As expected, Idema insisted he was doing supersecret work with direct approval from the top. Jack produced his evidence of calls to General Boykin’s office, but Boykin was not about to say he endorsed Jack’s activities. Idema also insisted he had records of phone calls to Rumsfeld’s office and other groups. These turned out to be correct, but again they proved to be one-sided inquiries from Idema.
After a very brief—and by all accounts, farcical—trial, the Afghan government convicted Idema, Bennett, and Caraballo of running an illegal prison and of torturing Afghan citizens. Idema and Bennett were sentenced to ten years each, and Caraballo got eight, though their sentences were later reduced to five years for Idema, three for Bennett, and two for Caraballo.
Despite incarceration in Afghanistan’s most notorious prison, Task Force Saber 7 enjoys the poshest setup available. Idema allegedly bribed the commander of Policharki Prison, a Tajik under General Fahim, to allow him to have couches, carpets, Internet access, and a sat phone. Caraballo was released in the spring of 2006, pardoned by Karzai for the Afghan New Year. While serving out his five-year sentence, Idema continues to publish a website and do interviews with those he considers friendly, all the while protesting his innocence and damning the conspiracy that keeps him from fighting his own war on terror.
Those who had met Idema in Afghanistan assumed there was something more important, someone more powerful behind the tough-guy façade. Those who know Idema well write him off as low-grade con artist who ends up revealing himself in his desperate hunger for publicity and money. The Afghan/American owner of the Mustafa Hotel in Kabul where Jack held court takes a more humorous approach: “The only thing that that Jack should be allowed to attack and kill is his bar tab.” Others have been financially, emotionally, and professionally damaged by Idema’s serial litigation, slander, and hyperaggressive campaigns to threaten or discredit former friends.
That such a transparent criminal could so easily label himself a contractor to act out his own covert paramilitary fantasy is a warning about the growing ubiquity of independent contractors. Bill Hagler, a private investigator and former associate of Idema’s, blames Idema’s long run in Afghanistan on the vague world of covert operations. “A world where the military can neither confirm or deny covert operators. That’s fertile ground for con artists like Idema.”
CHAPTER 10
* * *
The Very Model of a Modern Major Mercenary
“I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;…
For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.”
—GILBERT AND SULLIVAN’S THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE
The bitter chill of a winter night has settled over London as Michael Grunberg picks me up in his brand-new twelve-cylinder Bentley. As we glide silently through the darkened city, streetlights bend and flow along the glossy black hood. The interior smells of expensive leather and is lit by the dull glow of the backlit dials. Michael Grunberg not only has a mews house in an upscale borough of London, but also elegant homes in Guernsey and Paris. The son of a garment manufacturer, Michael has done well for himself—not just in his official profession as an accountant, but also as a careful proponent of the export and sale of military services. Although not a military man himself, Michael has played a pivotal role in creating and promoting the idea of privatized warfare over the past decade. Although his clients Tony Buckingham and Simon Mann originally formulated the vision for a modern corporatized version of mercenary action, Grunberg can take credit for the detailed structuring of ironclad contracts and constant behind-the-scenes media promotion of the concept.
As we glide by statues of statesmen, warriors, and mementos of wars fought in far-off lands, Grunberg outlines the history and genesis of Executive Outcomes and Sandline, the two original attempts in the 1990s to create a corporate structure for the sale of overtly mercenary and private military services. Understanding the rise and fall of these earliest examples of the private military company, and the motivations and ambitions of the key players behind the two ventures, opens a window into the more foreboding possibilities of an unregulated and unchecked industry dedicated to the sale or rental of armed men. It’s an examination of how purveyors of organized violence perfected and honed while serving for God and country can be effectively privatized and exploited for corporate or other interests. I tell Grunberg that I am particularly interested in the role played by Timothy Spicer, former president of Sandline, since he has emerged from the mercenary scandals of the 1990s with only shadings of taint on his image and has since gone on to become wildly successful by reinventing himself as a respectable security provider.
