HILO, Hawai'i — The daughter of a retired soldier from Hawai'i who was killed in Fallujah, Iraq, on a mission for private security company Blackwater USA said a newly released congressional report on Blackwater will help the families of the four slain contractors finally learn what happened that day.

Kristal Batalona, daughter of Big Island resident and retired U.S. Army Ranger Wesley Batalona, said she learned from news accounts of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report that Blackwater allegedly impeded the congressional investigation by falsely claiming that key records related to her father's death were classified.

The report also alleges the company tried but failed to have documents classified after the fact in connection with the March 31, 2004, ambush that killed Batalona, who was 48.

"I know that they (the records) will be very powerful to what we are trying to accomplish," Kristal Batalona said. "I'm still at a loss for words about it. I think it's huge, it's going to be huge to what we've been trying to say for three years."

The Batalona family joined with other families of the slain contractors in suing Blackwater for wrongful death to try to learn what happened.

The lawsuit alleges Blackwater sent Batalona, Jerry Zovko, Scott Helvenston and Michael Teague to Fallujah with inadequate equipment and protection. The men were ambushed and killed while escorting a convoy of three empty trucks to pick up kitchen equipment for a food company.

A mob dragged the bodies of the contractors through the streets and hanged two burned corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River, and images of the aftermath of the ambush were televised around the world.

The families' lawsuit alleges the men should have been traveling in armored vehicles, and should have had additional crew members in each vehicle acting as rear gunners.

Blackwater has denied the allegations and has filed a $10 million counterclaim that alleges families violated employment contracts prohibiting the men or their estates from suing the company.

The scathing House committee report released Thursday concluded Blackwater decided to use unarmored vehicles to save money.

The committee cited an internal Blackwater report that said Blackwater's contract paid for armored vehicles but that "management in North Carolina ... made the decision to go with soft skin due to the cost."

The report also alleges the two Blackwater vehicles should have had three men each, but were sent out with only two. The two extra men were pulled from the mission to handle administrative duties.

Without that third man in each vehicle, the vehicles were vulnerable to attack from the rear, according to the report.

Control Risk Group, a British security company, twice refused to accept the same mission to escort three flatbed trucks through Fallujah because it was too dangerous to take a slow-moving convoy through such dangerous territory, according to the report.

Even the internal review Blackwater prepared on the attack concluded the teams did not have time to do proper mission planning, and lacked adequate maps of the city, according to the report.

"I think that's going to help us in our case to understand what happened that day, because we have no idea," said Kristal Batalona, who now lives in Georgia. "Blackwater has answered none of our questions."

"I think this is the right step where we need to go," she said. "It just seems we had so many road blocks with them, and to have Congress get up and take interest in this and do an investigation, I actually see that it's going somewhere, and I hope that it goes somewhere to the point where we get some accountability for this industry.

"It's amazing what they can get away with." she said.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.