Erik Prince bounds in to the meeting late. Looking very youthful for his midthirties, he wears a conservatively cut suit, an American flag lapel pin, and a severe haircut more appropriate for a Navy officer than a wealthy industrialist. As mentioned previously, Erik is the sole owner of Blackwater, and the word on the street is that his company now does $800 million a year. Critics say that at best he might gross $600 million, and there is speculation that many of his operations don’t make a profit due to his insistence on fixed-price contracts. Erik is on a high today since Blackwater has just picked up a multimillion-dollar contract to support the drug eradication program in Afghanistan and has replaced Triple Canopy in all of the State Department’s contracts in northern Iraq. The contrast between the sage and circumspect Lord Westbury and the ebullient and effusive Erik Prince is fascinating and representative of the cultural difference in their respective approaches to the work they do.
A former Navy officer, a SEAL from Holland, Michigan, Erik Prince is a rare breed of moneyed heir who joined the military solely to perform a service for his country. Erik’s father, Edgar Prince, had started the family business in 1965 with a little die-cast shop called Prince Machine Corps. After being in business a few years, the business exploded, and Prince Automotive began to develop other types of car parts and invest some of their sizable profits in developments like shopping malls, ultimately expanding their assets into a billion-dollar-plus enterprise. With his new wealth, Edgar set up the Prince Group to manage a growing financial empire of real estate, factories, and other investments.
Devout Calvinists, Edgar and his wife actively participated in community affairs and contributed to furthering the interests of conservative Christianity. Erik began a career of public service early on, after his father got him an internship at the Family Research Council, a family-values lobby group that received generous funding from his father. In 1992, he spent six months interning for President George H. W. Bush, but then switched loyalties to work for Pat Buchanan’s election bid.
Erik first attended the heavily Libertarian, privately funded Hillsdale College before transferring to the U.S. Naval Academy. He tendered his resignation before graduating, though not before he met his future wife, Joan. After leaving the Academy, he joined the Navy, earning a commission as a lieutenant. Prince did one four-year tour with SEAL Team 8 (based out of Little Creek, Virginia) before his life changed dramatically.
In 1995, Edgar Prince suffered a massive heart attack and died. The twenty-seven-year-old Erik’s family values and work ethic compelled him to take over the day-to-day operations of the Prince Group. To add to his hardship, Erik’s wife was also diagnosed with cancer that year. Erik left the SEALs to attend to his new responsibilities. The decision was made to sell the family’s automotive business to S. C. Johnson Controls for 1.35 billion dollars, making Erik’s family one of America’s wealthiest. Outside of business, Prince had converted to Roman Catholicism and remained active in religious, human rights, and political causes like Christian Solidarity International, the Institute of World Politics, and the Republican Party.
In mid-1997, Erik broke ground on the six thousand acres in Moyock, North Carolina, that would become today’s Blackwater. Erik’s original business idea was simply to create a shooting range to service the needs of the surrounding special operations community. He also began Blackwater Target Systems, manufacturer of an innovative system of weighted metal targets that would bounce back up after every hit. September 11 and the rush to get into Afghanistan spawned Blackwater Security. After the war in Iraq made private security his most lucrative venture, Erik began to spin off more supporting divisions such as Blackwater Airships, Blackwater Canine, and an aviation division based in Melbourne, Florida, including Blackwater Aviation, Presidential Airways (a formerly defunct airline), and STI. Prince has even designed an entire line of uniforms and gear for his contractors, effectively creating his own brown paramilitary uniform for his own army. Hundreds of men in Iraq have the Blackwater bear paw and gun sight logo displayed on their chest, covering their heart.
Erik aggressively works to develop new technology and particularly loves airplanes, even flying his own Maule Caravan to commute back and forth from Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia to the Blackwater site in North Carolina. Blackwater’s latest aviation innovation is a CASA 212 gunship modified with two A12 guns. It can spit out forty-two hundred 50-caliber bullets per minute, which can travel thirty-four hundred feet per second. Seventy bullets per second creates a steady stream of red tracer fire that with depleted uranium shells can easily turn armored vehicles into Swiss cheese.
