Robert Young Pelton’s Latest Book to be Released September 2006

Overview

As the book opens the author introduces reclusive billionaire Erik Prince, the CEO of Blackwater, one of the world’s foremost security contractor firms, and learns that Prince is on the verge of bringing to market a fully equipped aircraft-and-artillery-supported private army.  It is Erik’s first public interview ever and sets the tone for this seminal work on an emerging industry.

From there the narrative shifts to Baghdad, currently the world’s most high-risk security posting.  In what resembles a scene out of “Mad Max,” Pelton goes inside again, giving us the first look at what it’s like to live and work with Blackwater’s private army.  Featured here are the tattooed, Kevlar-vested, gun-toting men who cruise up and down the infamous “Route Irish” – the 4 mile crater-pocked stretch of highway that, at the time of the author’s arrival, had recently seen 16 attacks a day.  No tailgating tolerated by these elite soldiers-turned-bodyguards.  Close approaching traffic that doesn’t heed warnings receives an immediate spray of gunfire. Welcome to the insane world of the private military contractor.

Next we meet 74 year old Billy Waugh, a Special Forces warrior turned covert contract operator. Billy’s recitation of his adventures takes us back to the origins of the “contractor” role, particularly as it was conceived by the CIA. A man with a lethal repertoire of skills, Waugh tells what its like to have Osama Bin Laden in his cross hairs and why he was never allowed to pull the trigger. The reader learns the inside story of how contractors and private armies were slowly defanged before 9/11. 

Are there new Billy Waugh’s?  And have we unleashed a new generation of contract killers to hunt down our enemies? To learn that, Pelton travels to the war torn border between Afghanistan and Pakistan where he trades on his long experience infiltrating covert groups and links up with a special task force of “guns for hire” (CIA contractors who possess deniability).  Pelton discovers that they’re doing everything the army says it isn’t: including going cross border to hunt for high-value targets.  The author then meets with a local tribal leader who identifies where Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar can be located and tries to bring together the hunter and the hunted. 

The next chapter gives us an exclusive look of what it’s like to be a contractor keeping Afghanistan’s targeted-for-assassination president Harmid Karzai alive.  The tenuity of Karzai’s position is made clear.  If the expensive security cordon that protects Karzai 24/7 ever falls away, he’s not likely to survive.  In a comparison with what befell former Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Pelton gives us the inside story — from the men who did it — of how the U.S. government can effectively topple a government via its ability to “pull out” American citizens privately employed in protecting a leader. 

From there, the book moves to Dallas, Texas to let the reader eavesdrop on a gathering of private security contractors and mercenaries looking to scope out the latest security technology and get leads on jobs. In a candid, impromptu "merc" roundtable, the author elicits comments regarding the reality of the guns-for-hire life.  For some it’s about the rush, for others it’s about the money, for still others patriotism is a factor.  For many it’s all three. What’s indisputable is that there’s no civilian job out there that can match the bucks ( $150,000+ a year ) one can earn by strapping on a Kevlar vest and a gun and accepting an assignment to the world’s war zones. 

The next two chapters graphically show the real risks contractors must overcome to collect that high pay.  For the first time the author details the inside story of the well known but little investigated events leading up to the killing of Blackwater contractors in Fallujah.  Still vivid in the memories of many are the images of the bodies of four men being dragged through the streets and suspended from a Fallujah bridge. The worldwide news coverage triggered global shock and litigation by family members who felt Blackwater didn’t do enough to protect its employees. For the first time the world asked "Who are these guys".  Licensed to Kill provides answers.   

In another coup, Pelton takes readers inside the Alamo-like contractor/insurgent standoffs in Najaf and Al Kut.  Here we learn just how exposed-to-danger and alone a private military contractor can be when thrust into combat. It’s a role contractors are not supposed to find themselves in, but often seek out. Featured in this chapter are the operational philosophies and real-world dilemmas of the American contractor firm Triple Canopy and UK firms Control Risks Group and HART. 

In Chapter 7 the author gains exclusive access to the secretive contractor training process. First stop is Triple Canopy’s training center in Arkansas, a bizarre and moribund dog-racing track that doubles as a site for honing anti-terrorist driving skills. While greyhounds chase pink rabbits and patrons drink cheap beer, aspiring contractors swerve rented Suburbans at high speeds around rows of orange cones, simulating a convoy coming under attack.  At a nearby and closed-to-the-public shooting range that is even more dilapidated, trainees polish their client protection skills with live-fire scenarios using M-4 assault rifles and Glock pistols.    

In between classes and late at night, potential security contractors pour out to Pelton their fears and dreams, permitting the reader to glimpse the inner lives of these normally tight-lipped men. We learn that there’s often a dark reality behind the patriotism and bluster: financial desperation. 

Next, Pelton accepts an invitation to teach a course at Blackwater’s training site in North Carolina, which he dubs “the kingdom of bang.”  On most of the facility’s 6000 acres, the din of heavy gunfire and explosions can regularly be heard as hundreds of soldiers, cops and covert units train.   Here, the author and other expert instructors put representatives from Homeland Security, Army Special Operations, the intelligence services and law enforcement through a “Mirror Image Course” meant to get them to think and act like terrorists.  Among the skills taught: how to better understand the mind of assassins, how to “take out” a target, and even how to deliver a truck bomb as part of a suicide attack. 

