Steve Fainaru on “Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq”

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Top Justice Department prosecutors are reportedly reviewing a draft indictment against six Blackwater security guards who opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square more than a year ago killing seventeen Iraqi civilians. The indictments would mark the first time armed private contractors from the United States face justice. We speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post correspondent Steve Fainaru about his new book Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq.

Interesting look into the world of mercenaries in Iraq like Blackwater, Triple Canopy and others where no laws seems to apply to the activity there. Give a listen or watch here.. Steve Fainaru on “Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq”

AMY GOODMAN: The pact recently approved by the Iraqi cabinet that allows 150,000 US troops to stay in Iraq ’til 2011 could have a significant impact on the role of private military contractors deployed in the war. According to the Wall Street Journal, the draft Status of Forces Agreement, known as SOFA, appears to end immunity from local Iraqi law for private military contractors. If the pact is approved by the Iraqi parliament, contractors would fall under the jurisdiction of Iraqi courts and would be subject to prosecution.


This comes as top Justice Department prosecutors are reportedly reviewing a draft indictment against six Blackwater security guards who opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square more than a year ago, killing seventeen Iraqi civilians. The Associated Press reports senior Justice Department officials are said to be considering manslaughter and assault charges against the guards. The indictments would mark the first time armed private contractors from the United States face justice.


Meanwhile, the State Department is reportedly preparing to hit Blackwater with a multi-million-dollar fine for allegedly shipping as many as 900 automatic weapons to Iraq without the required permits.


President-elect Barack Obama has been a staunch critic of private military contractors operating in Iraq and is the sponsor of the leading Democratic legislation in the Senate to bring more effective regulation and oversight to the war industry. But he has stopped short of seeking an outright ban on using armed contractors in Iraq. In March, after he delivered a speech on the economy here in New York at Cooper Union, I asked, well, then-Senator Obama if he would call for a ban on private military contractors.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you call for a ban on the private military contractors like Blackwater?


SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I’ve actually—I’m the one who sponsored the bill that called for the investigation of Blackwater and those folks, so—


AMY GOODMAN: But would you support the Sanders one now?


SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Here’s the problem: we have 140,000 private contractors right there, so unless we want to replace all of or a big chunk of those with US troops, we can’t draw down the contractors faster than we can draw down our troops. So what I want to do is draw—I want them out in the same way that we make sure that we draw out our own combat troops. Alright? I mean, I—


AMY GOODMAN: Not a ban?


SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don’t want to replace those contractors with more US troops, because we don’t have them, alright? But this was a speech about the economy.


AMY GOODMAN: The war is costing $3 trillion, according to Stiglitz.


SEN. BARACK OBAMA: That’s what—I know, which I made a speech about last week. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: What are “big boy rules”?


STEVE FAINARU: Well, it’s a—“big boy rules” is an expression that I first heard when I was reporting on a story in which a private contractor who worked for a company called Triple Canopy, which shares a State Department contract with Blackwater, one of their contractors announced to three of his colleagues, who were traveling with him that day, that he really wanted to shoot someone. And that day, according to these three colleagues, they were traveling on the airport road in Baghdad, and while they were passing a civilian taxi, this contractor, according to these three guys, fired into the windshield of this passing civilian taxi. When that happened, there was no real legal mechanism by which to deal with the situation. And as I was reporting the case, I heard from other contractors that they used this expression “big boy rules.” And what it really meant was that there were no rules for private security contractors in Iraq, and they operated under basically their own system of justice.

AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us about the group that you were embedded with and what happened to them. This was in 2006. You were the last reporter, one of the last people to see them alive.


STEVE FAINARU: Right. Well, while I was working for the Washington Post, we wanted to find out what this culture was and why these people were there, who they were. And so, I embedded with a private security company called Crescent Security Group that operated out of Kuwait City. I traveled into Iraq with these people. We were—their primary mission was to protect supply convoys on Iraq’s main highway. And so, I traveled into Iraq. We traveled up to Nasiriyah, and then we traveled back to the Iraq-Kuwait border. I interviewed them. I found out what they were about.


And one of the things that was most striking about this company was—you know, in the book, I call it basically the Kmart of private security, where, you know, if you have Blackwater sort of at the high end of the security spectrum—traveling in heavily armored vehicles, working for the State Department, paying their contractors $20,000 a month—you had companies like Crescent Security Group, who were paying their contractors $7,000 a month, they had a lot less experience, there were enormous problems with the company.


I came home. Before I had even written my story, the people that I had spent time with were kidnapped on the same highway where we had been traveling. They were missing for sixteen months, and last April their bodies turned up in southern Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: You describe one guy from, I think it was, Triple Canopy, talking about wanting to kill someone.


STEVE FAINARU: Yeah, it’s a chilling story, and I think it points up a lot of different issues. You know, he announced in an almost off-handed way—


AMY GOODMAN: Where were you?


STEVE FAINARU: What’s that?


AMY GOODMAN: Where were you?


STEVE FAINARU: When this occurred?


AMY GOODMAN: Yes.


STEVE FAINARU: Well, I wasn’t with the individual. I heard about the story later and then interviewed the people who were—all the people who were in the truck. But he announced to his three colleagues that he wanted to kill someone, and then he went out on Iraq’s—on Baghdad’s airport road and fired into the windshield of a taxi. And I think what the case pointed up—


AMY GOODMAN: Killing the people inside, killing the driver?


STEVE FAINARU: Well, it was not clear, because they simply drove off. The car, according to the witnesses, you know, sputtered to a stop on the side of the road. The witnesses saw bullet holes in the windshield. When they got back to the base, you know, there was a lot of confusion about what to do. Ironically, there was a Fijian guy who was on this team who was paid a tenth of what the American contractors who were in the same vehicle were being paid. He went to a Fijian supervisor and told him about what had happened, because he was disgusted. But the Fijian supervisor basically was afraid to go to his American supervisors and tell them what had happened. And so, the other two guys were also not sure what to do. They were afraid to come forward. Finally, after two days, they came forward, and they told the company what had happened. And the company’s response was to fire not only them, but the man who was accused of firing into this truck—or into this taxi.


One of the things I think that case points up is that there was no legal mechanism to pursue it any further. Nor was there any incentive for the company, really, to pursue it any further. The company, Triple Canopy, went to the director of security for the Green Zone and basically told him in a very vague way, you know, what had happened: there was a questionable shooting incident that took place on Baghdad’s airport road. And that’s really basically all they told him. And when I interviewed him, he told me basically that he said to the company, you know, “Look, this is not my job. You know, this is not something that I deal with.” He brought in a JAG officer, and, you know, the case was simply not pursued.


The two guys who were fired ultimately sued in Fairfax County Circuit Court, arguing that had been fired for essentially reporting a criminal act. Triple Canopy argued that the reason they were fired was because they had not reported this incident immediately. A jury upheld the company’s contention that, on technical grounds, they were within every right to fire the two guys who reported the incident, but at the same time the jury condemned the company for what it said was its business practices and the way it conducted its investigation.

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