Erik tells us that he has also been investing in the development of a new personnel carrier for Blackwater based on the South African Caspir, a high-speed armored vehicle. The Blackwater Grizzly will use a bigger turbocharged diesel engine and have the suspension created and built by Dennis Anderson, a legend in the monster-truck business. When Erik describes his armored monster truck, homemade gunship, and other toys, he looks like an excited twelve-year-old at Christmas. “We are having a South African armored vehicle modified by the guy that made Gravedigger. [Anderson] is doing the suspension and he is just down the road from us,” he explains with unrestrained excitement. Since Anderson usually designs his fifteen-hundred hp monster trucks solely to crush rows of cars and fly through the air with impunity, combining that with armed men seems like an odd creation out of a bad eighties action show like The A-Team.
Among his many multimillion-dollar contracts, Erik provides a maritime operations force that monitors smuggling and terrorism in the oil area for the Azeri government, has contracts with the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and protects State Department operations in Iraq, Israel, and Haiti. His company has quickly come from nowhere to have the same brand awareness of older and larger corporations like DynCorp, KBR, Kroll, ArmorGroup, and Control Risks Group. He has injected an intense political, military, and some say ideological focus that sets him apart from direct competitors like MVM, Triple Canopy, USIS, and other well-known providers of ex-soldiers with guns. The weekly newsletter put out by Blackwater contains stories of possible global threats, right-wing analyses, supportive articles about the War on Terror, and a concluding section written by a chaplain. In the War on Terror, Blackwater stands somewhere slightly to the right of the Bush administration. Erik’s wealth, personal connections, influence, and devotion to the cause makes Blackwater the one to watch.
Prince maintains an office in Virginia to keep himself close to the purse strings of government contracting opportunities and has just come from Capitol Hill. His business requires a careful mix of visits all around Washington, and he regularly pushes his PowerPoint past Republican congressmen, the State Department, Pentagon brass, and the CIA. One of Erik’s friends told me Erik’s real ambition—he wants Blackwater to be the fifth column of the U.S. military.
Erik has just come back from his latest pitch to the U.S. government on how to go after Iraqi terror cells. Prince believes targeting the foot soldiers of the insurgency to be a dangerous waste of time, money, and effort. “I want to launch a plan to go after the bomb makers,” he says excitedly. “Instead of just going after the insurgents, follow the technology, go after the real centers of the organizations.” He briefly lays out his plan to develop an independent intelligence network to target the bomb makers, and then abruptly launches into other ideas like speeding up the formation of an effective Iraqi military by inserting his own men among the Iraqis in training and in combat.
Hyperanimated and energetically gung ho about the benefits of privatization, Erik bursts with ideas and is always selling “better, faster, and more effective.” All the ideas he pitches to the U.S. government come with a fixed price and no-risk guarantee, and are dovetailed to the Bush administration’s efforts to privatize everything from Social Security to running the war in Iraq. Prince can’t help doing missionary work, even on pragmatic and seasoned vets like Richard and George. Erik explains how he is bring
ing efficiency to the battlefield: “We replaced 183 men with twenty in one of the CIA installations,” he says proudly. “The army needs that many support troops and men to provide the same effective force that we did with twenty.”
Erik, George, and Richard don’t take criticism of the industry by academics and the media very seriously. “We have been trying to get Peter Singer [of the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors] over to Iraq for months. He won’t go,” says Erik. When asked what he thinks about Singer’s constant criticism of the unregulated use of private security contractors, he thinks for a moment and says with a chuckle, “Let’s just say that Peter Singer has very soft hands.”
