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

THE MEN from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. The company beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene as 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. Officially, the company boasted of its forces “join[ing] the hurricane relief effort.”¹ But its men on the ground told a different story.² Some patrolled the streets in SUVs with tinted windows and the Blackwater logo splashed on the back; others sped around the French Quarter in an unmarked car with no license plates. They wore khaki uniforms, wraparound sunglasses, beige or black military boots, and had Blackwater company IDs strapped to their bulging arms. All of them were heavily armed—some with M-4 automatic weapons, capable of firing nine hundred rounds per minute, or shotguns. This despite police commissioner Eddie Compass’s claim that “Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons.”³

The Blackwater men congregated on the corner of St. Peter and Bourbon in front of a bar called 711. From the balcony above the bar, several Blackwater troops cleared out what had apparently been someone’s apartment. They threw mattresses, clothes, shoes, and other household items from the balcony to the street below. They draped an American flag from the balcony’s railing. More than a dozen troops from the Eighty-second Airborne Division stood in formation on the street watching the action.

Armed men shuffled in and out of the building as a handful told stories of their past experiences in Iraq. “I worked the security detail of both Bremer and Negroponte,” said one of the Blackwater men, referring to the former head of the U.S. occupation, L. Paul Bremer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. Another complained, while talking on his cell phone, that he was getting only $350 a day plus his per diem. “When they told me New Orleans, I said, ‘What country is that in?’” he said. He wore his company ID around his neck in a case with the phrase “Operation Iraqi Freedom” printed on it. After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a “State Department-issued” “explosion-proof BMW,” he said he was “just trying to get back to [Iraq], where the real action is.”

In an hour-long conversation in the French Quarter, four Blackwater troops characterized their work in New Orleans as “securing neighborhoods” and “confronting criminals.” They all carried M-4 assault weapons and had guns strapped to their legs. Their flak jackets were covered with pouches for extra ammunition. “This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS [Continental United States],” another Blackwater contractor said. “We’re much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq.” Blackwater president Gary Jackson told the Virginian-Pilot that his men were heavily armed “because of the intel that we received,” adding, “We did a risk assessment and decided we’re going to send guys in there for real.”⁴ Jackson claimed Blackwater “basically secured” the French Quarter—a claim hotly disputed by local law enforcement agents, one of whom said, “There may be some braggadocio involved” in Jackson’s claim. Maj. Ed Bush of the Louisiana National Guard told the Pilot, “Every group wants to kind of thump their chest a little bit, but just think about it. We live here. Seems kind of naive to think Blackwater beat us to the French Quarter.”⁵

Former Kentwood, Michigan, police officer Dan Boelens, another Blackwater contractor who had been to Iraq before deploying to New Orleans, was assigned by Blackwater to guard Bell South workers in New Orleans.⁶ He said that for several days after he arrived, he and other Blackwater contractors had patrolled the streets in SUVs and armed with assault rifles. “The only difference between here and Iraq is there are no roadside bombs,” he said. “It’s like a Third World country. You just can’t believe this is America.” Boelens added, “We keep having this little flashback, like what we were doing in Iraq.”⁷ The only kill Boelens claimed in New Orleans was a pit bull he shot before it could attack him.

Blackwater was among a handful of well-connected firms that immediately seized the business opportunity not just in the rubble and devastation in the Gulf but also in the media hysteria. As the federal, state, and local governments abandoned hundreds of thousands of hurricane victims, the images that dominated the television coverage of the hurricane were of looting, lawlessness, and chaos. These reports were exaggerated and, without question, racist and inflammatory. If you were watching from, say, Kennebunkport, Maine, you might imagine New Orleans as one big riot—a festival of criminals whose glory day had finally come. In reality, it was a city of internally displaced and abandoned people desperate for food, water, transportation, rescue, and help. What was desperately needed was food, water, and housing. Instead what poured in fastest were guns. Lots of guns.

Frank Borelli, a former military policeman who worked for Blackwater in the early days of the operation, recalled that when he arrived at the Blackwater camp in Louisiana, “I was issued a Glock 17 and a Mossberg M590A shotgun. I was also issued a shotshell pouch with ten rounds of slug and ten rounds of 00 Buck. There was (at that time) no 9mm ammo available, but I was blessed to be in a camp full of trigger-pullers. Before I racked out I had fifty-one rounds of 9mm ammo loaded into three magazines for the G17.”⁸ Clearly well armed, Borelli observed, “The logistics effort to support the operation is awesome, and I know ammo was just flown in on Monday. More came in on Wednesday. It is a comment on the spirit of the American cop/warrior that Blackwater can put so many men on the ground so fast. Supporting them is a daunting challenge.”

