The Colonels Corner The Invisible Soldiers by Hagedorn Part 4

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Transcript

0:00 Hello, SR-71. How are you today? Afternoon, Colonel. I'm fine. One of the few days I get to spend a Friday with y'all. Yeah. Awesome. But anyway, I'm sorry I missed you at Warhamster earlier. I'm going to have to go back and watch it. Well, hopefully the replay will have better sound. Warhamster's microphone was kind of messed up.

0:28 It was a good show. It was a great kind of ending to the whole skull and bones. We talked a lot about the military part of it, which, of course, is right up my alley. So anyway, that's awesome. Yeah, it was a good show. OK, let me get us live over here on Rumble. And how are you doing today? Are you having any cantaloupe at the moment? No, but I did.

1:04 I was able to give the grandbaby his first cantaloupe today because I had to. That's why I got started late with war hamster. My daughter got caught in traffic on her way back. I had to watch him for a couple of hours. And we did start the second half of the smaller one. And he loved it, by the way. Yeah. Speaking of which, I forgot to tell her.

1:35 So that's OK. She'll find out. Yeah. Hopefully he doesn't have a reaction to it or she'll find out sooner or later. OK, so let's get started. We're on chapter five. And I feel like I could probably just sum up this entire chapter since the name of its rules of engagement with the few people in the stories that I.

2:03 been told about private military operations. There are no rules of engagement, but we're going to at least examine what the book has to say about it. So this chapter starts out in 2005 with all of the new private military companies in Baghdad. And largely, they were subcontractors.

2:31 for companies with the big contracts that we mentioned some of them in the previous chapters. The new companies were popping up daily, especially small ones forming quickly to capitalize on the subcontracting mania. They might last for the duration of a job or disappear in the middle of a commission project. This was an industry out of control, and it was Aegis' job as administrators of the hub.

3:00 to manage the mayhem. And because Aegis had the cost plus project matrix contract, that would be up for renewal in 2007. And that renewal would add an additional $500 million. They were not going to lose it. And as I had mentioned in our

3:29 Alpha Warriors show, when one of these subcontractors failed in theater for whatever reason or got into an incident and they wanted to get them out of there, the people didn't leave. Even some of them that were involved in the incident, they would just go get employed by another subcontractor and never leave the country that they were in. And keep in mind, the subcontractors had

3:58 People from all over the world. It was not just a U.S. phenomenon. So what was at stake? Obviously, the coalition's livelihood and the protection of the oil, which I would argue is the main reason we were there. So without these companies, there would be no possibility for the construction companies like the Brown and Roots.

4:31 and Halliburton to be able to get their contracts because these guys were their security. So a lot was riding on the success. Aegis' term began on shaky ground. Not enough armored cars, not enough weapons, and not enough soldiers. Because again, they'd only been in business for 18 months. When it arrived in Iraq, it was in...

5:02 of a lot, one industry insider said. And those who knew how important this job was to the future for everyone basically had kind of dropped their disgruntledness of having not won the contract themselves. Control Risk Group, which was another private military that had been on the contract,

5:34 was one that understood what was at stake here and loaned Aegis its armored vehicles, loaned with a big payment. Anyone in the business that had any hint of sophistication knew we had to be in this together if we were all going to succeed. In April 2005, the Office of Special...

5:59 Inspector General for Iraq's Reconstruction, an office created by Congress to oversee the billions of dollars allocated for the rebuilding of Iraq, issued its first audit of Aegis. This was an early assessment to determine whether the company was capable of completing its three-year contract. The audit reported that the firm was fulfilling its contractual requirements for providing security to the U.S. officials and their contractors.

6:30 However, the auditors also pointed out there were serious problems in key areas. Quote, there is no assurance that Aegis is providing the best possible safety and security for government and reconstruction contractors, personnel, and facilities. Unquote. You know, that's their only job. For example, there were serious questions about whether Aegis Arms employees had received proper weapons training.

6:59 According to the audit, a random survey of 20 employees showed that there had been 30 weapons issued, including AK-47s and M4 assault rifles, and yet the company did not have the documentation to show that any more than six of the 20 had even been trained on the weapons. Another problem the audit pointed out was that the vetting of employees. Auditors were concerned that the...

7:26 firm was not adequately documenting background checks and thus had failed to verify that employees were properly qualified for the job. The company was supposed to document interviews and do detailed background checks to be sure that those they hired didn't provide an internal security risk. I would assume that you would want to know both internal and external.

7:54 Again, in a random sample of 20 records out of 125 Iraqis employed, six had not even been interviewed. 18 had not had police checks and no records, at least on two of them. No records at all. They were just paying them. In response, the company managers explained to the auditors that police checks are difficult to obtain.

8:23 and largely irrelevant to the vetting process because of the current dysfunctional state of the Iraqi government. So, because we don't know who we're hiring, it's all the Iraqi government's fault. There were more criticisms, such as shoddy monitoring of the contract at government offices in Iraq. More specifically, the official overseer of the Aegis contract, the auditor said, was not even trained to monitor contracts.

8:54 Doug Brooks, the head of the International Peace Operations Association, the industry trade group in the United States, told the press that he considered the auditor's criticism fairly minor. So we don't know who we're hiring. They're not trained to shoot weapons. And that's minor.

9:21 On the very day that the audit was released, six Blackwater employees were killed when their helicopter was shot down north of Baghdad. The next day, the U.S. contractor Halliburton told the media that insurgent attacks were so intense it might have to stop work restoring Iraqi oil fields. Industry insiders like Brooks believe that there had to be some recognition of a learning curve, not if you'd have hired somebody else.

