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

^{CHAPTER EIGHTEEN} JOSEPH SCHMITZ: CHRISTIAN SOLDIER

JOSEPH E. SCHMITZ had long been an ideological soldier for right-wing causes before he was appointed by President Bush to be the Pentagon’s Inspector General, the top U.S. official in charge of directly overseeing military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he proved himself a loyal servant of the administration during his scandal-plagued tenure in that post from 2002 to 2005. By the time he resigned, Schmitz stood accused by Republicans and Democrats alike of protecting the very war contractors he was tasked with overseeing and of allowing rampant corruption and cronyism to go virtually unchecked. On Schmitz’s watch, well-connected companies like Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel, Fluor, Titan, CACI, Triple Canopy, DynCorp, and Blackwater made a killing serving the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. By June 2005, the Defense Department had 149 “prime contracts” with seventy-seven contractors in Iraq worth approximately $42.1 billion.¹ According to Pentagon auditors, Halliburton “alone represent[ed] 52% of the total contract value.”²

Allegations of contract fraud and war profiteering during this period could fill volumes, and lawmakers denounced the lack of transparency and open bidding. “It’s been like Dodge City before the marshals showed up,” declared Senator Ron Wyden.³ In the midst of the brewing scandal over Halliburton’s profiteering and corruption in Iraq, Schmitz said in July 2004, “I haven’t seen any real deliberate gouging of the American taxpayer, but we are looking.”⁴ While there were many layers in the government system that facilitated such corporate misconduct, it was Schmitz whose singular task was overseeing the 1,250-person office with a $200 million budget charged with policing these lucrative U.S.-taxpayer-funded defense contracts.⁵

After three years of playing a key role in the system that indemnified well-oiled corporate profiteers, during which Schmitz went out of his way to demonstrate his loyalty to the Bush administration, the Pentagon’s top cop found himself under investigation. The powerful Republican Senator Charles Grassley launched a Congressional probe into whether Schmitz “quashed or redirected two ongoing criminal investigations” into senior Bush administration officials.⁶ Grassley also “accused Schmitz of fabricating an official Pentagon news release, planning an expensive junket to Germany, and hiding information from Congress.”⁷

Finally, under fire from both Democrats and Republicans, Schmitz resigned as Inspector General, though his office denied it was a result of the investigations. Just before he resigned, Schmitz revealed his intention to pursue a career working for Erik Prince at Blackwater. In a letter stamped June 15, 2005, he officially informed the Defense Department and the White House that “I am disqualified from participating in any official matter that will have a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests” of Blackwater USA.⁸ Schmitz wrote that he had “financial interests” in Blackwater “because I intend to discuss possible employment with them.”⁹ During Schmitz’s time at the Pentagon overseeing contractors, Blackwater had grown from a small private military and law-enforcement training facility to a global mercenary provider with hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government contracts.

But Schmitz’s interest in Blackwater (or Blackwater’s in Schmitz) was not simply about his dedication to the wars of the Bush administration, the fact that he worked for the Reagan administration, that he represented then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, or his involvement in the murky, corrupt world of military contractors. All of these were certainly factors, but the connection ran deeper. Joseph Schmitz, like Erik Prince and other executives at Blackwater, was a Catholic and a Christian fundamentalist. Some would go so far as to say he was a religious fanatic obsessed with implementing “the rule of law under God.” In numerous speeches given during his time as Pentagon Inspector General, Schmitz articulated his vision and understanding of the global war on terror, employing the rhetoric of Christian supremacy. “No American today should ever doubt that we hold ourselves accountable to the rule of law under God. Here lies the fundamental difference between us and the terrorists,” Schmitz said in a June 2004 speech, just after returning from trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. “It all comes down to this—we pride ourselves on our strict adherence to the rule of law under God.”¹⁰ On his official biography, Schmitz proudly listed his membership in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta,¹¹ a Christian militia formed in the eleventh century, before the first Crusades, with the mission of defending “territories that the Crusaders had conquered from the Moslems.”¹² The Order today boasts of being “a sovereign subject of international law, with its own constitution, passports, stamps, and public institutions” and “diplomatic relations with 94 countries.” ¹³ In addition to his Christian zealotry, Schmitz was a fierce devotee and an awestruck admirer of one of the famed foreign mercenaries who fought on the side of Gen. George Washington during the American Revolutionary War: the Prussian militarist Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Von Steuben, whom Schmitz referred to as “our first Effective Inspector General.”¹⁴ Von Steuben is one of four men often cited by Blackwater officials as founding mercenaries of the United States, the others being Generals Lafayette, Rochambeau, and Kosciuszko, whose monuments stand across from the White House in what some Blackwater officials have taken to calling “Contractor Park.”¹⁵ All of this made Schmitz an ideal candidate to join the ranks of Prince and his cohorts at Blackwater, where Schmitz would sit directly at Prince’s right hand as the Prince Group’s chief operating officer and general counsel.¹⁶ In a press release announcing the hire, Erik Prince referred to him as “General Schmitz.”¹⁷

