Paper Tiger: The Illusion of Security

By Christopher Prohaska

Paper Tiger is a small concise picture of my thirteen years spent contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Starting with securing weapons of mass destruction in Southern Iraq to giving away billions of US tax dollars while leading teams in Hillary's army. This book was written in the most sarcastic manner; as sarcasm was my endurance formula for the incompetence of leadership provided to us in mission accomplishment. If the enemy ever knew how much we improvised and the illusions we created, then we would all be getting our heads lopped off on the Internet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646282104

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Paper Tiger

The Illusion of Security

Christopher Prohaska

Copyright © 2019 Christopher Prohaska

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2019

ISBN 978-1-64628-209-8 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-64628-210-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

WPS Training

Start-Up

Trenchard

Mission Capable

Rock Star 4

Leadership

Mercury 4

Iranian Influence

USAID and CHS

Weakness

To the Winds

Welcome Home or Not

Not the Aegis I Remember

Back Together

How I Learned the Marine Corps’s Fourteen Leadership Traits: JJDIDTIEBUCKLE

After a long day of ranges and climbing up and down mountains at 29 Palms, California, my squad settled into a 360-patrol base for the evening. We all got inside our sleeping bags as the temperature was dropping quickly.

Corporal Darby, my squad leader, barked, Prohaska, recite the fourteen leadership traits.

Being a boot in the fleet for less than a month, Darby might as well been speaking Spanish to me. I told him, I do not know them, Corporal.

Darby said, Okay, I’ll give you ten minutes to learn them. Ten minutes passed, and Darby barked, Prohaska, what are the fourteen leadership traits?

I probably rattled off six to seven of them. This infuriated Darby that I was so stupid. Corp.

Darby said, I will give you three more minutes to learn them. Darby then went for a walk by himself. Darby returned with an unexploded 60-millimeter mortar round that he pulled up out of the ground. (If you never have been to 29 Palms, unexploded ordinance is all over the place as the training areas are basically one big live fire range.) Darby barked, Prohaska, recite the fourteen leadership traits! If you miss just one, I will throw this mortar into the air.

With my bootness, I recited maybe ten traits.

Darby ordered to our squad, If any of you motherfuckers get out of your sleeping bags, I will shoot you myself. And with that, he threw the unexploded mortar into the air. No one really believed he would throw the unexploded mortar, but he did. The mortar came slamming down in the middle of the patrol base. It did not detonate.

Corp. Darby ordered Prohaska, I will give you three more minutes to learn the traits.

With this, the whole patrol base became involved in teaching me the leadership traits. Massive peer pressure was the order of the day. Darby was ever watching to make sure no cowards got out of their sleeping bags.

Prohaska, ordered Darby, recite the traits!

I recited twelve this time. Up in the air went the mortar. Everyone covered their vitals as the mortar came crashing back down in the middle of the patrol base. This went on for two more episodes. Marines screamed at me and hammered into my head the leadership traits till finally, and to the relief of everyone in the patrol base, all fourteen leadership traits spilled out of my filthy mouth.

Justice, judgment, decisiveness, initiative, dependability, tact, integrity, enthusiasm, bearing, unselfishness, courage, knowledge, loyalty, and endurance, Corporal!

After getting out of the Marines, I pursued my dreams of playing football. I got a scholarship to a small college in Texas, but I never attended. I saw bigger opportunities. Unfortunately, those opportunities did not see me for long. After an injury, I lost sight of the bigger picture and went through what I would call a bum phase. I lived in my truck and camped off the roadside. I fed myself with ramen noodles, and as a treat, I ate off the value menu at Taco Bell. I joined a gym so that I could get back in shape and also be able to shower once a day. I took a job working over the road construction. I took this job mainly because it allowed me to sleep in a hotel room three nights a week. I was being paid nine dollars an hour and also working on the weekends at a bar as a bouncer. I would sleep with women on the condition that they bought me some food. I felt like a king. My life was pathetic.

My life continued down this spiral. Leaving the Marines, I had the qualifications of a Walmart door greeter. This sort of existence really didn’t seem to bother me as I lived by a credo: If I can’t carry it on my back, I don’t need it. Life was simple but pointless. I didn’t know what really happened; as a kid I had such dreams and aspirations. I was going to play in the NFL and drive fancy cars and be invited to the best parties attended by the most elite of people. Somehow that dream disappeared, and the reality of I’ll fuck you for breakfast was my existence.

Then one day, a manager at a Ford dealership believed in me and mentored me. Within a year, I went from the sales floor to management. I worked my ass off for this guy because he saw something in me that I had forgotten was there—a winner. He forced me to set goals and paid for me to attend motivational seminars. I was a new me. Everyone at that dealership took an interest in me and helped me become a better person. However, something was still missing.

