Licensed to Kill (33 page)

Task Force Saber 7 also plied local sources for information and went about “arresting,” or effectively abducting, Afghans Idema deemed to be al-Qaeda or Taliban. The detainees were held, interrogated, and abused in Idema's Kabul house of horrors. On May 3, Jack and his gang even turned an Afghan over to U.S. custody, photographing the exchange at Bagram for posterity. Jack described the battered Afghan as an HVT, a high-value target, but the U.S. military released the detainee without charges two months later. Idema's most famous prisoner was not one well known for terrorist ties, but for his position as a prominent Pashtun and Afghan Supreme Court judge.

Idema didn't know it, but his rash of threats, lawsuits, and betrayals had created a rapidly growing cabal of former friends who were bound and determined to shut him down. He no longer had to be unjustifiably paranoid about a conspiracy out to get him, since he had forced the situation. A private investigator he'd screwed out of 15 percent from the proceeds of a successful lawsuit, a humanitarian he'd conned, an author he'd destroyed, an army officer who'd been used; the list goes on: all developed a covert network to share documents and information designed to expose Idema's true nature. Several U.S. government agencies, the military, and the media were also investigating Jack's activities, though he was unaware of the gathering storm.

Jack also had no idea that he had a mole inside his organization. A man in Afghanistan working as an engineer had met Idema and been taken in by his charisma and “Action Jack” persona. After some time hanging out with him, however, the man started to recognize Idema's pathology and started funneling out pictures of Jack brutalizing Afghans to a number of people. The mole didn't really need to circulate the photos secretly, since Jack himself was sending out photos and video of his “operations” in an attempt to get the media to pay for his one-man show. Still no one wanted to arrest or even stop Jack. Media outlets were asked to bid on Jack's new, and this time admittedly self-made, terror tapes, complete with action scenes of him kicking in doors and rousting Afghans. The media watched in horror but said nothing.

Jack had become his own private army, with his own independent contractors assisting him in his brutal for-profit task. Caraballo acted as filmmaker for the action scenes, and then manned the camera to faithfully document the interrogations. Was this journalism, entertainment, or documentation of evidence? Idema's high profile and sheer audacity led most to believe that Jack really must be doing something important and secretive with high-level approval. The CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) already seemed to be using ill-defined relationships with ex-military turned independent contractors in Afghanistan, so Idema's operation fit into the pattern.

Jack cultivated this impression and may have actually been attempting to jockey himself into an officially sanctioned position. While no available evidence suggests that Idema had achieved this, calls he made to the office of Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Warfighting Support, indicate he was trying.

Boykin has a reputation for lending a sympathetic ear to ex–Green Berets with a patriotic cause. Idema began a series of interfaces with Boykin's office, and their like-minded goal of rooting out terrorists made the exchanges positive. Junior and midlevel bureaucrats encouraged Jack to develop hard intel, and Jack promised them in effusive e-mails that he was on the verge of a major bust. Not surprisingly, Jack had Caraballo film his telephone calls to Boykin's office. During one call, a man named Jorge Shim answers the phone and confirms that he has passed on information to Boykin and says they'll get back to him. While intriguing, and offered up by Idema as evidence of his ties to the U.S. military, the exchange really only offers proof that Idema had spoken to Boykin's office. As Ed Artis likes to explain, “There is a fiber of truth in everything Idema does, and then he goes and weaves an entire carpet.” Every branch of the U.S. military has officially denied any connection with Idema, and a call to the Pentagon's press office will evoke an immediate and forceful: “There is no—repeat no—connection of any kind with Idema.” As standard practice, the Pentagon would, of course, deny any connection with a covert operator, particularly one who had sparked a scandal of such gargantuan proportions. In the case of Idema, however, they were actually telling the truth. Since Idema was so keen to film his every move, particularly those that made it appear he was more important or connected than he really was, he would have had more damning evidence of a connection if he'd actually been operating with official approval. If Boykin had ever returned his call, Caraballo would have most certainly had the camera rolling. Further, that Idema was recording and attempting to sell film of his operations makes it even more impossible to imagine he was really running a sanctioned program.

