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

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

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

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

A “One-Stop Shop” for the Government

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

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

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

In early 2008, Blackwater suffered a setback to its plans for work along the U.S. border. The company announced that it was abandoning its plans to build “Blackwater West” on 824 acres of land in Southern California, a stone’s throw from Tecate, Mexico. Blackwater had planned to use the camp to train border patrol agents and other law enforcement and military in a major front line in the immigration debate.¹⁴ Residents of the tiny town of Potrero—population 850—waged a heroic battle against the company’s presence there for more than a year. They expressed a wide range of concerns—from the company’s reputation in Iraq to environmental issues—and forced out local town officials who had attempted to push through Blackwater’s deployment in their community. Finally, in March 2008, Blackwater had had enough; it released a muted statement that said, “The proposed site does not meet our business objectives at this time.”¹⁵ A company spokesperson said the decision had nothing to do with the protests against Blackwater. In the bigger picture, this was a minor defeat for Blackwater’s growing business. Even without its desired California facility, Blackwater already annually trains more than 25,000 military and state, federal, and local law enforcement personnel at its Moyock headquarters. It also successfully established “Blackwater North” in Illinois.

If there is one quality that is evident from examining Blackwater’s business history, it is the company’s ability to take advantage of emerging war and conflict markets. Throughout the decade of Blackwater’s existence, Prince has aggressively built his empire into a structure paralleling the U.S. national security apparatus. “Prince wants to vault Blackwater into the major leagues of U.S. military contracting, taking advantage of the movement to privatize all kinds of government security,” reported the Wall Street Journal shortly after Nisour Square. “The company wants to be a one-stop shop for the U.S. government on missions to which it won’t commit American forces. This is a niche with few established competitors.”¹⁶

Grizzlies and Polars

In addition to providing armed forces for war and conflict zones and a wide range of military and police training services, Blackwater does a robust multimillion-dollar business through its aviation division. It also has a growing maritime division and other national and international initiatives. Among these, Blackwater is in Japan, where its forces protect the United States’ ballistic missile defense system, which, according to Stars and Stripes, “points high-powered radio waves westward toward mainland Asia to hunt for enemy missiles headed east toward America or its allies.”¹⁷ Meanwhile, in early 2008, Defense News reported, “Blackwater is training members of the Taiwanese National Security Bureau’s (NSB’s) special protection service, which guards the president. The NSB is responsible for the overall security of the country and was once an instrument of terrorism during the martial law period. Today, according to its Web site, the NSB is responsible for ‘national intelligence work, special protective service and unified cryptography.’”¹⁸ Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto reportedly tried to hire Blackwater to protect her as she campaigned for the presidency in 2007.¹⁹ Conflicting reports indicated that either the U.S. State Department or the Pakistani government vetoed the plan. She was assassinated in December 2007.

Back home, Blackwater has stepped up its work on creating military hardware and surveillance equipment and technology to be marketed to the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security.

Blackwater is hoping to sell its Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored vehicle, the Grizzly, to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.²⁰ The company says it is already using three of the twenty-two-ton vehicles in Iraq.²¹ The Grizzly is portrayed as combining the versatility of an SUV with the durability of a powerful armored car. It can be driven at speeds up to sixty-five miles per hour and is said to be able to deflect ordnance as large as .50 calibers.²² In September 2007, the Pentagon received the green light to purchase more than 15,000 MRAP vehicles for about $11.3 billion.²³ Blackwater is hardly alone in producing them, but winning a share of that deal, which seems likely, would be yet another profitable arrangement. The company will manufacture the Grizzlies at its 70,000-square-foot plant, staffed in part by former Ford workers, in North Carolina, with company executives predicting it may eventually crank out as many as a thousand vehicles annually.²⁴ “We’re going to see good, steady growth for at least ten years,” Blackwater president Gary Jackson said.²⁵

