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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 27th,
2007 - Cutting Costs, Bending Rules, And a Trail of Broken Lives News article by the Washington Post |
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Cutting Costs, Bending
Rules, And a Trail of Broken Lives Ambush in Iraq Last November Left Four Americans Missing And a String
of Questions About the Firm They Worked For By Steve Fainaru Washington Post July 29, 2007 Baghdad - The convoy was
ambushed in broad daylight last Nov. 16, dozens of armed men swarming over 37
tractor-trailers stretching for more than a mile on southern Iraq's main
highway. The attackers seized four Americans and an Austrian employed by
Crescent Security Group, a small private security firm. Then they fled. None of the hostages has
been found, eight months after one of the largest and most brazen kidnappings
of Americans since the March 2003 invasion. Crescent is shuttered, like
dozens of other companies that have come and gone in Iraq's booming market
for private security services. The firm leaves behind a trail of broken lives
and a record of alleged misconduct. In March, the U.S. military barred
Crescent from U.S. bases after it was found with weapons prohibited for
private security companies, including rocket launchers and grenades,
according to documents and interviews with former Crescent employees and U.S.
officials. An investigation by The
Washington Post found that Crescent violated U.S. military regulations while
being paid millions of dollars to support the U.S.-led mission in Iraq. The
company routinely sacrificed safety to cut costs. On the day of the
kidnappings, just seven Crescent guards protected the immense convoy as it
drove through southern Iraq, a force that security experts described as inadequate
to fend off a major attack. Former senior managers with
Crescent denied any wrongdoing and said the guards who were seized had been
well equipped and simply failed to thwart the kidnappers. "We pretty much catered
to them. We spoiled them," said Scott Schneider, the company's former
director of security. "You know, basically the operators screwed
up," he added. "I mean, you hate to speak ill of people, but the
way the situation transpired, they just made mistake after mistake" as
the convoy came under attack. Schneider oversaw Crescent's
security operations for more than two years, despite having pleaded guilty,
according to court records, to misdemeanor charges of breaking and entering
and domestic violence in Michigan in the mid-1990s. Under U.S. law, it is a
felony for domestic violence offenders to carry firearms, a prohibition that
was adopted by the Defense Department for military and civilian personnel. Crescent's managing partner,
Franco Picco, said he fired Schneider, who earned $10,000 a month, after
becoming aware of his criminal background shortly after the kidnappings. Based in Kuwait City, about
an hour from Iraq's southern border, Crescent was formed in 2003, part of a
security industry that mushroomed overnight in Iraq in response to troop
shortages and mounting insurgent attacks. By this year, the Private Security
Company Association of Iraq, a trade group based in Baghdad's Green Zone,
listed 177 active foreign and Iraqi security companies. The Pentagon has said
that some 20,000 security contractors support the U.S.-led coalition,
although some estimates are considerably higher. The industry is largely
unregulated by the U.S. and Iraqi governments, leaving companies to establish
their own standards for operating on the battlefield. This article is based on two
eyewitness accounts of the ambush, company documents and interviews with
former Crescent employees, including the four missing Americans. Two weeks
before they were taken, the men expressed growing concern for their personal
safety to a reporter traveling with them in Iraq. "We're not the badasses
we used to think we were," said one of them, Paul Reuben, now 40, a
former Marine from Buffalo, Minn., sitting in his Kuwait City dormitory on
the eve of a convoy mission. "I realize I'm vulnerable." The guards have not been
seen since the Jan. 3 airing of a video made by their captors. Picco said he
is convinced that the men are still alive. He said he has spent more than
$300,000 seeking information about their fate and blamed U.S. and British
authorities for failing to follow up leads that he believes would have led to
their release. "Alive or dead, I will
bring them back," Picco said during an interview this month in Kuwait
City, where he continues to run logistics and catering businesses.
