Gray Work: Confessions of an American Paramilitary Spy

By Jamie Smith

The first ever, first-person story of America's private, paramilitary contractors at work around the world-from a man who performed these missions himself and has decades of stories to tell. This is a fascinating tale-and potentially the first-to describe the work of American contractors, men who run highly dangerous missions deep inside foreign countries on the brink of war. It will lift the veil and detail the ultimate danger and risk of paramilitary operations (both officially government-sanctioned and not) and show us in very intimate terms exactly what private soldiers do when the government can't act or take public responsibility. GRAY WORK combines covert military intelligence with boots-on-the-ground realism, following Jamie Smith through his CIA training and work as a spy in the State Department, to his co-founding of Blackwater following 9/11, to his decision to leave that company. As the founder and director of Blackwater Security, Smith's initial vision has undeniably shaped and transformed a decade of war. He argues that this gray area-and its warriors who occupy the controversial space between public and private-has become an indispensable element of the modern battlefield.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9780062271716

Jamie Smith

Jamie Smith is a veteran bike racer and bike race announcer. He has been a bike racer since 1983 working his way up through the ranks of amateur cycling, and a bike race announcer since 1985 traveling with some of the world's greatest cyclists. He spent several years in public relations for a sleepy Detroit suburb, receiving one Emmy nomination and several Telly Awards. Writing repetitive press releases and boring speeches inspired him to find something more exciting to write about: bike racing. A graduate of Central Michigan University's Broadcast and Cinematic Arts program, Jamie has become adept at describing cycling's most complex intricacies to normal people. His first book, Roadie: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer, was selected as a 2009 Notable Book by the Library of Michigan. He has since taken on the role of sport director to translate the complexities of bike racing for befuddled bike racers who mistakenly chase down their own teammates, miss the winning breakaway, and consistently finish one place out of the money. He currently lives in Rochester, Michigan, with his 11 bikes, 2 surfboards, 1 rowing scull, and 5 pair of cross-country skis.

Book preview

Author’s Note

I wish to dedicate this book to my God and Savior Jesus Christ, without whom I’d be lost; to my family, who have been my ever-present rock; and to those who fight for our country, both military and civilian—your sacrifice cannot be appreciated, nor rewarded enough. To the fine men and women of SCG, LLC who worked tirelessly in the face of much adversity, but who always gave 100 percent. Finally, to Morgan, Cole, and Mallory, I hope this helps you understand why your dad was gone so much, missed so many birthdays and special times. I love you . . . to pieces.

Everything in this book is my opinion or recollection. I have changed many of the names, mainly to protect sources and the identities of people who are still working dangerous jobs in dangerous parts of the world. In a few instances, I have also compressed the timeline of the events described or created a composite character. Honoring the confidentiality agreement I signed when hired by the Central Intelligence Agency, and then by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I submitted the manuscript for their review and have removed information considered classified. Both the FBI and CIA Publication Review Boards were courteous in their review process. The CIA has required that I—as is required of every former employee—include this disclaimer:

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are my own and do not reflect in any way the official position or views of the CIA or any other U.S. Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

—Jamie Smith

February 2015

Epigraph

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

—T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

Contents

Author’s Note

Epigraph

Prologue

I The Rise of the Rebels

CHAPTER 1 Libya

CHAPTER 2 Meeting Ambassadors

CHAPTER 3 Cairo

CHAPTER 4 Travel to Benghazi

CHAPTER 5 Meeting the Rebels

CHAPTER 6 How Much Is This Going to Cost Us?

CHAPTER 7 Spying on the State Department?

CHAPTER 8 Escaping Saddam

CHAPTER 9 Plan B

CHAPTER 10 To the Shores of Tripoli

II The Fall of a Dictator

CHAPTER 11 Inside the Militia

CHAPTER 12 Shoot ’Em in the Teeth While They Sleep

CHAPTER 13 Building a Spy: The Foundations

CHAPTER 14 The Battle for Sirte

CHAPTER 15 Dogs, Cans, and Dead Snipers

CHAPTER 16 Creating an Operator

CHAPTER 17 Old Meat in the Locker

Photographic Insert

III Afghanistan

CHAPTER 18 Blackwater

CHAPTER 19 Going to War

CHAPTER 20 Eight Miles to Go

CHAPTER 21 Loading!

CHAPTER 22 Bad Contractors

IV Syria, Iran, Mali

CHAPTER 23 The Iranian Operation

CHAPTER 24 Rendition

CHAPTER 25 Syria

CHAPTER 26 Targeted Killing

CHAPTER 27 MANPAD + Bad Guy + Jet = Bad Day

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Glossary

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

Last week of Ramadan, August 2011

Tripoli, Libya

IN THE DARK HOURS OF THE EARLY MORNING, my cell buzzed and a thin voice gave me the news: bad guys with guns were heading our way. This was a city at war and the thugs who kept Muammar Qadhafi in power were savages. But like hyenas, they were most dangerous when desperate and cornered. For days I’d carefully dodged Qadhafi’s hit teams from the Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya as they stepped up their hunt for the rebels. I’d kept one step ahead of them at each turn. But now, somehow, overnight, they’d found me.