For Homeland Security operations, counterinsurgency, or “war on drugs” activities, Blackwater is manufacturing an unmanned aerial vehicle, the Polar 400. The surveillance blimp is remote-controlled and, unlike traditional drones, will be capable of remaining in the air for days at a time, operating at an altitude of up to 15,000 feet and a speed of sixty miles per hour. “We can sit it over the top of Baghdad at 18,000 feet and watch all that goes on,” Jackson claimed. “The problem is if it really does work, it will be hard to produce them fast enough. I believe airships will be a multibillion-dollar business.”²⁶ In late 2007, Blackwater conducted a test flight of a 170-foot prototype and predicted it would begin production in 2008.²⁷ Blackwater, once again, was placing itself in the middle of a rapidly expanding market. Defense spending on unmanned aerial vehicles rose from $284 million in 2000 to more than $2 billion in 2005, a trend analysts predicted would continue.²⁸ Blackwater, according to the Virginian-Pilot , is “touting its airship as a lower-cost, longer-operating alternative to the fixed and rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicles now widely used by the Air Force and other military services.” Alan Ram, the head of production and business development for Blackwater Airships, said, “We think it’s a niche product with a lot of markets.”²⁹

Blackwater also continues to publicly agitate for a greater role in Homeland Security operations, disaster response, and international peacekeeping. Prince has consistently suggested Blackwater could be used in Darfur, saying in interviews after Nisour Square, “I mean, who can watch Hotel Rwanda and not want a different outcome?”³⁰ In a 2007 interview, Jackson said, “The question is not, ‘Why would we use the private sector in humanitarian operations, ’ but, ‘Why aren’t we using the private sector to the fullest extent possible to reduce human suffering around the world?’”³¹ Prince said a friend of his actually contacted actor George Clooney on Prince’s behalf in an attempt to sell Clooney on a potential Blackwater role in Darfur. Clooney, who has been outspoken on the situation in Darfur, reportedly did not return the call.³² The UN peacekeeping budget is estimated as being between $6 billion and $10 billion.³³ While private military companies have been used for years in UN operations for logistical support, the types of armed “services” Blackwater offers would undoubtedly spark major international controversy. “If you have now a marketplace for warfare, it is a commercial issue rather than a political issue involving a debate in the countries,” said Hans von Sponeck, a thirty-two-year veteran UN diplomat, who served as a deputy secretary general. “To outsource security-related, military-related issues to nongovernment, nonmilitary forces is a source of great concern.”³⁴ While Blackwater continues to push that project, another major one, involving one of the most sensitive sectors of U.S. national defense, is already well under way.

Spies Like U.S.

What could prove to be one of Blackwater’s most profitable and enduring enterprises is one of the company’s most secretive initiatives—a move into the world of privatized intelligence services. In April 2006, Prince quietly began building Total Intelligence Solutions, which boasts that it “brings CIA-style” services to the open market for Fortune 500 companies.³⁵ Among its offerings are “surveillance and countersurveillance, deployed intelligence collection, and rapid safeguarding of employees or other key assets.”³⁶

As the U.S. finds itself in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in the nation’s history, few areas have seen as dramatic a transformation to privatized services as the world of intelligence. “This is the magnet now. Everything is being attracted to these private companies in terms of individuals and expertise and functions that were normally done by the intelligence community,” says former CIA division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman. “My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control. It’s outrageous.”³⁷

In late 2007, R.J. Hillhouse, a blogger who investigates the clandestine world of private contractors and U.S. intelligence, obtained documents from the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI) showing that Washington spends some $42 billion annually on private intelligence contractors, up from $17.54 billion in 2000.³⁸ That means 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget is currently going to private companies. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the head of the DNI, as of the spring of 2008, was Mike McConnell, the former chair of the board of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the private intelligence industry’s trade association.

Hillhouse also revealed that one of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence documents, the Presidential Daily Briefing, is prepared in part by private companies, despite having the official seal of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. “Let’s say a company is frustrated with a government that’s hampering its business or business of one of its clients. Introducing and spinning intelligence on that government’s suspected collaboration with terrorists would quickly get the White House’s attention and could be used to shape national policy,” Hillhouse argued.³⁹

