Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

In late 2005 more controversy hit Aegis when a video was posted on a Web site run by a former Aegis employee that appeared to show private security contractors shooting at civilian vehicles driving on highways in Iraq. 95The video looked as though it was filmed from a camera mounted in the rear window of an SUV. According to the Washington Post, “It contained several brief clips of cars being strafed by machine-gun fire, set to the music of the Elvis Presley song ‘Mystery Train.’ A version posted months later contained laughter and the voices of men joking with one another during the shootings. The scenes were aired widely on Arabic-language satellite television and prompted denunciations from several members of Congress.” 96A subsequent investigation by the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division determined there was a “lack of probable cause to believe that a crime was committed.” 97It also determined the incidents recorded were “within the rules for the use of force.” 98

The U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq audited Aegis in 2005 and found “There is no assurance that Aegis is providing the best safety and security for the government and reconstruction contractor personnel and facilities.” 99Despite the controversy, what mattered to the industry was that “private military companies” were being brought closer to the fold and winning their legitimacy. “There have been a lot of changes in the way this industry works in the past ten years,” Tim Spicer said in late 2006. “What I was doing ten years ago was way ahead of its time. The catalyst has been the war on terror. The whole period since 9/11 has highlighted the need for a private security sector.” 100By October 2006, there were an estimated twenty-one thousand mercenaries working for British firms in Iraq, compared to seventy-two hundred active duty British troops. 101

In the summer of 2004, more private soldiers poured into Iraq, as the situation on the ground continued to deteriorate. In June, Blackwater commandos once again fell victim to an ambush that had echoes of the Fallujah killings. On the morning of Saturday, June 5, at about 10:30 a.m., two Blackwater sports utility vehicles were en route to the Baghdad airport. 102Blackwater /Alexander Strategy spokesperson Chris Bertelli said the men were on a mission relating to Blackwater’s ESS contract 103—like the one the four men killed at Fallujah were working under when they died. Bertelli identified it as a subcontract with Halliburton subsidiary KBR. 104Working the Blackwater detail that morning was a mixture of U.S. and Polish contractors. One of the Americans, Chris Neidrich, had previously worked the Bremer motorcade detail. 105In one of his last e-mails sent before the mission, Neidrich had joked with his friends about needing to drive ninety miles per hour in Iraq to avoid roadside bombs. “You know when I get home I’ll have to not drive for like two months,” Neidrich wrote. “Can’t remember the last time I drove slow, stopped for a light or stop sign or even a person.” 106The Poles on the Blackwater team that day were former members of their country’s elite GROM (“Thunder”) forces who had left Poland’s official Iraq contingent and gone to work for Blackwater. 107Gen. Slawomir Petelicki, former commander of the GROM, said Blackwater offered the Polish commandos $15,000 a month plus insurance. 108

As the Blackwater convoy sped along the four-lane highway to the airport, resistance fighters began tailing them in their own vehicles. “They were set up by four to five vehicles, full of armed men, all with automatic weapons,” said Bertelli. “It was a high-speed ambush.” 109The resistance fighters reportedly fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the trailing Blackwater vehicle, hitting the gas tank and engulfing the vehicle in flames. 110The second Blackwater vehicle doubled back to assist, and a gun battle ensued. “It was a hell of a firefight,” said K.C. Poulin, owner of Critical Intervention Services, a private security company that had employed Neidrich for years in the United States. “They engaged hostiles in multiple vehicles. They expended all their ammunition in the fight. The attack was well orchestrated. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill terrorists.” 111Blackwater said its men were outnumbered about twenty to seven. 112In the end, Neidrich and another American were killed, along with two of the Polish contractors. 113The remaining three Blackwater guards reportedly managed to fight their way to the other side of the road, flag down a passing vehicle, and escape. 114

The ambush took place on the main route from the Green Zone to the Baghdad airport and once again put Blackwater in the headlines. “Remember a year ago when Saddam’s spokesman, the wacky ‘Baghdad Bob,’ claimed that U.S. forces didn’t control the airport?” wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman about the ambush. “We shouldn’t have laughed. A year later, we still do not fully control the main road from Baghdad airport to Baghdad. You can’t build anything under those conditions.” Ironically, Blackwater would soon become one of the main high-paid taxi providers along this dangerous route—transporting clients in armored vehicles. The day after the ambush, with the chaos escalating in Iraq, the U.S.-installed Prime Minister-designate, Iyad Allawi, a former CIA asset, appeared to blame the violence on U.S. policy. He told Al Jazeera that “big mistakes” had been made by the United States in “dissolving the army, police services and internal security forces.” 115Allawi called for the Iraqi military to be reconstituted. The damage, though, had been done, and there were very few parties that benefited more from the violence than private military companies.

Paul Bremer snuck out of Iraq on June 28, 2004, two days ahead of the scheduled “handover of sovereignty.” As Bremer made his final rounds in Baghdad, saying good-bye to his Iraqi allies, the head of Bremer’s security detail, Frank Gallagher, insisted on increased security for the proconsul. “So this time he laid on seventeen extra Humvees to cover our convoy’s route, ordered all three Blackwater helicopters—each with two ‘shooters’—to fly just above our motorcade, and arranged with the military for a couple of Apache choppers to fly on our flanks and F-16 fighter bombers to fly top cover,” Bremer recalled. 116One of Bremer’s last official acts was to issue a decree immunizing Blackwater and other contractors from prosecution for any potential crimes committed in Iraq. On June 27, Bremer signed Order 17, which declared, “Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub-contract thereto.” 117That same month, Senator Patrick Leahy attempted to attach an “Anti-War Profiteering” amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that, among other provisions, would have created “extraterritorial jurisdiction over offenses committed overseas” by contractors. 118It was voted down.

Paul Bremer’s policies had left Blackwater firmly attached to the contract gravy train, not the least of which was the company’s prized contract to guard senior U.S. officials in Iraq. Blackwater would soon be responsible for the security of Bremer’s successor, Ambassador John Negroponte, a man notorious for his central role in the U.S. “dirty wars” in Central America in the 1980s. 119Known as the “proconsul” when he was U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte helped oversee U.S. aid to the Contra death squads fighting to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua—a program Negroponte referred to as “our special project.” 120Negroponte was also accused of covering up widespread human rights abuses by the U.S.-backed Honduran junta. 121Like several other officials from the Iran-Contra era, Negroponte was placed in a key position by the Bush administration. In Iraq, he would oversee the world’s largest Embassy and the biggest CIA station anywhere. 122