As Erik Prince rattles off history's roster of "privateers," or
independent contractors who helped shape, secure and ultimately spread
American democracy — Revolutionary War naval fighter John Paul
Jones to the "Flying Tigers" of World War II — a U.S. Coast Guard
search-and-rescue helicopter swoops down over a lake outside his office
window and evacuates four souls in distress.
A hundred yards beyond the orange-and-white chopper, green smoke pours
from a bombed-out vehicle carrying an American diplomat, who lies
injured on the ground. Within seconds, a security team in three
four-wheel-drive vehicles speeds in reverse to rescue the official and
his entourage.
In the distance one hears the fire of semi-automatic M-4 Carbines
— today's weapon of choice in the war against terrorism, although
Mr. Prince labels the box-cutter "the most cost-effective weapon in
history" — and from behind a stand of trees the reverberation of
more powerful munitions.
This, I come to realize, is a typical morning at Blackwater Worldwide's
7,000-acre headquarters and training facility in the Great Dismal Swamp
of North Carolina. Here on any given day training is provided to 750
people — 35,000 per year.
Founded by Mr. Prince in 1998, Blackwater has provided instruction to
virtually every branch of the U.S. military (not to mention America's
allies), including 135,000 U.S. Navy personnel, 8,000 U.S. Coast
Guardsmen, even cadets of West Point.
"We fill the gaps," explains the 39-year-old Mr. Prince, a former Navy
Seal whose title is chairman and CEO of Blackwater. A graduate of
Hillsdale College (his Michigan family previously owned the
automobile-parts manufacturer Prince Corporation), he equates
Blackwater's emergence to FedEx, which "evolved due to the lack of
capabilities and responsiveness of the USPS" [U.S. Postal Service].
"Who do you trust with your overnight package?" Mr. Prince points out.
One Blackwater official put it this way: "When they finally get Osama
bin Laden, somebody from Blackwater will be within 50 feet of where he
is found."
During my tour of what is the largest private technical training
facility in the United States, I encounter SWAT teams from several
local police departments and members of the Canadian Armed Forces'
elite counter-terrorist/special ops unit — or so I gather from
their uniforms.
Blackwater's aviation mechanics, meanwhile, are busy in one aircraft
hangar installing the newest high-tech equipment in two Royal Jordanian
military helicopters. Soon, Blackwater will begin training Pakistani
soldiers and Afghan border police, and providing armed escorts for
commercial vessels sailing through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden.
Needless to say, Blackwater Worldwide (formerly Blackwater USA) has
come a long way since it was awarded its first major U.S. government
contract following the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole,
which killed 17 American sailors. Life-size replicas of Navy ship hulls
float on a lake here, where Blackwater's instructors, many of them
ex-military, teach sailors how to thwart future bombing attempts.
Blackwater's primary mission — delivering security, capacity and
hope to populations ensnared in conflict — is accomplished
thousands of miles from this Carolina swamp. The security firm deploys
more than 2,000 civilian contractors in 15 countries — "most
places you would not want to visit," notes Mr. Prince — to assist
international relief organizations (if indeed they are in place) in
providing humanitarian aid, particularly medicine, food and water.
"Butter, not guns," Mr. Prince stresses. In 2007 alone, Blackwater
undertook 11,000 missions, including providing security to the U.S.
government, primarily the State Department.
All of which presents inherent risks. In 2004, four Blackwater
contractors in Iraq were ambushed and killed in Fallujah, their charred
bodies hung from a Euphrates River bridge; and on Sept. 16, 2007, 17
Iraqis in Baghdad were killed by Blackwater when it detected an ambush
of a State Department convoy.
As a result of the latter shooting, which remains under federal
investigation, Mr. Prince was summoned to Capitol Hill to testify about
Blackwater's contracts (reportedly worth more than $1 billion since
2001) with Uncle Sam and what government oversight exists with the
security firm's overseas operations.
"We perform no offensive missions," Mr. Prince insists (albeit he
concedes Blackwater easily beat the National Guard to New Orleans to
airlift stranded victims of Hurricane Katrina). Indeed, he is insulted
by accusations to the contrary.
One Blackwater official, who requests anonymity, tells me: "Blackwater
is defined in the press, and by extension the public, by two events
that resulted in the loss of human life. The first, Fallujah, resulted
in the loss of four Blackwater lives. The second, on 16 September 2007,
resulted in the loss of 17 Iraqi lives.
"The irony here is that it is a company that was founded and exists to
save lives. Everything done is in the interest of safety: training
troops to defend themselves; building armored personnel carriers to
keep troops alive in battle; building airships for surveillance to
detect the bad guys; teaching cops how to effectively and safely rescue
a hostage; helping people in executive-protection roles avoid an ambush
in a vehicle; building an aviation division capable of performing
rescue missions in war zones and natural disasters. The list goes on.
"My point is that the press quantifies the loss of life, but fails to
account for the sparing of life because of Blackwater. In Katrina
alone, 128 people were pulled to safety before a contract was ever
awarded. In more than 20,000 diplomatic missions, no one protected by
Blackwater has ever even been seriously injured."
