Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of theWar on Terror (7 page)

B
lackwater’s contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom wasn’t ever conceived as a business decision. We certainly received no money for it. The team in Moyock wanted to help the United States strike back at the men who’d attacked it, and opening our Rolodex and acting as facilitators was one way we could do so. I had another idea as well: I applied to work in the Special Activities Division of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, the agency’s most elite and secretive paramilitary wing. I went through the extensive vetting process, including a polygraph, standard tests of my loyalty, and a battery of psychological exams. To this day I chuckle about one of the ultimate ironies in my career: The CIA shot me down. They said I didn’t have enough field experience. Nonetheless, more people at Langley were learning my name—and seeing how a private business like Blackwater could serve as a vital asset for the government’s military and intelligence services. They knew we wanted to help.

Soon the agency offered us a way to do that: by standing guard. With the Taliban leveled, CIA bases sprang up in Kabul and elsewhere across the country. When Krongard visited the Afghan capital shortly after it changed hands, he found the locals ill-equipped to handle the crucial security details there—particularly when some of their allegiances remained uncertain. He knew the agency didn’t directly have the manpower to staff those roles. He also knew just the man to call.

In fact, Krongard’s trip overseas dovetailed perfectly with
conversations already happening in Moyock. Guarding officials or military installations had initially felt pretty far afield for our shop, but thanks to the client list from Blackwater’s training programs, we knew we had a network of retired special forces personnel who might be interested. In the 1990s, many special ops missions had revolved around security for high-value individuals. Elite personnel from those missions already understood threat assessments, radio protocols, and convoy procedures, and we realized they could slip into similar Blackwater roles with a minimal learning curve. As we watched Operation Enduring Freedom unfold, the idea of joining in suddenly made sense.

We incorporated the offshoot Blackwater Security Consulting early in 2002. In April of that year, Blackwater received the CIA’s urgent and compelling contract to provide security guards—and to have them on a plane in a matter of days—for the agency’s headquarters in Kabul. The first six months of work there was a sole-source deal, and beyond that my company competed and won the contract to keep going.

•   •   •

C
ritics contend that Blackwater must have landed that first international deal by greasing wheels someplace. Over the years, all of us associated with the company have heard that claim often. The reality is that during the life of the company, 95 percent of our contracts were won through open and competitive bidding. And to the CIA in 2002, it was clear that our performance record and our “Say yes first, iron out the details later” mind-set justified the deal. “Blackwater got a contract because they were the first people that could get people on the ground. We were under the gun, we did whatever it took when I came back from Kabul,” Krongard said in 2006. “
The only concern we had
was getting the best security for our people. If we thought Martians could provide it, I guess we would have gone after them.”

I was part of the first rotation of our guards. It wasn’t exciting work—and we certainly weren’t frontline vigilantes kicking down doors and shooting our way through Taliban strongholds, or whatever the public perception of Blackwater’s men seemed to become. Security meant being the defense—standing outside the front gate to investigate the vehicles that drove up, and ensuring there were none of the rebel attacks that would plague other diplomatic missions in the future. We brought a steely focus to our jobs—I was there to personally guarantee Blackwater’s men checked cars and stood guard better, and more cost-effectively, than anybody else—and quickly learned the rhythms of our new location. One of my most enduring memories from that inaugural trip to Afghanistan was lurching bolt upright in bed at four thirty a.m. my first night there. I’d never before heard a call to prayer—and the massive loudspeakers right outside the hooch ensured that no one anywhere nearby would miss it.

Blackwater’s dedication to efficiency formed the cornerstone of our entire corporate culture. It was perhaps the ultimate benefit of our streamlined hierarchy: The company had one owner—me—so no stockholders to answer to. There was no board of directors to argue with, and no interminable bureaucracy of a government organization. I could delegate much of my authority, or choose to stand a post overseas. We were nimble and aggressive. And as I learned a few short months later, that approach to our work made quite an impression.

Cristoforo Colombo is my favorite government contractor.

Sure, most people remember Christopher Columbus as the mariner from the Republic of Genoa, the man who received backing from Spain’s Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to launch the voyage that discovered the New World. But I love that Columbus was far more entrepreneur than seafarer, crazy enough to brave the open ocean in tiny trade ships—especially when
his speculation on the distance to reach
the East was off by a factor of three. He was a doer, trying to persuade royalty to back his vision even after being rebuffed multiple times.
Finally, at the start of 1492
, his timing was right: The Castilian crown had wrestled control of Granada away from the Moorish forces, and a more efficient Western route to the East Indies would again expand Spain’s global footprint in the name of Christendom.
With the Capitulations of Santa Fe
, Columbus was promised wealth and prestige if he could discover those shipping lanes. With the stroke of Isabella’s pen, Columbus effectively became a private military contractor, or PMC.

The mariner’s demands were grand, but given the huge stakes—Columbus’s son later admitted those monarchs never actually believed he would make it back alive—they were not unreasonable. The forty-year-old wanted the military rank of admiral, a hereditary post to be handed to his son and descendants, not unusual for the time in Europe. In addition, he sought to govern any lands he would discover or acquire on behalf of his royal clients. Columbus demanded one-tenth of the net wealth from those lands as payment.
He also wanted options on future business ventures
in the lands he would claim as payment for his enterprise and his risk.