Joseph Schmitz comes from one of the most bizarre, scandal-plagued, right-wing political families in U.S. history. For decades they have operated on the fringes of a landscape dominated by the likes of the Kennedys, Clintons, and Bushes. The patriarch of the family, John G. Schmitz, was an ultraconservative California state politician who raised his family in a strict Catholic household. As a state lawmaker, he railed against sex education in schools, abortion, and income tax, and he was a fierce supporter of states’ rights. He regularly introduced measures supporting the “Liberty Amendment,” which would have required the federal government to get out of businesses that would have competed with private industry.¹⁸ At one point, he proposed selling the University of California.¹⁹ In the late 1960s, he accused then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, of wanting to “run socialism more efficiently” after a tax increase.²⁰ A year after Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, John Schmitz led the opposition in the California State Senate to commemorating the slain civil rights leader. After winning a Congressional seat as a Republican from Orange County in the early 1970s, he soon “established himself as one of the country’s most right-wing and outspoken congressmen.”²¹ He ran for President against Richard Nixon in 1972 as the candidate of the American Independent Party, founded in 1968 by segregationist politician George Wallace.²² The elder Schmitz also served as national director of the anti-communist John Birch Society before being kicked out for being too extreme.²³ He made comments like, “Jews are like everybody else, only more so,” “Martin Luther King is a notorious liar,” “I may not be Hispanic, but I’m close. I’m Catholic with a mustache”²⁴ and described the Watts riot as “a communist operation.”²⁵ After President Richard Nixon announced he would visit “Red China” in 1971, Schmitz—who represented Nixon’s home district—called Nixon “pro-communist,” saying the visit was “surrendering to international communism. It wipes out any chance of overthrowing the [Peking] government.”²⁶ Schmitz also said he had “disestablished diplomatic relations with the White House”²⁷ and declared, “I have no objection to President Nixon going to China. I just object to his coming back.”²⁸ Schmitz ultimately lost his seat in Congress and, after his failed presidential bid, returned to state politics. In 1981, he chaired a California State Senate committee hearing on abortion and described the audience as “hard, Jewish, and (arguably) female faces.”²⁹ He also called feminist attorney Gloria Allred a “slick, butch lawyeress” during an attack on Allred’s support for abortion rights.³⁰ Allred sued Schmitz, resulting in a $20,000 judgment against him and a public apology.³¹ His political career, spent preaching about family values, came to a crashing end after he acknowledged fathering at least two children out of wedlock.³² Eventually John G. Schmitz retired in the Washington, D.C., area, where he purchased the home of his hero, the anticommunist fanatic Senator Joseph McCarthy.³³ Schmitz wrote two books, Stranger in the Arena: The Anatomy of an Amoral Decade 1964-1974 and The Viet Cong Front in the United States. He died in 2001 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.³⁴

Joseph Schmitz’s older brother, John Patrick, also a lawyer, was deputy counsel to George H. W. Bush from 1985 to 1993, during Bush’s time as both Vice President and President,³⁵ and he played a key role in protecting Bush from the Iran-Contra investigation. In 1987, Bush received a request from the Office of the Independent Counsel to produce all documents that might be related to the investigation, including “all personal and official records of [Office of the Vice President] staff members.”³⁶ Bush delegated the responsibility for this to his counsel, C. Boyden Gray, and deputy counsel John P. Schmitz.³⁷ It wasn’t until five years later—a month after Bush was elected President—that Gray and Schmitz disclosed that Bush had kept a personal diary during the scandal that was clearly covered under the earlier document request.³⁸ While they turned over the diary, Gray and Schmitz stalled in handing over documents related to the diary and failed to explain why it was not produced during the five crucial years of the investigation.³⁹ Investigators interviewed all those who had something to do with producing documents from Bush’s office except Gray and Schmitz, who refused to comply.⁴⁰ Schmitz refused to turn over his own diary, which covered 1987 to 1992, claiming it was a privileged work product,⁴¹ employing an obfuscatory tactic that would become de rigueur in George W. Bush’s executive branch. Even after Gray and Schmitz were both essentially offered immunity, they still refused to be interviewed; Schmitz left the administration in 1993.⁴² Joseph Schmitz had his own link to the Iran-Contra scandal, serving in 1987 as special assistant attorney general to Edwin Meese,⁴³ who served under Reagan as Attorney General and, in Meese’s own words, tried “to limit the damage.”⁴⁴ Prior to his time at the White House, John Patrick had clerked for then-U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Antonin Scalia.⁴⁵ John Patrick went on to become a lobbyist /attorney with the Washington, D.C., firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.⁴⁶ Among his clients: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Lockheed Martin, Enron, General Electric, Pfizer, and Bayer.⁴⁷ He was also a “Major League Pioneer” funder of George W. Bush, donating thousands to his campaign coffers.⁴⁸

Perhaps the most famous member of the Schmitz family, though, is the least political: Joseph Schmitz’s sister, Mary Kay LeTourneau. In 1997, the married schoolteacher and mother of four grabbed headlines after being charged with the child rape of Vili Fualaau, her thirteen-year-old student.⁴⁹ Four months later, she gave birth to Fualaau’s daughter.⁵⁰ The case was a tabloid obsession for years. After serving a seven-year prison term, during which time she gave birth to another child fathered by Fualaau, LeTourneau married her former sixth-grade student in 2004.⁵¹ While her father—the hysterical family-values politician who railed against feminists, homosexuals, and abortion—vigorously defended her, other family members kept a much lower profile about the case, which ran parallel to Joseph Schmitz’s ascension to a position in the Bush administration.⁵²