In the early days of the hurricane, even with heavily armed Blackwater men openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans, a spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knew of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. “We believe we’ve got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety,” Knocke said on September 8.⁹ But the very next day, the Blackwater troops on the ground put forward a very different narrative. When asked what authority they were operating under, one Blackwater contractor said, “We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.” Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, “He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.” The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck. Blackwater spokesperson Anne Duke also said the company had a letter from Louisiana officials authorizing its forces to carry loaded weapons.¹⁰ Some of the men said they were sleeping in camps set up by Homeland Security.

“This vigilantism demonstrates the utter breakdown of the government,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, upon learning Blackwater forces were deployed in the hurricane zone. “These private security forces have behaved brutally, with impunity, in Iraq. To have them now on the streets of New Orleans is frightening and possibly illegal.” A statement on Blackwater’s Web site, dated September 1, 2005, advertised airlift services, security services, and crowd control and said the company was deploying its SA-330 Puma helicopter “to help assist in evacuating citizens from flooded areas.”¹¹ The press release claimed “Blackwater’s aerial support services” were being “donated” to the relief effort. “At this time, all Americans should band together and assist our countrymen who have been struck by this natural disaster,” said founder Erik Prince. “Blackwater is proud to serve the people of New Orleans,” said Blackwater’s executive vice president Bill Mathews on September 13. “First and foremost, this is about Americans helping Americans in a time of desperation.”¹² Cofer Black spun Blackwater’s operations in Katrina as strictly humanitarian-motivated. “I think it’s important to underscore that companies like ours are in servitude,” Black later said, adding that when Katrina hit, “Our company launched a helicopter and crew with no contract, no one paying us, that went down to New Orleans. We were able to find out how to put ourselves under Coast Guard command—we got a Coast Guard call sign and we saved some 150 people that otherwise wouldn’t have been saved. And as a result of that, we’ve had a very positive experience.”¹³ “We’re always anxious to help our fellow citizens,” Black said, “whether we get paid or not.” But the fact is that Blackwater was indeed getting paid in New Orleans—big time.

On September 18, Blackwater estimated that it had 250 troops deployed in the region; a number Mathews said would continue to grow. “We are people who want to make a difference and help,” he said. “It’s time to set the record straight: We are not… skull-crushing mercenaries. We don’t believe we will make a profit here. We ran to the fire because it was burning.”¹⁴ In another interview Mathews said that because Blackwater had donated more than $1 million in aviation services, “If we break even on the security services, our company will have done a great job.”¹⁵ By then, the company was aggressively recruiting for its New Orleans operations. It required applicants to have at least four years of military experience “with duties involving carrying a weapon.” A Blackwater advertisement said, “This opportunity is for immediate deployment. Earning potential up to $9,000 a month.”¹⁶ Meanwhile, Blackwater floated a proposal to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that it set up a training facility to prepare local workers for security-industry jobs in New Orleans, either with Blackwater or other firms. “Security is going to be an issue during the entire reconstruction,” said Mathews.¹⁷

While Blackwater may indeed have donated some “services” in New Orleans, its claims about rescuing people with its helicopter have been called into serious question by the U.S. Coast Guard, under whose direction Blackwater boasted it was operating. In early 2006, Erik Prince bragged that “after Hurricane Katrina hit, we sent one of our Puma helicopters…. I said, ‘Start flying.’ We got ourselves attached to the Coast Guard, actually became a Coast Guard call sign, and we flew, rescued 128 people.”¹⁸ That story doesn’t appear to add up. “[Blackwater] offered to do rescues, but there were legal concerns. What if someone got hurt? So we asked them not to engage in pulling people out,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Todd Campbell, who directed a large part of the rescue operations. He told the Virginian-Pilot that Blackwater “debriefed me at the end of every day, and no one ever mentioned doing any rescues. If they were out there doing them, it was solely on their own.”¹⁹

