PRIVATE CONTRACTORS

Sheraton: An Author’s Note

When I landed in Iraq in October 2003, the first place I went was the front door of the Baghdad International Airport, dragging my suitcase behind me, my travel companion Russell Cummings following. We were both eager to get out of the airport and into the city of Baghdad. At the entrance, a very tall American-looking guy waiting there introduced himself as John Jones of KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root).

KBR is a major contracting and recruiting company for military men who still want to work in a related field after their retirement. It has rapidly become a club for former Special Forces men who are accustomed to an exciting and sometimes violent existence and who are grateful to find employment of the sort they feel most comfortable with. At an average salary of $100,000 per year, retired Special Forces men between the ages of thirty-five and fifty are delighted to go back to work for a few years, particularly in the field of security and in areas of difficult circumstance and unrest.

Jones was looking for his assistant, another American, who oversees airport security for KBR. It seems we weren’t leaving the airport as quickly or easily as we thought. We waited for about half an hour before the security man arrived with the news that we were all set to go into the city of Baghdad, to the Sheraton Hotel.

From reading the newspapers, I had no idea of the level of danger awaiting anyone who landed at Baghdad International Airport. If you were not picked up by a military convoy, you were severely placing your life at risk. Even the convoys at times were attacked on the way back to Baghdad.

The drive from the airport to Baghdad took about an hour. We had to proceed quite slowly, with alternating bursts of speed as we negotiated “ambush alley,” which went on for about seven miles. You never knew when someone with an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) would shoot across your bow.

We navigated “ambush alley” successfully and arrived safely at the Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad. By this time I had come to know John Jones a little bit, but I never again saw his airport security man who was constantly having problems out there at the airport.

The Sheraton Hotel is a misnomer—the Sheraton Hotel Corporation will not admit that there is a Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad. Even I, a former Sheraton employee for nine years, was told there is no Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad. The truth is that the Sheraton Hotel Corporation was caught by Saddam in a corporate tangle, which ended up with Saddam taking the hotel away from the parent company. This was the kind of move that Saddam had been making for some time against American corporations that did not give in to Iraqi government extortions.

I quickly saw that no American company would put up the kind of money it took to create a hotel of the sumptuous quality the Sheraton, Baghdad enjoyed. The name Sheraton was all over the hotel despite its non-association with the American hotel company.

We did not check in, but went immediately to the eighth floor with our luggage. The eighth floor of the hotel was leased out in its entirety to KBR, as was half of the seventh floor. The offices of KBR were on the eighth floor; the bedrooms for its transitory personnel were on the seventh floor. Russell and I were each given a room on the seventh floor, which were sumptuous by any standards, though the maid service was lacking and chairs were missing. The beds were not really made up, but the single sheet was clean. We knew we were lucky to have a clean, safe place to sleep.

The Sheraton felt at times more like a crazy office park than a hotel. On the fourth floor of the Sheraton, FOX News had their Baghdad HQ. Russell and I thought we should call on our neighbors. The first person we met was an Iraqi “businessman,” who was hired by FOX to fix any problems they might run into. His name was Amore, pronounced like the French word for “love.” He introduced us to the manager of the FOX HQ. Soon Russell and I had the run of the fourth floor and spent quite a bit of time of the first few days watching FOX News broadcasts to New York.

Their star broadcaster was a former NBC correspondent in Iraq named Dana Lewis. I was very impressed with his delivery on screen, and I introduced myself to him saying I was in Baghdad to write a book, continuing in the tradition of The Green Berets and of my last book, The Hunt for Bin Laden.

The FOX News group served a fine luncheon and supper at their dining/recreation room, which always had cold soft drinks and a TV set on. But most valuable was their direct line to New York City, which they also let me use on occasion. I hope I never abused the privilege, but when I needed to make a call to the United States the Fox phone was always there.

The other connection I had to home was my satellite phone, which had served me well over Christmas of 2002, when I was in Afghanistan. The satellite phone worked most of the time from the Sheraton Hotel as we stood out on our balcony, overlooking the mosque and the palace. Directly below us was the deserted area where the statue of Saddam Hussein had been pulled down for television viewers around the world to see.

