The Bridge examines the famous killing and mutilation of four contractors in Iraq — and, in the process, explains the origins of Blackwater USA, their employer:
Set on more than 6,000 acres in the state’s northeast corner, Blackwater was known as one of the best of the private military contractors. Its close ties to the elite Navy SEALs grew from its owner, Erik Prince.Prince, 35, had been a White House intern and was a billionaire’s son, yet he volunteered as a firefighter and for the Navy.
Prince, a widower and father of four, was a former member of the SEAL commandos. He maintained the unit’s characteristic secrecy while positioning himself at the intersection of free enterprise, activist Christianity, conservative politics and military contracting. He made his first political contribution at 19 — $15,000 to the Republican Party.
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His father, Edgar Prince, started his own company in 1965. He hit it big by making sun visors with lighted mirrors. Business grew, and his factories churned out parts seen in most cars today: overhead consoles, map lamps, headliners for roofs.
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Erik Prince molded himself after his father: a devout Christian, astute businessman and family man who shunned the limelight.After Holland Christian School, Prince attended Hillsdale College, a small liberal arts school that champions free markets and individual freedom. Erik Prince fit in at what Gary Wolfram, a professor of political economy who taught him, called a “Mecca of market economy.”
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He was one of the first interns at the Family Research Council in Washington. He worked as a defense analyst on the staff of U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican from Orange County, Calif. And he interned in the White House of President George H.W. Bush, father of current President George W. Bush. In 1992, he campaigned for Patrick Buchanan.“I interned with the Bush administration for six months,” Prince told The Grand Rapids Press in early 1992. “I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with — homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.”
Back at school, Prince volunteered on a more humble scale: He was the first college student to join the Hillsdale Volunteer Fire Department. He’d be sitting in class when his radio crackled. As amused classmates looked on, he’d dash out.
“When you’ve been on a fire an hour and a half and the crowd’s gone, some of the guys want to sit on bumpers and have a soft drink,” said Kevin Pauken, one of the squad’s full-timers. “Other guys will be rolling hoses and picking up equipment so you can get out of there. That was Erik.”
In 1992, Prince enlisted in the Navy, was commissioned as an officer, and the next year joined the SEALs, who get their acronym from the attack routes of sea, air and land. He spent four years with Seal Team 8 in Norfolk, Va.
“Prince was a first-class SEAL, he was the real deal,” said Messing, the retired Special Forces officer.
Prince left the SEALs in 1996. His father had died the previous year, and Erik took over the family business. About this time, his wife, Joan, was diagnosed with cancer (she died in 2003 at 36). Also in 1996, the Prince family sold its automotive business to S.C. Johnson Controls for $1.35 billion in cash. Prince headed the Prince Group, which held several nonautomotive factories and the company that developed downtown Holland.
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Prince has been equally secretive about his biggest venture since the SEALs: At 27, he founded Blackwater USA, buying an expanse of farmland in Camden and Currituck counties. He saw an opportunity as the shrinking military closed some of its own training centers, and he wanted to build the SEALs a good one just a short drive from the unit’s East Coast base at Little Creek, Va.Former Navy SEALs form the backbone of Blackwater, which advertises its Moyock compound — now more than 6,000 acres — as “the most comprehensive private tactical training facility in the United States.”
It puts many military ranges to shame. One range is two-thirds of a mile long and perfect for sniper training. There are computerized target systems and an entire mock town for urban tactical training, and a track for tactical driving techniques. Soldiers can shoot from boats or hovering helicopters into junk cars, trucks and buses. Blackwater boasts that it can custom-design any sort of training a soldier wants.