- 4 months ago
Barrie Rice is a former commando with the New Zealand Special Air Service. For the past 30 years, he's been a mercenary and personal bodyguard all over the world.
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00:00My name is Barry Rice. I'm a former soldier for the New Zealand Special Air Service.
00:04The last 30 years I've been a mercenary and bodyguard all over the world.
00:08This is everything I'm authorised to tell you.
00:11Everyone has a negative connotation of mercenaries, right?
00:14They all think they're a bunch of wild geese killers and go out there and do that, and it's not.
00:19They're generally there supporting an agency.
00:21And so there's always going to be some part of an entity, a government,
00:25or an agency who will use them for nefarious purposes.
00:30The word mercenary is an old term now.
00:36We're now called security contractors.
00:39Basically somebody who works for a foreign government or a foreign company for money.
00:46The value system or what they believe in and the ethics doesn't come into it.
00:50In late 2003, I went to Baghdad and this started my mercenary work.
00:55Yeah, I mean, the only thing that I was really focused on was the fact that I was going to be earning some decent money.
01:00The main principle of close protection and military contracting work, when you're looking after somebody, is to avoid conflict.
01:09If you're running around shooting up everybody every day, then you're doing your job completely wrong.
01:15Close protection is to allow the client to do his job unhindered.
01:19We were tasked with escorting clients to go to the ministries around the different ministries,
01:26the electoral ministry, the oil ministry, talking to the different peoples to try and pick up a rock again, get it back on its feet.
01:33Back in those days, 2003, the early part of 2004, we were still accepted by the locals.
01:37Okay, they knew we were there to help.
01:40That didn't change until maybe about sort of two months, three months later on on the ground and then things started to go ugly.
01:47If we had a task that we had to do is say take a client to a meeting in town, you couldn't afford things like punctures,
01:53you couldn't afford breakdowns.
01:55If you had like a Suburban or the Trailblazer, which had a trunk that could lift up, we'd have a driver, one guy in the front, two guys on each side, and a tail gunner.
02:06He'd be facing the back.
02:07And he normally had a belt-fed machine gun or something quite powerful, so he would always be facing back.
02:12So if anyone tried to approach you from the rear, you had enough firepower to keep them away.
02:17And everybody was given arcs of responsibilities.
02:19So everybody was up to speed as to what was going on the entire time that it was happening.
02:24Then when you get to the venue, if your sniper's going to go to the roof, because you were trying to carry someone who could do overwatch,
02:30always remembering that your mission is to bring back the client.
02:35When we started off with Blackwater and there were no armoured vehicles coming into the country, everyone had ordered them, but it took a long time for them to come in.
02:44When we did start getting better vehicles, we had fully armoured Nissan flatbed trucks that we had.
02:50And the disadvantage of that for us is that you can't shoot out of them because you can't wind the windows down.
02:55The advantage of the Soskin vehicles is that you can shoot out of them and you can shoot through the doors, you can shoot through the windows.
03:00That's not a problem if you need to.
03:02So probably one of the most common areas where anybody over there at the time would run into was on Irish, Route Irish.
03:11It was about a six-mile stretch of road.
03:15You know, you were constricted.
03:16You had a side of the highway going to the airport and you had a side of the highway coming back from the airport.
03:21So you couldn't really deviate from that road.
03:24They would try and attack the military along that road with IEDs, improvised explosive device, strapped to the safety barriers or car bombs or whatever.
03:34So, you know, it got to be a bit of a shooting gallery.
03:37The local insurgents, as it were, saw Blackwater as another extension of the U.S. government.
03:43So you were always on the lookout.
03:44If the traffic was bad and sometimes you had to be a little bit aggressive to get people out of the way so you could get through and get your client out of there and would say sorry later.
03:53What was initially a safe-ish stretch of six-mile highway became perhaps the most deadliest road in the world.
04:04January, February, beginning of March in Iraq of 2004, things were still relatively quite sort of peaceful.
04:14But that all changed on the 31st.
04:16So our guys, you know, they were tasked to go and do a job.
04:19They had to go through or around Fallujah to get to the base that they needed to get to.
04:23However, the team leader that they had stopped and asked the local Iraqi police what was the best way of getting that.
04:31And as they left, there was only two soft-skinned vehicles with two people in each vehicle, three flatbed trucks in between.
04:39A very lovely, soft target was coming through.
04:43And, of course, they set up an ambush.
04:45We saw that.
04:46OK, so I was in the team house.
04:50I was with a couple of the other guys there.
