The ambush took place on the main route from the Green Zone to the Baghdad airport and once again put Blackwater in the headlines. “Remember a year ago when Saddam’s spokesman, the wacky ‘Baghdad Bob,’ claimed that U.S. forces didn’t control the airport?” wrote
New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman about the ambush. “We shouldn’t have laughed. A year later, we still do not fully control the main road from Baghdad airport to Baghdad. You can’t build anything under those conditions.” Ironically, Blackwater would soon become one of the main high-paid taxi providers along this dangerous route—transporting clients in armored vehicles. The day after the ambush, with the chaos escalating in Iraq, the U.S.-installed Prime Minister-designate, Iyad Allawi, a former CIA asset, appeared to blame the violence on U.S. policy. He told Al Jazeera that “big mistakes” had been made by the United States in “dissolving the army, police services and internal security forces.”
115
Allawi called for the Iraqi military to be reconstituted. The damage, though, had been done, and there were very few parties that benefited more from the violence than private military companies.
Paul Bremer snuck out of Iraq on June 28, 2004, two days ahead of the scheduled “handover of sovereignty.” As Bremer made his final rounds in Baghdad, saying good-bye to his Iraqi allies, the head of Bremer’s security detail, Frank Gallagher, insisted on increased security for the proconsul. “So this time he laid on seventeen extra Humvees to cover our convoy’s route, ordered all three Blackwater helicopters—each with two ‘shooters’—to fly just above our motorcade, and arranged with the military for a couple of Apache choppers to fly on our flanks and F-16 fighter bombers to fly top cover,” Bremer recalled.
116
One of Bremer’s last official acts was to issue a decree immunizing Blackwater and other contractors from prosecution for any potential crimes committed in Iraq. On June 27, Bremer signed Order 17, which declared, “Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub-contract thereto.”
117
That same month, Senator Patrick Leahy attempted to attach an “Anti-War Profiteering” amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that, among other provisions, would have created “extraterritorial jurisdiction over offenses committed overseas” by contractors.
118
It was voted down.
Paul Bremer’s policies had left Blackwater firmly attached to the contract gravy train, not the least of which was the company’s prized contract to guard senior U.S. officials in Iraq. Blackwater would soon be responsible for the security of Bremer’s successor, Ambassador John Negroponte, a man notorious for his central role in the U.S. “dirty wars” in Central America in the 1980s.
119
Known as the “proconsul” when he was U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte helped oversee U.S. aid to the Contra death squads fighting to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua—a program Negroponte referred to as “our special project.”
120
Negroponte was also accused of covering up widespread human rights abuses by the U.S.-backed Honduran junta.
121
Like several other officials from the Iran-Contra era, Negroponte was placed in a key position by the Bush administration. In Iraq, he would oversee the world’s largest Embassy and the biggest CIA station anywhere.
122
As Bremer left Iraq, there was a much bigger picture unfolding that Blackwater understood better, perhaps, than any other private military firm on the planet: a
kairos
moment was upon the new soldiers of fortune. Out of the carnage of Fallujah, Blackwater was leading the mercenary industry toward a level of legitimacy that years earlier would have seemed unimaginable. One of the broader goals of the neo-mercenary rebranding campaign has been acceptance as legitimate forces in the country’s national defense and security apparatuses. For Blackwater, the Bremer contract in Iraq was undoubtedly far more valuable than its incredibly lucrative price tag. It was prestigious and an invaluable marketing tool to win more clients and high-value government contracts. The company could boast that the U.S. government had entrusted it with the protection of its most senior officials on Washington’s hottest front line in the “war on terror.” It also gave the unmistakable impression that Blackwater operations had a U.S. government seal of approval.
While private military firms on the ground in Iraq battled each other for contracts, Blackwater was quietly rewarded with the attachment of a U.S.-taxpayer funded I.V. to the company’s headquarters in Moyock. In June 2004, at the end of Bremer’s tenure, Blackwater was handed one of the most valuable and prestigious U.S. government contracts on the market, through the State Department’s little-known Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) program.
123
State Department documents describe the WPPS program as a government “diplomatic security” initiative to protect U.S. officials and “certain foreign government high level officials whenever the need arises.” In the government documents, the work is described as “providing armed, qualified, protective services details” and, if ordered, “Counter Assault Teams and Long Range Marksman teams.” The companies might also provide translators and perform intelligence work. The State Department warned the companies to “Ensure that contractor-assigned protective detail personnel are prepared to, and in fact shall operate and live in austere, at times unsettled conditions, anywhere in the world.” The contract also said that if necessary, “personnel, who are American citizens, will be issued an appropriate, official or diplomatic passport.” Private contractors were also authorized to recruit and train foreign nationals and to “conduct protective security operations overseas with them.”
In soliciting bids for the 2004 global contract, the State Department cited a need born of “the continual turmoil in the Mid East, and the post-war stabilization efforts by the United States Government in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.” It said the government “is unable to provide protective services on a long-term basis from its pool of special agents, thus, outside contractual support is required.”
The WPPS contract was divided among a handful of well-connected mercenary companies, among them DynCorp and Triple Canopy. Blackwater was originally slated to be paid $229.5 million for five years, according to a State Department contract list. Yet as of June 30, 2006, just two years into the program, it had been paid a total of $321,715,794. A government spokesperson later said the estimated value of the contract through September 2006 was $337 million.
124
By late 2007, Blackwater had been paid more than $750 million under the contract. A heavily redacted 2005 government-commissioned audit of Blackwater’s WPPS contract proposal charged that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs, which would result “not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit.”
125
The audit also alleged that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies.
