Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THE FACE OF BLACKWATER

  Introduction

  CHAPTER ONE - MAKING A KILLING

  CHAPTER TWO - THE LITTLE PRINCE

  CHAPTER THREE - BLACKWATER BEGINS

  CHAPTER FOUR - FALLUJAH BEFORE BLACKWATER

  CHAPTER FIVE - GUARDING BUSH’S MAN IN BAGHDAD

  CHAPTER SIX - SCOTTY GOES TO WAR

  CHAPTER SEVEN - THE AMBUSH

  Like “Slaughtered Sheep”

  CHAPTER EIGHT - “WE WILL PACIFY FALLUJAH”

  CHAPTER NINE - NAJAF, IRAQ: 4.04.04

  04/04/04

  CHAPTER TEN - “THIS IS FOR THE AMERICANS OF BLACKWATER”

  The War on Al Jazeera

  Collective Punishment

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - MR. PRINCE GOES TO WASHINGTON

  Blackwater’s Lobbyists

  Doing Kafka Proud

  Ambushed Again

  CHAPTER TWELVE - CASPIAN PIPELINE DREAMS

  Enter Blackwater

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - BLACKWATER’S MAN IN CHILE

  Blackwater’s Plan Colombia

  Business as Usual

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - “THE WHORES OF WAR”

  Contract Disputes

  “Whores of War”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - THE CRASH OF BLACKWATER 61

  The Political Question Doctrine

  The Feres Doctrine

  Exception to Federal Tort Claims Act

  Blackwater’s Curious Aviation Division

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - COFER BLACK: THE GLOVES COME OFF

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - DEATH SQUADS, MERCENARIES, AND THE “SALVADOR OPTION”

  “There Continues to Be the Need for This Kind of Security”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - JOSEPH SCHMITZ: CHRISTIAN SOLDIER

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - BLACKWATER DOWN: BAGHDAD ON THE BAYOU

  Blackwater and the Border

  K Street Collapse

  CHAPTER TWENTY - “THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE”

  Darfur Dreams

  Blackwater and the Sleeping Lion

  The South African Example

  Greystone

  “The Knights of the Round Table”

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  NOTES

  INDEX

  Copyright Page

  Praise for Blackwater

  Winner of the George Polk Book Award

  Winner of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism

  “A crackling exposé of the secretive military contractor Blackwater.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “The biggest book of the year is Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Long before the mainstream media and Congress were paying attention, Scahill exposed the workings of this lawless private army. It’s an amazingly researched and well-told story of the nexus between far-right fundamentalists, the Bush-Cheney war machine, privatization, and profiteering.”—Matthew Rothschild for The Progressive

  “Scahill provided me information . . . which I have not been able to get from the U.S. military. . . . I have read more from Mr. Scahill, than I’ve got from our own government.”

  —Representative Marcy Kaptur, Defense Appropriations Committee

  “[T]his is no uninformed partisan screed . . . Meticulously documented and encyclopedic in scope . . . it’s a comprehensive and authoritative guide . . . this book serves as a provocative primer for advancing the debate.”

  —Bill Sizemore, Pulitzer-prize nominated journalist, Virginian-Pilot

  “The utterly gripping and explosive story of how the Bush administration has spent tens of millions of dollars building a parallel corporate army that functions in Iraq outside the law . . . When Blackwater first came out, it was barely reviewed and TV news was so afraid of lawsuits that the book was nearly shut out. Fast-forward to this autumn, when the Iraqi government accused Blackwater of massacring civilians in downtown Baghdad. Suddenly the book looked prescient and we learned that the same press corps that had cheered on the war had also missed the biggest story in the war zone: that Iraq is more than a failed occupation; it’s a radical experiment in corporate rule.”—Naomi Klein, The Guardian (London)

  “Andy McNab couldn’t have invented this prescient tale of the private army of mercenaries run by a Christian conservative millionaire who, in turn, bankrolls the president. A chilling expose of the ultimate military outsource.”

  —Christopher Fowler, The New Review’s “Best Books of 2007”

  “Fascinating and magnificently documented . . . Jeremy Scahill’s new book is a brilliant exposé and belongs on the reading list of any conscientious citizen.”

  —Scott Horton, International and Military Law Expert, Columbia University Law School

  “Scahill is rightfully concerned about the moral and policy ramifications of such a powerful and unaccountable surrogate military, let alone the effect that its forces—who are paid six-figure salaries—have on the morale of normal soldiers. But the sternest message of this book has to do with the dangers a mercenary army poses, and always has: that it can always be turned on its host.” —Star-Ledger

  “[Scahill’s] book is so scary and so illuminating.”

  —Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time

  “Jeremy Scahill’s account of the increasing governmental dependence on private contractors who make massive profit via death and destruction reads like a futuristic page-turner. Only he is not writing about the future; he is writing about the present, and his research is encyclopedically documented.”—Courier-Journal

  “At Blackwater USA, Jeremy Scahill’s is the face they love to hate . . . [He is] perhaps the private military company’s most dogged critic.”