John Jones, a former Green Beret and fellow member of Chapter 38 Special Forces Association (Fort Campbell, Kentucky) was very gracious to me. It was impossible to get secure transportation inside of Baghdad without having some official connection, and John saw to it that we were able to get where we wanted to go in the city. And thus began my odyssey of traveling around Iraq in the midst of counterinsurgency and terrorism. While I was there, five helicopters were shot down. Nevertheless traveling by chopper was the only way to travel around the country. There were convoys taking gasoline and food all the way from Kuwait to Turkey, run by KBR and the military, but with the worries of ambushes and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and considering the slower pace of convoy travel, we took our chances in the air.

By the time we left, Russell Cummings (retired Special Forces himself) had been offered a job with KBR, which he immediately accepted. In all, our time and travels with KBR showed us yet another side to the war, the search for Saddam, and the massive effort involved in rebuilding a nation.

A Murky Area

As of late October 2003, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) did not have a large presence in Iraq. At most, there were some NGO “Command and Control,” or assessment teams, but that was about it. “Private contractors such as KBR are not really considered to be the same entities as NGOs, but this is a murky area to get into,” said an officer with the 101st Airborne Division.

The private contractor’s involvement in modern warfare has grown exponentially in the last ten years or so. It is now ten times the private involvement during Operation DESERT STORM in 1991, according to Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution military analyst. With manpower estimates ranging between ten thousand and twenty thousand people, that would place private contractors in second place behind the United States in terms of the number of people they had contributed to the Coalition.

There were a number of contracting firms with a foothold in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM support. The aerospace giant Northrop Grumman had its own contracting business—Vinnell Corporation, based in Fairfax, Virginia, and operating mainly in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

MPRI, a division of L-3 Communications, is also based in Virginia—no surprise as Virginia is also home to Langley and “the farm.” MPRI has seen action in many African theaters, Bosnia, Eastern Europe, and South America. Among their job postings were: “Public Affairs Trainers” who “provide professional and skill training to Iraqi journalists and broadcasters” and “Military Trainers” who concentrate on developing professional soldiering skills in new Iraqi Army recruits. DynCorp, a division of Computer Sciences Corporation, is also from Virginia. Don’t let the innocuous name fool you; these guys don’t program computers.

There are quite a few non-American contractors in Iraq. ArmorGroup (United States and the United Kingdom) and their subsidiary Defense Systems Ltd. are present in Iraq, as well as many other Middle Eastern countries, African republics, and in South America. Control Risks Group, Ltd., and Sandline International are both from Britain as well. An emphasis is placed on protecting power, oil, and electricity resources, which private contractors do daily. Erinys is a little-known security contractor staffed with former South African Special Forces, who train more than sixty-five hundred Iraqis in how to effectively guard their oil fields.

The largest contractor in Iraq by far is Kellogg, Brown & Root, otherwise known as KBR. KBR is a unit of Halliburton, a huge, politically connected Houston, Texas, conglomerate, once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. KBR handles every task imaginable: from feeding soldiers to logistics, and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure.

Tivador Toth has been working for KBR for nine years, as director of engineering. He had been in Hungary before the Iraq War. Toth arrived with his KBR team in Kuwait in March 2003 with the first Coalition troops and began the construction of a base camp on a large airfield. KBR takes over logistical functions that can free up U.S. troops for more traditional duties, such as combat. By July he had moved into Iraq, straight to Tikrit.

It is up to the government to determine the amount of money that will be spent on rebuilding Iraq, and liaisons working with companies like KBR determine how these funds will be allocated. Whatever the government decides the cost will be for the particular contract, KBR adds 2 percent to the total, “almost nothing,” according to Toth. As for what he thinks the U.S. government will eventually spend in Iraq, he wouldn’t wager a guess.

