AMY GOODMAN: Were going to break, Katy. KATY HELVENSTON: Well, I was initially I was stunned that I actually had gotten through to Erik Prince. Corporations are fictional entitiesthey only act through their personnel, explains Miles. AMY GOODMAN: Were talking about a groundbreaking lawsuit against Blackwater on behalf of the families of the four contractors who were killed on March 31, 2004 in Fallujah, the famous photographs of two of them hanging from the bridge over the Euphrates. 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. V. Blackwater Security - Facts & Allegations. He was exceptional. We were actually told, recalls Zovkos mother, Danica, that if we wanted to see the paperwork of how my son and his co-workers were killed that wed have to sue them., Thus began the legal battle between Blackwater and the dead mens families. navy seal scott helvenston death video - brew7-coffee.com Helvenston v. Blackwater Security Wiki Did you have luck getting Blackwater responding? As it turned out, Helvenston was slated to carry out a far less glamorous task. v. Blackwater Security is the lawsuit for wrongful death filed by the families of the four contractors for Blackwater Security (since renamed Academi) murdered in the 31 March 2004 Fallujah ambush.The families of the four men, led by Scott Helvenston's mother Katy Helvenston-Wettengel and Donna Zovko, Jerry Zovko's mother, filed suit against Blackwater with lawyer Daniel . Justin L McQuown, 50 - Virginia Beach, VA - MyLife.com The suit alleges that Blackwater trainer Justin "Shrek" McQuown resented Helvenston and deliberately reassigned Helvenston to the team that was ambushed. He was a great golfer. I said, Ill take any statement you want to give. I wanted to interview Justin McQuown. This is what delegationI dont mean to be dodging the question, although its kind of convenient in this case, but never[laughter] I really willIm going to call the Secretary and say you brought up a very valid question, and what are we doing about it? . JUAN GONZALEZ: Marc Miles, I would like to ask you, obviously there have been about 425, now, Americans who have been working for contractors who have been killed in Iraq. So they were to escort these two E.S.S. The man heading the training was Justin McQuown, nicknamed Shrek, after the green ogre movie cartoon character. The suit also alleges that McQuown intentionally refused to allow the Blackwater security contractors to conduct ride-alongs with the teams they were replacing from Control Risk Group. Blackwater was paying its men $600 a day but billing Regency $815, according to the Raleigh News and Observer. The night before he left, Helvenston sent an e-mail to the Owner, President and Upper Management of Blackwater, subject: extreme unprofessionalism. In this e-mail, obtained by The Nation, he complained that the behavior of McQuown (referred to as Justin Shrek in the e-mail) was very manipulative, duplicitive [sic], immature and unprofessional. He describes how his original team leader tried to appeal to Shrek not to reassign him, but, Helvenston wrote, I think [the team leader] felt that there was a hidden agenda. is a 501(c)3 non-profit news organization. He trained Demi Moore for her film G.I. And there are other people that have talked to Katy and Marc that have affirmed all of this. AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, thank you for being with us. His family is linked in with Richard DeVos, the Amway founder who basically funded the Republican revolution of the 1990s. JEREMY SCAHILL: I was very diligent in trying to get Blackwater to make any comment. They deleted the word armored. And Marc Miles says that in doing that, Blackwater was able to save $1.5 million. Shortly after entering the city, they get stuck in traffic, and their small convoy is ambushed. I would support them in any way I could, but they had to figure out how to get through college. And, Katy, I know this is difficult for you, and its the first time youre speaking out in a live national broadcast, but I would like to step back for a minute and have you tell us about your son Scott. If it had been up to Katy Helvenston, her son wouldnt have been in Iraq at all. Were gonna go have fun. We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. At our rooms. Scott was tall, tan and chiseled and, by all accounts, a model soldier and athlete. He swam like a fish. Blackwater, in turn, was billing a Kuwaiti company more than $800 for Scott Helvenstons services, and then that Kuwaiti company, in turn, billed a Cypriot company called E.S.S., which was the company that provides catering services to military operations, basically the U.S. military bases. The thing was see, I mean, they wouldnt even give him a map. So I sent Blackwater about 23 specific questions, and from that first email that Chris Taylor sent me, I never heard back. An analysis of Princes contributions prepared for The Nation by the Center for Responsive Politics reveals that since 1989, Prince and his wife have given some $275,550 to Republican campaigns. Previously, Justin was a Research Engineer at L una Innovations and also held positions at AeroVironment, Stryten Manufacturing, GE Healthcare, TopRank Marketing, Emerson, General Electric. We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. You will be launched to my site where you can watch the teaching. tn_keyword: ['academi', 'security-c'], He was dead. And the guard that was in charge of me, I said, You know, you really need to do something about these helicopters. You know, and he left for a minute or two, and finally the helicopters went away. And Erik had a check for the Zovkos. 