9:50 That is, how hard it must have been to accomplish all that the company had, given its short duration of time even existing. But others were less forgiving. U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin, issued a statement to the press saying that the audit is deeply troubling and only reaffirms the desperate need for vigorous independent oversight.

10:20 of the way taxpayer dollars are being spent in Iraq. In subsequent interviews, he said there were no excuse for the substandard vetting and that the combination of poor weapons training with employees who may or may not be competent and reliable was lethal. Aegis was supposed to be providing security for government and reconstruction contractor personnel in Iraq. Not only does it appear that the U.S. dollars are not being well spent,

10:47 But the consequence of the haphazard practices revealed in this report could very well be deadly. And of course they were. Barely six weeks later, what Feingold had described as lethal occurred. The incident in which Special Forces translator Khadhem Alkhani was shot. That's the guy that we started off the book with. That incident happened right after they were audited, saying they didn't know what the hell they were doing.

11:18 The story of that shooting never surfaced in America that summer and would not be known for several years. Thanks to the CIA. The incident was filed away as a shot in the line of duty case resulting in an honorable discharge. In the official paperwork, there were no mention given to the cause of the shooting or the identity of the shooter. Few people in the U.S. Army even knew about it. And those who did.

11:47 may not have connected the shooting with the company running the coordination hub in Baghdad, Aegis. For Qadhim, the silence would be as tragic as the gunshot itself. For Aegis, it was sheer luck that while its critics and competitors continued to look for evidence of incompetence, they remained unaware of what had happened to Qadhim.

12:16 Although Qadhim's shooting was exceptional, random shootings were not uncommon in Iraq at all. In later years, a former private security contractor who had worked for a private military contractor in Baghdad at that time, in an on-record, not-for-attribution interview in London, discussed such incidences in the early years in Iraq.

12:43 The shooting, he said, was a result of a confusion and inconsistencies regarding rules of engagement, which at some companies at that time were not the same as the rules followed by U.S. military. Private contractors were expected to warn civilian motorists who were approaching convoys and who appeared to present a threat by waving them away and firing warning shots in the air.

13:11 Only if the motorists did not heed the warning shots and were speeding towards the convoy, as a suicide bomber may do, was the armed security employee permitted to even fire at them. However, he said, in those early years, some contractors followed different rules of engagement. Each company seemed to have their own rules. And again, from a military perspective, that's no rules. You can't have different rules.

13:41 Quote, it was hard on us and I know it's hard to realize and there is no excuse, but maybe we were all victims at the time. Unquote. He told the story of a time when a partner of his opened fire on an SUV that appeared to be approaching his car too fast. After it happened, I wanted to go home. I could not stand what was happening. But then the next day we were out again and it was dangerous and I knew it would probably happen again, or at least it could.

14:11 We were not disobeying anyone when we did that. I want that to be clear. We were following orders. The orders later changed, but you have to understand that we felt threatened and were doing what we thought was right. In 2005, an unsettling video appeared on an unofficial website established by Aegis Workers. It was...

14:36 shot from inside a contractor's vehicle and it showed members of a security team shooting at Iraqi traffic on Route Irish, which was the main route from Baghdad Green Zone into the International Airport. Barrels of guns extended out of the back of a moving SUV fired live rounds at a car driving towards them in a long stretch of the highway. One of the cars

15:03 were a considerable distance away from the SUV, and all apparently were driven and occupied by civilians. In one scene, a spray of bullets forced a Mercedes to swerve wildly and then run into a taxi, whose passenger spilled out all of the doors, running frantically off the highway to avoid being shot. In another, bullets hit the car so hard that it careened off the road.

15:31 adding a touch of mockery to the scene and making the images seem even more callous. Exactly who the shooters were and whether or not they worked for Aegis was a mystery, as was the providence of the video itself. But soon the video began circulating all over the Internet, much to the domain of Aegis.

15:53 And the workers' website attracted an array of comments about what the appropriate defensive action when cars were headed towards a security convoy. On November 11th, one posting from somebody called Way Out Station read, Jesus, it must be bad if all the cars that advance towards you at speeds get the hell shot out of them. How many cars have been shot up where a husband had been taking his wife to the hospital?

16:22 having a baby. What an existence. How about circulating the names of the members of the team involved in murdering Iraqis on the footage to all of the private military companies working in Iraq so we won't have to work alongside these maniacs in the future. So even the people that were the contractors that were on this website, the videos from what was happening over there scared the hell out of them.

16:53 Another posting from a profile called Low Profile, quote, all this plays into the hands of those that see us as mercenary, baby killers, whatever, unquote. Yeah. Later in November, an anonymous source sent a copy of the video to the Times of London, which on December 1st published a detailed story in which an ageist spokesperson said that, quote, all such incidences, unquote,

17:23 were investigated and the company staff observed strict rules of engagement that allow for a structured escalation of force to include opening fire on civilian vehicles under certain circumstances. The Times quoted a British private military employee who worked for another company and said that he had witnessed, quote, at least two incidences

17:46 of innocent Iraqis being killed by poorly trained defense contractors who left the bodies by the side of the road and drove off. No one knew of any U.S. or British soldiers shot by accident or similar scenarios. The article reported that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that experts had viewed the footage and found no evidence that Aegis' staff were involved. But again,

18:13 Aegis is the prime contractor. So if their subs are engaging in this activity, they are still responsible for it. A company spokesperson told the Sunday Telegraph on November 27th, there is nothing to indicate that these clips are in any way connected to Aegis. Then on April 6th, 2006, the man who claimed he had started the Aegis Iraq website

18:43 and had posted the video suddenly surfaced and was interviewed on a British news show. His name was Rod Stoner, and he was a former British soldier and former Aegis employee. He said that he started the website in 2005 after quitting Aegis. According to Stoner, the shooters never knew whether or not they were aiming at innocent civilians or insurgents. We don't know because we never stop, he said.

