Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

by Jeremy Scahill

  There is no question that the Fallujah killings in March 2004 boosted Blackwater’s corporate success. On the one hand—some would say the cynical way of seeing things—you could say that Erik Prince cashed in on the deaths and saw right away the benefits of the highly publicized killings. Another way of looking at it is that the fortuitously timed killings happened to provide Blackwater the perfect venue and audience to further its already-active campaign to blaze a path toward greater privatization—with it, of course, at the forefront. The mercenary rebranding campaign, aimed at accelerating the pace of privatization to maximize profits, has allowed companies like Blackwater to build a permanent institutionalized presence for themselves within the structures of the state. The rebranding provides great PR opportunities and recruitment rhetoric while rolling out a ready-made justification scheme for politicians and various bureaucracies to outsource and privatize more and more taxpayer-funded military and security operations leading to added legitimacy and ever-growing profits. And this brings it all full circle: at the end of the day, it still boils down to money—a lot of it.

  Exactly how much money the U.S. government has paid mercenary firms is nearly impossible to pin down—a fact due in no small part to the apparent lack of transparent or comprehensive bookkeeping. A June 2006 Government Accountability Office report acknowledged “neither the Department of State, nor DOD, nor the USAID—the principal agencies responsible for Iraq reconstruction efforts—had complete data on the costs associated with using private security providers.”104 But the report found that “as of December 2004, the agencies and contractors we reviewed had obligated more than $766 million for security services and equipment” in Iraq.105 The GAO found that security often accounted for more than 15 percent of the cost of operating in Iraq, not including the security costs of subcontractors, and the State Department reported that security costs accounted for 16-22 percent of reconstruction projects.106 Given estimates of the total reconstruction cost from 2004 to 2007 of $56 billion, even a conservative 10 percent allocation for security would mean $5.6 billion.107 The bottom line is that the U.S. government has not provided publicly verifiable information on many of the private military companies it is increasingly hiring with taxpayer dollars.

  Blackwater alone has won more than a billion dollars in publicly identifiable U.S. government contracts under the war on terror, not including much of its “black” or “urgent and compelling need” business or its work for private actors. And its rhetoric of saving taxpayer money through free-market efficiencies seems increasingly empty. With the U.S. government unable or unwilling to effectively tabulate its own expenditures on private security /military services, a worldwide estimate proves even more elusive. In 2003, just as the Iraq War was getting under way, and before the major mercenary boom had begun, P. W. Singer estimated the value of the private military industry at more than $100 billion globally.108 Homeland Security Research, an industry tracking company, estimated that governments and businesses globally spent $59 billion in 2006 to fight terrorism, a figure that does not include many “passive” private security services and that represents a sixfold increase from 2000.109

  What this means in practical terms is that the rebranding campaign is enabling the mercenaries to affix a permanent sieve to the most lucrative feeding trough in the world—the national budgets of the United States and its war-making allies. These “services” are no longer reserved for unstable nations struggling to maintain power but are being welcomed by the great powers of the world as an integral part of their national forces. In talking about the “expanding role” of the mercenary industry, Cofer Black said, “I think it is something that we all need to think about. We need to talk about and sort of agree. I do not see us going back. I do not see the national forces being increased exponentially, and I see [using companies like Blackwater] as a useful cost-effective tool.”110

  What is particularly disturbing about the “expanding role” of Blackwater specifically is the issue of the company’s right-wing leadership, its proximity to a whole slew of conservative causes and politicians, its Christian fundamentalist agenda and secretive nature, and its deep and longstanding ties to the Republican Party, U.S. military, and intelligence agencies. Blackwater is quickly becoming one of the most powerful private armies in the world, and several of its top officials are extreme religious zealots, some of whom appear to believe they are engaged in an epic battle for the defense of Christendom. The deployment of forces under this kind of leadership in Arab or Muslim countries reinforces the worst fears of many in the Islamic world about a neo-Crusader agenda masquerading as a U.S. mission to “liberate” them from their oppressors. What Blackwater seemingly advocates and envisions is a private army of God-fearing patriots, well paid and devoted to the agenda of U.S. hegemony—supported by far lower paid cannon fodder, foot soldiers from Third World countries, many of which have legacies of brutal U.S.-sponsored regimes or death squads. For its vaunted American forces, Blackwater has expanded the mercenary motivating factor (or rationalization) beyond simple monetary gain (though that remains a major factor) to a duty-oriented, patriotic justification. “This is not about business and widgets and making money, at least not in our company it is not,” said Cofer Black.111 “If you’re not willing to drink the Blackwater Kool-aid and be committed to supporting humane democracy around the world, then there’s probably a better place” to go work than Blackwater, “because that’s all we do,” Taylor told The Weekly Standard.112