Moreover, despite its moralistic boasts, Blackwater hardly ran a pro-bono humanitarian operation in New Orleans. In addition to its work guarding private companies, banks, hotels, industrial sites, and rich individuals,²⁰ Blackwater was quietly handed a major no-bid contract with the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service, ostensibly to protect federal reconstruction projects for FEMA. According to Blackwater’s government contracts, from September 8 to September 30, 2005—just three weeks—Blackwater was paid $409,000 for providing fourteen guards and four vehicles to “protect the temporary morgue in Baton Rouge, LA.”²¹ Documents show that the government paid Blackwater $950 a day for each of its guards in the area—some $600 more per man per day than the company was allegedly paying its men on the ground.²² That contract kicked off a hurricane boon for Blackwater; by the end of 2005, in just three months, the government had paid Blackwater at least $33.3 million for its Katrina work for DHS.²³ All of these services were justified by the government’s claim of not having enough personnel to deploy quickly in the hurricane zone, though spokespeople carefully avoided drawing a connection to the various U.S. occupations internationally. “We saw the costs, in terms of accountability and dollars, for this practice in Iraq, and now we are seeing it in New Orleans,” said Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, one of Blackwater’s few critics in Congress. “They have again given a sweetheart contract—without an open bidding process—to a company with close ties to the Administration.”²⁴ By June 2006, the company had raked in some $73 million from its Katrina work for the government—about $243,000 a day.²⁵

Instead of a serious government relief operation in New Orleans, the forces that most rapidly mobilized were the Republican-connected corporations—many of the very companies making a killing off the Iraq occupation. To further aid these companies, President Bush repealed the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which required federal contractors to pay a prevailing wage to its workers²⁶ (he was later forced to restore it). This enabled the companies to pay bottom dollar to workers while reaping massive corporate profits. In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, Vice President Dick Cheney’s “former” company Halliburton/KBR (the greatest corporate beneficiary of the Iraq War) was given $30 million to “assess pumps and infrastructure in the city and construct a facility to support recovery efforts,”²⁷ while the Shaw Group (which was paid more than $135 million in Iraq) was given more than $700 million in Katrina contracts.²⁸ Both companies were represented by a lobbyist named Joseph Allbaugh, who just happened to be President Bush’s former campaign manager and the former head of FEMA.²⁹ Eventually, the government significantly raised the ceilings of its contracts to Republican-connected firms: $950 million for Shaw, $1.4 billion for Fluor, and $575 million for Bechtel.³⁰ Fluor’s Katrina project was run by Alan Boeckmann, the same manager who was in charge of the company’s Iraq contracts. “Our rebuilding work in Iraq is slowing down,” he told Reuters. “And this has made some people available to respond to our work in Louisiana.”³¹

Some began referring to New Orleans and the surrounding disaster area as “Baghdad on the Bayou.” As The Nation’s Christian Parenti reported in a dispatch from New Orleans, “It seems the rescue effort is turning into an urban war game: An imaginary domestic version of the total victory that eludes America in Baghdad will be imposed here, on New Orleans. It’s almost as if the Tigris—rather than the Mississippi—had flooded the city. The place feels like a sick theme park—Macho World—where cops, mercenaries, journalists and weird volunteers of all sorts are playing out a relatively safe version of their militaristic fantasies about Armageddon and the cleansing iron fist.”³² With U.S. forces spread thinly across multiple war zones, the landscape was ripe for some major-league disaster profiteering by the rapidly expanding world of private security and military companies.

Blackwater was hardly the only mercenary firm to take advantage of the tremendous profit opportunity in the great disaster. As business leaders and government officials talked openly of changing the demographics of one of America’s most culturally vibrant cities, mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, American Security Group, Wackenhut, Kroll, and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) fanned out to guard private businesses and homes, as well as government projects and institutions. Within two weeks of the hurricane, the number of private security companies registered in Louisiana jumped from 185 to 235 and would continue to climb as the weeks passed. Some, like Blackwater, were under federal contract. Others were hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III, who brought in private security to guard his $3 million private estate and his luxury hotels, which were under consideration for a lucrative federal contract to house FEMA workers.³³

A possibly deadly incident involving hired guns underscored the dangers of private forces policing American streets. One private security guard said that on his second night in New Orleans, where he was on contract with a wealthy business owner, he was traveling with a heavily armed security detail en route to pick up one of his boss’s associates and escort him through the chaotic city. The security guard said their convoy came under fire from “black gangbangers” on an overpass near the poor Ninth Ward neighborhood. “At the time, I was on the phone with my business partner,” he recalled. “I dropped the phone and returned fire.” The guard said he and his men were armed with AR-15s and Glocks and that they unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. “After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said.”

