Erik Prince is back with book defending Blackwater's role in war on on terror

Verne Strickland / March 30, 2014

Erik Prince is back with book defending Blackwater's role in war on terror

By Jim Harger | jharger@mlive.com
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on November 19, 2013 at 12:05 PM, updated November 19, 2013 at 2:44 PM

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Erik Prince has authored a new book defending Blackwater, the private security firm he created in 1997.Courtesy image 

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – After being vilified as the mercenary founder of Blackwater, Holland native Erik Prince is telling his side of the story in a new book titled, “Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.”
“For years my company’s work was misconstrued and misrepresented,” the 44-year-old former Navy SEAL wrote in the introduction to the book. “So now I’m done keeping quiet.
“What’s been said before is only half the story—and I won’t sit idly by while the bureaucrats go after me so that everyone else can just go back to business as usual,” wrote Prince, the son of philanthropist Elsa Prince Broekhuizen and brother of conservative West Michigan political activist Betsy DeVos.
“The true history of Blackwater is exhilarating, rewarding, exasperating, and tragic,” wrote Prince, who has published his book through Penguin Canada Books, Inc. three years after selling Blackwater Worldwide.
In an interview with ABC New’s “Sunday Spotlight,” Prince blamed his company’s image problems on the “anti-war left” who opposed the Vietnam War.
“This time they went after the contractors. Blackwater was a very easy whipping boy for them,” Prince told ABC’s Martha Raddatz in an interview “This Week.”
Acknowledging that civilians may have been killed by Blackwater’s security forces in Iraq, Prince told Raddatz “my greatest regret was going to work for the State Department.”
In an interview with “The Daily Beast” published Monday, Nov. 19, Prince said he is focusing his business on expanding markets in Africa and said he will never work for the U.S. government again.
Prince launched Blackwater in North Carolina in 1997 and was awarded no-bid security contracts from the U.S. government at the beginning of the Iraq War.
Blackwater became the focus of international scrutiny and ongoing legal action when guards were involved in a series of high-profile shootings in Iraq.
The company is now called Xe Services LLC after a group of investors bought the company from Prince in 2010.
Last year, the security firm agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to resolve allegations that it smuggled arms, among other crimes.
Click here to read an excerpt from Prince's book.

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