I got up from the couch I was sleeping on in the front room of the three-story concrete villa and grabbed my rifle—an AK-47. As far as I could tell, I was the only American operator in this part of Libya. Qadhafi’s men were hunting the rebels, the opposition. It was going to be a long, hot night.

Sumo, wake up. The young Asian, a twenty-something freelance photographer, was snoring just a few feet from me on another couch. I’d met him a few days earlier at the docks in Malta as I’d waited to board the old Korean-run, Filipino-crewed, Libyan-flagged fishing boat that brought us into this war-torn nation. It was his first time in this region, and he thought I worked for a news agency. I doubted his chances of surviving this war zone alone, so I let him tag along; I figured I could pawn him off to a real news crew at the first opportunity.

We’re out of here in two minutes, I said, pulling the shoulder strap of my tan Kifaru Tailgunner pack over my head and swinging it around to my front. Weighing nearly twelve pounds and about the size of a large football, it held my essentials: a loaded pistol given to me when I came ashore along with three spare mags of ammo, four loaded rifle magazines—also a gift upon arrival—a PVS-14-3 night vision monocular, a Medford TS-1 fixed-blade knife, a Garmin Oregon 400t GPS, and a Foretrex 401 GPS for a backup. There was a Ranger lensatic compass, signal mirror, Quest protein bars, gunshot kit, Thuraya satphone, laminated map, Cipro antibiotics, Imodium, infrared strobe, Velcro U.S. flag patch, passport, five grand in U.S. cash, extra batteries for everything, and most important, a laminated copy of two letters giving me authorization for being here.

Then I shouldered my Kifaru AG-1 main pack with everything else I brought in, including a compact sleeping bag, a change of clothes, foldout solar panel to charge my electronics, a Panasonic Toughbook computer, spare satphone antenna, more batteries for everything, CamelBak water purification bottle system, a dark brown Catoma one-man shelter, more protein bars, a larger first-aid kit, and other odds and ends. I put the big fifty-pound pack on last, just in case I had to ditch it. That way I’d still have the smaller bag—the Tailgunner with my essentials for survival—hooked to my body.

I pulled the mag out from my AK-47 to make sure it was topped off, then hooked it back into the rifle, tugged on it to make sure it was seated, and then chambered a round. Last thing I wanted was to have my magazine fall out of my gun. It was a training habit from decades on firing ranges, but it was important. After getting my gear ready and wiping the cobwebs from my brain, I formed a loose plan that revolved around one concept—get the crap out of here. I woke the rest of our party: Sleepy—a former Libyan ambassador who’d defected and who’d brought me to this place; Hakin, his good friend who owned the house we were visiting; and the boy—his preteen son.

Sleepy opened his eyes wide from a deep sleep, then squinted, recoiling at the sound of my voice as if stung by a wasp. Mr. Jamie, what is going on?

Kamel called. Qadhafi’s men are heading here right now. They know you and I are here, and they also think our host is General Hakim. The man whose villa we were borrowing, Mr. Hakin, apparently had a name similar to that of a rebel leader. The caller, Kamel, was a significant leader in the Misrata rebellion. He was good at fund-raising, and coordinating the influx of men and weapons. He apparently also had really strong connections into the intel networks in Tripoli. If we didn’t die tonight, I’d be happily adding him to the list of people to whom I owed my life.

We didn’t have time to screw around. I didn’t know when Kamel’s team had intercepted the call or how far away the hit team might even be. Our only security right now was speed—just get out of here.

Meet me at the front of the house and be ready to leave in two minutes.

Tripoli was exploding, but my company’s operation in Libya was shaping up. We had a forward-staging base in Malta, manned by one of our support staffers, and an Operations Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, run by Odell International. My partner, D, and I had been in and out of the country, collecting critical information on the state of the insurrection and pushing it back to Washington, D.C. We had estimates of the strength of the rebel brigades, which were set up to help secure the country, the extent of radical Islamist penetrations of the insurgency and those brigades, the locations and destinations of shipments of deadly surface-to-air missiles (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, called MANPADS), and anything else that seemed germane. We’d been responding to the Department of Defense and other RFIs (or requests for information) about certain people and places. When it was all wrapped up, I knew I’d have to brief Congresswoman Myrick, the Anti-Terrorism Caucus, and others on what we found. But first, I had to get out of Libya alive, and I wasn’t eager to make another run into the crazy streets, where a confrontation could easily leave me dead and bleeding out.