  In the bigger ideological picture, Blackwater executives fancy themselves part of a “just” mercenary tradition. “This is nothing new,” asserted IPOA’s Doug Brooks. “Even George Washington had contractors.”113 It is a line that Blackwater executives love. Indeed, they often cite the statues in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House as monuments to their trade and tradition. In the middle of the park is a statue of President Andrew Jackson on horseback. Flanking the four corners of the park are statues of mercenaries who fought on the U.S. side in the Revolutionary War: France’s Gen. Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette and Maj. Gen. Comte Jean de Rochambeau; Poland’s Gen. Thaddeus Kosciuszko; Prussia’s Maj. Gen. Baron Frederich Wilhelm Von Steuben (the object of Prince Group general counsel Joseph Schmitz’s obsession). “The idea of contractors on the battlefield, contractors doing this sort of thing, that it’s a new idea, is just wrong,” Erik Prince told a military conference in 2006.114 Citing the statues at Lafayette Park, Prince said, “Those are four military officers, foreign officers, contractors if you will, that came here and built the capability of the continental army, the continental army was having a tough time until they showed up. On Von Steuben’s statue it says he gave military training and discipline to the citizen-soldiers who achieved the independence of the United States. That’s what we’re doing in Iraq or Afghanistan, wherever we get hired and authorized to do so by the U.S. government, we’re giving them the capability to defend themselves, and to clean out their own problems, so you don’t have to send big conventional military to do that. You know, German mercenaries fought on behalf of the union in the civil war, even won the medal of honor.” Cofer Black echoed the narrative: “There is nothing new in this. What we are really talking about is the management of this for the good of the country and to achieve the objective. Lafayette Park could be called Contractor Park for our heroes that came to this country that trained us, trained our forebears.”115

  In February 2006, the mercenary industry won a major victory in its rebranding campaign when private contractors were officially recognized in the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review as part of the U.S. military’s “Total Force.” In releasing the report Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the review “sets out where the Department of Defense currently is and the direction we believe it needs to go,” adding, “Now in the fifth year of this global war, the ideas and proposals in this document are provided as a roadmap for change, leading to victory.”116 Cofer Black, was particularly pleased about the line in the
report that explicitly recognized contractors like Blackwater:117 “The Department’s Total Force—its active and reserve military components, its civil servants, and its contractors—constitutes its warfighting capability and capacity. Members of the Total Force serve in thousands of locations around the world, performing a vast array of duties to accomplish critical missions.”118 Pentagon policy, according to the review, “now directs that performance of commercial activities by contractors . . . shall be included in operational plans and orders. By factoring contractors into their planning, Combatant Commanders can better determine their mission needs.” It was a momentous occasion for the mercenary industry—one that Blackwater and other firms recognized as a watershed moment in the drive for the kind of integration and legitimacy they viewed as central to their survival and profitability. Hiring mercenaries was no longer an option; it was U.S. policy. That it was issued as an edict from Rumsfeld, without public debate, was irrelevant. By 2007, Blackwater had its forces deployed in at least nine countries. Some twenty-three hundred private Blackwater troops were spread across the globe along with another twenty-one thousand contractors in its database should the need for their services arise.119 The rise of Blackwater’s private army is nothing short of the embodiment of the ominous scenario prophesied decades ago by President Eisenhower when he warned of the “grave implications” of the rise of “the military-industrial complex” and “misplaced power.”

  Riding high on the privatization caravan aggressively pushed forward by the Bush administration, the right-wing think tank the American Enterprise Institute, which has long been at the forefront of the movement to privatize the government and military, sponsored a mercenary conference in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2006. They called it “Contractors on the Battlefield: A Briefing on the Future of the Defense Industry.” It featured two former Pentagon officials who were instrumental to privatization schemes, as well as Blackwater’s vice chairman, Cofer Black. The conference room was packed with representatives from various private military companies, as well as the State Department, Pentagon, and a variety of NGOs. The event felt very much like a reeducation camp for mercenaries, with the godfather, Black, presiding over lessons in rebranding and marketing the product: mercenary services. “We are in a state, as a planet, of disorder,” Black told the crowd. “I’m rather personally upset about this because coming out of the Cold War, I indeed thought that we would have a period of calm and relaxation and goodwill among men. This disorder is subversive.”120 Turning directly to the mercenary trade itself and with the room silent before him, Black spoke slowly, choppily, methodically, as though he were a hypnotist talking someone into a trance. “It may sound a little bit like the Knights of the Round Table, but this is what we believe,” the veteran spy declared. “Focus on morals and ethics and integrity. This is important. We are not fly-by-night. We are not tricksters. We believe in these things. We believe in being represented. We believe in providing the support. We are ethical. We give training to our employees. This is something that will grow and grow. We want to be able to contribute for a significant period of time.”121