19:12 By the end of the following day, Aegis had filed an injunction to prevent Stoner from speaking to the press or disseminating in any way the company's rules of engagement or other company confidential information. Stoner continued to talk to journalists, however, and told them that he was an occupant of a vehicle and neither he nor the others in the SUV that day had been questioned by investigators. So Aegis never followed up on any of this.

19:42 A former colleague of Stoner's later said that Stoner was living underground for several months after the injunction as he felt that he was in danger. In June, Aegis announced that its investigation into the video was complete and that the incidences and image published were all taken out of context and were therefore highly misleading in what they represented. The episode had little impact on the company's image.

20:08 As was clear in the autumn of 2006 when Britain's Spectator magazine read a story with the headline, quote, guns, men with guns are the new dot coms, unquote. That began with this scene, quote, sitting behind his smartly fashioned desk in one of the new antiseptic offices, office blocks that line London's Victoria Street. Tim Spicer.

20:37 looks like the model of a modern entrepreneur. He talks smoothly about service delivery, market share, and profit margins. If he was running a hedge fund or a new media company, you wouldn't be the least surprised. In fact, his business supplies tough blokes with guns and a very lucrative trade it has recently become, unquote. In June 2005, in the minutes immediately after the shooting of Khadim,

21:07 When it became clear that the medic in Khadim's convoy was unable to stop his bleeding, the convoy turned around, passed the checkpoint again, left the safe zone, and drove 10 miles to the special forces hospital located in one of Saddam's former palaces. The bleeding was eventually stopped, but removing the bullet, and we've already covered this, so I'm going to skip a little ahead.

21:33 as far as the, because I told you about it, got infected. He ended up at Walter Reed. By the end of 2006, Khadim had to adjust to several new realities. The remainder of the bullet cannot be removed from his foot, which meant his foot would never be able to bear his weight. He would soon be discharged from the U.S. Army, and now he had developed hepatitis C from the blood transfusions that were given to him along the way.

22:01 Upon his honorable discharge, Khadim received $20,000 from the government with a pledge of a monthly benefit of $112. His situation was unique. There was no precedent and no special benefits. However, what Khadim wanted most was a job, not a handout. He had a baby son and a wife and he needed to work. Considering his training experience and language skills, he was confident that he would be able to find a job.

22:31 He first sought work as an Arab translator in the Department of Defense, but he failed the blood test required because the Department of Defense had given him hepatitis C. Next, he tried to return to carpentry and the types of jobs he had before enlisting, but his foot ate too much for him to be able to do it. He also had PTSD and suffered frequently from the fatigue associated with hepatitis C.

23:01 Throughout 2006, he thought a champion for his cause within the Army, someone who would help him. He had phone numbers he was given after he was discharged and references, but nothing came of it. In his frustration, he sometimes harkened back to the many years when his father was telling him that he had to go to America. He was becoming very disgruntled. He believed in the greatness of America.

23:28 But now he was seeing what really was going on. One of the attorneys who would later represent Khadim said, if he had died, people would have known his story and the media would have helped to make someone accountable. But as it is, he was like a wounded animal walking into a forest. And the hope among his enemies was that no one would ever hear his call for help.

23:54 In the spring of 2007, as the deadline for the contract renewal was drawing near, seven U.S. senators, all Democrats, had signed on to ageist critiques. Among them was Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, and Barack Obama. And among the most outspoken of the U.S. representatives at the time was Ohio's Marcy...

24:23 Kaptur, K-A-P-T-U-R, a Democrat in office for nearly 25 years. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on defense, Kaptur had traveled to Iraq in February and after her return became an ardent advocate for diminishing the private military forces, if not banning them altogether. She was more than just a little concerned about the money. How many contractors were there?

24:51 how hard it was to track the funds, how quickly privatization had happened. She said, we're in the wake of a speedboat. Congress can't even begin to catch up on the contracting. One of Kaptur's colleagues, Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, shared her concern.

25:12 Waxman, as a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, had initiated a study in 2006 that showed the cost of federal contracts growing twice as fast as discretionary federal spending. The study noted that 118 contracts with overcharges and wasteful spending, and it outlined problems with specific contracts related to Pentagon's program in the Iraq War.

25:37 including $292 million to AGES for Iraq reconstruction services. AGES was of particular interest to Representative Kaptur because of the upcoming contract renewal. The first contract AGES had signed had totaled $293 million. Added to that additional cost for overtime and extended tasks, it ended up totaling $500 million.

26:06 and $48 million, almost twice as much. The upcoming contract, initial contract, was scheduled to be $475 million. Knowing that Aegis could end up with at least a billion dollars of American tax dollars, Kaptur initiated her own probe to learn more about the company. But as she told the press, the

26:32 Debra was harder than she anticipated. When the Department of Defense refuses to provide information to the public, I am incensed. By 2007, however, the watchdogs of Congress and the Pentagon were beginning to claim that the probes, audits, studies, and reports were accomplishing little towards addressing the impact of the growing number of mercenaries working for America. No one was taking a stand, stressed Jeremy.

