And while the four Blackwater guards on trial for the deaths of 14 of the victims claimed they believed they were under attack by an insurgent car-bombing attempt, no weapons or explosives were found on any of the dead Iraqis, despite an extensive FBI investigation. Instead, the official US investigation led to three men facing manslaughter charges, one accused of murder, and a fifth admitting manslaughter of other victims and testifying against his former colleagues.

But the 12 jurors who sat through harrowing evidence from victims and their relatives were not asked to assess the proportionality of the response. Like so many controversial encounters with security forces the world over, the crux of case is not whether the dead Iraqis posed a threat to the Blackwater convoy, but whether the guards’ belief that they did was a reasonable one.

From the perspective of soldiers working in hostile environments – whether as contractors or in the military – the distinction is a crucial protection and something that will have weighed heavily on the minds of a jury that included several veterans and US government employees. Other Blackwater employees – also working as guards for the US State Department – had been hit by a roadside bomb elsewhere in the city earlier that day.

Yet remarkably little evidence was presented to justify the guards’ ultimately false belief that the vehicles in Nisour Square posed a similar threat.

Both the prosecution and defence teams agreed that the primary reason for the guards thinking the convoy was about to be blown up was they had seen a white Kia sedan rolling toward them in what they claimed was a suspicious manner.

Defence lawyers allege the car was moving relatively fast and the guards shot at its engine block first to disable it, before killing the occupants. Prosecution lawyers allege the occupants – who turned out to be a medical student and his mother – were shot first and the car rolled forward slowly once the driver was dead because it was an automatic and his foot was off the brake.

The main alternative evidence presented to support the theory of self-defence concerned reports from some in the convoy that they had heard the sound of AK-47 gun fire and concluded it must have come from insurgents firing on the convoy.

Though this was not corroborated by any Iraqi witnesses, defence lawyers argued the theory was supported by a handful of AK-47 bullet casings found near the scene and several small dents on the Blackwater armoured vehicles and a leaking radiator that could have been caused by incoming rounds.

Prosecution lawyers argue that the damage was more likely to have been caused by fragments from the grenades that the guards were using and that bullet casings were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad at the time.

As justification for the killing of 14 unarmed civilians, several of whom appear to have been shot in the back allegedly while trying to flee the scene, such evidence may appear painfully thin. But jurors asked to convict the four defendants – Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard – need only reasonable doubt to acquit in such circumstances.

Since an earlier attempt to try the same case collapsed when a judge questioned the way the defendants were initially interrogated, for the many Iraqis enraged by the incident, this may be the last chance to hold the men accountable.

The IG found that Northrop and DynCorp charged the Army for hundreds of DynCorp employees lacking the required qualifications and billed for employees who reported working more than 24 hours in a day. The IG put some of the blame on the Army for relying on Northrop to verify employees’ qualifications and for not adequately reviewing contractor invoices. The IG report made no mention of whether the Army planned to hold the contractors accountable—aside from seeking a refund for the improper charges—or whether the Army personnel who managed the contract would face discipline.

The IG had been tipped off in October 2012 by the two plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit, DynCorp employees Adele Hollis and Xavier Egan. They claim DynCorp knowingly inflated labor costs on several CNTPO subcontract task orders, the largest of which involved providing flight operations, maintenance, logistics support, and training services in Afghanistan.

“Instead of trying to achieve the lawful profits that were permitted under the Contract and Subcontract,” they allege in the complaint, “DynCorp made its profits another way—by cheating.”

They allege that DynCorp regularly hired workers who were not qualified for the positions DynCorp specified in the invoices it submitted to prime contractor Northrop Grumman, which in turn billed the government. In so doing, the plaintiffs claim, DynCorp was able to reap nearly $45 million in illicit profits from 2008 to 2012. (Taking into account the mark-ups Northrop added to DynCorp’s charges, the lawsuit estimates the government suffered more than $50 million in actual damages, which is tripled under the False Claims Act.)

The plaintiffs only allege employee misclassification—they make no mention of the egregious time card padding found by the IG. Also, they claim DynCorp kept Northrop in the dark about its labor pricing shenanigans.

Hollis and Egan explain in the complaint that they contacted the Pentagon IG through its fraud hotline only after they were brushed off by DynCorp’s upper management and it became clear the company would not comply with its duty to report to the government the overbilling. Interestingly, they don’t claim whistleblower retaliation, even though they allege DynCorp eliminated their job positions after they reported the alleged wrongdoing to management.

“DynCorp International has cooperated with investigators throughout their inquiry into this issue, has complied fully with our obligations under the subcontract, and nothing improper was submitted by DI to our customer,” the company told POGO in an emailed statement

When POGO blogged about the Pentagon IG report in May, we recounted the troubled history of the CNTPO program. Inspector General audits in 2009 and 2011 found weak contract oversight and management by the Army and hundreds of thousands of dollars in contractor overbilling. In 2011, Wired magazine reported that this $15 billion program—which funds activities throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America—was being managed by just ten Army personnel stationed in Hunstville, Alabama.

With oversight spread so thin, we worry about the extent of contracting abuses throughout the program. Could the recently unsealed whistleblower lawsuit against DynCorp signal an oncoming wave of similar legal actions?