The construction and logistics arm of KBR checks on the availability of the client’s (in this case, the U.S. Army) requirements in the local markets to coordinate exactly what they need. Plans, designs, and calculations estimate how much it will cost, a timeline of how long it will take, and how to be the most efficient. The Army decides whether it will accept the estimate—a process that Toth said sometimes took too long.

Manpower is not a problem—private contracting firms have ready access to personnel. They come as advisers, trainers, instructors, and leaders from a multitude of nations, including the United States, Bosnia, and Hungary, or are hired in the indigenous country—in this case Iraq. It is the nonstop, eighteen-hour workdays, from early morning until after midnight, that sap their strength.

The task of rebuilding Iraq and restoring self-sufficiency to its people will not be an easy task, and it simply will not be over in a year or two. And when the Coalition and their private contractors finally do pick up shop and leave, Toth believes that they will leave a vacuum in their wake.

John Jones

John Jones is the chief of Middle Eastern security for KBR. His personal history with warfare and the Special Forces goes back to 1962. After completing Special Forces Training Group in 1963, he served as a junior demolitions expert on a Special Forces “A” in Vietnam in 1964. At twenty years of age, he underwent his “baptism of fire” when the CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group, an Asian mercenary group) platoon he was advising was ambushed by the North Vietnamese Army. He and the platoon “ran” for three days before he could get a helicopter to evacuate the seriously wounded. He kept the walking wounded with him as they managed to fight their way back to his camp, Duc-Co. He was awarded the Bronze Star with “V” device for his actions. Jones’s twenty-year career included seven years in conventional airborne units as a platoon sergeant. In 1978 he was in Panama as the senior engineer on a Special Forces “A” team (SCUBA) when the opportunity came to volunteer for Delta Force, a new counterterrorist organization being formed by COL Charlie Beckwith, a Special Forces legend, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Jones immediately volunteered for the selection program.

Jones was accepted by the board and began the rigorous Delta Force training. By the time Jones began his Delta training, he had already completed the other Army schools and programs that are considered by professional soldiers to be the most demanding. He questioned what this new training course would offer that he had not already experienced. He soon found out—between keeping up with the high standards of the organization, the intellectual aspect of the training and the peer pressure, it was one of the most demanding courses he had ever completed. Jones learned skills and concepts that would serve him well for the rest of his life.

He also came to respect COL Beckwith well above other officers he had served with during his career and felt that COL Beckwith also respected him. Perhaps Beckwith admired Jones’s unconventional “the ends justify the means” approach, while Jones clearly admired the brilliance and ferocity of the Special Forces legend.

Jones was now a master sergeant in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, or SFOD-D, also known as Delta Force. Among the many missions Jones and Beckwith took part in, the Delta Force mission with particular lasting impact on war planning and on Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was Operation EAGLE CLAW.

EAGLE CLAW

In April 1980, Delta Force was alerted with a potential mission to rescue American hostages held by Iranian militants in Tehran, Iran. COL Beckwith would be the ground commander. The rescue mission would be very complex; members of all four branches of the Armed Forces were involved and the plan included the use of twenty aircraft.

Four MC-130s were to bring the Delta team, the Air Force combat controllers, and the Ranger Company into the staging area/helicopter refueling point outside Tehran, code-named Desert One. Beckwith began planning in earnest, and requested that ten RH-53 helicopters be available for the mission. The Air Force was only able to provide eight birds, their reasoning being that only eight RH-53s could fit onto the deck of an aircraft carrier.

While Delta Force was to perform the actual rescue, a platoon from Charlie Company, 1st BN/75th Ranger Regiment was to provide security for the men and equipment once it landed at Desert Two, the staging area where the hostages would be brought after they were rescued from Tehran. Unfortunately, the mission never made it past Desert One.

The combined rescue force assembled in Egypt on April 21, 1980. Three days later, a fleet of C-141 Starlifters carried the 120-man force to Masirah Island, off the coast of Oman, where they transferred to three MC-130 Combat Talons, accompanied by three fuel-bearing EC-130s.

