The business of homeland securityThe Blackwater example: Private security booming
The war on terror has been a boon for private security companies; Blackwater is one of the more obvious success stories; the company is expanding its menu of offerings: it is wrapping up work on its own armored vehicle, the Grizzly, as well as its Polar Airship 400, a surveillance blimp
Security company Blackwater is doing well. In April 2008 the assignment to provide personal protection for diplomats in Iraq by Blackwater was renewed for the third year at $1,222 per day per guard, equivalent to $445,000 per year, or, as a blogger on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Web site writes — six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier.
Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, now has a new private spy agency, Total Intelligence Solutions. Run by three veteran CIA operatives, the company offers “CIA-type services” to Fortune 1000 companies and governments (see 6 November 2007 HS Daily Wire). Blackwater was asked by the Pentagon to bid for a share of a $15 billion contract to “fight terrorists with drug-trade ties” in a U.S. program that targets countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. The Post-Intelligencer’s blogger writes that this could be the company’s biggest contract ever.
In addition, Blackwater is wrapping up work on its own armored vehicle, the Grizzly, as well as its Polar Airship 400, a surveillance blimp Blackwater plans to market to DHS for use in monitoring the U.S.-Mexico border (on the return of the blimp, see 15 June 2008 HS Daily Wire). Blackwater affiliate Greystone Ltd, registered offshore in Barbados, is a more traditional soldiers-for-hire operation offering “personnel from the best militaries throughout the world” for hire by governments and private organizations.
