A few hours later, on their way home from the airport, the Hillah team will be ambushed by a group of trucks that materialize out of nowhere and begin hammering the Suburbans with PKM heavy-machine-gun fire. The insurgents don’t seem to notice the hate truck, with its blaring music and skullhead talisman, bearing down on them at high speed from behind. The blond tail gunner pulls his SAW and continuously drills holes into the trucks, killing one attacker and forcing the others to break contact and flee. As the insurgents speed off in disarray, the amped team has a split second to decide whether or not to pursue and keep firing, but they choose to get off the X instead. The blond tail gunner will angrily tell me later that he wishes he could have finished the job, particularly since the insurgents returned to the attack site later to booby-trap the body of the man he had killed. The trap ends up killing two marines who come by to inspect the site and roll over the body.
Leaving Iraq
A few days later, I head out with the Mamba team on an airport run from which I won’t return. My month is up. I’m going home. On my last ride down Route Irish, all the blackened, gravel-filled craters and burnt car hulks along the way look familiar. It has become much easier to distinguish the suspicious from the mundane. I say my good-byes to the team in the shade of the airport Arrivals lobby, and they all wish me well. I have enjoyed being the Mamba team’s bullet bitch, late-night confessor, and chronicler. Some of the guys will rotate out in a month, and despite the intensity of violence, I think Miyagi and his no-nonsense coplike view of the job will keep them safe.
With one last wave, I head inside to meet the crew of the Blackwater CASA 212, a small private plane that ferries contractors in and out of Iraq. Unlike the Royal Jordanian flight that uses a pressurized Fokker twin engine jet, the CASA is a long, noisy, cold ride over a featureless tan desert.
Preflight procedures at BIAP comically replicate the diligence of the Transportation Security Administration in the United States. Young Iraqi women search carefully through our baggage but miss anything tucked away. At the gate, an older American with a bad comb-over pats us all down in a needlessly touchy body search—particularly needless when a flight crew member admits to Mr. Comb-Over that he is wearing a loaded 9-mm Glock. He gets searched anyway, and they hilariously put his gun through the X-ray machine before returning it. Noncrew members are not allowed to carry any weapons onto a flight, and one of our team has a folding knife seized. The security guard hands it to our pilot, who just hands it back to the contractor. The outgoing contractors wear looks of disgust as they go through the charade. We are all well aware that only days before someone managed to sneak an entire Mercedes loaded with explosives aboard a DHL plane. Wearing a loaded gun or carrying a pocket knife seems minor, particularly since we’ll be traveling on a private Blackwater flight.
As we walk across the tarmac and out to the plane, one of the guards yells at us to walk between the yellow barrier tape. It makes no sense, but then again, it is BIAP.
Once we’re on board the plane, the Blackwater crew breaks open a large aluminum box and hands out loaded M4 weapons to each passenger. If this plane gets shot down and anyone survives, they won’t go without a fight. To make sure we can escape a crash, the pilot lowers the rear hydraulic ramp. The CASA doesn’t just take off; it leaps into the air and heads straight up—the much more violent reverse of the corkscrew spin the Royal Jordanian flight does when it lands. Only the ground is visible through the open rear door. Once the CASA has rocketed up to a safe cruising altitude above the range of surface-to-air missiles, the weapons are put back on safety and locked up again. What may seem like a bit of overly paranoid precaution will prove to be an appropriate security measure three months later when insurgents shoot down one of Blackwater’s helos and drag the injured pilot out to shoot him at point-blank range.
After we land in Jordan that night, a single bullet found in one of the contractors’ luggage causes us onerous delay in Jordanian customs. Although Jordan has shipped thousands of tons of light and heavy weapons to Iraq, they don’t want any returning. The Blackwater fixer is a former officer in the Jordanian secret police who works out the problem with customs and gets us out of there in a little over an hour.
A generic Amman hotel houses the incoming and outgoing Blackwater contractors, and Justin “Shrek” McQuown is there to greet us when we arrive. Though it is the first nightspot the outgoing contractors have seen in at least three months, and the last one the incoming will see for three more, a grim atmosphere hangs over Players Sports Bar on the eighth floor. The outgoing sit silently thinking of the thousands of mundane things that need to be taken care of when they get home. The inbound reflect on the risks and rewards of being thrust in between the insurgency and the U.S. occupation. With early flights to catch, bags to pack, and phone calls to make, the contractors clear out of the bar early.