The Delta Force/Ranger task force landed two hundred miles southeast of Tehran at 2200 hours and waited for the arrival of eight RH-53D “Sea Stallion” helicopters that had lifted off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. A twelve-man road watch team, composed primarily of Rangers, was along to secure the site while the helicopters refueled. The team would return to Egypt on one of the Combat Talons.

Before dawn on April 25, SFOD-D was to be flown to a predetermined coordinate by the Sea Stallions, where they were met by CIA assets, who led them to a nearby safe house. The helicopters would remain at their own hide site until the assault on the U.S. embassy compound where the American hostages were held. The plan was to use the helicopters to ferry the hostages to waiting transport.

Beckwith’s most important HUMINT ground asset was retired Special Forces legend Dick Meadows, who was in Tehran under the cover of an Irishman. Meadows had conducted the surveillance of the objective, and if the mission had been a “go,” he would have taken COL Beckwith on a recon mission prior to the Delta team’s insertion.

The task of the Rangers was to secure a landing area for the transports. The Rangers were to fly from Egypt to Manzariyeh, Iran, and secure the airfield there. They would land if possible, or parachute in if enemy resistance was offered.

Once the airfield, which was thirty-five miles south of Tehran, was secure, the Rangers would hold it while C-141s arrived to airlift the hostages and the Delta Force team back to Egypt. The Rangers would then “dry up,” or remove all signs of their presence, render the field useless, and be airlifted out themselves.

Taking over and securing a hostile airfield within enemy territory is one of the primary components of the Ranger mission. They were prepared to hold the field as long as necessary if there were not enough transports to take everyone out in one trip. During their training, the Rangers worked out all probable scenarios on a mock-up of the target airfield in Iran.

However, the Rangers did not cross-train with Delta Force, the Air Force flight crews, or the Marine Sea Stallion crews. No one had cross-trained, and there was no dress rehearsal before the green light came on. This would turn out to be an issue for a congressional investigation conducted after the tragedy that soon unfolded.

Two of the helicopters suffered excessive hydraulics malfunctions within four hours of leaving the deck of the Nimitz on the Arabian Sea; once grounded, one of the hydraulics repairs was too extensive to be performed on-site. The other six choppers were lagging behind due to bad weather. Having “go/no-go” authority, and refusing to risk leaving anyone behind, COL Beckwith aborted the mission.

After Beckwith’s order, one of the Sea Stallions crashed into an EC-130 Hercules while trying to refuel on the ground, creating a huge fireball that engulfed both aircraft. The tip of the Stallion’s main rotor had clipped the cockpit area of the EC-130 as it jockeyed into position for refueling. This dangerous refueling practice was known as “hopscotching,” and has been largely replaced by air-to-air refueling because of the safety hazards involved. Five Air Force crewmen and three Marine helicopter crewmen perished.

There wasn’t enough time to destroy what remained; in the rush to “un-ass the AO” the Sea Stallions were left in place, and the whole scene was under the Iranian military’s control by the next day. Moreover, the ground assets were compromised and almost killed. Although planning for a second mission was begun immediately, it was never attempted.

Later, at the congressional investigation, Beckwith was questioned as to why he hadn’t gone ahead with the rescue mission, despite the loss of the helicopters.

“I promised the President of the United States that we would not go through with the mission if we lost even one hel-icopter,” Beckwith answered. He had been under direct presidential orders, although that was not known by any of the other commanders at Desert One.

The congressional investigators then questioned Beckwith about the problems with Operation EAGLE CLAW.

Beckwith responded with his own question. “Sir, if you had a professional football team with the line practicing in New York, and the backfield in California, and the first time they met up was the day of the big game, how would you expect them to play?”

This was a turning point in combined special ops missions, and led to the founding of JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, less than eight months later. Critical mission failures were directly related to a lack of training, communication, proper rehearsal, and commanders who were unwilling to work with others as part of a joint operation with just one ground commander who has distinct authority over others. The standard Cold War operating procedure of compartmentalization could seriously affect the mission outcome, so JSOC was activated on December 15, 1980, and based at Pope AFB, North Carolina.