Joseph Schmitz was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who had served in the Navy, mostly in the reserves, for twenty-seven years at the time of his nomination in the summer of 2001 to be the Pentagon Inspector General.⁵³ His limited government work included the stint with Meese and as deputy senior inspector for the Naval Reserve intelligence program. Directly prior to his nomination, Schmitz was a partner at the high-powered and well-connected lobbying and law firm Patton Boggs, where he specialized in aviation law and international trade in high-tech goods, in militarily sensitive areas.⁵⁴ During Schmitz’s time at the Pentagon, Patton Boggs launched its own “Iraq Reconstruction” practice, in June 2003.⁵⁵ “An insider’s perspective is crucial… for companies seeking one of the many contracts to reconstruct Iraq,” read the copy on Patton Boggs’s reconstruction page, while the firm boasted of “an exceptionally high number of attorneys with extensive Hill experience and contacts, augmented by strong knowledge of key federal agencies involved in Iraq reconstruction” to help corporate clients procure lucrative contracts.⁵⁶ Like many Bush officials, Schmitz was a well-connected loyalist and a crony appointment. A glimpse into his extreme, at times bizarre, politics can be found in a series of antiabortion letters he wrote to various D.C.-area newspapers, beginning in 1989. In one letter, Schmitz wrote, “As a man, the plight of pregnant rape and incest victims may be hypothetical but as a former fetus, the plight of aborted innocent human life is as real to me as rape is to most women.”⁵⁷ In another, Schmitz calls Roe v. Wade “illegitimate federal legislation by unelected judges,” saying politicians should “leave political issues not addressed in the Constitution to the states and the people.”⁵⁸ In yet another, Schmitz declared, “Most pro-lifers are not averse to taking an ‘unpopular position’ in the defense of human life, whether the life be that of a frozen embryo, a fetus, a vegetative old woman or a teen-age rape victim. After all, the God of most pro-lifers once said: ‘Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”⁵⁹

President Bush nominated Schmitz for the Pentagon IG position in June 2001, where he would be “responsible for conducting independent and objective audits and investigations of defense programs and impartial investigations of the allegations of misconduct by senior officers and civilian department employees.”⁶⁰ The confirmation did not go smoothly, however. Schmitz’s appointment was held up by Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. During an October 2001 committee hearing, Levin questioned Schmitz about a letter he wrote to the right-wing Washington Times newspaper in 1992—three days before the presidential election between George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “Clinton practically confessed to being a security risk during the Vietnam War,” Schmitz wrote. “Now the same Bill Clinton wants to be commander in chief, but he won’t even talk about his organizing anti-war activities in England and then traveling to Moscow at the height of the Vietnam War. The KGB apparently knows more about the shady side of Bill Clinton than the American people ever will. The American people deserve better.”⁶¹ Schmitz signed the letter with his official rank of lieutenant commander, U.S. Naval Reserve.⁶² “Now, that was signed with your rank in the Reserves, which is the issue here,” Levin said to Schmitz during the hearing. “It’s not the views, whatever one thinks of those, but the fact that you signed it as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy Reserve.”⁶³ Schmitz responded, telling Levin, “The letter was merely a venting exercise. It was not a reflection of my judgment at the time and it certainly is not a reflection of my judgment today.” Careful with his words, Schmitz said, “The way the newspaper published my letter and highlighted my military rank obviously raises issues. I regretted it at the time and I regret it today. I learned a very good lesson for which I am now a better man. And, more importantly, I will be a much better inspector general for having learned that lesson if I am confirmed.”⁶⁴ Levin also took issue with Schmitz’s stated desire to remain on the board of a group called US English, Inc., while serving as Inspector General. “This is an organization that believes no government business should be done in any language other than English,” Levin said. “Why would you think it would be appropriate for you as inspector general to remain on the board of an advocacy group that is—obviously takes positions that would be an anathema to at least some members of the military?” After a lengthy defense of the organization, during which he accused Levin of holding a “common misconception,” Schmitz said, “It’s just a practical issue. If you want to succeed in the United States, you ought to learn English.”⁶⁵ Schmitz was required to resign from US English (which he had done just prior to the hearing) to be confirmed as Inspector General, which he was in March 2002.

Joseph Schmitz would be the top U.S. official in charge of policing the biggest corporate war bonanza in history during its most explosive period. His job description identified his mission as the “prevention of fraud, waste, and abuse in the programs and operations” of the Pentagon.⁶⁶ But unlike other IGs, the Pentagon’s reported directly to Rumsfeld, creating what some critics say was an inherent conflict of interest—one that was compounded by Rumsfeld’s ultracontrolling style. The Inspector General position should ideally be filled by an official determined to comb through the system looking for impropriety, corruption, and cronyism. Instead, what the Administration got in Schmitz was an official who seemingly admired the very parties he was supposed to be monitoring, not the least of whom was Rumsfeld himself. During his time at the Pentagon, Schmitz offered the following remarkable exaltation of his boss at the National Wrestling Coaches Association Coaches Clinic in St. Louis, during a speech entitled “Wrestling with Discipline: Life Lessons in Leadership:”

Schmitz carried around Rumsfeld’s famed twelve principles in his lapel pocket, of which the first sentence was, “Do nothing that could raise questions about the credibility of DoD.”⁶⁸ Under Schmitz’s watch, corporate profiteers, many with close ties to the administration, thrived as they burned through resources ostensibly allocated for the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan. “Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines,” according to an investigation by T. Christian Miller of the Los Angeles Times.⁶⁹ Miller reported that investigators working under Schmitz were so concerned about his loyalties that, at times, they stopped telling him whom they were investigating—substituting letter codes for individual names during weekly briefings—in fear that Schmitz would tip off Pentagon superiors.⁷⁰ “He became very involved in political investigations that he had no business getting involved in,” a senior official in Schmitz’s office told the Times.⁷¹ “I’ve seen this office become involved in many questionable projects despite strong and persistent opposition from senior staff,” said Iowa Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley at the end of Schmitz’s tenure. “It appears to me that this has created a lack of respect and trust, and has resulted in an ineffective Office of the Inspector General.”⁷²

