by Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:51 pm
This "extortionist employee" story is a discrediting diversion from much more damaging information by relatives of the four mercenaries.<br><br>The families of the four dead mercenaries are suing Blackwater and the US government.<br><br>The mother of Scott Helvenston, one of those four mercenaries, was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now program and she said her son was a whistle blower who was sent out to die by the very officer he blew the whistle on.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/20/1340246&mode=thread&tid=25">www.democracynow.org/arti...ead&tid=25</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>A few nights before Scott was killed, and actually the night before he left Kuwait to go to Baghdad, he sent an email to the owner, president and upper management of Blackwater, and the subject of that email was “extreme unprofessionalism.” And in this email, which we have, he is complaining about Justin McQuown, who he refers to as “Justin Shrek.” Scott Helvenston apparently thought his actual name was “Shrek” and was referring to him as “Justin Shrek” throughout the email. But he says he was, quote, “very manipulative, duplicative, immature and unprofessional.”<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>And that the flare up in Fallujah and the subsequent razing of it by the US led to losing Iraq as Vietnam II is especially ironic.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>AMY GOODMAN: Now, he was on television before he went to Iraq, is that right?<br><br>KATY HELVENSTON: Yes, he was Demi Moore's personal trainer for the G.I. Jane movie, and he ended up playing a small role on the film, because the guy that was supposed to play the Navy Seal instructor was terrified of the ocean. And Scotty finally went to casting, and he said, “This guy is just not going to work, because he will not get in the water.” So, Scotty did play a small role. He did some stunt work on the movie, but mostly he trained the cast of G.I. Jane how to behave like Navy Seals.<br><br>AMY GOODMAN: And then he was in a Survivor-like program called Combat Missions?<br><br>KATY HELVENSTON: Yes, and Mark Burnett produced that movie. It was one of these reality TV things. And at that point, Scotty was desperate for money, and he went in there. And only the one person that survived the thing, and the whole team had to survive, so if someone on a team didn't make it through, then the whole team was pretty much eliminated. That was an experience, and the way that show was produced, there was a lot of editing, and it really didn't happen the way it was produced. But, anyway, that's another story. Scotty chose Blackwater, because they had a two-month contract, and he could be back home. He had a job waiting for him, but he needed to make some money in those two months.<br><br>JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, even in the training period at Blackwater, he began to find problems in terms of the quality of the training that was going on?<br><br>KATY HELVENSTON: Well, apparently he had the audacity to suggest that maybe there was a better way of running these certain missions, in that the people who were subcontracting out with Blackwater would actually survive the mission. And this Justin McQuown was the instructor there at Moyock, and he was outraged that Scott had the audacity to even suggest that there was a better way.<br><br>AMY GOODMAN: Moyock in North Carolina, where Blackwater is based.<br><br>KATY HELVENSTON: Yes. And so, Scotty got over to the Middle East, and he was in Kuwait City for about a week, and then he was sent up to Baghdad, and all of a sudden, this same guy, Justin McQuown is Scott's boss. And he came up to Scott’s room a couple days before Scott was murdered and got into an altercation, and he took Scott's gun away from him. He had two men with him that held Scotty down. He didn't want to give up his gun. He said, you know, “I have to have my gun.” And they took that away from him. And that night he was ordered to change teams and go into Fallujah.<br><br>AMY GOODMAN: What did he think he was going to be doing?<br><br>KATY HELVENSTON: He was told that he was going to be security for the ambassador, Paul Bremer. And the people he had been with in Kuwait City, all of a sudden he was no longer working in that team. He was taken out of that team and put in with men that were wonderful, good people, but he had never met them, he had never worked with them.<br><br>JUAN GONZALEZ: And how unusual is it to take someone out of their team and assign them to another team and send them out on a mission?<br><br>KATY HELVENSTON: I was told that it’s unheard of.<br><br>AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill?<br><br>JEREMY SCAHILL: A couple things here. People should understand, Scotty Helvenston wasn’t even in Iraq for more than 48 hours before he was sent to Fallujah. That, in and of itself, is quite unusual, that these guys would not get a chance to acclimate themselves to the very hostile environment that they’re going to be operating in.<br><br>But Katy mentioned the name of a guy named Justin McQuown, and I think it’s important to kind of back up for a second and explain who he is, because it’s a key part of this lawsuit. On the one hand, you have the allegations that Blackwater systematically defrauded these men by not providing them with the armored vehicles, the weapons, the adequate personnel for the mission, the opportunity to do a pre-trip risk assessment, etc., all the things that Marc Miles has laid out. But then, the other component to this is that the lawsuit alleges that this Blackwater manager, Justin McQuown, because of his personal animosity toward Scott Helvenston -- the lawsuit and Katy characterize it as Justin McQuown resented Scott. He was an extremely accomplished Navy Seal, was popular with other guys, and it seems very plausible that he viewed Scott Helvenston as a threat.