Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (17 page)
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Authors: Jeremy Scahill
BOOK: Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
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On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris walked into their high school, Columbine High, in Littleton, Colorado, wearing black trench coats and armed to the teeth with semiautomatic weapons and shotguns. The two proceeded to go on a killing rampage that took the lives of twelve of their fellow students and one teacher. The incident would quickly be dubbed the “Columbine massacre.” Despite the fact that the number of school shootings had dropped from thirty-two during the 1992-1993 school year to nineteen during 1998-1999, the hype around Columbine encouraged a panic about such incidents that spread throughout the country.
50
It also caused law enforcement agencies at all levels to review their ability to respond to such incidents. “Nobody thought that Columbine could have happened,” Ron Watson, a spokesman for the National Tactical Officer’s Association (NTOA), said at the time. “So Columbine has changed thinking. It has thrown a new wrinkle into training.”
51
50
It also caused law enforcement agencies at all levels to review their ability to respond to such incidents. “Nobody thought that Columbine could have happened,” Ron Watson, a spokesman for the National Tactical Officer’s Association (NTOA), said at the time. “So Columbine has changed thinking. It has thrown a new wrinkle into training.”
51
In September 1999, some four hundred SWAT team officers found their way to Moyock for exercises at Blackwater’s newly constructed “R U Ready High School.”
52
The NTOA kicked in $50,000 to construct the fifteen-room, 14,746-square-foot mock school, but the project likely cost Blackwater much more.
53
As with future projects, Prince had the means and the motivation to spend if he thought there would eventually be a payoff. “Erik had enough money to pay for whatever they needed up front, so he could get his money back, he had plenty of capital,” said Al Clark. “He probably inherited $500 million, so he had plenty of money to play with.”
54
The mock school featured the sound effects of screaming students, blood spatters, gunshot wounds, and simunition (practice ammo). “You’re dealing with chaos—a tremendous amount of confusion,” said retired NYPD Emergency Service Unit commander Al Baker. “They are all young and all are unknowns in this large place. There is a tremendous amount of noise. You don’t know who the shooter is. We’re trying to teach them the techniques of clearing a hostile environment. There is a lot of bleeding. This is not something that can wait.”
55
52
The NTOA kicked in $50,000 to construct the fifteen-room, 14,746-square-foot mock school, but the project likely cost Blackwater much more.
53
As with future projects, Prince had the means and the motivation to spend if he thought there would eventually be a payoff. “Erik had enough money to pay for whatever they needed up front, so he could get his money back, he had plenty of capital,” said Al Clark. “He probably inherited $500 million, so he had plenty of money to play with.”
54
The mock school featured the sound effects of screaming students, blood spatters, gunshot wounds, and simunition (practice ammo). “You’re dealing with chaos—a tremendous amount of confusion,” said retired NYPD Emergency Service Unit commander Al Baker. “They are all young and all are unknowns in this large place. There is a tremendous amount of noise. You don’t know who the shooter is. We’re trying to teach them the techniques of clearing a hostile environment. There is a lot of bleeding. This is not something that can wait.”
55
Blackwater’s quick construction and running of “R U Ready High” convinced the NTOA, an organization that trains four thousand police officers annually, to split its sixteenth annual conference between Virginia Beach and Blackwater’s Moyock compound. The event drew tactical teams and police officers from every state, Canada, Haiti, Belgium, and England. By April 2000, the NTOA had put more than one thousand officers through training at “R U Ready” as police departments across the country started more and more to hear the name Blackwater. At an NTOA soiree at the time, Prince commented that events like Columbine are “a reminder that vigilance is the price of liberty, and we need well-trained law enforcement and military. There is no shortage of evil in the world.”
56
56
On February 1, 2000, with its name spreading across the law enforcement community, Blackwater took a huge leap forward as it landed its first General Services Administration contract, creating a government-approved list of services and goods Blackwater could sell to federal agencies and the prices it could officially charge. Winning a “GSA schedule” essentially opened Blackwater up for “long-term governmentwide contracts.”
57
The schedule outlined a list of prices for use of Blackwater facilities or to use Blackwater instructors for specialty training. Use of the tactical training area cost $1,250 per day for less than twenty shooters. Use of the urban training area, of which “R U Ready High” was a component, ran $1,250 a day for less than thirty people, $1,500 a day for more. Each range could be rented out to a government agency for $50 per person per day with a $500 minimum. The schedule also provided for $1,200-a-day Blackwater instructors to teach classes in executive protection, force protection, close quarter battle, ship-boarding movement, and hostage rescue, and allowed Blackwater to sell its own specially developed targets and other training gear to whatever agency requested it. Offerings ranged from $1,335 bullet traps to $170 “pepper poppers” to $512 turning targets.