The irony is that if a real U.S. contractor had cultivated such a close relationship with the media and was attempting to profit from footage of supposed covert operations, the military would have likely managed to shut down his operation faster than they did Idema's. While he clearly didn't have U.S. government funding or formal approval, the fact that Idema ran his makeshift jail at a static address in Kabul for months suggests that those U.S. officials who'd become aware of Task Force Saber 7's activities initially may have tacitly assented to allowing them to continue unhindered. With bin Laden on the loose, and former al-Qaeda and Taliban roaming the streets of Kabul, a completely deniable freelance operation run by a like-minded ex-military guy could have been an asset to the U.S. government's goals in Afghanistan, if Idema had ever been able to produce any verifiable results. However, no marked achievements and a building controversy about the excessive tactics of Task Force Saber 7 meant Idema and friends wouldn't enjoy their freedom of operation for long.

As soon as a real covert operator, Billy Waugh, heard about what Idema had been doing in Afghanistan, he started to sound the alert. “I told General Brown at SOCOM that Idema is beating people up and running a POW camp…. They put bulletins all over the place saying do not talk to the son of a bitch. In Bagram, Tashkent, and all over. The CIA put it out, too. Before he was nailed, believe me, I made sure the word was out. But one thing you can do is simply tell people like Boykin that you're doing sanctioned operations. That's pretty clever.” Even Afghan minister Yunus Qanuni admitted Idema had duped him into thinking he represented the U.S. government.

On May 15, 2004, two and a half years after Ed Artis had alerted Afghan and American officials to the presence of an armed and dangerous con man roving through Afghanistan, U.S. authorities in Kabul started circulating a poster for Idema with an “arrest on sight” order. Still, it took until July fifth for Jack and his crew to be picked up in a raid by Afghan police on his Kabul house.

As expected, Idema insisted he was doing supersecret work with direct approval from the top. Jack produced his evidence of calls to General Boykin's office, but Boykin was not about to say he endorsed Jack's activities. Idema also insisted he had records of phone calls to Rumsfeld's office and other groups. These turned out to be correct, but again they proved to be one-sided inquiries from Idema.

After a very brief—and by all accounts, farcical—trial, the Afghan government convicted Idema, Bennett, and Caraballo of running an illegal prison and of torturing Afghan citizens. Idema and Bennett were sentenced to ten years each, and Caraballo got eight, though their sentences were later reduced to five years for Idema, three for Bennett, and two for Caraballo.

Despite incarceration in Afghanistan's most notorious prison, Task Force Saber 7 enjoys the poshest setup available. Idema allegedly bribed the commander of Policharki Prison, a Tajik under General Fahim, to allow him to have couches, carpets, Internet access, and a sat phone. Caraballo was released in the spring of 2006, pardoned by Karzai for the Afghan New Year. While serving out his five-year sentence, Idema continues to publish a website and do interviews with those he considers friendly, all the while protesting his innocence and damning the conspiracy that keeps him from fighting his own war on terror.

Those who had met Idema in Afghanistan assumed there was something more important, someone more powerful behind the tough-guy façade. Those who know Idema well write him off as low-grade con artist who ends up revealing himself in his desperate hunger for publicity and money. The Afghan/American owner of the Mustafa Hotel in Kabul where Jack held court takes a more humorous approach: “The only thing that that Jack should be allowed to attack and kill is his bar tab.” Others have been financially, emotionally, and professionally damaged by Idema's serial litigation, slander, and hyperaggressive campaigns to threaten or discredit former friends.

That such a transparent criminal could so easily label himself a contractor to act out his own covert paramilitary fantasy is a warning about the growing ubiquity of independent contractors. Bill Hagler, a private investigator and former associate of Idema's, blames Idema's long run in Afghanistan on the vague world of covert operations. “A world where the military can neither confirm or deny covert operators. That's fertile ground for con artists like Idema.”