<br><br>Justin McQuown's nickname, according to documents we’ve gotten and to other people who were in Kuwait and Iraq at the time, was “Shrek,” after the green ogre character, and it doesn't sound like he was too popular of a guy and really sort of targeted Scott Helvenston. And there are other people that have talked to Katy and Marc that have affirmed all of this.<br><br>And what’s important here is that the lawsuit alleges that because of Justin McQuown’s personal animosity toward Scott Helvenston, he intervened to have only four men sent, that only four were sent on Justin McQuown’s order that day, instead of six, and the other two were held back to perform clerical duties in the Blackwater facility in Baghdad. And this becomes very important, as Marc Miles talks about, because you have to prove intent.<br><br>And there’s all sorts of -- Scott speaks to us posthumously through his email, and I just want to read from this. A few nights before Scott was killed, and actually the night before he left Kuwait to go to Baghdad, he sent an email to the owner, president and upper management of Blackwater, and the subject of that email was “extreme unprofessionalism.” And in this email, which we have, he is complaining about Justin McQuown, who he refers to as “Justin Shrek.” Scott Helvenston apparently thought his actual name was “Shrek” and was referring to him as “Justin Shrek” throughout the email. But he says he was, quote, “very manipulative, duplicative, immature and unprofessional.”<br><br>And Scott describes how his original team leader tried to appeal to Justin McQuown not to reassign Scott Helvenston at the last second, that this was an insane thing to do. You don’t just stick a Navy Seal on a brand new team with guys and send them into a combat zone. And Scott wrote in this email to Blackwater, that “I think [that my team leader] felt that there was a hidden agenda. ‘Let's see if we can screw with Scott.’” Those were like the last words that Scott Helvenston basically wrote before being sent over there to Baghdad.<br><br>And the email, it’s incredible, because Scott sort of makes all these apologetics. He says, you know, basically says, ‘I’m not the kind of guy who would normally complain about anything, but this has gotten so extreme that I want to raise this with you.’ And so, you have a convergence of Justin McQuown's alleged interventions that led to these guys being sent out the way they were, and Blackwater -- the allegations of Blackwater systematically defrauding these guys.<br><br>JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask Marc Miles, on the day then that these four Blackwater employees are killed, they're sent into Fallujah. You raised a whole issue of the contract that required a risk assessment on their part and an overview of the mission that they were involved in. What happened that day, as far as you have been able to understand and as your lawsuit alleges?<br><br>MARC MILES: Well, what we're going to prove at trial is that because Blackwater essentially cut corners and because of this personal animosity that Justin McQuown had with Scott Helvenston, they weren't allowed to gather intelligence and do the pre-tip inspection and all of the things that they were told that they would be allowed to do and that is actually represented in the contracts for the mission that they were doing work under.<br><br>And so, what happened that particular day from the evidence that I’ve accumulated is that they were basically told to escort three flatbed trucks, which I understand were going to pick up some kitchen equipment, far different from what Scott Helvenston had understood, that he would be guarding an ambassador. Instead, kitchen equipment, actually empty trucks that were going to get kitchen equipment.<br><br>So they were to escort these two E.S.S. trucks from a city of Taji to an army base, which is on the west side of Fallujah. And so, what happened is they set out on their mission, but because they didn't have G.P.S., because they didn't have maps of the area, because they weren’t able to do a pre-trip inspection of the route, they didn't necessarily know where they were going, so they essentially got lost. And, in fact, the first day that they set out, they were so lost and it was getting late that they ended up staying at an army base on the east side of Fallujah.<br><br>AMY GOODMAN: Marc, I just want to interrupt for one second. You said they had no map?<br><br>MARC MILES: That's correct. In fact, from what I understand, and folks that we have talked to, they had asked for a map shortly before going out on their mission, and basically the individual who was in charge of handing out the maps said, “It's too late for a map now,” and sent them on their way. And that's the type of conduct at Blackwater that we're dealing with. They got so lost that first day that they had to spend the night in a different camp, somewhere that they weren’t even intending on going. And at that point, they were on the east side of Fallujah.<br><br>Now, they were ultimately to get to the other side of Fallujah. Unfortunately, what they didn't know was that there was a much safer route that took them around the north side of Fallujah. They could have easily traveled this route in a single day, and it would have been extremely less dangerous. But because they didn't have a map, they didn't have G.P.S., and, in fact, funny story, I think they had G.P.S. units, but Blackwater didn't provide them with the maps to go in the G.P.S. units for the Middle East. So, essentially, they had G.P.S. units for the United States, which doesn't do a lot of good over there. Anyway, there was a safer route that they could take north of the city that would take them about three hours to get to the other side. But instead, they missed that turnoff, and they ended up driving straight through the center of Fallujah, and it was as they got through the middle of town that they got stuck in traffic, that they were ultimately ambushed. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 7/6/06 12:53 pm<br></i>
