Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

On Capitol Hill, Republican operatives seized the opportunity to escalate their anti-immigrant, proprivatization, promilitarization campaign and push forward with an agenda that would have been difficult to popularize before 9/11. Now, the new national hysteria provided the ideal turf to wage the battle. In the midst of this, on May 18, 2005, the House of Representatives passed the first Department of Homeland Security Authorization Bill, which approved the hiring of some two thousand new border patrol agents. On May 24, the House Homeland Security Committee’s management integration and oversight subcommittee held a hearing on the training of these new agents. One of the central purposes of the hearing seemed to be to promote outsourcing the border-training program to the private sector.

The first panel of the hearings consisted of two U.S. government immigration officials. The second panel represented the private industry. For this panel, there were just two speakers: T. J. Bonner and Gary Jackson. 52“We need reinforcements desperately, and we need them yesterday,” Bonner told the hearing. “There’s a crying need for agents clearly, which is borne out by the call for citizen patrol groups, military on the border. Clearly we’re not doing our job. But the reason we need more border patrol agents is to secure our borders. We need to spend whatever it takes, not try and do it on the cheap, not try and figure out how we can cut corners to hire as many border patrol agents as possible, but to spend whatever it takes to support these men and women so that they can go out there.” 53Jackson began his testimony by running through a brief, selective history of Blackwater. The company, he said, was founded “from a clear vision of the need for innovative, flexible training and security solutions in support of national and global security challenges. Both the military and law enforcement agencies needed additional capacity to fully train their personnel to the standards required to keep our country secure. Because these constraints on training venues continued to increase, Blackwater believed that the U.S. government would embrace outsourcing of quality training. We built Blackwater’s facility in North Carolina to provide the capacity that we thought our government would need to meet its future training requirements. Over the years, Blackwater has not only become an industry leader in training but at the cutting edge.” Jackson said that as the company grew, “We quickly realized the value to the government of one-stop shopping. While there were other companies who offered one or two distinct training services, none of them offer all of our services and certainly not at one location.” The importance of this, Jackson said, “cannot be overstated. Being able to conduct training at a centralized locality is the most cost-effective, efficient way of ensuring that new federal law enforcement agents are trained to the level demanded by today’s national and homeland security challenges.” 54

Alabama Republican Mike Rogers, who chaired the Congressional hearing, blasted the costs of government training programs for border agents, saying, “It’s going to cost more to train a border patrol officer in a ten-month program than it is to get a four-year degree at Harvard University.” Rogers asked: if Blackwater was given $100,000 per agent, did Jackson believe the company “would give them equal or better training than they’re receiving” from the federal government’s training program? “I could assure you of that,” Jackson shot back. He told the lawmakers that Blackwater could train all two thousand new border patrol agents in one year. “Blackwater successfully conducts a similar public-private partnership with the Department of State to recruit, train, deploy, and manage diplomatic security specialists in Iraq and other areas of interest. Securing our borders will continue to be a challenge for our nation,” Jackson said. “The urgency is clear. History repeatedly demonstrates that innovation and efficiency are what alter the strategic balance, and Blackwater offers both in support of training new border patrol agents. Just as the private sector has responded in moving mail and packages around the world in a more efficient manner, so too can Blackwater respond to the CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) emerging and compelling training needs.”

A few days later, Blackwater’s Tactical Weekly newsletter carried the news headline “Border Patrol Should Consider Outsourcing Its Training, Lawmaker Says.” 55The article, from the Federal Times, reported that “[Congressman] Rogers said the government may need to turn to Blackwater USA or other contractor if they can do the job cheaper. ‘We have a fiduciary obligation to taxpayers to look at other options,’ Rogers said. ‘It’s irresponsible to go forward with that in the absence of supporting documentation.’” 56

In November 2005, Blackwater and the American Red Cross held a joint “Gulf Region Relief” fundraiser that symbolically brought Blackwater’s diverse federal contracts full circle. The keynote speaker, welcomed with a standing ovation, was Blackwater’s once-prized client, L. Paul Bremer, whose book on Iraq had just been published. Blackwater claimed to have raised $138,000 that night 57—about $100,000 shy of the company’s estimated daily take from the Katrina contracting jackpot. “Tonight was a success because it was about Americans helping Americans,” said Gary Jackson, repeating what had become Blackwater’s new mantra. “Our great employees and our special relationship with Ambassador Bremer and the Red Cross made it possible to pull off this event.” 58It was reminiscent of the tobacco industry cheering its own meager contributions to antismoking campaigns, while at the same time aggressively marketing cigarettes with exponentially more resources. In reality, Blackwater gained far more from the hurricane than New Orleans’s victims did from Blackwater’s services.

President Bush used the Katrina disaster to try to repeal the Posse Comitatus Act (the ban on using U.S. troops in domestic law enforcement), and Blackwater and other security firms initiated a push to install their paramilitaries on U.S. soil, bringing the war home in yet another ominous way. “This is a trend,” said one Blackwater mercenary in New Orleans. “You’re going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.” Blackwater had now solidified its position not only as one of the great beneficiaries of the “war on terror” but as a major player in several of the key arenas of the neoconservative agenda. On the one-year anniversary of Katrina, Gary Jackson used the opportunity to showcase Blackwater’s services. “When the Department of Homeland Security called with an emergent and compelling requirement for a turnkey security solution for multiple federal assets, we responded,” he wrote. “Our Rapid Response Enterprise has global reach and can make a positive difference in the lives of those who are affected by natural disasters and terrorist events.” 59

Shortly after Blackwater’s Katrina profits started rolling in, Erik Prince sent out a memo on Prince Group letterhead to “all Blackwater USA officers, employees, and independent contractors.” Its subject: “Blackwater USA National Security Oath and Leadership Standards.” It required Blackwater workers to swear the same oath to the Constitution as Blackwater’s “National Security-related clients” to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…. So help me God.” 60

In January 2006, as Blackwater continued to enjoy the great windfall from Hurricane Katrina, its powerful lobbying firm, the Alexander Strategy Group, was brought down in the flames of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Abramoff was a member of President Bush’s 2001 Transition Team, a powerful Republican lobbyist, and a close associate of many of the most powerful political players in the United States. In March 2006, after months of sustained revelations about Abramoff’s influence-peddling activities, he ended up pleading guilty to five felony counts in one of the greatest corruption scandals in Washington in recent history. ASG was one of several Abramoff-related casualties. The well-connected Republican lobbying firm, founded and run by former senior staffers of ex-House majority leader Tom DeLay, was also deeply entangled in several other scandals rocking Washington at the time. As Abramoff was going down, ASG’s lobbyists feverishly scrambled to dissociate themselves from the sinking ship.