Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

The hurricane’s aftermath ushered in the homecoming of the “war on terror,” a contract bonanza whereby companies reaped massive Iraq-like profits without leaving the country and at a minuscule fraction of the risk. To critics of the government’s handling of the hurricane, the message was clear. “That’s what happens when the victims are black folks vilified before and after the storm—instead of aid, they get contained,” said Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and an editor of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch. 40Kromm alleged that while seemingly endless amounts of money were doled out to scandal-ridden contractors, vital projects had “gotten zero or little money” in New Orleans in the same period, including: job creation, hospital and school reconstruction, affordable housing, and wetlands restoration. Even in this context, DHS continued to defend the Blackwater contract. In a March 1, 2006, memo to FEMA, Matt Jadacki, the DHS Special Inspector General for Gulf Coast Hurricane Recovery, wrote that the Federal Protective Service considered Blackwater “the best value to the government.” 41

A month after Katrina hit, Blackwater’s guards were also working the Hurricane Rita gravy train. At its high point the company had about six hundred contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi. 42By the summer of 2006, Blackwater’s operations in New Orleans were staffed more by police types than the commandos of the early deployment. The paramilitary gear was eventually replaced by black polo shirts with the company logo, khaki pants, and pistols as Blackwater men patrolled the parking lot of a Wal-Mart that had been converted into a FEMA outpost. 43In late August 2006, Blackwater was still guarding such vital public institutions as the city library—which was being used by FEMA—where one patron, after allegedly being refused entry by a Blackwater guard and finding himself unable to get an explanation as to why, said the “brazen representative declined to give his name and called a supervisor who declined to give his name or the name of the representative who denied [the man] access to the library.” 44In Baton Rouge, Blackwater set up a Katrina zone headquarters, renting space at the World Evangelism Bible College and Seminary, run by disgraced Christian televangelist Jimmy Swaggart (whose public career went up in flames in 1988 when he was caught with a prostitute in a motel). 45

For Blackwater, Katrina was a momentous occasion—its first official deployment on U.S. soil. While it raked in a hefty sum for the domestic disaster operations, the greatest benefit to the company was in breaking into a new, lucrative market for its mercenary services—far from the bloodletting of Iraq. As the Virginian-Pilot , which is right in Blackwater’s backyard, observed, the hurricanes of 2005 represented “a potential plug for a hole in Blackwater’s business model. Private military companies thrive on war—an icy fact that could gut the now-booming industry when or if Iraq settles down. Katrina offered Blackwater a chance to diversify into natural disasters.” 46Erik Prince has said that prior to Katrina, “We had no plans to be in the domestic security business at all.” 47In the aftermath of the hurricane, though, Blackwater launched a new domestic operations division. “Look, none of us loves the idea that devastation became a business opportunity,” said the new division’s deputy, Seamus Flatley, a retired Navy fighter pilot. “It’s a distasteful fact, but it is what it is. Doctors, lawyers, funeral directors, even newspapers—they all make a living off of bad things happening. So do we, because somebody’s got to handle it.” 48

But critics saw the deployment of Blackwater’s forces domestically as a dangerous precedent that could undermine U.S. democracy. “Their actions may not be subject to constitutional limitations that apply to both federal and state officials and employees—including First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights to be free from illegal searches and seizures. Unlike police officers, they are not trained in protecting constitutional rights,” said CCR’s Ratner. “These kind of paramilitary groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law. The use of these paramilitary groups is an extremely dangerous threat to our rights.”

One quality Blackwater USA has consistently put on display is its uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right moment—especially when it comes to scooping up lucrative government contracts. Far from being a matter of simple luck, the company has dedicated substantial resources to monitoring trends in the world of law enforcement and military actions and has hired many well-connected ex-spooks, former federal officials, and military brass. Like the best entrepreneurs, Blackwater is always looking to provide what it refers to as “turnkey” solutions for problems ailing the government bureaucracy or to fill the seemingly endless “national security” holes appearing in the wake of the “war on terror.” In the years following 9/11, Blackwater proved remarkably adept at placing itself in the middle of many of the prized battles the administration (and the right in general) was waging: rapid privatization of government, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and bolstering Christian/Republican friendly businesses.

While the hurricanes expedited Blackwater’s domestic program, it was by no means the first time the company had considered the major profits to be made on the home front. In fact, in mid-2005, three months before Katrina hit—and with its forces firmly entrenched in Iraq and a taxpayer-funded I.V. running directly from Washington, D.C., to Moyock—Blackwater quietly threw its hat into the ring of another major front: immigration and “border security.” After the launch of the “war on terror,” anti-immigrant groups used the fear of further attacks to push for greater militarization of the U.S. borders—with some calling for a massive fence stretching hundreds of miles along the U.S./Mexico border—and to “crack down” on people they characterized as “illegal aliens.”

In April 2005, the anti-immigrant/pro-militarized-border cause got a huge boost as the Minuteman Project Civil Defense Corps exploded onto the scene. The overwhelmingly white movement organized anti-immigrant militias to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico. The Minutemen, named after the militias that fought in the American Revolution, billed themselves as “Americans doing the jobs our Government won’t do.” They claimed to have hundreds of volunteers from thirty-seven states, among them many former military and law enforcement officers as well as pilots who would do aerial surveillance.

One of Blackwater’s key Congressional allies, Representative Duncan Hunter, began stepping up his campaign for a massive “border fence,” 49while Erik Prince’s old boss, Representative Dana Rohrabacher endorsed the Minutemen, saying the militias “demonstrated the positive effects of an increased presence on the southwest border. There’s no denying that more border patrol agents would help create a stronger border and decrease illegal crossings that may include international terrorists.” 50T. J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council—a lobbying organization—echoed those sentiments, invoking the 9/11 attacks. “Even if a terrorist is a one-in-a-million occurrence, with several million people coming into the country every year, very soon they reach that critical mass necessary to carry out another attack on the magnitude of September 11,” he said. “This is totally unacceptable from the standpoint of homeland security and national security. We have to gain control of our borders.” 51