AMY GOODMAN: What did he think he was going to be doing?

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.

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?

KATY HELVENSTON: I was told that it’s unheard of.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

AMY GOODMAN: Marc, I just want to interrupt for one second. You said they had no map?

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.

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.

AMY GOODMAN: Katy Helvenston, when did you last speak to your son Scotty?

KATY HELVENSTON: It was probably 24, maybe 30-some hours before he was murdered.

AMY GOODMAN: So, March 30?

KATY HELVENSTON: He did call me that morning from -- I assume it was from that base that he stopped at. And I had turned off the ringer on my bedroom phone, and he left this message, and he said, “Mom, I’m okay. I’ll be home soon.” He said, “I’m going to spoil you.” And, you know, he was already dead by the time I got that. The thing was -- see, I mean, they wouldn’t even give him a map. If he had had the armored vehicle, if he had had the rear gunner, if he had been familiar with the area... He asked. He said, “Give us a map.” And they said, “You’re going to have to wing it.”

AMY GOODMAN: How did you hear that Scott had died?

KATY HELVENSTON: I was in my home office doing research, and I was on the computer and I had CNN on. 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. And I had no idea it was Scotty, but I saw this burning vehicle, and I just said, “This is insane.” And I switched stations. I didn't want to watch it.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they say it was Fallujah?

KATY HELVENSTON: They said Fallujah, and I said, well, Scotty, he’s in Baghdad. And they said “contractor,” and I was thinking of maybe they were working on the pipelines, oil lines or something. I was thinking of construction when they said “contractor.” And a couple hours later, they said “security contractors,” and I said, “My god, Scotty is a security contractor, but he's not in Fallujah. He's protecting Paul Bremer.” But the day went on, and all of a sudden it was Blackwater. They said “Blackwater.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: When were you officially notified that it was him?

KATY HELVENSTON: I called Blackwater at about 7:00 at night. When they finally said “Blackwater,” I thought, and I just looked up on the internet and got an 800-number, and I called them, and I said, “My name is Katy.” I said, “Scotty Helvenston is my son. Is he okay?” And they said they didn't know. And I said, “What do you mean you don't know?” And they said, “We don’t know.” And I said, “Well, don’t you know where your employees are?” And they said, “Not really.”

And I was on the phone. I called every hour and talked to them for like 15, 20 minutes, and Scotty had been so good about calling me and emailing me, and I kept thinking, you know, he would have called me and let me know he was okay, because he knew how worried I was. And finally, about midnight, I just started -- I started when Scotty was born, and I went through his entire life to some other unknown person on the other end at Blackwater, because I knew he was gone, and at 3:00 in the morning they finally said, “He's gone.”

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break, Katy. And then, when we come back, I want to ask you about your request for an incident report from Blackwater to understand what had taken place and also about a memorial service that Blackwater held, and we'll continue this discussion. Katy Helvenston’s son Scott Helvenston is one of the four men who died, the security contractors working for Blackwater on March 31, 2004 in Fallujah. The pictures are famous at this point of what happened to them on that day. We’re talking to Katy Helvenston, Scott's mother; Jeremy Scahill, who’s breaking the story today in The Nation magazine; and Marc Miles, the attorney for the families of the four Blackwater employees.

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