In March 2003, a year after Schmitz took over as the Pentagon IG, and just as the Iraq invasion was beginning, he found himself responsible for investigating a scandal that rocked one of the key architects of the administration’s Iraq policy: Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative activist, founder of the Project for a New American Century and chair of the Defense Policy Board. Perle was close to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and had an office right next to Rumsfeld’s at the Pentagon.⁷³ As the Iraq invasion was getting under way, the New York Times and The New Yorker magazine revealed that Perle was using his position to lobby for corporate clients in their dealings with the Defense Department.⁷⁴ “Even as he advises the Pentagon on war matters, Richard N. Perle, chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board, has been retained by the telecommunications company Global Crossing to help overcome Defense Department resistance to its proposed sale to a foreign firm,” the Times reported.⁷⁵ Noting that Perle was “close to many senior officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who appointed him to lead the policy board,” the Times revealed that Perle stood to make $725,000 from Global Crossing if the government approved the sale. The Pentagon and FBI opposed the sale because it would “put Global Crossing’s worldwide fiber optics network—one used by the United States government—under Chinese ownership.”⁷⁶ In legal documents obtained by the Times, Perle blatantly peddled his Pentagon position to explain why he was uniquely qualified to help Global Crossing. “As the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, I have a unique perspective on and intimate knowledge of the national defense and security issues that will be raised” in the review process, Perle wrote.⁷⁷

When the news broke, Perle quickly resigned his chairmanship of the advisory board, while maintaining his innocence. In resigning, Perle told Rumsfeld he didn’t want the scandal to distract from “the urgent challenge in which you are now engaged” in Iraq.⁷⁸ Rumsfeld asked Perle to remain on the board, which he did. Representative John Conyers called for an investigation of Perle, and the case was sent to Joseph Schmitz. After a six-month investigation, Schmitz exonerated Perle of any wrongdoing, saying, “We have completed our inquiry regarding the conduct of Mr. Perle and did not substantiate allegations of misconduct.”⁷⁹ Despite exposés in almost every leading news outlet in the country about Perle’s multiple conflicts of interest, the Inspector General’s report “found insufficient basis to conclude that Mr. Perle created the appearance of impropriety from the perspective of a reasonable person.”⁸⁰ Perle said he was “very pleased”⁸¹ with Schmitz’s conclusion, while Rumsfeld declared, “The Inspector General’s report confirms the integrity of the Defense Policy Board and Mr. Perle’s participation.”⁸²

Not long after the revelations about Richard Perle’s business dealings, another controversy erupted about a powerful senior official in Rumsfeld’s inner circle, Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. In October 2003, Boykin was revealed to have gone on several anti-Muslim rants, in public speeches, many of which he delivered in military uniform. Since January 2002, Boykin had spoken at twenty-three religious-oriented events, wearing his uniform at all but two.⁸³ Among Boykin’s statements, he said he knew the United States would prevail over a Muslim adversary in Somalia because “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”⁸⁴ Boykin also charged that Islamic radicals want to destroy America “because we’re a Christian nation”⁸⁵ that “will never abandon Israel.”⁸⁶ Our “spiritual enemy,” Boykin declared, “will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.”⁸⁷ As for President Bush, Boykin said, “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”⁸⁸ In another speech, Boykin said other countries “have lost their morals, lost their values. But America is still a Christian nation.”⁸⁹ He told a church group in Oregon that special operations forces were victorious in Iraq because of their faith in God. “Ladies and gentlemen, I want to impress upon you that the battle that we’re in is a spiritual battle,” he said. “Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.”⁹⁰

Boykin was a career military officer, one of the first Delta Force commandos who rose through the ranks to become head of the top-secret Joint Special Operations Command. He had served in the Central Intelligence Agency, and during the war on terror, he had been in charge of Army Special Forces before joining Rumsfeld’s close-knit leadership team, where he was placed in charge of hunting “high-value targets.”⁹¹ Boykin was one of the key U.S. officials in establishing what critics alleged was death-squad-type activity in Iraq. Asked in a Congressional inquiry about the similarities between the U.S. Phoenix program in Vietnam and special operations in the war on terror, Boykin said: “I think we’re running that kind of program. We’re going after these people. Killing or capturing these people is a legitimate mission for the department. I think we’re doing what the Phoenix program was designed to do, without all of the secrecy.”⁹² Military analyst William Arkin, who first revealed Boykin’s comments, wrote, “When Boykin publicly spews this intolerant message while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, he strongly suggests that this is an official and sanctioned view—and that the U.S. Army is indeed a Christian army. But that’s only part of the problem. Boykin is also in a senior Pentagon policymaking position, and it’s a serious mistake to allow a man who believes in a Christian ‘jihad’ to hold such a job…. Boykin has made it clear that he takes his orders not from his Army superiors but from God—which is a worrisome line of command. For another, it is both imprudent and dangerous to have a senior officer guiding the war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan who believes that Islam is an idolatrous, sacrilegious religion against which we are waging a holy war.”⁹³ When Boykin came under fire for his anti-Muslim comments, Rumsfeld and other Pentagon brass vigorously defended him. “Boykin was not removed or transferred. At that moment, he was at the heart of a secret operation to ‘Gitmoize’… the Abu Ghraib prison,” wrote former Clinton senior adviser Sidney Blumenthal. “He had flown to Guantanamo, where he met Major General Geoffrey Miller, in charge of Camp X-Ray. Boykin ordered Miller to fly to Iraq and extend X-Ray methods to the prison system there, on Rumsfeld’s orders.”⁹⁴