CHAPTER 10

         

The Very Model of a Modern Major Mercenary

“I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;…

For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.”

—G
ILBERT AND
S
ULLIVAN'S
T
HE
P
IRATES OF
P
ENZANCE

The bitter chill of a winter night has settled over London as Michael Grunberg picks me up in his brand-new twelve-cylinder Bentley. As we glide silently through the darkened city, streetlights bend and flow along the glossy black hood. The interior smells of expensive leather and is lit by the dull glow of the backlit dials. Michael Grunberg not only has a mews house in an upscale borough of London, but also elegant homes in Guernsey and Paris. The son of a garment manufacturer, Michael has done well for himself—not just in his official profession as an accountant, but also as a careful proponent of the export and sale of military services. Although not a military man himself, Michael has played a pivotal role in creating and promoting the idea of privatized warfare over the past decade. Although his clients Tony Buckingham and Simon Mann originally formulated the vision for a modern corporatized version of mercenary action, Grunberg can take credit for the detailed structuring of ironclad contracts and constant behind-the-scenes media promotion of the concept.

As we glide by statues of statesmen, warriors, and mementos of wars fought in far-off lands, Grunberg outlines the history and genesis of Executive Outcomes and Sandline, the two original attempts in the 1990s to create a corporate structure for the sale of overtly mercenary and private military services. Understanding the rise and fall of these earliest examples of the private military company, and the motivations and ambitions of the key players behind the two ventures, opens a window into the more foreboding possibilities of an unregulated and unchecked industry dedicated to the sale or rental of armed men. It's an examination of how purveyors of organized violence perfected and honed while serving for God and country can be effectively privatized and exploited for corporate or other interests. I tell Grunberg that I am particularly interested in the role played by Timothy Spicer, former president of Sandline, since he has emerged from the mercenary scandals of the 1990s with only shadings of taint on his image and has since gone on to become wildly successful by reinventing himself as a respectable security provider.

Britain is the perfect place to understand the mercenary and the complicated and delicate subsets of privatized warfare. London is littered with reminders of warfare's capacity to reshape the world and the resultant commercial benefit that arises from controlling a vast colonial empire. Here, pursuit of aggressive commerce, national policy, and international soldiering helped drive the British Empire's world dominance. The Victorian view of proxy warfare led to the training of foreign nationals to fight wars from Afghanistan to Borneo, the seconding of former colonials like Gurkhas into Her Majesty's army, and the renting of British officers to advise foreign rulers in Oman. Warfighting skills and tools are considered necessary and vital exports in the United Kingdom. The military culture of England is woven from exported might, noble failures, exotic punitive expeditions, faraway massacres, and famous victories. From Abyssinia to Mesopotamia to Sarawak to America, the military culture of England is second to none in complexity, color, and history.

Legendary British privateers and adventurers, such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Rajah James Brooke, created the image of swashbuckling government-blessed privateers—businessmen whose personal fortunes rose and fell by fulfilling the needs of the current monarch but who were always subservient to the Crown's guiding hand. The word “mercenary” has more often been used by those whom they conquered, usually in the pejorative, since men who fight for money instead of just for a cause are often considered to be morally guided by a narrow self-interest. Today, “mercenary” is a term that is connected directly with the word “criminal” by the UN and many governments, even though those same governments often actively employ mercenaries and support proxy armies in clandestine operations.

European mercenaries and third-world proxy armies have continued to be tools of foreign policy in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. Some of the more famous Cold War soldiers of fortune have been Bob Denard, Rolf Steiner, “Black Jack” Schramme, and “Mad” Mike Hoare, all of whom came from former military backgrounds and were hired by intelligence services or foreign rulers to train and lead forces in “dirty wars.” Mike Hoare fought in the Congo in the early 1960s, and then narrowly escaped a botched coup in the Seychelles. Steiner fought in Biafra in the late 1960s but was later imprisoned and tortured in the Sudan after helping the southern rebels. From 1978 to 1988, Denard was the de facto leader of the Comoros after he had overthrown the previous government in a coup. He now finds himself on trial in Paris for attempting to return for yet another coup attempt on the Comoros in 1995.