Shortly thereafter, Isabella and Ferdinand appointed their new PMC to the royal offices he sought. The Italian explorer was now a Spanish admiral.
The
Niña
,
Pinta
, and
Santa María
arrived
in the New World on October 12, 1492, as armed, privately owned merchant vessels requisitioned by the Crown. And for more than five centuries to follow, the fate of our nation would be inextricably tied to military contractors.

•   •   •

T
oday in Washington D.C.—a district named after Columbus—there is a seven-acre public park just north of the White House called Lafayette Square. It’s a lovely place full of regional trees and open spaces, and wide brick paths that lead to a central statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback. I often visit the park when I’m in the city—
at its four corners are additional statues
, honoring General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Major General Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, General Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette, and Major General Comte Jean de Rochambeau. None of them are Americans, yet they were all instrumental in the United States winning its independence. They’re instrumental in how I look back on what we built at Blackwater.

It might seem incongruous that America owes its greatest military triumph largely to the help of contractors—foreign ones at that—but only to those people who don’t know the history of the business model.
In 1607, for instance, Captain John Smith
, whose
relationship with Pocahontas would become the stuff of legend (and Disney films), arrived in Virginia clapped in shackles and leg irons. The twenty-seven-year-old English soldier and war hero was sent to the New World by the joint-stock business Virginia Company of London and was tasked with overseeing security operations in the dangerous North American wilds.
The company intended to mine for gold
in what is today the Chesapeake Bay area and explore the countryside for other lucrative natural resources in hopes of establishing a more permanent English settlement there. They needed a military contractor to safeguard their business interests.

Historical accounts suggest Smith was
as aggressive as a wolverine
, and only half as likable—it seems he arrived in leg irons because he so irritated expedition leaders during the voyage, they charged him with mutiny. But he quickly proved himself indispensable in the New World.
He explored the bay area
, creating detailed maps that stood as the definitive charts of the region for nearly a century. Smith helped establish the colony’s settlement, Jamestown, which he named after England’s King James I, and supervised construction of the colony’s fort. His organization of a security force, which he trained with English weapons, ultimately led to his becoming president of Jamestown.
The pale-faced PMC with the fiery red beard
also reached out to the area’s indigenous populations—with varying degrees of Disneyfied success—and, more than anyone else, shepherded the English colony through potentially crushing setbacks during his two years in the region. His tenacity was an inspiration to me as I built Blackwater and we began to grow our own security operations.

In 1614, Smith mapped the northern
American coastline, naming it “New England,” which enabled another English firm, and another PMC, to shape our nation’s history. In 1620, the
Council for New England, previously known
as the joint-stock Plymouth Company, was granted a royal charter by King James to explore the new region Smith had mapped. They just needed colonists. Puritans and Separatists, meanwhile, needed a new homeland away from religious persecution in England. So the company leased a veteran freighter
built for the wine trade, called the
Mayflower
, and sent the pilgrims on their way. One key passenger on that fateful voyage? Thirty-five-year-old Captain Myles Standish, who may have sympathized with the Separatists but who had no religious reason for joining their expedition. Standish was, in fact, an English soldier who had fought in the Netherlands before joining the private sector. He was
a military contractor hired by the pilgrims
to lead the defense of the colony to come.

Prior to landing, Standish was
one of the forty-one signers
of the Mayflower Compact. And ultimately, the fortifications and training he oversaw in Plymouth Colony proved so successful, he became the first PMC immortalized on an official government emblem.
Approved by Governor John Hancock in 1780
, the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts features the state’s coat of arms, first sketched out five years prior.
That coat of arms shows an Algonquian
Native American holding a bow and arrow; above the shield is a uniformed right arm brandishing a golden sword. That arm and sword are believed to represent Standish, whom the National Guard proudly remembers as “
a professional soldier hired to train
the colonists to defend themselves in the New World. He instructed them on the proper handling of muskets and other arms, helping to make them a more effective defensive force.”

By the time our fledgling nation revolted against the British Crown, the use of private citizens to carry out what are today thought of as traditionally government military functions was practically habit. On the brink of war in 1775, one prominent Southern plantation owner volunteered to personally fund a military force to battle the British if the Continental Congress failed to create a standing army. The forty-two-year-old, who’d been an officer in the Virginia militia,
trusted the private sector’s ability to provide solutions
when the government could—or would—not. Luckily for the fate of the nation, the Continental Congress consolidated the colonial militias into a national army, and George Washington didn’t actually have to fund the force himself.

But that ragtag Continental Army did face huge gaps in capability, training, experience, and organization—which is where those statues in Lafayette Park come in. The Continental Congress had to fill the gaps by turning to foreign professionals to staff, train, and even command Washington’s soldiers. It was a blueprint for outsourcing that I admire to this day. In Paris, Benjamin Franklin, the U.S. envoy to France, personally recruited Tadeusz—or Thaddeus—Kosciuszko,
a skilled Polish freedom fighter with an expertise in artillery
and engineering.
The fortifications he built
at Philadelphia, Saratoga, and West Point were so successful, Kosciuszko is today considered the father of American artillery.