Although JSOC’s official purpose is to provide a “unified command structure for conducting joint special operations and exercises,” numerous reports indicate that JSOC is actually the command responsible for conducting U.S. counter-terrorism (CT) operations. According to published reports, JSOC also commands the U.S. military’s Special Missions Units (SMUs). SMUs are tasked with conducting CT operations, strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas, and “special intelligence missions.” JSOC’s patch is symbolic of the cooperation between the Armed Services, with four swords crossing each other over a globe.

Despite its failure, Desert One brought together some of the greatest minds in special operations, including Dick Meadows, Charlie Beckwith, John Jones, and Pete Schoomaker. Schoomaker was a Delta Force Squadron commander on Operation EAGLE CLAW; after twenty years, GEN Schoomaker was back in the desert sands of the Middle East yet again.

Schoomaker commanded SFOD-D squadrons through three decades (1978–1981 and 1989–1992) on and off, and had a mastery and appreciation for unconventional warfare that few could match.

Schoomaker retired as commander of U.S. Special Operations Command at Ft. Mac Dill AFB in Florida in November 2000, and many felt that his knowledge of Special Warfare was lost forever in the post-9/11 Global War on Terror—a campaign in which such knowledge would be needed the most. Things were about to change, though, as for only the second time in the history of the United States, an officer would be taken from retirement and put back on active duty by a president. The first time was by John F. Kennedy, when he asked retired U.S. Army GEN Maxwell Taylor to serve as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962. George W. Bush made his mark on history, and asked Schoomaker to step up to the plate.

On June 17, 2003, President Bush nominated retired GEN Peter J. Schoomaker to be the Army’s thirty-fifth chief of staff. The Senate confirmed Schoomaker before he took up his new duties, and on August 2, 2003, GEN Pete Schoomaker replaced GEN Eric Shinseki.

Shinseki had disagreed with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the size of the U.S. force in Iraq. Was the war in Iraq turning into another Vietnam? The parallel was increasingly drawn between the two conflicts, as the Coalition’s time spent in Iraq mounted.

The most frequent comparison in the special operations community was the similarity of pro-Saddam Iraqi insurgents and the Viet Cong. How do you fight an ideology? The dangers that Coalition forces faced did not meet them on the field of battle, and did not carry a flag or obey the rules of engagement. The skills and lessons learned in Vietnam-era guerrilla warfare could prove to be of great worth in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.

Schoomaker understood the complexities and nuances of unconventional warfare (UW) and counterterrorism (CT). De Oppresso Liber, the motto of Special Forces, was a focus of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, while “Speed, Surprise, and Violence of Action,” the motto of SFOD-D, would also come into play when U.S. forces were able to focus on and strike a definitive enemy force.

The toughest thing to do, then, was to identify the enemy. John Jones, also on the EAGLE CLAW mission, left Delta Force after Beckwith did in 1981. Jones recalled that Beckwith had become a broken man after the incident at Desert One, and lost his shot at becoming a general.

Jones went to Texas after leaving Delta Force. Coincidentally, Texas was home to Halliburton and KBR, though it wasn’t until 1999 that Jones joined KBR, finding a perfect niche for his skills. This time with KBR, he went to Baghdad, and Delta-mate Pete Schoomaker was with him (figuratively) as well. As head of Iraq security for KBR, and headquartered in one of Saddam’s palaces, Jones works on the security concerns in Iraq.

According to Jones, there are four groups of Saddam loyalists that are of major concern since the defeat of the Iraqi Army. The first group of Saddam supporters is motivated by money or their former positions, which they may have lost and would like to regain. Perhaps they’ve lost family members supporting Saddam. They are willing to attack Coalition forces, although in Jones’s opinion, “they are not willing to commit hari-kari and be suicide bombers. They’re willing to do ambushes, but they want to get away and get the money they’re being paid by pro-Saddam groups for doing the ambushes.”