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? Initially they put us in separate hotels. Scott Helvenston - Net Worth, Bio, Age, Height, Family, Wiki! You can read our Privacy Policy here. What happened that day, as far as you have been able to understand and as your lawsuit alleges? They were told that they were able to do a pre-trip inspection of the routes and be able to familiarize themselves with the area before going on routes. Helvenston et al. v. Blackwater Security | Military Wiki | Fandom correspondent Jeremy Scahill. The suit alleges that Blackwater trainer Justin "Shrek" McQuown resented Helvenston and deliberately reassigned Helvenston to the team that was ambushed. The suit alleges that there were six guards available that day, but McQuown intervened and ordered only the four to be sent. Okay, that may be an overbroad analogy there, but the same principle applies. Helvenston et al. And at that point, they were on the east side of Fallujah. You may unsubscribe or adjust your preferences at any time. The problem is that theyre working outside of the military structure, and therefore theyre not subject to court-martial or any particular chain of command, while at the same time theyre working within a country, such as Iraq, which really doesnt have a civil justice system or a police force, which would be able to hold American private security contractors accountable or liable for any of the conduct that they do over there. Jane), and was also featured in the reality shows Combat . Go ahead. 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. After his talk, he took questions from students at the school. And the noon news, it had this just all of a sudden it caught my attention, and I looked over there, and I thought, Oh, my god, you know. You need to put a face on these acts. They say Blackwater refused to redraft the contract. They had some rocks that they had kind of shaved off, and they had the name of each one of the men. AMY GOODMAN: Months later. Shortly after George W. Bush was re-elected in November 2004, Gary Jackson sent out a mass celebratory e-mail declaring, Bush Wins, Four More Years!! Ill only be away from my kids for a couple of months. Thats why he chose Blackwater, she recalls. The families of the four men killed at Fallujah have filed a lawsuit charging the company with wrongful death. We are speaking with the mother of one of the four men who were killed in Fallujah, March 31, 2004, Katy Helvenston; Jeremy Scahill has written a piece, an article in The Nation magazine called Blood Is Thicker Than Blackwater; and Marc Miles, the attorney for the families of the four Blackwater contractors. placementName: "thenation_right_rail", And whats important here is that the lawsuit alleges that because of Justin McQuowns personal animosity toward Scott Helvenston, he intervened to have only four men sent, that only four were sent on Justin McQuowns order that day, instead of six, and the other two were held back to perform clerical duties in the Blackwater facility in Baghdad. And so, what happened is they set out on their mission, but because they didnt have G.P.S., because they didnt have maps of the area, because they werent able to do a pre-trip inspection of the route, they didnt necessarily know where they were going, so they essentially got lost. Now, thats not unusual for, you know, a lifelong Republican to give that kind of money. Lawyer Paul Dickinson: The U.S. I went up to him, and I tried to shake his hand. 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. This is life and death were talking about here, and as Marc Miles says, the commodity that Blackwater deals in is human beings. Beast, he was the only contestant to defeat the beast, outmaneuvering a chimpanzee in an obstacle course. Name. They were killed by insurgents literally walking up and shooting them with small-arms fire. And they said contractor, and I was thinking of maybe they were working on the pipelines, oil lines or something. It was about what happened to Scotty and Jerry and Mike and Wesley. A day after the killings, Prince enlisted the services of the Alexander Strategy Group, a now disgraced but once powerful Republican lobbying and PR firm. My family wouldnt let me read any of the articles, they were so graphic. The other two were kept behind at Blackwaters Baghdad facility to perform clerical duties. You said they had no map? They were told that they were able to do a risk assessment of every trip, and if the threat was too dangerous, that they could decline the mission. The man heading the training was Justin McQuown, nicknamed Shrek, after the green ogre movie cartoon character. JEREMY SCAHILL: Per day. 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? Scottys not going to die in vain, says his mother. Justin received a Bachelor of Science degree from . ease arkansas phone number There is not a whole lot of jobs out there for ex-Special Forces guys, and obviously he didnt realize that at the time. In addition, the paper reports, Blackwater billed Regency separately for all its overhead and costs in Iraq. Regency would then bill ESS an unknown amount for these services. KBR/Halliburton refuses to discuss the matter and will not confirm any relationship with ESS. Erik Prince comes from a major powerful Republican family in Michigan. AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, unfortunately, we were not able to get Blackwater on, writing us the letter and saying no. Scott Helvenston and his team were to deploy to Iraq on March 29. Stephen "Scott" Helvenston (June 21, 1965 - March 31, 2004) was a United States Navy SEAL.He was working as a security contractor for Blackwater Security when he was killed in the 31 March 2004 Fallujah ambush within days of arriving in Iraq.. Helvenston was a personal trainer for Hollywood celebrities such as Demi Moore (for G.I. Im driven and Im not going to quit. Scott Helvenston - Interesting stories about famous people, biographies Helvenston arrived in Kuwait on March 18, where he was under the management of John and Kathy Potter, whom he knew from Combat Missions. Also with us, attorney Marc Miles, who joins us from studio in Irvine, California. JUAN GONZALEZ: Jeremy, in your article, you talk about some of the contracts that you were able to get copies of, where actually Blackwater was subcontracting to others, but in their contract they deleted certain provisions of the protections of these men, and the men actually complained about it, the superiors complained about it. 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 .
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