The Bremer Detail

by Frank Gallagher,John M. Del Vecchio

  In October the Al Rasheed Hotel came under a rocket attack that killed an army Special Forces soldier and badly wounded several others. The rocket launcher used in the attack was a large, hollowed-out diesel generator with drop sides that had been towed into place by a pickup truck. The truck had pulled up, stopped, and the driver had gotten out to initiate the launch. The generator held a bunch of rockets in improvised launch tubes set to fire when a countdown timer hit zero. The timer clicked, the sides dropped, and some rockets launched. Lucky for most of the folks in the hotel, only about eight of the array (I don’t recall the exact total number, around twenty to twenty-five, I think) went off. That was the trouble with the improvised munitions that the Iraqis started slapping together. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. Who knows how many attacks didn’t happen because of shoddy and poor quality of work.

  Thank God this had not happened the evening of our first party a few weeks earlier. Prior to this the Al Rasheed had been viewed as a safe place for us to go. Another fantasy destroyed.

  As a result of the attack, the decision was made to close the hotel to all Americans, and to move all U.S. personnel onto the palace grounds. This created another housing shortage as the trailer parks were still under construction. Steve Jones and Bill Miller approached me and asked if we had any beds available that they could use. Both were Diplomatic Security (DS) agents for the U.S. State Department. I liked both of them—great guys on assignment to help transition the palace grounds to the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Bill would actually become the first regional security officer (RSO) in the new Iraq.

  Thanks to Ken H’s efforts liaising with a navy officer, LCDR Tucker, (whom he had met and formed a great working relationship with in the palace), we had secured a large multiroom office and a separate cipher-locked room with cots that we used as a “ready” room where the guys could relax between missions. There was a refrigerator and long-distance phone line for the team to call family back home. Inside the locked room we stored our weapons and operational gear. It wasn’t much, but it beat the hell out of living in tents. Bill and Steve and another DS agent moved in that day and lived there for a few weeks. Bill, even before becoming the RSO, had become a valuable ally to Blackwater. He helped me get a lot of things accomplished through both back channels and official channels that otherwise may have never gotten done.

  In late 2003 Bill stopped an international incident that would have been a disaster. Secretary of State Colin Powell came to town for a visit, and made several trips with Ambassador Bremer during the days he was there. One of the visits was to the Baghdad City Council in downtown Baghdad, a Red Zone destination we truly hated each and every time we went there. The DS team accompanying the secretary worked very closely with both our detail team and our advance team. The AIC for the secretary was John Murphy. John is and was a great guy, and he’s still a good friend. Post-Iraq I worked with John for about seven years in the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program run by the U.S. State Department.

  Knowing that eventually the palace grounds would become the U.S. embassy, and speculating that if Blackwater was still doing security there, a decent working relationship with the State Department would be important, I offered John any support we could provide. On this particular day my advance team had gone to the Baghdad City Council and had begun setting up the concentric rings of security that we needed to protect both the ambassador and the secretary. One of the DS advance agents panicked when he saw Iraqis in the street carrying AK-47s. To us it meant almost nothing; every family in Iraq had at least one AK-47. It only became an issue when and if they pointed them at us … which they frequently did. They were extremely careless about their weapons handling. The DS agent ordered my snipers to shoot each and every Iraqi carrying a rifle. Fortunately, Scotty, my advance team leader, called me and told me what was happening. I told the guys they were not to shoot at anybody unless they were fired upon first. I then called Bill Miller, and he called the agent and told him to follow Blackwater’s lead when it came to this sort of thing. Nisoor Square would have been nothing compared to this disaster had Bill not intervened and ordered his agents to comply with our tactics and protocols.

  The intel reports continued to get darker and darker. The Iraqis were becoming more openly hostile to all American forces, and the threats against Bremer continued to pour in. One day I got a report that the insurgents had decided that Bremer did not have enough security guys close to him and he would be susceptible to a knife or suicide bomber attack. At this time I was still wearing a sport coat and trying to blend in. I made the decision to begin dressing like the rest of the Blackwater guys with weapons revealed, making no attempt to hide who or why I was there and letting folks know that we were right in the ambassador’s back pocket. Two days later another report was passed along stating that the insurgents had decided to attack the British ambassador instead because Bremer now had security close to him and the British ambassador did not. Needless to say my British counterparts were not happy with me.

  Being proper British military they continued to dress as protocol dictated. It sucked to be them. We laughed like hell. They were some of the best guys and gals I had ever met—men and women who were extremely professional, hard, and very funny—top-shelf operators and world-class ballbusters. In the austere environment of high-threat protection, emotions run high. These emotions can eat you alive if you let them. Only professionals with a great sense of humor tend to thrive. Anyone who has ever worked or visited the United Kingdom can appreciate the British sense of humor. For those who have not, let’s just say it is not quite the same as American humor.

  Our British counterparts, the security detail protecting Ambassador Greenstock, was composed of active-duty military from the British army. They were a lively bunch of real professionals, and my men quickly grew to become good friends with them. We spent a lot of time together, and I’m still in contact with many of them. True to their word, the Brits had offered any and all support we might require. Being British military, they had far more assets than we did.