Amid outcry from human rights groups and Arab and Muslim organizations, Boykin personally requested that Schmitz’s department at the Pentagon conduct an investigation into any potential wrongdoing on his part.⁹⁵ Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Boykin “is anxious to have the investigator do the investigator’s job.”⁹⁶ After a ten-month review, Schmitz’s office essentially cleared Boykin, concluding the general had violated three internal Pentagon regulations. “Although it was the substance of Boykin’s remarks and not his regard for Pentagon rules that aroused controversy, the report pointedly steered clear of comment on the appropriateness of Boykin’s injection of religion into his depiction of the military’s counterterrorism efforts, including his claims that a ‘demonic presence’ lay behind the actions of radical Muslims,” reported the Washington Post.⁹⁷ The paper quoted a senior Defense official who “said the report is seen as a ‘complete exoneration’ that ultimately found Boykin responsible for a few ‘relatively minor offenses’ related to technical and bureaucratic issues.”⁹⁸

In June 2004, Schmitz traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan and upon his return gave a major address titled “American Principles as Potent Weapons and Potential Casualties in the Global War on Terror.”⁹⁹ At the time, the scandal over prisoner torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib was still fresh in the United States, and Schmitz, who was in charge of investigating the abuse, did his best to whitewash the scandal. He blamed Abu Ghraib on a few “bad eggs,”¹⁰⁰ saying, “I’m not aware of any illegal orders that came from any leaders.”¹⁰¹ He told an audience at the City Club of Cleveland, “The few systemic breakdowns, and the reprehensible actions of a few of our own people—who are even now being brought to justice—should not overshadow the sacrifices and accomplishments of the thousands of courageous Americans who continue to serve honorably in the best tradition of the United States Armed Forces.”¹⁰² Schmitz said that he had been to Abu Ghraib and “another detainee collection point” in Afghanistan “to learn more about the rules, standards, and procedures we use to collect intelligence and otherwise to deal with the known and potential terrorists we capture in the course of our ongoing military operations. The more time I spend with our forward-deployed troops, listening to their stories and watching them perform their duties, the more I understand why the terrorists hate us so much. Beyond any doubt, we owe our American men and women now serving overseas a debt of gratitude. I cannot begin to tell you what an awesome and honorable job American troops are doing in both Iraq and Afghanistan.”¹⁰³ The terrorists, Schmitz said, “refuse to recognize the very standards of behavior that distinguish civilization from barbarism.” Even after the revelations of systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, he said, “We are still, by the grace of God, the beacon of hope to the world.”¹⁰⁴ While speaking at length about the “rule of law” that governs the United States, Schmitz told the audience, “We ought not let the bad news coming out of Abu Ghraib eclipse the fact that we’ve got some great American sons and daughters of regular Americans, farmers and whatever, and they’re over there doing great work for you and for me.”¹⁰⁵ In Afghanistan and Iraq, Schmitz said, “I saw American soldiers doing what we ‘Yanks’ have always done, being affable liberators, befriending the local people when they can, and chafing at the lack of contact when prevented from doing so by threats of violence from a shadowy and cowardly enemy.”¹⁰⁶

Like General Boykin, Schmitz often gave speeches during his tenure at the Pentagon that were overtly soaked in religious and Christian rhetoric and demeaning of other cultures and traditions. “The rule of law can scarcely be said to exist in tribal cultures, such as, for example, parts of Iraq and Afghanistan, where loyalty to one’s own often trumps everything—honesty, the law, fairness, and even common sense,” Schmitz said in a March 2004 speech.¹⁰⁷ In another, he declared, “The men and women of our armed forces today do not doubt the enduring principles that make America great—the same principles President Reagan mentioned in the midst of the Cold War: ‘individual responsibility, representative government, and the rule of law under God.’”¹⁰⁸ Schmitz ended his address by quoting Donald Rumsfeld’s “admonition” in the aftermath of 9/11: “We pray this day, Heavenly Father, the prayer our nation learned at another time of righteous struggle and noble cause—America’s enduring prayer: Not that God will be on our side, but always, O Lord, that America will be on Your side.” Schmitz then told the audience, “If we want to remain one nation, under the rule of law and under God, we must always hold ourselves to a higher standard.”¹⁰⁹

So prevalent was the religious rhetoric in Schmitz’s speeches that after one, he was told by an audience member, “The flavor of your speech has kind of troubled me because I always believed that the Constitution is a secular document, and I thought government is supposed to be a secular organization. I find that the church/state separation has been blurred by this Administration.”¹¹⁰ Schmitz proceeded to ignore the question, babbling on about chaplains in the military, before the questioner said, “That wasn’t the tenor that I had. I thought I was talking about—.” At that point, Schmitz interrupted the man and declared, “The American people, unlike other people around the world, are profoundly religious. That’s a historical and a current fact. So for us to pretend, somehow, that we shouldn’t be acknowledging the existence of Almighty God is just—it ignores reality, Sir. I’m sorry to have to say that. But that’s how I see it.”¹¹¹

Some of the most bizarre stories about Schmitz’s time at the Pentagon stem from what colleagues described as his “obsession” with Baron Von Steuben, the mercenary who fought in the Revolutionary War.¹¹² Von Steuben reportedly fled Germany after learning that he was going to be tried for homosexual activities and was welcomed by George Washington in America as a key military trainer—one of several mercenaries who fought the British. Soon after Schmitz was appointed to his post at the Pentagon, according to the Los Angeles Times:

