The Bremer Detail

by Frank Gallagher,John M. Del Vecchio

  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.

  After dropping off the wounded Marine, Hacksaw flew back to LZ Washington to refuel. While he was on the ground one of the Blackwater PMs told him to shut down his machine and to park it. Hacksaw waved to him and told him that he would as soon as the helo cooled down. When the refueling was done, Hacksaw lifted off and flipped the guy the finger. The guy called Hacksaw on the radio to tell him that he would be fired if he did not immediately turn around and come back. Hacksaw told him that he could fire him when, and if, he made it back.

  Thoughts raced through my head about the decisions I had made. I decided to rely upon the reasonable man theory. This theory basically states that when a tough decision has to be made and there are conflicting emotions, you remove emotion and simply ask, “What would a reasonable man do?” I had brothers in a life-and-death fight just days after four Americans had been murdered, mutilated, burned, and hanged. I felt then I was making the right decision. I still do.

  The combined forces of the Hondurans, the El Salvadorans, the remaining U.S. Marines, and now the two Blackwater teams were keeping the attackers at bay. The CPA folks were safely ensconced in the main building, which was a somewhat hardened structure that afforded a modicum of safety from small-arms fire. But they did not huddle there. During the firefight many of the CPA civilians (men and women) were loading empty M-4 magazines and heroically running them up the stairs to the roof so the Blackwater guys could continue to fight without worrying about reloading. The CPA staff brought the empty magazines back down the stairs for reloading and repeated this action many times throughout the fight. It was truly a group effort during a very perilous time. Had an RPG hit the main building there would have been significant casualties.

  After nearly six hours of fighting, things quieted down, and around 2000 I made the decision to have the guys return to Baghdad. We had no serious injuries other than Dave B who had nearly scalped himself when he hit his head on a low doorway as he headed downstairs from the rooftop. Doc Phil patched him up after he got back, and he was good to go. From several different sources I heard casualty reports on the attackers’ side. The Shiite militia dead were counted anywhere from fifty to five hundred.

  The next morning, we picked the ambassador up at 0630 and began what I had hoped would be a very quiet and relaxing day. We had zero Red Zone missions planned. The ambassador was actually going to spend the entire day in the office. After what had happened the previous day, he had his hands full. Around 1030 I got a call from Najaf. It appeared as though the insurgents were gearing up for a second run at the compound. The guys on the ground were in need of more ammo and any help that we could provide. FUCK.

  I called Hacksaw and asked him if he was game for another day in Najaf. His new pilot had arrived, and our protocol called for this to be day one of his training. We talked about Najaf and decided we’d give it a few hours to see what transpired. I called and told them to keep me posted. My biggest concern was their dwindling ammo supply. It’s tough to fight when you have no bullets.

  Three of the guys who had made the first run to Najaf were rotating out that day. I wished them well and knew none of them would be back. They as much as said so. T-Bone and Dave B were both former Marines and good guys. I would miss them.

  Najaf called back again and said things were getting uglier. Sax, Hacksaw, and I huddled and decided to make a second trip down. I had not heard a word from Blackwater headquarters and did not know if they knew what I had done. Hell, I thought I was already going to get executed for yesterday’s decision; they couldn’t kill me twice.

  We met at the LZ, loaded ammo, and off we went once again. This time it was six pilots and six shooters and thousands of rounds of ammo. We flew directly there. I was in Hacksaw’s Little Bird with Sax and the new pilot, Jerry. As we approached the compound there was a tremendous explosion. The force hit our helo and blew it for what felt like ten yards directly to the left. I thought we’d been hit by an RPG. Hacksaw yelled into the radio, laughing as he said, “Hang on, boys, I got this.”

  Hang on? That was a little late. The concussion of the bomb blast nearly blew Sax and me out of the back of the helo. The rear area of a Little Bird is nothing more than a metal floor. No seats, nothing. They are designed that way so you can easily clean out ammo casings, vomit, or blood. Fortunately, our homemade seat belts of carabineers and webbing kept us in. Lady Luck was still on our side.

  Have I mentioned the communications issue? As we were flying in unannounced, the Marines had called for an air strike on some bad guys in a building just outside the compound. Our flight path took us over the building, just coincidentally as a JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition—a laser-guided bomb dropped by fighter aircraft) hit, penetrated, detonated, and completely destroyed the structure. It begs the question: Did the air strike kill people who would have killed us as we flew in? I’ll never know, but I do know that the Iraqi bad guys were not stupid. We had flown in yesterday. They saw how we came in. Things got ugly again today. Were they waiting for us? Who knows? But it did give me a few seconds’ pause to reflect upon what the hell we were doing there.

