In this week's cover story in The Nation, Democracy Now!
correspondent Jeremy Scahill reports on how mercenaries from private
security firms like Blackwater USA and BATS are patrolling the streets
in New Orleans. [includes rush transcript]
In his article in
The Nation, Jeremy Scahill writes:
"As business leaders and government officials talk openly of changing
the demographics of what was one of the most culturally vibrant of
America's cities, mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, Intercon,
American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut and an Israeli company
called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) are fanning 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.
Some, like Blackwater, are under federal contract. Others have been
hired by the wealthy elite"
- Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent.
- Read Jeremy Scahill's article: "Blackwater Down"
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, can you talk about the security scene that is enforcing what Naomi Klein has just described to us?
JEREMY SCAHILL: One of the things that I think is really
important to point out is that the very forces that Naomi’s talking
about that are now trying to implement these sort of austerity measures
in some ways and then these policies that target the poor. The forces
that are implementing these policies are being backed up now by the
very forces that we see operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. You have the
U.S. military, of course and the National Guard and there’s an enormous
number – It seems like everyone with a badge and gun is now descending
on New Orleans. But you also have these private security companies like
Blackwater. We have talked extensively about the role of Blackwater in
New Orleans here on Democracy Now!.
I think we have to view this in the context of what we have
seen for decades, in U.S. foreign policy and that is the hidden hand of
the free market and the corporate elite, and then the iron fist of
military force. So, these measures are being backed up by these private
security firms. One of the people who’s brought in private security
companies is a powerful businessman by the name of James Reese. He
lives in the wealthy, elite, gated community of Audubon Place. They
have the only privately owned street in the city of New Orleans. Well,
he brought in a company called Instinctive Shooting International,
which is an Israeli firm, and it's actually owned and operated by a guy
who lives in New Jersey and has had contracts to train New York City
police officers, but he is an Israeli martial arts expert.
This is part of a bigger trend of outsourcing the training of
homeland security to Israeli firms. He brought in these Israeli
paramilitaries one of whom bragged to me about having been involved
with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. They're standing there in front
of the Audubon Place community. I went up and talked to them, and one
of the guys said to me, we fight the Palestinians all day every day of
our lives, and then tapping on his M-16, he said, most Americans, when
they see this, they get scared. It’s enough to scare them away. But a
lot of Americans, I think, would be shocked to know there are Israeli
paramilitaries patrolling the streets of a U.S. city.
But what's more significant is who James Reese is, the man who
brought them in. He serves in Mayor Ray Nagin's administration. He also
runs a powerful business lobby, and Naomi has talked about him as well.
He also was quoted openly in the Wall Street Journal saying he doesn't
want black people or poor people to return to New Orleans. These kinds
of sentiments are then being backed up by these military and
paramilitary forces. Blackwater is also a very interesting case. They
got a lucrative $400,000 contract from the federal government to
provide security for FEMA reconstruction projects.
The head of Blackwater, the founder, is a man named Eric
Prince. He is a mega-billionaire from Michigan. His father was a close
friend of Gary Bauer. His father helped to found the Family Research
Council. His sister, Betsy, is married to Dick DeVos, who is going to
be the gubernatorial candidate of the Republican Party in the state of
Michigan. He, Dick DeVos, is the son of Richard DeVos, the founder of
Amway, the greatest benefactor in the history of the Republican Party,
the man who largely funded the Republican revolution in 1994, this
Christian fundamentalist corporation, Amway. So he comes from a
powerful Michigan family. He has given hundreds of thousands of dollars
to the Republican Party. He started this firm Blackwater Security. He
himself is a former navy S.E.A.L. He staffs it with people he describes
as patriots, although, it’s interesting, they have been doing
recruiting in Chile, hiring men who were trained under Augusto
Pinochet's regime. So these forces are now – there are about two
hundred of them – in New Orleans right now. One hundred and sixty-four
of them are on a no-bid federal contract with FEMA to provide
protection for these sites. This is part of a bigger push by these
paramilitary firms to gain contracts here in the United States. For
instance, Blackwater seized on the fact that four of their employees
were killed in Fallujah in March of 2004. Eric Prince viewed this as a
profit moment. So, what he did is hired –
AMY GOODMAN: This is that horrible moment –
JEREMY SCAHILL: Where we saw the charred bodies. They
were hanged, and it resulted in the massive U.S. onslaught against
Fallujah that resulted in tens of thousands of people having to flee
the city, scores of people being killed, innocent civilians. Of course,
now Fallujah has become an international symbol of resistance against
the U.S. occupation in Iraq. Well after these four Blackwater
mercenaries were killed in Fallujah and then their bodies mutilated and
hung from a bridge, Eric Prince hired the Alexander Group which is a
powerful Republican lobby firm tied to House Majority Leader, Tom
DeLay, and then hired a former C.I.A. Department of – C.I.A., State
department official, named Coffer Black, to help promote their cause in
Washington. I
In fact, just as the hurricane was hitting, another high-level
person from the Pentagon was hired by the Prince Group, the parent
company of Blackwater, Joseph Schmitz. He had just resigned as the
Inspector General of the Pentagon. He himself was involved with
numerous scandals. So he is then brought on board, and then they get
this contract. What's interesting is that when I spoke to the
Blackwater mercenaries in New Orleans, they said clearly, we're here on
a Department of Homeland Security contract.