“[Schmitz] was consumed with all things German and all things Von Steuben,” a former Defense official told the Los Angeles Times’s T. Christian Miller. “He was obsessed.”¹¹⁴ Schmitz also peppered many of his official speeches as Inspector General with references to Von Steuben, referring to him in almost messianic ways. “We all rely on his precedent and his wisdom to provide a compass for leadership within the Pentagon—to help find our way when things appear convoluted and distorted, as often is the case in large bureaucratic organizations, particularly in the heat of battle,” Schmitz said in a May 2004 speech at a dedication ceremony for a Von Steuben monument in New Jersey.¹¹⁵ In Iraq, Schmitz said in June 2004, “We must stay the course and stand behind our troops. For my part, I have deployed my very best ‘Von Steubens’ on the ground in Iraq to help train their new Inspectors General as champions of integrity and engines of positive change in each of the new Iraqi ministries.”¹¹⁶

It didn’t take long for Schmitz to be called to accounts by lawmakers of various political stripes and the critical in-depth investigative reporting of Miller in the Los Angeles Times. Perhaps the most serious heat Schmitz faced for his role in several scandals came from a powerful Republican—Senator Grassley. One centered on Rumsfeld aide John “Jack” Shaw, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense. A diehard, highly partisan Republican operative who had worked in every GOP administration going back to Gerald Ford, Shaw was put in charge of Iraq’s telecommunications system by the White House once the occupation got under way, despite the fact that “he had no background in either defense contracting or telecommunications,” wrote Miller.¹¹⁷ Whistleblowers from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq charged that Shaw attempted to use his position to steer lucrative contracts to corporate cronies, according to the Los Angeles Times.¹¹⁸ Shaw worked behind the scenes with powerful Republican lawmakers in an effort to redirect lucrative mobile phone network contracts in Iraq to businesses run by people with whom Shaw had a personal relationship, according to Miller.¹¹⁹

In 2003, Schmitz, in his capacity as Inspector General, signed an agreement with Shaw that gave him investigative authority, which Shaw allegedly used to press for the redirection of the telecommunications contracts to his friends.¹²⁰ “In one case, Shaw disguised himself as an employee of Halliburton Co. and gained access to a port in southern Iraq after he was denied entry by the U.S. military,” Miller reported, citing Pentagon officials. “In another, he criticized a competition sponsored by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to award cell phone licenses in Iraq. In both cases, Shaw urged government officials to fix the alleged problems by directing multimillion-dollar contracts to companies linked to his friends, without competitive bidding, according to the Pentagon sources and documents. In the case of the port, the clients of a lobbyist friend won a no-bid contract for dredging.”¹²¹

When the whistleblowers’ allegations about Shaw came before Schmitz, rather than investigating the case himself, he sent it to the FBI, citing a potential conflict of interest because Schmitz had deputized Shaw. “It’s a safe bet you can bury something at the FBI, because they won’t have time to look at it,” a Pentagon official told Miller.¹²² “The [FBI] was far more interested in terrorism than in official corruption,” Miller observed in his book Blood Money. “Schmitz’s own senior investigators objected to the transfer, seeing the decision as a calculated move to help a fellow political appointee. Predictably, the FBI investigation never went anywhere, and it was eventually dropped.”¹²³

After Shaw’s suspected corruption was revealed by the LA Times, Schmitz personally helped draft a Pentagon press release that sought to exonerate Shaw.¹²⁴ “The allegations were examined by DoD IG criminal investigators in Baghdad and a criminal investigation was never opened,” the Pentagon release, dated August 10, 2004, read. “Shaw is not now, nor has he ever been, under investigation by the DoD IG.”¹²⁵ The press release referred journalists to the FBI for further information. According to Miller’s reporting, Schmitz deputy Chuck Beardall e-mailed his boss, saying the press release was “dead wrong and needs to be removed ASAP. Failure to do so reflects poorly on the DOD’s and our integrity.”¹²⁶ Schmitz, according to Miller, “told an assistant, Gregg Bauer, that he was inclined to ‘let the sleeping dog lie.’ ‘We did the right thing by recommending a less-inclined-to-misinterpretation’ version of the press release, Schmitz wrote in an e-mail response.”¹²⁷ In a subsequent letter to Rumsfeld, Senator Grassley wrote, “What I find most disturbing about this situation is the alleged involvement of the IG, Mr. Schmitz, in this matter. First there is a paper trail that appears to show that Mr. Schmitz was personally and directly involved in crafting the language in this press release. And second, I understand that Mr. Schmitz was repeatedly warned by his own staff ‘to take it down’ because it was ‘patently false.’ Even the FBI weighed in on that score, I am told.”¹²⁸ Grassley told Rumsfeld that after he informed Schmitz of his intention to investigate him and requested access to Schmitz’s files on the matter, “I have been informed unofficially by sources within the IG’s office that ‘all papers related to Shaw and the other matter were stamped law enforcement sensitive to prevent my access.’”¹²⁹ Grassley also accused Schmitz of thwarting an investigation of a senior military official who Grassley believed may have lied under oath.¹³⁰ For his part, Shaw denied any wrongdoing and claimed allegations against him were a “smear campaign.”¹³¹

