On August 26, 2005, Schmitz officially informed his staff that he was leaving the Pentagon to work with Blackwater. In an e-mail he sent out, he signed off, saying, “May the Creator acknowledged in our Declaration of Independence who has endowed each of us with those unalienable rights that we as Americans consider ‘first things,’ continue to bless each of you.”170 Just as Schmitz began his work at Blackwater, in September 2005, the company reeled in lucrative government contracts, deploying heavily armed Blackwater forces on U.S. soil, in the wake of the worst “natural disaster” in U.S. history.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BLACKWATER DOWN: BAGHDAD ON THE BAYOU
THE MEN from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. The company beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene as 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. Officially, the company boasted of its forces “join[ing] the hurricane relief effort.”1 But its men on the ground told a different story.2 Some patrolled the streets in SUVs with tinted windows and the Blackwater logo splashed on the back; others sped around the French Quarter in an unmarked car with no license plates. They wore khaki uniforms, wraparound sunglasses, beige or black military boots, and had Blackwater company IDs strapped to their bulging arms. All of them were heavily armed—some with M-4 automatic weapons, capable of firing nine hundred rounds per minute, or shotguns. This despite police commissioner Eddie Compass’s claim that “Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons.”3
The Blackwater men congregated on the corner of St. Peter and Bourbon in front of a bar called 711. From the balcony above the bar, several Blackwater troops cleared out what had apparently been someone’s apartment. They threw mattresses, clothes, shoes, and other household items from the balcony to the street below. They draped an American flag from the balcony’s railing. More than a dozen troops from the Eighty-second Airborne Division stood in formation on the street watching the action.
Armed men shuffled in and out of the building as a handful told stories of their past experiences in Iraq. “I worked the security detail of both Bremer and Negroponte,” said one of the Blackwater men, referring to the former head of the U.S. occupation, L. Paul Bremer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. Another complained, while talking on his cell phone, that he was getting only $350 a day plus his per diem. “When they told me New Orleans, I said, ‘What country is that in?’” he said. He wore his company ID around his neck in a case with the phrase “Operation Iraqi Freedom” printed on it. After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a “State Department-issued” “explosion-proof BMW,” he said he was “just trying to get back to [Iraq], where the real action is.”
In an hour-long conversation in the French Quarter, four Blackwater troops characterized their work in New Orleans as “securing neighborhoods” and “confronting criminals.” They all carried M-4 assault weapons and had guns strapped to their legs. Their flak jackets were covered with pouches for extra ammunition. “This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS [Continental United States],” another Blackwater contractor said. “We’re much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq.” Blackwater president Gary Jackson told the Virginian-Pilot that his men were heavily armed “because of the intel that we received,” adding, “We did a risk assessment and decided we’re going to send guys in there for real.”4 Jackson claimed Blackwater “basically secured” the French Quarter—a claim hotly disputed by local law enforcement agents, one of whom said, “There may be some braggadocio involved” in Jackson’s claim. Maj. Ed Bush of the Louisiana National Guard told the Pilot, “Every group wants to kind of thump their chest a little bit, but just think about it. We live here. Seems kind of naive to think Blackwater beat us to the French Quarter.”5
Former Kentwood, Michigan, police officer Dan Boelens, another Blackwater contractor who had been to Iraq before deploying to New Orleans, was assigned by Blackwater to guard Bell South workers in New Orleans.6 He said that for several days after he arrived, he and other Blackwater contractors had patrolled the streets in SUVs and armed with assault rifles. “The only difference between here and Iraq is there are no roadside bombs,” he said. “It’s like a Third World country. You just can’t believe this is America.” Boelens added, “We keep having this little flashback, like what we were doing in Iraq.”7 The only kill Boelens claimed in New Orleans was a pit bull he shot before it could attack him.
Blackwater was among a handful of well-connected firms that immediately seized the business opportunity not just in the rubble and devastation in the Gulf but also in the media hysteria. As the federal, state, and local governments abandoned hundreds of thousands of hurricane victims, the images that dominated the television coverage of the hurricane were of looting, lawlessness, and chaos. These reports were exaggerated and, without question, racist and inflammatory. If you were watching from, say, Kennebunkport, Maine, you might imagine New Orleans as one big riot—a festival of criminals whose glory day had finally come. In reality, it was a city of internally displaced and abandoned people desperate for food, water, transportation, rescue, and help. What was desperately needed was food, water, and housing. Instead what poured in fastest were guns. Lots of guns.