"Whether it takes me 10 years or a month. That's just the moral thing to
do. ... These guys are part of me." Relatives of the missing men
have begun to speak out publicly, providing some details about them and the
ambush in newspaper articles and on Web sites. The families have offered a
$150,000 reward for information leading to release of the men. U.S. officials in Baghdad
said the investigation is still open. "We have no information to
indicate they are not alive, but we are concerned about their health and
welfare," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Reeker. "Efforts
toward their safe recovery are a high priority for the United States." There has been no
communication from the captors, according to U.S. officials, Crescent and the
families. The attack and seizure have
spotlighted Crescent's low-budget approach to private security and raised
questions about whether the company was vulnerable to such an attack. Another
missing guard, Jonathon Cote, now 24, a former Army paratrooper from Buffalo,
N.Y., described Crescent as "ghetto" because of its relatively low
pay, its minimal hiring standards and what he and other guards described as
management's willingness to bend rules and cut corners. "I've worked for a
billion companies, and this is the worst I've ever worked for," said
Brad Ford, a former Crescent guard who now works in Afghanistan for another
security firm. "I couldn't believe how they were getting away with all
the stuff they were getting away with." Crescent crafted its own
military identification badges to enable its employees - including unscreened
Iraqis - to gain admittance to U.S. bases, according to several former
guards, two of whom provided copies of the badges. Some guards smuggled
weapons and liquor across the Iraq-Kuwait border in secret compartments they
referred to as stash boxes, the former employees said. As attacks became more
frequent and lethal, Crescent continued to armor its gun trucks - black
Chevrolet Avalanches with belt-fed machine guns mounted in back - with steel
plates welded inside the doors, even though some guards had requested
additional protection. The company often hired
guards with little or no experience. Reuben, the company medic, was a
self-described alcoholic who was not certified as an emergency medical
technician and had resigned as a suburban Minneapolis police officer in 2003
after a drunk-driving violation. David Horner, 54, a truck driver from
Visalia, Calif., said Crescent hired him over the Internet in 2005 and put
him to work immediately, even though he had not served in the military since
1973 and had never picked up an AK-47, the automatic assault rifle used by
many of the company's guards. On Nov. 16, Crescent's
trucks pushed into Iraq without any of the firm's Iraqi guards, leaving the
ill-fated convoy severely undermanned. The company also had not filed
paperwork with the ground-control center in Baghdad that monitors nonmilitary
convoys, according to those authorities, who still do not list the Crescent
hostages among their casualty figures for killed, wounded and missing because
the convoy was unregistered. That oversight limited Crescent's communication
with the command center responsible for coordinating the military's emergency
response to attacks on civilian convoys. Security experts described
the lapses as unconscionable. "It's insane. I don't know how you could
sleep," said Cameron Simpson, country operations manager for ArmorGroup
International, a British firm that protects one-third of all nonmilitary
convoys in Iraq. ArmorGroup normally assigns 20 security contractors to
protect no more than 10 tractor-trailers. Picco said employees such as
Reuben, who had previously worked for two other security companies, were
presumed to have been vetted before joining Crescent. He said the company
shunned fully armored trucks, not to save money but because guards preferred
vehicles that allowed them to return fire and maneuver more easily. Picco's
deputy, Paul Chapman, said the Italian military, which held the contract, was
responsible for monitoring the convoy, even though private companies provided
the trailers as well as security. "We tried to be 110
percent legal in everything we did," Chapman said, adding that Crescent
was licensed by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Picco said the team leader
that day, John Young, 44, an Army veteran and carpenter from Lee's Summit,
Mo., made the decision to leave a team of Iraqis behind without the company's
knowledge and went into Iraq with just seven Western guards to protect the 37
trailers. "I think complacency set in," Picco said. "Why would
you leave a complete team behind?" But Andy Foord, a Crescent
guard from Britain who was left bound inside a truck as the kidnappers fled,
said in an interview that none of the Iraqi guards had reported for work that
morning. He said Young informed Crescent's operations center in Kuwait City
that the undermanned convoy intended to proceed into Iraq. "They knew,
because John called them from the Iraq border," Foord said. Several former Iraqi
employees of Crescent were spotted among the kidnappers, according to Foord
and a written report by Jaime Salgado, another guard who was left behind and
later freed. Foord said he believes the attack was set up by an Iraqi
interpreter who had advance knowledge of the mission. Crescent is "blaming
these boys, and they're not here to answer about it themselves," said
