U.S. contracting firm accused of bilking millions and running wild in Iraq

By Deborah Hastings
ASSOCIATED PRESS

9:15 a.m. April 30, 2005

His career in Baghdad was brief. And it ended badly.

On a blistering July afternoon, three MP5 submachine guns were pointed at Robert Isakson. The men carrying the weapons wanted his money and his security pass.

As Isakson tells it, they also wanted his guns, leaving him unarmed in a mess of a country and banned from its safest haven.

"We were defenseless," says the former cop and FBI agent. He had come to Iraq to help rebuild the devastated country, accompanied by his 14-year-old son, Bobby. Now, after less than a month, they were being expelled at gunpoint.

By Americans.