Prussian officer Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben
was similarly recruited to help oversee the training and staffing of the Continental Army, and effectively became the first inspector general of the U.S. military. Meanwhile,
the French aristocrat the Marquis de Lafayette
was only nineteen when he first met Washington in the colonial capital of Philadelphia in 1777, but he impressed the general enough to quickly become one of his closest aides. That “
pushy French teenager
,” as the Smithsonian Institution would later describe him, rose to the rank of major general in the Army,
and today there are some two dozen towns or cities
in the United States named Fayetteville, Lafayette, or some variation of La Grange, in honor of Lafayette’s estate in France.

Finally, in 1780
Comte Jean de Rochambeau was sent
by French king Louis XVI to command the fifty-five hundred or so French troops who fought alongside the colonialists and ultimately overpowered the British at the Siege of Yorktown, in Virginia. Because the upstart Americans had French support, Rochambeau’s assistance helped lay the groundwork for modern military aid. As Washington wrote to Congress just days before British lieutenant general Lord Cornwallis surrendered there and effectively ended the war, “
I cannot but acknowledge the infinite obligations
I am under to His Excellency, the Count de Rochambeau.”

While all of that happened on land, privately owned warships played an equally key role in safeguarding our harbors.
So powerful was the Royal Navy
in the 1770s, with some 150 ships, that any challenge seemed futile.
The Continental Navy, such as there was one
, consisted of sixty-four ships. Without disrupting British supply lanes or port blockades, however, the American cause was doomed. So in late 1775 John Adams, then a Massachusetts delegate for the First and Second Continental Congresses,
proposed a turnkey solution
: private warships that could wage naval insurgency on the high seas. Privateering—essentially government-sanctioned piracy—wasn’t an original idea, but when the Massachusetts legislature passed “An Act for encouraging the fixing out of Armed Vessels to defend the Sea-Coast of America” in November of that year, New England’s merchants and fishermen were given the green light to convert their fishing vessels into nimble little warships.
Suddenly the twelve hundred guns
of America’s tiny Continental Navy were backed by nearly fifteen thousand guns from seventeen hundred privateer vessels.

Soon after, the Second Continental Congress, under its president, John Hancock, authorized privateer and Navy attacks on “all vessels” flying the British flag. The Navy pledged to split the plundered bounty with the privateers, keeping its part to fund the war effort.
Congress printed blank commissions
for “private ships of war” and authorized “letters of marque and reprisal” for the entrepreneur-soldiers, giving privateers the legal authority to attack. The men in our nation’s history who drafted the very bedrock declarations and articles upon which this nation was built clearly grasped the value of private companies in larger governmental operations. That Congress issued legislative guidelines on how private warships could carry out their work, marking some of this nation’s first government regulations for private business.

Encouraging entrepreneurs to build and run their own warships had a profound effect:
By the end of the war, privateers
had captured
2,283 British ships, compared to fewer than two hundred by the standing Continental Navy.

•   •   •

O
ver the ensuing 240 years, the use of private military contractors in American conflicts has only increased.
Privateers again took to the high seas
to help defeat the British during the War of 1812.

Then, a half century later, Abraham
Lincoln relied upon the Pinkerton National Detective Agency
—the original “private eye” sleuthing firm, founded by Allan Pinkerton in 1850—to build his domestic intelligence network. In 1861, Pinkerton uncovered an assassination plot against President-elect Lincoln, and Union general
George McClellan soon hired the Scottish immigrant
to create a “secret service” to gather military information in the South during the Civil War. The CIA credits him with “
developing a different view of espionage
, pursuing what today would be called actionable intelligence.”

A year before the United States entered World War I, American aviators determined to battle Kaiser Wilhelm II volunteered for the French Air Service. The
colloquially known “Escadrille Américaine
” was created in 1916; soon after, the squadron of thirty-eight pilots was officially renamed in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, becoming the Lafayette Escadrille. Two years later, with the United States involved in the war, they were merged into the 103rd Pursuit Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Service.

Perhaps the most famous contract aviators arose from World War II, however. I remember sitting in bed at night as a boy in Michigan, reading about the American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers. I read about how in early 1941, months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had invaded the Republic of China. To support Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt sent retired U.S. Army Air Corps captain
Claire Lee Chennault to create an air force in China that would help
repel the imperial forces—but not directly involve the U.S. military. The
three squadrons commanded by Chennault
—consisting of about twenty aircraft each and flown by pilots recruited from the Army, Navy, and Marines—are officially credited with destroying 297 Japanese aircraft. The Flying Tigers were heroes to me when I was younger—they seemed larger than life. I couldn’t believe how cool those Curtiss P40s looked with the shark faces painted on them. Even thirty years after those men had completed their missions, they were the ones who first made me dream of becoming a pilot someday.