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The name Blackwater, the world's largest private military contractor, became infamous early in the Iraq War, when four of its men were seized by a mob in Fallujah, murdered, and hung from a bridge for the world to see. Since then, Blackwater has expanded dramatically; its men have been involved in major scandals, including a shooting spree in Iraq that has now caused the Iraqi government to blacklist the company. As Suzanne Simons reveals in this first-ever inside look, based on extraordinary access to Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and dozens of his key employees, Blackwater is just the tip of Erik Prince's empire. He publicly reassures everyone that Blackwater only works for the U.S., and would never become a mercenary organization for other governments, yet he has another entire company dedicated to doing just that, hiring foreign nationals, working for well over a dozen different governments, and overlapping in crucial ways with Blackwater. In addition, he has a private spying company, run by former top CIA men, employing extraordinarily sensitive methods and technical sophistication, for rent by any interested party, from companies to governments. Finally, he is amassing an air fleet that is large enough to serve as a miniature air force, not just by purchasing planes and helicopters, but also by building his own unmanned drones. In short, the full story of Erik Prince and his now-crumbling empire is a story of one of the modern world's most influential military figures, and it has never been told. Prince is a man who shuns publicity except when absolutely necessary, to tamp down a scandal; even when he has wanted to tell his story, he has been shut down by his clients in Washington who won't stand for it. Instead, he has given Suzanne Simons hours of interviews; access to his staff; invitations to join him on trips to Afghanistan; and more. He is a fascinating figure, part deeply conservative, evangelical patriot; part rebellious, go-it-alone kingpin. He is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and his companies are worth billions. His empire dwarfs all of its competitors, to such a degree that even if the military wanted to wash its hands of him, they wouldn't be able to replace him.

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Master of War

HarperCollins

Chapter One

Erik Prince learned a lot from his father both from his life and from his death. Edgar Prince was just a boy when his own father died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-six. The death left young Edgar with little choice but to assume a new identity as caretaker for his widowed mother and two siblings. Edgar Prince would eventually build a fortune, but he would do it on a history of hardship.

"They made it through the Great Depression and through the war," recalled Erik. Not even a teenager, Edgar worked his way through middle school by taking a job at a local car dealership, where he cleaned and prepped new vehicles for delivery.

By the time Edgar was old enough to go to college, money was still tight, so he joined the military to help him get through. When he left college, he served his two-year commitment in the Air Force. The military was never a passion for Edgar, the way it would be for his son.

Edgar Prince was a man driven by business. After the Air Force, he took a job at an automotive supplier in western Michigan. He worked in multiple departments, learning everything from sales to research and development. Erik believes that that wide-ranging experience is a big part of the reason that, when the company changed hands and Edgar didn't get on well with the new management, he decided it was worth the risk to go out on his own.

By 1965 Edgar Prince had collected close to $160,000 to launch a small die-cast shop he called Prince Manufacturing. He based the company in his hometown of Holland, Michigan.

"Six guys came with him," remembered Erik. "He mortgaged his house, his car, about anything you could mortgage. His mother, as a single mom in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, had managed to save $10,000, and she invested that in the company."

It was a tremendous financial risk for a man with a young family to support. Erik's mother, Elsa, remembered just how hard it was. "We were so frugal, I would write down in my pocketbook if I bought a spool of thread or stamps," said Elsa. "That's how closely we kept our records."

But not everyone believed that Edgar Prince's decision was a smart one. There was fierce competition in automotive manufacturing in Michigan in the mid-1960s, and several larger companies were already heavily invested in the marketplace. Erik recalls a talk his father gave about the company years later, when he told employees of the hurdles he once faced.

"All the smart people, all the business people," Erik remembered his father saying, "they said, 'You really shouldn't start a capital-intensive business like this with anything less than $5 million.' My dad said, 'Well, if I had $5 million, I wouldn't be trying to start a business right now, I'd be hanging out.'?"

The potential for failure drove Edgar to work harder, which often meant long days away from his family. "We knew that in small businesses, two out of three fail, and his could have failed," recalled Elsa.

Edgar and Elsa Prince already had three daughters by the time Erik was born in 1969. The family was deeply rooted in their conservative Dutch community, and Prince's company hired many of its employees from among the local population. Prince Manufacturing was well on its way to becoming Holland's largest employer. Even today, visitors to downtown Holland are greeted by the bronzed footsteps of Edgar Prince that lead to a statue of musicians near a plaque that reads, "We will always hear your footsteps."

But much like what had happened to his own father, all of Edgar Prince's hard work would come at a price. One day, when Erik was just a toddler, his father came home in the middle of the day and went straight to bed. Erik knew something was terribly wrong. "That just never happened," Prince said. "I was scared. My mom took him to the hospital, and he ended up having a heart attack there, which probably saved his life."

Edgar began a recovery process that took weeks, but almost immediately, his family noticed a change. With more time to think about his life, he began to shift some of his priorities. Elsa saw Edgar become a man of renewed faith, saying not only did the heart attack change her husband's life, but "he just realized he could be gone, and what do you leave?"

Edgar Prince's relationship with God had always been important to him, but it rose to a new level after his heart attack. Edgar believed that God had given him a second chance, and it must be for a reason. The elder Prince made changes in his life that would almost immediately benefit Erik. Father and son spent more time together, making little lead soldiers and crafting pieces for chess games. Edgar even built his son an air hockey table after seeing one on a trip to Disney World in Florida.

"I think he tried to relax a little bit more," recalled Erik. "He was still pushing the business, but I think he gave some of the other guys a bit more free rein, and some great things started to happen."

One of those "things" was a dramatic shift within the company from making machinery to making parts. It was another risk Edgar was willing to take. Erik insists that finding more efficient ways to do things is what drove his father, even though some of his ideas weren't exactly show stopping. Not all of them had to do with cars, either. A propeller-driven snowmobile and a ham deboning machine were just two of Edgar Prince's earlier experiments that didn't exactly take off.

"The ham deboning machine was a great product," said Erik. "My dad says in Bulgaria, at one point, we had 100 percent market share in ham deboning machines."

It was in the early 1970s that Edgar Prince's company came up with a very simple product that would have a dramatic impact on the automobile industry. Prince engineers patented an automotive sun visor that could light up.

"They sold the first 5,000 to General Motors before they ever made one," said Prince. "They figured out how to make them fast, and when the business was sold, they were making 20,000 a day."

The sun visor became a staple of the automotive industry that led to a financial windfall for the Prince family. It was a classic American small-business success story, and with the company's success, the Prince family solidified its role as a leading fixture of its tight-knit community.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Master of Warby Suzanne Simons Copyright © 2009 by Suzanne Simons . Excerpted by permission.
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