Then, he said, “the Army showed up, yelling at us and thinking we were the enemy. We explained to them that we were security. I told them what had happened and they didn’t even care. They just left.” Five minutes later, the guard said, Louisiana state troopers arrived on the scene, inquired about the incident, and then asked him for directions on “how they could get out of the city.” The guard said that no one ever asked him for any details of the incident and no report was ever made. “One thing about security,” he said, “is that we all coordinate with each other—one family.” That coordination apparently did not include the offices of the Secretaries of State in Louisiana and Alabama, which said they had no record of his company.
A few miles away from the French Quarter, another wealthy New Orleans businessman, James Reiss, who served in Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration as chairman of the city’s Regional Transit Authority, brought in some heavy guns to guard the elite gated community of Audubon Place: Israeli mercenaries dressed in black and armed with M- 16s. Reiss, who flew the men in by helicopter, told the Wall Street Journal, “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again, or we’re out.”34 Two Israelis patrolling the gates outside Audubon said they had served as professional soldiers in the Israeli military, and one boasted of having participated in the invasion of Lebanon. “We have been fighting the Palestinians all day, every day, our whole lives,” one of them declared. “Here in New Orleans, we are not guarding from terrorists.”35 Then, tapping on his machine gun, he said, “Most Americans, when they see these things, that’s enough to scare them.”
The men said they worked for Instinctive Shooting International, which described its employees as “veterans of the Israeli special task forces from the following Israeli government bodies: Israel Defense Force (IDF), Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, Instructors of Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, General Security Service (GSS or ‘Shin Beit’), Other restricted intelligence agencies.”36 The company was formed in 1993. Its Web site profile said: “Our up-to-date services meet the challenging needs for Homeland Security preparedness and overseas combat procedures and readiness. ISI is currently an approved vendor by the US Government to supply Homeland Security services.”
As countless guns poured into New Orleans, there was a distinct absence of relief operations, food, and water distribution. The presence of the mercenaries raised another important question: given the enormous presence in New Orleans of National Guard, U.S. Army, U.S. Border Patrol, local police from around the country, and practically every other government agency with badges, why were private security companies needed, particularly to guard federal projects? “I don’t know that there are any terrorist attacks being planned against FEMA offices in the Gulf Coast,” said Illinois Senator Barack Obama. “It strikes me, with all the National Guardsmen that we’ve got down there, with a bunch of local law enforcement that are back on the job and putting their lives back together again, that that may not be the best use of money.”37 Shortly after The Nation exposed Blackwater’s operations in New Orleans, Representative Schakowsky and a handful of other Congress members raised questions about the scandal. They entered the reporting into the Congressional Record during hearings on Katrina in late September 2005 and cited it in letters to DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner, who then began an inquiry.38 In letters to Congressional offices in February 2006, Skinner defended the Blackwater deal, asserting that it was “appropriate” for the government to contract with the company. Skinner admitted that “the ongoing cost of the contract… is clearly very high” and then quietly dropped a bombshelclass="underline" “It is expected that FEMA will require guard services on a relatively long-term basis (two to five years).”39
The hurricane’s aftermath ushered in the homecoming of the “war on terror,” a contract bonanza whereby companies reaped massive Iraq-like profits without leaving the country and at a minuscule fraction of the risk. To critics of the government’s handling of the hurricane, the message was clear. “That’s what happens when the victims are black folks vilified before and after the storm—instead of aid, they get contained,” said Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and an editor of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch.40 Kromm alleged that while seemingly endless amounts of money were doled out to scandal-ridden contractors, vital projects had “gotten zero or little money” in New Orleans in the same period, including: job creation, hospital and school reconstruction, affordable housing, and wetlands restoration. Even in this context, DHS continued to defend the Blackwater contract. In a March 1, 2006, memo to FEMA, Matt Jadacki, the DHS Special Inspector General for Gulf Coast Hurricane Recovery, wrote that the Federal Protective Service considered Blackwater “the best value to the government.”41
A month after Katrina hit, Blackwater’s guards were also working the Hurricane Rita gravy train. At its high point the company had about six hundred contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi.42 By the summer of 2006, Blackwater’s operations in New Orleans were staffed more by police types than the commandos of the early deployment. The paramilitary gear was eventually replaced by black polo shirts with the company logo, khaki pants, and pistols as Blackwater men patrolled the parking lot of a Wal-Mart that had been converted into a FEMA outpost.43 In late August 2006, Blackwater was still guarding such vital public institutions as the city library—which was being used by FEMA—where one patron, after allegedly being refused entry by a Blackwater guard and finding himself unable to get an explanation as to why, said the “brazen representative declined to give his name and called a supervisor who declined to give his name or the name of the representative who denied [the man] access to the library.”44 In Baton Rouge, Blackwater set up a Katrina zone headquarters, renting space at the World Evangelism Bible College and Seminary, run by disgraced Christian televangelist Jimmy Swaggart (whose public career went up in flames in 1988 when he was caught with a prostitute in a motel).45
For Blackwater, Katrina was a momentous occasion—its first official deployment on U.S. soil. While it raked in a hefty sum for the domestic disaster operations, the greatest benefit to the company was in breaking into a new, lucrative market for its mercenary services—far from the bloodletting of Iraq. As the Virginian-Pilot, which is right in Blackwater’s backyard, observed, the hurricanes of 2005 represented “a potential plug for a hole in Blackwater’s business model. Private military companies thrive on war—an icy fact that could gut the now-booming industry when or if Iraq settles down. Katrina offered Blackwater a chance to diversify into natural disasters.”46 Erik Prince has said that prior to Katrina, “We had no plans to be in the domestic security business at all.”47 In the aftermath of the hurricane, though, Blackwater launched a new domestic operations division. “Look, none of us loves the idea that devastation became a business opportunity,” said the new division’s deputy, Seamus Flatley, a retired Navy fighter pilot. “It’s a distasteful fact, but it is what it is. Doctors, lawyers, funeral directors, even newspapers—they all make a living off of bad things happening. So do we, because somebody’s got to handle it.”48