Then, he said, “the Army showed up, yelling at us and thinking we were the enemy. We explained to them that we were security. I told them what had happened and they didn’t even care. They just left.” Five minutes later, the guard said, Louisiana state troopers arrived on the scene, inquired about the incident, and then asked him for directions on “how they could get out of the city.” The guard said that no one ever asked him for any details of the incident and no report was ever made. “One thing about security,” he said, “is that we all coordinate with each other—one family.” That coordination apparently did not include the offices of the Secretaries of State in Louisiana and Alabama, which said they had no record of his company.

A few miles away from the French Quarter, another wealthy New Orleans businessman, James Reiss, who served in Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration as chairman of the city’s Regional Transit Authority, brought in some heavy guns to guard the elite gated community of Audubon Place: Israeli mercenaries dressed in black and armed with M- 16s. Reiss, who flew the men in by helicopter, told the Wall Street Journal, “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again, or we’re out.”³⁴ Two Israelis patrolling the gates outside Audubon said they had served as professional soldiers in the Israeli military, and one boasted of having participated in the invasion of Lebanon. “We have been fighting the Palestinians all day, every day, our whole lives,” one of them declared. “Here in New Orleans, we are not guarding from terrorists.”³⁵ Then, tapping on his machine gun, he said, “Most Americans, when they see these things, that’s enough to scare them.”

The men said they worked for Instinctive Shooting International, which described its employees as “veterans of the Israeli special task forces from the following Israeli government bodies: Israel Defense Force (IDF), Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, Instructors of Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, General Security Service (GSS or ‘Shin Beit’), Other restricted intelligence agencies.”³⁶ The company was formed in 1993. Its Web site profile said: “Our up-to-date services meet the challenging needs for Homeland Security preparedness and overseas combat procedures and readiness. ISI is currently an approved vendor by the US Government to supply Homeland Security services.”

As countless guns poured into New Orleans, there was a distinct absence of relief operations, food, and water distribution. The presence of the mercenaries raised another important question: given the enormous presence in New Orleans of National Guard, U.S. Army, U.S. Border Patrol, local police from around the country, and practically every other government agency with badges, why were private security companies needed, particularly to guard federal projects? “I don’t know that there are any terrorist attacks being planned against FEMA offices in the Gulf Coast,” said Illinois Senator Barack Obama. “It strikes me, with all the National Guardsmen that we’ve got down there, with a bunch of local law enforcement that are back on the job and putting their lives back together again, that that may not be the best use of money.”³⁷ Shortly after The Nation exposed Blackwater’s operations in New Orleans, Representative Schakowsky and a handful of other Congress members raised questions about the scandal. They entered the reporting into the Congressional Record during hearings on Katrina in late September 2005 and cited it in letters to DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner, who then began an inquiry.³⁸ In letters to Congressional offices in February 2006, Skinner defended the Blackwater deal, asserting that it was “appropriate” for the government to contract with the company. Skinner admitted that “the ongoing cost of the contract… is clearly very high” and then quietly dropped a bombshell: “It is expected that FEMA will require guard services on a relatively long-term basis (two to five years).”³⁹

The hurricane’s aftermath ushered in the homecoming of the “war on terror,” a contract bonanza whereby companies reaped massive Iraq-like profits without leaving the country and at a minuscule fraction of the risk. To critics of the government’s handling of the hurricane, the message was clear. “That’s what happens when the victims are black folks vilified before and after the storm—instead of aid, they get contained,” said Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and an editor of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch.⁴⁰ Kromm alleged that while seemingly endless amounts of money were doled out to scandal-ridden contractors, vital projects had “gotten zero or little money” in New Orleans in the same period, including: job creation, hospital and school reconstruction, affordable housing, and wetlands restoration. Even in this context, DHS continued to defend the Blackwater contract. In a March 1, 2006, memo to FEMA, Matt Jadacki, the DHS Special Inspector General for Gulf Coast Hurricane Recovery, wrote that the Federal Protective Service considered Blackwater “the best value to the government.”⁴¹

