Tierney quoted Army Col. Peter Mansoor: “If they push traffic off the roads or if they shoot up a car that looks suspicious, they may be operating within their contract, but it is to the detriment of the mission, which is to bring the people over to our side.” He quoted retired Army officer Ralph Peters: “Armed contractors do harm COIN—counterinsurgency efforts. Just ask the troops in Iraq.” Brig. Gen. Karl Horst: “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There is no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them when they escalate force. They shoot people and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.” And Col. Thomas X. Hammes: “The problem is in protecting the principal, they had to be very aggressive. And each time they went out they had to offend locals, forcing them to the side of the road, being overpowering and intimidating, at times running vehicles off the road, making enemies each time they went out. So they were actually getting that contract exactly as we asked them to—it was at the same time hurting our counterinsurgency effort.”
Tierney told Prince, “So when we look at Blackwater’s own records that show that you regularly move traffic off the roads and you shoot up cars—in over 160 incidents of firing on suspicious cars—we can see, I think, why the tactics you use in carrying out your contract might mitigate [sic] against what we’re trying to do in the insurgency.”
“I understand the challenges that the military faces there,” Prince responded, adding, “We strive for perfection, but we don’t get to choose when the bad guys attack us. You know, the bad guys have figured out—the terrorists have figured out how to make a precision weapon with a car, load it with explosives with a suicidal driver.”
Representatives also raised the issue of cost, pointing out that each Blackwater operative cost taxpayers $1,222 per day. “We know that sergeants in the military generally cost the government between $50,000 to $70,000 per year,” Waxman said. “We also know that a comparable position at Blackwater costs the federal government over $400,000, six times as much.” Prince was confronted with Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s statement a week earlier on the issue of the disparity in pay between soldiers and private forces. “I worry that sometimes the salaries they are able to pay in fact lures some of our soldiers out of the service to go to work for them,” Gates had said, adding that he was seeking legal advice on whether a “noncompete” clause could be put into security contracts. Prince said it would be “fine” with him but asserted that “it would be upsetting to a lot of soldiers if they didn’t have the ability to use the skills they learned in the military in the private sector.”
Toward the end of the hearing, it was noted that General Petraeus makes about $180,000 a year. When asked his own salary, Prince said he didn’t know exactly and then, when pressed, offered that it was “more than $1 million.” He estimated that about 90 percent of the business of the Prince Group empire (Blackwater’s parent company) comes from federal contracts. He wouldn’t say how much the company had made for its work in Iraq, but “as an example” he said under some contracts Blackwater earns a profit margin of about 10 percent, which one Congressman remarked could mean more than $100 million. Prince adamantly refused to answer the profit question directly. “We’re a private company,” he said. “The key word there is ‘private.’”
Connecticut Democrat Christopher Murphy, incredulous, asked, “How can you say that information isn’t relevant?” adding, “my constituents pay 90 percent of your salary.” Finally, Prince quipped, “I’m not a financially driven guy.”
While Blackwater’s actions in Iraq over the past four years have consistently resulted in an escalation of violence and bloodshed there, many of the most infamous incidents involving the company were not discussed or only brought up in passing at the hearing. Some of the Democrats on the committee appeared to be reading their briefing papers while Prince was testifying, giving the impression that they were ill-prepared to address Blackwater’s central role in the U.S. war machine. Prince did face some tough and important questions, but often his answers were left to stand with no credible follow-up or challenge. All the while, the very reason Prince found himself before Congress that day and the reason the world watched his testimony—the Nisour Square massacre—went undiscussed, the Iraqi victims unmentioned.
The Republicans did their best to portray the hearing as a witch-hunt and heaped praise on Prince for his patriotism and service. “This is not about Blackwater,” said conservative California Republican Darrell Issa. “What we are hearing today is, in fact, a repeat of the MoveOn.org attack on General Petraeus’s patriotism.” Several Republicans thanked Prince for keeping them alive when they toured Iraq, the irony of how this could impact their impartiality apparently lost on them.
It wasn’t lost on Massachusetts Democrat Stephen Lynch. He said in his trips to Iraq, he too had been protected by Blackwater, which he acknowledged “did a very, very good job.” He added, “I find myself right now with this committee having a difficult time criticizing those employees, because I am in their debt… which brings me to my problem. If I have a problem criticizing Blackwater and criticizing the employees and some of the times that you have fouled up, what about the State Department?” Lynch questioned how any effective investigations into Blackwater’s conduct could be expected when Blackwater itself is responsible for the safety of those tasked with investigating the company. “The State Department employees, you protect them every single day. You protect their physical well-being, you transport them, you escort them. And I am sure there is a heavy debt of gratitude on the part of the State Department for your service,” Lynch told Prince. “And yet they are the very same people who are in our system responsible for holding you accountable in every respect with your contract and the conduct of your employees…. That is an impossible conflict for them to resolve.” Prince never addressed the matter because Lynch’s time expired. But Lynch’s point was an important one. According to the Oversight Committee’s investigation, “There is no evidence” that “the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation.” 116 Indeed, the State Department had not only failed to effectively investigate or rein in Blackwater; there was evidence that it had done the reverse, covering for the company when it landed in the hot seat.
As the duration of the hearing neared four hours, Prince was asked if he wanted to take a break or deal with the remaining questions. “I’ll take them, and then let’s be done,” he shot back. Moments later, Prince’s lawyer shot up from his chair behind the Blackwater chief and frantically directed a “T” for “time” with his hands toward the committee. With that, the hearing came to an end. Prince stood up, grabbed the paper with his name on it from the table, and marched with his entourage from the room.
There is no question the Justice Department’s intervention at the eleventh hour took some of the heat off Prince over Nisour Square. “He gave a very self-serving testimony to us,” said Waxman. “I can understand that that’s what he wanted to do. That was in his interest to do it.”117 Blackwater clearly felt its man had won the day. Emboldened by Prince’s defiant appearance before Congress, Blackwater would launch a new PR campaign to defend its image, and its star would be Prince himself. Far from facing the heat of a critical media, Prince would find friendly faces and softball questions as he met the press. Shortly after his Congressional testimony, Prince’s longtime friend archconservative California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher compared the Blackwater chief to another controversial figure who had once been forced to raise his right hand before Congress. “Prince,” Rohrabacher said, “is on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was.”118