THE PREVIOUS DAY AROUND lunchtime, I was in the courtyard trying to get a satphone signal to send a SITREP (situation report) back to our Ops Center when a loud crack ripped the air, and then another. Within seconds, Hakin’s phone started playing a ridiculous ringtone on the highest volume setting and he announced that there was a sniper in our neighborhood, as if the shots weren’t evidence enough.

Hakin, an out-of-shape, middle-aged businessman with a growing paunch before the war, now ran upstairs and came back with his AK-47 and two magazines. Then he ran out the front door. This is the way people get killed, I remember thinking.

Hakin lived in one of the ritziest areas of the city—it reminded me of the west side of Houston—but it was as dangerous as the worst gang turf in Southern California. The dictator’s sons had homes nestled among the tree-lined boulevards that sat between Gergarish Road and Gorji Street, just a few blocks from the psychiatric hospital. How fitting that Hakin, who had no formal training in fighting, wanted to go hunting snipers. He belonged in that asylum, I half joked to myself.

They say it’s a single shooter. He’s up a few blocks that way, Hakin said, pointing toward the rear of his house in his broken English. I wasn’t here to hunt snipers; my job was to relay information to D.C., not go on a foot patrol with a guy who barely knew how to work his rifle. But I needed to keep building trust with these people, and of course Hakin had opened his home to me, a port in a dangerous storm. Hospitality is an ancient sacrament in Muslim countries. I cursed under my breath as I pulled on my Oakleys, shouldered my rifle, checked the mag and chamber, and nodded to Hakin, saying, "Yah-la serbi—Go . . . quickly."

Leaving the house, we circled left and moved low along a wall toward the street corner. I dropped prone to the concrete and crawled to the edge, poking my eyeball around and studying the empty, tree-lined street. But for a few cars, rocks, and trash, there was nothing really to see.

Hakin’s phone rang again, startling both of us. I yanked my head back from the corner, yell-whispering at him to end that noise. Junk like that we called a noise ND, short for negligent discharge. Have an ND, whether with a gun, flashlight, phone, or radio, and you direct the enemy to your position from the noise or light—and you never want to do that. It makes everyone around you hate you. Hakin! Shut that thing off before you get us shot! Just take a deep breath, I told him as he got off the phone; he removed his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped the sweat with his sleeve as it dripped down into his now saucer-size eyes.

The sniper is in Qadhafi’s son’s house on the roof. It is not far from here, he whispered.

The home of Qadhafi’s heir-apparent was abandoned now. It had become a place for squatters and now, a sniper. I couldn’t see it from my position, but Hakin seemed to have a clear line of sight from his. Here’s a hint: if you can see the enemy, he most likely can see you, too.

Another pair of shots came from the house—it sounded like the same weapon as before, a high-powered rifle firing supersonic ammo. But I noticed that each shot produced a single report. If he’d been aiming in our direction there would have been two—the sound of the bullet breaking the sound barrier, followed by the muzzle discharge a second or so later. This guy was shooting anything that moved, but we weren’t in his sights right now. We had to stay out of view of that house.

Long ago I learned the basic rubric for shooting and moving under fire. It was motion, distance, angles, cover, and concealment, MDACC for short. First, we needed to keep moving, because it’s harder to hit a moving target. Our direction was important, too: we needed to move at an angle to the shooter, not on a straight line, which was far easier to hit. Lastly, Hakin and I also needed to find cover to stop bullets and conceal our position—cars, trees, or walls. There’s a significant difference between cover, which stops a bullet, and concealment, which might not. This sniper had the advantage at a distance because we were assuming he had a scoped weapon and we didn’t. But if we could get in the house at close quarters, that scope would become as useless as an ejection seat on a helicopter.

I grabbed Hakin by the shoulder and pointed to the wall across the street, then bolted for it, running low. I slid into the sidewalk and curb on the other side and motioned for him to come, while I covered his movement. Then, as we moved down the wall, another shot rang out. This time I heard two reports. The guy was firing our way now. Hakin stopped and reached for that dern ringing phone again. I was up near the wall as tightly as I could get, my rifle aimed toward the end of the street where the house was, though I still couldn’t see it behind the row of trees blocking our view of the rooflines.

He took the call, then, eyes wild, gave me the update. People from the neighborhood have seen him on the roof. He’s on the far side of the house—not this side. Many people are coming to kill him in that direction.

We started to move forward, when the sniper’s next two rounds were answered by an absolute onslaught of automatic weapons fire from the street off to our front right. We both hit the ground, hugging up against the corner of the wall, covering our heads.

It’s never a bad thing to have reinforcements in a gunfight—or any fight, for that matter—but your life can depend on them knowing whether you’re a friend or foe. With us situated on the opposite side of the building, it might be easy for them to mistake us for the sniper and shift fire onto us instead.