A month after Katrina hit, Blackwater’s guards were also working the Hurricane Rita gravy train. At its high point the company had about six hundred contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi.⁴² By the summer of 2006, Blackwater’s operations in New Orleans were staffed more by police types than the commandos of the early deployment. The paramilitary gear was eventually replaced by black polo shirts with the company logo, khaki pants, and pistols as Blackwater men patrolled the parking lot of a Wal-Mart that had been converted into a FEMA outpost.⁴³ In late August 2006, Blackwater was still guarding such vital public institutions as the city library—which was being used by FEMA—where one patron, after allegedly being refused entry by a Blackwater guard and finding himself unable to get an explanation as to why, said the “brazen representative declined to give his name and called a supervisor who declined to give his name or the name of the representative who denied [the man] access to the library.”⁴⁴ In Baton Rouge, Blackwater set up a Katrina zone headquarters, renting space at the World Evangelism Bible College and Seminary, run by disgraced Christian televangelist Jimmy Swaggart (whose public career went up in flames in 1988 when he was caught with a prostitute in a motel).⁴⁵

For Blackwater, Katrina was a momentous occasion—its first official deployment on U.S. soil. While it raked in a hefty sum for the domestic disaster operations, the greatest benefit to the company was in breaking into a new, lucrative market for its mercenary services—far from the bloodletting of Iraq. As the Virginian-Pilot, which is right in Blackwater’s backyard, observed, the hurricanes of 2005 represented “a potential plug for a hole in Blackwater’s business model. Private military companies thrive on war—an icy fact that could gut the now-booming industry when or if Iraq settles down. Katrina offered Blackwater a chance to diversify into natural disasters.”⁴⁶ Erik Prince has said that prior to Katrina, “We had no plans to be in the domestic security business at all.”⁴⁷ In the aftermath of the hurricane, though, Blackwater launched a new domestic operations division. “Look, none of us loves the idea that devastation became a business opportunity,” said the new division’s deputy, Seamus Flatley, a retired Navy fighter pilot. “It’s a distasteful fact, but it is what it is. Doctors, lawyers, funeral directors, even newspapers—they all make a living off of bad things happening. So do we, because somebody’s got to handle it.”⁴⁸

But critics saw the deployment of Blackwater’s forces domestically as a dangerous precedent that could undermine U.S. democracy. “Their actions may not be subject to constitutional limitations that apply to both federal and state officials and employees—including First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights to be free from illegal searches and seizures. Unlike police officers, they are not trained in protecting constitutional rights,” said CCR’s Ratner. “These kind of paramilitary groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law. The use of these paramilitary groups is an extremely dangerous threat to our rights.”

Blackwater and the Border

One quality Blackwater USA has consistently put on display is its uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right moment—especially when it comes to scooping up lucrative government contracts. Far from being a matter of simple luck, the company has dedicated substantial resources to monitoring trends in the world of law enforcement and military actions and has hired many well-connected ex-spooks, former federal officials, and military brass. Like the best entrepreneurs, Blackwater is always looking to provide what it refers to as “turnkey” solutions for problems ailing the government bureaucracy or to fill the seemingly endless “national security” holes appearing in the wake of the “war on terror.” In the years following 9/11, Blackwater proved remarkably adept at placing itself in the middle of many of the prized battles the administration (and the right in general) was waging: rapid privatization of government, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and bolstering Christian/Republican friendly businesses.

While the hurricanes expedited Blackwater’s domestic program, it was by no means the first time the company had considered the major profits to be made on the home front. In fact, in mid-2005, three months before Katrina hit—and with its forces firmly entrenched in Iraq and a taxpayer-funded I.V. running directly from Washington, D.C., to Moyock—Blackwater quietly threw its hat into the ring of another major front: immigration and “border security.” After the launch of the “war on terror,” anti-immigrant groups used the fear of further attacks to push for greater militarization of the U.S. borders—with some calling for a massive fence stretching hundreds of miles along the U.S./Mexico border—and to “crack down” on people they characterized as “illegal aliens.”