Frank Borelli, a former military policeman who worked for Blackwater in the early days of the operation, recalled that when he arrived at the Blackwater camp in Louisiana, “I was issued a Glock 17 and a Mossberg M590A shotgun. I was also issued a shotshell pouch with ten rounds of slug and ten rounds of 00 Buck. There was (at that time) no 9mm ammo available, but I was blessed to be in a camp full of trigger-pullers. Before I racked out I had fifty-one rounds of 9mm ammo loaded into three magazines for the G17.”8 Clearly well armed, Borelli observed, “The logistics effort to support the operation is awesome, and I know ammo was just flown in on Monday. More came in on Wednesday. It is a comment on the spirit of the American cop/warrior that Blackwater can put so many men on the ground so fast. Supporting them is a daunting challenge.”
In the early days of the hurricane, even with heavily armed Blackwater men openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans, a spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knew of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. “We believe we’ve got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety,” Knocke said on September 8.9 But the very next day, the Blackwater troops on the ground put forward a very different narrative. When asked what authority they were operating under, one Blackwater contractor said, “We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.” Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, “He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.” The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck. Blackwater spokesperson Anne Duke also said the company had a letter from Louisiana officials authorizing its forces to carry loaded weapons.10 Some of the men said they were sleeping in camps set up by Homeland Security.
“This vigilantism demonstrates the utter breakdown of the government,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, upon learning Blackwater forces were deployed in the hurricane zone. “These private security forces have behaved brutally, with impunity, in Iraq. To have them now on the streets of New Orleans is frightening and possibly illegal.” A statement on Blackwater’s Web site, dated September 1, 2005, advertised airlift services, security services, and crowd control and said the company was deploying its SA-330 Puma helicopter “to help assist in evacuating citizens from flooded areas.”11 The press release claimed “Blackwater’s aerial support services” were being “donated” to the relief effort. “At this time, all Americans should band together and assist our countrymen who have been struck by this natural disaster,” said founder E
rik Prince. “Blackwater is proud to serve the people of New Orleans,” said Blackwater’s executive vice president Bill Mathews on September 13. “First and foremost, this is about Americans helping Americans in a time of desperation.”12 Cofer Black spun Blackwater’s operations in Katrina as strictly humanitarian-motivated. “I think it’s important to underscore that companies like ours are in servitude,” Black later said, adding that when Katrina hit, “Our company launched a helicopter and crew with no contract, no one paying us, that went down to New Orleans. We were able to find out how to put ourselves under Coast Guard command—we got a Coast Guard call sign and we saved some 150 people that otherwise wouldn’t have been saved. And as a result of that, we’ve had a very positive experience.”13 “We’re always anxious to help our fellow citizens,” Black said, “whether we get paid or not.” But the fact is that Blackwater was indeed getting paid in New Orleans—big time.
On September 18, Blackwater estimated that it had 250 troops deployed in the region; a number Mathews said would continue to grow. “We are people who want to make a difference and help,” he said. “It’s time to set the record straight: We are not . . . skull-crushing mercenaries. We don’t believe we will make a profit here. We ran to the fire because it was burning.”14 In another interview Mathews said that because Blackwater had donated more than $1 million in aviation services, “If we break even on the security services, our company will have done a great job.”15 By then, the company was aggressively recruiting for its New Orleans operations. It required applicants to have at least four years of military experience “with duties involving carrying a weapon.” A Blackwater advertisement said, “This opportunity is for immediate deployment. Earning potential up to $9,000 a month.”16 Meanwhile, Blackwater floated a proposal to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that it set up a training facility to prepare local workers for security-industry jobs in New Orleans, either with Blackwater or other firms. “Security is going to be an issue during the entire reconstruction,” said Mathews.17
While Blackwater may indeed have donated some “services” in New Orleans, its claims about rescuing people with its helicopter have been called into serious question by the U.S. Coast Guard, under whose direction Blackwater boasted it was operating. In early 2006, Erik Prince bragged that “after Hurricane Katrina hit, we sent one of our Puma helicopters. . . . I said, ‘Start flying.’ We got ourselves attached to the Coast Guard, actually became a Coast Guard call sign, and we flew, rescued 128 people.”18 That story doesn’t appear to add up. “[Blackwater] offered to do rescues, but there were legal concerns. What if someone got hurt? So we asked them not to engage in pulling people out,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Todd Campbell, who directed a large part of the rescue operations. He told the Virginian-Pilot that Blackwater “debriefed me at the end of every day, and no one ever mentioned doing any rescues. If they were out there doing them, it was solely on their own.”19