Sharon DeBrabander, the mother of Young, the missing team leader. "I
don't think that's right. They're covering up their butts, that's what
they're doing." 'I Only Came Over Here For the Money' "War is inevitable. You
cannot cancel it. You can only postpone it to your advantage." That
message was scrawled on a dry erase board in Picco's Kuwait City office. Picco, 38, who was born in
Italy and reared in South Africa, formed Crescent in 2003, initially to
protect trucks belonging to his shipping company, Mercato del Golfo. "Everyone knew when
Iraq opened up there was going to be money to be made," he said. As business boomed but
security deteriorated, Crescent expanded. The company gained a reputation for
traveling to the riskiest destinations, often for half as much as its
competitors. At its peak, it earned $600,000 to $800,000 a month providing
convoy protection, according to Picco, and was profiled in a 2006 book on
private security contracting, "A Bloody Business," by Gerald
Schumacher, a retired U.S. Special Forces colonel. "We protect the
military. Isn't that mind-boggling?" Picco said in an interview last
November. "And I'm talking about escorting soldiers, as well. Isn't that
frightening?" Most of Crescent's employees
were military and law enforcement veterans willing to accept extreme risk in
exchange for fast money and adventure. Crescent handed out monthly pay in
envelopes stuffed with Kuwaiti dinars. The guards took the money to currency
exchange houses, which transferred the funds into their bank accounts. "All you're thinking
about is the money," said Chris Jackson, 28, a former Marine from Salem,
N.H. "You have $50,000 in the bank, and all you're thinking about is,
'Another month and I'll have $57,000, another month and I'll have $64,000.'
" By the end of last year, Jackson said, he had saved $55,000, even
after splurging on Las Vegas vacations and a $5,000 Panerai watch. "I hate to say it, but
I am so thankful for this war," he said. "I only came over here for
the money, and I didn't even know I could do this job until two years ago. I
didn't know it was available to me." Crescent's Iraqi employees
were recruited by word of mouth; most lived around the southern city of
Basra, a hotbed of Shiite militias, and were largely unknown to the company.
Crescent used a two-tiered pay scale. Guards from the United States, Britain
and other Western countries earned $7,000 a month or more. Iraqi guards earned
$600 - roughly $20 a day - but performed the most dangerous work, including
the manning of belt-fed machine guns while exposed in the back of the
Avalanches. Picco said the system was
not ideal but was necessary to hold down costs. "To put 12 white people
on a team, it's not economically viable," he said. Before the attack, relations
between the Western and Iraqi guards had deteriorated. Foord said the Iraqis
were refusing to man the machine guns. After a rash of thefts, Crescent fired
a group of Iraqi guards on his recommendation, Foord said. One month before the
kidnappings, Crescent's entire stockpile of weapons - dozens of AK-47s, PKM
machine guns, grenade launchers, thousands of rounds of ammunition, body
armor - disappeared from locked shipping containers at a compound across the
border in Iraq, Picco and several former employees recalled. Picco said he sent out one
of his Iraqi employees with $50,000 to buy new weapons on the black market.
Some of the guns came back with serial numbers matching those on the stolen
weapons. 'There Was No Place They Couldn't Go' Last August, three months
before the attack, a Crescent-led convoy was transporting trucks to an Iraqi
army compound in Numaniyah, about 50 miles southeast of Baghdad. On an
isolated stretch of Main Supply Route Tampa, the principal highway in
southern Iraq, a bomb struck a Crescent gun truck carrying three Iraqi
guards. One died within minutes. Another was pinned inside the truck, his
hands severed and his femur protruding from his pants-leg. Reuben, the former suburban
Minneapolis police officer who served as the company medic, reached for his
trauma kit. But Crescent had failed to provide him with tourniquets and
morphine, Reuben recalled before he was seized, so he tried to stanch the
bleeding with swatches of fabric he tore from his armored vest. The driver
remained conscious for 45 minutes but bled to death, Reuben said. "If
they saw what I saw, they would get what we need," he said. Picco said Crescent gave
Reuben all the medical supplies he asked for, suggesting that any shortages
stemmed from his own failure to ask. A friendly, heavy-set man
who turned 40 shortly after he was kidnapped, Reuben wore an EMT cap but said
his training came mostly from first-aid courses and books. He said he now
drank alcohol only occasionally. Schneider, Crescent's former director of security,
said that the company was aware of Reuben's history of alcoholism but added
that Reuben had been "cleaning himself up." "In this job, as long
as you have people willing to work for the money, you don't need a
medic," said Cote, the missing former paratrooper. "The military is
different, because you care about your soldiers, and they're doing it for
service and commitment. For us, it's like a paycheck. I still think you
should have some necessities, but you don't always get those." For employees unable to
obtain the military identification badges needed to gain access to U.S.
