Blackwater’s Prince Digs In For Tough HearingWelcome to the Rayburn House Office Building, where Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater, and a clutch of State Department officials are getting grilled by the House oversight committee about proper procedure — and potential wrongdoing — for Blackwater and other private security companies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The thin, baby-faced Prince walked in wearing a crisp blue suit, a starched white shirt, and his shoulders square. He gave a quick smile before sitting at the witness table. An associate in a black suit behind him clapped him on the back for support during what’s sure to be an uncomfortable hearing.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) started the hearing by paying Prince a backhanded compliment. So many of the scions of the nation’s “wealthy and politically connected families” don’t join the military, Waxman said, before thanking Prince, who was a Navy SEAL before founding Blackwater, for his service.
Waxman said that at the request of the FBI, which has just announced the opening of an investigation into the September 16 shootings by Blackwater at Baghdad’s Nisour Square, the hearing will not take public testimony from Prince or from State Department officials on that incident. However, Waxman said he wanted to assure the families of those Blackwater guards killed in Fallujah in 2004 that “Blackwater will be accountable today.”