04:52TV was going and we could see this vehicle burning.
04:54And they looked very familiar to us, you know, panned around and we saw bodies, you know, inside the vehicle being burnt.
05:02They were being beaten by the locals and all that sort of carrying on.
05:06And then we realized it was our guys.
05:09OK, and it was really a stop moment.
05:13And you could kind of feel the change in history, if you know what I mean, for those of us who were on the ground.
05:18That this was now more than just helping them rebuild, you know, their country.
05:24This was now our war as well.
05:27You know, the most disturbing thing about it for me was that the insurgents, well, the guys who attacked our boys, they got them in ambush.
05:35They killed them.
05:37They took their weapons.
05:38But it was what the locals were doing.
05:40It was the locals that were beating them up.
05:42After the boys got killed in Fallujah, the Marines and the U.S. military went in there for a second time and basically flattened Fallujah.
05:51And that one incident was history changing, you know.
05:56That one incident caused the death and destruction of thousands of people.
06:03So the ROEs or rules of engagement are what we are guided to and what we're told to do and how we are to act.
06:15OK, generally, like for the military, you aren't allowed to shoot at somebody until you can identify a weapon or they're trying to shoot at you.
06:22Pretty limiting.
06:23OK, but you want to try and win hearts and minds.
06:25You just don't want to go around, you know, killing everybody.
06:27However, for us, we didn't have such restrictions.
06:34If we thought that we needed to engage somebody, we were technically allowed to.
06:39The Bush administration at the time were making all sorts of rules that had never been done before.
06:44That did not mean at all that we would go around just shooting at someone because we felt like it.
06:51However, if we did, legally, we were cleared to be able to do that.
06:55And there were guys in some companies, you know, would be running cars off the road, forcing them to crash, shooting a lot more into the bonnets.
07:03And you're a real kind of human being if you do that.
07:06And even if you tried that in the military, then, you know, your friends would quite rightly either tell on you or put a bullet in the back of your head.
07:14In my teams, I made sure none of that ever happened.
07:17And if there were people who were going out there in order to try and get a head count or a body count, it was quite quickly that they would be either taken care of or moved out.
07:27We did fire for sure.
07:29We did.
07:29But we had to watch out for different target indicators.
07:31OK.
07:32And if they failed these different target indicators, then we could perhaps consider them to be a bit more anti-us.
07:39And we would have to act accordingly.
07:41The biggest thing was never to wait too long.
07:43And then you find that you're on the receiving end of something that you could have avoided.
07:53Breakwater Commercial, there was a whole...
07:56They had to equip a lot of people in a short period of time.
07:58So what the company did was they bought hundreds of guns just from wherever they could find them.
08:04And when we came in, we had them placed all over the front yard of our team house.
08:09The gun is a big misconception about close protection.
08:14Guns don't make the job.
08:16It's about using your brain, using your observation skills, and getting out of there or understanding and reading the situation.
08:24And part of when you're buying second, third-hand, 20-year-old guns, whatever the age they may be, is you've got to make sure that they work.
08:31So myself and about three other guys were given the task of stripping, assembling, oiling up, and testing these guns.
08:40Also, you had to make sure that anything that you bought from the street hadn't been booby-trapped in a way that if you were to use it, it would blow up in your hands and kill the operator.
08:50And all those guns that we had were all of the AK variant.
08:55And you'll find most conflicts, they all use the AKs.
08:58Those magazines are all prevalent.
09:00Those parts are all prevalent.
09:01If you use more exotic guns like the M4s or the HKs, they're harder to find the pieces.
09:06And if you run out of bullets in a firefight, you just can't go and pick up some that are on the ground.
09:11You have to grab the whole gun.
09:12One thing I was sort of very impressed with, but sort of like very sort of, I'd say jealous and giggled about, was the amount of gear that my American Collars colleagues brought in.
09:23I mean, these guys had 5'11 trousers, shirts, hats, you know, vests.
09:29But the thing was, when we got the AK-47s and vests that were seven sizes too big for us, none of that stuff was any good for them.
09:37You know, the one thing that I think was an advantage, coming from where I came from in New Zealand, was that our military was, sure, we were equipped as best as we could, but we could also make do with what we didn't have.
09:51So a lot of guys struggled who had all this Gucci kit, but didn't have anything to put it onto, right?
09:57And they couldn't really adjust to the basics of what we actually ended up having on the ground.
10:02When we finally were able to get body armor, we'd have body armor, which was a must, and we'd have a vest.