58
In and of themselves, those may not seem like big ticket items, but having the GSA schedule in place essentially opened Blackwater’s doors to the entire federal government, provided it could politick well enough to score contracts. “It’s like having a Wal-Mart to the government,” explained Jamie Smith in an interview.
59
Smith is a former CIA operative who spent years working for Blackwater. “Having a GSA contract allows the government to go in and buy things from you without having to go out to bid really.” The real work for companies once they win a GSA designation is greasing the wheels at various government agencies and convincing them to use the company’s services often and widely. That’s where a company’s political connections come into play. Halliburton had developed a model that Blackwater and others could mimic. As Smith said, “It’s a handshake-type thing and you say, ‘Here’s our GSA schedule, and let’s see what we can do.’” Blackwater’s first payment under its GSA contract was for $68,000 in March 2000 for “armament training devices.”
60
As it happened, that was the exact amount Erik Prince would donate later that year to the Republican National State Elections Committee in an election year that would see George W. Bush take power.
61
57
The schedule outlined a list of prices for use of Blackwater facilities or to use Blackwater instructors for specialty training. Use of the tactical training area cost $1,250 per day for less than twenty shooters. Use of the urban training area, of which “R U Ready High” was a component, ran $1,250 a day for less than thirty people, $1,500 a day for more. Each range could be rented out to a government agency for $50 per person per day with a $500 minimum. The schedule also provided for $1,200-a-day Blackwater instructors to teach classes in executive protection, force protection, close quarter battle, ship-boarding movement, and hostage rescue, and allowed Blackwater to sell its own specially developed targets and other training gear to whatever agency requested it. Offerings ranged from $1,335 bullet traps to $170 “pepper poppers” to $512 turning targets.
58
In and of themselves, those may not seem like big ticket items, but having the GSA schedule in place essentially opened Blackwater’s doors to the entire federal government, provided it could politick well enough to score contracts. “It’s like having a Wal-Mart to the government,” explained Jamie Smith in an interview.
59
Smith is a former CIA operative who spent years working for Blackwater. “Having a GSA contract allows the government to go in and buy things from you without having to go out to bid really.” The real work for companies once they win a GSA designation is greasing the wheels at various government agencies and convincing them to use the company’s services often and widely. That’s where a company’s political connections come into play. Halliburton had developed a model that Blackwater and others could mimic. As Smith said, “It’s a handshake-type thing and you say, ‘Here’s our GSA schedule, and let’s see what we can do.’” Blackwater’s first payment under its GSA contract was for $68,000 in March 2000 for “armament training devices.”
60
As it happened, that was the exact amount Erik Prince would donate later that year to the Republican National State Elections Committee in an election year that would see George W. Bush take power.
61
Blackwater’s original five-year GSA contract value (i.e., the government’s projection of how much business Blackwater would do with federal agencies) was estimated at a meager $125,000.
62
When it was extended by five years in 2005, the estimate was pushed to $6 million.
63
But all of those projections were far shy of the actual business Blackwater would win under the GSA. As of 2006, Blackwater had already been paid $111 million under the schedule. “This is a multiple-award schedule, indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery contract,” said GSA spokesman Jon Anderson. “When the contract is first awarded, we do not know whether or not agencies are going to place orders with the contractor as the contractor has to compete with other . . . contractors for task orders, so we set the estimated dollar value of the contract at $125,000. Blackwater was obviously very successful in their endeavors and was able to build their sales to $111 million over a six-year period.”
64
By 2008, the number would reach more than a billion dollars.
62
When it was extended by five years in 2005, the estimate was pushed to $6 million.
63
But all of those projections were far shy of the actual business Blackwater would win under the GSA. As of 2006, Blackwater had already been paid $111 million under the schedule. “This is a multiple-award schedule, indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery contract,” said GSA spokesman Jon Anderson. “When the contract is first awarded, we do not know whether or not agencies are going to place orders with the contractor as the contractor has to compete with other . . . contractors for task orders, so we set the estimated dollar value of the contract at $125,000. Blackwater was obviously very successful in their endeavors and was able to build their sales to $111 million over a six-year period.”
64
By 2008, the number would reach more than a billion dollars.
In 2000, as business was picking up for Blackwater, all was not well at the Moyock compound. Al Clark, the man many credit with dreaming up the company, found himself at odds with Prince and others at the company. “As time went on, some things took place there that I didn’t really agree with, so I left to start another business,” recalled Clark, who founded Special Tactical Systems with former Blackwater employee and fellow SEAL Dale McClellan in 2000. “One of the things that started happening was Erik wanted it to be a playground for his rich friends. And I was questioned on why would I train your standard Army guy on the same level that I’d train a SEAL. And my rebuttal was, ‘Why would you base the value of someone’s life on the uniform they’re wearing, because once the bullets start flying they don’t discriminate,’ and I was basically told my standards were too high.”