Britain is the perfect place to understand the mercenary and the complicated and delicate subsets of privatized warfare. London is littered with reminders of warfare’s capacity to reshape the world and the resultant commercial benefit that arises from controlling a vast colonial empire. Here, pursuit of aggressive commerce, national policy, and international soldiering helped drive the British Empire’s world dominance. The Victorian view of proxy warfare led to the training of foreign nationals to fight wars from Afghanistan to Borneo, the seconding of former colonials like Gurkhas into Her Majesty’s army, and the renting of British officers to advise foreign rulers in Oman. Warfighting skills and tools are considered necessary and vital exports in the United Kingdom. The military culture of England is woven from exported might, noble failures, exotic punitive expeditions, faraway massacres, and famous victories. From Abyssinia to Mesopotamia to Sarawak to America, the military culture of England is second to none in complexity, color, and history.
Legendary British privateers and adventurers, such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Rajah James Brooke, created the image of swashbuckling government-blessed privateers—businessmen whose personal fortunes rose and fell by fulfilling the needs of the current monarch but who were always subservient to the Crown’s guiding hand. The word “mercenary” has more often been used by those whom they conquered, usually in the pejorative, since men who fight for money instead of just for a cause are often considered to be morally guided by a narrow self-interest. Today, “mercenary” is a term that is connected directly with the word “criminal” by the UN and many governments, even though those same governments often actively employ mercenaries and support proxy armies in clandestine operations.
European mercenaries and third-world proxy armies have continued to be tools of foreign policy in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. Some of the more famous Cold War soldiers of fortune have been Bob Denard, Rolf Steiner, “Black Jack” Schramme, and “Mad” Mike Hoare, all of whom came from former military backgrounds and were hired by intelligence services or foreign rulers to train and lead forces in “dirty wars.” Mike Hoare fought in the Congo in the early 1960s, and then narrowly escaped a botched coup in the Seychelles. Steiner fought in Biafra in the late 1960s but was later imprisoned and tortured in the Sudan after helping the southern rebels. From 1978 to 1988, Denard was the de facto leader of the Comoros after he had overthrown the previous government in a coup. He now finds himself on trial in Paris for attempting to return for yet another coup attempt on the Comoros in 1995.
The men behind Executive Outcomes and Sandline may not have been mercenaries in the traditional sense, but key individuals did seek to exploit business opportunities that would require killing people in combat operations, regardless of any lip service paid to “training programs,” “advisory roles,” and “stability operations.” Unlike most military men who might consider warfare an emotionally scarring and destructive activity, chartered accountant Mi
chael Grunberg views it clinically, as a business—the lucrative application of low-cost basic ingredients like South African soldiers, Eastern European weapons, and Western military management in a tight turnkey package. It’s a business endeavor that has served Michael well, considering the luxuries he enjoys. Of the other major players in these early experiments with the formalized private military company, Simon Mann now sits in a Zimbabwe jail for a failed “regime change” in the tiny oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea; Tony Buckingham manages his rapidly rising oil revenues, much of it earned from ventures in hostile environments; and Timothy Spicer heads Aegis Defence Services Ltd., the main provider of security in the maelstrom that is Iraq. Though each may have taken divergent career paths in the new millennium, all came from the Executive Outcomes/Sandline petri dish or “private military company” world of the 1990s.
In the early 1990s, Tony Buckingham founded the Heritage Group, a company dedicated to oil and resource exploration. Tony describes himself on his Heritage Oil website as a “self-employed businessman with a wide array of international business interests, particularly in Africa.” Buckingham began his involvement in the oil industry as a North Sea diver and subsequently became a concessions negotiator acting for several companies, including Ranger Oil Limited and Premier Oil plc. Throughout the nineties, Tony worked to negotiate deals in Oman, Uganda, Namibia, Angola, and even Iraq—transforming himself into a wealthy oilman. Simon Mann and Tony were jet-setting friends; they drove a 1964 Aston Martin DB4 at a car rally together, sailed Tony’s yacht, and talked about the money that could be made in the developing world. Tony and Simon, unlike many other investors, viewed the provision of security as just a stepping-stone to financial wealth from exploitable resources such as diamonds, oil, and precious minerals.