10:08I carried an MP5, an Ecklingcock MP5, which is a small 9mm submachine gun, sort of the Rolls-Royce standard of submachine guns back in the day.
10:18And the reason I carried this was because inside a vehicle, it was very short and compact, and you were close enough where you could put rounds down.
10:28Now, you're not going to snipe anybody while you're driving in a vehicle.
10:33You want to put enough rounds down, hopefully, to distract them from shooting back at you.
10:38Also, I had four other guys up in the vehicle who had AK-47s, and they were big enough.
10:44In fact, we even had a bigger weapon than that, and we had a belt-fed machine gun in the trunk.
10:48So there was plenty of high-powered firepower that we needed.
10:51Also, I had an RPK or an RPD, I'd taken the bipod off, which was a long-barreled AK-47, and I carried an M-72 rocket launcher.
11:01We'd also carry, if we had them, white-fluss grenades or flashbangs.
11:07And it depended on your job, if in the team dictated what you carry.
11:11And what I brought into my teams after seeing a video of someone being kidnapped was that we would put a piece of red electrical tape around one of the magazines.
11:23And we carried three magazines for our pistol.
11:25And if we got into the firefight and we were bogged down that badly that we ended up, our last magazine had red tape on the end,
11:31and the reason to do that was not to be captured and star in our own decapitation video that our families would see for the rest of their lives.
11:46So the hierarchy that we were under while we were there was the owner and his subordinates back in the U.S.,
11:56and then you'd have your contract managers and your project managers and then your team leaders and then your guys on the ground.
12:02And again, it's exactly the same as being in the military.
12:04You have to have your chain of command and things go up and down in order to be cleared and whatever.
12:09However, like a special forces unit, the people on the ground who are running their teams like I was with my guys
12:16and the guys that I was looking after with other teams, we are given quite a loose rein.
12:23We are able to make decisions that we think are going to get the job done or are going to achieve the goal.
12:30I briefed before we went on any mission.
12:32I briefed when we got back.
12:34We trained every week.
12:36We cleaned our weapons on a certain day every week.
12:39Then we would relax, we'd have beers, we'd smoke.
12:42However, with that, you know, we also had within our company teams and different teams on different contracts
12:48that didn't train, they didn't brief, they didn't take the job as seriously and they paid the price.
12:57They worked as a bunch of individuals and they lost lives.
13:02I was fortunate that I never lost any one of my clients, no one of my boys.
13:07And when we did have to work to get out of a situation that could have been deadly,
13:13we worked very, very efficiently and very, very cohesively.
13:17And at the beginning stages, we could fire people if we felt like they weren't up to scratch.
13:22But as months and years went on, it became harder and harder.
13:26And you're starting to get guys who weren't of military background.
13:30You'd get like former police, you'd get former security guards.
13:33We had these two guys come over, went out to the airport, picked up a bunch of guys
13:36and these two guys, they were f***ing fat.
13:38You know, there's no other word for it.
13:40You know, they came back to the team house and then I got a call from the team house manager
13:45and she said, I've got these two guys who are going to join your team.
13:48And I looked at them and I just sort of laughed and said, there's no f***ing way, you know.
13:52These guys are big.
13:53And I just said, no, this is not going to work.
13:55The reason I signed up back in 2003 initially was because, which is the same reason for a lot of soldiers
14:08or ex-soldiers when they get out, is that we have all these skills that are not really appreciated
14:14or monetarily valued sort of worth in civilian street.
14:19We've got very high qualifications and high skills.
14:25When the opportunity came around to get paid for it in a conflict war situation, yeah, we jump at the chance.
14:32The paycheck was very encouraging.
14:34It was the carrot that was very encouraging to get over there and do.
14:39However, once on the ground, it was like, yeah, you were working for every dollar.
14:42I was paid the same as the guys.
14:44There's everybody else, which was basically a standard salary across the whole company, you know, being in the ground.
14:52Believe me, coming from New Zealand, $600 a day back then, you know, f*** what more money did I want?
14:58I mean, that was just being greedy, you know.
14:59There was an insurance policy for harm, like I think it was DBA.
15:06You know, that was all part of the being over there.
15:08Yeah, I mean, every security company had generally ended up buying or renting a villa inside the IZ.
15:16And the houses in Iraq are generally pretty big.
15:19What we had was a really nice one, two, three-storey villa.
15:26We had a front yard out of it with two day trees, and we used to sit down in the front each night
15:30and pull up our plastic tables and have a few beers.
15:33Each team had a room.
15:36Me and my boys, we had one-room bunk beds, and we made it as comfortable as possible.