That was denied by the Department of Homeland Security. One
them showed me a badge, said he had been deputized by the Governor of
the State of Louisiana. That was then denied. Well, after this report
came out, and it went all over the web, and we talked about it on
Democracy Now!, the response was tremendous.
Blackwater was then under siege from reporters confronting
them with this, and they were forced to admit and so was the federal
government, that in fact, Blackwater was on the Department of Homeland
Security contract and that, in fact, they did operate with a letter
from the Governor of the State of Louisiana, authorizing them to carry
loaded weapons. So they're patrolling in unmarked cars around the
streets, and they said that they were confronting criminals and
stopping looters.
JUAN GONZALEZ: You actually interviewed some who claimed to have been involved in shootouts and to have actually shot people?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right, and this is something that really
underscores the danger of having these kinds of private security forces
on the streets. I was – I walked down to a hotel on the corner of
Bourbon and Canal in the French Quarter called the Astor Crown Plaza.
It's a five star hotel operated by one of the wealthiest businesspeople
in the state of Louisiana, a man named F. Patrick Quinn III. He is
married to Republican State Senator, Julie Quinn. They are a powerful
Louisiana Republican family. He is the owner of the largest hotel chain
in the state of Louisiana, and is a powerhouse hotel owner in the
South, in general.
I was talking to his head of security, a guy named Michael
Montgomery. He told me he was with a company based in Alabama called
Body Guard and Tactical Security. Actually, Juan, when I was talking to
him, he – I said that I was from New York, and he said, “Oh, I was in
New York once.” I said, “Oh, yeah?” He said, “I was there for the New
York Daily News strike,” and I naively thought somehow that he was an
employee, that he had been an employee of the Daily News and I said,
“My colleague and friend, Juan Gonzalez, was one of the leaders of that
strike. He goes, “Oh, I know Juan Gonzalez. I spiked his car.” I said,
what do you mean? He goes, “I was working security there, and we spiked
about forty Daily News employees’ cars at La Guardia airport. He said
he put sugar in the gas tanks of the car. So that was my introduction
to the guy. So we start talking, and then I asked him, well –
JUAN GONZALEZ: So you solved the riddle of that big repair bill I had back in 1990.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, what's interesting, Juan, is you
could send it to the BATS Company, Bodyguard And Tactical Security,
except they don't exist. I talked to the Secretary of State offices in
Alabama and Louisiana. There's no company called BATS registered. They
were wearing uniforms that said Bodyguard and Tactical Security. So as
I talked to him, this representative from the phantom company hired by
a powerful Republican businessman, married to a Republican State
Senator, a major donor to the Republican party and the Bush-Cheney
campaign, operator of a five star hotel, that’s, he said, under
consideration for lucrative FEMA contract to house their workers, it's
interesting, because the hotel remains pretty much empty. There are no
FEMA workers coming in there.