Moreover, despite its moralistic boasts, Blackwater hardly ran a pro-bono humanitarian operation in New Orleans. In addition to its work guarding private companies, banks, hotels, industrial sites, and rich individuals,20 Blackwater was quietly handed a major no-bid contract with the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service, ostensibly to protect federal reconstruction projects for FEMA. According to Blackwater’s government contracts, from September 8 to September 30, 2005—just three weeks—Blackwater was paid $409,000 for providing fourteen guards and four vehicles to “protect the temporary morgue in Baton Rouge, LA.”21 Documents show that the government paid Blackwater $950 a day for each of its guards in the area—some $600 more per man per day than the company was allegedly paying its men on the ground.22 That contract kicked off a hurricane boon for Blackwater; by the end of 2005, in just three months, the government had paid Blackwater at least $33.3 million for its Katrina work for DHS.23 All of these services were justified by the government’s claim of not having enough personnel to deploy quickly in the hurricane zone, though spokespeople carefully avoided drawing a connection to the various U.S. occupations internationally. “We saw the costs, in terms of accountability and dollars, for this practice in Iraq, and now we are seeing it in New Orleans,” said Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, one of Blackwater’s few critics in Congress. “They have again given a sweetheart contract—without an open bidding process—to a company with close ties to the Administration.”24 By June 2006, the company had raked in some $73 million from its Katrina work for the government—about $243,000 a day.25
Instead of a serious government relief operation in New Orleans, the forces that most rapidly mobilized were the Republican-connected corporations—many of the very companies making a killing off the Iraq occupation. To further aid these companies, President Bush repealed the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which required federal contractors to pay a prevailing wage to its workers26 (he was later forced to restore it). This enabled the companies to pay bottom dollar to workers while reaping massive corporate profits. In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, Vice President Dick Cheney’s “former” company Halliburton/KBR (the greatest corporate beneficiary of the Iraq War) was given $30 million to “assess pumps and infrastructure in the city and construct a facility to support recovery efforts,”27 while the Shaw Group (which was paid more than $135 million in Iraq) was given more than $700 million in Katrina contracts.28 Both companies were represented by a lobbyist named Joseph Allbaugh, who just happened to be President Bush’s former campaign manager and the former head of FEMA.29 Eventually, the government significantly raised the ceilings of its contracts to Republican-connected firms: $950 million for Shaw, $1.4 billion for Fluor, and $575 million for Bechtel.30 Fluor’s Katrina project was run by Alan Boeckmann, the same manager who was in charge of the company’s Iraq contracts. “Our rebuilding work in Iraq is slowing down,” he told Reuters. “And this has made some people available to respond to our work in Louisiana.”31
Some began referring to New Orleans and the surrounding disaster area as “Baghdad on the Bayou.” As The Nation’s Christian Parenti reported in a dispatch from New Orleans, “It seems the rescue effort is turning into an urban war game: An imaginary domestic version of the total victory that eludes America in Baghdad will be imposed here, on New Orleans. It’s almost as if the Tigris—rather than the Mississippi—had flooded the city. The place feels like a sick theme park—Macho World—where cops, mercenaries, journalists and weird volunteers of all sorts are playing out a relatively safe version of their militaristic fantasies about Armageddon and the cleansing iron fist.”32 With U.S. forces spread thinly across multiple war zones, the landscape was ripe for some major-league disaster profiteering by the rapidly expanding world of private security and military companies.
Blackwater was hardly the only mercenary firm to take advantage of the tremendous profit opportunity in the great disaster. As business leaders and government officials talked openly of changing the demographics of one of America’s most culturally vibrant cities, mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, American Security Group, Wackenhut, Kroll, and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) fanned out to guard private businesses and homes, as well as government projects and institutions. Within two weeks of the hurricane, the number of private security companies registered in Louisiana jumped from 185 to 235 and would continue to climb as the weeks passed. Some, like Blackwater, were under federal contract. Others were hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III, who brought in private security to guard his $3 million private estate and his luxury hotels, which were under consideration for a lucrative federal contract to house FEMA workers.33
A possibly deadly incident involving hired guns underscored the dangers of private forces policing American streets. One private security guard said that on his second night in New Orleans, where he was on contract with a wealthy business owner, he was traveling with a heavily armed security detail en route to pick up one of his boss’s associates and escort him through the chaotic
city. The security guard said their convoy came under fire from “black gangbangers” on an overpass near the poor Ninth Ward neighborhood. “At the time, I was on the phone with my business partner,” he recalled. “I dropped the phone and returned fire.” The guard said he and his men were armed with AR-15s and Glocks and that they unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. “After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said.”
Then, he said, “the Army showed up, yelling at us and thinking we were the enemy. We explained to them that we were security. I told them what had happened and they didn’t even care. They just left.” Five minutes later, the guard said, Louisiana state troopers arrived on the scene, inquired about the incident, and then asked him for directions on “how they could get out of the city.” The guard said that no one ever asked him for any details of the incident and no report was ever made. “One thing about security,” he said, “is that we all coordinate with each other—one family.” That coordination apparently did not include the offices of the Secretaries of State in Louisiana and Alabama, which said they had no record of his company.
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