The Bremer Detail (10 page)

I chose six guys to go. The six had been around since the beginning of September; and I felt it was a good way for them to relax, eat some decent chow, and get a taste of real life for a few days before they rotated home. I would stay behind and train with the new guys.

Our away team had been in Spain for about a day when the ambassador was called back to the United States. This concerned me, as I was always fearful of the guys not having any adult supervision. My fears were not unfounded. There really is no way that what happened could have been much worse. It was a disaster.

In Baghdad we trained, went to the gym, took long-needed naps. After evening chow, Ski and I decided to relax and have a couple of drinks. Ski had been there since the beginning and was a great guy. About 2200 hours my cell phone rang. It was Ambassador­ Pat Kennedy, Bremer’s chief of staff, telling me to come immediately to his office. My heart sank. I knew this could not in any way, shape, or form be good. Ski and I headed straight over, and Ambassador Kennedy was in his office with Colonel Sabol. This was going to be way worse than I had imagined. Sweat soaked my shirt.

Ambassador Kennedy was Ambassador Bremer’s right-hand man. He was a career diplomat who had been in charge of the Diplomatic Security Service for a period of time. He was a no-nonsense, straight shooter of the highest order. He had been a key ally of mine during the start-up phase of the Blackwater operation and had gone way beyond the call of duty to make sure we had whatever we needed to keep Ambassador Bremer safe. I liked him and respected him. He was smart and never asked a question to which he did not already know the answer. The conversation began: “Frank, if a member of your team assaulted a member of President Bush’s staff, what would you do?”

“Sir, I would fire him.”

“Frank, if this happened in Spain, what would you do?”

“Sir, as soon as he got back, I’d have him on a plane out of here.”

“Frank, do you think there are any flights directly from Spain to the United States?”

“Yes, Sir, I’m sure there are.”

“Frank, is there any good reason for bringing him back here instead of putting him on the next flight to JFK?”

“None that I can think of, Sir.”

“Good, can you arrange that tonight?”

“Yes, Sir, I will.”

“Good, have a great evening”

“You too, Sir.”

Fuck me. I got ahold of Ken and Blackwater, and we started the process. I got ahold of the guys in Spain and asked what had happened. Apparently after the boss departed, the party lamp had been lit. Two days of cavorting had led to two of the six guys being late for departure to the airport to board the C-130 back to Baghdad. When questioned as to why they were late, the individual in question (a former Marine, still drunk) got a tad surly with a member of the president’s staff. When further pressed as to the reason for being late, the guy asked the man if he knew what the capital of Thailand was. The man hesitated for a second, and my guy punched him square in his nut sack and yelled, “BANGKOK!” This can be funny in the proper setting, but this clearly was not the proper setting. The fight was on. Punches were thrown and the Spanish cops had to stop the fight. Cooler heads prevailed, and the president’s men declined to have the Spanish police arrest my guy. Thank God.

I assigned two guys (Riceman and Tony T) to keep him in his room, telling them to stand by for instructions. If the incident wasn’t bad enough, this idiot had failed to check his weapon into the weapons box with all the other guns, so I now had a drunk guy in Spain with a gun. I did not know how I would get the weapon back to Iraq. Even getting the two guys who were babysitting back to Iraq was going to be tough. Fuck.

The guy called me crying and sobbing hysterically and accusing me of not having his back. “Frank, what are you doing to me?”

“You’re going home tomorrow.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You smacked a member of the president’s staff.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Doesn’t matter. You did it. Big boy rules. Have a safe flight home.”

“I can’t believe you’re fucking me over like this.”

“You did it. You own it.”

“It’s not fair.”

Whatever.

