[NYTr] Blackwater: 'Mercenary Is a Slanderous Term'

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Newsweek - Oct 13, 2007
http://www.newsweek.com/id/43571/output/print

‘Mercenary Is a Slanderous Term’

The founder of Blackwater defends himself—and his company.

By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Erik Prince made it clear he doesn't like talking to the press. But the
Blackwater founder also tells NEWSWEEK's Mark Hosenball he doesn't want
"what we do" to be "completely misrepresented." So he spoke—about
himself and his controversial company—in an at-times prickly hourlong
interview in his offices in northern Virginia. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Rep. [Henry] Waxman has charts claiming that [from '01 to
'06, your company got] more than $1 billion in contracts. Is that
correct? [If so], how did you grow so rapidly? Erik Prince: Our first
big growth as a defense contractor started after the bombing of the
[U.S.S.] Cole, October of 2000. You had two fanatics in a boat packed
with explosives that blew up a billion-and-a-half-dollar ship while it
was refueling.

To do what? To train Navy security to protect the ship?

Yes, sir. Exactly.

Is Waxman's figure correct?

Over that many years, it's possible they could add up to a billion.

Why did you get into [the military training business]?

I laid it out in a letter home to my wife in 1995, while I was deployed
[as a Navy SEAL]. The Special Operations units had been going to
private facilities since the late '70s—individual shooting schools—and
no one had done it on a large, industrial scale. So I wanted to build a
training facility that would be a state-of-the-art facility.

Explain why you don't like the word mercenary.
It's just not accurate to call us mercenaries, because you have
Americans working for the American government. That in no way meets the
definition of a mercenary. So I think mercenary is a slanderous term,
kind of an inflammatory word [used] to malign us. Taking U.S. military
or law-enforcement veterans and putting them back to work and using the
skills that they have acquired over the years to teach other U.S.
active-duty military, law-enforcement units, [is] just filling the gaps
that exist in the U.S. military.

You went to Annapolis. Did you—

I went there for a year and a half.

[Did you leave because] you didn't think the people there were actually
serious enough? I found the academy to have a lot of extra rules and
regulations, and it kind of chafed me. So I left, and I went to school.
I was a fireman. Did you guys find that out?

Yeah, we did.

A great time. I actually dove for the county sheriff's department doing
body recoveries. To be a SEAL, and to be part of a small unit, it's
even more regimented than [what] you had in Annapolis. The one time I
got a safety violation … I didn't have my flare attached to my knife
correctly. You have to have the right end down.

Why does that matter?

Because if it's in the dark and you're in trouble, you need to get that
flare off. Those kind of small rules save lives.

[It's been] reported that you're involved with conservative religious
groups like the Institute for World Politics, the Christian Freedom
International. The Institute of World Politics is a graduate school
that teaches foreign-service officers and military officers. A friend
of mine started it. I'm proud to be on that board, because they do
great work. Christian Freedom International, I don't think I've been to
a board meeting in probably a year and a half or two years, and they
provide some help to folks that were persecuted in Sudan and Burma and
places like that. The Council on National Policy promotes evangelical
candidates. I went to some of those meetings in high school, in
college, with my parents, and in the last, let's see, 15 years, I've
probably been to one or two of those meetings.

Do you worry about the lack of transparency of your business?

I think we're very transparent. We have been audited many times by the
Defense Contract Management Agency. We go through all those audits for
the contracts we do. We invite neighbors onto the property. Members of
Congress or staff, if they want to come down, we let them come aboard.
We invite military officers.

Where do you go from here?

Like any business, we have tried to diversify … We went and hired smart
people to [develop products] and innovate, and we have a
lighter-than-air persistent-surveillance platform, which is just about
done. There's a big rush in UAVs, unmanned air vehicles—but they have
wings. This is a helium-filled blimp that will give us two to three
days of persistent surveillance.

Until now you've had a reputation for secretiveness. If you had your
druthers— Secretiveness? I disagree with that. I speak at educational
forums. I have spoken at various conferences. As much as I don't like
doing media appearances now, I love Blackwater more, and I love our
team, and I want to [be sure not to] let what we do be completely
misrepresented as it has been to the media.