When the shooting let up, we moved quickly, crouching low, reaching the gate of a house next to the one the sniper was using. I mule-kicked the gate and we pushed inside. I scanned over my sights and cleared the courtyard, then turned my sights up high left toward the roofline of the other house. Three more cracks of a rifle brought another massive barrage of automatic fire tearing through the air, followed by a wild, yelling, chaotic commotion out in the street. I heard doors and glass being broken and the sounds of people running and yelling, shooting and more yelling. Someone had the same idea we did: get into that house.

An eight-foot wall separated our courtyard from the house where the sniper was hiding. I grabbed a white plastic chair, stood on it, and pulled myself over the wall, spider-dropped landing in a crouch, bringing my rifle up again, and looking for something to shoot. I heard scraping sounds and labored breathing behind me and realized Hakin was struggling to follow—pull-ups apparently weren’t in his daily PT regimen. He finally dropped in a sweating, exhausted heap onto the ground next to me. To our right sat a ransacked SUV, stripped to the bone. Hakin got in front of me, saw someone he knew moving in the house, and yelled something in Arabic. Running, they headed to a door, went in, and started for the stairs. We followed them, tight, because I knew that a stranger like me—a Westerner—was just as likely to be shot as the sniper. I gripped Hakin’s with my nonfiring hand, keeping him close, practically wearing him as we climbed to the second level.

More shooting and shouting punched and echoed down through the stone and marble structure as we raced up the ornately curved stairs to the next level. Blood was on the steps and the wall—smeared where someone had placed a hand going up or down.

We pushed through a door onto the flat roof of the building and found a bleeding black guy dressed in a dark gray, stained hooded sweatshirt, flip-flops, and baggy, oversize camouflage pants. It was our sniper. He was shot nearly everywhere and was bleeding out. The low plaster and concrete wall in front of where he lay had been shredded by a storm of lead and full-metal-jacketed rounds. The mob had knocked him down in a hail of bullets, then rushed up and shot him many more times at point-blank range for good measure. A martyr might have called it a good way to die, but truthfully it was just the risk he ran working for a madman.

It was around this time when the townsfolk noticed me. Hakin immediately spoke up on my behalf and stood between us, their faces becoming less threatening by the second. A few reached to shake my hand. Many seemed surprised to find an American helping to protect their neighborhood.

BUT ALL THAT WAS YESTERDAY. As we hit the street again, at news of a hit team coming our way, I knew that tonight could easily be a different story.

Sumo, Sleepy, and Hakin were waiting by the front door with the kid—Hakin’s son—all dressed in a mix of pajamas, flip-flops, jeans, and house shoes. The old man had on a blue terry-cloth robe with the belt dangling along the floor; the kid had a brown sheet around his shoulders. Were the killers coming for us, for this family tonight, because of what happened yesterday on the roof? Had I been compromised somehow by the locals?

We’re going to move out into the street and go up the road to your grandfather’s house, I said to Hakin.

I’m going to be in the front; everyone get right behind someone and stay quiet. Don’t bunch up and don’t walk in the middle of the road—stay right behind me and watch where you step. Don’t make noise. Stay tight and you’re last, I said, pointing to Sleepy. Make sure we don’t lose anybody. Everybody clear on this? Sleepy translated, and nodded yes, so I opened the door and stepped out into the blackness.

Gun at my shoulder, I scanned the courtyard through my sights, moving across the open ground toward the gate. In the distance, to my right toward the marina, tracer fire licked up into the night sky and then I heard the report. From the delay, about ten seconds, I judged it to be roughly two miles from us.

Slowly, carefully I took my nonfiring hand and worked the squeaky metal gate handle, worrying the entire time that everyone in the neighborhood would hear it. I scanned up one side and down the other, then, slipping through to the street, we turned left, hugging the edge, away from the center of the road but keeping a few feet from the walls and buildings.

Moving down the middle of a road, gets you noticed, and that’s how you get shot. Tonight, anyone could have seen our black silhouettes against the flat paved road. All the streetlights had been shot out, but the moonlight picked up anything shiny, so we made our way along the sidewalks, under the canopy of the trees but also where broken concrete, rocks, and debris littered the ground, making walking quietly a challenge.

