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WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Blackwater private-security firm said Tuesday that guards working for his company have “acted appropriately at all times” while protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq and accused critics of making “baseless allegations of wrongdoing” against them.

In a contentious hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Erik Prince said it is up to the Justice Department, not Blackwater, to investigate shootings and other acts of violence involving Blackwater employees and, if warranted, prosecute personnel involved in the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

“We fired him,” he said of a drunken Blackwater employee who allegedly shot and killed a security guard of one of Iraq’s vice presidents last Christmas Eve. The man was fined “multiple thousands of dollars,” Prince said. But “we can’t flog him. We can’t incarcerate him. That’s up to the Justice Department.”

The guard has not been charged.

But senior State Department officials testified that it remains unclear whether U.S. laws cover contractors.

“The area of laws available for prosecution is very murky,” said Richard Griffin, head of the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. “That lack of clarity is part of the problem.”

The hearing was prompted by a Sept. 16 incident in which Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Baghdad are alleged to have killed at least 11 Iraqis. But discussion of that incident was prohibited soon after the session began when committee chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the Justice Department has warned that testimony on the shootings could endanger “any potential criminal prosecution.”

The panel released on Monday a majority-staff report that said Blackwater guards had engaged in 195 shooting incidents since early 2005, including several involving previously unreported killings of Iraqi civilians. In more than 80 percent of the incidents, Blackwater guards fired first, the report said.

Although security contractors working for the Defense Department are liable under military codes, it remains unclear whether the same laws – or any others – cover them when their employer is the State Department. The FBI is assisting in the investigation of the Sept. 16 incident “as if it were a criminal investigation,” to protect the integrity of the process and the chain of evidence, in case the law is clarified, said an administration official who declined to be identified.

A Democratic bill that would place all contractors under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act is scheduled to be considered in the House this week, and a similar measure has been introduced in the Senate.

In an opening statement before the committee, Prince, a former Navy SEAL who started Blackwater in 1997, said nearly 30 employees have been killed carrying out their duties in Iraq.

Meanwhile, he said, no one under the protection of his personnel has been killed or seriously injured.

“A lot of people call us mercenaries,” he added. “We are Americans, working for Americans, protecting Americans.”