The Bremer Detail (16 page)

Again my phone rang and I heard about the one team, one fight concept from HQ. Again I explained that these new guys were unprofessional and were killing our hard-earned reputation, and that it had to stop. Again Brian B said he would address the issue. He did, but it just further fueled the animosity between The Bremer Detail and the other Blackwater guys. The others continued to drop our name whenever they needed something. That never ended.

Some of these Blackwater team house guys assumed any and all of my assets were automatically also theirs. Most of the either long-retired or fresh-off-active-duty guys had no grasp of the whole concept of private security contracts; of how different contracts with specific resources (like Little Birds and armored vehicles) are paid by separate chunks of tax dollars; or that the resources under one contract could not legally cross over or overlap to another contract. We all may have been “contractors,” but very few actually understood contracts. The whole idea of contracts and who was paying for things was completely lost on them. Hacksaw called me one day to ask about the new door gunner training. I had no idea what he was talking about. It seems that some of the new non-Bremer Blackwater guys thought it would be cool to do the door gunner training program. They weren’t even part of my team. I quickly killed it. Some wanted me to give them weapons, or get them ID cards that identified them as part of my team.

The requests never stopped. I would come back from a mission and have these guys ask if they could borrow my “hard cars” for a run they were making. I wanted these guys banned from the palace, but that never happened. It took a while, but the stupidity slowed down, though it never completely ended. Unfortunately we had suffered some damage from our non-Bremer brothers, and Blackwater was beginning to be painted as the bad guys by others in the palace. I eventually put the team house off-limits to my guys except for Ken who went over to conduct business or to scrounge. Otherwise if they were there, it was only because I had fired them or they had quit.

We continued to make several Red Zone moves each day. The guys seemed to like the split teams, and everybody was now able to get some decent rest and some quality gym time. And the villa guys were doing a great job. It was one less headache for me.

Then one night I get a call from the guy running the villa. He says he needs to talk to me. It’s about 2330 Before I can get there the major in charge of the FAST Company Marines calls me and says he needs to see me ASAP. All I can think of is that one of the villa guys must have gotten into a fight with a FAST company guy. FUCK.

The major is waiting for me in the palace. We shake hands, and he apologizes for what happened. I tell him I am in the dark and have no idea what he was talking about.

Apparently one of the villa guys, Gonzo, had driven to the chow hall to get
mid rats
(midnight rations—late-night snacks) for the guys taking the overnight watch at the villa. When he approached the main gate, he reached down to grab his access pass. At that exact moment a Marine manning a .50 caliber machine gun about twenty feet away had a negligent discharge. The rounds penetrated Gonzo’s headrest and went through the other side of the vehicle. No one had been hurt. Gonzo was lucky as hell. Had he been sitting upright his head would have been evaporated. We let him keep the headrest as a memento. I assured the major there were no hard feelings as “Shit happens,” and no one was hurt. The young Marine was gone two days later.

Again the frequency of rocket and mortar attacks against the Green Zone increased. The Iraqi population was not happy with things. Muqtada al-Sadr continued to preach to his followers to fight us at every possible opportunity. It was a dangerous time. A mortar attack landed a few hundred yards from the villa and blew out some windows in the ambassador’s residence. No one was injured, but it was a stark reminder there were no truly safe places.

With this backdrop, I got a call on 31 March from the team house. A leader on another contract asked if he could use the helos to fly to Fallujah to check on some of his men. I asked why. He said one of his housekeepers had seen a news report on Al Jazeera with film coverage of what she thought were Blackwater guys being murdered. I asked why she thought they were Blackwater guys and was told she recognized one of the guys and the Mitsubishi Pajeros he drove. We were getting ready to take the ambassador out, so I had to decline, but I said I would report it to the RSO. Bill Miller was out of the office, but his second in command, Frank Benevento, was there. I explained the situation to him, and he said he would look into it and get back to me. Frank was a retired NYPD detective who had joined DS. He was a hard man—very funny, very articulate, but tougher than woodpecker lips. I liked him a lot. He had volunteered for every high-threat thing he could. Baghdad was just the place for him. He called me back fifteen minutes later and said that four Americans had been murdered in Fallujah, but he wasn’t sure if they were Blackwater guys or not. It was eventually confirmed that they were.