Total Intelligence, which opened for business in February 2007, is a fusion of three entities bought up by Prince—the Terrorism Research Center; Technical Defense; and The Black Group, Blackwater vice chair Cofer Black’s consulting agency.⁴⁰ The company’s leadership reads like a who’s who from the CIA’s early “war on terror” operations after 9/11. In addition to the twenty-eight-year CIA veteran Black, who is chairman of Total Intelligence, the company’s executives include CEO Robert Richer, the former associate deputy director of the agency’s Directorate of Operations and the second-ranking official in charge of clandestine operations. From 1999 to 2004, Richer was head of the CIA’s Near East Division, where he ran clandestine operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia. As part of his duties, he was the CIA liaison with Jordan’s King Abdullah, a key U.S. ally and Blackwater client, and briefed President Bush on the burgeoning Iraqi resistance in its early stages.⁴¹ Total Intelligence’s chief operating officer is Enrique “Ric” Prado, a twenty-four-year CIA veteran and former senior executive officer in the Directorate of Operations. He spent more than a decade working in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and ten years with the CIA’s “paramilitary” Special Operations Group.⁴² Prado and Black worked closely together at the CIA.⁴³ Prado also served in Latin America with Jose Rodriguez, who would gain infamy in late 2007 after it was revealed that as director of the National Clandestine Service at the CIA he was allegedly responsible for the destruction of videotaped interrogations of prisoners, during which “enhanced” interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, were reportedly used.⁴⁴ Richer told the New York Times he recalled many conversations with his then boss, Rodriguez, about the tapes. “He would always say, ‘I’m not going to let my people get nailed for something they were ordered to do,’” Richer said.⁴⁵ Before the scandal, there were reports that Blackwater had been “aggressively recruiting” Rodriguez.⁴⁶ He has since retired from the CIA.

Total Intelligence’s leadership also includes Craig Johnson, a twenty-seven-year CIA officer who specialized in Central and South America, and Caleb “Cal” Temple, who joined the company straight out of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served from 2004 to 2006 as chief of the Office of Intelligence Operations in the Joint Intelligence Task Force—Combating Terrorism.⁴⁷ According to his Total Intelligence bio, Temple directed the “DIA’s 24/7 analytic terrorism target development and other counterterrorism intelligence activities in support of military operations worldwide. He also oversaw 24/7 global counterterrorism indications and warning analysis for the U.S. Defense Department.” The company also boasts officials drawn from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.⁴⁸

Total Intelligence is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia.⁴⁹ Its “Global Fusion Center,” complete with large-screen TVs broadcasting international news channels and computer stations staffed by analysts surfing the web, “operates around the clock every day of the year”⁵⁰ and is modeled after the CIA’s counter-terrorist center, once run by Black.⁵¹ The firm now employs at least sixty-five full-time staff—some estimates say it is closer to 100.⁵² “Total Intel brings the… skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives directly to the board-room,” Black said when the company launched. “With a service like this, CEOs and their security personnel will be able to respond to threats quickly and confidently—whether it’s determining which city is safest to open a new plant in or working to keep employees out of harm’s way after a terrorist attack.”⁵³

Black insists, “This is a completely legal enterprise. We break no laws. We don’t go anywhere near breaking laws. We don’t have to.”⁵⁴ But what exact services Total Intelligence is providing and to whom remain shrouded in secrecy. What is clear is that the company is leveraging the reputations and inside connections of its executives. “Cofer can open doors,” Richer told the Washington Post in 2007. “I can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see. We don’t help pay bribes. We do everything within the law, but we can deal with the right minister or person.”⁵⁵ Black told the paper he and Richer spend a lot of their time traveling. “I am discreet in where I go and who I see. I spend most of my time dealing with senior people in governments, making connections.”⁵⁶ But it is clear that the existing connections from the former spooks’ time at the agency have brought business to Total Intelligence.

Take the case of Jordan.

For years, Richer worked closely with King Abdullah, serving as the CIA’s liaison with the king. As journalist Ken Silverstein reported, “The CIA has lavishly subsidized Jordan’s intelligence service, and has sent millions of dollars in recent years for intelligence training. After Richer retired, sources say, he helped Blackwater land a lucrative deal with the Jordanian government to provide the same sort of training offered by the CIA. Millions of dollars that the CIA ‘invested’ in Jordan walked out the door with Richer—if this were a movie, it would be a cross between Jerry Maguire and Syriana. ‘People [at the agency] are pissed off,’ said one source. ‘Abdullah still speaks with Richer regularly and he thinks that’s the same thing as talking to us. He thinks Richer is still the man.’ Except in this case it’s Richer, not his client, yelling ‘show me the money.’”⁵⁷