I moved as quickly as I could, scanning over my rifle sights up, down, left, and right—rooftops, corners, under cars, any movement got my attention. My rifle stock and elbows were tucked in and the weight of my pack was cutting sharply into my shoulders. My senses were on fire and my eyes were opened so wide that my forehead ached as I tried to take in as much ambient light as I could. I directed my vision slightly off center to where I wanted to go, to allow the rod cells in my eyes to make maximum use of their abilities, since my cones had gone off duty when it got dark. My night-vision device stayed in my pack; I didn’t have the head mount for it and mainly used it for static observation anyway—besides, I needed both hands free. My twenty-one-plus years of experience and training was all that stood between my gaggle of refugees and serious problems. At night in this hostile city, controlled by Qadhafi’s hit teams, they could be coming from any direction. If we were shot down in the street, who would ever know? I was an American contractor; I wasn’t officially here, at least according to my government. I’d gotten off a boat, had no passport stamp, and could just disappear into the haze that was Libya at war.

As we moved to a four-way intersection, blocked in every direction with rocks, chairs, tables, and tires, a machine gun ripped the night air nearby, much closer this time. I heard a vehicle engine start up—was it bad guys, or just some fellow reparking his car? At least I didn’t have to worry about them driving up on us. We threaded our way through the makeshift barricades and made our turn south. Just a few blocks to go.

Lights from a vehicle washed over the intersection we’d just passed through. More automatic weapons fire, but I had no idea what they were shooting at. Now it was closer still. Nearby I could hear the engine of a truck or car racing and men yelling—were they searching the adjacent streets? Were the killers close? I couldn’t tell if the trucks and shooting were friendly or not. But if we didn’t hurry, we stood a good chance of being caught out in the open and gunned down.

Moving quickly but not running, my senses alive to every sound, every shadow, I had a strange thought of my dad back home in Mississippi, where I was raised. I sure could have used his help tonight. Once when our farm pond became infested with aggressive water moccasins, Dad strapped on his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver loaded with rat shot, got on the orange Kubota tractor, and rumbled out. A few minutes later, from the house, we children heard the battle. He shot snake after snake with that pistol. Most, we later saw, were hit right in their black heads.

When the Libyans and I reached the block where the house was, I told them to hide up against the wall under a tree, then I edged up close to the property. I heard nothing—no movement inside the gated courtyard. I motioned them forward. When we reached the front gate to the three-story house, I slowly worked the gate handle. It was locked.

I looked back to Hakin and made an unlocking motion with my left hand as if I had a key, then whispered to Sumo, Does he have a key? pointing to Hakin. He passed the question back.

Hakin shook his head no.

Get the kid over that wall and tell him to open this gate.

Sumo and Sleepy lifted the featherweight preteen onto the top of the eight-foot security wall, which luckily was not covered with broken glass. While they did this, I looked for work, scanning both ends of the street for someone to shoot.

Moments later, metal scraped, hinges screamed, and the gate opened. Didn’t they know about WD-40 over here? I slipped inside and scanned the immediate area for threats, then motioned everyone in. Counting them off as they filed past, I looked up and down the street once more, then shut the gate behind the last man. Sleepy wedged a piece of wood into the handle on the inside to keep it from being opened again from the street.

As we hustled across the courtyard to the front door of the house, Hakin took a knee in the garden and started digging. Grinning broadly in the pale moonlight, he held a brass key to the front door and blew dirt off it. We hustled inside and I sent everybody up the stairs to the roof.

A door opened out onto a terrace surrounded by a three- or four-foot wall. I saw plastic lawn chairs, the obligatory satellite TV dish, a clothesline holding laundry snapping softly in the gentle, salty Mediterranean breeze, a water bucket, and a few other housekeeping items scattered around.

Lock the door and brace it, then you guys get down and get some rest. I’ll keep watch, I told Sumo and Sleepy. I was pouring sweat and was exhausted—from the movement, from the events earlier in the day, from the boat ride—from just about everything. But from three floors up, I could see both ends of the street in either direction. I heard the low staccato sounds of automatic weapons in the distance. I didn’t know where the bad guys were, but if anyone figured out we were here, they’d have to drive straight at us down that street. From up high, behind the cover of this thick concrete wall, I figured I could do a decent job on them. But the image of the sniper, perforated and bled out, stuck in my head. No stronghold was impregnable. I didn’t know what the morning would bring. I never do. That’s my job.

TODAY OUR NEW COMPANY NAME IS GRAY SOLUTIONS, but our mission is the same and we are who the big guys—governments, agencies, and international organizations—call when they don’t want anyone to know they’ve got skin in the game. By 2011, when I hit Libya as a private contractor, I was seasoned in the business—a professional trained in battle, espionage, intelligence, and planning.

Today, at forty-five, I’m more operationally seasoned and more physically fit than ever in my life. My men and I can shoot an eight-inch target at twenty feet away in a dead sprint and can draw handguns and hit targets the size of the bottom of a Coke can in .85 seconds, on average. The teams that my company puts together today are subtle, quiet, yet any of them alone can unleash destruction with accuracy unrivaled by almost any private outfit on earth.

