Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Scahill writes, "Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the 'global war on terror,' with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 private contractors at the ready. Run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies, its forces are capable of overthrowing governments." From Iraq to New Orleans, Blackwater has continued to pull in multi-million-dollar government contracts, mostly without accountability and in near-secrecy.

Four years ago today, the US invasion of Iraq was in its opening hours. Hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries later, another date marked later this month has taken on nearly as much significance. March 31st, 2004. Four employees of the private U.S. security firm Blackwater USA are ambushed as they drive through the center of Fallujah. In images broadcast around the world, their burnt corpses are dragged through the streets. Two of them are strung up from a bridge. This is an excerpt of the PBS documentary, "Private Warriors", going back to that day.

"Private Warriors" - excerpt of PBS documentary.

The U.S. military followed with the first of two major attacks that ended up virtually destroying Fallujah -- and setting off a new wave of Iraqi resistance that continues to this day. Meanwhile, instead of curbing the reliance on contractors in Iraq, the Bush administration has expanded the privatization of war. Blackwater has been one of the biggest recipients. From Iraq to New Orleans, it has continued to pull in multi-million-dollar government contracts, mostly without accountability and in near-secrecy.


AMY GOODMAN: You begin your book about talking about a speech of Donald Rumsfeld’s the day before the September 11 attacks.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary, and gathered before him was the gaggle of corporate executives that had been tapped by the Bush administration to make up the senior civilian leadership at the Pentagon. There was a sort of mixture of people at the Pentagon. On the one hand, you had people from corporate America, from all the defense and weapons manufacturers that were brought in, and then you also had the neoconservative ideologues, people like Paul Wolfowitz. And so, Rumsfeld gives a speech in which he literally declared war on the Pentagon bureaucracy. And he said, “I’ve come not to destroy the Pentagon, but to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”

And then literally the next day the Pentagon would be attacked. But the vision that Rumsfeld sort of laid out that day would become known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine, where you use high technology, small footprint forces and an increased and accelerated use of private contractors in fighting the wars. It also, at the center of the Rumsfeld Doctrine, became regime change in central strategic nations. Rumsfeld and Cheney both had been signers of the Project for a New American Century, that envisioned a new Pearl Harbor as accelerating the agenda, the neoconservative agenda. And, indeed, the day after Rumsfeld laid out that plan, the Pentagon was attacked, and all of a sudden the world became a blank canvas on which Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush could sort of paint their vision.

AMY GOODMAN: What's happened with your website?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I actually got a letter from Blackwater's -- one of Blackwater's many lawyers. They have an army of lawyers. Their counsel of record is Ken Starr, the man who led the impeachment charge against President Clinton. And their previous lawyer was Fred Fielding, who now is President Bush's White House counsel, defending him against the attorney purge scandal. So they have powerhouse law firms, many law firms working for them. We got a letter from their law firm saying that they respect my First Amendment rights to criticize Blackwater, but take down your website. And they said that I’m violating the Lanham Act, which has to do with like corporate competition and trademark. And, I mean, this is intimidation tactics. And we're not going to back down. The website is going to remain up. More on the story.