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."