Licensed to Kill (39 page)

HART's initial role in Iraq was to provide security for media. George explains, “When this war started, I was guarding the BBC. There is a security group inside the BBC called the Chryon Group.”

As instability began to rock Iraq, HART soon picked up a contract to guard an electrical power line. “We had a crazy period; we grew from fifty to seventy people to one hundred seventy in one month. A lot of people coming and going. We look for ex-military, but we prefer to hire someone we know. It's word of mouth. HART is based close to Ianapa (Cyprus), so we know the ins and outs of an offshore business.” George also knows that a contractor who works offshore makes more money than an American who pays U.S. taxes.

The British boom in private security companies has not only benefited from Iraq, but has created an odd U.S./UK synthesis to take advantage of the global War on Terror. Bethell's worldy SAS experiences from Afghanistan to the Falklands to Oman to Northern Ireland to Iraq combined with George Simm's equally experience-rich background as former regimental sergeant major for 22 SAS would serve HART's interests well in exotic locations. George's background in the SAS has taught him that the excessive use of money or violence accomplishes little. He explains how the minimum application of force must be combined with good human intelligence. “We have a peculiar way of doing business. What drives us on any given day is the threat and the perception of threat. We only use the minimum amount of force required. Don't you think if you drive around all day pointing guns at people and shooting at them it will come back to you?”

Though they work in the same industry, there is a vast difference between the operating styles of American and British security companies. A Blackwater PSD tries to ensure safety by rolling aggressively with a prominent and imposing display of force, while the traditional British style has contractors relying more on natives and trying harder to blend in and be discreet, hoping to pass unnoticed below the radar of those who might want to attack them. This philosophy mandates that HART work with Iraqis recruited by a local sheik—the real source of power and influence in the region they were tasked to protect. Of course, this knowledge of who is in charge doesn't always match the occupying army's opinions. American military intelligence investigated the sheik for possible collaboration with the insurgents, but then the sheik ended up being assassinated by the insurgents for collaborating with the Americans. After a long history ruling a sometimes-unruly empire, the British have learned to excel in making distinctions in the fine shadings of gray found in complicated insurgencies. Foreigners, usually Brits, South Africans, or Americans, command HART PSDs, supported by local Iraqi hires. “We had twenty-five hundred Iraqis working for us making ten dollars a day. It always has a positive effect. It bumps up their economy, but it also has a negative effect. Those that don't get hired get pissed,” George tells me. The teams use hired or bought local cars, keep their weapons below the windows, and move with the least amount of disturbance. “It's something we learned in Northern Ireland,” George says, “and it's no different in Iraq.”

HART's use of Iraqis gives them a better understanding of the situation but has a dangerous downside, since it is not uncommon for Big Army to attack one of these low-key security convoys. In one incident, an American military convoy shot at a HART convoy, killing a young Iraqi interpreter on her first day on the job. After the American convoy fled, another American rapid-reaction force showed up and attacked the HART team again. HART may risk targeting by the Americans, but the insurgents don't tend to take notice of their low-key convoys, leaving HART with a statistically lower casualty rate than most of the large Western-owned security companies operating in Iraq.

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 bringing 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.”