| Erik Dean Prince | |
|---|---|
Erik D. Prince |
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| Born | June 6, 1969 Holland, Michigan |
| Residence | Abu Dhabi[1] |
| Nationality | US |
| Education | graduate of Holland Christian High School, Hillsdale College |
| Occupation | private military company executive |
| Known for | founder of Blackwater Worldwide |
| Title | chairman and CEO of the Prince Group and Blackwater Worldwide |
| Board member of | Christian Freedom International |
| Religion | Christian; a convert to the Roman Catholic Church,[2] raised in the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church in North America[3] |
| Spouse | Joan Nicole Prince (deceased in June 2003); Joanna Ruth Prince, neé Houck |
| Children | 7; 4 from his first marriage and 3 from his second |
| Parents | Edgar D. Prince and Elsa Prince-Broekhuizen |
| Relatives | Betsy DeVos (sister) |
Erik Dean Prince (born June 6, 1969) is the founder and former owner of the private military company now known as Academi (known during his ownership as Blackwater Worldwide and then Xe Services LLC).[4] He founded the company in 1997. In March 2009 he stepped down as its CEO, and sold it in 2010,[5] after which it was again renamed. He moved to the United Arab Emirates, where he is creating a private military contractor force and writing his memoirs.[6]
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Erik Prince was born in Holland, Michigan to Edgar D. Prince and Elsa Broekhuizen. Prince is the youngest of four children.[7] Both his parents share Dutch heritage (the family name, Prins, was at some point anglicized to Prince).
Prince and his father toured the world together, visiting Dachau, a divided Berlin, and Normandy. According to his mother, these trips "made a big impression" on the young Prince.[8]
Prince received a B.A. from Hillsdale College. During his time at Hillsdale, Prince served as a volunteer firefighter and as a cold-water diver for the Hillsdale County Sheriff's Department.[9] Prince eventually became an emergency medical technician.[10]
He was also an intern in the White House under President George H. W. Bush[11] and subsequently criticized that administration's policies to the Grand Rapids Press, saying: "I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with—homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kinds of bills."[7] He left to search for a mass grave in Nicaragua, to expose killings under leftist president Daniel Ortega.[12] He served as an intern to California Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who recalled Prince as "a bright, driven young man."
After Hillsdale College, Prince was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy via Officer Candidate School in 1992. He went on to become a Navy SEAL and deployed with SEAL Team 8 to Haiti, the Middle East, and the Balkans. He credits the SEALS for being an outlet for his entrepreneurial spirit.
Prince ended his Navy service prematurely in 1995 when his father died. Prince's mother sold the Prince Corporation for $1.3 billion in cash to Johnson Controls. He moved to Virginia Beach and personally financed the formation of Blackwater Worldwide in 1997.[13] He bought 6,000 acres (24 km2) of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and set up a school for special operations.[14] The name "Blackwater" comes from the peat-colored bogs in which the school is located.[15]
Prince's father, Edgar D. Prince, began Prince Machine Corporation, an automobile supply company, in 1965. The business "exploded" and Prince began to invest some of the profits, through the Prince Group, into shopping malls and other types of car parts, creating a network of companies and real estate worth a billion dollars.[2] In the early 1970s, Edgar Prince's company patented a sun visor that could light up and sold 5,000 to General Motors. When the company was sold in the 90s, the company produced 20,000 a day.[16]
On March 2, 1995, Edgar Prince suffered and died of a heart attack at age sixty-three. Erik assumed control of daily operations, which was eventually sold for $1.35 billion in 1996.[17] [17][18]
Prince's father co-founded the Family Research Council with Gary Bauer.[19] Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and wife of former Alticor (Amway) president and Gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos,[13] son of Richard DeVos, Sr. (listed by Forbes in 2009 as one of the world's richest men, with a net worth of $4.2 billion).[20]
Prince has seven children. His first wife, Joan, died in 2003 from cancer.[21] His youngest, Charles Donovan, was named after William "Wild Bill" Donovan.[21]
Author Suzanne Simons describes the family as "conservative Christians, and they have very strong views on the sanctity of human life and the defense of marriage and the role of faith in the public square," according to Bauer.[22]
Prince credits the Rwandan genocide with his decision to start Blackwater. He told an audience in his native Holland, Michigan, "It really bothered me. It made me realize you can't sit back and pontificate. You have to act."[23]
Since 1997, the firm has won more than $1.6 billion in unclassified federal contracts and an unknown amount of secret work.[24] It became the largest of the State Department's three private security companies, providing 987 guards for embassies and bases abroad.[25]
Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates.[26] The Barack Obama administration awarded the company a $120 million United States Department of State security contract and about $100 million in new CIA work in 2010.[24]
Prince takes great pride in the work Blackwater has done and points to its successes. According to him, out of 40,000 personal security missions, only 200 involved guards discharging their weapons. "No one under our care was ever killed or injured. We kept them safe, all the while we had 30 of our men killed."[23]
Prince, according to Robert Young Pelton reportedly thinks of Blackwater's relationship to the military as something similar to FedEx's relationship to the U.S. Post Office "an efficient, privatized solution to sclerotic and wasteful government bureaucracy."[27] He credits his father's competitive streak in the automotive business with the inspiration to design a lighter, faster army.[28]
In recent years Blackwater has come under criticism, but Prince believes that much of this criticism stems from politics. "I put myself and my company at the CIA's disposal for some very risky missions," Prince told Vanity Fair for its January 2010 issue. "But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus."[29]
Prince announced his resignation as CEO of Blackwater (later called Xe, now called Academi) on March 2, 2009. Prince would remain as chairman of the board but will no longer be involved in day-to-day operations. Joseph Yorio was named as the new president, replacing Gary Jackson, who resigned. Yorio also took Prince's place as CEO. Danielle Esposito was named the new chief operating officer and executive vice president.[30] Prince had expressed a desire to become a high school teacher and severed his ties to Xe.[31][32] Prince sold the company in late 2010 to a group of investors.[33]
Prince is on Al-Qaeda's "Most Wanted" list and frequently targeted for death threats. Prince was identified by Al-Qaeda after members of the House intelligence congressional committee leaked his name in connection to a CIA plan to kill terrorists.[34] Prince compared the situation to the one involving Valerie Plame:
"The left complained about how [CIA operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it."[34]
Prince flies coach internationally to not draw attention to himself. He considers himself a marked man and believes that the diplomats and dignitaries Blackwater protects are “Al Jazeera–worthy,” meaning that, in his view, “bin Laden and his acolytes would love to kill them in a spectacular fashion and have it broadcast on televisions worldwide.”[35] According to a 2010 article in Vanity Fair, when arriving at the Kabul airport, "Prince is immediately shuffled into a waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves, and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s tactical-operations center."[36]
Prince describes himself as a "libertarian" and practicing Roman Catholic.[29] He describes his political views as follows:
"I'm a very free market guy. I'm not a huge believer that government provides a whole lot of solutions. Some think that government can solve society's problems. I tend to think private charities and private organizations are better solutions."[37]
Prince credits his time as a White House intern with some of his free market views. There he questioned the size of the federal government.