  For example, after the first IED attack on the palace area in early November 2003, one of our guys we called Geek (former Air Force Special Operations) was able to secure a Mini Me, or what we know as the M249 squad automatic weapon, from the Brits, which he carried on the advance team. The Brits let him borrow it for his entire stay in Iraq. To be honest I never asked him about it because I didn’t want to know how exactly he obtained that weapon system. He got it, I was glad. It was better for me not to know.

  Among their various forms of entertainment the Brits played “the whaah game.” It went something like this. You ask someone a blatantly obvious question, such as “Are those blue jeans you are wearing?” The person replies with a look that questions your intelligence and says something to the effect of, “Yes, I am.” The person playing the game yells as loud and as annoyingly as possible: “WWWWWHHHHHAAAAAAH!!!!” They found great joy in “whaaing” us as often as possible. The Brits were killing us with it.

  Take a bunch of overachievers—guys who hate to lose—doing one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet, add a game that the majority of the Americans have never heard of, let alone played before, and it spells a recipe for a good time. Let the games begin. Before very long, the majority of the detail was having a blast. It got to the point where guys were afraid to answer any questions from anybody. Especially any questions coming from our British counterparts. They were the masters of the game and they abused us.

  In a few short weeks, all the detail members were now up to speed and playing with any unwitting person they encountered in or around the CPA headquarters. No one was immune. This thing went viral over the course of weeks. In typical American fashion, the team took things to another level.

  “Wow. Is that your M-4 you are carrying?”

  “Yes.”

  “WHAAAAAH!”

  To a guy standing outside the ambassador’s of
fice: “Are you waiting for the boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “WHAAAAAH!”

  To a guy in his gym clothes: “Nice shorts. Are you headed to the gym?”

  “Yes.”

  “WHAAAAAH!”

  It got annoying as hell.

  The Brits may have shared the game with us, but things got out of control quickly. Fast-forward a few weeks and much of the detail was invited to the British ambassador’s villa to have a few pints and rub elbows with a number of high-ranking British staff officials, including Ambassador Greenstock and the commanding general of all the British forces currently deployed in Iraq under the coalition banner. It was quite a party.

  So as my guys are hanging out, the commanding general decides to address the assembled group. He started out with something to the effect of thanks for coming … blah, blah, blah … and then says: “We even have some of the Americans playing the ‘whaah game.’ We must stop this game immediately, as it’s not proper manners. Are there any questions?”

  Apparently the general did not realize that there were about twenty Americans in the crowd. Quickly a hand shoots up in the back of the crowed and Jadicus (former SEAL medic), one of my best smart-asses, says in his best British accent: “Sir, so what you are saying is there will be no more playing of the ‘whaah game’?”

  British general: “Why, yes, that is exactly what I’m saying …”

  Before he could even finish his sentence, there was a loud and thunderous:

  “Wwwwwwhhhhhhaaaaaaah!”

  Needless to say the entire group, including the general, had a good chuckle. As I said, no one was immune.

  Intel reports can be a great thing as evidenced above, but they can also drive you crazy. I had four separate entities bringing me valuable intelligence each day. Trying to decide what was actionable and should be shared with the team and what was pure rumor and not substantiated was a tough call. And, of course, getting to meet with these folks when they called was always difficult. They had full-time jobs and many others to brief. Including me daily was a pain in their ass. We rarely met in an office-type setting. The meetings would take place behind the palace, on the walkway to the gym, in the parking lot, outside my trailer, in the smoking area, or someplace else that could easily explain our “chance” meeting. And getting them to talk over the phone was nearly impossible. But without them, there is no telling how things might have turned out.

  From the beginning I never wore body armor or carried a rifle when we were working in the Red Zone. As AIC I thought that I should present a more professional image and give the impression that extreme measures were not needed. But as the situation became more ominous and the intel reports more threatening, I began to occasionally wear my body armor and carry a rifle. When I did, my guys tensed up and wanted to know what I was not telling them. They clearly inferred I knew something that they did not. And they were correct. But as the leader of these guys my job was to keep them focused on their jobs and not overload them with maybes, might-bes, or could-bes. They had to do their jobs each and every day regardless of the threats that were being made against the ambassador. We had a sign posted in the office that stated: the bad guys only have to win once; we have to win every day. That was our mind-set and focus. If we did our jobs properly each day, we would prevail and everyone would get home safely. End of story.

  Around this time Scotty H came to my trailer one evening for a cold Heineken, and he told me that he had some bad news. He had been offered and had accepted a full-time gig with a government agency, and he was hoping to leave as soon as possible. FUCK. Scotty, by this time, had become my closest confidant and my most reliable asset, as well as being a damn good advance team leader. We talked about his replacement, and he said he thought that Sax was the best man for the job. A former SEAL with extensive spec-op experience, Sax was one of the smartest guys on the team. I asked Scotty to work with Sax so the transition would be as seamless as possible. He told me he already had started. That was Scotty—always a chess move ahead of everybody else. He left five days later.

