The Bremer Detail

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The Bremer Detail Page 6

by Frank Gallagher,John M. Del Vecchio


  We had certain rules that everyone had to follow. We all had to wear collared shirts whenever we were out on a mission. No thigh holsters, no ball caps, no full beards. I wanted us to present a professional appearance in keeping with Ambassador Bremer’s status as the presidential envoy. There were a lot of other PSD teams running around looking like an advertisement for Soldier of Fortune magazine. That was not going to be us. There was even a guy who walked around the palace wearing a three-quarter-length leather duster with a sword strapped to his back. He was not with us or part of us.

  The interpreter—my first problem child of many to follow—approached me one afternoon after he had an argument with Ski (a former SEAL now running the operational side for me) and stated that he had “more combat experience than anyone else” on the team and wanted to be a shooter assigned to the detail. I laughed and told him it would never happen. He said he was going to call Blackwater and complain. I told him to be my guest, and offered him my phone. I then told him if he could not get with the program he would soon have one of two choices—an aisle or window seat back to the United States. He stormed off muttering.

  The very next mission we ran this guy showed up in a black T-shirt and with a ball cap on his head. As luck would have it the ambassador spotted him immediately and gruffly asked me if he was one of mine. FUCK ME! I got Scotty on the radio and told him to have the guy disappear, and that we’d deal with it when we got back to the palace. We got back and I told Ken H (my chief Ops/support guy) to start the process to get rid of him.

  Firing a man in the war zone presented some unique obstacles. One: There were no commercial flights, so getting someone out of the country took about three days to arrange while we coordinated with the Air Force to find a seat available for the screwup. And believe me, the Air Force was busy as hell transporting people who were far more important to the war effort, as well as wounded people and soldiers. Dealing with a Blackwater headache was not high priority. Two: These guys had access to weapons, and we were never sure how one would react to being fired.

  Ken looked at me and we both laughed as we really had no idea on how to make this happen. But Ken was an extremely smart guy. He never took no for an answer, and always killed everybody with kindness. And he always got what we needed when we needed it. To this day, I will never know how he accomplished all that he did. He was a trusted ally and an invaluable member of the team.

  Ken went to work on the issue, and said he had secured a seat on an Air Force C-130 for the guy to Amman in three days. I called Blackwater and told them they needed to get this guy a plane ticket to his home of record from Amman and they said they would. The program manager back in Moyock was not happy with me over his firing. This would be the beginning of many attempts by this guy sitting back stateside to question my decisions, or to interfere with running the detail, even though he had no idea what was the in-country ground truth.

  Now I had to figure out what to do with this renegade for three days. I did not want a disgruntled employee wandering around with weapons, and I certainly did not want him embarrassing me again. The decision was made to let him continue working until the departure date. I held my breath and my tongue each day. I was embarrassed and disgusted at the same time.

  On the day he left I sent three guys over to his trailer at 0600 to collect his weapons, and to tell him he had one hour to pack before we took him directly to the airport. He complied meekly and off he went. This was the way I ended up firing any of the guys who got sent home. They had no time to stew or get angry, and by the time the shock wore off they were on a plane home. It worked for me—and for the team.

  About this time I got a call from Blackwater asking if I would extend for another thirty days. The pay would go up to $675 a day, and as I had not yet been killed I figured, What the hell! I called Kim and told her, and she agreed that another thirty days was not such a big deal. Of course, by this time I had been on TV, in the newspapers, and in magazines in pictures with the ambassador and did not realize the toll it was taking on the family. Katherine had it the hardest as she was in high school and had to deal with the antiwar liberals who saw me every morning on the news channels. But she stood up to them and told them that both her dad and her uncle John (US Army, Special Forces—Afghanistan) were away fighting for the country. I was, and am, very proud of her.

  I talked to Bird. “Blackwater called and asked me to extend. They want you to extend also.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Good luck with that. I took another gig for 1K a day [$1,000 per day]!”

  “Damn! Any way I can talk you out of it?”

  “Zero chances of that happening. Good luck. You know you’re going to get killed, don’t you?”

  “I hope the fuck not.”

  “Look at some of these guys they sent over. I can get you on the same gig with me.”

  “Thanks, but I told them I’d stay.”

  “You’ve lost your damn mind.”

  “Only time will tell.”

  He had accepted a gig with another company doing security work in the sandbox. To say I was bummed would be a gross understatement. I was losing a good friend and my shift leader at the same time. And now I had to find someone who was as good as he was. That person was not there at this time. It was a scary proposition.

  Bird left five days later. With the loss of the guy I fired and Bird, my thirty-six-man team was now a thirty-four-man team.

  The operational tempo continued at breakneck speed. We had four or five missions every day. Up at 0530, done around midnight. We were running the roads in Baghdad as safely as we could but traffic was a bitch, and the intel reports came in every day about our pending demise. We would jump the median and drive against oncoming traffic before we would ever allow ourselves to be stopped for more than a few seconds. The MP CAT team would speed ahead of us and block intersections so we rarely if ever stopped. Arrivals and departures were rehearsed until we could get in and out of the open area as quickly as possible. The guys were finally all in tune with one another and had learned to fill and flow. If a guy was out of position, someone would automatically move to the vacated spot. I was pleased.