15:41We had offices, briefing room, kitchen, TV room.
15:46When you come from the military, you're used to having not a lot of anything, all right,
15:50and you make the best of what you do have, and you make it comfortable, and you make it home.
15:54And this was probably a point of contention with the military because we could drink and they couldn't, you know,
15:59and that would piss them off a bit as well.
16:02They're on a dry contract.
16:04We were allowed to drink, and we did.
16:09You know, we went ugly early.
16:11You know, we drank like there was no tomorrow because we had a day to recover kind of thing or, you know.
16:18I mean, every weekend there would be a party, and some of them big and some of them not so big,
16:22and some we went to and some we didn't.
16:23Our rotations were three months on, one month off, which was a perfect sort of timing, really,
16:30because after three months, you're pretty cooked.
16:36We were sort of meant to work side by side with the military, okay.
16:42But the military, at the end of the day, were in charge.
16:45We'd see them all the time, you know, checkpoints, convoys, and whatever else.
16:50However, it became pretty apparent pretty soon that they had a bit of a lower regard for us.
16:58We got paid a lot more than they did.
17:00We were all former military like they were.
17:02They were still in the military.
17:03They were still under the sort of the reins of what they could and couldn't do.
17:08We could go home at any time we wanted.
17:10We had great rotations.
17:11We had a great salary.
17:12They were stuck there.
17:13They had to fulfill their contracts.
17:15And it became apparent that we were facing quite a lot of animosity towards them.
17:19And they would deliberately send us around different roads from their checkpoints.
17:23They wouldn't, you know, open gates for us or they would just basically leave us waiting out,
17:29you know, making our jobs a lot harder than they had to be.
17:32And we ran into that a lot, particularly if they saw a convoy or whatever stopped on the side of the road.
17:38We had to ask permission to get past them, which is fair enough,
17:41because we were driving around the same sort of civilian vehicles as the insurgency, right?
17:45And you've got a lot of sort of young members in the military who don't really want to be there.
17:50You know, they see a civilian car roaring past and guys dressed in civilian clothes.
17:54They don't know just from a first glance if it's an insurgent type or, you know, or a contractor.
18:00They have no idea.
18:01So we came up with identification.
18:04We'd wait.
18:05We had flags.
18:06We'd wait until we got, you know, a thumbs up to be able to get past them.
18:10At night, you could expect a lot more sort of hostility because it was dark.
18:14They couldn't really see who we were.
18:16Our vehicles were bit up and dirty.
18:18So, you know, you just had to be a lot more careful.
18:20We were coming back into the CPA one time, coming through Checkpoint, we'll get 11, Checkpoint 1.
18:27And so we were driving up and sure enough, you know, we were waiting for it.
18:30You start seeing ping, ping, ping on the side of the road.
18:33You know, OK, they're shooting at us.
18:35All right.
18:35So that means stop.
18:36And so we'd stop, we'd put up our flag, we'd yell out, we'd wave.
18:41I got out.
18:42I put my hands out just like you see on TV with the cops.
18:45And then I got out and I took my weapon off, put it in.
18:49I made sure I did nothing aggressive or nothing, you know, speedy fast because you don't know how old this, you know, little prick on the other end of a 50-car is down there.
18:59He's scared enough to shoot at you.
19:01So I took off all my gear, put it in the vehicle, spun around nice and slowly and then just tried to encourage them that we were friendlies and we wanted to come and ping, ping, ping.
19:12You know, here we go, guys.
19:13We're getting shot at again.
19:15And I'm pissed off at this stage because this has happened more than three or four times.
19:19So I get out and I yell up to the towers, you know, and I said, who the f*** are shooting at us?
19:24And this senior guy comes out and he goes, oh, you know, we are.
19:28So I said, who the f*** do you think you are?
19:30And I added out with him.
19:31I'd have had enough.
19:31And it wasn't just me and my teams.
19:34It was almost everybody has got stories of being shot at by the military by these A-holes up in the towers, you know.
19:40He had a military force called the Maddy Army.
19:50They were doing what they thought they believed in order to protect, you know, Baghdad, Iraq against the invaders.
19:57They decided at that time that they were going to try and take over the Najaf, which is a holy city to them.
20:03And we had a CPA office down there.
20:06The American guy in charge, as a civilian, was protected by a Blackwater team.
20:13So the boys were down there looking after him.
20:15There was a contingent of Marines with them.
20:19So our guys basically fought them off.
20:21We got as many sort of guns and ammunition and everything they needed supply, resupply with.