27:01 a journalist who at the time was writing a book on Blackwater. Both Republicans and Democrats, with few exceptions, were selling out, he wrote. Even shutting down the wars would not stop the private military contractors. Until Congress reigns in these massive corporate forces and the federal funding that goes into their coffers, partially withdrawing U.S. troops may be...

27:27 may only set the stage for an increase in their use. By the contract renewal year, the larger firms like Aegis were indeed becoming more embedded in American strategies, more entrenched and more established with their lucrative contracts, prestigious boards, new subsidiaries, sophisticated websites, media connections. They had all hired lobbyists and PR firms.

27:55 While Aegis might not have been the largest or the most powerful in the world by 2007, it likely had had one of the biggest increase in profits since the beginning of the Iraq War. In its first accounting for the year ending December 2003, it had an income of 543,000 pounds. By year's end in 2006, it had become 71 million lira.

28:26 Aegis was becoming the best example among private military contractors of the trajectory from covert and infamous, excuse me, to acceptable and indispensable. Between 2004 and 2007, as industry began to consolidate, Aegis expanded and diversified. In 2005, for instance, it purchased Rubicon International Services, a rival firm specializing in security risk assessment.

28:55 also known for its intelligence work, and it was adding new members to its board and its advisory council, like Robert McFarlane, the Reagan chief advisor on the National Security Council that was responsible for Iran-Contra. More recently, McFarlane had started companies in the international industry, energy industry. He was also vice chair of UN's

29:27 Energy Security Forum, as well as the director on the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was basically a CIA front. Another influential figure new to Aegis' board of director was the grandson of Winston Churchill, the Honorable Nicholas Soames, who had most recently served as Britain's Minister of the Armed Forces.

29:57 and had been a conservative member of Parliament since 1983. Other newcomers to the board include the former head of the British Army, a highly regarded top-drawer London attorney, and a former British Army officer who was also a former senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. After the announcement of the new board members, one of AGES's managing directors told the press,

30:27 This is only just becoming an industry, and there has been a question mark over how respectable it is. Certainly, the resurgence of the new board members' names offers an endorsement of our company. Yeah, like a criminal Robert McFarlane. In 2006, Aegis established an American branch, Aegis Defense Services, LLC, on K Street in Washington, D.C. Soon its website list...

30:56 would list offices in Washington, D.C., Baghdad, and Kabul, as well as Nairobi, Kathmandu, and Manama in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The American entity, however, was especially important to the growth of the business. The firm's new roost in Washington would assist gaining connections crucial

31:27 to winning additional U.S. contracts. With the Matrix renewal coming up, lobbying and networking was essential components to Aegis image building in Washington. Helping with that was a group called Global Policy Group, which in 2007 was under contract to several private intelligence concerns and security firms to help them secure contracts with the U.S. government. Also, Aegis LLC

31:58 CEO Christy Clemons had run public relations for none other than Paul Bremer. She had also been a Bush appointee at the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Patrol. Ages had also became an official advisor to Lloyds of London, specializing in threats and risks to the shipping industry. It had won a new contract of

32:29 3.348 million pounds from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to protect Italians aid workers in southern Iraq. But that was nothing compared to Project Matrix renewal. In January 2007, after the Joint Contracting Command Iraq-Afghanistan of the U.S. Army issued the request for proposals

32:55 For the $475 million contract, Blackwater, Enris, Armored Group, DynCorp, Control Risk Group, and Aegis entered the competition. On April 1st, the Army announced the competition had narrowed to Armored Group and Aegis. But then while the two firms awaited the decision, a former U.S. captain from Colorado, Brian Scott, filed a lawsuit in U.S. Court of Federal Claims to stop all

33:25 government contracting of private military companies. A federal judge thus ordered an extension to the AGES current contract for six months. Scott based his protest on what he believed was a violation of an 1893 law. Each time the government contracts a private military company, he claimed it was in direct violation of what was known as the Anti-Pinkerton Act.

33:52 originally passed to stop the government from hiring mercenaries as strike breakers. Pinkerton's armed employees were best known for their role in crushing trade unions, mainly in the steel and coal industries, by working as armed security. And if you guys know anything about that period, they literally shot strikers.

34:16 who had served 13 years of active duty in the U.S. Army, had filed at least a dozen protests against the use of private military companies, all were dismissed, as this one would be too. By mid-September, Aegis was awarded the contract, this time for two years. It was the single largest security contract awarded by the Department of Defense by that time. Once again, Aegis was not the lowest bidder, and once again, refrain.

34:44 why Aegis could be heard, though not as loudly as the first time. The Washington Post, which had called the bidding war a high-stakes derby, reported that over the past several months, Aegis had worked to show the military that it had a strong track record, stressing that none of its U.S. military clients had been killed in the three years while traveling more than 3 million miles in Iraq and conducting over 20,000 missions.

35:14 To change the leadership of such a complex security operation in the midst of reconstruction and counterinsurgency, they argued, could threaten the security that three years of work had established. Now, granted that none of their protectees had been killed, but they were leaving dead bodies everywhere. That September, however, the security of the citizens of the occupied nation, not the occupiers,

35:43 was under a blinding spotlight for on the 16th, Blackwater contractors opened fire with automatic weapons and grenade launchers on a busy street west of central Baghdad, killing 17 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, and wounding at least 20 more. Many were shot while inside their cars while they were frantically trying to drive away from the violence.