bases, Crescent created its own Italian security cards in Kuwait City,
according to former employees. "This thing was used by
the Iraqis, mainly, to get them on base and get them in the
commissaries," said Horner, one of the guards. "It worked sometimes
- sometimes. They could flash this Italian logistics security card, and
depending on how sharp the guard was decided whether they could go in." Horner said the Iraqis were
instructed to identify themselves as Egyptians to avoid arousing suspicion.
He said the Iraqis and some Western contractors used the ID cards to gain
admittance to the Green Zone in Baghdad; Camp Victory, near Baghdad
International Airport; and Logistics Support Area Anaconda, the largest U.S.
base in Iraq. "There's no place they
couldn't go," Horner said of the Iraqis. "They could have been
mapping the whole damn place, and we never would have known." Schneider acknowledged that
Crescent made its own badges but said they were used only in Italian-run
sectors. "We made them up, but they were recognized, so I guess you
could call them official," he said. Picco said that the Italian military
had authorized Crescent to make its own badges and that he had distributed
them judiciously. The badges were not fake, he
said, even though Crescent guards referred to them as fake IDs. "That's not a fact,
it's just an expression," Picco said. 'You Are Going to Die' The route scheduled for Nov.
16 was regarded as safe by the Crescent guards. They made the run almost
daily, part of a long-standing contract to assist the Italian military, which
was withdrawing its troops and equipment from Tallil Air Base near Nasiriyah,
where Picco also operated a restaurant and a pizza joint for soldiers. The mood at the border had
been tense for months. Iraqi border police had confiscated trailers from
several convoys, including Crescent's. Foord, the British guard, said that
the week before, he had resisted border police officers' efforts to steal a
truck, sparking a confrontation in which an Iraqi officer pointed a gun at
his head. The incident closed the border for six hours, Foord said. Crescent normally traveled
with at least two or three Iraqi guards in each vehicle. The Iraqis would
join the convoy at Wolf's Den, a border compound named after a Crescent
employee who was killed in 2004. On the day of the
kidnapping, the Crescent team crossed the border two hours early and found
just one Iraqi waiting for them. He was Wissam Hisham, an interpreter
nicknamed "John Belushi" because of his resemblance to the late
actor. The rest of the Iraqi team
wasn't there. "We tried to contact them, but we couldn't get through on
the phones," Foord said. "That usually means that they don't want
to run that day. It wasn't the first time they hadn't shown up. The team made
a decision just to roll with it and hopefully hook up with the Iraqi team
later." Foord said he believed the guards had become complacent about
the run to Tallil, which Crescent had made hundreds of times without
incident. According to Picco, a team
of Iraqi guards was in fact waiting. He first said the Iraqi team had 11
experienced members, then later said there were only seven. "There was only one -
John Belushi," Foord said, adding that he believes the interpreter set
up the ambush. "Not 11, not seven, just Belushi." The trucks snaked past
Safwan, an Iraqi border city, and continued north before approaching an
overpass known as Bridge 3. The point vehicle, occupied by Cote and Joshua
Munns, a 24-year-old former Marine from Redding, Calif., sent word over the
radio that a police checkpoint was blocking the road. Foord stopped his Avalanche
in the middle of the highway at the rear of the halted convoy. An unmarked
truck suddenly roared up beside him carrying 10 armed men. One stuck an AK-47
inside the passenger door and fired, narrowly missing him as he threw his
head back, according to an 11-page account he gave military investigators
after the kidnapping. Foord said he accelerated
and raced to the front of the convoy in the southbound lane while the gunmen
pumped rounds into his truck with their automatic weapons. When he reached the front of
the convoy, the rest of the Crescent guards were lined up on their knees by
