Think twice before you blow the whistle on the BFEE

[burythehatchet]

Everyone has heard stories of selfless idealists killed in Iraq. Stoffel was not one of those and probably would not have wanted to be seen that way. He was a self-professed man of action, one who was proudly and openly in Iraq to make a fortune. Still, he supported the war and the promise of a new Middle East and was a solid Republican, an enthusiastic backer of George W. Bush, and a donor to the president's campaigns.

There had been obstacles in Stoffel's way: distractions, false starts, broken promises. There had been encounters with con men, hucksters, and thugs. Stoffel—who'd come to Iraq on the strength of his connections with a circle of Washington lobbyists associated with the invasion's eminence grise, Ahmed Chalabi—had recently accused the Iraqi government and American employees of U.S. military contractors of corruption in a massive deal involving military equipment. But he believed his friends in Washington had sorted it all out and that he was going to be paid the millions of dollars he felt he was owed. An Army colonel who saw him that day said he appeared “pleased.”

Two days later, Stoffel's car was discovered in a grim neighborhood along the Tigris. The hood was crumpled like a paper bag, the windshield a haze of cracks. The dashboard was covered with blood. Stoffel had been shot repeatedly in the head and upper back. His friend and employee, Joe Wemple, had been shot once through the head.

A mysterious insurgent group has claimed credit for Stoffel's killing; another terrorist group celebrated the murder and called him an American spy. His friends, though, aren't convinced that this was just another act of violence by militants in Iraq, and neither, apparently, is the FBI, which is now investigating his death. In the chaos of Iraq, it's likely that no one will ever know for sure why Dale Stoffel was murdered.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0506.roston.html