Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of theWar on Terror (24 page)

We look forward to the New Direction of America, and to your dedication to putting an end to the fleecing of the American taxpayers and death of its citizens in the name of war profiteers such as Blackwater.

Waxman was already primed. For the better part of a decade, the then sixty-seven-year-old congressman had served as the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the mission of which is to “
work tirelessly
, in partnership with citizen-watchdogs, to deliver the facts to the American people and bring genuine reform to the federal bureaucracy.” With the victory in the midterm elections, Waxman became chairman and head “muckraker,” a designation included in seemingly every profile of the Los Angeles native. Now the man at the forefront of using an unpopular war for political gain was eager to wield his newfound subpoena power.

Within weeks of receiving Callahan’s letter, I was told that Waxman’s committee would hold a hearing to pick apart the layers
of subcontracts under KBR’s LOGCAP contract with the Army, “with a particular emphasis on the Blackwater company.”
That February 7, 2007, hearing
, “Iraqi Reconstruction: Reliance on Private Military Contractors and Status Report,” was ostensibly focused on escalating war costs and “sorting out overhead, subcontracts, sub-subcontracts, profit, and performance” among PMCs, the congressman said.

But before Waxman had even finished his opening statement at that hearing, things veered toward a familiar, unrelated refrain: “
Today four family members
of the four murdered Blackwater employees will share their testimony with us,” he said. “They believe Blackwater sent their relatives into Fallujah unprepared and without armored vehicles, a rear gunner for each vehicle, or heavy automatic weapons to defend against attacks. Their experience tells them that tax dollars never reached the security personnel on the ground. They believe that the money for protective equipment took a backseat to the multiple layers of contractor profits.”

One of our company representatives, general counsel Andrew Howell, agreed to appear at the hearing. Yet we found it revealing that the day before Howell’s appearance, Waxman canceled another panel scheduled for the same day. That one would have included auditors from the Government Accountability Office, Defense Contract Audit Agency, and Special Inspector General’s office, all of whom could have addressed the practical questions of government spending Waxman purported to be interested in. We weren’t alone: “I [am concerned] that plaintiff’s lawyers pursuing civil litigation in this matter against one of our scheduled witnesses for Wednesday’s hearing have attempted to use this committee and this hearing to advance their private litigation,” committee member
Lynn Westmoreland
, a Republican from Georgia, wrote to Waxman upon hearing of the cancellations. “The official business of the committee should be to provide oversight of government activities, not promote particular private interests. The plaintiffs will have their day in
court; but the American people deserve to have these matters treated independently of private lawsuits.”

It was little use. My company had become a full-fledged political lightning rod—far too valuable to Democrats for any sort of independent or impartial review. So only two panels remained for the February 7 show trial—the first consisting entirely of the families suing us. They began by reading a comprehensive description of grievances they acknowledged had been crafted by Callahan. “
One question I have
is [about] the opening statement,” California Republican Darrell Issa said to them during the hearing. “Who wrote it? . . . I asked because it did appear as though it was written by an attorney who had obviously slipped in a lot of things that they believe would be facts in the lawsuit now pending.”

The day’s other panel contained Blackwater’s Howell, along with representatives from the Army and contractors, including Regency and KBR, who had the unenviable task of enduring a witch hunt that had nothing to do with them.

The whole show ultimately proved fruitless for the inquisitors—as I knew it would. There was no dark underbelly to my company for them to uncover. Yet the politicians were adamant about trying to appease the masses—they knew Blackwater had already been found guilty in the court of public opinion. We were “mercenaries,” people said. We were “cowboys.” We were paid too much and beholden to no one—Bush’s private army, run by a Roman Catholic war profiteer.

I began to wonder how much public pillorying one company could really withstand. With the combination of private lawsuits, congressional investigations, relentless demands to increase the size of our workforce overseas, and the cascading PR fallout at home, a perfect storm was swirling. That storm touched down seven months later, in a crowded Baghdad traffic circle known as Nisour Square.

2007

Sunday, September 16, 2007.
Just shy of noon in sweaty western Baghdad.