The missing part of me wasn’t the bigger picture or success. That was there. I existed for my next sale. I was the hungriest man on the floor. I won monthly sales contests right and left. What was missing was the brotherhood and being a part of something much bigger than myself. It was about that time that I started receiving e-mails from friends I served with who were now in Iraq working as contractors.

They told me about all the fun they were having in Iraq. They bragged about the money. You no longer had to take the free tour; you could now afford to buy the membership, one of them said. Starting at $12,000 a month. I was, like, I’m all in. What do I need to do? I was told to go attend a PSD course and get evaluated and then do a blanket résumé to several companies. I did as instructed. I attended Hostile Control Tactics’ fourteen-day PSD course and rated out as Tier 1. I then shotgun blasted out my résumé, and twelve hours later, I was employed. It was really that simple in 2006 to get a six-figure job.

There was a war on two fronts, and finding qualified guys willing to go into harm’s way was at premium. I got picked up by a small company called Cochise Consultancy. Within a week, they had me in Southern Iraq, at the Tallil and Nasiriyah area. Their mission was to dispose of all the ordinance and munitions in Iraq. I paid attention to details and within a few months moved up to assistant team leader. This was one of the best companies I worked for in the Middle East.

For about five years, I continued to work DOD contracts in Iraq. I worked for two other companies: Erinys and Aegis. They had the Matrix contract. They had two missions. One was the ROC, which was basically Tactical Operations Command Center for all private security companies in Iraq; their other mission was transporting and safeguarding the lives of high-ranking United States Army Corps of Engineers reconstructing the infrastructure in Iraq.

Erinys and Aegis were both British-owned companies, and they took great care of their men. They never broke the Golden Contracting Rule: Don’t fuck with my money or my leave. They allowed me to grow and learn more, all while making my bank account fat at the expense of risking my life traveling throughout Iraq. I survived three IED blasts and five slaps on the plates. I was a fortunate man who enjoyed his job tremendously.

It was around 2011 that I saw the wave of the future in contracting in the Middle East with Worldwide Protective Services for the State Department. Otherwise known as WPS. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got the funding to put together a small army. About five thousand individuals would be needed on the ground to fill the ranks. This was not including all the vetting or support personnel that would be required.

I already knew a few guys working in WPS at Blackwater, and they told me about all the great training they received and the cool missions they would go on. They made it sound so glamorous and elite. Perhaps it was because they were working for Eric Prince; I don’t know. What I did know was that big army was pulling out of Iraq, and the DOD contracts were becoming smaller and smaller. I knew the State Department and WPS were the way forward in contracting.

In April of 2011, I resigned my position with Aegis and said goodbye to DOD contracts forever. In June of 2011, I began my journey in the WPS program. This would turn out to be a seven-year adventure. One that always kept me wondering where all this money was going, and if the American people ever knew the waste. It was a journey of the illusion of security, and did the enemy ever know we were so fucked.

This book is dedicated to all the men who lost their lives on the WPS program and to all the men who reached down and found theirs when the going got tough. This is just another story of the State Department failing the men on the ground. There is one thing that the State Department is not inefficient at and that’s showing there is a class difference between direct hires and contractors. I’m sure after this book comes out, I will be pulled off post, have my clearances revoked, and told to go pack my shit. Hopefully this book sells well as I’ll never work another WPS contract again.

For security purposes or personal reasons, some names in this book had been changed. However, most names in this book were changed because these guys did not want the world to know what incompetent douche bags they were.

Chapter 1

WPS Training

Nothing is ever certain in the world of contracting. I was among several Americans who resigned from Aegis to go work on the Dynacorp INL Shark Team Program. We all had signed contracts, and some of us even had plane tickets for training. Our starting pay was $211,000 per year with fifty-six days of leave per year. I had to pinch myself as I was signing that contract. But then the unexpected happened; ten days before training, the State Department pulled the INL funding for Iraq, and the program shut down.

Dynacorp did the best they could for us. They offered us jobs in other programs they had, but the pay was fractional and leave was even worse. We all scrambled to find leads on other contracts. We set up a Skype group chat and shared information on leads and recruiters. Then someone stumbled upon a small start-up company called Global Integrated Security (GIS).

Global had just been awarded Task Order 6 (TO-6). It was a start-up contract providing mobile and static security for the State Department in Basra, Iraq. Global was a spin-off or Skunk Works of the British firm Global Security. I recognized the name Global from being stationed in Baghdad. The British side of Global used to provide security at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). They were most notable for how they treated their Gurkha guards.

When Global lost the BIAP security contract in around 2007. They took their Gurkha guard force to an airplane hangar and told them to stay there and someone would come back and get them. Gurkhas were like little robot marines and followed their orders to a T. The Gurkhas stayed in that airplane hangar for almost a month not showering, shitting in a corner, and eating what they could scrounge; until one day someone stumbled upon them. It was obvious that Global had abandoned these poor guys. On the American taxpayers’ dollar, the Gurkhas were flown home to Nepal.