The news went worldwide quickly. The videos were gruesome. My phone was blowing up. They were not Bremer guys. I barely knew one of them and did not know the other three at all. What and why it happened has been debated since that day. My guys were beyond angry. I called a team meeting and told them we all knew this could happen on any day to any of us. We had to stay focused on our mission and on our mission alone. Tempers were running hot. A few hours later I got a heads-up that a few of my guys wanted to take the vehicles out and head up to Fallujah to get some revenge. I walked to the office and saw about ten guys all kitted up getting ready to head out. I gruffly told them to go to bed. I grabbed the car keys and took them with me back to my trailer. The ambassador was working the next day and so were we.

Blackwater, for better or for worse, was now more famous than ever.

April 2004—NAJAF

Post Fallujah we got condolences from everyone we ran into at the palace. Most people still assumed every Blackwater guy in Iraq worked for me. I thanked them and gently explained it was a different contract from ours and we had not been involved in the operation nor knew anything other than what we had seen on the news reports.

My heart felt for the families. These were the first Blackwater guys to get killed in Iraq. Their loss at Fallujah reinforced in my mind just how well the methods we had been using on Bremer’s detail were working. Protecting the most-threatened man in the world was a lot more dangerous than protecting convoys transporting infrastructure reconstruction materials. It was not fair to my guys—my team of complete professionals—to have people repeatedly ask them, “What did you do wrong to get four guys killed?” It was truly an apples and oranges comparison, yet we had become the de facto face of Blackwater.

As Easter approached, the ambassador planned a trip back to the United States for a long overdue vacation. I would not be going as I was hoping to sneak away the following month for my daughter Kelli’s college graduation. From the day I left on 19 August 2003, I had promised her I would be there, and I had every intention of being there, come hell or high water. We got both.

Najaf, one of the holiest cities in Iraq, was both home to a number of influential Shiite clerics and a hot bed of insurgency. Imam al-Sistani, one of the most important clerics, wielded tremendous clout from his downtown mosque. Muqtada al-Sadr, whose group was the most troublesome from a security perspective, also had a presence. We had taken the ambassador to Najaf a few months earlier, and it had been an uneventful trip. Just the way we liked.

Now Blackwater had an eight-man PSD team providing security for the head of the new U.S. consular delegation at the CPA compound in Najaf. The coalition’s military presence there included small contingents from Spain, El Salvador, and Honduras. I knew a couple of the Blackwater guys who were there—two of them, Goldberg and Tony T, had worked earlier on Bremer’s detail. They had good reputations and by all accounts were doing an excellent job up in Najaf.

Recently al-Sadr’s local followers had been protesting and creating disturbances, and had everyone inside the CPA compound a little shook up. Calls of “Death to the Americans,” were louder than ever, and the Fallujah murders seemed to embolden the insurgents even more. It was getting very tense there.

I got a call on Friday, 2 April, around 2100 hours from the program manager for the Najaf team asking me if we could help them out. He explained to me his guys were hearing rumors of an attack on the grounds the next day. I asked him for the grid coordinates, and as luck would have it, he did not have them. How the hell could I plan a mission without grid coordinates? You can’t make this stuff up. A program manager who was asking for help but could not even tell me the exact location of his people was deeply troubling.

I told him to keep me posted if things got ugly. Then I called Hacksaw, and we talked about the feasibility of flying from Baghdad to Najaf. Of course, the first thing he asked for were the grid coordinates. I told him that I hoped to have them the next day. He was concerned about fuel stops, what he would run into on the way to or back from Najaf, and the never-ending inability to communicate on missions with any folks other than our detail. I knew once I engaged Hacksaw he would begin to formulate a plan he thought would work. I checked the ambassador’s schedule and saw we had a moderate day scheduled with no Red Zone moves planned. I could not send the helos anywhere if the boss was in the Red Zone. Something told me Saturday would be an interesting day. I called two of my intel guys to see what they had been hearing from their sources. I met one at 2330 hours and the other at 0030. Both said the same thing: there were rumors of potential problems but no sure details. Many times the call to fight went unanswered. Sometimes mob mentality took over and the game was on. I had nothing solid. I slept fitfully.