As I sink into bed, I think about the dozens of runs back and forth along Route Irish. Throughout my month in Iraq, Blackwater PSD teams had come and gone, new ICs rotated in and others rotated out. Car bombs, snipers, blocked roads, suspicious packages in the median, and the high-speed drive to and from the airport all turned into a day at the office. The morning briefings, once ominous and frightening, became routine as Miyagi reminded us at the beginning and the end: “New Day, New Mission.” Every successful run the Mamba team made reduced the odds that the men would not make it home safely to their families. T-Boy told me before I left that I must be a lucky charm, since none of the Mambas had been hit or any of the close-knit team killed or injured while I was riding along. I didn’t know that in a few weeks the Mamba team would be blown up by an IED, killing one and seriously injuring two, including Miyagi. For now, I was out.
Part Three
* * *
Of Rogues and Tycoons
CHAPTER 9
* * *
An Army of One
“I want to kill every fucking Afghan I can.”
—“JACK” IN THE HUNT FOR BIN LADEN
“The only thing that that Jack should be allowed to attack and kill is his bar tab.”
—OWNER OF THE MUSTAFA HOTEL IN KABUL
On September 10, 2001, Jonathan Keith Idema was living the less-than-idyllic existence of an ex-soldier and convicted felon in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The next day, as he watched thousands of Americans murdered on the command of a turbaned and bearded Arab hiding in a South Asian cave, Idema discovered a new sense of purpose. He was going to kill bin Laden, along with any other suspected terrorists he could find. He informed friends and family immediately that he’d be packing his bags and heading to Afghanistan as soon as he could find a way. For Idema, President Bush’s demand in a nationally televised address a few days later for bin Laden to be brought in “dead or alive” was the directive he sought to buttress his already-simmering ambitions. The post-9/11 world opened a Pandora’s box of prospects for adventurers, conmen, and opportunists, and created the perfect environment for a man like Idema to satisfy the most dominant aspects of his character: his fervid patriotism and need for action and admiration. The multimillion-dollar bounty on bin Laden’s head also stimulated his ambition. He soon began planning his first trip into Afghanistan—the beginning of a dark odyssey that would ultimately see him arrested in Kabul for operating an illegal prison and torturing its prisoners.
Idema’s transformation from a down-on-his-luck ex-soldier and felon to the “superpatriot” he now calls himself began on September 12, 2001, when he managed to arrange an appearance on Fox affiliate KTTV, billing himself as a counterterrorism expert. In this capacity, he suggested to viewers that three Canadian aircraft may have also been hijacked the day before. While the idea seems preposterous, Idema offered it with the same characteristic bluster that would enable him to operate so successfully in the many roles he would assume over the next three years. From his first appearance as an expert on September 12 until his arrest in July of 2004, Idema would come to be known as many things—documentary producer, h
umanitarian, CIA contractor, DoD contractor, Special Forces member, Northern Alliance advisor, tour guide, Pentagon official, media consultant, freelance prison operator, torturer-interrogator, and bin Laden bounty hunter. Some roles were real, some imagined, but few were questioned or investigated until overwhelming pressure from Idema’s victims spurred authorities to arrest him and his tiny band of mercenaries. Idema’s exploits were no more than a sideshow to the real action in Afghanistan, and Jack himself was no more than a bit player with no real role in the legitimate private security industry. However, what Idema did manage to accomplish in Afghanistan speaks to a hidden danger created by the increasing profusion of armed civilians in a theater of war.
The many layers of deception in which his life is shrouded makes it difficult to fully dissect the enigma of Jonathan Keith Idema, and the wildly incorrect and compulsively dishonest tales he has fed to the press suggest that an interview with him would be more for entertainment than illumination. But through my conversations with many associates and others who’ve known Idema, a very disturbing portrait has emerged of how easily an ordinary, if deeply flawed, individual can take advantage of the shadowy modus operandi of covert operators and the recent explosion in the U.S. government’s use of private contractors. Idema has proven that an ambitious civilian upstart with certain key skills can soldier on independently of any government oversight, command, external financial support, or approval.
