Licensed to Kill

by Robert Young Pelton

  The battle for Fallujah began in November of 2004 as six thousand U.S. troops and two thousand Iraqis swept into the city from the north, confronting insurgents and pushing out residents. After the battle died down, Fallujah appeared a battered ghost town haunted by the reported twelve hundred fighters and six hundred civilians who died there. About seventy Americans gave their lives and two hundred suffered serious wounds in the fight to control the city. Although it can be argued that the battle for Fallujah was part of a larger plan to destroy insurgent strongholds in the Sunni Triangle, it was the brutal death and postmortem mutilation of four Blackwater contractors eight months earlier, in March of 2004, that served as the rallying cry and inspiration for the troops who fought there.

  During the initial phase of operations in Iraq in the spring of 2003, troops had begun to take over Fallujah but were ordered back. For the first year of the occupation, the city remained an uncontrolled hot spot for violence and sheltered a base of operations for the spreading insurgency. Woefully unprepared for violent resistance to the occupation, the American military was strained to the limits as it dealt with manpower and supply problems.

  The desperate situation created an ideal business opportunity for Blackwater. At the time, Blackwater was providing security for the CIA in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and had just set up about five dozen of their contractors on the Bremer detail. Blackwater was eager to aggressively expand their business in the most lucrative and fastest-growing market for security providers in the world. To understand the full picture of what happened to the four contractors in Fallujah, it makes the most sense to start at the top rather than the bottom, since Blackwater actually occupied a low rung on the ladder in the contract the four men were servicing.

  Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) manages the lucrative $7.2-billion cost-plus LOGCAP contract to handle support functions for the U.S. military on a global basis. In the execution of the LOGCAP, KBR utilizes a massive network of contractors to manage different elements of the contract, who in turn hire contractors to manage an even narrower delegation of responsibility, who in turn may hire even more contractors to handle specific tasks—often creating layers upon layers of subcontracting.

  In the Fallujah incident, Blackwater had been hired to provide security for the Kuwaiti-based Regency Hotel and Hospitality Company, which was a subcontractor of German food service company Eurest Support Services (ESS), which was itself a subcontractor of KBR in the vast mosaic of companies hired to execute the LOGCAP. Even within Blackwater, there were subcontracts to purchase equipment and hire both management and the independent contractors who would carry out the actual tasks, creating multiple layers of contracts and profits to perform the function of feeding troops.

  At the time, U.S. military and State Department policy was that, although it could provide convoy protection from Kuwait, it could not provide individual or short-notice escorts to private companies, even if the corporations were working to provide vital resources to the military. Since KBR is required to provide logistics and support on a cost-plus basis, it is far more expedient and profitable to contract private security forces to protect the convoys of its suppliers. Blackwater aggressively and successfully competed for these contracts knowing that once in place, the profits could grow dramatically as the need for security became more critical.

  The ESS contract picked up by Regency and Blackwater required thirty-four armed men on ninety-day contracts to guard the movement of ESS equipment and personnel. The initial security survey provided by Blackwater was not a hard bid, but rather an estimate of the $867,033.34 needed to get them going for the first month. Blackwater signed a primary contract with ESS on March 8 and a subcontract with Regency on March 12.

  Although the contract with Regency was for just under $900,000, with a third paid up front, the actual costs were to be billed as the client required them. The Regency contract allotted for two “tier-one” management positions, twelve “tier-two” PSD operators, and twenty “static” or “tier-three” operators. Management positions typically paid roughly $750 a day; tier two—those operators with extensive military or police experience who would be the main providers of security—earned about $600 per day; and tier three—those with less experience who played support roles—earned approximately $450 to $500. They would all earn $150 a day for travel or standby days.