65
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Clark says during training sessions he “gave everybody everything I had when I had them,” but he said company executives “thought there was no incentive for [clients] to come back if I gave them everything, and my argument was, they may not get a chance to come back, so while we’ve got them, we should give them everything we have. A lot of cops were paying out of their own pocket, taking their vacation time away from their families, to go to a school they thought would give them something their departments wouldn’t.” Clark was reluctant to expand much on his split with Prince, but he summed up his feelings about leaving Blackwater: “Let’s put it this way: I wanted it to be a place built by professionals for professionals, and I wanted it to be professional, and it didn’t feel to me like it was being that way.”
66
Blackwater had already started down the path to success when Clark left in 2000, having landed a couple of hundred thousand dollars in payments on its GSA contract and other awards, but it wasn’t until more than a year later that the business really began to boom. That would come courtesy of two terror attacks attributed to Osama bin Laden.
66
Blackwater had already started down the path to success when Clark left in 2000, having landed a couple of hundred thousand dollars in payments on its GSA contract and other awards, but it wasn’t until more than a year later that the business really began to boom. That would come courtesy of two terror attacks attributed to Osama bin Laden.
Shortly after 11:00 a.m. on the morning of October 12, 2000, in the Yemeni port of Aden, a small boat approached the U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer the
USS Cole,
which had just finished up a routine fuel stop. As the boat neared the ship’s port side, it exploded, ripping a forty-by-forty-foot hole in the massive ship. Osama bin Laden would later take responsibility for the suicide attack that killed seventeen U.S. sailors and injured thirty-nine others. The second annual tragedy, following 1999’s Columbine massacre, that would benefit Blackwater resulted in a $35.7 million contract with the Navy, Blackwater’s ancestral branch of the military, to conduct “force protection” training.
67
Traditionally, the average Navy midshipman didn’t train for a combat role, but with increased threats to the fleet, that began to change. “The attack on the
USS Cole
was a terrible tragedy and dramatic example of the type of threat our military forces face worldwide on a day-to-day basis, emphasizing the importance of force protection both today and in the future,” Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of Naval operations, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2001. “The Navy has taken action at home and abroad to meet this challenge, undergoing a sea change in the way we plan and execute self-defense. We have enhanced the manning, training, and equipping of naval forces to better realize a war fighter’s approach to physical security, with AT/FP serving as a primary focus of every mission, activity, and event. Additionally, we are dedicated to ensuring this mindset is instilled in every one of our sailors.”
68
At the time, the Navy had already committed itself to incorporating “a comprehensive plan to reduce infrastructure costs through competition, privatization, and outsourcing.”
69
Among its projects was a review of some 80,500 full-time equivalent positions for outsourcing.
70
While the bombing of the
USS Cole
significantly boosted Blackwater’s business, it would pale in comparison to the jackpot that would come courtesy of the greatest act of terror ever carried out on U.S. soil.
USS Cole,
which had just finished up a routine fuel stop. As the boat neared the ship’s port side, it exploded, ripping a forty-by-forty-foot hole in the massive ship. Osama bin Laden would later take responsibility for the suicide attack that killed seventeen U.S. sailors and injured thirty-nine others. The second annual tragedy, following 1999’s Columbine massacre, that would benefit Blackwater resulted in a $35.7 million contract with the Navy, Blackwater’s ancestral branch of the military, to conduct “force protection” training.
67
Traditionally, the average Navy midshipman didn’t train for a combat role, but with increased threats to the fleet, that began to change. “The attack on the
USS Cole
was a terrible tragedy and dramatic example of the type of threat our military forces face worldwide on a day-to-day basis, emphasizing the importance of force protection both today and in the future,” Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of Naval operations, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2001. “The Navy has taken action at home and abroad to meet this challenge, undergoing a sea change in the way we plan and execute self-defense. We have enhanced the manning, training, and equipping of naval forces to better realize a war fighter’s approach to physical security, with AT/FP serving as a primary focus of every mission, activity, and event. Additionally, we are dedicated to ensuring this mindset is instilled in every one of our sailors.”
68
At the time, the Navy had already committed itself to incorporating “a comprehensive plan to reduce infrastructure costs through competition, privatization, and outsourcing.”
69
Among its projects was a review of some 80,500 full-time equivalent positions for outsourcing.