20:29And it was going to be taken to Najaf to help them out in the battle.
20:33We were going to drive our team because I'd been there before.
20:35But it was deemed to be, you know, too many checkpoints on the way.
20:41We would have been ambushed and probably would never have made it.
20:43However, so we got permission to use the company helicopters.
20:47And those guys loaded up the company helicopters.
20:50And they did a fantastic job.
20:52Very brave guys and fantastic guys, you know.
20:56Picked up injured Marines, brought them back.
20:58And they did runs and shuttle runs every so often.
21:01They provided enough ammunition and support for the boys to be able to protect the CPA until such time as the Maddy Army backed off.
21:12Then the aftermath of that, because even back then, some guys would take photos and social media.
21:17It sort of blurred the lines of why civilian contractors were doing the job that the military are meant to do.
21:25A lot of people in D.C. didn't like that, okay.
21:29You know, why have all this military then if you can use civilians who can do the job?
21:34Yeah, but the thing is the military is a lot cheaper as far as salaries and blah, blah, blah.
21:37And everyone has a negative connotation of mercenaries, right?
21:40And they played on the negative connotations of that and then tried to slander the boys for the job that they did.
21:46Which I believe would not have been this successful if they had not been there.
21:50No, I think security contracting is a necessary job.
21:53They all think they're a bunch of, you know, wild geese killers and go out there and do that.
21:58And it's not.
21:59I mean, mercenaries have been around for hundreds, thousands of years.
22:02You know, it's just bolstering and helping out a military who may be too thin on the ground to be able to do their job.
22:11It's not like we're out there doing it all on our own or they're doing it all on their own.
22:14They're generally there supporting an agency.
22:16It should be used where possible correctly.
22:19And I think Iraq was a very good experiment as to where it could be used properly.
22:24And I think it touched a little bit close to the bone in some cases, like I mentioned with Najaf,
22:29that civilian contractors, former military people of a very high standard, can do the job that the military can.
22:41We were doing another contract.
22:44We had to go to a meeting in Tikrit, which is about maybe, I think, two hours or so, sort of north-ish of Baghdad.
22:51But when we came back, this one bridge in particular, which was very infamous for IED attacks,
23:00they had hit somebody who was at the meeting.
23:03So we were forced to stop on the side of the road.
23:05It was about maybe four vehicles, I think, at the time.
23:10And as long as we stayed in the vehicles, we were fine.
23:13We were hidden.
23:13The thing we dreaded the most appeared, you know, happened.
23:16And the client wanted to go to the washroom.
23:17Generally, we would pee in a bottle, so we didn't have to get out.
23:20But we couldn't really ask him to do that.
23:22So we let him out after we came up with a plan.
23:26Then the plan was for just him and that vehicle security to get out.
23:31And that worked pretty well.
23:33He went in, he got in, he got out.
23:35Then all of a sudden, we had one dick in the back vehicle.
23:38And there was a guy who was a problem child.
23:40He wanted to get out for a piss as well, despite being told not to.
23:44He just did.
23:45And as soon as he did that, we had no choice but to bust all around sort of security on him and everybody else.
23:52And as soon as we did that, of course, we exposed ourselves.
23:54I started getting this feeling that, you know, okay, there were eyes on us and the people were coming around to give us a go.
23:59So I prepared for it by asking the guys who were closest to the outside of the road,
24:05get in a linear fashion and move down into an overgrown plantation.
24:11There was lots of high grass that they could sit down there and not be seen while those of us up on the road could keep an eye out.
24:20And if nothing happened, fantastic.
24:22We could just wait until it was time to go and then leave.
24:24But what did happen was one of the guys on the ground noticed some movement.
24:28And sure enough, they identified a weapon, they identified guys creeping up on them.
24:34It was getting pretty close to us having to leave at that stage.
24:39So I decided to incorporate what was basically called the, like a mad minute.
24:45Told everybody on the ground, on the count of three.
24:47Let off a burst in that general direction.
24:50So three, two, one, boom, everything kicked up.
24:52Everyone went to their pants who was in the vehicles and they all tried to get out of there.
24:56Then we sent out a clearing patrol where a couple of guys had been out to go and have a look.
25:00And sure enough, there were signs of weapons, there were signs of blood.
25:03And so I was pretty happy with the decision that I had made and deduced that what we did was right.
25:10It saved us from being attacked.
25:13And that's what you're all about.
25:14So we just got back in and left the scene.