We picked up the ambassador at the usual 0630 and began our regular routine. The Najaf PM called me and said his guys were reporting sporadic shooting at the CPA compound. I knew that Spanish, Honduran, and El Salvadoran military units were there, so at this point I was not alarmed. A CPA compound taking fire was a pretty normal thing. He called back and said his guys could see a crowd gathering and they were armed with AK-47s and RPGs. Still, I was banking on the coalition military guys to handle a direct assault on the compound. I called Hacksaw. He said he had figured out the logistics of how we could make this thing work if push came to shove. Once again he asked for the grid coordinates. I still did not have them. We continued our normal routine.

My phone rang again, and the Najaf PM told me the attack was under way and the Spanish were refusing to fight. For some reason the Spanish commander thought he could work out some sort of political compromise to the situation. Of course he had no authority to handle anything on the political side. This meant the eight Blackwater guys, a handful of U.S. military—four Marines who happened to have been working on the communications capabilities at the compound plus a handful of U.S Army soldiers—and the El Salvadorans and Hondurans would now be fighting hundreds of guys trying to storm the compound. The bad guys had snipers hiding in the hospital across the street who were firing at the compound as the crowd was moving forward. I went to see the ambassador and told him what the Blackwater guys were reporting. Of course he had already been informed by the head CPA guy in Najaf. I went to the Joint Operations Center (JOC) that was the CPA’s military command post to see what the military had planned to support the guys holding off the attackers. They told me there was nothing in the works as of yet. According to their intelligence, nothing was happening. I shared what I was being told by the guys on the ground. They just stared at me.

With visions of the guys in Fallujah burned, dismembered, and hanging from a bridge, I called Hacksaw. We met in the chow hall to discuss our options. Unbeknownst to me Hacksaw had also gotten a call that morning about forty-five minutes earlier from White Boy asking for help. White Boy, a former SEAL and now the Blackwater team leader on the ground in Najaf, had worked with Hacksaw when they were active-duty military. He had told Hacksaw they were in deep shit. Our meeting took on added significance and meaning—White Boy was not prone to exaggeration.

“Hacksaw, what do you think?”

“Hell, I think we can get there with one fuel stop. But I’m down one pilot. And it would be nice if I knew exactly where we were going.”

“I know, I’m supposed to get the grid coordinates later today. How much ammo can we carry in the two helos with two shooters in each?”

“Not as much as they’re going to need if it gets ugly.”

“Any chance we can fly a single pilot in the third bird?”

“Of course we can, if you authorize it.”

“Shit. Thanks for that. What will Blackwater Air say about that?”

“You let me worry about that. Can you get clearance from the JOC for us to go?”

“Hell, no. If we go, it’s all on us.”

“Great. But those guys need our help.”

“I know. I’ll keep you posted. We’ve got to do something. I’m just not sure what, not just yet.”

“Hell, Frankwater! That’s what we do. We make shit happen. Let’s go.”

Typical Hacksaw.

The situation was not good. We did not have permission to go, we didn’t know exactly where we were going, and what we had planned was somewhat outside the scope, to put it mildly, of Blackwater’s contract to protect Ambassador Bremer. Second, if somebody got killed or a helo went down, it was my ass. Third, if the ambassador had to make a Red Zone move, the helos would be off station. There was no way, with the unrest in and around Baghdad, I could put the boss in jeopardy by leaving the palace grounds without air cover.

I got another call from Najaf. The battle was raging full tilt, and the Spanish were still not engaging. The Blackwater guys had assumed positions on a rooftop and were returning fire with all the weapons that they had available. The El Salvadorans and Hondurans were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the insurgents. This was not good. I went to the ambassador’s office again. He saw me and asked what I was getting from the Blackwater guys there on the ground. I told him what I knew. He said he was hearing the same thing. I headed back over to the JOC to see what was being done, and again was told they had no plans.

The Najaf guys called and said they would run out of ammo soon, that there was no way they could hold the compound overnight. To send my guys and my helos to Najaf was a decision that rested totally on my shoulders. I called Ken and told him to meet me ASAP at the front door to the palace. I told him what was going on and that I needed a quick sanity check. Ken told me what he thought, and I made the decision and did what I believed was the right thing.