The next day he was gone. Ken and one of the other guys packed up his luggage and found some missing gear from the detail, including a $14,000 set of night vision goggles that was apparently going to find its way to his home when he left. They shipped his kit back to the States minus the almost-stolen gear. My guys took the illegal weapon to the embassy where Bill Miller had arranged for the regional security officer (RSO) in charge of the security at the U.S. embassy in Spain to somehow get it shipped back to Baghdad. It took my guys four days to return. The weapon arrived a month later. In the meantime, since we still had a mission to meet and were one gun short, Ken had to give up his own sidearm so one of the new detail guys would be armed while out with the ambassador.

Ambassador Kennedy never mentioned the incident again. That’s the kind of man he was. Problem solved. Move on.

The rotation of the men continued to be an issue for the ambassador and his staff. They were none too pleased as the newer guys continued to make the same elementary mistakes that the earlier guys had made and had stopped making. I did not blame them. It was making me crazy also. How many phone calls can you get about the same mistakes being made over and over? Again I notified Blackwater that this was an issue. Again I got the “shut up and color” speech. Blackwater did not like to hear constructive criticism, and I think they wished that I would stop questioning them or giving them a heads-up on anything. They would have been far happier if I sat in the corner with a box of crayons and a coloring book. All I could do was to try and keep everybody happy.

One of our ongoing challenges was that we frequently had folks from D.C. visiting. It was far from unusual. For example, around this time, November 2003, Jim Cawley, one of the Secret Service guys who had done the original assessment, came back to Baghdad to “arrange” security for a pending visit from Senators Hillary Clinton and Jack Reed, and to see what and how we were doing. The senators were supposedly heading to Baghdad after a stop in Afghanistan. Jimmy Cawley was a great guy. He came over to the villa and inspected the improvements they had recommended and we had made to the ambassador’s primary residence, and we reviewed the tactics and techniques that we were employing. He told me if I ever had any issues to contact him directly, and he would contact the director of the Secret Service to make sure we got any and all support we required. The Blackwater contract was under tremendous scrutiny back in Washington. As the threats came in, all parties involved knew we could not fail. We had his full backing.

Thanksgiving morning, Brian called me to the office saying the ambassador needed to speak with me. Later in the day we were scheduled to accompany the ambassador to a USO show at Baghdad International Airport. Midafternoon my advance team would be heading out to BIAP to begin the security preparations for our arrival. I walked into the office, and the ambassador asked me if I had set up security for the event. I told him the advance team would be heading over shortly. He said we should stand by and not head out there just yet as President Bush would be arriving and the Secret Service was there setting up the security. I almost fell over. He smiled and asked me if I was okay with the Secret Service taking the lead on this one. I replied through a smile that I thought they could handle it. He told me that I was now the third person at the palace to know about it.

I called the detail leader and the advance team leader to my trailer and I told them to stand down. I advised them that for today we would not have the lead for security at the event. They looked at me like I had lost my damn mind. I said, “Trust me. When you get out there, just follow the directions from whoever you run into.” They did.

The Secret Service directed the advance team to take a position fairly close by, but not close enough to be in their way. When the ambassador arrived, I was allowed in along with one other guy from our team. They asked if we were armed, we said we were, and in a huge show of respect they allowed us to keep our weapons. In the world of the Secret Service, they rarely if ever let anyone not part of their team carry a weapon around the president. It was a good day.

The president arrived and met the ambassador, and they talked for a few minutes before the president marched into the mess hall to a huge ovation. I got goose bumps. Here was the president of the United States in Baghdad, serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops. It was truly a moment I will never forget. The Secret Service guys were as professional as they always are. We exchanged a few words, and Jimmy Cawley introduced me to the director of Protective Operations for the Secret Service, and a few other heavy hitters who were in attendance. Mark Sullivan told me again that if we ever need anything not to hesitate to call. I certainly knew I would if I had to. Eventually, in May, I would have to make that call when problems arose with some of our military counterparts.

6 December 2003

On a Red Zone run several days later, Ambassador Bremer came out of his meeting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, at Hakim’s house in Baghdad, and turned to me and said he would be going to the airport with the secretary of defense. This was not part of my detailed plan for the day. We had expected to head directly back to the Green Zone and the palace. My initial reaction was to protest the move, but I could see from the look in his eyes that this was not open for debate. I answered “Yes, Sir” and relayed the information to the team.