36:09 The incident happened around noon in Nisor Square, a traffic circle outside of the fortified areas of Baghdad known as the International Zone or Green Zone. The convoy of four heavily armed trucks filled with 19 Blackwater contractors and using code name Raven 23 was responding to the detonation of a bomb in the vicinity of another Blackwater.

36:35 personal security detail located about a mile from Nisor Square. That detail was in charge of transporting U.S. diplomats to a meeting that day in western Baghdad with officials from USAID. Raven 23's job typically was to provide backed-up fire support for other Blackwater security details. When they reached Nisor Square, they were traveling on the east side of the circle

37:05 against the flow of traffic where they positioned themselves in a line on the southern half of the circle with the purpose of blocking traffic from entering the circle from the south or to the west to protect the U.S. diplomats from any danger. Within seconds of the convoy forming the blockade, the contractors in the third of the four vehicles opened fire on a white Kia sedan that was approaching the circle from the south.

37:32 In the passenger seat was a 46-year-old female physician. The driver was her 23-year-old son, a medical student. The initial shots killed the son while wounding the mother. Then an Iraqi policeman rushed to the car, apparently in an effort to assist the wounded woman, according to witnesses, was frantically waving her arms. But in that second, another contractor, also from the third vehicle in the convoy, fired.

38:02 his M4 assault rifle into the windshield of the passenger side, deciding that the policeman's uniform could be an insurgent disguise. At least one member of the convoy launched a grenade, which exploded under the passenger seat, causing the Kia to erupt in flames. At the same time, another contractor fired rounds into the hood, front grill, and whatever was left of the sedan's windshield.

38:27 Seconds after the Iraqi policeman was killed, other policemen began firing at Blackwater guards. A battle ensued. Among the dead, and the book lists them, several police officers, a nine-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 19-year-old, a man, a father, three boys, and four girls, including a newborn.

38:59 a 55-year-old that was shot in the head while riding a bus with her daughter, another person 28, another person 30, and then another person 56 that was also on the bus. Within 10 minutes, Nizor Square had become a death scene. As the Raven 23 convoy drove away, moving against the flow of traffic to the north,

39:27 turret gunners in the convoy continued to fire their machine guns into civilian vehicles. One of the gunners, Jeremy Ridgway, would later testify these were vehicles that posed no threat to the convoy at all. Ridgway was the contractor who had fired rounds into the windshield on the mother side of the Kia. He also shot at least three rounds from his M4 into the roof of a white Chevrolet Celebrity.

39:54 sedan, sending bullet fragments into the driver's legs. Later, Ridgeway would testify that he intended to kill the driver of the Chevy sedan. Under oath, he would also say that there had been no attempt on the part of the convoy to provide reasonable warning to the driver in the Kia to come to a complete stop. They just literally opened fire. As a condition of all State Department contractors,

40:20 Ridgeway and his Raven 23 colleagues had signed what was called the Use of Force Policy or the State Department's Mission Firearms Policy. It specified that deadly force was permitted only when other means of protecting the individuals the contractor was hired to guard failed. This meant the policy acknowledged that the contractors on the scene may often be forced to make split-second decisions.

40:47 In this case, the critical decision was made by the shift leader of the convoy who ordered the contractors to start firing. In the aftermath of the massacre, the industry braced for a storm of criticism. The International Police Operation Association in Washington shifted into high gear, as did companies savvy enough to be working with PR firms. In London Times, a few weeks after the incident,

41:16 Tim Spicer, for example, noted that his company was a contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense, unlike Blackwater, which was contracted to the State Department. And that meant that Aegis had to adhere to about 15 layers of regulations that Blackwater did not. Still, no public relation, one, could wave away the damage of such an incident to an industry trying to persuade the world that they were not paramilitary. And that's the end. I tell you what.

41:55 if you um like while you're going through of course you know i'm digging and posting and things while you're and it's always enlightening to do so to dig deeper while we go and these the overwhelming amount of okay so like everybody all of a sudden came out and said apparently too much light was shined on the human rights abuses

42:25 these private military companies. And in every case where it came out of the EU, if it was an article or if it was something they brought up, in every case, they all said, well, private military companies are now a necessity as we move forward from the Cold War. And it's like, wait, what?

42:55 They didn't pop up after the Cold War. These are more recent things. But they're using the same Russia. They're using the same stupid Russia, Russia, Russia. And they all point back to Wagner Group because it was located in Russia. And they completely turned a blind eye to the ones that were based in, I don't know, the United States and were caught.

43:24 doing the most horrific, awful, awful things. Out in the open, and the way everyone described it is, well, since they're in war-torn areas, and there essentially is no active current government, they're not going to be held liable. Well, the bottom line to all of this is, if what the United States is doing

43:53 is outside the scope of your military, you probably ought to not be doing it. But all of this goes to the bigger picture that I have described repeatedly, that this was never about exceeding the capability of our military. It was always about

44:20 Setting up the circumstances, which you just described well, to justify the creation of private military organizations that are going to be bought up by the same oligarchs so that they can profit off of death. And I can't get past the, okay, they used NGOs to get around. It's like, okay.

44:53 It's illegal for the government to censor people. We'll just use that as an example. So we'll create an NGO and then fund it through USAID to censor people. That way we can circumvent the law. And everyone really needs to realize that the ones sitting on the board of these NGOs are the very lawmakers that are circumventing the law.

