A few years ago, reporter Eamon Whalen told me that he wanted to look into something odd happening in Minneapolis.
It was 2021, and the city was still experiencing lethal police violence, prompting regular local protests. And in response, Eamon told me, there were reports at a mall where police had killed a man that caused outcry: The shopping center had hired a former military contractor named Nathan Seabrook, whose company promised to use tactics learned abroad against protesters in the homeland. From there, Eamon began reporting. We thought the story would take some time. But we had no idea just how much there was to uncover.
Today, we published a years-in-the-making investigation into Seabrook and his company, Conflict Resolution Group. The reporting sprawls from military tactics used in Minnesota to a government investigation into millions of dollars’ worth of stolen military gear and overlooked abuses during America’s privatized war on terror. It’s a story in and of itself. But it also has lessons for our current moment, when the government sees its troops as solutions to supposed chaos.
Eamon’s work shows the result. His look into CRG is a lesson and haunting foreshadowing of what is happening right now in US cities. Both the mercenary as mall cop and the modern ICE agent show what happens when a lot of money is promised to—and little accountability governs—masked men patrolling streets with overwhelming firepower to clamp down on protest. It is also a lesson in the kind of democracy we exported to the world coming back home to the US.
A few of the forever wars might finally be over. But here is their effect. There are many men who are coming back to the US with a new set of skills. What happens when they need to sell those skills? And what happens when scared Americans who view fellow citizens as insurgents have a demand?
—Jacob Rosenberg