  —Virginian-Pilot

  “Jeremy Scahill’s exhaustive Blackwater appears with perfect timing . . . Dwight Eisenhower warned decades ago against the emergence of a military-industrial complex. Scahill sees in the rise of Blackwater the fulfillment of that dark prophecy.”—Weekend Australian

  “Blackwater being rarely out of the news lately, this is a very useful survey of modern mercenaries—or, as they prefer to be called, ‘private security contractors’ in the ‘peace and stability industry’ . . . Scahill is a sharp investigative writer.”—The Guardian (London)

  “It should be mandatory reading. It’s very interesting—and scary.”

  —Scarlett Johansson, actor

  “Jeremy Scahill actually doesn’t know anything about Blackwater.”

  —Martin Strong, vice president, Blackwater Worldwide

  For unembedded journalists, particularly Arab media workers, who risk and

  often lose their lives to be the eyes and ears of the world. Without their courage

  and sacrifice, history would indeed be written by self-declared victors, the rich,

  and the powerful.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS BOOK would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of my colleague Garrett Ordower. Garrett is a remarkable investigative journalist who spent countless hours filing Freedom of Information Act requests, researching complicated people and events, digging up facts and figures, and interviewing sources. He also wrote solid first drafts of some chapters for this book. I am forever grateful to Garrett for his diligent and careful work on this project and his unflinching dedication to old-fashioned muckraking. This book is as much his as it is mine. I look forward to Garrett’s future endeavors i
n law and journalism and would be honored to work with him again.

  Additionally, I would like to thank Eric Stoner who provided research assistance in the paperback updates of this book. I also wish to alert the reader to the fact that Blackwater refused to grant me interviews with company executives. A spokesperson did write to “thank” me for my “interest in Blackwater” but said that the company was “unable to accommodate” my request for interviews with the men who run Blackwater. I am indebted to the solid reporting of Jay Price and Joseph Neff of the Raleigh News & Observer and Bill Sizemore and Joanne Kimberlin of the Virginian-Pilot newspapers. These reporters and their groundbreaking work have done the public a great service in chronicling the Blackwater story and the explosive growth of the private military industry. Special thanks also to T. Christian Miller of the Los Angeles Times and Anthony Shadid and Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post, as well as authors P. W. Singer and Robert Young Pelton. I would encourage readers to read the acknowledgments at the end of this book for a more comprehensive understanding of the number of people who contributed to this process.

  THE FACE OF BLACKWATER

  October 2, 2007

  Washington D.C.

  ERIK PRINCE, the boy-faced thirty-eight-year-old owner of Blackwater, marched confidently into the regally decorated chamber of the Congressional hearing room and was immediately swarmed by a mob of paparazzi. Cameras flashed and heads turned inside the packed room. The man at the helm of a small army of mercenaries was escorted not by his elite squad of ex-Navy SEALs and Special Forces operators but by an army of lawyers and advisers. Within minutes, his image would be beamed across the globe, including onto television screens throughout Iraq, where rage against his men was building by the moment. His company was now infamous, and for the first time since the occupation began, it had a face.

  It was a moment Prince had long resisted. Before that warm October day in Washington in 2007, he had shunned the spotlight, and his people were known to stifle journalists’ attempts at taking his picture. When Prince did appear in public, it was almost exclusively at military conferences, where his role was to extol the virtues of his company and its work for the U.S. government, which consisted, in part, of keeping alive the most hated officials in Iraq. Since September 11, Blackwater had risen to a position of extraordinary prominence in the “war on terror” apparatus, and its contracts with the federal government had grown to more than $1 billion. On this day, the man in control of a force at the vanguard of the Bush administration’s offensive war in Iraq would be on the defensive.

  Shortly after 10 a.m. on October 2, Prince was sworn in as the star witness in a hearing of Representative Henry Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The muscular, clean-shaven ex-Navy SEAL wore a smartly tailored blue suit—more CEO than cowboy contractor. On the desk in front of Prince’s chair was a simple paper sign that read, “Mr. Prince.” The Republicans attempted to adjourn the meeting in protest before it started, but the measure was defeated. In classic Waxman fashion, the advertised title of the event was generic and understated: “Hearing on Private Security Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.” But the reason for Prince’s appearance on Capitol Hill that day was very specific and politically charged. Two weeks earlier, his Blackwater forces had been at the center of the deadliest mercenary action in Iraq since the start of the occupation, an incident one senior U.S. military official said could have an impact “worse than Abu Ghraib.” It was a massacre some had dubbed “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday.”

