Victims of an Outsourced War -- Printout -- TIME

Victims of an Outsourced War -- Printout -- TIME: " *

Thursday, Mar. 15, 2007
Victims of an Outsourced War
By Brian Bennett

In many ways, Katy Helvenston is like any mother who has lost a son in Iraq. She talks to others who have survived their kids. She wonders whether she could have done more to keep him out of harm's way. She breaks down in tears at random intervals.

But Helvenston has problems that military mothers do not have. Her son Scott, who was killed in 2004 at the age of 38, was neither a soldier nor, really, a civilian. He was an ex--Navy seal who worked for a private security firm called Blackwater. Instead of a headstone at Arlington, he has his name etched in a rock at Blackwater's corporate campus in North Carolina. And Helvenston says that three years later, she still has no real answers from the company about what led to her son's death--a death that she believes was due in part to the company's negligence.

You probably remember how Scott Helvenston and his three colleagues died. Video of their killings made newscasts around the world on March 31, 2004, when a Blackwater security convoy was ambushed by gunmen in Fallujah, Iraq. The four men were dragged from their cars, mutilate"