The next chapter presents this new Ronin class in its element. Pelton take us inside Baghdad’s “Green Zone” to the Blackwater team house where he lives, works and drinks with men who work one of the world’s toughest security details. On a daily basis, men with nicknames like “Baz”, “Grizz”,, “Miyagi”, “Cougar”, and “Shrek” lock and load to protect a convoy making the deadly airport run. The author actually makes us part of the convoy, introducing us to contractors who within months will end up as casualties.  We glimpse many of the contractors’ little known tools, such as the “hate truck” a security convoy’s heavy armed cavalry, meant to stay and fight while the rest of the convoy gets off the “X”.  It’s a rolling vehicle of violence pack with weapons and home-made armor, and complete with AC-DC heavy-metal music pumping from the radio and a grinning skull mounted on the dash. 

The latter part of the book reveals some of the most disturbing permutations at the edges of the security contractor/merc world.  We meet “Jack” Idema, a man who put the “con” in contractor.  Featured here is the never before told story of Idema’s over-the-top Afghanistan exploits, which include illegally rounding up and imprisoning citizens he deemed suspected terrorists.  Pelton also brings us face to face with Britain’s most famous and now richest former mercenary: Tim Spicer. A one-time British officer, Spicer went on to work for a private military company called Sandline, which earned a tainted reputation with its ventures in such remote places such as Papua New Guinea and West  Africa. The venue for Pelton’s conversation with Spicer is the well-appointed office of the multi-million-dollar company Spicer runs, Aegis. The huge scale of Aegis’ operations is the direct result of being awarded the largest cost-plus US security contract in Iraq. 

We also go inside the British security industry, participating in a pivotal meeting between Erik Prince and his wealthy UK counterpart, Lord Westbury. Westbury is a highly decorated SAS officer who founded one of the earliest private military companies, DSL, as well as a newer security firm HART. Pelton brings these two visionary men together to get to the core of the philosophical difference between the two companies.  Their conversation points up a dichotomy characterizing the whole industry: HART favors a colonial-style, blend-in-with-the-natives, minimum-force approach; Blackwater favors a Rambo-style, maximum-firepower approach, complete with helicopters and giant armored gunned-up vehicles. 

The book’s last chapter should be bad fiction.  It focuses on an attempt by a celebrity-backed international business consortium to use mercenaries and contractors to overthrow a small oil-rich dictatorship. But the coup attempt on Equatorial Guinea is true and the key conspirator turns out to be one of Pelton’s old friends.  With unprecedented access to sealed evidence and even an exclusive interview with the president of the country, Pelton painstakingly recreates the events that led to disaster. The reader learns that contractor and mercenary, law breaker and law enforcer can be one and the same…it just depends on the gig.   

In his four-year journey while writing the book Pelton sees the best and the worst of the private military world, struggling to remain unbiased. He presents the idea that high-functioning, constantly trained private armies could represent, as Erik Prince advocates, an innovative way to administer global peace, but he also makes frighteningly clear that firms such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy and the thousands of freelance ex-military hired guns they recruit are a dangerously tempting weapon for deep-pocketed players who want to rewrite history according to their own rules.  Ultimately, Pelton’s book is a breakneck, bullet-dodging trip through the little known world of the mercenary and contractor — as well as an intelligent, balanced reference guide for those who wonder exactly what happens when civilians in the War on Terror are given a “license to kill.” 

Among the inside stories covered in License to Kill:  

*The dark origins of private and proxy warfare, the history of contractors and private companies in the dirty wars, how 9/11 led to the rebirth of this once dark and reviled way of doing business.  

*What sparked the massive explosion in the private security sector.  Its birth, what fuels it, why it’s destined for further exponential growth and profits. 

*The tribalism and lingo of contracting.  The pay, the danger, the attacks, the untold stories and dirty secrets. 

*New, intriguing details concerning the colorful mover and shaker Billionaire Erik Prince and his thousand-man army (exclusive access). 

*How the media toured Shkin, Aghanistan never realizing it was a CIA base and the birth of Blackwater USA. 

*A Harmid Karzai assassination attempt that was thwarted by ex Navy Seal contractors, but left two innocents dead. 

* The birth and evolution of the science of keeping VIP’s alive, straight from Delta force legend “Mad Max’ Craig Maxim 

*The hidden death toll of contractors in Iraq, as well as who they are and the impact on their families. 

*The huge number of violent incidents involving private security contractors in Iraq, and the shocking non-interference policy adopted by Iraqi police. 

*How the U.S. government spends millions training elite troops only to have them leave the military, hire on with contractor firms, and be sold back to the government at premium rates. 

*How the government uses contractors to outsource blame and political responsibility. 

*The truth behind charges leveled at certain contracting firms that they inadequately orient their personnel to combat zones, and show callousness when their employees are injured. 

*How, in the worst firefights, it is often contractors, the “coalition of the billing,” who battle furiously while the “coalition of the willing” stand around and watch. 

*The consequences of being the hired gun who gets left behind: an exclusive prison interview with Nick du Toit, who while leading a coup in Equatorial Guinea partly financed by affluent Brits and South Africans, was captured and given a life sentence in a E.G. prison. 

*The danger that a private military firm might act out the orders of American leaders or the CIA without Congressional oversight.

  
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