I previously served as a blue-badged federal employee in the Central Intelligence Agency’s

In it were some of the savviest paramilitary warriors America ever turned out. Every unit—Delta, ST6, Force Recon—will say they’re the top, and everyone will argue they are better and badder or take on hairier missions that the other groups. Bottom line, they’re all great units made up of true American heroes and I’m not here for a schoolyard debate about whose dad is toughest. Each unit has its own focus and specialties. But men go through tremendously difficult selection and training and are capable of engaging the enemy anywhere on earth, under any conditions. Hard men, doing hard work, operators work out on a limb with no backup team waiting in the wings to pull their butts out of the fire. They are the president’s most lethal paramilitary tools.

I also served as a contractor with the CIA’s , the teams that take Case Officers out into hot spots around the globe and make sure they make it home alive.

In the course of my time with the CIA, I learned to shoot practically any weapon I put my hands on; use a vehicle as a weapon or a means of escape with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel; detect surveillance in a crowded New Delhi street; blow up a truck with items found in your kitchen cabinets; or hit a guy just once to end it all. We could fight aboard commercial aircraft using just what was readily available, navigate a small boat and link up with submarines off the coast of a hostile country, or set up surveillance outposts on top of mountains in Pakistan and live for months. specialists could penetrate nearly any structure on earth, steal whatever was required—even the safe itself—and leave nothing but smoking holes in the floor where the bolts had been—not even DNA. Masters of mayhem, yet men who could blend into a crowd in nearly any place on earth, do the job, and then disappear like morning mist when it sees the sun.

One day operators are armed to the teeth running hard to a target and another you could find them carrying suitcases stuffed with millions of dollars for tribal leaders, buying supplies and loyalty, and making things happen in a very different way. Covert predators who leave no fingerprints and who are proud to claim the designation of operator.

The term operator was created decades ago to bridge the gap between the soldier and the spy. But today it seems that everyone who’s ever held a gun claims the label.

An operator is someone who can fight his way out of a problem but wears no uniform; he is skilled at fighting, espionage, and gathering information, making drops, detecting surveillance, and meeting agents, but he or she lives in a kind of gray zone, playing chess in the dark. This isn’t a life of 007 suits, ties, or cocktail parties, but Carhartts, beards, sunburned faces, AK-47s, and Bedouin tents. is how the CIA gets its hands dirty; it is the dagger inside the cloak.

Today, I’m on the private side and we’re known as contractors, a term that can apply to a wide variety of skill sets and jobs. Construction workers hired to build barracks on a U.S. base in Kabul are contractors, as were truck drivers who hauled fuel to army units in Iraq, and former soldiers, sailors, and police officers who stand guard at U.S. embassies. But there is another type of contractor—a specialized contractor who works what’s called the black side.

My team and I quietly help agencies like the CIA with things to which they don’t want to be connected. We work for the FBI collecting information or snatching suspects in places—such as Iran—where they can’t send their personnel. We work for foreign heads of state who have been dethroned by illegal coups and we put them back into power. We work for members of Congress, as well as Fortune 100 companies, gathering information on their foreign competitors or protecting their executives when they have to go into questionable countries. We work for the Department of Defense, training members of their various services to protect generals and admirals stationed in extremely hostile places. We work for the Nuclear Emergency Support Teams (NEST), teaching them to detect surveillance, to escape pursuit, and to use a vehicle like a weapon. We are force multipliers and we get the job done.

We are contractors in that we get paid the same way—by check or wire, most of the time. But there have been a few times when I was paid in cash slid across a restaurant table in a manila envelope from an undisclosed U.S. federal agency. But our role, our way of life, and our tradecraft—the way we do our job—is far, far different from standing guard at an embassy, guarding a CIA base, or driving a fuel truck. In a fight, there’s no preliminary shoving match, no shouting. We don’t say anything at all, we just move with as much speed, violence, and efficiency as humanly possible. It’s not pretty, it probably doesn’t make for good TV, but there are no points for style—just winning. We don’t yell for a breacher to come blow down a door like in the movies—our guys see what’s needed, step around the stack, set their charges without a word being spoken, and the door disappears with a loud bang and a gray cloud of smoke. We don’t crack silly jokes in helicopters flying to a target; we don’t get smashed in bars on the weekend and get into bar fights. It’s like the difference between watching freshmen on a college campus and a grad student—one is just happy to be there and the other is ready to get about their business. We are mature, most of us have families, most go to church, and we know our business. Simply, we are professional warriors who inhabit the gray world where leaving a track behind can get you killed or embarrass your client.

In the world’s most brutal places, you learn the little things or you die. Stop at the wrong vehicle checkpoint in Syria and you’ll find yourself folded in half and stuffed into a car tire to be beaten to death with iron rods in a pale, concrete office somewhere. Say the wrong thing at a meeting with an Afghan warlord and you’ll be buried out back in the goat pen by morning. Choose the wrong hotel in Karachi and you’ll get a visit from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, and have a fair chance of disappearing into a black hole from which there is no rescue. we don’t get black, diplomatic passports that give us immunity—we’re on our own.