The men behind Executive Outcomes and Sandline may not have been mercenaries in the traditional sense, but key individuals did seek to exploit business opportunities that would require killing people in combat operations, regardless of any lip service paid to “training programs,” “advisory roles,” and “stability operations.” Unlike most military men who might consider warfare an emotionally scarring and destructive activity, chartered accountant Michael Grunberg views it clinically, as a business—the lucrative application of low-cost basic ingredients like South African soldiers, Eastern European weapons, and Western military management in a tight turnkey package. It's a business endeavor that has served Michael well, considering the luxuries he enjoys. Of the other major players in these early experiments with the formalized private military company, Simon Mann now sits in a Zimbabwe jail for a failed “regime change” in the tiny oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea; Tony Buckingham manages his rapidly rising oil revenues, much of it earned from ventures in hostile environments; and Timothy Spicer heads Aegis Defence Services Ltd., the main provider of security in the maelstrom that is Iraq. Though each may have taken divergent career paths in the new millennium, all came from the Executive Outcomes/Sandline petri dish or “private military company” world of the 1990s.

In the early 1990s, Tony Buckingham founded the Heritage Group, a company dedicated to oil and resource exploration. Tony describes himself on his Heritage Oil website as a “self-employed businessman with a wide array of international business interests, particularly in Africa.” Buckingham began his involvement in the oil industry as a North Sea diver and subsequently became a concessions negotiator acting for several companies, including Ranger Oil Limited and Premier Oil plc. Throughout the nineties, Tony worked to negotiate deals in Oman, Uganda, Namibia, Angola, and even Iraq—transforming himself into a wealthy oilman. Simon Mann and Tony were jet-setting friends; they drove a 1964 Aston Martin DB4 at a car rally together, sailed Tony's yacht, and talked about the money that could be made in the developing world. Tony and Simon, unlike many other investors, viewed the provision of security as just a stepping-stone to financial wealth from exploitable resources such as diamonds, oil, and precious minerals.

In 1992, Simon Mann's contacts in Angola had helped land a shallow water offshore oil concession called Block 4, which he brought to Tony to exploit. Buckingham negotiated a joint venture between his Heritage Group and the Calgary-based Ranger Oil called Ranger Oil West Africa Ltd. (ROWAL). Ranger invested $2 million to have Heritage build oil platforms and agreed that Tony's company would earn 10 percent of the ultimate proceeds to be generated by the venture.

By 1993, Tony Buckingham and his ROWAL operation had encountered a major glitch in their plan. Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebels had seized the oil port of Soyo, including some expensive controlling equipment needed to operate the floating drill rig called the
North Sea Pioneer.
Without the controlling equipment, the
North Sea Pioneer
could be nothing more than an expensive and worthless piece of hulking metal sitting off Angola's coast. Tony was paying around $20,000 a day to lease the rig and the pumping equipment, and every day of lost operations cost Buckingham big money in the lease and lost income potential.

Tony and the Angolan government attempted to negotiate with UNITA, but since oil revenue would have enriched the dos Santos government, the rebels weren't interested. Desperate, Tony contacted Richard Bethell (Lord Westbury), who was at that time heading up a security company called DSL. Tony asked Bethell if he could arrange the sabotage of the rig for an insurance claim. Bethell refused and told Tony, “A deep water rig sunk in a shallow silt-filled harbor wouldn't fool even the laziest insurance inspector.” Tony then urged dos Santos to have his troops liberate the harbor, but it was clear that the ragtag Angolan army did not have the capability for such an operation. Mann had gotten his friend Tony Buckingham involved in Angola, so after the fighting trapped Tony's investment, it fell on Simon to help redeem the situation. Mann introduced Tony to his friend Eeben Barlow.

