Blackwater Shield of Silence Crumbling Amid Probe

A flood of federal investigators are beginning to pierce the armor of silence surrounding Blackwater guards at their Baghdad encampment, with some seriously questioning the justification of last month's shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis. “Some guys are thinking it was not a good shoot," one guard told the New York Times. "I think it was the application of deadly force gone horribly wrong.”

Others talk of the rift among team members that day, when some guards continued to fire into Iraqi cars as others yelled at them to stop. A growing number of Blackwater guards believe criminal charges will be filed against some of the team members who opened fire, most of them young ex-Marines. (More Iraq stories.)