The second group of Saddam supporters is the Shi’ite Muslims in the south of Iraq, who are funded and supported by the Iranians. The Iranian motivation for this is that they do not want a democracy in the Middle East. An Iraqi democracy could be a model that other countries might want to emulate, which would weaken Iran’s monarchy. So, it is to Iran’s advantage that the Coalition fail in Iraq.

The third group is comprised of people with purely terrorist motivations, such as Al Qaeda. They will work with Shi’ites, others, or just by themselves. They will pound on U.S. military forces just for the sake of pounding on them, much as they brought down the World Trade Center, showing the world that America was vulnerable.

The fourth group is the Palestinians. The Palestinians are coming into Iraq to draw attention to and further their cause in Palestine. Not one of these four groups of Saddam supporters is concerned with the well-being of the Iraqi people. The Saddam supporters “are all out for themselves,” Jones said. Only the Coalition forces are truly concerned with encouraging, protecting, and perpetuating the well-being of the Iraqi people.

According to Jones, “The Coalition forces are here for the right reasons—the Iraqi people. We are willing to hedge our bets, and we are willing to risk our young men and women to make that happen.

“When the U.N. and other organizations stand up and criticize us—the Coalition; the Brits, the Spanish, the Australians, whoever is here trying to make that happen … it’s so much bullshit, and the American people buy into it. They should stop and really consider what was going on. But we [Americans] buy into the news media’s thoughts of why we are doing this. The news media is presenting a negative picture that we’re buying into, as we did with Vietnam. What people don’t realize is that Iraq is a pretty big country, about the size of California, eight hundred miles long and three to four hundred miles wide.”

Substantial ground to cover and the simple fact that Coalition forces are so outnumbered by Iraqi population give the Coalition only one choice—to win the support of the Iraqi populace. “We have to win the peace, not force the peace,” Jones explained. “This is only my humble opinion,” he added.

“Understand the difference between those two? Winning the peace is putting these people to work; getting them money that they can support their families with, so that they’re too damn tired at night to pick up a gun and go out and attack the Coalition forces.

“And then when they get their second and third paycheck, and they will have fed their family, their wife is like, ‘Hey, Amman, don’t fuck this up.’ They want to keep this paycheck coming in. That’s what we’ve got to do to win this war, get them to earn money and support their families; something they haven’t been able to do in thirty years.

“Iraqis must be convinced to do the right thing. Try rewarding correct behavior and taking away items or choices for bad behavior. There is a lot of commonality between the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam. There were a lot of lessons learned there that could be applied here. Convoys need to be covered and ambushes need to be stopped before they occur. All of the gasoline that is imported, around a thousand trucks a day, is all being brought in by Coalition forces. A convoy without air cover is a beautiful target to an insurgent.”

The New Iraqi Army

Two new military units have been placed on the border between Iraq and Iran to stop the flow of terrorists into the country. New Iraqi Army units are being trained to perform border security. This army is a battalion-sized unit of former Iraqi soldiers. Former Ba’ath Party loyalists are screened before they are allowed to join, but they are accepted if they want the job and are willing to work with Coalition forces.

The screening was accomplished by a combination of HUMINT (Human Intelligence) and cross-checking of names and information in counterintelligence databases. Questions most important in screening include, but are not limited to: Was the candidate a card-carrying member of the Ba’ath Party? Was the candidate involved in the black market or the drug trade? What was the former position the person held, and did they fit into the mold of an extreme Saddam loyalist?

According to a private-sector trainer, most towns in Iraq are “clannish,” where everybody knows everybody else’s business. This makes it simple in most cases to find out whether a potential recruit was “a good guy or a bad guy.”

Part of the funding for the New Iraq Army, border guards, and other projects comes from Saddam Hussein’s assets, which were frozen, captured, and “held in escrow,” so to speak, after the Coalition invasion, and paid out by the government of Iraq. Money in the Mosul region that used to belong to Saddam has also been put into several hundred schools, playgrounds, youth centers, and a nearby health care facility that treats three hundred people per week.