45:24 And so now we have, there are certain things that our military cannot do because it would be breaking our constitution. So we will hire, we will create and then hire private militaries who actually staff veterans of our military. So we train them in the military and then we send them to these private militaries to circumvent.

45:53 our Constitution and still be able to accomplish. And again, the generals are the ones involved in these. So you're just shuffling the people around in order to circumvent the law, the Constitution, etc. And when you go to these third world countries where our military has went down, and of course we use Colombia because it's a great example.

46:20 Under the guise of anti-drug, which we know they weren't anti-drug, they were facilitating the drug trade, they trained an extra 20,000 so that they can hire them into these subcontracted private military companies in order for them to go over there because they don't care if they die or not. Yeah, it's a crazy circle. SR-71, go ahead.

46:51 Thank you, Colonel, and thank everyone for attending here today on Spaces and Rumble. I was doing some questions to, well, asking Grok about the Nassar Square trial. And according to what happened and the whole deal, Nicholas Slayton, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Hurd, following the 2000 massacre in Baghdad, Iraq,

47:21 where they killed 17 civilians and injured 20, took place in federal court as Blackwater reported under U.S. contracts. Now, they were initially sentenced, and they were actually put in jail. And then I come up with a little bit of information concerning these people.

47:53 What I see as a mic drop is President Trump in 2020 issued full pardons for all four contractors. Yep. So that makes me wonder at this point in time, when it says all four contractors, is he saying just the contractors or is he saying those four people? Those four people. Yep.

48:26 Okay, it just blows my mind. Why he would do that in the first place? Well, because they're the ones responsible for it. Well, yes, but they had already been to trial and sentenced, so why give them a pardon? Because again, Bush and his dad are behind all of this. So why wouldn't they? This is the same.

48:57 This is this is very similar to if you go back to when we were in Italy and the expose of Operation Gladio there in the 1990s, where you found people were just that actually were terrorists paid by Operation Gladio bombing, whatever. They oftentimes would be tried, sent to jail and they would walk out of jail.

49:26 You can't walk out of a jail unless everybody's in on it. Well, I agree with that, Colonel. What's puzzling me here is this wasn't Bush that issued the pardon. This was Trump. Oh, I didn't know that. You didn't say that part. Trump issued the pardons, and that's what's bugging me. Yeah, I don't know why. That's actually very interesting.

49:55 I didn't look at the date. I did see that they were pardoned, but I didn't look at the date the pardons were issued. Maybe he realizes that those people are really a victim of the system that they were in. And I don't know, to be honest with you, I haven't looked at the most recent data of how many.

50:23 private military companies. The last data I had was from 2004. So it'd be interesting to know how, other than the existing contracts, if any of those are being canceled. Because again, I believe, and I believe you guys can tell me if I'm wrong, if the United States

50:49 has a mission to do in a foreign country. That mission ought to be done by the United States military. There should be no private contractors. You either decide you're going to do it and you do it the right way, which is through Congress, through the Department of Defense. You don't hire mercenaries on our dime to go over to operations where

51:19 through layers of contracting, there's zero accountability. And not even that, again, putting my personnel hat back on, if I'm in the production of a commodity called a special forces troop, I don't want to have to compete with a private military corporation who is going to pay that person 10 times more than I'm capable of paying them in the military because

51:48 There is a crap ton, and I've talked to several of them, actually, that the only reason they got off active duty was to go work for one of these so they could make that kind of money. Why are we funding the exportation of something that we produce with our taxpayer dollars? It's ludicrous, Bridget.

52:17 Okay, so in the process of doing the research, I can add more context that will definitely enlighten us. Because what happened in that particular situation from the basis of, I don't know, 20 articles that I was scanning through, is the individual people, yes, were tried and thrown in jail. The contractor was not. Yes, and he should have been. The company itself.

52:48 continued to function and the only one that they and there were a bazillion of include uh civil rights or not civil rights human rights things that happened while they were over there including but not limited to rape torture and on that were much more horrific than the massacre that happened that day and he did pardon those

53:18 And then went on to sanction the company. He didn't just pardon the individuals. So he called the company responsible, not the individuals. Correct. Correct. And so he, you could say, was righting wrong. You know, again, a lot of these guys, when they're sent over there, like we had talked about other friends of ours who are veterans, believe they're fighting the bad guys.

53:51 However, the company knows what it's there for. And the individuals over there are carrying out orders, not knowing that the ones on the other end of it are not communists, really bad guys. I'm going to push back a little bit on that. Every one of these people signed a contract and signed the form that said what the procedures were to discharge your weapon.

54:23 You were to shoot in the air as a warning before you ever shoot a person. And that didn't happen. Right. Right. That is true. Right. But anyway, and again, to me, this sounded like. I don't disagree with you. I'm sure that's what Trump's intention was. But those individuals and maybe he believed that the time served was enough for them to have.

54:54 rethought those choices, but you don't ever in a civilian situation, because this is what happened. As a result of this incident, the insurgent capability blew up because the people in Iraq that really just wanted to get back to their life became militant.

55:23 This incited, and that's the problem with private military contractors. They want more insurgents so they can create incidences like this. They can drive up the number of insurgency, which then drives up the amount of contracts they're going to get to fight the insurgency they created by the incident. Right, right. Essentially, you're back to the cattle price. Yes.