In a 2007 interview on the cable TV business network CNBC, Black was brought on as an analyst to discuss “investing in Jordan.”⁵⁸ At no point in the interview was Black identified as working for the Jordanian government. Total Intelligence was described as “a corporate consulting firm that includes investment strategy,” while “Ambassador Black” was introduced as “a 28-year veteran of the CIA,” the “top counterterror guy” and “a key planner for the breathtakingly rapid victory of American forces that toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan.” During the interview, Black heaped lavish praise on Jordan and its monarchy. “You have leadership, King Abdullah, His Majesty King Abdullah, who is certainly kind towards investors, very protective,” Black said. “Jordan is, in our view, a very good investment. There are some exceptional values there.” He said Jordan is in a region where there are “numerous commodities that are being produced and doing well.”

With no hint of the brutality behind the exodus, he argued that the plight of Iraqi refugees, fleeing the violence of the U.S. occupation, was good for potential investors in Jordan. “We get something like six, 700,000 Iraqis that have moved from Iraq into Jordan that require cement, furniture, housing, and the like. So it is a—it is an island of growth and potential, certainly in that immediate area. So it looks good,” Black said. “There are opportunities for investment. It is not all bad. Sometimes Americans need to watch a little less TV…. But there is—there is opportunity in everything. That’s why you need situation awareness, and that’s one of the things that our company does. It provides the kinds of intelligence and insight to provide situational awareness so you can make the best investments.”

Black and other Total Intelligence executives have turned their CIA careers, reputations, contacts, and connections into profitable business opportunities. What they once did for the U.S. government, they now do for private interests. It is not difficult to imagine clients feeling as though they are essentially hiring the U.S. government to serve their private interests. “They have the skills and background to do anything anyone wants,” said Hillhouse. “There’s no oversight. They’re an independent company offering freelance espionage services. They’re rent-a-spies.”⁵⁹

In 2007 Richer told the Post that now that he is in the private sector, foreign military officials and others are more willing to give him information than they were when he was with the CIA. He recalled a conversation with a general from a foreign military during which Richer was surprised at the potentially “classified” information the general revealed. When Richer asked why the general was giving him the information, he said the general responded, “If I tell it to an embassy official I’ve created espionage. You’re a business partner.”⁶⁰

“I Sleep the Sleep of the Just”

In 2008 Iraq was a leading issue in the U.S. presidential election. While the Democrats campaigned on a pledge to end the war, the Republican nominee, John McCain, suggested U.S. forces could remain in Iraq for “maybe a hundred” years, a scenario that he said “would be fine with me.”⁶¹ But hidden behind the rhetoric of political speeches, often framed as pro- versus anti-Iraq War, was a stark reality: the Iraq occupation will continue for years to come regardless of who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Erik Prince, who had previously donated more than $250,000 to Republican campaigns and causes, seems to have determined that his publicly traceable campaign contributions are a liability. “I don’t know that I’ll have much political involvement in either party going forward,” he said in late 2007.⁶² Whether that is a business decision or a political one, his company and the highly profitable industry in which it operates are so deeply embedded in the U.S. political system that they are here to stay.

Mercenary companies clearly have little to fear from Republican-dominated governance in Washington. But what about the Democrats? Despite their stated antiwar claims, the Democrats’ dominant Iraq plan would keep in place tens of thousands of U.S. troops for an unspecified time, while escalating U.S. action in Afghanistan. For military contractors like Blackwater, this is welcome news. “Nobody is going to be able to throw the contractors out,” said David Isenberg of the British-American Security Information Council. “They’re the American Express card of the American military. The military doesn’t leave home without them, because it can’t.”⁶³

The 2007 Iraq supplemental spending bill opened a window onto what could happen in the first term of a Democratic administration. Along with the findings of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group analysis, it formed the basis for the Iraq plans of the leading Democratic contenders for the presidency. The bill was portrayed as the Democrats’ withdrawal plan, and Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton passionately supported it, with Obama saying it meant the country was “one signature away from ending the Iraq War.”⁶⁴ But upon a careful reading of the legislation (which was vetoed by President Bush), that claim rings hollow. The plan would have redeployed some U.S. forces from Iraq within 180 days. But it also would have provided for 40,000-60,000 troops to remain in Iraq as “trainers,” “counterterrorist forces,” and for “protection for embassy/diplomats,” according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies.⁶⁵ “There was nothing in the legislation about contractors or mercenary forces,” said IPS analyst Erik Leaver.⁶⁶ The truth is that as long as there are troops in Iraq, there will be private contractors.