HART’s biggest frustration doesn’t stem from the theoretical criticism of the regulation of their industry, or obstacles encountered in hiring out their services in the war-torn areas of Africa. George expresses vehement incredulity that the U.S. government could hand out multimillion-dollar contracts to controversial start-ups like Aegis, headed by self-proclaimed mercenary Tim Spicer, and demonstrably incompetent groups like Custer Battles, which has been under investigation for a variety of misdeeds.
He tries to sum up the almost unthinkable concept of Tim Spicer landing an almost half-a-billion-dollar contract. “I call it ‘the Cult of Tim.’” It’s enough to make George apoplectic. “He is a shallow fucking wannabe. He tried to join the SAS, but failed. Somebody has to quiz him about capabilities…. We would like to divest ourselves of the wannabes, and Timis right at the head of the queue.”
Members of the private security industry usually keep quiet with regard to criticisms of other companies and operators, believing that less public spotlight on the failures of individuals benefits the group. One of Richard’s most pointed criticisms of Spicer reflects this tight-lipped environment as he says, “He made things worse by taking his case to the press. It’s not done that way.”
Considering the circle-the-wagons impulse of the industry, George’s continuing response to the mention of Tim Spicer is remarkable, even given Spicer’s obvious faults. “Tim is a scurrilous wanker, a lightweight. He has never succeeded as an adult. His impact on our industry has been profound.” He shakes his head in disgust.
The gentlemanly Richard restrains his comments on Spicer but still expresses disdain at the media’s reporting that Spicer was a member of the SAS. “Tim had failed selection for the SAS, and although well-respected in the UK military, was not considered someone who did well in the field.”
Richard’s more forgiving view of Spicer perhaps comes from his past acquaintance with the man. “He is a hard-working fellow. When Spicer was asked to join Executive Outcomes and Sandline, he talked to me. I warned him that once you go down that path, you cannot come back.”
Erik is enamored with the mystique of mercenaries, private military corporations, and men like Richard and George—men who have chased pirates in Somalia, advised potentates in Oman, fought terrorists on the streets of Belfast, and guarded the royal family. For their part, Richard and George like Erik’s boundless enthusiasm and unabashed American patriotic zeal, a stark contrast to the cool, reserved style of former SAS commanders. Richard and George are fascinated by the massive amounts of American money being spent in Iraq to reinvent the wheel. They see the Americans trying to fight a counterinsurgency, protect the reconstruction of infrastructure, and keep foreign workers and government employees alive while advancing the nation’s business interests—something soldiers, colonial administrators, and privateers of the former British Empire did for hundreds of years.
The British historical memory of the use of mercenaries and privateers is very different from the Americans’. The English tradition of private military companies reaches as far back as the Crusades, when wealthy patrons raised private armies to fight for the Holy Land. Later, heroic, colorful privateers like Sir Francis Drake and royal charter companies would employ indigenous soldiers to open up new territories for the British Empire. In the English tradition, “mercenary” evokes a dashing “boy’s own” aura. In America, the term has an ugly feel to it, recalling the brutal reality of Angola, Nung tribesmen, Contras, and Latin American death squads. The irony of America and their new partner Britain hiring privateers in Iraq and Afghanistan does not escape those within the private security industry. While the American government does have a limited history of employing mercenaries abroad on an ad hoc basis through the CIA, the war in Iraq has introduced a modern justification for formalizing the system—something the Brits learned generations ago.
One of the reasons for this meeting between HART and Blackwater is that the two groups want to see what kind of synergy they can develop. HART hopes to integrate the long British historical experience and conservative style of using indigenous talent commanded by first-world officers with Blackwater’s aggressive American entrepreneurialism. Their first joint venture ended up a success with the client choosing HART as the lead contractor. Now Erik is looking to expand utilization of his company, and HART is looking to export its low-key SAS culture of assimilation into the brash, almost xenophobic, Navy SEAL–oriented Blackwater culture.
Erik mentions that he wants to create a peacekeeping and intervention force for Africa, particularly focusing on the Darfur region of southwestern Sudan. George and Richard express frustration at the complete lack of interest by governments and aid organizations in utilizing the experience of a private army to solve major security and stability problems in Africa. George’s new focus is the Congo, a place where millions have died without attracting much meaningful attention from the international community and where a long-running UN peacekeeping mission has made little difference in the suffering of the people.
