Waxman: Blackwater Cost-Cutting to Blame For 2004 Fallujah AmbushRight on the heels of a Brookings Institution report detailing the problems private military companies create for counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has released a study finding that Blackwater improperly prepared its contractors for traveling through Fallujah in March 2004 — a trip that proved to be fatal.
Internal Blackwater reviews and eyewitness accounts obtained by Waxman’s oversight committee conclude that the company sent its four employees to Fallujah in what one disgusted Blackwater colleague called “unarmored, underpowered vehicles.” The day before the ambush, Blackwater’s Baghdad operations manager complained to the company’s North Carolina headquarters that he was in dire need of weapons, ammunition, communications equipment and “hard cars.” Yet Waxman’s report (pdf) cites another employee who says Blackwater opted to go with “soft skin” — that is, unarmored vehicles — “due to the cost.”
But it wasn’t just the cost. Blackwater’s reliance on unarmored vehicles was part of a scheme to undercut a competitor, the Kuwaiti company Regency Hotel & Hospital, in order to gain control of a contract Regency held with ESS Support Services Worldwide, which in turn had valuable contracts with Kellogg, Brown & Root and Fluor.
Several reports by Blackwater personnel in Baghdad and Kuwait indicate that Blackwater never intended to armor its vehicles, which included Honda Pilot SUVs, but instead force Regency into purchasing new vehicles or risk losing its role on the ESS contract. … A second Blackwater employee reported that he was told to “string these guys along and run this Honda thing into the ground” because “if we stalled long enough they (Regency) would have no choice but to buy armored cars, or to default on the contract, and ESS might go directly to Blackwater for security.”
A Blackwater lawyer told the committee in February the contractors were given an “appropriate” amount of protection for the threat environment in Fallujah.
