto threat because it includes an expansion of federal hate-crimes laws.  James Risen, David Stout and David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: REPORT SAYS FIRM TRIED COVER-UPS AFTER SHOOTINGS. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Employees of Blackwater USA have engaged in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, according to a new report from Congress.