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Days After Former CEO Calls For Private Guards In Iraq, Blackwater Is Found Guilty Of Iraqi Massacre


Professional Overseas Contractors
Blackwater Worldwide guards were found guilty Wednesday of killing 14 Iraqis and wounding 17 others after they fired machine guns and threw hand grenades into Baghdad’s Nisour Square seven years ago. Jurors ultimately rejected the guards’ claims that they were acting in self-defense, as none of the victims were insurgents. The conclusion of the 11-week trial brings a close to one of the darkest chapters of the Iraq War.

Despite the new spotlight on Blackwater’s botched operation, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security group is just as eager as ever to send hired hands into Iraq.

“If the old Blackwater team were still together, I have high confidence that a multi-brigade-size unit of veteran American contractors or a multi-national force could be rapidly assembled and deployed to be that necessary ground combat team,” Prince wrote earlier this month in a column on his new company’s website.

“The longer ISIS festers, the more chances it has for recruitment and the danger of the eventual return of radical jihadists to their western homelands. If the Administration cannot rally the political nerve or funding to send adequate active duty ground forces to answer the call, let the private sector finish the job,” he concluded.

The “old Blackwater team” disbanded long ago — and now, with this ruling, is even more maligned. But is there any chance that the U.S. government will call on private security to help fight its battles abroad?

American security agencies had no qualms with giving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to Blackwater in the wake of the 2007 debacle, and private security agencies have only rebranded and relaunched since then. In the wake of the 2007 shootings, Prince changed Blackwater’s name to ‘Xe Services’ in 2009. As Xe Services, the company received a contract worth around $100 million from the CIA. After Prince sold the company in 2010, investors changed the name to ACADEMI. As ACADEMI, the firm has continued to contract with the Department of Defense. And earlier this year, the firm merged with a competitor under the new name ‘Constellis Holdings.’

But the breakaway companies have tried to keep their distance from Blackwater’s image — even if their work is largely the same.

ACADEMI, for instance, has made a deliberate effort to distance themselves from Prince and Blackwater. One FAQ on its website bluntly poses the question, “Is ACADEMI associated with Erik Prince or the Former Blackwater?”

The answer begins with an unequivocal, “No,” and continues, “Erik Prince took both the Blackwater name and legacy with him when he sold the facility.”

The Blackwater name is no more, but where, exactly, has Prince taken his legacy? To the Frontier Services Group, a private equity group which offers security services along with “end-to-end expeditionary solutions” in the fields of construction, aviation, and even humanitarian efforts.

Does Prince’s op-ed mean he wants to get back into the fight on the government dime?

He doesn’t have to, according to Robert Young Pelton. “It doesn’t matter who has the contract, they’re all the same people,” Pelton told Foreign Policy’s Kate Brannen in July. “Constellis represents a clean slate until they f*** up and get thrown under the bus.”

Pelton would know. He was hired by Prince to help write his memoir. He then sued for not getting paid the amount the former Blackwater head agreed to pay him. His sense is that all of the new companies are just fronts with the same mission as Blackwater.

“The government has a bizarre love-hate relationship with these companies,” Brannen wrote, in summary of what Pelton told her. “On the one hand, they’re reliant on them to outsource political risk and on the other, eager to slap them in public whenever scandal happens.”

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