  INTRODUCTION

  BAGHDAD’S BLOODY SUNDAY

  SEPTEMBER 16, 2007, approximately 12:08 p.m., Nisour Square, Baghdad, Iraq: It was a steamy hot day, with temperatures reaching 100 degrees. The heavily armed Blackwater convoy entered the congested intersection in the Mansour district of the Iraqi capital. The once upscale section of Baghdad was still lined with boutiques, cafes, and art galleries dating back to better days. The ominous caravan consisted of four large South African-made “Mamba” armored vehicles with 7.62-millimeter machine guns mounted on top.1 For Iraqi police, it had become a standard part of their workday in occupied Iraq to stop traffic to make room for U.S. VIPs, protected by heavily armed private soldiers, to blaze through. Ask U.S. officials and they’ll say the reason was to prevent an insurgent attack on U.S. convoys. More often, though, the Iraqi police did this for the safety of Iraqi civilians who risked being gunned down merely for getting too close to the most highly valued lives in their country—those of foreign occupation officials.

  As the Blackwater convoy was entering the square that day, a young Iraqi medical student named Ahmed Hathem al-Rubaie was driving his mother, Mahasin, in the family’s white Opal sedan. They had just dropped off Ahmed’s father, Jawad, a successful pathologist, near the hospital where he worked. They then had gone on their way to run errands, including picking up college applications for Ahmed’s sister. The plan was to finish up and return later to pick up Jawad. As fate would have it, they found themselves stuck near Nisour Square. The Rubaies were devout Muslims and were fasting in observance of the holy month of Ramadan. Ahmed was multilingual, a soccer fan, and was in his third year of medical school, where he was training to become a surgeon. Medicine was in his DNA. Like his father, Ahmed’s passenger that day, his mother, was also a doctor—an allergist. Jawad says the family could have left Iraq, but they believed they were needed in the country. “I feel pain when I see doctors leaving Iraq,” he said.2

  Ali Khalaf Salman, an Iraqi traffic cop on duty in Nisour Square that day, remembers vividly the moment when the Blackwater convoy entered the intersection, spurring him and his colleagues to scramble to stop traffic. But as the Mambas entered the square, the convoy suddenly made a surprise U-turn and proceeded to drive the wrong way on a one-way street.3 As Khalaf watched, the convoy came to an abrupt halt. He says a large white man with a mustache, positioned atop the third vehicle in the Blackwater convoy, began to fire his weapon “randomly.”4

  Khalaf looked in the direction of the shots, on Yarmouk Road, and heard a woman screaming, “My son! My son!”5 The police officer sprinted toward the voice and found a middle-aged woman inside a vehicle holding a twenty-year-old man who had been shot in the forehead and was covered in blood. “I tried to help the young man, but his mother was holding him so tight,” Khalaf recalled.6 Another Iraqi policeman, Sarhan Thiab, also ran to the car. “We tried to help him,” Thiab said. “I saw the left side of his head was destroyed and his mother was crying out, ‘My son, my son! Help me, help me!’”7

  Officer Khalaf recalled looking toward the Blackwater shooters: “I raised my left arm high in the air to try to signal to the convoy to stop the shooting.”8 He says he thought the men would cease fire, given that he was a clearly identified police officer.9 The young man’s body was still in the driver’s seat of the automatic vehicle and, as Khalaf and Thiab stood there, it began to roll forward, perhaps because the dead man’s foot remained on the accelerator.10 Blackwater guards later said they initially opened fire on the vehicle because it was speeding and would not stop, a claim disputed by scores of witnesses.11 Aerial photos of the scene later showed that the car had not even entered the traffic circle when it was fired upon by Blackwater, 12 while the New York Times reported, “The car in which the first people were killed did not begin to closely approach the Blackwater convoy until the Iraqi driver had been shot in the head and lost control of his vehicle.”13 Thiab explained, “I tried to use hand signals to make the Blackwater people understand that the car was moving on its own and we were trying to stop it. We were trying to get the woman out but had to run for cover.”14

  “Don’t shoot, please!” Khalaf recalled yelling.15 But as he stood with his hand raised, Khalaf says, a gunman from the fourth Blackwater vehicle opened fire on the mother gripping her son and shot her dead before Khalaf’s and Thiab’s eyes.16 “I saw parts of the woman’s head flying in front of me, blow up,” Thiab said. “They immediately opened heavy fire at
us.”17 Within moments, Khalaf says, so many shots had been fired at the car from “big machine guns” that it exploded, engulfing the bodies inside in flames, melting their flesh into one.18 “Each of their four vehicles opened heavy fire in all directions, they shot and killed everyone in cars facing them and people standing on the street,” Thiab recalled. “When it was over we were looking around and about fifteen cars had been destroyed, the bodies of the killed were strewn on the pavements and road.”19 When later asked by U.S. investigators why he never fired at the Blackwater men, Khalaf told them, “I am not authorized to shoot, and my job is to look after the traffic.”20