In 1992, Simon Mann’s contacts in Angola had helped land a shallow water offshore oil concession called Block 4, which he brought to Tony to exploit. Buckingham negotiated a joint venture between his Heritage Group and the Calgary-based Ranger Oil called Ranger Oil West Africa Ltd. (ROWAL). Ranger invested $2 million to have Heritage build oil platforms and agreed that Tony’s company would earn 10 percent of the ultimate proceeds to be generated by the venture.
By 1993, Tony Buckingham and his ROWAL operation had encountered a major glitch in their plan. Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA rebels had seized the oil port of Soyo, including some expensive controlling equipment needed to operate the floating drill rig called the North Sea Pioneer. Without the controlling equipment, the North Sea Pioneer could be nothing more than an expensive and worthless piece of hulking metal sitting off Angola’s coast. Tony was paying around $20,000 a day to lease the rig and the pumping equipment, and every day of lost operations cost Buckingham big money in the lease and lost income potential.
Tony and the Angolan government attempted to negotiate with UNITA, but since oil revenue would have enriched the dos Santos government, the rebels weren’t interested. Desperate, Tony contacted Richard Bethell (Lord Westbury), who was at that time heading up a security company called DSL. Tony asked Bethell if he could arrange the sabotage of the rig for an insurance claim. Bethell refused and told Tony, “A deep water rig sunk in a shallow silt-filled harbor wouldn’t fool even the laziest insurance inspector.” Tony then urged dos Santos to have his troops liberate the harbor, but it was clear that the ragtag Angolan army did not have the capability for such an operation. Mann had gotten his friend Tony Buckingham involved in Angola, so after the fighting trapped Tony’s investment, it fell on Simon to help redeem the situation. Mann introduced Tony to his friend Eeben Barlow.
Afrikaner Eeben Barlow had founded Executive Outcomes in Pretoria in 1989. Barlow had formerly worked for the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB; an intelligence arm of the South African apartheid government) and was former assistant commander of 32 “Buffalo” Battalion—called “Buffalo” because most (about 70 percent) of the troops in 32 Battalion were black, though the officers were white Afrikaners. The 32 Battalion specialized in conducting unconventional bush wars and during the apartheid era would run long-range counterinsurgent operations to track terrorists and communist rebels back to their bases across the borders in Angola and Namibia. The CCB was essentially a dirty-tricks bureau that assassinated foes in other countries, created disinformation, and propped up the apartheid government. Having been a covert operator for South African intelligence, Barlow knew well the dark world of warfare, assassination, psyops, denial, and cover organizations. He also knew that in Africa, a few well-trained armed men with weapons could provide a valuable service to businessmen and rulers. The intent of his new business could be easily gleaned from his choice of company logo: a knight chessboard piece derivative of Paladin’s “Have Gun, Will Travel” calling card.
Some of Barlow’s initial clients were ranchers plagued by poachers and other small local security contracts—including training programs for the South African Defence Force—though he always had feelers out for more interesting projects. Barlow put together a brochure that offered complete training in sabotage, behind-the-lines operations, and weapons—in essence what he and his cohorts had done in the military. When Simon Mann contacted Barlow on behalf of a friend with a little problem in Angola, Barlow was prepared to respond with a mercenary solution.
The opportunity for Executive Outcomes to fight for dos Santos against UNITA provides proof that mercenaries value money above morals, since Barlow and his former 32 Battalion soldiers, who had spent their careers fighting with UNITA against dos Santos and his Movimento Popular de Libertaçao, or Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), would now be fighting for their former left-wing enemy against their formerly U.S.-backed ally.