25:23So when I first went over, I mean, the only thing that I was really focused on was the fact that I was going to be earning some decent money.
25:30I was going over there to fulfill a job.
25:32As we were told, get them back on their feet and rebuild.
25:36As the years went on, I found a degree of sympathy with the Iraqi people.
25:41And the sort of sense of, you know, you've been shafted.
25:44You've been lied to.
25:46You know, and that became more and more apparent, not only to myself, but to a lot of the guys.
25:50As the years went on, this was never about rebuilding.
25:55This was all about land grab, resource grab.
25:58And the premise of going was a complete lie.
26:01And they say that we were there to fight the terrorists and, you know, the insurgents.
26:06And, you know, when you brought it all down, you know, you could quite fairly say that we were the terrorists and we were the insurgents because we were in their country.
26:14They formed guerrilla groups and fought against an invading occupying force.
26:20When you see these politicians who were all for it, you know, let's go over there and invade, even though it was so obvious that Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11 or anything like this.
26:32And they've now since changed their tune.
26:34And everybody will want to try and get on the right side of history and erase their support for an illegal invasion.
26:42That's quite sickening.
26:44The people who are the real mercenaries are the ones who are wearing suits, the ones who are sending people out.
26:49The politicians, the weapons manufacturers, the donors to the politicians, for those who will benefit without getting their hands dirty, profiteering from the death and destruction of another country.
27:05And that's how politics works, particularly here in the U.S.
27:09I'd left the company when the Nassau Square incident happened in 2007.
27:14I think that situation was the perfect storm of anything that could go wrong, going wrong.
27:21So what had happened was our State Department contract were going out to do some, you know, escorting.
27:27There was always one major circle called Nassau Square, Nassau Square, where you were bound to always get contacted.
27:35OK, everybody knew that that was a very dangerous area.
27:38So what happens, and I wasn't there, but this is just from reading about it and studying about it.
27:43They went through that circle.
27:45They believed they were contacted.
27:47They got into a firefight.
27:48And in the process, civilians got killed.
27:50That was a perfect opportunity for the Iraqi government and anybody anti-security contracting and anybody anti-black order to just dump on us.
28:01And, of course, everyone thinks, oh, you know, a bunch of murdering pricks, you know.
28:05They got what they deserved when they went to jail.
28:08However, when you're on the ground, you know, things aren't as cut as dry, you know, simple as that.
28:13So after Blackwater, I was living in Jordan, so I did a bit of work around the region, Beirut, Syria, Egypt.
28:33But then I went back into Iraq, but with other companies and worked up in Kurdistan, which was nowhere near as intense as the central and southern part of Iraq.
28:44We were doing a lot of sort of like just walking around the countryside looking after people doing seismic survey and stuff like this.
28:52But my drinking at that stage had reached the point where it was now becoming a hindrance to me doing the job properly.
28:59So I was also at a point where I had to get out of the country because in my head, you know, I was going to die if I stayed any longer because of my mental instability.
29:11So I sort of realized that and then I left there.
29:16So I was in Iraq for a total of seven years.
29:18I then did sort of close combat, close protection in places like South Sudan, Mali, West Africa, all around.
29:26Wherever there was a conflict, I was able to find work.
29:30So I was taking up whatever contracts would come along.
29:33A couple of the contracts that I did in Africa were training contracts, training presidential guards how to do close protection and everything that was around doing close protection.
29:48And to a certain degree, in preparation for perhaps coups or hostile takeovers because they're so intertribal.
29:59I know, you know, there's a coup attempt slightly after you were in South Sudan.
30:05What are you talking about?
30:07How do you feel about the morality of some of the other stuff that you've taken on?
30:11I've never turned down a contract because of what I think would be too dangerous.
30:15But I have turned down many contracts, actually, because A, it runs across one of my golfing days.
30:22I'm playing golf, so no, I don't want to.
30:24B, it doesn't pay enough for what I'm expected to do.
30:27And C, and I won't tell you which one, but it goes against my moral compass as to what I was expected to do.
30:34You don't want to talk about that?
30:35No, I don't want to talk about that.
30:37Now, maybe as a younger person, I would have accepted it when I was desperate for money.
30:42But now that I'm an older person, not so desperate for money, what they would have asked me to do is something that I wouldn't morally be able to do.
30:51No, no, looking back, it doesn't worry me.
30:52I had to do what I had to do in order to be where I am today, you know.
30:57And I suppose the only time I have any real issues about what I've seen done or where I've been is Iraq, really.
31:08And I think that was more because of the, from what I saw, the damage that was done.