With a thunderclap and a sixty-foot-high wall of flames, a car bomb exploded in the city’s affluent al-Mansour district, flipping and crumpling a half dozen sedans outside what was locally known as the “Izdihar compound.”
Inside that fortified complex
—one of Baghdad’s largest beyond the Green Zone—Kerry Pelzman, director of USAID’s capacity-building office in Iraq, had been meeting with local counterparts about USAID’s years-long project to bolster the Iraqi private sector and create jobs there.
The ten-year USAID veteran
had recently transferred into Iraq after two years directing health and education ministries across Central Asia. She was vital to the USAID mission in Baghdad. She had arrived at the Izdihar compound under the protection of Blackwater’s Team 4—and it suddenly seemed that we weren’t the only ones who knew she was there.

Even before the explosion, my men had been on heightened alert that day. By late 2007, according to a National Intelligence Estimate I’d read, Iraq had descended into all-out “civil war”—except for one clarification: That designation didn’t capture the true misery on the
ground. “
I believe that there are essentially four
wars going on in Iraq,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at the time. “One is Shia-on-Shia, principally in the south; the second is sectarian conflict, principally in Baghdad; third is the insurgency; and fourth is al-Qaeda.” Since January, the State Department had counted more than 54,230 attacks throughout Iraq—more than two hundred per day—and by the time of the Izdihar compound explosion, nobody could agree on just how many civilians, Iraqi security forces, and coalition troops were being massacred. Blackwater’s contractors understood that letting their guards down while on duty, even for a moment, could be fatal.

Another concern we had that day was the growing string of insurgent attacks tied to the start of Ramadan, the holy ninth month of the Islamic calendar. In 2007, Ramadan began on September 13, and in the days leading up to the blast outside Izdihar, militants had staged a number of sophisticated ambushes against Blackwater’s diplomatic security convoys. They’d shot down one of our helicopters with a rocket-propelled grenade, then waited with automatic weapons to ambush the rescue team that came for the passengers and crew. (Thankfully, all eight people involved survived.) Then, the next day, dozens of insurgents attacked one of our motorcades, resulting in a bloody firefight as Blackwater’s men fled with their protectees to safety. That was followed by a midweek attack from an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) along Route Irish—the bomb destroyed the engine of one of our armored vehicles, sending our men to the hospital—and two days later we endured another highway ambush with small-arms fire. In just over three years of WPPS duty, Blackwater had seen twenty-three of its contractors killed in the line of duty—and for the men safeguarding Pelzman, the threat of becoming number twenty-four was all too real.

When the blast rang out, everyone’s schedule changed. Typically, after an explosion like that, Blackwater’s men would “hardpoint” the principal, hunkering Pelzman down in the most secure area they could find for fifteen or twenty minutes, until the situation
stabilized and they could make a rapid exit. On the other hand, we’d recently seen a developing trend in attacks wherein initial explosions served as mere decoys for deadlier blasts that followed, capitalizing on the chaos. That vulnerability was compounded by the fact that as soon as the bomb went off outside the meeting location, all the Iraqi guards nearby seemed to flee. So, not sure what might be coming next, and definitely not wanting to be there to find out, Blackwater’s men made the call to evacuate the USAID worker.

The security team hustled her into a black armored Suburban waiting outside. Pelzman wouldn’t be out of danger until her motorcade of SUVs reached the nearest entrance to the Green Zone, three miles away. Fearing a kidnapping attempt might be under way, the men at Blackwater’s operations center dispatched a support team convoy of heavily armored gun trucks to meet Pelzman’s motorcade at Izdihar compound. Those gun trucks could bulldoze a path in front of the SUVs, if it came to that. Further, at the request of the State Department’s regional security officer, we sent an additional armored convoy, code-named “Raven 23,” to block off a crucial busy intersection in advance of Pelzman’s speeding motorcade.

At approximately 12:08 p.m., the nineteen men of Raven 23 entered that intersection, officially called Nisour Square—which is actually anything but. The “square” is, in reality, a crowded traffic circle with a tangle of entrances and exits at something approximating its corners, where pedestrians scamper through and traffic cops make a feeble attempt at maintaining order. We knew all too well that insurgents see those traffic circles the same way deer hunters see trail bottlenecks—they’re obvious locations for an ambush. It was crucial that Pelzman’s guards be able to get her through the intersection as quickly as possible.