Simon and Tony approached the state oil company Sonangol for cooperation—or, more precisely, funding—for a plan to free up Tony’s drilling equipment and get the oil revenue flowing back into government coffers. When Tony Buckingham was asked what it would cost to liberate Soyo, he suggested off the top of his head that it would take $10 million. The Angolan director simply asked for their banking information. One insider present at the discussions recalls that after the meeting, those involved had this sense of “Holy shit! We are on!” The promise of big money kicked the men into action, and, “The next thing you know Simon is sitting in the backseat of a Angolan MiG fighter doing the recce for the operation.”
At first, the plan was supposedly only for EO to provide training, equipment, and support for the Angolan army to liberate the oil port, but their obvious shortcomings as a fighting force led to EO moving in to be the sharp end of the spear for the operation. Using only a few dozen EO hires—mostly black Angolan and Namibian expat veterans of South Africa’s 32 Buffalo Battalion—Lafras Luitingh led the Executive Outcomes mercenaries in by ship. Helicopters were used, plus two battalions of Angolan troops as support, as the offensive pushed back UNITA and recaptured the port and Tony’s equipment. Three South African mercenaries died in the battle for Soyo, many were wounded, and EO soon extracted the rest once they had successfully completed their mission. With the port under guard of Angolan soldiers, a fresh offensive by UNITA again wrested control away from the government a few months later.
Impressed by the success of the initial EO operation, dos Santos realized he would need their assistance again to reverse UNITA’s recent progress and to enact a more long-term solution. Dos Santos sent his personal jet to pick up Tony in London and fly him to Angola to discuss a long-term training contract for the Angolan army. The two ended up negotiating a deal that satisfied Angola’s need for a robust and effective security force and Executive Outcomes’s requirement for providing them at a profit. The rebels controlled the diamond areas, and one of the key objectives would be to deny Savimbi that income. It was not too difficult to figure out who would be first in line to help exploit and develop the liberated areas.
Recognizing the future possibilities for a corporate army prepared and capable of providing security in unstable environments, the new b
usiness associates registered a UK-based EO to work the Angola contract as a joint operation with the South African EO. Though the public documents filed for the creation of the new EO list only Eeben Barlow and his wife, Sue, as the owners, all accounts indicate that Mann and Buckingham were the real forces behind the creation of the new entity. With offices in South Africa and the UK and a lucrative contact opportunity in Angola, Executive Outcomes only required a stable of clients to transform itself into a fully developed, multimillion-dollar, multinational business entity. The recruiting commenced immediately, but not before Simon Mann contacted his old friend in the Scots Guard, Tim Spicer, to offer him an executive position with the new company. Since he was still active military and hoping for a promotion, Spicer declined the invitation on the grounds he was up for a long-awaited command position.
While Mann and his EO cabal may have envisioned themselves as the vanguard of an entirely new industry, they had to achieve success with their first big operation before declaring the new golden age of the modern mercenary. Their first hurdle would take the form of training a ragtag government force of ill-equipped, ill-disciplined, inexperienced, and somewhat indifferent Angolan soldiers. Though the initial contract dictated that EO was only supposed to train and equip the Angolan army, it again became quickly obvious that that alone would never make them an efficient fighting force. Mann and Buckingham renegotiated the contract to support their mercenaries’ moving into full combat operations, jacking the price up to $100 million for one year, which eventually expanded to $300 million for three years.
As is the case with current ex-military becoming independent contractors, the new EO hires could expect a significant pay bump over what they had earned earlier in their careers. Frontline grunts, primarily black Angolan, Namibian, and South African 32 Battalion veterans, were paid $2,000 a month, and Ukrainian and other foreign pilots could earn upward of $10,000 in U.S. dollars. The average pay for a white officer was around $4,000, which could be five to ten times what they had been paid in the South African army. It was not a piecemeal white mercenary army in the mold of Bob Denard or Mike Hoare, but rather a privatized reconstruction of the classic counterterrorism structure of white Afrikaners leading and fighting side by side with Angolan and Namibian tribesmen. As a result of South Africa’s program of decommissioning the 32 Battalion, the recruitment drive for EO’s mercenary army would require only a couple of phone calls.
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