Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of theWar on Terror (12 page)

He lasted about two more years in the bureaucracy of the State Department before following the lead of its top two officials—Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage—and resigning before the start of President Bush’s second term. On February 4, 2005, Black came to work for Blackwater, bringing with him his intelligence expertise.

Soon after, we incorporated the Black Group, helmed by the eponymous CEO with three decades of government experience, which focused on security for
Fortune
500 companies. “We seek to anticipate and defeat the next terrorist tactic—disruptions of supply chains, coordinated attacks on key assets or customers, or even assassinations of top executives,” said a statement on the company Web site. “Corporations are the most vulnerable targets. It’s our job to keep them safe.”

The idea of working in the intelligence field never occurred to me while sketching out plans for a shooting range and training center, but the market was undeniably there. We’d seen over the years how larger corporations assessed risk and planned for security, often poorly. Those were skills we knew well. Black, meanwhile, brought his own impressive background, and together we saw the chance to assemble an intelligence team in Virginia every bit as formidable as the former military men on the ground in Moyock.

That same year, another heavy hitter joined our ranks: Robert Richer resigned his position as associate deputy director of operations at the CIA to become Blackwater’s vice president of intelligence. After twenty-two years with the agency, the former Marine saw in our company a level of efficiency that simply doesn’t exist within the federal bureaucracy—and the potential to expand business intelligence on a global scale. “
Cofer can open doors
,” Richer said then. “I can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see. We don’t help pay bribes. We do everything within the law, but we can deal with the right minister or person.” Under their guidance, we soon combined the Black Group with a pair of independent companies, the Terrorism Research Center and Technical Defense, to create Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS): a sixty-five-man, twenty-four-hour operation based in Arlington that provided threat analysis, political briefings, and security training services to companies around the world.

Before long, oil companies, cruise lines, banks, and biotech firms—even the Walt Disney Company (which needed threat assessments for filming locations overseas)—were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on TIS’s services. Black quickly became so impressed by the private sector, he publicly suggested that every midlevel government official should spend a two-year sabbatical there to learn about efficiency and effectiveness.

Hiring the ambassador was certainly a coup for Blackwater. Our critics like to contend there was something devious about his transition to corporate America. In reality, it’s far simpler than that: Business intelligence companies have been around for ages; if we were going to expand in that direction, we wanted the most experienced personnel to offer the highest-quality services. It’s the same thing every company strives for. Back in 2002, for instance, retired Army lieutenant general Harry E. Soyster, then an executive at giant contractor Military Professional Resources Inc., made waves by bragging, “
We’ve got more generals per square foot
here than in the Pentagon.” However, in my mind, bringing in retired DoD brass was
the
last
thing a PMC should brag about. I wanted executives who accomplished things, not senior leaders who’d been paralyzed by years in the bureaucracy.

As for why Black wanted to work with us: He’d seen what our manpower could accomplish at home and overseas. He’d seen how streamlined our corporate hierarchy was. And he’d seen that this team would never shy away from doing whatever it took to support American troops. That message hit close to home: At the time,
Black’s son was a lieutenant in the Army
, stationed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Tillman—a base named for the professional football player who joined the Army, only to be killed by friendly fire.
FOB Tillman sat along Afghanistan’s rugged
southeast border, separated from Pakistan by harrowing peaks that American troops nicknamed “Big Ugly” and “Big Nasty.” Blackwater regularly carried in supplies for the troops there; I personally flew on one of those missions that dropped on Tillman. As a father and an American, our service appealed to Black. “
The reason I came to Blackwater was its mission
to support the United States government,” Black would later say. “I’m proud of the fact that Blackwater provided air resupply to my son.”