Anyhow, Global was in great need of bodies on the ground, and they were speeding guys through processing. We all applied and got job offers. The downside of speeding guys through processing like that was there were going to be some hiccups and some turds squeezing through. Actually, the hiccups never stopped for the three and a half years I worked for them. Every day was a new day for Global. They never learned from their past mistakes.

Being a small start-up company, Global did not have a WPS-certified training facility. The State Department had strict guidelines on what it wanted taught and the manner it would be taught. This required a very large training facility with gun ranges, lodging, chow hall, race track, mock town for close-quarter combat, and good supply of vehicles to be driven and destroyed.

Like the American way, Global subcontracted their training out to The Ogara Group. Ogara was situated in a very rural part of Virginia—Montross, Virginia—where the biggest store was the Dollar General and not even one fast food restaurant. It was forty-five minutes away from the next largest town, Tappahannock. What Ogara lacked in amenities, they made up for in the quality of their instructors. These men were well versed and cared about what they were doing; which was more than I could say for some of the students they were about to teach. In reality these instructors should have been vetting men to go downrange, not training them; but like I said, Global was in dire need of bodies on the ground.

I landed at the Richmond International Airport. I gathered my luggage from the carousel and found the Ogara liaison. This character looked like he had just finished cutting grass. A lot of grass. For the next three years when I got picked up at the Richmond Airport, I was met by someone who would look very similar to this guy. So the grass cutter told me to go over and wait in that group and that we were waiting on one more guy.

I walked over to the group the grass cutter pointed out and could not believe my eyes. Here were dudes interviewing for a six-figure job, and they were dressed almost as if they were vagabonds: wifebeater shirts, cutoff shorts, earrings, and tattoos exposed; hell, they made the grass cutter look top-notch. In my head I was thinking, Guys, from the moment you get off the plane till forty-five days from now, this is a job interview. No one was guaranteed a job. But then this turned out to be a trend at Global.

The last man came down the stairs to the baggage area, and I recognized that guy. It was Carlos Ramos. I worked with him at Aegis for three years. He was stationed up in the Mosul province. Carlos hailed from Puerto Rico and served in the US Army as a Black Hawk crew chief for the Night Stalkers. Night Stalkers were an extremely talented group who delivered and recovered Special Forces in some of the most extreme conditions. Being of Spanish descent, I was very surprised to find out the only two words in Spanish Carlos spoke were the same two I spoke: cerveza and baño (beer and bathroom). Of course, his skin tone allowed him to blend in much better downrange. Many Arabic men would come upon to him and just chatter away, and Carlos would just smile.

From the airport, we traveled by van to Tappahannock, Virginia, and our accommodations was the Days Inn. There were two men to a room, and we were told to be out front at 0700 in PT gear and to bring a change of clothes. They probably should have been more specific than that about the change of clothes. Days Inn was one of two hotels in Tappahannock. It definitely was a dive. I opened the drawers and saw roaches, so I did not unpack. The view out my window was a white crackhead prostitute with a black eye and her black pimp. Johns were coming in and out of that hotel room. Mostly over-the-road construction workers, but unfortunately one or two WPS candidates participated in that activity.

At 0700 the next morning, twenty-six individuals were standing out front of the hotel with their change of clothes. Two extended vans pulled up, and we were all loaded in for the forty-five-minute ride to the training facility. I always enjoyed that ride. The cornfields and scenery were so beautiful, especially as the sun was rising.

As we got close to the training facility, I noticed some signs up in the median. This was an election year, and one of the candidate’s stance was We don’t want no mercenaries in our town. That attitude continued with the townsfolk as brawls would occasionally break out with the locals on our off nights, resulting in fewer and fewer places our money was welcome. We never went out looking for a fight, but we delivered when there was no other option. This usually resulted in the local sheriff coming to the training facility the next day with a chip on his shoulders. Those Ogara guys sure were good about saving our asses but then chewing our asses. They would calm down that sheriff and send him on his merry way and then come in the classroom screaming about some locals getting their asses beat. I sort of thought it was a show. I figured they would have done the same thing in a similar situation. The end result was one less place we were welcome.

WPS is meant to be a vetting course, not a training course. What I meant by that was you were expected to come to the course with a certain skill set. The skill set that you said you possessed on your résumé that you submitted that got you hired. Unfortunately guys would stretch the truth of their experience. Instead of being a motor pool specialist who once delivered a vehicle to the commanding general, they would say they were an expert tactical driver on the commanding general’s close protection team. This unfortunate situation would slip through the cracks often. These types of individuals were plain greedy and selfish. Not only did they not possess the needed skill set, but they endangered their lives and the lives of the men around them. All because they wanted that