At the December 1 book night, Steve Fainaru, the 2007 OPC Hal Boyle Award and Pulitzer Prize author, jumped right into telling how his new book on mercenaries in Iraq came to be. His book, Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq, represents his experiences reporting the war in Iraq beginning from the fall of 2004 until the end of 2007.
“The book follows the trajectory of my reporting,” Fainaru said.
He began as an embedded reporter for the first year, and then at the end of 2005, he wanted to continue reporting but knew “Iraq fatigue” was happening among U.S. readers. An editor at The Washington Post suggested he cover the private war in Iraq.
“It was a vast subject with 190,000 people, from cooks to sanitation to private security/mercenaries,” Fainaru said. “You’d see these people at chow halls, dressed as civilians and heavily tattooed. They looked like they stepped out of a Max Mad movie. I wanted to know who they were and what they did.”
Fainaru made contact with the Crescent Security Group based in Kuwait City. He described Crescent’s headquarters as a house that looked like a “paramilitary group found in the San Fernando Valley,” but inside found it to be a well fortified mission control. Within eight hours of his arrival, they went to Iraq in regular pick-up trucks.
“They literally commute to the war,” Fainaru said. “This was at the height of the insurgency.”
He saw no guns on the people in the truck and asked someone where weapons were kept. He was told that they were kept in a “container on the other side.”
“Is that safe?” he asked.
Fainaru said the person replied, “‘Funny you should mention that…,’” Fainaru explained that the week before all the weapons were missing from the container. The owner of Crescent sent an Iraqi employee into Iraq with $50,000 to buy weapons on the black market. After looking at the serial numbers, they realized they had bought back their own stolen weapons.
This was just one of many stories Fainaru related at the OPC Book Night that underscores the lawlessness in Iraq when it comes to private security firms. Big Boy Rules [Da Capo Press, 2008] follows closely who the mercenaries are, with particular attention to former 82nd Airbourne Jon Coté who worked for $7,000 a month for Crescent.
“He was looking for a feeling he didn’t have,” Fainaru said. “That’s one of the most perverse things about the war.”
Fainaru spent a week with Coté and returned to write a story. Before striking the first key, he received a call that Coté and three colleagues had been kidnapped. They went missing for fourteen months until an informant came forward delivering their severed fingers in a bag. The bodies began to appear soon after.
Fainaru said he wanted to look into why people like Coté take these dangerous jobs and what happened to them. The second half of Big Boy Rules looks at the corporate world of private security firms.
“Because there was never going to be a draft and they wouldn’t put more troops on the ground, the government outsourced the war,” Fainaru said. “There were tens of thousands of hired guns called the ‘Iraq Bubble.’ Everyone involved in these firms operated with impunity.”
Fainaru told the story of a former marine – who was paid $18,000 a month – who woke up one day and said he wanted to kill someone. Later that day he kicked open the truck door and fired several rounds into a taxi and drove off. One of the members in his group of four, a Fijian paid $600 a month, came forward and was told by his Fijian supervisor to remain silent on the matter. Eventually the two other former military members came forward. The company’s response was to fire the two informants and the perpetrator of the shooting who now resides in Oklahoma. There are no rules or jurisdictions in Iraq, hence the name of the book, Big Boy Rules, an expression used by employees of the security agencies.
“What struck me about this was the total absence of law,” Fainaru said. “No contractor has been charged with a crime. The company I heard the most about was Blackwater; they more than any company operated with impunity. The U.S. paid $1.2 billion a year to protect diplomats in Iraq. Blackwater has been so pernicious because it’s operating under a state department contract. No State Department personnel has so far been killed.”
Fainaru said the government claimed they wouldn’t renew contracts if there were reported missteps, but so far all contracts have been renewed.
“There are layers and layers of contracts, some for $35,000 that last for only a day sealed by no more than a handshake,” Fainaru said. “It’s labyrinthian in nature.”
The upcoming Obama administration is in a tough spot, Fainaru said. “As a senator he worked to make laws for the contractors, but now he’s faced with a parallel track. As the U.S. withdraws, there’ll be a need for more private security firms. As the oil services industry begins again, they’ll need security.”
One of the biggest issues with the private security firms Fainaru said, is that they are not counted in figures of troops killed or missing.
“This is the hidden costs of war,” Fainaru said. “It’s amazing how many people are willing to do this work. The people doing it say it’s exciting, the money is good. It’s all the great stuff about the military without the B.S. The majority are professional and do important work. The question is, should they be doing that work?”
Fainaru blogs on this continuing story – most recently about a candlelight vigil he attended in Buffalo for Jon Coté – at http://www.bigboyrules.com/.