  EPILOGUE

  BLACKWATER BEYOND BUSH

  IN EARLY 2008, Blackwater’s name had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Henry Waxman’s ongoing investigations into the company’s activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and despite the international infamy attached to the Blackwater name, business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following the Nisour Square massacre in September 2007, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for “protective services” in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.1 Erik Prince continued to portray his company as the victim of a partisan witch hunt. “I met the president twice,” he said after appearing before Waxman’s committee. “Iraq is a controversial war—no question. If they can go after contractors and take some of them down . . . it’s another way to embarrass the administration.”2

  Amid rampant speculation as to whether Blackwater’s lucrative State Department security contracts would be extended in Iraq, Prince and other executives seemed unfazed. While quietly maintaining Blackwater’s Iraq work, they aggressively pursued other business opportunities for the Prince Group empire. As Blackwater absorbed a barrage of incoming fire over its conduct in Iraq, there was a silver lining for the company. It had secured a very public reputation for being a badass operation that protected—and kept alive—its “principals” in the most hostile of settings by any means necessary. Its very presence in Iraq after Nisour Square, over the objections of the Iraqi prime minister and amid multiple Congressional, military, and Justice Department investigations, sent a clear message: Washington needed Blackwater more than the pretense of Iraqi sovereignty. Blackwater’s boots on the ground were too important to lose, even in the face of growing outrage in the United States over the lack of accountability of Washington’s private forces in Iraq. “I know we’re there not only to be a protective screen,” Prince said in late 2007, “but maybe the fall guy when something goes wrong. That’s probably what’s happened to us in this case.”3

  After Nisour Square, Prince hinted that Blackwater might quit Iraq, at least in its overt capacity there. “It’s been a source of huge controversy and hassle for us,” he said.4 But Prince and Blackwater were clearly emboldened by the vivid demonstration of their centrality to the U.S. war machine, and in the days and weeks after Nisour Square, the Blackwater founder began speaking of his empire growing into “more of a full-spectrum” operation.5

  A “One-Stop Shop” for the Government

  In September 2007, it was revealed that Blackwater had been “tapped” by the Pentagon’s Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a five-year $15 billion budget “to fight terrorists with drug-trade ties.”6 According to the Army Times, the contract “could include anti-drug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft, communications, security training, pilot training, geographic information systems, and in-field support.”7 A spokesperson for another company bidding for the work said that “80 percent of the work will be overseas.”8 As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, explained, “The fact is we use Blackwater to do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan. I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job.”9

  Such an arrangement could find Blackwater operating in an arena with the godfathers of the war industry, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. It could also see Blackwater potentially expanding into Latin America, joining other private security companies who are well established in the region. The massive U.S. security company DynCorp is already deployed in Colombia, Bolivia, and other countries as part of the “war on drugs.” In Colombia alone, U.S. defense contractors are receiving nearly half the $630 million in annual U.S. military aid for the country.10 Just south of the U.S. border, the United States has launched Plan Mexico, a $1.5 billion counternarcotics program. This and similar plans could prove lucrative business opportunities for Blackwater and other companies. “Blackwater USA’s enlistment in the drug war,” observed journalist John Ross, would be “a direct challenge to its stiffest competitor, DynCorp—up until now, the Dallas-based corporation has locked up 94% of all private drug war security contracts.”11 The New York Times reported that the contract could be Blackwater’s “biggest job ever.”12

  As populist movements grow stronger in Latin America, threatening U.S. financial interests as well as the standing of right-wing U.S. political allies throughout the region, the “war on drugs” becomes an increasingly central part of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts. It allows for more training of foreign security forces through the private sector—away from effective U.S. Congressional oversight—and a d
eployment of personnel from U.S. war corporations. With U.S. forces stretched thin, sending private security companies to Latin America offers Washington a “small footprint” alternative to the politically and militarily problematic deployment of active-duty U.S. troops. In a January 2008 report by the United Nations working group on mercenaries, international investigators found, “An emerging trend in Latin America but also in other regions of the world indicates situations of private security companies protecting transnational extractive corporations whose employees are often involved in suppressing the legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and environmental organizations of the areas where these corporations operate.”13