Several officials identified the Iraqi lawyer as Jaafar al-Mousawi, who had earlier served as the chief prosecutor in the trial of Saddam Hussein.

Image Baghdad's Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis died in a shooting involving Blackwater Worldwide. Credit... Eros Hoagland for The New York Times

The second document is a response from a senior Embassy official, an e-mail message warning Blackwater officials not to bribe the Iraqi government, the officials said. In an interview in Baghdad on Friday, Mr. Mousawi said that in February 2008 he worked with top Blackwater officials to spend up to $1 million to compensate the families of the Nisour Square victims. He said he consulted with Mr. Maliki about the payments.

“He said, ‘Go ahead and help because these are poor people,’ ” Mr. Mousawi said.

Saying that 40 families received a total of about $800,000, he added that he believed that Blackwater hoped the compensation would help “moisten the situation with the Iraqi government to get the license.”

But he said that he was unaware of any efforts by Blackwater executives to bribe Iraqi officials, and that news reports misinterpreted the purpose of the victims’ fund as intended bribes.

Several former Blackwater employees, however, had told The Times that Blackwater’s president at the time, Gary Jackson, authorized about $1 million for payments to Iraqi officials, with only a small portion intended for victims. While the documents apparently do not offer proof that Blackwater paid off any Iraqi officials, the American officials who have reviewed them say they suggest that officials at the United States Embassy in Baghdad were concerned enough about Blackwater’s plans to issue the warning to the company.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. Stacey DeLuke, a spokeswoman for Blackwater, now called Xe Services, which is based in Moyock, N.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

The bribery investigation is still in its early stages, according to officials familiar with the inquiry. They said that lawyers in the fraud section at the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters were working with federal prosecutors in North Carolina, where a federal grand jury has been examining Blackwater’s activities for several years. The State Department is also cooperating with the bribery investigation, several officials said.