Hunting Down Saddam (19 page)

Combat operations were immediately replaced with nation building.

At the same time, MAJ Gravillis's B Company ran two checkpoints: one in Tirbil, on the Jordanian–Iraqi border, and one up north on the Syrian–Jordanian border. 10th Mountain Division companies were brought in to augment the Special Forces teams. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of young Syrian males were turned away at the borders before they could enter Iraq to assist in the guerrilla fight against Coalition forces. They carried no weapons, but their MOs were easily discernible: lots of money (over $50,000 on some of the men) and directions on them as to who to link up with inside Iraq to fight the Americans.

The wannabe
jihadists
tried to come into Iraq on buses. There would be one bus with several families on it, then the next bus would be “loaded down” with fifty to sixty young males. They were interrogated and sent back across the border, while the “legitimate” families were allowed to proceed into Iraq to visit their relatives or reenter the country after fleeing before the start of the war. The 2nd BN/5th SFG (A) continued at Tirbil and Charlie Company from the 3rd BN/5th SFG (A) remained at the northern checkpoint.

According to Haas, MAJ Paul Ott “did fantastic work” in the Tehayab, Haburiyah, and Mudaysis airfield areas in the southwest. SF's ability to blend in and care for the “host-nation” populace made the areas under their control very safe and friendly. They had gained experience in helping people in Afghanistan and this paid off when they built a rapport with the local Iraqis.

It became such a friendly, permissive environment for U.S. forces that LTC Haas was able to reposition Ott's company into the Akashat area to examine the phosphate mines there and to perform linkups with locals in that vicinity. Periodically, an A-Team or two would be sent back to their original southwest areas to ensure that everything was still under control. The close-knit tribal government there worked very efficiently and the locals were supplemented by airdrops of food and medical supplies, as well as work on their electricity and water sources.

This was dubbed by Haas as an “economy of force,” which was moved northward to address problems along the Syria–Iraq border, where the ODAs were needed the most.

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.