During his time at the Pentagon, Schmitz spoke publicly and passionately about the scourge of human trafficking, focusing in particular on sex trafficking—a pet issue of the Christian right and the Bush administration. In September 2004, Schmitz presented to the House Armed Services Committee a paper he wrote called “Inspecting Sex Slavery through the Fog of Moral Relativism.” ¹³² In it, he declared, “Moral relativism is an enemy of the United States Constitution” and “The President of the United States has identified 21st Century sex slavery as ‘a special evil’ under ‘a moral law that stands above men and nations.’” Schmitz said, “Ostensible consent by the parties to immoral practices such as prostitution and sex slavery ought never to be an excuse for turning a blind eye,” concluding, “Even as we confront the new asymmetric enemies of the 21st Century, those of us who take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States (and similar principle-based legal authorities) should recognize, confront, and suppress sexual slavery and other ‘dissolute and immoral practices’ whenever and wherever they raise their ugly heads through the fog of moral relativism—‘so help [us] God.’”¹³³

But while Schmitz railed against moral relativism and sex slavery, he simultaneously was accused of failing to investigate serious allegations of human trafficking by Iraq contractors, including KBR, which had thirty-five thousand “third country nationals” working in Iraq.¹³⁴ In a groundbreaking investigation, “Pipeline to Peril,” Cam Simpson of the Chicago Tribune documented how twelve Nepalese citizens were sent into Iraq in August 2004 and subsequently abducted and executed.¹³⁵ The paper revealed how “some subcontractors and a chain of human brokers allegedly engaged in the same kinds of abuses routinely condemned by the State Department as human trafficking.”¹³⁶ The Tribune also “found evidence that subcontractors and brokers routinely seized workers’ passports, deceived them about their safety or contract terms and, in at least one case, allegedly tried to force terrified men into Iraq under the threat of cutting off their food and water,” and that KBR and the military “allowed subcontractors to employ workers from countries that had banned the deployment of their citizens to Iraq, meaning thousands were trafficked through illicit channels.”¹³⁷

According to the Chicago Tribune: “Separate records also show that similar allegations had been raised in September 2004 with Joseph Schmitz, who was then the Department of Defense inspector general. Schmitz did not respond in any detail until nearly a year later, saying in an Aug. 25, 2005, letter to Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., that there was a ‘list of corrective measures’ ordered by coalition military officials in Iraq following ‘a preliminary inquiry’ into the allegations. The letter did not mention passport seizures or violations of U.S. laws against human trafficking, but said living conditions ‘required further attention’ and that officials were ‘monitoring the status of corrections’ purportedly under way.”¹³⁸ Hardly the “moral relativist,” “special evil” condemnation, apparently reserved by Schmitz and his allies for more “immoral” crimes.

One of the greatest scandals involving Schmitz began in May 2003, when the Pentagon agreed to lease one hundred military tanker planes in a controversial deal with Boeing worth a whopping $30 billion.¹³⁹ Almost immediately, the unusual arrangement—the largest such lease in U.S. history—was blasted by government watchdog groups as “wasteful corporate welfare,” as it boosted the struggling aerospace business.¹⁴⁰ Republican Senator John McCain slammed the deal as “a textbook case of bad procurement policy and favoritism to a single defense contractor.”¹⁴¹ McCain alleged that analyses by the General Accounting Office showed that it would be exponentially cheaper for the government to modernize existing tankers, rather than leasing additional ones from Boeing at several times the cost.¹⁴² “I have never seen the security and fiduciary responsibilities of the federal government quite so nakedly subordinated to the interests of one defense manufacturer,” McCain said.¹⁴³ In winning the controversial deal, Boeing reportedly had a string of powerful backers, among them House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a key ally of the White House and of senior White House aides Karl Rove and Andy Card. “What was unusual about Boeing’s lobbying was that it gained complete access to all divisions of government from the president down, to having the key leadership of the House and Senate and dozens of lawmakers pushing their wares on the deal,” said Keith Ashdown, director of Taxpayers for Common Sense.¹⁴⁴ According to the Financial Times, “Boeing also invested $20 million last year in a defence-related venture capital fund run by Richard Perle… [who] co-authored an editorial in The Wall Street Journal in August supporting the deal. He did not disclose the Boeing investment.”¹⁴⁵

The contract was approved by President Bush’s chief weapons buyer at the Pentagon, Edward C. “Pete” Aldridge Jr.,¹⁴⁶ who just happened to be the former president of McDonnell Douglas Electronic Systems, which later became part of Boeing.¹⁴⁷ Aldridge approved the deal on his last day at the Pentagon before taking a job with weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.¹⁴⁸ The deal would soon go down as “the most significant defense procurement mismanagement in contemporary history,” in the words of the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair, Republican John Warner,¹⁴⁹ resulting in a cancellation of the contract, amid widespread allegations of cronyism. Former Air Force procurement officer Darleen Druyun went to prison, as did a Boeing representative, while Air Force Secretary James Roche resigned.¹⁵⁰

Ultimately, the case ended up on Joseph Schmitz’s desk at the Pentagon for investigation. In June 2005, Schmitz released a 257-page report on the scandal, which critics charged concealed the possible role of senior White House officials in the deal—the report contained forty-five deletions of references to White House officials.¹⁵¹ In fact, Schmitz had actually given the report to the White House for review before its release, where it appeared to have been scrubbed of possibly damning information.¹⁵² In a letter to Schmitz, Republican Senator Grassley wrote, “By excluding pertinent evidence from the final report, certain potential targets were shielded from possible accountability.” Grassley added that Pentagon officials “may have been acting in response to guidance and advice from the senior White House officials, whose names were redacted from the final report on your orders; those officials are not held accountable.”¹⁵³