In April 2005, the anti-immigrant/pro-militarized-border cause got a huge boost as the Minuteman Project Civil Defense Corps exploded onto the scene. The overwhelmingly white movement organized anti-immigrant militias to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico. The Minutemen, named after the militias that fought in the American Revolution, billed themselves as “Americans doing the jobs our Government won’t do.” They claimed to have hundreds of volunteers from thirty-seven states, among them many former military and law enforcement officers as well as pilots who would do aerial surveillance.

One of Blackwater’s key Congressional allies, Representative Duncan Hunter, began stepping up his campaign for a massive “border fence,”⁴⁹ while Erik Prince’s old boss, Representative Dana Rohrabacher endorsed the Minutemen, saying the militias “demonstrated the positive effects of an increased presence on the southwest border. There’s no denying that more border patrol agents would help create a stronger border and decrease illegal crossings that may include international terrorists.”⁵⁰ T. J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council—a lobbying organization—echoed those sentiments, invoking the 9/11 attacks. “Even if a terrorist is a one-in-a-million occurrence, with several million people coming into the country every year, very soon they reach that critical mass necessary to carry out another attack on the magnitude of September 11,” he said. “This is totally unacceptable from the standpoint of homeland security and national security. We have to gain control of our borders.”⁵¹

On Capitol Hill, Republican operatives seized the opportunity to escalate their anti-immigrant, proprivatization, promilitarization campaign and push forward with an agenda that would have been difficult to popularize before 9/11. Now, the new national hysteria provided the ideal turf to wage the battle. In the midst of this, on May 18, 2005, the House of Representatives passed the first Department of Homeland Security Authorization Bill, which approved the hiring of some two thousand new border patrol agents. On May 24, the House Homeland Security Committee’s management integration and oversight subcommittee held a hearing on the training of these new agents. One of the central purposes of the hearing seemed to be to promote outsourcing the border-training program to the private sector.

The first panel of the hearings consisted of two U.S. government immigration officials. The second panel represented the private industry. For this panel, there were just two speakers: T. J. Bonner and Gary Jackson.⁵² “We need reinforcements desperately, and we need them yesterday,” Bonner told the hearing. “There’s a crying need for agents clearly, which is borne out by the call for citizen patrol groups, military on the border. Clearly we’re not doing our job. But the reason we need more border patrol agents is to secure our borders. We need to spend whatever it takes, not try and do it on the cheap, not try and figure out how we can cut corners to hire as many border patrol agents as possible, but to spend whatever it takes to support these men and women so that they can go out there.”⁵³ Jackson began his testimony by running through a brief, selective history of Blackwater. The company, he said, was founded “from a clear vision of the need for innovative, flexible training and security solutions in support of national and global security challenges. Both the military and law enforcement agencies needed additional capacity to fully train their personnel to the standards required to keep our country secure. Because these constraints on training venues continued to increase, Blackwater believed that the U.S. government would embrace outsourcing of quality training. We built Blackwater’s facility in North Carolina to provide the capacity that we thought our government would need to meet its future training requirements. Over the years, Blackwater has not only become an industry leader in training but at the cutting edge.” Jackson said that as the company grew, “We quickly realized the value to the government of one-stop shopping. While there were other companies who offered one or two distinct training services, none of them offer all of our services and certainly not at one location.” The importance of this, Jackson said, “cannot be overstated. Being able to conduct training at a centralized locality is the most cost-effective, efficient way of ensuring that new federal law enforcement agents are trained to the level demanded by today’s national and homeland security challenges.”⁵⁴

Alabama Republican Mike Rogers, who chaired the Congressional hearing, blasted the costs of government training programs for border agents, saying, “It’s going to cost more to train a border patrol officer in a ten-month program than it is to get a four-year degree at Harvard University.” Rogers asked: if Blackwater was given $100,000 per agent, did Jackson believe the company “would give them equal or better training than they’re receiving” from the federal government’s training program? “I could assure you of that,” Jackson shot back. He told the lawmakers that Blackwater could train all two thousand new border patrol agents in one year. “Blackwater successfully conducts a similar public-private partnership with the Department of State to recruit, train, deploy, and manage diplomatic security specialists in Iraq and other areas of interest. Securing our borders will continue to be a challenge for our nation,” Jackson said. “The urgency is clear. History repeatedly demonstrates that innovation and efficiency are what alter the strategic balance, and Blackwater offers both in support of training new border patrol agents. Just as the private sector has responded in moving mail and packages around the world in a more efficient manner, so too can Blackwater respond to the CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) emerging and compelling training needs.”