"Having that White House internship responsibility and badges, I walked around some of these other cavernous federal agencies, and you want to talk about depressing? Walk through HHS (Health and Human Services) or HUD (Housing and Urban Development) or Commerce, you name it. Leviathan realized."[37]
Prince serves as vice president of the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, which his family founded. Salon reports that "between July 2003 and July 2006, the foundation gave at least $670,000 to the Family Research Council and $531,000 to Focus on the Family,"[38] headed by James Dobson. The foundation is a major donor to Calvin College,[39] a Christian institution in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Prince serves as a board member of Christian Freedom International, a non-profit group with a mission of helping "Christians who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ." Prince has donated heavily to both Christian and Islamic causes, building mosques at his overseas bases, and supporting a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan.[29]
Between 1998 and 2007, Prince personally donated over $200,000 to Republican causes.[40][41][42] Prince is a donor to the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian legal group.[43] Prince contributed money to the Green Party of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, though this has been interpreted as an attempt to help Republican Senator Rick Santorum, by giving aid to a more liberal alternative to Democratic challenger Bob Casey.[44]
Prince has been an advocate of a leaner, more efficient military. He suggests several ways to make the military more efficient without compromising security. His suggestions are: greater accountability of costs, using appropriate equipment for each job, reduction of overhead, and operational and procurement reform.[45]
Prince has entertained the idea of building a pre-positioning ship—complete with security personnel, doctors, helicopters, medicine, food, and fuel—and stationing it off the coast of Africa to provide "relief with teeth" to the continent’s trouble spots or to curb piracy off Somalia. He considered creating a rapidly deployable brigade that could be farmed out, for a fee, to a foreign government.[46] He also reportedly told George Clooney that he could take care of Darfur and other hotspots.[47]
Prince grants few interviews and is reluctant to have his photo taken publicly because of his fear of death threats by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. A competing contractor commented, "Realistically, there's ongoing projects by (terrorist groups) to collect data on private contractors. I appreciate and understand his efforts to protect his family. The guy needs his privacy."[40]
In 2008, Prince spoke at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids to a sold-out crowd, where his sister Betsy DeVos was on the organization's board. Prince banned video and still cameras from the event.[48]
Organizers of the 2010 Tulip Time Festival invited Prince to speak at the festival kick-off luncheon on May 5 at the DeVos Fieldhouse in his hometown. Prince requested the media not be invited to the event the day before his seminar appearance. Festival organizers settled on allowing the media who had already purchased tickets, but disallowing audio and video recordings at Prince's insistence. Amid several dozen peaceful protesters outside the venue, Prince delivered the speech to an 800-table sold-out crowd.[48][49][50]
In January 2011, the Associated Press reported that Prince had taken on a new role training a force of 2000 Somalis for anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. The program is reportedly funded by several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and backed by the United States. Prince's spokesman, Mark Corallo, said that Prince has "no financial role" in the project and declined to answer any questions about Prince's involvement. The Somali force will also reportedly pursue an Islamist supporting warlord.
The Associated Press quotes John Burnett of Maritime Underwater Security Consultants as saying "There are 34 nations with naval assets trying to stop piracy and it can only be stopped on land. With Prince's background and rather illustrious reputation, I think it's quite possible that it might work."[51]
In May 2011, the New York Times reported on efforts to build a rapid reaction brigade of largely Latin American soldiers trained in the United Arab Emirates by a company called Reflex Responses (also called R2) under Erik Prince's direction, funded by the government of the United Arab Emirates.[52]
The UAE responded to the story in Bloomberg News. General Juma Khalaf al-Hamiri, head of administration and human resources for the Armed Forces, answered a question from a reporter as follows:
“The U.A.E. armed forces currently engage with a number of third parties, such as Spectre, which delivers academy training capabilities; Horizon, a pilot training partner and R2 which provides operational, planning and training support. All engagements of commercial entities by the U.A.E. Armed Forces are compliant with international Law and relevant conventions.”[53]
On May 15, 2011, an article published in the New York Times incorrectly stated that Prince owned and ran the company Reflex Responses, which has been contracted by the U.A.E. to train troops. On June 6, 2011, the Times printed a correction, noting that Prince oversaw the effort to recruit and train troops.[54][55] Reflex Responses has denied all ties to Prince.[56]
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