Schmitz did not include the comments of Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz because, Schmitz said, they hadn’t said anything “relevant.” If so, asserted the Washington Post editorial board, “investigators must not have asked the right questions. To offer just one example: Mr. Roche recounted that Mr. Rumsfeld called him in July 2003 to discuss his then-pending nomination to be secretary of the Army and ‘specifically stated that he did not want me to budge on the tanker lease proposal.’”¹⁵⁴ In a transcript of Schmitz’s office’s interview with Rumsfeld, obtained by the Washington Post, investigators asked the Defense Secretary whether he had approved the Boeing tanker lease despite widespread violations of Pentagon and government-wide procurement rules. “I don’t remember approving it,” Rumsfeld said. “But I certainly don’t remember not approving it, if you will.”¹⁵⁵ Investigators then asked Rumsfeld about the fact that in 2002 President Bush asked his Chief of Staff, Andy Card, to intervene in the Pentagon negotiations with Boeing (a major Bush contributor). “I have been told,” Rumsfeld said, “that discussions with the President are privileged, and with his immediate staff.”¹⁵⁶ The Post said much of the rest of the discussion was blacked out on the transcript. None of Rumsfeld’s comments were included in Schmitz’s report.¹⁵⁷

What’s more, Schmitz’s team did not interview anyone outside the Defense Department, despite the well-documented involvement of several high-profile lawmakers, administration officials, and the President himself.¹⁵⁸ Schmitz also failed to interview Edward Aldridge, the Pentagon official who approved the deal. His report noted that Aldridge failed to get proper approvals before moving forward with the deal, but said the approvals were in place anyway. In a Senate hearing on the scandal after the report was released, McCain said to Schmitz, “So, Mr. Aldridge basically lied,” to which Schmitz replied, “We know generally that… he and others within the Air Force and [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] were trying to treat the appropriations language as if it had waived a whole bunch of legal requirements.” ¹⁵⁹ McCain was incredulous. “Don’t you think it would have been important to have his testimony?” he asked Schmitz. “My staff couldn’t reach him,” Schmitz eventually asserted, saying he had sent him a registered letter and left him some voice mails. “You couldn’t get a hold of him through Lockheed Martin?” asked a stunned McCain. Despite his subpoena power, Schmitz never used it to compel Aldridge to be interviewed. “I don’t think it’s a mystery,” Senator John Warner told Schmitz. “He’s on the board of a major defense contractor, it seems to me he’s locatable.” In fact, it is very difficult to imagine Schmitz could not reach him at Lockheed Martin. Schmitz’s brother, John P. Schmitz, former deputy counsel for George H. W. Bush, served as a registered lobbyist for Lockheed Martin from July 2002 until January 2005,¹⁶⁰ overlapping the Boeing deal and probe. He served on a team of two to three lobbyists from Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, which was paid at least $445,000 during that time.¹⁶¹ There is nothing, however, to suggest that John P. Schmitz had any direct connection to the tanker deal or to Aldridge.

In the end, Senator Grassley told Joseph Schmitz that his handling of the scandal “raises questions about your independence” as Inspector General.¹⁶² Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense said, “We now know that at the highest levels of the Pentagon and the White House, the wheels were greased to direct billions in corporate welfare to the Boeing Company.”¹⁶³ But, he added, because of “the inspector general’s reluctance to grill the secretary of defense” and “overzealous redactions… we are now left with more questions than answers.”

With his office embroiled in multiple scandals, Schmitz served his official notice in June 2005 that he was recusing himself from Blackwater-related issues because he was in talks with the company about possible employment. The brief memo did not reveal what led to the disclosure or his dealings with Blackwater, but it came exactly a year after Schmitz returned from a nine-day trip to Baghdad, where he worked with Blackwater’s prized client Paul Bremer on establishing a network of twenty-nine inspectors general (with Schmitz’s “very best Von Steubens”) for Iraqi ministries ahead of the “handover” of sovereignty.¹⁶⁴ To some observers, having these two officials develop a system of oversight for a “new” Iraqi government would be like asking two foxes to decide how the chicken coop should be protected.

In November 2004, Schmitz gave Bremer the Joseph H. Sherick Award, given to an individual “who contributes to the mission of the inspector general.” ¹⁶⁵ Schmitz said he gave Bremer the award because he was “a man of vision and a man of principle.”¹⁶⁶ In accepting the award, Bremer said, “I felt from the time I got [to Iraq] how important it was, given the history of corruption under Saddam Hussein… to try to get this concept of trust in government established right from the beginning.”¹⁶⁷ In early 2005, Schmitz delivered a lecture to the Order of Malta Federal Association at Bremer’s church in Bethesda, Maryland, during which he told a story from Frances Bremer’s (Paul’s wife) novel Running to Paradise.¹⁶⁸ A few months later, in November 2005, Schmitz and Paul Bremer would be united again, as Blackwater hosted Bremer at a “fundraiser” for victims of Hurricane Katrina.¹⁶⁹

On August 26, 2005, Schmitz officially informed his staff that he was leaving the Pentagon to work with Blackwater. In an e-mail he sent out, he signed off, saying, “May the Creator acknowledged in our Declaration of Independence who has endowed each of us with those unalienable rights that we as Americans consider ‘first things,’ continue to bless each of you.”¹⁷⁰ Just as Schmitz began his work at Blackwater, in September 2005, the company reeled in lucrative government contracts, deploying heavily armed Blackwater forces on U.S. soil, in the wake of the worst “natural disaster” in U.S. history.