The road to BIAP was referred to in many ways—none of them favorable. We usually called it the highway of death, as the insurgents repeatedly targeted and killed coalition forces making the dangerous journey between the airport and the Green Zone. Adrenaline pumped as I made a mental checklist of items we had not been able to do to make this trip as safe as possible: no advance team; no helicopter briefing; the route had not been cleared; no idea/intel of events that had occurred on Route Irish that day. Many major components of a regular mission were not in place. The flip side was that, as this was an unscheduled visit, no one knew we were heading out there, and we would be traveling with the additional manpower and firepower that accompanied Secretary Rumsfeld. I notified the team that there had been a change in plans and that we were off to the VIP lounge at the airport. Needless to say, some of the radio traffic back to me expressed grave concern about doing the mission, à la “Are You Nuts?!”

The twenty-minute trip out to the airport was uneventful. However, the eighteen or so car motorcade with U.S. Army Apache helicopters, Kiowa helicopters, and my two Little Birds certainly told everyone in the area something unusual and noteworthy was taking place at the airport this evening. Imagine eighteen-plus vehicles moving as if controlled by one mind. We called it “the motorcade dance.” All were moving within mere feet of each other. All were rolling at 60–70 mph. It was a thing of beauty. We arrived safely, and the meeting began.

I gathered my men and explained that getting back to the Green Zone was going to be an adventure, and to make sure that everyone was aware of the dangers—a truly unnecessary step as they all knew the risks. While we had the advantage of surprise on our way
to
the airport, this would be lost on the return. We should expect a lot of unwanted attention on the way back. We laughed and said our good-byes to one another and promised to have a cup of mead in Valhalla later that evening. One has to love the macabre sense of humor among security contractors.

At 2320 the meeting broke up. Ambassador Bremer and Brian McCormick came out, and we loaded them into the motorcade. We were the first motorcade to leave that evening, and the irony of being the advance motorcade heading down the highway of death was not lost on any of us. Earlier, because we had had no idea how long we would be there, I had told Hacksaw to have the Little Birds land at the airport and stay with us. I could not risk having the ambassador come out, and us not having the helos. Our adrenaline levels spiked. It was late. And very dark. The Little Birds were in the air flying top cover and scanning for potential issues. Due to manpower issues I had only one shooter in each bird, Shrek and another guy.

We had two up-armored Humvees working as our lead CAT element in front of the protection detail motorcade. Our lead car, driven by Travis T had Riceman sitting in the front-right seat working as the tactical commander. Behind him we had two additional shooters staring intently out the windows peering into the darkness looking for potential problems. The limo had Q behind the wheel, and I was sitting in the front-right seat with the ambassador directly behind me. Brian Mac was sitting behind Q. The follow car had a driver, and Ski sitting right front acting as the shift leader. Behind them were two more shooters watching their areas of responsibility, and behind them in the third seat we had Doc Jones. Following up as rear security were two more up-armored CAT vehicles.

From my position in the limo, a level-6 armored SUV, I could watch Q at the wheel and Hacksaw flying lead helo above. As we progressed, Hacksaw reported a suspicious vehicle backing down an on-ramp on the highway. He radioed that he was going to fly over and check it out. The shift leader gave the command to shift the limo to the left (away from the side of the road and away from the entrance to the on-ramp and toward the center median) while the follow and lead cars shifted to the right.

Seconds later all hell broke loose.

I heard something hit my window. While I was trying to figure out what it was there was an explosion of light and sound. The limo veered. Q fought to retain control. Temporarily blinded by the explosions we could see nothing. I leaned over the seats to check on the ambassador and Brian just as the ambassador asked what had happened. “Bomb and AK fire, Sir,” I told him. Despite the sound of the explosions, we could still hear AKs being fired at us. I asked the boss if he was okay, and he confirmed he was. I could see the back of the limo had sustained severe damage (the rear window was gone, and the door itself was bent), and I directed him and Brian to get down. Despite the damage, Q was firmly in control of the vehicle. The bad guys were shooting at the limo as we sped away at roughly 60 mph through the smoke-induced fog. Neither Q nor I could see anything more than five feet in front of us. Q was driving purely by instinct and training.