A few days later, Blackwater’s Tactical Weekly newsletter carried the news headline “Border Patrol Should Consider Outsourcing Its Training, Lawmaker Says.”⁵⁵ The article, from the Federal Times, reported that “[Congressman] Rogers said the government may need to turn to Blackwater USA or other contractor if they can do the job cheaper. ‘We have a fiduciary obligation to taxpayers to look at other options,’ Rogers said. ‘It’s irresponsible to go forward with that in the absence of supporting documentation.’”⁵⁶

In November 2005, Blackwater and the American Red Cross held a joint “Gulf Region Relief” fundraiser that symbolically brought Blackwater’s diverse federal contracts full circle. The keynote speaker, welcomed with a standing ovation, was Blackwater’s once-prized client, L. Paul Bremer, whose book on Iraq had just been published. Blackwater claimed to have raised $138,000 that night⁵⁷—about $100,000 shy of the company’s estimated daily take from the Katrina contracting jackpot. “Tonight was a success because it was about Americans helping Americans,” said Gary Jackson, repeating what had become Blackwater’s new mantra. “Our great employees and our special relationship with Ambassador Bremer and the Red Cross made it possible to pull off this event.”⁵⁸ It was reminiscent of the tobacco industry cheering its own meager contributions to antismoking campaigns, while at the same time aggressively marketing cigarettes with exponentially more resources. In reality, Blackwater gained far more from the hurricane than New Orleans’s victims did from Blackwater’s services.

President Bush used the Katrina disaster to try to repeal the Posse Comitatus Act (the ban on using U.S. troops in domestic law enforcement), and Blackwater and other security firms initiated a push to install their paramilitaries on U.S. soil, bringing the war home in yet another ominous way. “This is a trend,” said one Blackwater mercenary in New Orleans. “You’re going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.” Blackwater had now solidified its position not only as one of the great beneficiaries of the “war on terror” but as a major player in several of the key arenas of the neoconservative agenda. On the one-year anniversary of Katrina, Gary Jackson used the opportunity to showcase Blackwater’s services. “When the Department of Homeland Security called with an emergent and compelling requirement for a turnkey security solution for multiple federal assets, we responded,” he wrote. “Our Rapid Response Enterprise has global reach and can make a positive difference in the lives of those who are affected by natural disasters and terrorist events.”⁵⁹

Shortly after Blackwater’s Katrina profits started rolling in, Erik Prince sent out a memo on Prince Group letterhead to “all Blackwater USA officers, employees, and independent contractors.” Its subject: “Blackwater USA National Security Oath and Leadership Standards.” It required Blackwater workers to swear the same oath to the Constitution as Blackwater’s “National Security-related clients” to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…. So help me God.”⁶⁰

K Street Collapse

In January 2006, as Blackwater continued to enjoy the great windfall from Hurricane Katrina, its powerful lobbying firm, the Alexander Strategy Group, was brought down in the flames of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Abramoff was a member of President Bush’s 2001 Transition Team, a powerful Republican lobbyist, and a close associate of many of the most powerful political players in the United States. In March 2006, after months of sustained revelations about Abramoff’s influence-peddling activities, he ended up pleading guilty to five felony counts in one of the greatest corruption scandals in Washington in recent history. ASG was one of several Abramoff-related casualties. The well-connected Republican lobbying firm, founded and run by former senior staffers of ex-House majority leader Tom DeLay, was also deeply entangled in several other scandals rocking Washington at the time. As Abramoff was going down, ASG’s lobbyists feverishly scrambled to dissociate themselves from the sinking ship.

A few months earlier, it would have been difficult to predict ASG’s downfall. The firm enjoyed a prosperous 2005, ranked as a Top 25 lobbying outfit by National Journal, with revenues on a steady rise—up 34 percent in one year, to $8 million from what the Washington Post termed “an A-list of about 70 companies and organizations.”⁶¹ In addition to powerhouses like PhRMA, Enron, TimeWarner, Microsoft, and Eli Lilly, ASG counted among its clients over the years several evangelical Christian causes and organizations—among them right-wing media operations like Salem Communications, the National Religious Broadcasters, and Grace News.⁶² ASG was also a quiet workhorse in procuring lucrative military contracts for some of its clients. At the time of its downfall, ASG was on the cutting edge of one of the fastest-growing industries within the military world—private security. That was thanks in large part to the long-term relationship between ASG partner Paul Behrends and Blackwater owner Erik Prince.

