Virginian-Pilot : Blackwater: On the Front Lines

Blackwater: On the Front Lines

By BILL SIZEMORE AND JOANNE KIMBERLIN, The Virginian-Pilot | © July 25, 2006

Part 3 of 6

On May 1, 2003, President Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier Lincoln under a "Mission Accomplished" banner and declared: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

But it was just the beginning for private military companies and their missions in Iraq.

U.S. government agencies coming in to rebuild the shattered country expected a benign environment. Instead, they found a cauldron of violence. As insurgent attacks steadily escalated, millions of dollars were diverted from reconstruction to security, opening up a huge new market for the private military industry.

One of the first companies to jump in was Blackwater USA.

Executives of the North Carolina-based company landed a meeting with Paul Bremer III, the diplomat chosen by Bush to head the Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraq's interim government.

"Nobody had really figured out exactly how they were going to get him from D.C. and stand him up in Iraq," Blackwater President Gary Jackson said. "The Secret Service went over and did an assessment and said, 'You know what? It's much, much more dangerous than any of us believed.' So they came back to us."

In August 2003, Blackwater was awarded a $21 million no-bid contract to guard Bremer, and U.S. agencies have been tapping the Blackwater well ever since. The company now has about 1,000 contractors in Iraq - the most it has ever had.

Other players also have rushed in to meet the demand. Last month, the government estimated that there were at least 180 security companies operating in Iraq with more than 48,000 employees - the largest private military deployment in history.

In the first Gulf War 15 years ago, the ratio of private contractors to troops was 1 to 60; in the current war, it's 1 to 3.

In fact, the private sector has put more boots on the ground in Iraq than all of the United States' coalition partners combined. One scholar, Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution, suggests that Bush's "coalition of the willing" would be more aptly described as the "coalition of the billing."

Those bills are in the billions and rising.

Blackwater alone has won $505 million in publicly identifiable federal contracts since 2000, according to an online government database. About two-thirds of that amount was in no-bid contracts.

The bulk of those are with the State Department, which has used the company to guard its ambassadors in Iraq since Bremer's provisional government was disbanded in mid-2004.

Federal regulations allow agencies to bypass competitive bidding in cases of "unusual and compelling urgency" - which just happens to be Blackwater's stock in trade.

"When there is a crisis," Jackson said, "they have a tendency to call us first."

Why does Blackwater get so much federal work? Company officials say it's because of their strong track record. The organization's high-level political connections certainly don't hurt.

Blackwater declined to discuss the particulars of its work in Iraq, but Brian Leventhal, a State Department spokesman, said the company's contracts were awarded under "emergency conditions." Competitive bids were sought in May and are now being reviewed, he said.

The mushrooming presence of private security contractors on the battlefield is uncharted territory, spawning a difficult set of questions about conflicting objectives, poor coordination and lack of accountability.

As the United States and the global community struggle for answers, Blackwater - once again - finds itself in the middle of the fray.

In Iraq, Blackwater's security teams stepped into a world that has been widely compared to the Wild West.

In defense-speak, it's a "complex battle space," shared by a dizzying array of players: military forces, government agencies, humanitarian groups, contractors, insurgents and Iraqi civilians just trying to get through the day.

When Marine Col. Thomas X. Hammes did a stint in Iraq in early 2004, he encountered them all. Hammes was assigned to help set up bases for the newly reconstituted Iraqi armed forces. On several occasions, he crossed paths with Blackwater convoys escorting Bremer.

They did a professional job, he said, but they used "very aggressive" tactics in protecting the "principal" - security lingo for the VIP under guard, also known as the "package" or "egg."

"I was in an Iraqi army civilian vehicle at the time so we were treated as Iraqis" by the Blackwater contractors, Hammes said in an e-mail interview. "... The very act of guarding a principal - forcing his convoy through traffic, keeping all Iraqis away from the vehicle - irritated the Iraqis."

Blackwater accomplished its mission: keeping Bremer alive. But, Hammes said, it did nothing to help further the larger U.S. goal of winning Iraqi hearts and minds.

"The Iraqis perceived the armed contractors as being above the law," he said. "They felt if a U.S. soldier or Marine did something wrong, he might eventually be held accountable for it. They believed contractors would simply fly out of the country.... They don't seem to be held responsible by any authority."

Since the start of the war in March 2003, no private military contractors have been charged with - let alone convicted of - a crime in Iraq.

Unlike military personnel, dozens of whom have been charged with crimes in Iraq, private contractors are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Chris Taylor, a Blackwater vice president, said the company doesn't want its workers subjected to the military justice system because of possible "institutional biases" against contractors.

Under an order issued by Bremer that remains in effect, contractors are also generally immune from Iraqi law for acts performed while carrying out their jobs. Contractors might or might not be covered by civilian U.S. law, depending on which agencies they work for.

According to the Raleigh News & Observer, which reviewed voluntary reports filed with the government during a nine-month period in 2004-05, contractors fired into 61 Iraqi civilian vehicles.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Blackwater contractors fired into a taxi at a Baghdad intersection in May 2005, killing a passenger and wounding the driver. A review by the U.S. Embassy found that two contractors had not followed proper procedures and they were fired, a U.S. official told the newspaper.

Asked about the shooting, Taylor said: "To the best of my knowledge, it didn't happen."