Blackwater boss' 'Civilian Warriors' battles Philly One Book 'Yellow Birds'
Ex-CEO Erik Prince unrepentant as he explains why his private army soared, crashed
LATER UPDATE: "...In 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there issued a threat: "that he could kill" the government's chief investigator and "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," according to department reports," reports the New York Times here, as the government prepares to bring four ex-Blackwater operatives to trial. Founder Erik Prince told the paper he was unaware of the invesigators' reported threats.
UPDATE: Read excerpts from my interview with Blackwater founder Erik Prince in my column in the Nov. 25 Philadelphia Inquirer here.
EARLIER: Everyone in Philly, through the Free Library's yearly "One Book" program, is supposed to be reading The Yellow Birds, writer Kevin Powers' book about the war in Iraq as experienced by a soldier-turned-contractor. Powers hopes to use fiction to address hard questions of why we sent our forces there and what our troops were called to do there.
Erik Prince, founder of private war contractor Blackwater, has a book out, too. Civilian Wariors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror (Portfolio Penguin) tells how Prince, son of a self-made industrialist, and himself a Naval Academy dropout turned Navy SEAL, rapidly built Blackwater into a for-profit force, employing largely former service members, who Prince says was able to protect Americans more effectively and efficiently, in some situations, than our national forces. In his telling, Blackwater got caught in media-political storms, in which it was alternately blamed for applying too llittle deadly force, and too much, on jobs that led to the deaths of Americans and Iraqis.
Prince isn't apologizing, he's explaining a complex vital story. I'm only a couple of chapters into it; so far it's a page-turner, with the author as star. His publicists tell me "his only U.S. appearance" supporting the book will be at the Free Library of Philadelphia, 8 a.m. on Monday Nov. 22. More info at Freelibrary.org/authorevents