55:52 They are creating their own enemy so they can enrich themselves fighting the enemy that they in fact created because they killed civilians. That's why you don't ever have private military contractors. The entire thing is an oxymoron. They are never going to want peace because peace means they don't get paid. Right. Like a non-governmental organization, an oxymoron, because it's being paid for and formed by.

56:24 The government. SR-71, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. And thank you, Bridget, for clearing that up. The other thing that I've found is that as far as rules of engagement go, there are some basic rules for PMCs, but they're pretty much left up to their own to do however they want to do it. And that, to me, is a major part of the problem. Sure.

56:58 absolutely they did they did go on to and supposedly there's been a whole lot of controversy and a whole lot of information out there written about them being held accountable via international law but none of it has ever come to bear they it's kind of the church committee all over again they all come down and condemned it

57:24 They've all come out and said, oh, yeah, we need to hold them accountable via international law. But they never have done that. Because technically, in most of these cases, there is no international law and that's on purpose. Right. Right. Yeah. Because why would you stop people doing this, filling your pockets? Because the same people responsible for making international law.

57:54 are the ones behind the use of the private military contractors. Right. Yeah. You come away from the entire situation, not only with a better understanding, which is why I wanted to do this book, of the fact that it's out there and it's being done in our name, but you are creating entire countries that will hate America. Entire movements that see these people.

58:25 Because they're being paid for by the American government as representing us. And they don't. Wasn't that when Trump said that Obama created ISIS? Well. Kind of a similar context. The creation of ISIS was through Al Qaeda.

58:51 and the training of the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. So that's something that's, I think, very different. That was the creation of a terrorist group that you can manipulate and use to conduct terror attacks where you want them done in order to then use private military contractors.

59:21 The use of ISIS in Syria, and you look at the number of private military companies in Syria, the terrorist attacks that the CIA is responsible for, because they're responsible for ISIS and al-Qaeda, they launch those attacks in a country they want to overthrow, like Syria, and then they bring in the paramilitary people.

59:50 that are going to go and conduct these horrific things in order to keep the tension up until the government is toppled. So basically, strategy of tension. SR-71. Thank you, Colonel. And to make matters worse, since the GS subcontracts a lot of these issues here that we see going on.

1:00:25 You can't even get a list of the subcontractors a GS employs. I've looked for it. You can't get it. They show up now and then, but you can't get a full list of subcontractors that these people use. Correct. Nor can you necessarily get a list from the countries that they're recruiting from. Now, we will see later in this book, this woman traveled to countries.

1:00:56 In order to find estimated numbers, but in what countries we're being recruited from. But yeah, it's just another way of hiding what they are doing in our name. The whole thing's outrageous. So with that said, I don't see anybody up here. So we're going to call it a night.

1:01:31 I want you guys to have a nice weekend because I'm going to, because I have my grandbaby's first birthday this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to that. And we will be back on Monday. And probably we'll finish the book next week sometime. Tim just asked for a mic. Okay. Tim, did you have something to say? Tim? Nope.

1:02:13 I guess not. Well. All right. Okay. All right. We're going to call it a night. You guys take care.

Entities here

Aegis Defense Services25 Iran23 United States11 Khadhem Alkhani10 Baghdad10 Aegis contract audit9 Blackwater9 Department of Defense8 U.S. Army6 Donald Trump6 Nisour Square massacre6 Nisour Square5 Marcy Kaptur5 Rod Stoner4 Russ Feingold4 U.S. Congress4 ISIS3 Brian Scott3 Shooting of Khadhem Alkhani3 Al Qaeda3 Robert McFarlane3 Jeremy Ridgway3 Halliburton2 Project Matrix2 Jeremy Scahill2 London2 Tim Spicer2 Doug Brooks2 USAID2 Henry Waxman2 Pinkerton National Detective Agency2 U.S. State Department2 George H.W. Bush2 International Peace Operations Association2 Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army1 Christy Clemons1 Global Policy Group1 Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs1 Joint Contracting Command Iraq-Afghanistan1 Nicholas Slayton1

Claims made here

Aegis Defense Services funded Iran documented ▶ 3:00

“to manage the mayhem. And because Aegis had the cost plus project matrix contract, that would be up for renewal in 2007. And that renewal would add an additional $500 million. They were not going to l…”

Controlled Risk Group supplied_arms_to Aegis Defense Services documented ▶ 5:34

“was one that understood what was at stake here and loaned Aegis its armored vehicles, loaned with a big payment. Anyone in the business that had any hint of sophistication knew we had to be in this to…”

Aegis Defense Services covered_up Shooting of Khadhem Alkhani book_quoted ▶ 11:18

“The story of that shooting never surfaced in America that summer and would not be known for several years. Thanks to the CIA. The incident was filed away as a shot in the line of duty case resulting i…”

Rod Stoner exposed Aegis Defense Services book_quoted ▶ 18:43

“and had posted the video suddenly surfaced and was interviewed on a British news show. His name was Rod Stoner, and he was a former British soldier and former Aegis employee. He said that he started t…”

Henry Waxman exposed Aegis Defense Services documented ▶ 25:12

“Waxman, as a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, had initiated a study in 2006 that showed the cost of federal contracts growing twice as fast as discretionary federal sp…”

Aegis Defense Services funded Iran documented ▶ 25:37

“including $292 million to AGES for Iraq reconstruction services. AGES was of particular interest to Representative Kaptur because of the upcoming contract renewal. The first contract AGES had signed h…”