31:13As you see and do things, or as you particularly see things like in Iraq, for example, you can't erase them from your memories or you can't erase them from your minds.
31:28My particular situation, it wasn't anything to do with conflict at all.
31:32Anything I did conflict-wise, I have absolutely no problems with and I'll sleep like a baby.
31:37But this one incident, not long after we got there, there was a bombed big pile of rubbish, big pile of concrete.
31:45But there was this boy who used to come out at night and would look at him and would try and give him food, but he would scamper back into the rubble.
31:52And he lived in the rubble.
31:53And we came back one evening and I said to the Iraqi guard, well, I asked the Iraqi guard and I said, he spoke English.
32:01I said, who's this kid?
32:03And, you know, why is he always going in and out of this bombed out car park?
32:07He said, no, it's not a car park.
32:09He said, that's, that used to be an apartment block.
32:13And it got hit in the initial stages of the, of the bombings.
32:16And it collapsed and everyone in there got killed except for him because he wasn't there at the time.
32:23And his family is still in there, dead, obviously.
32:26And you could see he had lost his mind, completely lost his mind.
32:29And that really made me think about my kids at home when they were of the same age.
32:33And for some reason, that really stuck with me.
32:37And it still is.
32:38I suppose the hardest part of the job, believe it or not, was when you went home on your one month off,
32:43you're away from your brothers and you didn't want anything to happen to them while you were away.
32:48And during those times, they are more important than your family, you know,
32:53and you can, you can't relate to your family.
32:56You can't tell them what you're doing.
32:58They don't understand and nor should they, but yeah, your brothers can.
33:01And if I thought about the boy and everything else or sort of other things that were playing on my mind,
33:07it would sort of send me into a, into a dark place.
33:10PTSD to me is like depleted uranium.
33:13As time goes on, more sand covers it and covers it.
33:16But as soon as you kick that sand again, pops up again as fresh as it was the day at first to end of there.
33:21So I would try and bury them by, by drinking.
33:24Alcohol wasn't burying it for me.
33:26Alcohol just kept kicking it and kicking it.
33:28And I, I joined another sort of company where the job wasn't as morally sort of sound as it was.
33:35But then again, I was at a mental state where I didn't care.
33:40My, my, my high moral standards had dropped through the sink again because I was needing money and, you know,
33:47I'd do whatever I had to do to get it.
33:49And the PTSD is always there.
33:51And what helps me control it is the fact that I don't drink anymore.
33:54And it has certainly helped with the PTSD.
33:57It doesn't, it doesn't keep kicking the sand for me.
34:00It doesn't keep bringing it to the surface.
34:02It's always there.
34:03And I can accidentally kick the sand sometimes.
34:07And it could be just a question like you've asked me.
34:10But I can, I can control it better.
34:13When, when I was drinking, I couldn't control it.
34:20I joined the military in 1985 with the intention of joining the New Zealand Specialist Service.
34:25I did a year in battalion.
34:26Then I got posted to Singapore for two years.
34:29The early stages of 1988, I decided I would now try for selection cards.
34:33Of course, I did selection for our SAS, very, very tough, very grueling.
34:40I passed and then I did seven years in the unit itself.
34:43We were called the unit back then.
34:45I was a counter-terrorism team commander and a troop commander in the amphibious unit.
34:53So I was a diver.
34:54I really enjoyed my time there, but it was, it's very tough.
34:57It's very hard on the body.
34:58So after 10 years in total in my military service, I decided to get out.
35:04And before my body totally collapsed, knees were going, hips were going.
35:10I was still young enough to sort of, you know, be able to do some physical work.
35:15But I didn't want to get too old and be completely broken before I could do anything else.
35:18The skills that it teaches you, it teaches you how to work alone or how to lead.
35:25And not everybody can be a leader.
35:27They teach you how to think very quickly and to come to a solution very quickly.
35:33And as things change, and if it doesn't go to plan, having another plan.
35:37Always thinking, thinking, thinking, and always working towards a successful outcome.
35:42Your fitness level is supreme.
35:45And, you know, making the most out of sort of quite bad situations and pushing yourself further than you perhaps thought that you could go.
35:55So I first joined a company called Custer Battles.
35:58The day-to-day sort of work that I thought that we would be doing was basic close protection looking after civilians who were then going around to different ministries.
36:06When I got on the ground, it soon became apparent to me and a few others that some of the operating procedures were perhaps verging on a little bit sort of reckless for what we were expected to do.