While Behrends had been lobbying for Prince and Blackwater almost from the moment the business began, the key assistance Behrends provided came in the immediate aftermath of the Fallujah ambush in 2004. In November 2005, when Blackwater and other private security firms began a push to recast their mercenary image under the banner of the International Peace Operations Association, the mercenary trade association, it was Behrends and ASG they enlisted to help them do it.⁶³ Among those registered by ASG as lobbyists for IPOA were several former DeLay staffers, including Ed Buckham and Karl Gallant, former head of DeLay’s ARMPAC, and Tony Rudy, DeLay’s former counsel, who pleaded guilty in March 2006 to conspiracy to corrupt public officials and defraud clients.⁶⁴ Interestingly, Rudy had also worked alongside Behrends in Representative Dana Rohrabacher’s office in the early 1990s—the same time Erik Prince claimed to have worked there as a defense analyst.⁶⁵ According to Rohrabacher’s office, Prince was actually an unpaid intern. Rohrabacher remained an ardent defender of Jack Abramoff, whom he first met when Abramoff was a leading College Republican and Rohrabacher was an aide to President Reagan. When Abramoff was sentenced in 2006, Rohrabacher was the only sitting Congress member to write the sentencing judge asking for leniency. “Jack was a selfless patriot most of the time I knew him. His first and foremost consideration was protecting America from its enemies,” Rohrabacher wrote. “Only later did he cash in on the contacts he made from his idealistic endeavors.”⁶⁶

Prince himself managed to escape scrutiny, despite his ties to Rudy and his connection to Abramoff. The Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, of which Erik Prince is a vice president and his mother is president, gave at least $130,000 to Toward Tradition,⁶⁷ an organization that described itself as a “national coalition of Jews and Christians devoted to fighting the secular institutions that foster anti-religious bigotry, harm families, and jeopardize the future of America.”⁶⁸ Abramoff served as chairman of the organization, run by his longtime friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin, until 2000, and remained on the board until 2004.⁶⁹ Toward Tradition surfaced in Abramoff’s plea agreement as a “non-profit entity” through which “Abramoff provided things of value… [w]ith the intent to influence… official acts.”⁷⁰ Abramoff clients eLottery, an Internet gambling company, and the Magazine Publishers of America each donated $25,000 to Toward Tradition.⁷¹ The $50,000 was then paid to Tony Rudy’s wife, Lisa, in ten $5,000 installments for consulting services.⁷² At the time, Rudy was DeLay’s deputy chief of staff and was helping eLottery to fight a bill that would outlaw Internet gambling and helping the MPA to fight a postal rate increase.⁷³

Despite the ASG scandal in early 2006, the head of the IPOA, Doug Brooks, told Roll Call that the association with Behrends would continue, saying IPOA found him “helpful in terms of what we were working on.”⁷⁴ While the ASG lobbyists scrambled to set up new shops with different names and clients tried to distance themselves from the scandal, Behrends began working for powerhouse law firm Crowell & Moring’s lobbying arm, C&M Capitol Link—a company he had previously worked with on behalf of Blackwater in 2004.⁷⁵ Still, some questioned the hiring of a DeLay-linked lobbyist. “We did our homework. We did all the right due diligence, as you might guess,” said John Thorne, head of C&M Capitol Link. “[Behrends’s] reputation is solid. Everyone we talked to said he was completely out of that other business.”⁷⁶ But Behrends was not out of the mercenary business in general nor Blackwater’s stake in it specifically. The bond between the influential lobbyist and Erik Prince was far too strong not to weather a mere political scandal. Besides, major projects were on the horizon.

The company would soon begin expanding its global reach and its appetite for international contracts, putting its forces forward as possible peacekeepers in places like Darfur—a crisis zone located in Cofer Black’s old stomping ground, Sudan. Eight years after Blackwater’s quiet beginnings, the company had become a major player in the neoconservative revolution and would enthusiastically act as the Pied Piper of the neo-mercenary rebranding movement.