Over the radio I heard the shift leader, Ski, calling out, “TUNA, TUNA, TUNA”—our code to drive directly through an ambush, getting off the “X” and out of the kill zone. The smoke cleared and I looked to my right to see the follow car driver about twenty-four inches away from me using his car to shield the limo—his side mirror touching Q’s side mirror at 60 mph. I asked for a casualty report and learned that two of our four CAT team vehicles were damaged, but limping along. No injuries to any of the detail or CAT team members.

As all this was happening, Ambassador Bremer leaned over and casually asked Brian Mac, “Tell me again why we shouldn’t go to Davos?” They had been discussing the upcoming trip to Davos when the attack happened. And in typical Bremer fashion. He never panicked, just went right back to the subject at hand.

As the AIC I had to make the painful decision that the damaged CAT vehicles were on their own. I was unsure of the damage to the limo, and the ambassador’s safety always came first.

The shift leader radioed me again to ask if we were all right. I responded, “That’s an affirm.” Apparently the damage to the limo was far greater than I realized. The follow car guys could see it, we couldn’t. We were advised to slow our vehicle down to make sure we reached the Green Zone safely. Q throttled back to about 45 mph. And we made it back.

Inspecting the damage to the motorcade vehicles after arrival we found several bullet holes in the rear of the lead vehicle. The limo had lost the back end (the nonarmored hatch area), the electronic countermeasure (ECM) device had been destroyed, and we found shrapnel and bullet holes in the armored area just behind the rear seats where the ambassador and Brian had been sitting. The ECM blocks radio and telephone signals from being able to set off explosive devices. The IED must have been command detonated, meaning that, rather than being radio controlled, it was hardwired to explode when the terrorist pressed a button to initiate the device. In hindsight we concluded we had happened upon the ambush site before the insurgents had finished their nasty surprise for us. They must have shot at us hoping that we would slow down or stop and engage them. There were additional bullet holes in the right side of the car and, of course, one that was even with my head on my window. The follow car had extensive shrapnel damage and bullet holes riddling the body. When the explosion went off the heat from the blast convinced both the shift leader and the driver their feet had been badly burned. Fortunately it had been only painful, not permanent. Fifteen minutes later the CAT vehicles finally limped in. All the tires had been destroyed and they had sustained extensive shrapnel damage.

The ambassador took a look at the car and asked again if everyone was okay. I said we were all fine. He turned and walked to his office and went right back to work. I met with Dan Senor, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), who asked if the incident would be on the news. I told him there was no way we would be reporting it. The ambassador called me to his office, and we talked about keeping the incident quiet and whether he should mention it to his wife or not. I told him he might want to mention it because this way if she heard about it, she would know he was safe.

Minutes later I got a call from Brutus telling me that one of the Dirty 30 teams had been attacked on the road, and that they heard sounds of an attack about fifteen minutes before their guys had been hit. I told him the first attack had been against us. Our convoy to the airport had drawn a lot of attention.

I notified Blackwater that we had been hit but suffered no casualties. They thanked me for the briefing. I also called Jimmy Cawley from the Secret Service and gave him the details. I knew the Secret Service would want to know the details firsthand and not through the media, if news of the attack became public. He was thankful that no one was hurt and that Bremer was safe.

Somehow, the news didn’t leak out for two weeks. Who leaked it, I still do not know. Someone in Washington spilled it to the D.C. press. Very quickly everyone knew about it, and the Iraqi press pressured the ambassador for his reaction. He calmly stated it had happened two weeks earlier and it had not altered or changed the way he did his job or how he conducted his business as evidenced by the schedule that he had maintained since the incident. Dan Senor added at a press conference that the ambassador had full faith in his security team to keep him safe. There were some family members of guys on the team who were not happy when they heard about it, but we had all survived. No harm, no foul.