In part, these contractors do mundane jobs that traditionally have been performed by soldiers, from driving trucks to doing laundry. These services are provided through companies such as Halliburton, KBR, and Fluor, and through their vast labyrinth of subcontractors. But private personnel, as Blackwater’s history in Iraq has shown, are also consistently engaged in armed combat and “security” operations. Contractors interrogate prisoners, gather intelligence, operate rendition flights, protect senior occupation officials—including some commanding U.S. generals—and in some cases have taken command of U.S. and international troops in battle. In an admission that speaks volumes about the extent of the privatization, Gen. David Petraeus, who was charged with implementing the “surge,” admitted that he has, at times, not been guarded in Iraq by the U.S. military but by “contract security.”⁶⁷ At least three U.S. commanding generals have been guarded in Iraq by hired guns, including the general who oversees U.S. military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.⁶⁸

In 2008 the number of private contractors in Iraq was at a one-to-one ratio with active-duty U.S. soldiers, a stunning escalation compared with the 1991 Gulf War. “To have half of your army be contractors, I don’t know that there’s a precedent for that,” said Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.⁶⁹

Some estimates actually put the number of contractors at higher than active-duty soldiers in Iraq, but exact numbers are nearly impossible to obtain.⁷⁰ According to a March 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon “does not maintain departmentwide data on the numbers of contractor employees working side-by-side with federal employees.”⁷¹ But in a review of twenty-one Defense Department offices, the GAO found that at “15 offices, contractor employees outnumbered DOD employees and comprised up to 88% of the workforce. Contractor employees perform key tasks, including developing contract requirements and advising on award fees for other contractors.”

Beyond the issues raised by private contractors hired by the Pentagon lies the more troubling problem of the State Department’s private armed forces. A major part of the Democrats’ plan calls for maintaining the massive U.S. Embassy, the largest embassy in world history, as well as the Green Zone. At present, much of the security work required by the embassy and the travel of U.S. officials into and out of the Green Zone is done by three private security firms: Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and DynCorp. This arrangement reflects the simultaneous militarization and privatization of the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Created in the mid-1990s, the department’s Worldwide Personal Protective Services was originally envisioned as a small-scale bodyguard operation, comprised of private security contractors, to protect small groups of U.S. diplomats and other U.S. and foreign officials. In Iraq, it has been turned into a sizable paramilitary force. Spending on the program jumped from $50 million in 2003 to $613 million in 2006.⁷²

The looming question is: who would protect the Democrats’ army of diplomats in Iraq? Some insist that it is possible to continue to rely on private forces to do this work as long as they are held accountable. As of March 2008, these private forces enjoyed a de facto “above the law” status, which both Obama and Clinton have decried. But it is hard to see how “accountability” is going to be achieved, at least in the short term.

In late 2007, in the aftermath of Nisour Square, the House overwhelmingly approved legislation that would ensure that all contractors would be subject to prosecution in U.S. civilian courts for crimes committed on a foreign battlefield.⁷³ The idea is: FBI investigators would deploy to the crime scene, gather evidence, and interview witnesses, leading to indictments and prosecutions. But this approach raises a slew of questions. Who would protect the investigators? How would Iraqi victims be interviewed? How would evidence be gathered amid the chaos and dangers of a hostile war zone like Iraq? Given that the federal government and the military seem unable—or unwilling—even to count how many contractors are actually in the country, how could their activities possibly be monitored? Apart from the fact that it would be impossible to effectively police such an enormous deployment of private contractors (such as in Iraq, where it is equal in size to the military presence), this legislation could give the private military industry a tremendous PR victory. The companies could finally claim that a legally accountable structure governed their operations. Yet they would be well aware that such legislation would be nearly impossible to enforce. Perhaps that is why the industry has passionately backed this approach. Prince called its passage in the House, “Excellent.”