2004

By mid-2004, the initial ground war in Iraq had given way to Operation Iraqi Freedom II (OIF 2), military shorthand for the new American mission to stabilize the shattered nation. At that point, the
Pentagon rotated in and out
of Iraq more than 200,000 pieces of equipment and 235,000 personnel to relieve those reaching the ends of their one-year deployments. It was the largest troop rotation since World War II—one described by Air Force general Richard Myers, then chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, as “
a logistics feat that will rival any in history
.” He told reporters, “There’s going to be a lot of turbulence in the system, as you would expect.”
That turbulence, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld added
with significant understatement, “is always undesirable.”

A year after Saddam Hussein was ousted from the country,
attacks across Iraq numbered in the dozens per day
.
More than two hundred American troops had been killed
there since the end of major combat operations, and casualties continued to mount among civilians and the sloppy patchwork of Iraq’s security forces, both of
which were increasingly targeted by an equal-opportunity insurgency. During the OIF 2 rotation, the massive influx of U.S. troops without established situational awareness and an understanding of the rapidly evolving Iraqi enemy provided nearly free rein for terrorist strikes—nowhere more so than in what’s known as the Sunni Triangle, a few hundred square miles of central Iraq bounded roughly by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north, and Ramadi to the west. At the time,
some 80 percent of all guerrilla attacks
in Iraq came within that triangle, where well-armed Hussein loyalists preyed on coalition forces with a combination of IEDs—improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs—and artillery scavenged from the collapse of the former regime’s internal security apparatus.

Those Hussein forces, abruptly disbanded by CPA Order 2, had employed well over one hundred thousand Sunni men—and now they were eager for bloodshed. “The coalition and Iraqi Security Forces face a composite insurgency whose elements act on diverse motives. These include former regime members and Iraqi Islamists, foreign jihadists, angry or aggrieved Iraqis, tribal groups, and criminals, who draw considerable strength from political and religious ideologies, tribal notions of honor and revenge, and shared solidarities deeply ingrained in the Sunni Triangle,” read a
2005 analysis by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
, a nonprofit think tank that promotes peace and security in the Middle East. “Fundamentally the insurgency is about power: who had it, who has it now, and who will have it in the future.”

Though attacks in Baghdad still dominated headlines, perhaps no part of the Sunni Triangle was more volatile in early 2004 than a city seated on the banks of the Euphrates River, forty miles west of the capital: Fallujah. Home to roughly three hundred thousand people, the city had been
largely left to police itself thanks to DoD planning
that stretched the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division precariously thin in an effort to have it patrol the entire triangle.

Tensions in Fallujah were permanently high, and bloody battles common: At an April 2003 rally there to celebrate Hussein’s
sixty-sixth birthday—the ousted leader had not yet been captured by the coalition—the Army’s troops insisted they were fired upon by demonstrators.
The 82nd Airborne shot back
, killing more than a dozen Iraqis and injuring seventy-five. Not long after, insurgents retaliated by shooting down an American transport helicopter just outside town, killing sixteen soldiers.
Townspeople danced on the wreckage
. By March 2004, roughly a hundred days before U.S. authorities handed over power to the fledgling Iraqi government, the archconservative Sunni stronghold had become the flashpoint of anticoalition hostility.

That month, the 1st Marine Division relieved the 82nd Airborne in the triangle as part of the OIF 2 troop rotation. That meant turnover in logistical support teams as well: When American forces move, the contractors who feed them move, too—in this case, ESS Support Services Worldwide. ESS was the subcontractor to Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the
lead contractor being paid through that massive Army LOGCAP
. ESS needed to transfer truckloads of pots and pans and kitchen equipment out of Camp Ridgeway, just west of Fallujah. With the Marines moving in, the Army’s contractors were clearing out—which meant someone had to protect ESS’s convoys on their trips through the desert. It was the sort of thing Blackwater was good at.

We staked a partnership with Kuwaiti firm Regency Hotel & Hospitality Company to become
the subcontracted security provider for ESS
, making Blackwater the subcontractor to the subcontractor of the contractor for the Army. We signed that deal on March 8, 2004. And then there was even an additional layer of paperwork added: Blackwater’s security missions were so carefully planned, we soon feared that wrangling with a business partner might force us into logistical compromises we weren’t comfortable with. So four days later we signed
a restructured deal with Regency
making us subcontractors under
them
, putting Blackwater fourth on the contracting chain but giving us control over the actual security procedures in place. We agreed to
provide a squad of thirty-four men
to protect ESS’s personnel and convoys. Regency was to pay my company
$11,082,326 for a year of work—just shy of a million dollars per month—with an option to renew for a second year.