  My original thirty-six-man PSD team was again a thirty-four-man PSD team. Between the advance team, the detail team, the villa team, and now the door gunners, I was sweating each and every day. Who was sick, who was hurt, whose wife had just left him, whose kids were sick? Oh yeah, and did I mention the bad guys were going to kill us today? I had become the AIC, psychiatrist, scheduler, mother hen, and, according to some, the biggest asshole in Baghdad. I was juggling all the balls as fast I could. I had no patience for the weak, sick, lame, or lazy. I knew that Blackwater’s reputation was on the line (as well as mine), and I damn sure was not going to let either of us take a hit. I set a stern example and hoped the “real men” would follow suit. They did.

  Of the thirty-four guys from the original rotation, about half were on sixty-day contracts and half on ninety-day contracts. This way, when the first group left and was replaced, they would have thirty days to learn the ropes from the ninety-day group, before the next group would arrive. It seemed like a good idea when it was first explained to me. The biggest problem was there was no real template on what we were doing and how we were doing it. Each day we changed some things around to make them better. Throwing in the helos with no training program for the pilots, the door gunners, or the tactical commander added another twist.

  At no time did we ever have a quick reaction force (QRF) on standby to help us if we were attacked. Nor did we have the communications ability to call an SOS to other units in the Green Zone. Our radio base station at our own command post worked occasionally—if we were lucky. We did have cell phones, but there was no one there standing by ready to help us. Each day we went out it was just us and us alone. If we were attacked, the plan was for us to defend the ambassador and transfer him as quickly as possible to one of the helos and fly him out of the danger zone. The advance team would attempt to fight their way back to us, and hopefully everyone would survive. Not a great plan, but we had no other options. The MP CAT teams did have comms back to their unit, and we gave them one of our radios for each mission, but depending upon where we were and how long it would take them to get to us, it could be a while. The point is that there was nobody standing by if something horrific happened. It was just Frank and his merry band of Blackwater guys. The reality of this situation began to sink in with some of them. While everyone is brave and an ass-kicking machine when there is no real threat, the reality of pending death on every mission began to take a toll on some of the less-experienced guys. My Rangers, SEALs, Marines, Special Forces, and combat arms guys relished each mission. Some of the others? Yeah, not so much. I could see the stress mounting in a few of them. Despite the manpower issues, when a guy was not doing well, I tried to make sure he got a day off to decompress. Of course, he was then labeled as a weak link and I knew he would not be returning. Given the choice I would never knowingly allow a guy to come back if he had proven to me or the other leadership elements that he was a potential liability in any way, shape, or form. Big boy rules.

  November 2003

  As rotation time got closer I had a few guys come to me and ask if they could leave earlier than scheduled. I could see the stress and despair on their faces and listened to their stories of woe and distress back home. I knew some of them were not having fun. I learned later that some of them used these stories to break their contracts with Blackwater and jump ship to another company that was paying more. Other guys were in hog heaven and asked to extend and stay. Ken began the process of getting flights scheduled, and we waited for word on the incoming replacements we had been promised. Ken requested résumés and background information on each man so we could place them where we felt they would best fit as soon as they arrived. The résumés never came. We were often operating in a vacuum. Guys had contracts and wanted to leave on schedule. We did our best to process them. We had been promised that as each guy left, he would be replaced th
at day. It wasn’t that smooth. While I was out with the ambassador, Ken kept working the arrival and departure flights, room assignments, gear, radios, and weapons inventories. He scrounged ammo and equipment and did all the paperwork to get the guys home and make sure they got paid. It was not easy.

  Three guys got flights: thirty-four became thirty-one. Three more left and thirty-one became twenty-eight. We were still doing four or five missions every day. I cut back on the advance team and could only put a single shooter in each helo. We were severely shorthanded. As the AIC I took the brunt of the criticism from the team. Only Ken knew the true level of my frustration. I was so frustrated with the lack of support coming from Blackwater HQ back in Moyock that I had Ken regularly look at and edit my e-mails for a sanity check so I wouldn’t come across as the complete fuming angry bastard I was.

  “Ken, take a look at this e-mail. What do you think?”

  “Frank, maybe ‘you motherfuckers’ isn’t a good choice of words if you want them to actually answer you back and give you what we need.”

  “Yeah, you might be right.”

  We’d just laugh, and then Ken would rewrite it for me.

  I put on the stern happy face and made sure everyone was focused on keeping the ambassador alive, but inside I was mad as hell. The hours were brutal. The villa team had been cut to four guys, and they were working twelve-hour shifts and then flying in the birds for four or five hours each day. I moved Shrek to the villa to run that side of the house. He was also flying and doing twelve-hour shifts. Single shifts at the office for an hour became multiple shifts every day. Everybody was pulling more than their weight, and I could see the stress was mounting. They knew as well as I did that we were not operating as efficiently as we should be. One thing about type A personalities is that you can’t bullshit them, ever. And I did not try.