126
For Blackwater, the WPPS contract was a milestone that solidified the company’s role as the preferred mercenary firm of the U.S. government, the elite private guard for the administration’s global war. In late November 2004, Blackwater president Gary Jackson sent out a mass e-mail celebrating President Bush’s reelection and Blackwater’s new contract: “Well, the Presidential elections are over, the masses spoke, the liberals are lined up at health clinics receiving treatment for Post Election Selection Trauma, and President Bush’s war on terror will continue to move forward for the next four years. Our military is doing a fabulous job in fighting the war on terrorism as is apparent by the results of the most recent victory in the Battle of Fallujah. As Iraq continues to become more stable the Department of State will be sending in more U.S. Government Officials to assist Iraq in becoming a democracy. Even though the majority of Iraqis want democracy there will still be those terrorist[s] who do not, and they are a high-threat to the safety of our Officials. These Officials need professional protection and the Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security has chosen and contracted Blackwater Security Consulting to assist their organization in providing that protection.”
127
Jackson excitedly announced that for qualified candidates wishing to “get involved in stabilizing Iraq and supporting the President’s war on terrorism . . . now is the time to join Blackwater.”
128
CHAPTER TWELVE
CASPIAN PIPELINE DREAMS
ALTHOUGH BLACKWATER’S
name recognition in 2004 was almost exclusively centered on the Fallujah ambush and the company’s role in Iraq, it was not the only “war on terror” front line where the Bush Administration dispatched the company. Beginning in July 2004, Blackwater forces were contracted to work in the heart of the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Sea region, where they would quietly train a force modeled after the Navy SEALs and establish a base just north of the Iranian border as part of a major U.S. move in what veteran analysts in the region call the “Great Game.” As it won more contracts in Iraq in the aftermath of Fallujah, Blackwater simultaneously found itself helping to defend another high-stakes pet project of some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. national security establishment, including Henry Kissinger, James Baker III, and Dick Cheney.
The United States’ quest for domination of the world’s petrol reserves certainly did not begin with the 1991 Persian Gulf War or the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq. While Iraq and the war on terror have dominated the headlines, the U.S. government and American corporate interests have long been quietly engaged in a parallel campaign to secure another major prize, this one located on the territory of what was once the Soviet Union: the Caspian Sea, which is believed to house well over 100 billion barrels of oil.
1
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington and its allies saw an opportunity to snatch one of the great deposits of valuable natural resources from Moscow’s grip. Multinational oil giants swooped in like vultures as the United States and its allies moved quickly to shore up the repressive regimes of the littoral ex-Soviet republics of the Caspian region. Unocal spent much of the 1990s trying to run a pipeline from Tajikistan through Afghanistan, a project on which Erik Prince’s friend (and Blackwater’s lobbyist) Paul Behrends had worked, but there was also great interest in the nations of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, as well as the strategically important Republic of Georgia. While the route from Tajikistan proved very complicated, it was by no means the only one being explored by Big Oil, the White House, and a powerful cast of political players from past U.S. administrations.
Complicating a swift U.S. domination of the landlocked resources of the Caspian was the fact that two powerful nations—Russia and Iran—also border the sea and viewed the U.S. incursion into the area as a hostile threat. By 1997, a powerful U.S. consortium was hard at work exploring multiple ways to get to the Caspian resources. “American oil companies—including Amoco, Unocal, Exxon, Pennzoil—have invested billions of dollars in Azerbaijan and plan to invest billions more. As a result, they have developed a strongly pro-Azerbaijan position,” reported
New York Times
correspondent Stephen Kinzer in a dispatch from Azerbaijan. “The list of private American citizens who are seeking to make money from Azerbaijani oil or to encourage investment here reads like a roster of the national security establishment. Among the most prominent names are former Secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker 3d, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, former Senator and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, former White House chief of staff John H. Sununu, and two former national security advisers, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski.”
2
While the Clinton administration worked feverishly to secure Caspian resources, hosting Azerbaijan’s president at the White House for a two-hour meeting in August 1997 and courting his cooperation,
3
it was not until the Bush administration took power that these onetime “pipe dreams” became a reality. In May 2001, Dick Cheney’s energy task force estimated that proven oil reserves in Azerbaijan’s and Kazakhstan’s sectors of the Caspian alone equaled “about 20 billion barrels, a little more than the North Sea and slightly less than the United States.”
4
The Cheney group estimated that if the United States could get a major pipeline flowing west from the Caspian Sea—away from Moscow’s control—daily exports from the Caspian to world markets could go as high as 2.6 million barrels per day by 2005, “as the United States works closely with private companies and countries in the region to develop commercially viable export routes.”
5
By contrast, in 2005 Iran exported 2.6 million barrels of oil per day, Venezuela 2.2, Kuwait 2.3, Nigeria 2.3, and Iraq 1.3.
6
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, getting at the Caspian region’s oil had proved extremely difficult for Washington. Dating back to the Clinton administration, the United States and its allies envisioned a plan wherein Washington would essentially prop up the repressive regime in Azerbaijan and establish a state-of-the-art oil exploitation operation off the coast of the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, a peninsula that juts into the western Caspian. The oil would then flow through a massive pipeline stretching from Baku to Tbilisi, Georgia, through Turkey to the Mediterranean port city of Ceyhan. From there, the Caspian oil could be easily transported to Western markets. The project would mean an end to Moscow’s de facto monopoly on transporting Caspian oil, while at the same time providing Washington with an unparalleled opportunity to exert its influence in the ex-Soviet territories. When the project began in 1994, some analysts celebrated it as a “new Persian Gulf”; estimates projected as much as 230 billion barrels of oil in the region—eight times the proven U.S. reserves.
7