But as I talked to this man who said that he had spiked your
car, he told me a very scary story, that I think is the source for
potential litigation against these private security firms. Michael
Montgomery, the head of BATS, said that on the second night he was in
New Orleans he was going to pick up one of Mr. Quinn's associates. They
got stopped in the ninth ward. He said they came under fire from a
group of people on an overpass that he described as black gang bangers.
He said, “At the time I was on the phone with my business partner.” I
said, “What did you do then?” He said, “I dropped the phone and opened
fire.” I said, “With what kind of weapons?” – “AR-15 assault rifles and
Glock 9's.” Fired up at the people he described as black gang bangers
on this bridge. I said, “Then what happened? Did you kill them?” He
said, “Well, let's just put it this way, I heard a lot of moaning and
screaming, and the shooting stopped. Enough said.”
Well then he said that the Army came and responded to the
incident, surrounded them and thought that “we were the enemy.” That's
how he said it. He said, “I then explained to the Army soldiers that we
were security. They didn't care. They didn't file a report. They left.”
Five minutes later, Louisiana State Troopers come. They ask what
happened. He explains the story to them. They then ask him, “How do we
get out of the city.”
So this is the climate of impunity. This man – and as Michael
Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights points out, how do we
know that he was fired upon? How do we know what that incident was? Why
wouldn't law enforcement file any kind of report on a shootout in which
this guy is openly bragging to having shot up a bunch of people he
described as black gang bangers on an overpass?
So if I, as an investigative journalist, cannot track down
this company, what if you were one of the people who was shot and
wounded by this guy? What if you are the family member of someone who
was killed by him and you cannot trace down this company? In fact, the
Louisiana agency that governs and licenses private security firms, when
I talked to them, they were furious, and they say that they are going
to be serving papers on him today to cease and desist operating as a
security officer in the State of Louisiana.
What's key is that he was hired by Patrick Quinn. Patrick
Quinn is liable for the torts of his employees. So if this man, in
fact, did shoot up a bunch of people, Patrick Quinn, this wealthy,
powerful businessman is also responsible for it. What's interesting is
that Patrick Quinn, bringing in an apparently unlicensed company to
provide security, is that while you have shelters teeming with people
desperate for work, Patrick Quinn is bringing in Mexican workers from
Texas to clean out his hotel, and because of Davis-Bacon, they don’t
have to pay them – because of the wipe out of the Davis-Bacon Act, they
don't have to pay them livable wages. So that’s why they don't want to
go in and hire, for instance, African-American men and women to come
and clean the hotel, because that gives them jobs and keeps them in the
community. Instead, you bring in cheap labor from Texas, Mexicans piled
on the back of a truck.
AMY GOODMAN: Soon after you did your piece, Jeremy, on
Blackwater, when you first got down to New Orleans, and we posted it on
the website, we started to get letters and email. There's an email
petition of Blackwater employees. Describe it.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, the Blackwater employees and
families have initiated a petition against me. What's interesting is
that they don't take issue with any of the facts that I have reported.
They take issue with the fact that I quote one of the Blackwater
employees complaining that he's only getting paid $350 because
normally, they get $1,000 or more –
AMY GOODMAN: A day.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right, a day. They say they're just
trying to provide for their families and put food on the table. These
guys are making $1,000-plus a day in Iraq and have all sorts of tax
breaks. Well, now they're complaining of only getting $350 a day.
The letter, this petition goes on to talk about how they're
like any computer programmer or any auto worker. What's interesting is
– I don't know about you, but I have never met an auto worker who makes
$1,000 a day.
AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, you can describe how this
security scene that Jeremy is describing on the streets of New Orleans
fits in to your assessment of purging the poor?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, Amy, I think what it really
underscores is the violence of the economic project itself. I mean,
what we are talking about is a wrenching process of uprooting hundreds
of thousands of people, who are deeply rooted culturally, historically,
economically, in the city of New Orleans. New Orleans is a city with a
rich radical history, and people aren’t going to accept this without a
fight. That's why the radical gentrifiers of New Orleans are arriving
with their own private armies.