“The Congo contains all that is evil about social disintegration—AIDS, child soldiers, disease, warfare, crime, the list goes on. Everything in every segment of scientific and human studies is abused in this massive region. Yet a small peacekeeping force could fully protect the tiny population per mile with little trouble,” George asserts.
Erik also sees governments and the UN renting armies as the ultimate evolution of his corporate investment in Blackwater, a rapidly growing organization that is fully prepared to capitalize on the Bush administration’s privatization of the War on Terror. Lest I forget Blackwater’s mantra, Erik reminds me again: “We are ready to field a battalion anywhere in the world.”
As an offshore company with sophisticated financial and government contacts around the world, HART could bring much to the bold red, white, and blue culture of Blackwater. George recounts for Erik the most important lesson he learned during his years in the SAS: “To defeat your enemy, you don’t have to kill. There is negative impact. Even when we did our ambushes in Northern Ireland, the aim was to arrest, not kill. The experiences of an SF soldier at that moment is critical. It’s instinct. That’s what we bring to this world. It’s abhorrent to shoot a warning shot. It’s never nice to discharge your weapon.”
Prince wants HART to help develop his knowledge and hone his skills in operating in foreign territories, something that would greatly benefit his latest business endeavor—Greystone. Greystone is a departure for Erik, since it is not an overtly American entity, but rather an offshore private military company that would employ locals in the English tradition—a foreign legion modeled after Executive Outcomes, Sandline, Erinys, and HART.
Erik is particularly excited because he’s planning a big reception to roll out the idea of Greystone in a couple of weeks. The party will be held at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC, and Prince expects to entertain a long list of diplomats representing a broad spectrum of nations, along with oil company execs, financial experts, gun manufacturers, and others who could use the services of an armed force. Cofer Black, former ambassador for counterterrorism at the State Department, former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and now vice chairman of Blackwater, will give the keynote address.
It doesn’t seem like a very subtle message that Greystone will be
available and capable, just as EO and Sandline were, to solve security problems worldwide. For now, the immediate goal will be to provide static security when budgets do not allow for the cost of an American or Brit. Former U.S., British, or South African military can be hired for between $400 and $600 a day, but Gurkhas, Chileans, and ex-soldiers from developing nations are thrilled to make half to a tenth of that. Although the market for the high-end operators may be running short, there are plenty of rank and file available. The black-tie audience listening to Cofer Black’s pitch will include government representatives from the Philippines, Yemen, Indonesia, Angola, Russia, Kenya, Tunisia, and numerous others. Their need combined with Erik Prince’s love of covert paramilitary operations, his hawkish and conservative ideology, and his entrepreneurial and expansionist business philosophy may allow Greystone to push the boundaries of privatized security.
The Greystone brochure and website offer the expected services of training, security assessements, and protection options. A quick scan by a disinterested outsider might miss an innocuous but carefully worded paragraph:
Proactive Engagement Teams:
Greystone elements are prepared to configure capabilities to meet emergent or existing security requirements for client needs overseas. Our teams are ready to conduct stabilization efforts, asset protection and recovery, and emergency personnel withdrawal.
In short, Greystone will be selling the same services offered by Executive Outcomes and Sandline. EO’s first operations were essentially the use of mercenaries in “asset recovery” of Tony Buckingham’s oil-drilling equipment; their second job was the massive offensive campaign to push back the rebels of UNITA, masked as a training operation; and their third project was the “stabilization effort” in Sierra Leone. Depending on the contract opportunities presented to Greystone, the future may see a further blurring of the fine line between privatized security and privatized military operations. It’s impossible to predict exactly where the industry may lead Prince’s army, but for foreign leaders it will certainly provide a legitimate and credible enhancement to traditional military or clandestine operations.
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