  We dropped the ammo from the air directly on the compound’s rooftop. One Little Bird hovered a foot or two above the roof and off-load while the other two circled in overwatch positions. Then we switched places. Finally we landed inside the compound and met with White Boy, the team leader for the Blackwater Najaf guys. He thanked us again for coming. I asked for a status report, and he said the insurgent militia were milling around taking random potshots at the compound. Then he shrugged, “But nothing like yesterday.”

  We went to the roof. The Iraqis were firing off the occasional AK round, but there was no coordinated attack. Nor any mob activity. The Najaf guys were on one roof while we were on another. We had a couple of our guys assume a “countersniper position,” but while they watched for enemy activity not much happened. From one roof position an El Salvadoran soldier with a .50 cal sniper rifle would occasionally blast some unlucky militant into the afterlife. An hour so later there was some movement around the compound but it was about five hundred yards away. Our snipers took some shots at them, and they returned fire, but none of us were hit and at that distance with a shortened M-4 I doubt many, if any, of them were hit. [
The YouTube video Blackwater Snipers was filmed on the roof on Day 2.]

  We had a few moments of anxiety when buses suddenly drove in front of the compound. The day before the buses would stop and unload armed militia intent on capturing the compound. Today, none of them stopped. We stayed a couple more hours, then said good-bye and headed back to Baghdad.

  Returning to the palace I braced for the fallout. The military was not happy with me. I was not sure how Blackwater was going to react. We had not suffered a casualty, we had medevaced a wounded soldier and provided critical ammunition and support to troops and CPA staff under serious threat, the helos were undamaged, and we had not compromised the security of the ambassador. I truly believed that I had done the right thing

  Hacksaw got the first call from Erik Prince asking him to explain why we did what we did, especially the reasoning behind the single pilot flight and the medevac. Hacksaw explained everything we did and why we did it. Apparently the Blackwater Air PM had called Blackwater HQ and had demanded permission to fire Hacksaw that evening. He did not get it. Thank God Mr. Prince was a warrior and patriot first and foremost, and not an admin bitch. He knows that real men make real decisions based upon what needs to be done. Damn protocol! Do the right thing. Especially when lives are at stake. So Hacksaw was safe. I wondered if I was also.

  The Washington Post carried an article the next day and I was certain that the fallout was not going to be pretty.

  Private Guards Repel Attack on U.S. Headquarters

  By Dana Priest

  Washington Post Staff Writer

  Tuesday, April 6, 2004; Page A01

  An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government’s headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident.

  Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said.

  The role of Blackwater’s commandos in Sunday’s fighting in Najaf illuminates the gray zone between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating in an active war zone. Thousands of armed private security contractors are operating in Iraq in a wide variety of missions and exchanging fire with Iraqis every day, according to informal after-action reports from several companies.

  © 2004 The Washington Post Company

  The article went on to describe the fighting, the attack with AK-47s and RPGs, and the defense by our guys and the few Marines and Army troops. It did not mention our Central American allies or their role but did go into the fact that Blackwater commandos were on contract to provide security to the Najaf CPA. The reporter likely did not know that Blackwater had multiple contracts or that our effort was not linked to the Najaf team’s contract.

  Although sketchy, the report did accurately note the low-ammo situation, the severely wounded Marine, and the lack of timely reinforcements by coalition forces. It then went into the military’s official comments, or justifications, delivered by U.S. command spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt. “On a rooftop yesterday in an-Najaf … a small group of American soldiers and coalition soldiers … who had just been through about three and a half hours of combat, I looked in their eyes, there was no crisis. They knew what they were here for… . They’d lost three wounded. We were sitting there among the bullet shells—the bullet casings—and, frankly, the blood of their comrades, and they were absolutely confident.”

  The news article concluded by recapping the brutal slaying of the four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah only days prior to the Najaf attack.

  Interestingly, after the news of our rescue in Najaf hit the mainstream media, Blackwater experienced a PR coup. People saw that Blackwater would look out for its people. Blackwater in North Carolina, and Ken in the palace were inundated with requests for jobs. When I was not available, people automatically would look for Ken. Somehow word had gotten out that Ken was an executive for Blackwater and that he could help get people on the detail. He fielded many requests from both males and females, military and nonmilitary. Some of the stories were hysterical. Everybody wanted to be part of what we were and what we were building.