the side of the road, Foord said. But Hisham, the interpreter, appeared to be
participating in the kidnapping, according to Foord's account. Foord said
Hisham accused him of shooting one of the Iraqi gunmen and screamed:
"You are going to die ... now you are going to die." A man in civilian clothing
intervened and forced Foord to his knees near the other Crescent guards --
Cote, Munns, Young, Reuben and Bert Nussbaumer, 25, an Austrian. Foord said
he spotted "30-40" armed men, including at least four wearing suits
who appeared to be in charge. The gunmen bound the guards with handcuffs, cloth
tape and a power cord and began to load them into vehicles. Crescent guard Salgado, a
Chilean who later gave a one-page statement in fractured English, said he
recognized "4 of the guys" participating in the attack as former
Crescent employees. Foord and Salgado were
placed together in Salgado's GMC Yukon. Salgado said the attackers were
unable to locate the keys to his truck. "Suddenly they get a
telephone call and start to move fast," Salgado's account said. As the
attackers began to flee, a white pickup packed with gunmen roared up beside
the two men, according to Foord's report. But it had no room for them. "Jaime and myself
appeared to have been left behind because they had lost the keys to his Yukon
and had no space in any of the other vehicles," Foord said. The
abductors roared off. Several minutes later, two
American Humvees approached from the south. "I was still waiting
for the bullet in the back of the head," Foord said. The Americans cut loose
Foord and Salgado and escorted the tractor-trailers back to the border. Most
of the drivers that day were Pakistani. Nine drivers were seized and almost
immediately released. Nineteen trailers were taken; some were recovered. Crescent
sent out a team to retrieve the company's vehicles. There has been no word about
the hostages since the Jan. 3 video showing the five Crescent guards. The
video opened with an image of the Koran and a map of Iraq, then the words,
"The National Islamic Resistance in Iraq: The Farqan (Quran) Brigades
takes responsibility for the kidnapping in Safwan, Basra." In January, Crescent made a
lump-sum payment of $3,500 - half a month's pay - to each of the missing
men's families. The company said it has set aside three months' salary for
each guard, to be paid on their release. 'This Will Never Happen
Again' After the kidnappings, Picco
moved Crescent to Tallil Air Base. The company cut its staff and ran
occasional security missions while waiting for news about the hostages. On Feb. 1, U.S. military
police entered Crescent's living quarters and found 143 cans of beer, illegal
steroids and an assortment of weapons that private security companies are
prohibited from possessing under U.S. military regulations, including seven
fragmentation grenades, a Bushmaster rifle with its serial number removed and
four antitank weapons known as LAW rockets, according to a memorandum the
military later sent to Crescent. A month later, the military
opened shipping containers belonging to Crescent and found more banned
weapons, including four .50-caliber machine guns, 2,200 rounds of .50-caliber
ammunition and nine more LAWs. The Army informed Picco and
Crescent Security that the company had been banned from U.S. bases "due
to blatant disregard" of the arming guidelines for U.S. and Iraqi
private security companies, according to the memorandum. Picco protested that the
weapons were legal and that Crescent was being targeted for unknown reasons,
possibly related to the November ambush and seizure. But on March 6, before
closing Crescent down, he signed a brief statement. "I accept full
responsibility for my company's non-compliance with established guidance and
understand that any future infractions will result in additional barment from
this installation," the statement said. "I assure you this will
never happen again." Crescent's vehicles,
including Andy Foord's bullet-pocked Avalanche, sit idle in a dirt parking
lot outside Kuwait City. The company continues to maintain a Web site, still
featuring its motto: "Integrity-Commitment-Success." Staff researcher Julie Tate
in Washington contributed to this report. External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/28/AR2007072801407.html |