Fail to notice the street sweeper who takes a little too much interest in your car as you leave your hotel in Iran and you’ll meet the Revolutionary Guard, be arrested, and end up tortured and killed like Beirut Station Chief Bill Buckley. Iran will never acknowledge they have you and U.S. government officials will publicly deny they ever knew you. You’ll discover that the dank green walls of Evin Prison never let in the light of day.

Our world is savage, hard, and governed by two-hundred-proof Darwinian logic—either you make yourself strong and smart and survive, or you get slaughtered. I have tried to live by that all around the globe, from Libya to Iraq to Russia to Pakistan. At home it takes days to readjust to a life of Starbucks and Wal-Mart and sometimes I still drive to the local grocery store like I’m in a place where people still want to kill me—freaking my children out.

What the government has allowed me to tell of my story will give you a glimpse into the way the world really works behind the news, and a look into the future. At a time when the conventional military’s footprint is shrinking around the globe, we are part of the new wave of American warfare—like it or not.

The business of life is about accumulating memories and experiences. This is not a treatise on geopolitics. These are a few of mine.

Welcome to my gray world.

I

The Rise of the Rebels

CHAPTER 1

Libya

Late February 2011

Washington, D.C.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall send?

And who will go for us?"

And I said, Here am I. Send me!

Isaiah 6:8 (NIV)

I PULLED MY COAT UP TIGHTER AROUND MY NECK to ward off the frigid East Coast wind as it whistled through the parking garage and stole away any vestige of warmth I had left. Shouldering my daypack, I hit the button on my key fob and listened for the chirp-chirp telling me my car was locked. I could hear car tires turning on pavement, engines running, and the occasional horn on the streets below from someone running late to work. In the distance an ambulance announced its need to get somewhere. My phone vibrated against my belt as I stepped into the elevator to go up to my office. My secretary, Barbara, said I had a call waiting from a staff member from the office of Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC). I knew her well—she was a woman whom the terrorists wanted dead and my company, SCG, LLC had provided her with armed security since the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona on January 8, 2011. Congresswoman Myrick was permanently at risk, but that didn’t stop her.

A fit, slight woman of seventy with short, dark hair and a quick smile, Myrick—who took office in 1995—founded the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus and chaired the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, HUMINT [HUMan INTelligence], Analysis, and Counterintelligence. Closely tied to the intelligence community, she was a tough-minded American patriot and deputy minority whip in the House. Her driving concern was the rise of radical militant Islam, and she faced death threats nearly every day from Africa, the Middle East, and around the world. It was so bad that she had to change her congressional e-mail address regularly. I took the call on the way up.

Sue was wondering, said her aide who handled military affairs, if your team might have any insight into the Libyan crisis and the rebels, in particular. We know you’ve probably got resources beyond normal government channels and she trusts you guys and wants your input.

SCG, LLC WAS A SMALL, QUIET OUTFIT that provided a full suite of services—from intelligence and security support to special operations and tactical training—all for an elite, select client list of governments, corporations, agencies, and families around the globe. We were not a security company, but we provided that service and have had our people in Kabul, Islamabad, Cairo, and even on the U.S. Gulf Coast helping establish order for the state of Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina’s wrath. We were not a training company, but we taught soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, FBI agents, SWAT personnel, CIA staff, and allied foreign troops for more than ten years in everything from Pashtun language and combat medicine, to lock picking and driving armored trucks. We were not a private military or intelligence company, but we put boots on the ground in every major conflict zone since 9/11, provided intelligence on terrorists and coups, and even provided a highly focused opposition research service to select political clientele.

In a way, we were a hybrid of the Defense Department and CIA, but on a far, far smaller and leaner scale. We had several departments: Operations, Training, Intel, Logistics, and Admin, and each one worked to support the others. We had all the essential bells and whistles—from satellite phones, to encrypted voice calls, e-mail, and text messaging. We could track our people or our sensitive equipment anywhere on earth and see their position on one of the big screens in our Operations Center. Once my folks tracked me as I walked down into the vast red mountain canyons near Petra in southern Jordan to meet an asset—not an easy feat with the signal being blocked by the towering cliffs lining that path. We had video teleconferencing and could pull up our teams nearly anywhere on earth, except the north or south poles, for a face-to-face meeting. We used armored vehicles when necessary—many looked like taxicabs or beaters—a tactic we developed for Iraq and Afghanistan way before others were doing it. We also had B-7, near-presidential-level-protected Suburbans complete with run-flat tires, sat-com units, full medical trauma kits, automatic fire extinguishers under the hood, and door handles that shocked bad guys if they tried opening them.