  We had female military types that promised Ken a night he would never forget if he could get them hired. We had truck drivers who asked if their fathers could get a job as they were badass, hard-assed killers who had served in Vietnam. Active-duty military guys wanted to join as soon as their enlistments were up. Everyone fancied themselves capable of doing the job despite the fact that they really had no idea what we were doing. Trying to explain that we played defense, not offense, was tough to get across. Ken was polite and tried to explain that the decisions were made in North Carolina not in Baghdad. He forwarded many résumés. He did not hire anyone. Nor did he get a Blackwater executive’s salary. In fact, since Blackwater didn’t view Ken’s role in the mission to be as vital as I did, they even tried to cut his pay at one point. They would still bill him to the government at the full daily rate that the contract specified, but he’d be paid less so the company could keep more for the profit margin. I lobbied Mr. Prince directly on this point and managed to keep Ken at the same pay as the rest of the team, but it took a little convincing. Baghdad was dangerous for everybody who served there whether you were in an office or in an armored SUV. Indirect fire and stray bullets do not discriminate. And Ken gave me supreme peace of mind. Because Ken kept the admin wolves at bay I was able to concentrate on the ambassador. Without Ken my life would have sucked way worse than it did.

  Monday we were back to the grind: more Red Zone runs, more intel reports coming in, and more planning for future missions. More new guys arrived. I settled back into my zone. If something were going to happen, it would happen quickly. And then nothing happened. Monday came and went.

  Tuesday arrived and we worked just as we always did. Some of the guys were pissed at me for not letting them make the Najaf run. I called a team meeting and told the team that I decided the door gunners would go because I thought we would have to fight our way in and out, and that the additional guys I had picked were solid combat vets who had fought in urban environments. It was nothing personal, just a business decision that I had to make. We finished the meeting and my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was Blackwater. I took a deep breath and answered.

  “Frank speaking.”

  “Frank, this is Erik Prince.”

  “Sir, how are you?”

  “I’m good. Just called to tell you that you did a great job with the Najaf decision. Well done. We’re all proud of you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I know it wasn’t an easy decision, but in light of recent events, I’m glad you did it and I back you 100 percent.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Good. Now get back to work and keep doing what you’re doing.”

  “Roger that.”

  I took another deep breath and realized that I was going to survive to fight another day. I got a few other calls from Blackwater execs all saying basically the same thing. The only one I did not hear from was our own program manager in Baghdad. Imagine that.

  Three new guys arrived. Clutch, a former Army Ranger, and Mongo B (former SEAL—he became Mongo B as we already had a Mongo on the team) fit in immediately. Mongo B went to the advance team. Clutch started on the detail team but eventually became one of the few guys to work as a door gunner and on the advance team as well. Hailing from West Virginia, Clutch had a moderate southern drawl and pretended he was not as smart as he was. He was, by far, one of the smartest guys on the team and one of the best guys I ever met. Since The Bremer Detail I have worked with him throughout the world.

  The third was a self-described martial arts guy who came in thumping his chest about being one
of the baddest men on the planet. Looking at his hands, you could tell he had spent a lot of time hitting the bag. He went to the Green Zone detail team initially. On his first few runs he was constantly out of position. Arrivals and departures are like a ballet. Everyone has to go to their spots and cover their areas of responsibility. He just couldn’t get it right, and as a result he put the ambassador and the team in jeopardy. Drew B was the shift leader and he worked him hard after hours in an attempt to get him dialed in. Strike 1. We wondered how he had made it through the train-up.

  On his first Red Zone mission he got into the vehicle and as we exited the Green Zone, he charged (loaded) his M-4 and loaded his Glock. It nearly gave everyone in the vehicle a heart attack. Travis T was driving and wanted to kill him. We carried weapons loaded at all times. The bad guys never gave us a heads-up when they might attack. When we asked why he was unloaded, he responded that he wasn’t comfortable with a loaded weapon in the Green Zone. It is a proven fact in high-stress situations such as a gunfight that you lose your fine motor skills and are left only with the ability to perform large muscle movements. That is why we practice, practice, practice—and practice some more. Blackwater trained us with several thousand rounds per person specifically to develop the muscle memory and presence of mind that will save one’s life, and the ambassador’s, if and when things went bad. If you are not perfectly comfortable with muzzle discipline, trigger control, and the absolute certainty that you can safely handle a weapon under duress, then you have no business carrying one for a living. On the Glock pistol your finger is the safety. If you don’t put your finger inside the trigger guard and don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you absolutely intend to kill someone, then you won’t have any mistakes or any problems. All armed professionals know this. How could you arrive in an active combat zone and not feel comfortable with issued weapons? Drew B counseled him again. Strike 2.

  We picked the ambassador up at his usual time and took him to the palace. As we arrived at the palace the team dismounted and took their security positions. Drew B gave the okay. I got out and opened the limo door for the ambassador who began the fifteen-foot walk past the FAST Company Marines into the palace. This was a secure area. Just then the martial artist bursts through the doors and into the palace, raises his M-4 pointing it at several frightened CPA employees, and yells: “All clear.”