After 9/11, spurred by anger and his deep sense of patriotism, Idema felt certain he could hunt down bin Laden if given the opportunity, but he had to find a way into Afghanistan first. For his first trip into the war zone, he managed to create an opportunity for himself working on a National Geographic–financed documentary that was supposed to chronicle the work of two humanitarian organizations. While that sounds like an innocuous and even valiant endeavor, in reality Idema ended up scamming two well-meaning NGOs and attempting to make a documentary of his own dramatized heroism.
A small man with a tiny frame, bad eyesight, and black-dyed, thinning hair, Idema has a dominating persona and a talent for charm, when he chooses. Although he only stands five foot nine, he makes a lasting impression on the people who meet him. Edward Artis, director of one of the scammed NGOs, holds Idema in about as much regard as many others who have crossed the man’s path: “If his hod is full of shit and falls on him, that’s okay with me.”
Artis, a former army airborne soldier from the 82nd, has specialized in frontline humanitarian work since the early 1970s, including many trips to Afghanistan. His tiny NGO, Knightsbridge International, keeps things simple and moves fast. Though he already had a filmmaker following him to South Asia, ever mindful of the donation-generating benefit of publicity, Artis agreed to allow another film crew from National Geographic television to join his caravan when a friend referred Idema.
“The Nat Geo thing happened through Idema. I admit, I fucked up. In October of 2001, Jim Morris, who is a fellow Knight of Malta, a former Special Forces major, and writes for Soldier of Fortune, contacted me. Then Idema approached me via e-mail after being introduced by Morris. The way I figured it back then, Idema was a guy just out of prison, looking to do something honest…. He said he was producing a documentary for National Geographic with producer Gary Scurka and former CBS cameraman Ed Caraballo.”
Despite Artis’s first impression, Jonathan Keith Idema did not view himself as a felon trying to go straight. He had reinvented himself as “Jack,” a crime-fighting, bad-guy-punching, ex–Green Beret using his amazing skills and secret connections to save the world from evil. In reality, Idema was broke and involved in multiple frivolous and self-enriching lawsuits, including suing Dreamworks for allegedly stealing his life story and even suing a company for repossessing his Jeep when he missed payments. A cursory investigation into Idema’s background would have found arrest records for receiving stolen property, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, being a fugitive from justice, two counts of assault by pointing a firearm, discharging a firearm into a dwelling, communicating threats and assault on a female, and federal convictions on one count of conspiracy and fifty-five counts of wire fraud. Idema had never been to Afghanistan or been seriously involved in humanitarian work but saw an opportunity to use the lens of a documentarian’s camera to record for posterity all the heroic deeds he intended to commit, or at least to dramatize.
The Nat Geo documentary wasn’t the first time Idema had tried to cast himself in the role of hero. In May 1995, Jim Morris had sent a film pitch to Steven Spielberg entitled Loose Cannon: The Keith Idema Story, described as a “treatment based on Idema’s exploits but replete with fictionalized accounts,” a pattern Idema followed faithfully even in real life. This film treatment became the basis for a 2000 lawsuit brought by Idema and Morris against Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks, George Clooney, and others involved in the 1997 nuclear smuggling film The Peacemaker. They sued for $150 million, but the case was dismissed and Idema was later ordered to reimburse Dreamworks’s legal fees of $273,000.
As sketched out in Loose Cannon, Idema claims that while he was in Lithuania training police in the early 1990s, he learned about an extensive network of black-market smuggling in nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union. Upon his return to the United States, Idema reported this information to the Pentagon and the FBI, but when pressed to turn over his contacts for this information, he refused. When Idema was later arrested on more than fifty counts of wire fraud, he contended that the FBI was unfairly punishing him for not turning over his sources. He says this conspiracy was behind his prosecution, conviction, and stint in federal prison, not his actions in falsifying credit lines to purchase, but not pay for, supplies for his failing mail-order business. Abuse by conspiracy, hatred of the FBI, alleged theft of property, and total denial of any wrongdoing had been common themes in Idema’s life for years before he capped off his life’s performance in Afghanistan.