  For their billing, Blackwater would mark up the base labor costs, adding on additional charges for overhead, training, equipment, housing, and so on, and pass on the bill to Regency. Regency would add its own costs incurred, if any, and mark up Blackwater’s cost with its own profit and hand the bill off to ESS. Then ESS, in turn, would mark up and bill KBR, who then would mark up and bill the U.S. government based on its standard LOGCAP cost-plus arrangement. There is no direct accountability for cost or performance, since KBR considers its LOGCAP billing to be confidential and not disclosed to the taxpayer or journalists. Even the act of discussing work done for a contractor like Blackwater can result in instant fines of $250,000, something agreed to in writing by each contractor. At no point is there any incentive to reduce the layers of subcontracting, since every markup provides a profit for somebody. This particular contract had four levels of profit-making before the actual service was provided. It is conceivable that the rate charged to the U.S. taxpayer for a $600-a-day security contractor could end up being thousands. The comparable cost for an enlisted soldier of the same experience and paygrade is about $100 to $250 a day. Even if a four-star general were to provide the services, it would cost around $450 a day.

  Although much is made of the high rates for contractors, their contractually stipulated twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week job makes $600 a day an effective $25 an hour with no benefits or guarantee of employment beyond the stipulated term of the contract. The biggest benefit for the U.S. military is that using contractors adds no long-term liability in insurance, retirement, training, benefits, or medical costs. Relying on contractors essentially provides a hard one-time cost with no commitment or liability before or after the required use date. Contractors are the ultimate use-once, throwaway soldiers—an expensive but disposable source of muscle and steel when problems occur.

  Though the contracting companies have no incentive to reduce costs to the U.S. government, cutting corners in their own expenditures can maximize their profits. For example, a simple line deletion in Blackwater’s subcontract with Regency, replacing armored vehicles with soft skins, could have added over a million and half dollars in profit. Blackwater’s March 8 primary contract with ESS stipulated that PSDs be comprised of six-man teams traveling in two armored cars. However, the subcontract to Regency left out the armored-car requirement, an omission that could have been key to the survival of the contractors. Prior to the Fallujah incident, John “JP” Potter, a former SEAL and Kuwait liaison officer for Blackwater, was reportedly fired for pointing out the danger of this change. While much has been made of this decision in the subsequent lawsuits by the murdered contractors’ families, each man had signed an obsessively detailed contract that protected Blackwater from any liability.

  Blackwater’s twenty-three-page contract details how Blackwater cannot be held accountable in the event of a contractor’s injury, dismemberment, or emotional distress caused by “terrorists” or even “U.S. governmental employees.” The list of potential threats is impressive: being shot, permanently maimed, and/or killed by firearms or munitions, falling aircraft or helicopters, sniper fire, landmines, artillery fire, rocket-propelled grenades, truck or car bombs, earthquakes or other natural disasters, poisoning, civil uprising, terrorist activity, hand-to-hand combat, disease, plane or helicopter crash, hearing loss, eye injury or loss, inhalation or contact with biological or chemical contaminants (whether airborne or not), or injury by flying debris. The contract specifies that it is the responsibility of the contractor to get insurance. The only standard recourse Blackwater employees have is Defense Base Act (DBA) insurance, and hopefull
y backup assistance from the U.S. military if they get into a jam, something that would be rare and not readily available in dangerous areas.

  Blackwater was taking over services previously provided by Control Risks Group (CRG), which had begun phasing out their security operations on March 18, with full pullout scheduled by the twenty-ninth of that month. The thirty-day implementation period in Blackwater’s original contract would have left ESS without security from the twenty-ninth to April eighth. Since every day waiting for the contract to begin meant a loss of profits, Blackwater reduced the prep time in order to be operational by April 2. When it became clear that ESS would require a security escort to move some kitchen equipment on March 30, Blackwater management pressed harder to get their men in place. When there is a changeover in the provider of security, the incoming contractors typically do a few days of ridealongs with the departing teams, in order to develop an awareness of the terrain and potential dangers they would face. But because of the tight schedule, the Blackwater contractors were dropped in place their first day on the job and did not get the benefit of learning from the experience of CRG. Additionally, State Department standard operational procedures require at least twenty-four-hours’ notice for a move, which is supposed to be used for advance prep work such as scouting the intended route, generating alternate route plans, evac instructions, and putting together a detailed briefing for the security contractors—usually in the form of a PowerPoint presentation with handouts and communications codes. What actually happened was very different. Like all preventable disasters, a series of major and minor mistakes would lead to the violent deaths of Scott Helvenston, Mike Teague, Wes Batalona, and Jerry Zovko.