Blackwater took over the lucrative assignment from ESS’s previous security team, Control Risks Group (CRG), a move some have since contended must have involved shady backroom dealings. The reality is far simpler: CRG refused to do it. That British firm had twice been asked by ESS to guard its convoys in the Sunni Triangle. “
This was refused both times
due to the obvious risk of transporting slow-moving loads through such a volatile area,” CRG’s operations manager would later write in a report. So ESS found someone who would take the job.

During security handovers among private firms, there’s often a thirty-day transition during which the incoming teams ride along on missions and monitor the established provider’s movements from the local command center. It also provides sufficient time for the new contractor to acquire the appropriate vehicles and weaponry to do its job. The Blackwater-Regency team signed our initial deal with ESS on March 8, meaning that thirty-day window would have put my men on duty April 8—but
upon losing the contract, CRG promptly announced
its personnel would continue to support ESS only for another three weeks, through March 29.

ESS, meanwhile, had its own contracts to fill and wanted its manpower and matériel on the move before April 8. Starting our work before the contractual date meant that tactical SUVs and heavy machine guns to be provided to us by Regency might not have yet arrived. My men wouldn’t have had a full month to fully explore the area. Yet ESS was a major global supplier—a company well worth making a good impression upon. Blackwater’s men always said yes first. We would figure out the details as we went.

•   •   •

O
n March 30, the four men of Blackwater Team November 1
arrived at the Army’s Camp Taji, located a dozen miles north of Baghdad. The men—forty-eight-year-old Wes Batalona, thirty-two-year-old
Jerry Zovko, and thirty-eight-year-old Mike Teague, all former Army Rangers, as well as thirty-eight-year-old former Navy SEAL Scott Helvenston—had been on a mission transporting an ESS employee north from the capital.
They delivered the principal without an issue
.

There, however, the plan changed: With Blackwater’s team now at Camp Taji, ESS management called our site manager in Baghdad, Tom Powell, and requested that November 1 make an additional run. The food service provider still needed to collect its sixteen truckloads’ worth of kitchen equipment from Camp Ridgeway, on the other side of Fallujah.
Could the four-man Blackwater team leave right away
from Taji with a caravan of empty flatbeds to pick up the matériel?

November 1 was made up of talented men, for sure. Batalona, a native of Hawaii’s Big Island, had served as an Army Ranger for two decades. As a retired sergeant first class, the veteran was exactly the kind of guy to lead a small unit in a tight situation.
The silver-haired forty-eight-year-old
, whose penchant for flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts would follow him even to Baghdad, had joined the Army at the end of the Vietnam War.
Batalona was part of the first invasion force
in Panama in 1989, and the liberation of Kuwait the following year; then, in 1993, he served in the Somalia operation. He
retired the year after, moved back to Hawaii
and to his wife, June, whom he’d been with since high school. He eventually
took a job as a security guard
at the Hilton Waikoloa Village, but the night shift wasn’t exactly thrilling for a man with his background. So in late 2003 Batalona found himself on contract with the firm MPRI to train Iraq’s new army. On that job, he became fast friends with another former Ranger sixteen years his junior, Jerry Zovko.

Zovko, a Cleveland native
, had spent a year at Ohio State before enlisting in the Army at age nineteen. He
served six years, starting out as a military policeman
with the 82nd Airborne but spending most of his career as a Ranger.
The Croatian-American saw action in Bosnia
in 1995 before retiring from the Army two years later. He was
six foot three and built
to bench-press the world. He spoke Croatian,
Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Thai—and Arabic, which made him particularly valuable in the contracting realm. He caught on first with the PMC DynCorp to provide security at the U.S. embassy in Qatar, then
reported to Iraq in the summer of 2003
on that MPRI deal.
In February 2004, he and Batalona signed
contracts with Blackwater to work security in Iraq: $600 a day for missions, $150 for standby days.

