WRAL Tech Wire

Blackwater’s departing founder is one interesting guy

Blackwater USA founder and chief executive Erik Prince testifies before Congress on Oct. 2, 2007.

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Editor's note: The "Innovation Exchange," a regular feature in Local Tech Wire, is written by Noah Garrett, former director of communications for the North Carolina Technology Association, a creative spirit, from writing music to news stories, and owner and operator NGC Communications. The focus of the Innovation Exchange is just that – creating a web community through which people can exchange ideas and foster creativity.

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Growing up in Virginia Beach, Va., and living nearly a decade in northeast North Carolina, I have some familiarity with private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, now called Xe.

It wasn’t unusual to see vehicles riding around town, mostly big pickup trucks, sporting the infamous paw-print sticker that branded the Moyock-based company. Erik Prince, who founded the company 11 years ago, announced Monday that he is stepping down as chief executive.

The 39-year-old former Navy SEAL will retain his post as chairman, but will move away from daily oversight of the company. Joseph Yorio, recently a vice president at DHL and a former Army Special Forces officer, will serve as president, replacing retiring executive Gary Jackson. Danielle Esposito, a 10-year veteran with the firm, will be the new chief operating officer and executive vice president.

For those who don’t know, Blackwater is actually the name of a creek flowing from the rural part of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake to adjacent to the facility in Moyock which is hundreds if not a thousand acres in size. I’m not sure if they derived the company name from that little body of water, but I do know the creek exists and caught many bass and brim in there over the years.

While living and working on the Outer Banks, I was a reporter and columnist for The Coastland Times newspaper. I recall trying to gain access to the facility one time to write a feature story on the group from an economic development perspective, but that never happened.

Although I assured their communications folks that the story would be a good PR piece for the local newspaper, they were steadfast in not allowing any press into the place or granting interviews. Eventually, I just gave up and moved on to another story.

Another personal experience with Blackwater was in car sales. I used to have a 1987 Oldsmobile station wagon that barely ran. A friend in the U.S. Coast Guard knew someone at Blackwater, and he told me they were buying up old cars for training purposes.

I contacted his friend and sold the car for $200. A grizzly-looking man with a flatbed truck showed up at my house one day, loaded it up and paid me in cash. I asked him what they needed the car for since it barely ran, and no kidding, he said the bad guys were using old cars to deliver bombs in the Middle East and they needed to practice on learning how to blow them up.

I thought to myself, cool. Can you send me a picture of the car after you blow it up? He said yes, but I never received a picture.

Flash forward a few years later while working at the North Carolina Technology Association, we hosted a successful security conference in Cary called the Five Pillars of Executive Leadership in a Non-Secure World. Prince was on a panel focused on physical security. I actually was the moderator of the panel.

I remember getting up to the podium to begin the discussion and making a joke: I don’t know about ya'll, but this just might be the safest place in America right now.

The crowd laughed, but as I looked over to the panel and Prince being directly to my left, he looked at me with his sharp eyes as if he applauded my effort at jest but was not impressed. To this day, I tell friends and colleagues about the way he looked at me and how I felt about the size of a peanut. I never get nervous in speaking to big crowds, but at that moment, I wanted to run.

Dressed in a fashionable suit and sporting shiny, black cowboy boots, Prince flew into RDU that morning and did not disappoint in his comments during the panel presentation. There were no PowerPoint slides or fluff. He was blunt and effective at relaying the reality of today’s threat landscape.

From a PR perspective, I cringed when he said that law enforcement personnel screwed up in reference to the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred just a few months earlier. That quote made the Associated Press wire the next day, which when I heard him say it during the discussion, I knew it would.

He didn’t care. He said whatever was on his mind, and I respected that. He didn’t sugar coat anything he said during the 30-minute panel discussion and it was actually refreshing to see someone so politically incorrect. I enjoyed it and many in the audience did, too.

After confirming his participation in the conference a few weeks prior, I was given specific instructions regarding press access while he was in attendance. The media advisory put out the day before noted his participation and also gave detailed instructions to any media/press attending that no photographs, video or interviews would be permitted.

Needless to say, those instructions were not followed. When Prince and the other panelists got up on the stage, I noticed two photographers (one AP and another from Raleigh News & Observer) who were literally behind a curtain quickly snapping frames as he sat down.

I noticed them and he did, too. However, he didn’t say anything and went along with the discussion. I actually signaled someone from the stage at one point to have the photographers removed, which they did.

Later, Prince asked me why the photographers were there. I told him that I gave specific instructions to all media and even showed him the advisory, but they broke the rules anyway and there wasn’t really much we could do about it. He just smiled, leaned in to me, and said, “(expletive) press.”

Throughout my career in the media, I have met some interesting folks. I have interviewed several members of congress, the Ambassador to Canada, Joan Jett, the guy that created Monster.com, the Beach Boys, and even had 30 minutes to chat with hall of fame bluesman B.B. King. Although I wasn’t in the media when I shook Prince’s hand, I have to say meeting and working with him to create a dynamic panel discussion is also on that list of experiences.

He certainly is an interesting guy.