In retrospect I’m still not sure who the bad guys thought they were attacking or why no one ever took credit for the attack. The mission to the airport had been unscheduled but extremely high profile, so I think we were just a target of opportunity. Wrong place, wrong time.

That night, after making my calls, I had headed over to Blackwater Boulevard to check on the guys. It was by then about 0100.

Me: “Everybody OK?”

The team, all talking at once: “Damn, that was close.”

“Those motherfuckers.”

“Have a drink.”

“How’s the boss?”

“Shit, they almost got us.”

And on it went for about thirty minutes. I trudged back to my trailer and tried to sleep. The adrenaline was slowly wearing off, and my thoughts were filled with the usual thousand “what if” questions. I finally dozed off.

We found out the next day that the IED consisted of eight howitzer shells wired together. Only the first two had gone off. The six that had not exploded were placed in our direction of travel. In other words, as we drove away from the first explosion we were meant to roll right over another three times more powerful! Thank God the guys who wired it had made a mistake, and that we were moving fast, otherwise the results would have been different. One more of our nine lives had been used up. How many more did we have left?

Two days after the attack Blackwater notified me that my replacement and some other new guys would be arriving the following week. I knew this news was not going to be well received by the ambassador. I told Blackwater that their post-attack timing could not be worse. They told me to tell him, and “to make it work.” Yeah, right. They still did not realize that we were on the ground and knew more than they did back in Moyock, North Carolina. No matter how many times we tried to make them understand the ground truth reality of what was going on, they lived in some fantasy world where they were far smarter than we were. I talked to Ken and he just shook his head and said good luck.

I called Brian and requested an appointment with Ambassador Bremer. Brian asked what was up, and I told him what the Blackwater plan was. He expressed total shock and asked me if I had been telling Blackwater about the issues with the rotations, and how they had not been sitting well with anybody on the ambassador’s staff. I told him I had. He said he would get back to me. Usually when I requested time with the ambassador, unless it was a true emergency, I would have a few hours before he could slot me in. Ten minutes later the phone rang. It was Brian telling me the boss wanted to see me now.

I walked into the office and could tell by the looks I was getting that this would not be pleasant. Brian immediately ushered me in to see the ambassador. Again, way out of the norm. I usually had time for a coffee and some chitchat with Sue Shea, Bremer’s executive assistant. Not this time.

Brian: “Sir, Frank is here.”

“Frank, Brian tells me that you’re leaving next week.”

“Sir, this is what Blackwater told me today.”

“Why? Everyone else is doing a year here.”

“Blackwater thinks rotating guys in and out is a good idea.”

“I want you to stay as long as I’m here. Are you okay with that?”

“Sir, I can only do what Blackwater tells me to do.”

“Are you on a DOD contract?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good, I’ll call SecDef Rumsfeld right now.”

With visions of Blackwater getting kicked out of country, I said: “Sir, I’m not sure it needs to go to that level.”

He paused for a second and said: “Get Colonel Sabol in here right now.”

I grabbed my phone, called Colonel Sabol, and told him the ambassador wanted to see him right away. He asked what was up, and as I was in the office and could not talk I said just get here ASAP.

The colonel arrived within five minutes, went into the ambassador’s office, then came out and told me he would take care of it. And he did. About ninety minutes later he called and said I was not leaving. I asked him what had happened. He said he called Blackwater and asked to speak to Erik Prince or Gary Jackson. He was told they were not available. He said they had sixty minutes to call him back or he was calling the SecDef. When asked why, he told the lady on the phone what was in play. Ten minutes later they called back and said I would not be replaced. Mr. Prince clearly understood that the client, especially this client, is always right when it comes to how he wanted the contract supported, and who he wanted with him.