  The four men represented a fairly typical mix of a Blackwater contract. The oldest, forty-eight-year-old Wesley J. K. Batalona, had twenty years of experience in the army and had retired as a Ranger sergeant. A native Hawaiian, Wes was working as a security guard at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on Hawaii’s big island when the Iraq war began. He reportedly wanted to start a program to help troubled youth and also needed money to help prevent the foreclosure on his ill father’s home—both requiring a serious inflow of funds Batalona did not have. Having been out of the service for nearly ten years, the appeal of a return to the action likely also drew Batalona to the world of private contractors. The silver-haired and physically fit Batalona stood out from his fellow contractors in Iraq, not just because of his advanced age, but because of his proclivity for dressing in colorful Hawaiian shirts while on duty. At the time of his death, he had worked two months in Iraq with Blackwater and had put in previous time on an earlier contract with MPRI. Wes had done a thirty-day stint training the fledging Iraqi Army for MPRI in the fall of 2003, which is where he had met his partner, the youngest of the group, thirty-two-year-old Jerko Gerald “Jerry” Zovko.

  A Cleveland-born Croatian-American, Zovko had joined the army in 1991 as part of the 82nd Military Police at Fort Bragg, and went on to pass qualifications to become a Ranger—but did not attend the school. Zovko was a hulk of a man, standing six foot three and weighing approximately two hundred thirty-five pounds. He had served in Croatia, and as his stint in the army was coming to an end, he decided that he wanted to transition into another career more exciting than being a sheriff’s deputy or security guard. His first gig as a private security contractor began in late 1997—a straight shot into a DynCorp contract in Qatar. He learned Arabic while in the Middle East and moved on to MPRI in the fall of 2003 to train the Iraqi Army in Kirkush. He and Batalona became close friends, bonding over their difficult task of training disorganized, demoralized, and inexperienced soldiers. In November, the Iraqi recruits had gone home for Ramadan, but few returned, apparently terrified they would be killed by insurgents and unhappy with the tough training meted out by the contractors. With no troops to train, the MPRI contract evaporated. Batalona and Zovko’s search for other job opportunities eventually led them to Cochise (from which they were fired) and then to Blackwater.

  Their doomed team had another former Ranger, Michael R. “The Ice Man” Teague, who had been a door gunner for the elite 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) out of Fort Bragg. A thirty-eight-year-old family man from Clarksville, Tennessee, Teague had spent twelve years in the army with time in Grenada, Panama, and Afghanistan. He had recently retired and decided to become a contractor after having difficulty finding any work to support his wife and son other than as a low-paid security guard. As ex-Army, Batalona, Zovko, and Teague enjoyed a tribal bond that required no translation of terminology, tactics, or acronyms.

  The odd man out on the team was Scott Helvenston. Pulled from his all ex-SEAL team and ordered to fill a missing spot at the last minute, he immediately knew that the group had no cohesion. Rangers tend to stick together and view SEALs as pretty boys who don’t do well out of water. Now the ex-Army had on their team a man with no combat experience but who was the ultimate poster boy for the SEALs. Steven “Scott” Helvenston, thirty-eight, was a SEAL celebrity. He had acted as a military consultant on big-budget Hollywood movies such as Face/Off, starring John Travolta, and Three Ninjas. He even had screen time as a SEAL instructor who helped whip Demi Moore into shape for Ridley Scott’s 1997 G.I. Jane. His quest for celebrity and his good looks led him to star in Mark Burnett’s reality show, Combat Missions, a survival game against other ex-soldiers and cops, and Man vs. Beast, where he raced chimps. He was recognizable to anyone who watched late-night TV as a fitness pitchman, since he had produced and aggressively hawked a series of Navy SEAL exercise videos—the main selling points being his blond hair, good looks, big smile, and perfectly chiseled California beach torso. Those Blackwater operators with a few rotations under their belt wondered why “Scotty Bod” didn’t make the Bremer detail, or the “pretty boy” detail, as they called it.