Our men and women come from the best in the covert operations and intelligence world—CIA, Delta, ST6 (SEAL Team 6), 22nd SAS (Special Air Service), FBI HRT (Hostage Rescue Team), Britain’s MI5 and MI6. We had our own in-house B&E (breaking and entering) specialists and we had the contract to teach the U.S. Navy’s famous Red Cell team, based now at Little Creek, Virginia, and called by another name entirely, on how to break into protected buildings housing secure servers and other high-tech hardware. But we didn’t take just any client and didn’t accept just any contract—we were choosy and thus able to offer top-notch service anywhere on God’s green (and brown) earth. We even brought in a psychologist who ran tests on every operator, instructor, and ops manager to determine what the optimum psychological profile looked like for future hires. We once took an American client to a Middle Eastern nation during the height of the Iranian war threat, and our team not only took all the standard security precautions, but went so far as to recon evacuation routes out in the event of a regional war; this included even identifying borrowing a boat from a local marina and sailing it to Cyprus in case all other legal travel options like airplanes and cars failed. I’d learned all these lessons about quality control the hard way, from my time as vice president of Blackwater USA, and also as the founding director of Blackwater Security Company.

BUT ON THIS COLD WINTER DAY I had to meet with Congresswoman Myrick: my team and I had escorted her abroad, and we had reported to her on the Egyptian revolt and the Muslim Brotherhood. I’d gone there, seen it firsthand, and had become her unofficial intelligence adviser, along with Dr. Walid Phares, who advised her on counterterrorism issues. In 2012, he would be appointed as one of the senior national security advisers to presidential candidate Mitt Romney and was a cochair of his Working Group on the Middle East and North Africa. Why Walid wasn’t advising the National Security Council (NSC) was a mystery, because he definitely knew what he was talking about—as I came to find out over the next few months and years.

I’ll e-mail you what we have and I can be there when she’s free. Just name the date, I said to Myrick’s aide.

The day after tomorrow, he said, adding that the congresswoman wasn’t getting anything responsive to her questions from the Obama administration. She thinks you guys might be able to give a more balanced view.

AT THE MEETING IN D.C., Congresswoman Myrick waved me to a chair like a gracious schoolteacher receiving a wayward pupil. Just off the reception area, her office was well appointed, with her desk in front of a large window, paintings hung from the wall amid mementos from her home state. We sat informally and talked about the president’s apparent hesitancy to support the Libyan rebels and what Qadhafi’s opponents might need. I suggested that to help them it would be important to identify the rebel sympathies and build relationships with their leaders, while staying alert to the fact that we needed to be careful to avoid dealing with militant Islamists; but I emphasized that I wasn’t an expert on Libyan politics or the rebellion.

Of course, I got the context: all through the Middle East, threats to existing U.S. interests went hand in hand with the advancement of radical Islamist fundamentalists. The Arab Spring had unfolded in mid-December 2010 in Tunisia, as the tired and oppressed took to the streets, protested unemployment, sorry living conditions, the high cost of food, and lack of freedom. When a simple, lowly street vendor set himself on fire, Facebook and Twitter made his martyrdom a worldwide tsunami that struck North Africa and the Persian Gulf. In less than thirty days Tunisia had a new government, and that was just the start.

Other waves started in Algeria, Jordan, and Oman, but in Egypt they became tidal forces. The bloody rebellion there climaxed in February 2011, with the

Reviews for Gray Work

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

About as true to life as a James Bond novel. Double-oh-nothing: the Spy Who Lied to Me. Some sort of recruitment/propaganda piece for the CIA and the US government in general.

...still, it's so over the top and ridiculous, it's kind of entertaining. It's the story of Jamie McBadAss, a true god fearing American Patriot spreading Freedom to the middle-east with bullets and gritty one-liners. The way he writes himself into every important historic event makes me think of Forest Gump except as if it was written by Andy McNab. It's full of many biographical elements and needless dramatisation including dialogue and an omniscient narrator.

The author has no self-awareness. He's making scathing comments about foreigners (or as he calls them: bad guys) being savage religious zealots who are the only thing stopping this world from being heaven on earth (them and Obama) whilst himself name dropping Jesus every other line and promising his second coming like some crazed prophet who just happens to make a living from *killing people for money*.

[susan.macura · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Smith makes a compelling argument for the continued use of private contractors in today’s world of political and military unrest. His story is an interesting one as he describes how he worked for the CIA and from there became involved in the increasing world of private contractors in a variety of settings. His story is more interesting than fictionalized stories in the same venue because his tales are true, at least as far as his telling can be. I enjoyed the different perspective he provides for events in history and see where much can be learned from those working outside the box.