The third Ranger on November 1 was Teague.
The giant Tennessean was a former Night Stalker
with the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, based out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Teague had served in the invasions of Grenada and Panama, and had earned the Bronze Star in Afghanistan. He had retired from the military as a staff sergeant in January, and on that day had been with Blackwater for only two weeks.
He’d signed up just after his seventh wedding anniversary
with his wife, Rhonda. “
He was aware of the conditions
,” friend Johnny Ratliffe later said. “He volunteered his services to try to help more people.” That was in keeping with his character: At home, the thirty-eight-year-old
donated his time to help out
his son’s high school wrestling team and was active in the local Cumberland Drive Baptist Church. “
Mike, from the men of Task Force DAGGER
,” a fellow Night Stalker would later write on a military message board, “drop your rucksack, and stand at ease as you enter the gates of Heaven, ’cause your time in Hell has already been served.”

Even on a team of remarkable veterans, the final member stood out: Stephen “Scott”
Helvenston had dropped out of high school
before finding his true calling in the Navy. After earning his GED, he enlisted and went directly to SEAL training. Helvenston was only seventeen years old when he completed BUD/S training; not yet old enough to vote, and needing special parental consent to be there, he became
the youngest SEAL in naval history
.
The Florida native was deployed by the SEALs
four times before transitioning to become an instructor for BUD/S training and accelerated-freefall parachute jumps in his home state. That lasted until 1994,
when his canopy
malfunctioned during a jump: He broke both legs—then stood up and tried to walk it off.

Like many members of the special forces, Helvenston struggled to find a niche for his extraordinary skills in civilian work. While in the Navy, he’d won two gold medals in the world championship of the Military Pentathlon—once described as “perhaps the closest thing to being named the best military athlete on the planet”—so
he started a fitness company, Amphibian Athletics
, in Southern California. He became an occasional stuntman for Hollywood films, and trained actress Demi Moore for her SEAL role in
G.I. Jane
. But times were tight, and with Blackwater he saw a chance to again serve a war effort he believed in, and to save a little money for his two young children, whom he adored. When he arrived in the Middle East in early 2004, Helvenston became instantly recognizable to our staff as the guy constantly saying, “
I’m just damn glad to be here
!” He was unflinchingly optimistic; a fellow SEAL and friend would later remember, “
His feeling was, ‘If your time is up
, there’s going to be a bullet out there with your name on it.’”

At Camp Taji, Powell conferred with Batalona, November 1’s team leader. They all knew Fallujah was nasty. And there, prior to the official contract start date with ESS,
November 1 didn’t have the heavy-duty squad automatic weapons
that were still en route from Regency. Worse, the men knew they’d be driving a pair of ESS’s old Mitsubishi Pajeros that were being used only until Regency could deliver us vehicles with protection kits—armor plating that reinforces an SUV better than anything you’d drive off your local sales lot, but not as well as full armor. ESS’s Pajeros were just regulation SUVs with armor plates mounted behind the back seats. The men knew that if they were attacked from behind, that level of protection wouldn’t mean much.

Lastly, there was the question of manpower.
The contract that Blackwater and Regency had initially signed
with ESS specifically acknowledged the threats our men could face in Fallujah, and the number of men necessary to do our job. “Further to Blackwater’s
analysis of ESS requirements and the current threat in the Iraqi theater of operations as evidenced by the recent incidents against civilian entities in Fallujah, Ar Ramadi, Al Taji and Al Hillah,” the contract read, “there are areas in Iraq that will require a minimum of three Security Personnel per vehicle.” That allowed for one driver, a navigator riding shotgun—which isn’t just a colorful phrase in this line of work—and a third team member in the backseat watching their six.