  By 2001, Scott was hurting financially. His acting career had stalled, and his fitness videos had not generated enough profit to pay off the advertising costs. He declared bankruptcy and had to sell his California home and take work as a campground security guard. With an annual reported income of under $15,000 and two children to support, his personal situation was bleak. Scott decided to apply to Blackwater, and despite their prohibition of hiring those with financial problems, he was accepted. Run by a former SEAL, president Gary Jackson, Blackwater’s bending the rules to help an ex-SEAL is not surprising. Ex-military know that life on the outside is tough, and there is a sense of pride that Blackwater offers a second chance—a chance to get back in the action, associate with former operators, and serve your country. The fact that contractors work dangerous assignments for a financial lifeline is not discussed but does offer an evident incentive to skim the contract and sign on the dotted line. Scott Helvenston was about to find the fame he sought, in a brutal reality show, caught on tape and broadcast around the world.

  Helvenston joined Blackwater in early March 2004, trained up at headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, and deployed to Kuwait to do convoy security for the ESS contract. For Helvenston’s family, their tragedy is all the more poignant because Scott wasn’t even supposed to be on the run that ended with his death.

  T-Boy, a thirty-seven-year-old former marine from California, had been slotted for a position on the doomed four-man team, but missed it because of a delayed flight into Kuwait. “By the time I made it to the hotel, ‘Team November One’ had already left and drove to Baghdad. Scott Helvenston took my place from another team because of my absence and was killed two days later. A few guys were very upset at me for a while after that. They didn’t understand what had happened to my flight. They just knew one of their close friends that had replaced me on the team had been killed.”

  Mental replays of the contractors’ brutal deaths, perhaps tinged by some survivor’s guilt, have haunted T-Boy. “A few of the guys I worked with didn’t think I was stable enough to be here and tried to get me fired. No one really knows how they will take death until it happens. But here I am, more than a ye
ar later, still in Iraq and doing what I think is right.”

  Scott’s instructor in Moyock had been Justin “Shrek” McQuown, a former marine who was promoted from instructor and assigned to run the ESS contract as project manager from Kuwait. Scott and Justin had butted heads during training, and that animosity persisted in Kuwait. When T-Boy did a no-show at the airport, “Shrek” chose Scott to fill in the open slot on the November One team. While Scott was having dinner late in the evening of the twenty-eighth, Shrek told him to pack his stuff and be prepared to head up to Baghdad at 5:00 A.M. At first Scott begged off, saying he wasn’t feeling well. Though another contractor offered to take Scott’s place, Shrek came into Scott’s room later that night and began berating him, calling him a coward, confiscating his weapon, and screaming that he was fired. It was enough of a confrontation that Scott fired off an e-mail to Blackwater headquarters describing the situation and asking them to intercede. He had received no response by the next morning and so packed his stuff and headed to Baghdad.

  November One’s job for ESS was to accompany a truck convoy carrying kitchen equipment from Taji to Camp Ridgeway. Acting as security escort, they were to watch for anything unusual, deter any attacks, and, if engaged, deliver enough “lead on target” until they and the convoy could escape. Their weapons were standard M4s and Glock pistols, gear they were accustomed to in the military and knew how to use. However, they weren’t familiar with the terrain and didn’t know where and who the enemy was—that knowledge could only come with time and experience. The November One team was a typical security contractor detail—experienced men with enough skills between them to get out of most jams—but they hadn’t all worked together before and lacked group cohesion. Additionally, they were handicapped by a deliberate shortage of manpower. Although they had the capability to send out full six-man teams, and Blackwater’s contracts with ESS and each individual contractor required convoys to be accompanied by six-man teams, the manager in Baghdad, Tom Powell, decided to send out only four men that day.