70
While the bombing of the
USS Cole
significantly boosted Blackwater’s business, it would pale in comparison to the jackpot that would come courtesy of the greatest act of terror ever carried out on U.S. soil.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11, carrying ninety-two passengers from Boston to Los Angeles, abruptly turned course and headed straight toward New York City. At 8:46 a.m., the plane smashed directly into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Some seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. As fire and smoke burned from two of America’s most famous buildings, the attacks almost instantly accelerated an agenda of privatization and conquest long sought by many of the people who had just taken over the White House less than a year earlier. President Bush’s Secretary of the Army, Thomas White, a former Enron executive, oversaw the rapid implementation of the privatization agenda kick-started by Dick Cheney a decade earlier.
71
The program would soon see the explosion of a $100 billion global for-profit military industry. Among the greatest beneficiaries of the administration’s newly declared “war on terror” would be Erik Prince’s Blackwater. As Al Clark put it, “Osama bin Laden turned Blackwater into what it is today.”
72
71
The program would soon see the explosion of a $100 billion global for-profit military industry. Among the greatest beneficiaries of the administration’s newly declared “war on terror” would be Erik Prince’s Blackwater. As Al Clark put it, “Osama bin Laden turned Blackwater into what it is today.”
72
“The bombing of the
USS Cole
in Aden, Yemen, sent a ripple through the U.S. Navy, and then 9/11 happened and the ripple was worldwide,” Blackwater vice president Chris Taylor said in a 2005 speech at George Washington University Law School. “The Navy appropriately responded realizing that in order to combat today’s terrorist threat, all sailors would need substantial training in basic and advanced force protection techniques. The Navy moved swiftly to create a sound training program, the majority of which Blackwater now executes and manages all over the country. Sailors the world over are now better prepared to identify, appropriately engage, and defeat would-be attacks on naval vessels in port and underway. To date, Blackwater has trained some 30,000 sailors.”
73
Blackwater was officially awarded the $35.7 million Navy contract for “force protection training that includes force protection fundamental training . . . armed sentry course training; and law enforcement training.”
74
The bulk of the work was to be performed in Norfolk, with some in San Diego and San Antonio.
75
A Blackwater trainer who oversaw the contract commented shortly after it started in 2002 that his instructors were shocked to find many sailors “have never held a firearm, except for at boot camp.”
76
USS Cole
in Aden, Yemen, sent a ripple through the U.S. Navy, and then 9/11 happened and the ripple was worldwide,” Blackwater vice president Chris Taylor said in a 2005 speech at George Washington University Law School. “The Navy appropriately responded realizing that in order to combat today’s terrorist threat, all sailors would need substantial training in basic and advanced force protection techniques. The Navy moved swiftly to create a sound training program, the majority of which Blackwater now executes and manages all over the country. Sailors the world over are now better prepared to identify, appropriately engage, and defeat would-be attacks on naval vessels in port and underway. To date, Blackwater has trained some 30,000 sailors.”
73
Blackwater was officially awarded the $35.7 million Navy contract for “force protection training that includes force protection fundamental training . . . armed sentry course training; and law enforcement training.”
74
The bulk of the work was to be performed in Norfolk, with some in San Diego and San Antonio.
75
A Blackwater trainer who oversaw the contract commented shortly after it started in 2002 that his instructors were shocked to find many sailors “have never held a firearm, except for at boot camp.”
76
The post-9/11 environment provided Erik Prince and his Blackwater colleagues with a blank canvas on which to paint a profitable future for the company, seemingly limited only by imagination and personnel. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had come into office determined to dramatically expand the role private companies like Blackwater would play in U.S. wars, and 9/11 had put that agenda on the fastest of tracks. On September 27, two weeks after 9/11, Prince made a rare media appearance as a guest on Fox News’s flagship program,
The O’Reilly Factor
. “I’ve been operating in the training business now for four years and was starting to get a little cynical on how seriously people took security,” Prince said on the show. “The phone is ringing off the hook now.”
77
The reason for Prince’s appearance on Fox was to discuss the air marshal program and the training that marshals would receive, some of it at Blackwater. That month, Blackwater inked contracts with the FBI worth at least $610,000.
78
Soon it would be providing training for virtually every wing of the government, from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administrative Service Center to the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crime Enforcement Network to the Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary’s office.
79
The O’Reilly Factor
. “I’ve been operating in the training business now for four years and was starting to get a little cynical on how seriously people took security,” Prince said on the show. “The phone is ringing off the hook now.”
77
The reason for Prince’s appearance on Fox was to discuss the air marshal program and the training that marshals would receive, some of it at Blackwater. That month, Blackwater inked contracts with the FBI worth at least $610,000.
78
Soon it would be providing training for virtually every wing of the government, from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administrative Service Center to the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crime Enforcement Network to the Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary’s office.
79
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