  Lydia K, a member of the Governance Team, was working closely with the local Iraqis and the ambassador. She came to me one day and told me that the local population was becoming angry about the way our guys were pointing weapons at everyone on the street as the motorcade moved through town. The lead and follow cars were not armored vehicles and the new shift leader thought it was a good idea to have the guys hold their weapons through the open windows so “they could react more quickly.” Quite honestly I had never thought of the reaction of the locals, but Lydia was very in touch with the locals and I trusted her. If she said something might become a problem, I knew she was right and it would eventually become a problem. I went to the new shift leader and told him that from now on all weapons would be kept inside the vehicles and the windows would be rolled up. To say he was not happy would be an understatement. I pointed out that Bird had always kept the weapons below the closed windows. He still wanted to argue about it. Oh well, I said, it is my call and if you do not agree do you want a window seat or an aisle seat? The weapons stayed in the cars with the windows up from that point forward.

  I was still short two guys. Shrek, a former FAST Company (Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security) Marine, showed up and filled one of the holes. It was apparent that he had some experience, and he went to work almost immediately. We still had guys with gastrointestinal issues or upper respiratory infections from the never-ending dust. And the heat was a killer. And now another 10 percenter revealed himself. A former cop asked to speak to me. He told me that he had not signed up for this type of work, that he was used to eight-hour days, three meals per day, coffee breaks, and eight hours of sleep. I very sarcastically told him to organize a union and see what he could get arranged. I was faced now with sending another guy home, but in a stroke of cl
arity I decided to send him to the villa and replace him with a villa guy. The villa guy was ecstatic to be on the detail, and the weak sister could relax as he would no longer have to go into the Red Zone. The villa quickly became a place where I could hide the sick, lame, and lazy.

  Baghdad was a city that was one of the most extreme examples that I have ever seen of “haves” and “have-nots.” Saddam’s palaces were a garish testament to excess. Huge chandeliers, gold-plated fixtures in the bathrooms, fifty-foot cathedral ceilings, pictures of Hussein in every room. He spared no expense in making sure he had the best of everything. The citizens of Baghdad, on the other hand, lived in cement houses that had no sewage systems and no organized garbage pickup. Raw sewage ran from the houses into the streets; garbage was tossed in vacant lots. The smell, intensified by the heat, was oppressive. Electricity was a hit-or-miss proposition for the people. Forget about air-conditioning. Saddam had kept his foot firmly on the throats of his people while he enjoyed all the luxuries that he or anyone else could ever imagine. No wonder they hated him.

  October 2003—THE LITTLE BIRDS ARRIVE

  About this time I got a call from Blackwater that my helicopters would be arriving in a few days. Once again I was faced with a logistical nightmare. I now needed housing for ten more people, and a place to park and be able to work on the “Little Birds.” I went to Ken H and asked him to get the process rolling. There was a helo landing zone (LZ Washington) in the Green Zone that would be perfect, but there was neither housing nor a hangar there. Ken went to Colonel Sabol and somehow between the two of them, they miraculously got trailers installed at the LZ, and construction on a hangar began.

  Six pilots, four mechanics, and the three MD-530 helicopters arrived. I met with the lead pilot. We talked about potential problems that might arise, and he assured me that due to his connections with the army air guys he could handle the issues. All the pilots in the first group were former TF-160 guys—The Night Stalkers. Most had considerable time working with Delta and the SEALs in support of spec-ops missions. Several were veteran pilots of the famous Somalia incident immortalized in the film Black Hawk Down. Most had retired from active duty after twenty years.

  It took a couple of days for the Little Birds to be assembled, op checked, and declared operational. The decision was made to use only two at any time, thus making sure we would always have a spare ready to go if one of them got hit or had a mechanical issue. Each bird had two pilots and room in the back for two shooters who might provide firepower and cover in the event the motorcade was hit.

  And then, as I anticipated and feared, some issues began to develop. Apparently a couple of the pilots never got the memo they were there to support the PSD team that was providing the security to the most-threatened man in the world. Several seemed to think our PSD team was there to support the new air wing of Blackwater. This was the first time that Blackwater had an aviation division, and, by extension, the first time that air power would be used to provide support to a PSD team on the ground. Just like when building the PSD team, we would have to develop the protocols for this new air resource. First these pilots wanted me to give them dedicated door gunners who would report only to them. When I told them I didn’t have sufficient manpower to do that, they suggested I cut back on either the detail or the advance team. Really? How would that make sense? Where did they think we were working, Myrtle Beach? I told them when the guys from the villa were off duty, they could use them. It was the best I could do until we got more people.

  Then they informed me that, per FAA regulations, they could only be on duty for eight hours each day. WTF? We were in Iraq, not Nebraska! Again, I told them we worked whenever the ambassador worked. They wanted precise takeoff times and wanted to know exactly when they should be back on station before the ambassador left a meeting. I’ll never know what fairy tales they had been told, but they had obviously not been given a clear picture of what we were really doing. Meetings lasted until the ambassador was done. Sometimes they ended twenty minutes early; sometimes they ran two hours over. Ambassador Bremer was trying to rebuild a country, and a few of the pilots were worried about crew rest? I was beside myself. One pilot actually told me to tell the ambassador that he had to follow his schedule exactly or it would affect the pilots’ performance. It was an amazing conversation. He’s looking at me like I’m crazy, and I’m looking at him like he has three heads. I looked around for a Candid Camera crew. There was no way he could be serious. But he was.

