The privatization of the occupation also offered a chance for many combat enthusiasts, retired from the service and stuck in the ennui of everyday existence, to return to their glory days on the battlefield under the banner of the international fight against terrorism. “It’s what you do,” said former Navy SEAL Steve Nash. “Say you spend twenty years doing things like riding high-speed boats and jumping out of airplanes. Now, all of sudden, you’re selling insurance. It’s tough.”3 Dan Boelens, a fifty-five-year-old police officer from Michigan and self-described weapons expert, went to Iraq with Blackwater because it was “the last chance in my life to do something exciting,” saying, “I like the stress and adrenaline push it gives me.”4
“When a guy can make more money in one month than he can make all year in the military or in a civilian job, it’s hard to turn it down,” said ex-SEAL Dale McClellan, one of the original founders of Blackwater USA. “Most of us have been getting shot at most of our lives anyway.” Their skills—urban warfare, sniping, close-quarter combat—McClellan said, are “all worthless in the civilian world.” Plus, there’s an added bonus McClellan calls the “cool-guy factor.” “Let’s face it,” he said. “Chicks dig it.”5
“You’re not trained for a lot of other things,” said Curtis Williams, another ex-SEAL. “That adrenaline rush is addicting. It’s something that never goes away.”6 Many Special Forces soldiers who served in the “peacetime” of the 1990s also felt robbed of the overt combat of different eras and viewed the war on terror as their chance at glory. “We are trained to serve our country in an elite fashion,” said Williams. “We want to go back and kill the bad guy. It’s who we are.”7 A Blackwater contractor who served in Afghanistan admitted that money is a major factor. “But that’s not all of it,” he said. “After 9/11, I wanted some payback.”8 Among those lured to Iraq by Blackwater’s offer was a thirty-eight-year-old former Navy SEAL named Scott Helvenston.9
A tan, chiseled, G.I. Joe action figure of a man, Helvenston was like a walking ad for the military. Literally. His image—shirt off, running on a beach at the head of a pack of jogging SEALs—once graced the cover of a Navy promotional calendar. He came from a proud family of Republicans, and his great-great-uncle, Elihu Root, was once the U.S. Secretary of War and a winner of the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize. Helvenston’s father died when he was seven, and he helped raise his younger brother, Jason. Scott Helvenston was, by all accounts, a model soldier and athlete. He made history by becoming the youngest person ever to complete the rigorous Navy SEAL program, finishing it at seventeen. He spent twelve years in the SEALs, four of them as an instructor. “It’s the longest and most arduous training of its kind in the free world,” Helvenston said of the SEAL program’s Basic Underwater Demolition School. “When you make it through, you say, Hey, I think I can handle anything.”10 But, like many ex-Special Forces guys, Helvenston struggled to figure out what to do with his life after he left the service in 1994. His combat skills didn’t exactly transfer into the “real world” all that well, and he had no interest in being anybody’s rent-a-cop. His real passion was fitness: he had made several workout videos through his company, Amphibian Athletics, and had dreams of opening his own fitness center.
For a while in the 1990s, Helvenston tried his luck with Hollywood. He trained Demi Moore for her film about the SEALs, G.I. Jane, was an adviser on John Travolta’s film Face/Off, and he even had a cameo as a stunt double in a movie here and there. He also did a few stints on reality television, including a starring role in the Special Forces military reality show Combat Missions, which was produced by Survivor creator Mark Burnett. One reviewer described Helvenston as having “a spitfire temperament” on the show, and he was widely seen as the villain.11 “He’s very emotional, and he reads things a certain way and is of a mind about how he’s perceived,” said Burnett of Helvenston. “But you know what? Put a gun on him and send him into battle. You’d want him on your side. He’s a great Navy SEAL and one of the best athletes in America.”12 In another series, Man vs. Beast, Helvenston was the only contestant to defeat the beast, outmaneuvering a chimpanzee in an obstacle course.
Not for lack of effort, the acting work wasn’t panning out for Helvenston, and he was struggling to make ends meet. “It was good money but it was never enough,” his mother, Katy Helvenston-Wettengel, remembers. He was divorced from his wife, Patricia, but continued to support her and their two teenage children, Kyle and Kelsey. Helvenston was also in debt, and when he heard through the SEAL grapevine that serious money was to be made as a high-risk bodyguard, he began looking around. He was offered a job by DynCorp protecting Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but he ultimately declined because it required a one-year commitment and Helvenston didn’t want to leave his children.13 Then, in late 2003, when he heard that Blackwater was hiring—and that he could deploy for just two months—the idea immediately appealed to him. Scott’s mother says he viewed it as an opportunity to turn his life around. “He said, ‘I’m gonna go over there, make some money, maybe make a difference, then I’ll be coming back starting my new job. I’ll only be away from my kids for a couple of months.’ That’s why he chose Blackwater,” she recalls.
When he would talk about it with his family or friends, Scott Helvenston would tell people that he was going to be guarding the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq. After all, that’s what Blackwater was known in the private security world to be doing over there. Plus, the company was run by ex-SEALs like Helvenston—he’d be right at home and around guys who’d have his back in Iraq. “Scott had a warrior mindset,” said his friend Mark Divine, a Navy SEAL reservist trained by Helvenston. He said Helvenston planned to make $60,000 in Iraq, but that he also was looking forward to seeing the kind of action he’d trained for but hadn’t really seen during his “peacetime” years in the SEALs. “When you’re not in the game, you feel a little bit like a caged animal. Like training your whole life to be a pro football player and not getting to suit up for the game,” Divine said.14 Helvenston’s brother, Jason, said that although Scott had participated in covert operations as a SEAL, he felt none were risky enough to feel fulfilled. “He sometimes felt he never served his country because he didn’t encounter enough danger,” Jason Helvenston said. “That’s why he went to Iraq.”15 Divine spoke to Helvenston two days before he shipped out. “This was a last hooray for Scott,” he said. “It was his last opportunity to get back in the arena.” As for the serious risks of deploying in Iraq, Divine said, “His feeling was, ‘If your time is up, there’s going to be a bullet out there with your name on it.’”16