Afrikaner Eeben Barlow had founded Executive Outcomes in Pretoria in 1989. Barlow had formerly worked for the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB; an intelligence arm of the South African apartheid government) and was former assistant commander of 32 “Buffalo” Battalion—called “Buffalo” because most (about 70 percent) of the troops in 32 Battalion were black, though the officers were white Afrikaners. The 32 Battalion specialized in conducting unconventional bush wars and during the apartheid era would run long-range counterinsurgent operations to track terrorists and communist rebels back to their bases across the borders in Angola and Namibia. The CCB was essentially a dirty-tricks bureau that assassinated foes in other countries, created disinformation, and propped up the apartheid government. Having been a covert operator for South African intelligence, Barlow knew well the dark world of warfare, assassination, psyops, denial, and cover organizations. He also knew that in Africa, a few well-trained armed men with weapons could provide a valuable service to businessmen and rulers. The intent of his new business could be easily gleaned from his choice of company logo: a knight chessboard piece derivative of Paladin's “Have Gun, Will Travel” calling card.

Some of Barlow's initial clients were ranchers plagued by poachers and other small local security contracts—including training programs for the South African Defence Force—though he always had feelers out for more interesting projects. Barlow put together a brochure that offered complete training in sabotage, behind-the-lines operations, and weapons—in essence what he and his cohorts had done in the military. When Simon Mann contacted Barlow on behalf of a friend with a little problem in Angola, Barlow was prepared to respond with a mercenary solution.

The opportunity for Executive Outcomes to fight for dos Santos against UNITA provides proof that mercenaries value money above morals, since Barlow and his former 32 Battalion soldiers, who had spent their careers fighting with UNITA against dos Santos and his Movimento Popular de Libertaçao, or Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), would now be fighting for their former left-wing enemy against their formerly U.S.-backed ally.

Simon and Tony approached the state oil company Sonangol for cooperation—or, more precisely, funding—for a plan to free up Tony's drilling equipment and get the oil revenue flowing back into government coffers. When Tony Buckingham was asked what it would cost to liberate Soyo, he suggested off the top of his head that it would take $10 million. The Angolan director simply asked for their banking information. One insider present at the discussions recalls that after the meeting, those involved had this sense of “Holy shit! We are on!” The promise of big money kicked the men into action, and, “The next thing you know Simon is sitting in the backseat of a Angolan MiG fighter doing the recce for the operation.”

At first, the plan was supposedly only for EO to provide training, equipment, and support for the Angolan army to liberate the oil port, but their obvious shortcomings as a fighting force led to EO moving in to be the sharp end of the spear for the operation. Using only a few dozen EO hires—mostly black Angolan and Namibian expat veterans of South Africa's 32 Buffalo Battalion—Lafras Luitingh led the Executive Outcomes mercenaries in by ship. Helicopters were used, plus two battalions of Angolan troops as support, as the offensive pushed back UNITA and recaptured the port and Tony's equipment. Three South African mercenaries died in the battle for Soyo, many were wounded, and EO soon extracted the rest once they had successfully completed their mission. With the port under guard of Angolan soldiers, a fresh offensive by UNITA again wrested control away from the government a few months later.

Impressed by the success of the initial EO operation, dos Santos realized he would need their assistance again to reverse UNITA's recent progress and to enact a more long-term solution. Dos Santos sent his personal jet to pick up Tony in London and fly him to Angola to discuss a long-term training contract for the Angolan army. The two ended up negotiating a deal that satisfied Angola's need for a robust and effective security force and Executive Outcomes's requirement for providing them at a profit. The rebels controlled the diamond areas, and one of the key objectives would be to deny Savimbi that income. It was not too difficult to figure out who would be first in line to help exploit and develop the liberated areas.