During his trial, Idema ignored his court-appointed attorney and acted as his own lawyer. He constantly made claims of conspiracy and belittled the evidence, as well as the judge and prosecutor. The judge presiding over the case took umbrage at Keith’s claims, excuses, and behavior. Magistrate Wallace Dixon told Idema, “In my assessment, you are a bully who apparently likes to talk, to hear his own tongue wagging.” Later, Dixon continued, “I think you are sick. I don’t know of any other way to say it. I think you have a mental illness.” Judge Terrence Boyle’s opinion of Idema was equally harsh: “All of the things you purport about what a wonderful patriot you are and what a singled-out person you are is pure fantasy.” Idema’s response was typical: “I’m going to sue the FBI,” he said. “They know I’m going to go on TV. They know I’m going to go to Congress. They know I’m not going to give up until I prove my innocence.” On April 11, 1995, thirty-eight-year-old Keith Idema was sentenced to four years in prison and fined $250,000.
Defeated and chastised in the courts and penal system, Idema did turn to the media to fight his battle. Jim Morris, a longtime friend and co-complainant in the Dreamworks lawsuit, supported Idema’s tale of persecution and reported on the case of the Lithuanian nukes for Soldier of Fortune in April and May of 1995. It didn’t take long for CBS to send one of their top investigative journalists, Gary Scurka, to interview Idema in prison. The October 1995 60 Minutes segment on Lithuanian nuclear smuggling ended up winning awards for investigative journalism, but those assembling the broadcast felt uncomfortable about the quality of one of their sources and completely excluded the interview with the bug-eyed federal prisoner from the segment.
Idema reconnected with Scurka after being released from jail in 1997, and the two started a production company together called Point Blank News. Idema pushed for their first project to be Any Lesser Man: The Keith Idema Story, but despite Scurka’s belief in Idema’s story, networks and financial backers did not share their enthusiasm. Of the $1 million they needed to start production, they managed to raise only about a quarter, and ended up shelving
the project.
Mr. Potato Head
After September 11, when Idema heard about Ed Artis’s planned trip into Afghanistan, it must have sounded like an opportunity for the reformulation of Any Lesser Man. Though the documentary pitch ostensibly focused on the work of Ed Artis, Idema envisioned a starring role for himself as another ex-soldier turned humanitarian braving danger to lessen the suffering of poor Afghans. As war against the Taliban loomed, and the American public thirsted for any information on their newly discovered enemy, media organizations scrambled to fill programming hours with anything related to Afghanistan. In this environment, it seemed of little consequence that Idema had no humanitarian, military, business, or any other connection to Afghanistan. The pitch to National Geographic, called “Operation Pathfinder,” portrayed “Keith” as a leader of a team of ex–Green Berets who would come to the rescue of “Sir Edward Artis,” a Vietnam vet and “one of the world’s most renowned humanitarians.” The pitch describes Keith as a man who did time for a crime he did not commit and now wants to “get back into the action.”
Idema first contacted Ed Artis as Artis was waiting in Tajikistan for passage into Afghanistan with filmmaker Adrian Belic, who was shooting a documentary, Beyond the Call. Even in that first conversation, Artis remembers Idema as being less than forthcoming about the focus of the documentary. Artis recalls: “We’re in the convoy getting ready to go over and I get this call on my sat phone from Idema. We filmed that call. I got pictures of him telling me about Nat Geo. ‘Gary Scurka of Nat Geo wants to come in and do a doco on you.’ ‘What’s the pitch?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been in the biz. Let me see the outline.’ Idema says, ‘We will get the outline to you before we come over.’ Idema told me, ‘Gary Scurka doesn’t want to give it to you by e-mail. We will bring it with us,’ he says. I say fine. The idea was they’d do a documentary on Knightsbridge International’s efforts to help the people of Afghanistan. You know, ex-military guys doing humanitarian work while bombs fall around them kinda stuff. Coverage is good, but with me it’s mission first. It’s not about me.”
Licensed to Kill Page 26