It was week three of the 2007 college football season. South Carolina was hosting S.C. State in what was being erroneously billed as an intrastate thriller.
LSU entertained Furman in Death Valley.
Both games were snoozers.
Each team (both 3-0) settled into what fans expected would be the mother lode of college football glory. The Sunday newspapers reported the lopsided scores on the sports pages, but the international section barely reported what turned out to be the news scoop of the weekend -- the deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi citizens by Blackwater International security guards in Baghdad, a story that unfolded 6700 miles and several civilizations away from Williams-Brice stadium’s Cockabooses.
When the page four story broke we were focused instead on “Air Spurrier’s” invasion of Baton-Rouge and the coming SEC battle with LSU.
Similarly, few paid attention to the regrettable air mishap three years earlier where a Presidential Airways contract plane carrying three Army personnel smacked into a mountainside. The crash of the civilian CASA-212 turboprop cargo plane into a rock-walled canyon in Afghanistan caused a titter at the water coolers in Washington, D.C. All of a sudden political insiders were wondering out loud just what role this so-called private security agency was up to half a world away. Eyebrows arched and lips pursed wider when the Congressional Committee on Oversight summoned Erik D. Prince, the 38 year-old CEO of Blackwater International, to testify as to the nature of Blackwater’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The public grilling of the highly secretive Prince is now a part of the Congressional Record for October 2, 2007.
The notion of private paramilitary organizations maneuvering inside countries hostile to the USA angers some Americans. The average fellow who gets his news in sound-bites from the AM shows is confused as to why we tolerate private gunmen running loose around Baghdad and Kabul. Howbeit, the use of civilian toughs to take care of the “loose ends” of empire is certainly nothing new in the western world.
And what a difference the profit incentive can make.
Remember Elizabeth I, that most cunning of monarchs? Not much escaped her hawk-like senses. There was that graceless matter of the Madre de Deuce in 1592. The Deuce, as historians refer to the ship, was a Portuguese East India frigate taken in the Solent by English privateers. Laden with the wealth of the Orient, the ship was towed into Dartmouth. But when nightfall came, townsmen rowed out and Deuce was plucked of its wealth as a chicken is of its feathers. Good Queen Bess was furious that her one-third share of loot was pilfered. And if she sent her horse guards to recover it, then it’d look exactly like the act of international aggression that it was. So Elizabeth sent swashbuckler Walter Raleigh overland with his trained band. “If I meet any of them coming up,” Raleigh swore, “if it be upon the wildest heath in all the way, I mean to strip them as naked as ever they were born, for her majesty has been robbed and that of the most rare things.”
The amount recovered equaled a half-million pounds sterling, half of what was currently in the English exchequer. Raleigh privately managed Elizabeth’s “loose ends.”
Those incommoding loose ends of America’s foreign and domestic interests began to surface in the earliest days of the Lincoln administration. Old Abe had heard of Allan Pinkerton, the railroad detective, long before the election of 1860. Pinkerton, a Scotsman from Glasgow, single-handedly pioneered modern security guard methods. He was so adept at sleuthing that Lincoln relied on him even when it came to checking up on Union generals.
Pinkerton handled many special assignments for Lincoln.
But Congress switched Lincoln’s personal security over to the U.S. Army in 1865. Abe was shot down at Ford’s Theater soon thereafter. Pinkerton was disgusted at the laxity of the Army in its protection of the president. Pinkerton’s logo was “the eye that never sleeps.” Today the Pinkerton Security Company has been sold to Securitas AB, a Swiss security outfit that has clients in over two dozen nations. Securitas AB is a rival of Blackwater Worldwide, the primary security service operating inside Iraq and Afghanistan. There are others consisting mostly of soldiers of fortune, companies such as Aegis or Loomis, but Erik Prince is the personal choice of top brass when it comes to “tying up the loose ends” of international political expediency.
Security dons are seldom eager to publicize personal information, but what is believed to be true of Erik Prince is that he is a Michigan native, son of a billionaire, and Naval Academy dropout. He finished the small liberal arts Hillsdale College and qualified at Coronado as a Navy Seal in the 1980s. Prince is believed to be passionate about patriotism, evangelical causes, and the Catholic Church. The published accounts of Prince’s family list his sister as being married to billionaire Richard DeVos, son of the founder of Amway. Prince plunked down a lot of cash for 6000 acres of Dismal Swamp in the northeastern quadrant of North Carolina. There, he supervises the training of a commando-styled security force made up of very well-paid former special forces soldiers. The arsenal of this private army includes a fleet of fixed-wing aircraft, armed helicopters, armored vehicles, and automatic weapons galore. The burly men who wear the big dog paw emblem of Blackwater have a no-nonsense demeanor. Judging from the number of consonants in their names, it’s evident that not all the agents are Anglo-Saxons.
Some unexplainable and perhaps inexcusable violent acts have been reported involving Blackwater guards. Yet look at what the USA seeks to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon is engaged, not only in defeating a wily foe, but also in rebuilding and realigning the infrastructure. That means hundreds of foreign contractors moving in and around the urban areas, and these fellows are prime targets of Al Qaeda. Winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people is the first measure of establishing lasting democracy. Contractors crawl all over Baghdad, and they feel secure with the Big Dog Paw riding alongside.
If lasting democracy is achieved, then we will owe Blackwater boys much more credit for tending to the “loose ends” than they’ve gotten thus far.

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. See more columns at www.moultrienews.com.)