36:17Even though it was very initial stages in the war, we knew there wouldn't be a lot of material, there wouldn't be a lot of equipment, there wouldn't be a lot of support, but it seemed to be even less.
36:27So when we first arrived, we expected to be fully kitted out, body armor, you know, latest gucci guns, optics and all this sort of carry-on.
36:34But when we went to the ranges and we were given these AK-47s that looked as if they had been used for anti-piracy on the arc, yeah, the sort of red flags started to pop up.
36:44We went on the range a couple of times and I actually had one explode in my hands.
36:50That's how old it was and how in disrepair this gun was.
36:55It wasn't a good start.
36:56So after a month of being with Custer Battles, it became very apparent that things weren't going to get any better any time sooner.
37:04There was about maybe 11 of us who were there going, this is not quite right.
37:08But there was one person in the group who I had not met and he had a contact back here in the States with a company called Blackwater.
37:16So word went around without making it too obvious and there was meetings going on that would break away from Custer Battles.
37:23I was given the opportunity to have a meeting with this guy.
37:26After about an hour, he offered me a job.
37:29He then told me what the daily rate would be if we succeeded, which was from $200 a day with Custer Battles to $600 a day with Blackwater, which is phenomenal money back then.
37:43You know, phenomenal money, particularly for someone from New Zealand, right?
37:47I mean, I was doing cartwheels and then I thought, OK, well, now that I've got my kahunas out on the table, I'll ask if I can be the team leader.
37:55And then he said yes again.
37:58We all packed up our gear and left.
38:04There will always be a need for a mercenary group.
38:08I got offered to work as a mercenary in Ukraine, but the pay wasn't worth anything for me to be interested in.
38:16And also that kind of warfare is old style warfare, to be honest.
38:23You know, trench warfare, wearing uniforms.
38:27I haven't done that since I was in the military.
38:30And it's a completely different type of method of fighting compared to what we were doing in Iraq or Libya or anywhere else.
38:39And we weren't always fighting in Iraq or Libya or anything like that.
38:42We were protecting.
38:43Here it's actual sort of, you know, moving up to advance and face the enemy.
38:49So that's more a soldier's, that's a younger person's type of warfare and something that I hadn't done in a very long time.
38:56Currently, I think mercenaries are getting a really bad name because of what's happening in Israel.
39:04What those guys, in my opinion, are doing over there is completely disgraceful.
39:08The way I see how private military contracting companies are being used today or mercenary companies, there's always going to be some part of an entity, a government or an agency who will use them for nefarious purposes.
39:22And you'll always find people who will do it.
39:26Warfare's changed.
39:27Warfare's changed.
39:28I would not want to be a soldier nowadays with the way, particularly Ukraine, with drone warfare.
39:34Being a soldier on the ground is almost going to be obsolete.
39:37As soon as you poke your head out of a hole, the drone's going to smack into it.
39:40Also with AI that's coming along, it's all going to be sort of drone and done from afar.
39:50It's not going to be boots on the ground so much anymore.
39:52I've soon retired.
40:00I, for the last, say, 15 years on and off, but now, I was working for a very interesting client, a human rights lawyer, and we've done some very amazing work all around the world.
40:12As a civilian bodyguard for executive protection aid, whatever you want to call yourself, you don't have the ability to carry guns everywhere you go.
40:21There's no such thing as an international firearms license.
40:24So you have to rely on your skills, your observation skills, your instincts, and your training, and your years of experience.
40:32Where, as an armed mercenary or close protection agent, you don't have to be the grey man so much because you're dressed in armour, you've got a gun, people can see you.
40:42When you're a civilian, you're dressed in a suit or you're dressed in civilian clothing, you blend in.
40:47Because the one thing you don't want to do is attract attention to yourself.
40:50I'm in my 60s.
40:52I, you know, like to play golf and sit in the sun a little bit more now.
40:56I've gone away and I've done movies, I've done TV shows.
41:00I've written a book and it's called We Were Blackwater.
41:02And it's about everything that we've spoken about.
41:05I live with a wife who now understands I don't drink anymore.
41:10She didn't stop drinking in order to support me.
41:12We live way up on a hill in a country, I don't want to tell you what it is.
41:16We rescue animals and we live a very tranquil life compared to what it used to be.
41:23I now have a better relationship with my children.
41:27And through the book, they can see now why I was the absent father, that I was far better than I can verbally explain it to them.
41:38Hi, I'm a producer on Authorized Account.
41:46If you like this episode, then you should check out our new podcast and comment below with the names of people you'd love to hear us interview.
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