Licensed to Kill by Robert Young Pelton Read Free Book Online Page B

Erik’s personal interests than pure profit. In 1997, Erik had broken ground on his Blackwater Training Center, at that time a six-thousand-acre property with a shooting range designed to offer specialized training for military and police. Growth was slow. From 1998 until 2000, only six people worked in the training department, and Prince often had to dip into his own pocket just to make payroll. In early 2001, Prince began Blackwater Target Systems to build an innovative self-resetting steel target. He managed to turn a slight profit, but business conditions were not entirely favorable when one of his first employees, Jamie Smith, initially suggested Erik start a new division specializing in providing security.
    Smith has a background in the CIA and had been working as a role player and trainer at Blackwater off and on to make some extra money for law school, but he had quit to start his career as a tax lawyer after graduating in 2001. Prince wanted to retain him as an employee, but Smith had a bigger vision. Jamie saw a market in hiring out men skilled in State Department–style personal protection skills and wanted to create a division that had potential as a growth industry. It wasn’t until after 9/11 that Prince became fully committed to the idea. He called Smith in November 2001 to offer him a position as vice president of Blackwater, and by January 2002, Smith had relocated to headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina.
    Having no reason to train a force of security contractors before they had any work to do, Smith suggested they begin by trying to work all of his and Erik’s contacts to find an opportunity. Erik told Smith that a friend of his had recently joined the CIA and that he could be in a good position to help move the business plan forward. Buzzy Krongard had been appointed to the position of executive director of the CIA in March 2001. He had quite a few years of experience as advisor to the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence), but further back in his career he had been an investment banker, and it was in that capacity that he had first become acquainted with Erik and the Prince family fortune.
    Erik’s timing was either fortuitous or calculated, since CIA security resources were soon spread thin. Six months after 9/11, the Global Response Staff, the CIA’s security division, was overstretched, and they needed protection for their newly established Kabul station. The CIA had hired corporations for collection and other covert needs before, but they had rarely contracted out their field officers’ security to private industry. After Prince called seeking opportunities for his new business venture, Blackwater obtained a $5.4-million six-month contract that specified that it was for an “urgent and compelling” necessity. “Urgent and compelling” contracts eliminate all the competitive bidding requirements, so the contract went straight to Blackwater.
    The “black” contract awarded by the CIA to Blackwater required eighteen contractors plus a C1 and C2—the first and second commanders. Although the work would be dangerous, both Blackwater and the independent security contractors Prince hired would be offered enough of a financial incentive to take the calculated risk. Jamie based what to charge the CIA on what DynCorp was charging the State Department for similar work. The contractors would be paid $550 per day—just a slight bump over what Jamie was paying the instructors at Moyock—but Blackwater would bill out at a rate of $1,500 per man per day. That tripled figure not only factors in costs of training, transport, and other overhead, but also includes a fairly healthy profit margin. The individual contractors would earn about $18,500 in a month, but Blackwater would gross $30,000 per day, which would add up to $900,000 a month. Although this was a relatively small contract, it showed that the private sector could bolster capacity in time of