Marcy Kaptur exposed Aegis Defense Services documented ▶ 26:06

“and $48 million, almost twice as much. The upcoming contract, initial contract, was scheduled to be $475 million. Knowing that Aegis could end up with at least a billion dollars of American tax dollar…”

Aegis Defense Services recruited Rubicon International Services documented ▶ 28:26

“Aegis was becoming the best example among private military contractors of the trajectory from covert and infamous, excuse me, to acceptable and indispensable. Between 2004 and 2007, as industry began …”

Aegis Defense Services recruited Robert McFarlane documented ▶ 28:55

“also known for its intelligence work, and it was adding new members to its board and its advisory council, like Robert McFarlane, the Reagan chief advisor on the National Security Council that was res…”

Aegis Defense Services recruited Nicholas Soames documented ▶ 29:27

“Energy Security Forum, as well as the director on the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was basically a CIA front. Another influential figure new to Aegis' board of director was the gra…”

Robert McFarlane member_of Washington Institute for Near East Policy documented ▶ 29:27

Aegis Defense Services funded Global Policy Group documented ▶ 31:27

“to winning additional U.S. contracts. With the Matrix renewal coming up, lobbying and networking was essential components to Aegis image building in Washington. Helping with that was a group called Gl…”

Christy Clemons appointed U.S. Department of Homeland Security documented ▶ 31:58

“CEO Christy Clemons had run public relations for none other than Paul Bremer. She had also been a Bush appointee at the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Patrol. Ages had also becam…”

Christy Clemons worked_for Paul Bremer documented ▶ 31:58

Christy Clemons headed Aegis Defense Services documented ▶ 31:58

Joint Contracting Command Iraq-Afghanistan funded Project Matrix documented ▶ 32:29

“3.348 million pounds from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to protect Italians aid workers in southern Iraq. But that was nothing compared to Project Matrix renewal. In January 2007, after the …”

Aegis Defense Services funded Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs documented ▶ 32:29

Aegis Defense Services competed_for Project Matrix documented ▶ 32:55

“For the $475 million contract, Blackwater, Enris, Armored Group, DynCorp, Control Risk Group, and Aegis entered the competition. On April 1st, the Army announced the competition had narrowed to Armore…”

Brian Scott filed_lawsuit_against Aegis Defense Services documented ▶ 32:55

Brian Scott cited Anti-Pinkerton Act documented ▶ 33:25

“government contracting of private military companies. A federal judge thus ordered an extension to the AGES current contract for six months. Scott based his protest on what he believed was a violation…”

Aegis Defense Services awarded_contract Project Matrix documented ▶ 34:16

“who had served 13 years of active duty in the U.S. Army, had filed at least a dozen protests against the use of private military companies, all were dismissed, as this one would be too. By mid-Septemb…”

Blackwater carried_out_attack Nisour Square massacre documented ▶ 35:43

“was under a blinding spotlight for on the 16th, Blackwater contractors opened fire with automatic weapons and grenade launchers on a busy street west of central Baghdad, killing 17 Iraqi civilians, in…”

Blackwater operated_in Nisour Square documented ▶ 36:09

“The incident happened around noon in Nisor Square, a traffic circle outside of the fortified areas of Baghdad known as the International Zone or Green Zone. The convoy of four heavily armed trucks fil…”

Blackwater protected USAID documented ▶ 36:35

“personal security detail located about a mile from Nisor Square. That detail was in charge of transporting U.S. diplomats to a meeting that day in western Baghdad with officials from USAID. Raven 23's…”

Jeremy Ridgway member_of Blackwater documented ▶ 39:27

“turret gunners in the convoy continued to fire their machine guns into civilian vehicles. One of the gunners, Jeremy Ridgway, would later testify these were vehicles that posed no threat to the convoy…”

Jeremy Ridgway testified Nisour Square massacre documented ▶ 39:27

Tim Spicer worked_for Department of Defense documented ▶ 41:16

“Tim Spicer, for example, noted that his company was a contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense, unlike Blackwater, which was contracted to the State Department. And that meant that Aegis had to ad…”

Blackwater worked_for U.S. State Department documented ▶ 41:16

United States trained Colombia host_asserted ▶ 46:20

“Under the guise of anti-drug, which we know they weren't anti-drug, they were facilitating the drug trade, they trained an extra 20,000 so that they can hire them into these subcontracted private mili…”

Evan Liberty involved_in Nisour Square massacre documented ▶ 46:51

“Thank you, Colonel, and thank everyone for attending here today on Spaces and Rumble. I was doing some questions to, well, asking Grok about the Nassar Square trial. And according to what happened and…”

Dustin Hurd involved_in Nisour Square massacre documented ▶ 46:51

Nicholas Slayton involved_in Nisour Square massacre documented ▶ 46:51

Paul Slough involved_in Nisour Square massacre documented ▶ 46:51

Donald Trump pardoned Paul Slough documented ▶ 47:53

“What I see as a mic drop is President Trump in 2020 issued full pardons for all four contractors. Yep. So that makes me wonder at this point in time, when it says all four contractors, is he saying ju…”

Donald Trump pardoned Dustin Hurd documented ▶ 47:53

Donald Trump pardoned Nicholas Slayton documented ▶ 47:53

Donald Trump pardoned Evan Liberty documented ▶ 47:53

Operation Gladio funded Italy host_asserted ▶ 48:57

“This is this is very similar to if you go back to when we were in Italy and the expose of Operation Gladio there in the 1990s, where you found people were just that actually were terrorists paid by Op…”