  At this point I wasn’t even sure how to best utilize them in their support role. A few days later one of the pilots came over to talk to me. Steve “Hacksaw” Chilton knew I was reaching a breaking point, and he asked me to let him massage his boss. I knew from word of mouth Hacksaw was a straight shooter and a damn good pilot, and I knew if he told me something could be done and that he could do it, it would get done. He was also, far and away, the best pilot in the group.

  Somehow he fixed the issues. How he did it will always remain a mystery. I did hear a few stories of rather heated arguments and offers to “step outside” to handle the differences of opinion. Fortunately they kept that strictly to themselves.

  The first Thursday the pilots were in-country I invited them over to my trailer for some adult beverages; I was told curtly by the lead pilot that his guys would not be attending. I responded in kind. I said they now worked for me; I was the AIC, and he and his guys fell under my command, not vice versa. He did not come over, but a few of the others did. It was the start of a very contentious relationship between him and me. I was never happier than when he rotated out. Eventually I learned that his biggest issue stemmed from taking directions from me, a former Marine Corps NCO, an enlisted man. He was a retired army colonel, and he truly believed that officers were superior to enlisted men in everything and in every way. The fact that I had been doing protection operations for years for a former cabinet-level government official meant nothing to him. As an officer he automatically knew more about protection than I ever would.

  The other pilots were great guys—absolutely fearless. Men of character who would do anything asked of them whenever it was asked. And ask we did, and answer the call they did.

  At this time Blackwater had another team in country—The Dirty 30. They worked under a different contract and provided support for a different agency. Most were former spec-op guys (Recon, SEALs, and Special Forces) and when they heard about our Little Birds they could not get to me fast enough to see how they might use them to support their mission. Once again, I had to remind people that the birds were here to support the PSD team guarding Ambassador Bremer. I got the patented Blackwater “one team, one fight” speech, and I realized that they actually thought they had access to the helos. It was a nightmare. We were on different contracts, being paid by different government agencies. If something happened while we were out with the ambassador, how was I supposed to explain why my birds were providing air support for someone else?

  My new toys were a novelty item to most of the folks in the palace. Everyone wanted a ride or to “borrow” them. It was a pain in the ass dealing with all the requests for special favors from folks who “absolutely needed” them for some special project. I tried to stay focused on the missions, but between the attitude of the lead pilot and the hours my men were keeping, it was a brutal struggle. The lead pilot never met a request he thought he shouldn’t fulfill. In his mind those “recreational” flights would count against his eight-hour day and had the potential to generate future business and income for Blackwater Air. Needless to say they were rarely granted. The guy was a skilled pilot, but why he was there as the lead guy baffled me. We made up the rules as the situations dictated, and he played everything by the book—a book that was totally inapplicable in Iraq. He would call Blackwater HQ daily to complain about something, and then my phone would ring and I would be asked to explain some nonexistent problem. On more than one occasion I was with the ambassador when Blackwater
called about some slight, real or imagined, that hurt this guy’s feelings. I only called HQ if and when I had an emergency.

  At this time IEDs (improvised explosive devices) were becoming quite a problem for the folks (military and civilian) in Baghdad. The Iraqis were masters of taking different explosives—artillery shells, mortar shells, hand grenades, plastic explosives, etc.—and turning them into explosive devices they could bury under the road, stuff into animal carcasses, or hide in trash cans and then detonate remotely. IEDs were extremely effective and were responsible for thousands of American, coalition, and Iraqi citizens’ injuries and deaths. Not to mention the car bombs that were driven by suicide bombers or the suicide bombers that would strap explosives to themselves and walk up to the target and blow themselves up while killing their intended victims.

  Consequently, we were always on guard for lone individuals. One day, we took Bremer to the other side of The 14th of July Bridge. This bridge crossed the Euphrates River and was named by the Iraqis to honor a special date in their history. A homeless man approached the motorcade while we were stopped for traffic. He fixated on the limo and began to approach with a broom in one hand. The other hand extended palm up. He was obviously begging for a handout. The limo driver, instead of keeping the car moving, reached and fumbled for his pistol as though he was going to draw it and fire it through the armored window. I casually reached over and stopped him from drawing the weapon. Firing a weapon inside an armored vehicle may be just about dumbest thing a person could do. The bullet can’t get out. It would just bounce around inside until it hit one of us or the ambassador. At the same time I heard yelling behind me and turned around to see the shift leader out of his vehicle pointing his weapon at the homeless guy and screaming at him to stop and get back. Funny thing about the English language; no matter how loud you yell it, if they can’t understand it, they can’t understand it. The ambassador calmly asked me if it was necessary to point a loaded weapon at an obviously homeless beggar. I told him I would talk to the team. Fuck.

 

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