Raven 23’s four armored vehicles drove into Nisour Square from the east and then turned left, “counterflow” to the traffic. They fanned out to wall off the southwestern and southeastern entrances to the circle.

By this point, my company’s contractor database had grown so
large, I didn’t know all of the men on that particular team personally. I have learned much about their backgrounds and their reputations since that day, however—and I am proud that they worked for me. Among them was Donald Ball, an Eagle Scout and decorated Marine who had been a squad leader in three grueling tours in Iraq. He was the rear turret gunner of Raven 23’s first vehicle—a position akin to drawing the short straw. Handling the heaviest machine gun is little consolation to taking on the most dangerous job, practically mounted on top of an armored vehicle on a sweltering day while everyone else remains cocooned in the steel and air-conditioning below. Yet Ball could handle it; prior to joining Blackwater, he had been awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for maintaining focus during a mission despite encountering “numerous improvised explosive devices and small arm attacks.”

Former Marine Evan Liberty served as driver of the convoy’s third vehicle. Liberty had served with what was then known as the Marine Security Guard Battalion (now the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group) in Egypt and in Latin America. The decorated Marine had risen to the rank of sergeant of the guard, in charge of a detachment of twenty-four Marine embassy guards. His background made him well suited to the work we were doing in Iraq.

Paul Slough, meanwhile, was turret gunner of that same vehicle. After enlisting in the Army in 1999, Slough (pronounced “Slow”) did a tour with the 3rd Infantry Division, conducting security patrols with an international peacekeeping force in Bosnia before being honorably discharged in 2002. He earned the Army’s Commendation and Good Conduct medals, then signed up with the Texas National Guard back home, deploying to Iraq in 2005. Slough joined my company in 2006 at the age of twenty-nine.

Dustin Heard was the rear turret gunner in the fourth Raven 23 vehicle. The twenty-seven-year-old Texas native had enlisted in the Marine Corps at nineteen. He served in Bahrain, then Kuwait, then near Karbala, in southern Iraq, as part of a team that recovered downed pilots and aircraft. After earning several commendations
and awards, Heard was honorably discharged in 2004, at which point he signed up with Blackwater. While he was serving with my company, Embassy Baghdad presented him with a certificate of appreciation for “outstanding professionalism.”

The men of Raven 23 were armed with M4 assault rifles, belt-fed machine guns, and 9-mm Glock pistols. As the team entered Nisour Square, Ali Khalaf, an Iraqi traffic officer in a crisp blue button-down and black slacks, hopped out from his guard shack at the southern tip of the circle and appeared to wave for traffic to halt. Blackwater’s men established their positions.

No sooner had they done so, however, than a white Kia sedan approached Nisour Square from the south, driving straight toward the third and fourth trucks in our convoy. As my men would later describe it, the Kia’s twenty-year-old driver, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y, paid no attention to warnings to stop. He could not possibly have not seen the armored vehicles, or the armed men, positioned directly in his path. “
I and others were yelling
and using hand signals for the car to stop,” Slough later said, “and the driver looked directly at me and kept moving toward our motorcade.”

Believing the Kia represented yet another car bomb, and fearing for his own life as well as the lives of his men, Slough was out of time to check off the varying degrees of force response. As the car drew closer, he leveled his machine gun at the Kia’s windshield, and fired.

•   •   •

T
hroughout Blackwater’s history, perhaps no single issue has been more misunderstood, or led to more misdirected invective, than the question of contractors’ “rules of engagement”—effectively the necessary response gradations before lethal force is authorized. The s
tandard sound bite
goes something like this, from Robert Fisk of the
Independent
: “How do we explain now the armies of truculent, often ill-disciplined mercenaries now roaming Iraq on behalf of the Anglo-American occupation authorities? . . . They have no rules of engagement and many of them drink too much.” That theme has
been parroted over and over, in various forms and forums—making it more salacious and more ill-informed only seems to draw more attention. “
There are no rules of engagement
[for contractors in Iraq], no restrictions on the use of deadly force,” inveterate Blackwater critic Jeremy Scahill once told a conference on globalization and culture. They’re told, “Just keep our people safe no matter how many civilians you have to gun down, and enforce the gospel of the free market.”