Others have proposed to address the problem simply by expanding the official U.S. government forces responsible for securing the embassy and Green Zone, thus reducing the market for mercenary companies. In an October 2007 letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Senator Joe Biden, chair of the influential Foreign Relations Committee, suggested the United States should examine “whether we should expand the ranks of Diplomatic Security rather than continue to rely so heavily on contractors.”⁷⁴ He called for hiring more agents, saying, “The requirement for extensive personal security to protect the employees of the U.S. mission will continue for several years to come—regardless of the number of U.S. forces in Iraq.”

While an increase in funding to the Diplomatic Security division would ostensibly pave the way for a force made up entirely of U.S. government personnel, there are serious questions about how quickly that could happen. As of October 2007, the State Department had only 1,450 Diplomatic Security agents worldwide who were actual U.S. government employees and only thirty-six deployed in Iraq.⁷⁵ In contrast, as of March 2008, Blackwater had nearly 1,000 operatives in Iraq alone, not to mention the hundreds more working for Triple Canopy and DynCorp. The State Department has said it could take years to identify prospective new agents, vet them, train them, and deploy them.⁷⁶ In short, this would be no small undertaking and, even if the political will and funding was there, would take years to enact.

If the Democrats attempted to make diplomatic security a military operation, that would pose serious challenges as well. As the New York Times reported in late 2007, “the military does not have the trained personnel to take over the job.”⁷⁷ Even if the military trained a specialized force for executive protection and bodyguarding in Iraq, this arrangement would mean more U.S. military convoys traveling inside Iraq, potentially placing them in deadly conflict with Iraqi civilians on a regular basis.

Realizing the practical challenges any transition away from private security forces in Iraq would entail, during the 2008 election campaign, a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama said, “I can’t rule out, I won’t rule out, private security contractors.”⁷⁸ This must have been a difficult admission. While Obama has been at the forefront of attempts to legislate accountability for contractors on the battlefield—he introduced a contractor reform bill eight months before Nisour Square—his foreign policy team clearly understood that their support for maintaining a sizable U.S. presence in Iraq had painted them into a corner. On February 28, 2008, a day after I reported Obama’s position in an article in The Nation, Hillary Clinton announced she would sign on to legislation to “ban the use of Blackwater and other private mercenary firms in Iraq.”⁷⁹ The timing, in the middle of their hotly contested campaign for the Democratic nomination, was curious—Clinton, during her five years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, had been largely mute on the issue before the September 16 Blackwater shooting and did not issue her statement for a full six months after the massacre. How exactly she envisioned carrying out her Iraq plan without such private forces was also unclear.

Both Clinton and Obama indicated they supported increasing funding of Diplomatic Security, as advocated by Senator Biden in 2007. In the bigger picture, however, firms like Blackwater operate in a demand-based industry, and it is this demand, which derives from offensive, unpopular wars of conquest, that must be cut off. Even if a U.S. president determined to completely transfer diplomatic security jobs from companies like Blackwater to official U.S. government agents, which would be a major undertaking, the State Department has said it could take years to implement. The reality is that short of dramatically shrinking the size of the U.S. civilian and diplomatic presence in Iraq, which necessitates such a large “diplomatic” security force, the next president may have no choice but to continue the current contracting arrangements. And that is good news for Blackwater and other private security companies.

But Iraq and diplomatic security are only part of the picture. There is almost no discussion in Congress about the stunning growth of the operations of companies like Blackwater globally and at home. Their expansion into private intelligence, homeland security, military weapons, surveillance technology, the “war on drugs,” and peacekeeping operations continues, largely free from the scrutiny of lawmakers and the media. Long ago, these companies began to stake out their role in future conflicts and a greater presence in highly sensitive and increasingly privatized government programs. It is in large part because of the lack of intense scrutiny by the media and Congress that their future appears both secure and bright.

Erik Prince certainly isn’t losing sleep these days, not over the killings of Iraqi civilians by his forces or over his company’s future status in the U.S. war machine and national security apparatus. Shortly after Nisour Square and facing a slew of Congressional, military, and Justice Department investigations over his company’s actions, Prince said, “How can I sleep? Because I’m comfortable, and I know what we’re doing. We’re doing the right thing, so beyond that, I can’t worry. I sleep the sleep of the just. I’m not feeling guilty.”⁸⁰