You know, I was talking about this with Jeremy yesterday. It's
almost like a kind of yuppy sci-fi version of old-school colonial
warfare. It's like the military industrial complex has been replaced by
the mercenary condominium complex. Because, what we are talking about
here, the characters that Jeremy is describing like Quinn and Reese,
these are the key land developers in New Orleans. They are the ones who
are hiring these mercenaries to be the muscle behind the projects. So,
I think that that is really the message.
But there's something else at play. You hear these names like
Blackwater and then on the contracting side, the people getting the job
to rebuild New Orleans are Bechtel, Halliburton, Fluor. These are the
same companies that are in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they arrived very,
very quickly, and the reason they arrived so quickly is because
reconstruction now is a standing multi-billion dollar industry, global
industry. Whenever there is a war or natural disaster, they move in
instantly, often with pre-signed contracts.
You know, we were all in New Orleans, and I think, you know,
that city needs a lot of things. It needs pumps. It needs affordable
housing. It needs water, and it needs electricity, but I didn't see any
shortage of law enforcement. As Jeremy said, you know, everybody with a
badge and gun is there. So, the presence of these privatized police
forces, I think is more ideological than it is anything else. Ideology
is really driving the reconstruction project, and if you listen to
what's being said by groups like the Republican Study Committee,
they're very clear about this.
They talk in the language of experimentation. They talk, like
Ted said, “Bringing free market ideas to the disaster zone is white hot
right now.” Treasury secretary, John Snow, said, you know, “This is a
time for all sorts of experiments.” It's almost like they're putting on
lab coats and seeing this area of massive humanitarian devastation as a
place where they can vindicate their ideology. Their ideology, you
know, suffered a pretty serious blow by the disaster itself.
I mean, there was talk in the first couple of days after the
levees broke, that this was going to be for neoconservativism what the
fall of the Berlin wall was for communism. That this was itself this
incredibly graphic, damning event for the ideology of privatization,
and Harry Belafonte, the other night, you know, he had a great quote at
the fund-raiser organized by Wynton Marsalis where he said “This was
the result of a political authority that subcontracts its
responsibility to the private sector and abdicates responsibility
altogether,” but of course what Jeremy is describing is a radical
abdication, further abdication in response to the disaster.
What I saw when I was in New Orleans was really the emergence
of an absolutely unmasked corporate military state. Now, I know these
sound like buzz words, but I'll give you an example. One of the images
that's really stuck in my mind is the conversion of a huge Wal-Mart
into a military base in downtown New Orleans. They call it Camp
Wal-Mart. So here you have – and we even hear people suggesting that
Wal-Mart should replace FEMA at running disaster response.
Another example of this is: There's a building in Baton Rouge,
which is the Capital Annex, which is attached to the state legislature.
It's where a lot of the government offices are located. Well, after the
flood, the state – the Capital Annex building was opened up to many of
the business groups that we have been discussing.
So, now, you have in that building, a complete merger of
government interests. You have got the Mayor's office working out of
that building. You have the state legislature working out of that
building, but you also have James Reese's business association. You
also have Greater New Orleans, Inc., which is a private lobby group
representing everyone from Shell and Chevron to Coca-Cola, in that
building. Then you have the Association of Conventions and Tourism,
which is another private business group in that building.
Every morning – I was told this by the Assistant Secretary of
Economic Development for Louisiana, he said, every morning there's an
8:30 meeting where seven to ten people from government and business sit
down and plan the reconstruction of New Orleans. So, it is literally
the merger – completely unmasked – of corporate and state interests.
There's no distinction. No, they're not inviting the Teacher's Union to
be at these meetings. They're not inviting housing rights activists to
be at the meetings. You even see this in the repopulation plans for
this city.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Naomi, if I can just interrupt, because we have to cut this segment off, I'd like to ask Jeremy, any final remarks?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Senator Barak Obama has questioned giving
this $400,000 contract to the Blackwater security firm. I think that's
a question that people need to be posing to their officials, because
Congress could move swiftly to cut the welfare chain off for these
private security firms, and it's something concrete that people can do
right now as we look at the reconstruction of New Orleans, is to insure
that as people do try to come back and rebuild their communities, that
they don't have to face down the very paramilitary thugs that are
killing people in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, Naomi Klein, thanks so much for being with us. This is Democracy Now!
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