With only a convention center gig in the Green Zone on the ambassador’s schedule and the current situation getting crazier, I felt pretty certain there would be no Red Zone mission. I was between a rock and a hard place. If I asked permission and was denied, we couldn’t go. The military was claiming nothing was happening. I could not ask the ambassador to put his day on hold while I did something outside our contract. It was my call, my ass.

I called Hacksaw and told him “We’re going.” Hacksaw immediately got the pilots and mechanics together and told them the situation. He told them that none of them had to go, that he was looking for volunteers, but that he was going by himself if need be. They all said they were in and told him to shut up and start prepping the Little Birds, and that he was wasting time.

I called Sax and told him what I had planned. He said, “I’m in.” I called Ken back and told him to grab a truck, head to the team house to collect as much ammo as he could find, and to meet us at LZ Washington ASAP. I called Travis H and told him to alert the door gunners and head over to LZ Washington. The Najaf PM, who was living at the team house in the Green Zone, would meet us there. Ken and a few others loaded all the ammo they had at the team house into the helos. We had only five pilots, so Hacksaw said he would fly by himself.

I told the guys that if anything happened, to report that I ordered them to go. I heard a chorus of “Fuck you. I volunteered.” Five pilots and six shooters headed to Najaf. We saw them off, and I prayed that nothing would go wrong.

Hacksaw’s Little Bird was overloaded from the floor to the transmission with ammo and weapons and was so heavy he had to skip the bird off the tarmac three times before he could get it airborne. He barely cleared the blast walls and trees at the end of the LZ by ten feet. Everyone was holding their collective breath as we wondered if he would make it. The other two Little Birds were carrying their standard loads and had no problems.

On the way to Najaf Hacksaw spotted an Apache refueling base. He and the other two Little Birds stopped at the army installation to fuel up. He walked over to where Apache pilots were also refueling; introduced himself, told them what we were doing, and asked for and got updated intel from them. The Apaches were still on standby, doing occasional flyovers, but not engaging any targets. One Apache pilot then told Hacksaw that he and his partner had just been sent to another mission pulling them off the Najaf compound overwatch. He also told Hacksaw that the guys in Najaf were going to need all the help they could get as the situation was bad and getting worse. Because we did not have a radio that would allow us to speak directly to the military aircraft, Hacksaw asked the Apache pilot to radio his teammates and tell them that Blackwater was inbound and not to shoot us down. For some reason we never did get the military frequencies—most likely a security clearance issue. The Little Birds were easy to spot because at this time they were still sporting a very nontactical gloss-white with a blue-and-silver-striped paint job. Even though the Iraqis had no aircraft, our guys took their lives in their hands each time they went up as there was no way for them to communicate with any military assets except via our own CAT MPs; and even that radio traffic had to be relayed through the tactical commander in our lead vehicle. Fortunately we never took friendly fire.

The Apache pilot gave Hacksaw the grid coordinates and even drew him a map of the battle area on his knee board. Now at least Hacksaw knew where the fighting was taking place and exactly where he had to go. One has to love the brotherhood of combat helo pilots.

As they approached Najaf, with the aid of the Apache pilot’s map, Hacksaw could see the crowd and the firefight taking place. Again, we had no ability to talk to the Blackwater guys who were there. Our radios were not compatible with theirs. This was
not
an ideal situation, but we played the cards we had. Hacksaw directed the Little Birds to a spot inside the compound where they could land (not an easy feat as there was not a lot of room) and the pilots, shooters, and two Najaf guys off-loaded the ammo and weapons as quickly as possible and headed to the rooftop.

White Boy met them and briefed them on the situation.

They found a Marine there who had been shot through the chest. Applying combat first aid protocols, they got the bleeding stopped and the decision was made to evacuate him to the main military hospital in Baghdad. Hacksaw again volunteered for the mission. He and one of the shooters loaded the Marine into a Little Bird and took him to the hospital. It was a fifty-minute trip each way between Baghdad and Najaf. This meant that Hacksaw had to fly over the mob again to depart, and then back over the crowd to return. It was not a job for the weakhearted. Not to mention he was flying alone and not in the two-helo tandem formation our protocols stated we were
always
supposed to use. But what was protocol that day? He got the wounded Marine to the hospital, where he underwent surgery, had the bullet removed, and made a full and complete recovery. He was back to full duty in a few weeks with his Purple Heart medal and a few other military awards.