It is true that while working as contractors for the State Department or CIA in Iraq, Blackwater was not beholden to the Defense Department’s rules of engagement, which detail the force responses permitted for soldiers in military operations. But anyone who asserts that my men had no parameters for when they could fire their weapons is pushing an agenda without regard to the facts. Which are these:

Each WPPS contractor was required to follow Embassy Baghdad’s “
escalation of force” policy
, which outlined the appropriate response continuum in the face of threats. Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Richard Griffin told Congress in 2007:

This “escalation of force” policy utilizes a seven-step process that must be utilized as appropriate under the circumstances: (1) English/Arabic visual warning signs on vehicles; (2) hand/verbal warning signs; (3) use of bright lights; (4) use of pen flares; (5) weapon pointed at offending vehicle; (6) shots fired into engine block of vehicle; and (7) shots fired into windshield of vehicle. It should be noted that deadly force can be immediately applied provided that it is necessary under the specific situation’s circumstances.

Further, as a condition of working the WPPS, all of Blackwater’s men signed a written acknowledgment that obligated them to follow both the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s blanket Deadly Force and Firearms Policy and then Embassy Baghdad’s site-specific Mission Firearms Policy. At the outset, the embassy’s policy clearly lays out “
Principles on Use of Deadly Force
” (emphasis in the original):

The United States Department of State recognizes and respects the integrity and paramount value of all human life. Consistent with that primary value, but beyond the scope of the principles articulated here, is the commitment by the State Department and the United States Mission Baghdad to take all reasonable steps to prevent the need to use deadly force. The touchstone of Embassy Baghdad policy regarding the use of deadly force is
necessity
. The use of deadly force must be objectively reasonable under all the circumstances known to the individual at the time.

The embassy policy in place in 2007 listed two “
permissible uses
” for deadly force: First, it says, “The necessity to use deadly force arises when all other available means of preventing imminent and grave danger to a specific individual or other person have failed or would be likely to fail. Thus, employing deadly force is permissible when there is no safe alternative to using such force and without the use of deadly force, the individual or others would face imminent and grave danger.” The
second point acknowledges
, “Determining whether deadly force is necessary may involve instantaneous decisions that encompass many factors, such as the likelihood that the subject will use deadly force on the individual or others if such force is not used by the individual.”

As for the steps leading up to deadly force, the Mission Firearms Policy also clarifies something for which Blackwater’s men were continually criticized in the public:
the issue of warning shots
, and of firing at cars that got too close to our motorcades.

Warning shots are not authorized. At no time will a weapon be fired into the ground or air as a warning to stop a threat. Warning shots may pose dangers to others in the vicinity of where the shot was fired.

Shooting at a vehicle is an authorized use of the appropriate level of force to mitigate a threat. In order to ensure a safe separation from motorcade and suspected or likely threat, shots may be fired into the vehicle’s engine block as needed to prohibit a threat from entering
into an area where the protective detail would be exposed to an attack. If at all feasible, other warnings, visible, verbal and combination, will be used before the use of these shots. If the vehicle continues to be a threat after shooting into the engine block, the next level of deadly force is authorized to mitigate the threat. Employees must use their discretion at the number of rounds fired into the engine block to stop the threat.

Blackwater’s application of those mandates was reflected in one oft-cited statistic: From June 2005 to June 2007,
my company had 195 documented episodes
in which our men fired their weapons. A few critics have contended that statistic doesn’t include some hypothetical number of uncounted incidents—though those people clearly aren’t familiar with State Department incident reporting protocol. Any time a shot was fired by one of Blackwater’s men, it had to be called in by radio and confirmed in the debrief that happens after every mission. State issued ammunition to Blackwater’s men, and rounds of ammunition were counted. Anyone who’d fired his weapon and
not
reported it would have lost his job immediately—as would any of his team members who lied to protect him.