Two former employees - one a former U.S. Marine - have lifted the lid on Blackwater, accusing its founder, Erik Prince, of embarking on a 'crusade to eliminate Muslims'.   They claim Blackwater guards routinely took mind-altering drugs and steroids, and used child prostitutes in the war-torn country they were supposedly helping to liberate.  They also say Blackwater carried out deliberate killings and arms dealing.   Prince himself is accused of smuggling illegal weapons into Iraq on his private aircraft, and allowing his guards to use illegal exploding bullets 'to inflict maximum damage on Iraqis'.   In sworn affidavits lodged in the U.S. last week, the two former employees took the anonymous identities of John Doe No 1 and John Doe No 2 for fear of retribution.   They claim Prince either murdered or had killed former employees cooperating with federal investigators looking into murky dealings at the company. Blackwater denies the claims and is contesting the lawsuit.   So can it really be true that Blackwater operated above the law? And who is Erik Prince, a man who now possesses his own terrifyingly powerful global private army?

Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe - pronounced 'Zi' - was one of the first security companies to go into Iraq, winning multi-million-dollar contracts from Washington, which was keen to reduce military costs by 'contracting out' to the private sector. Blackwater's tasks include escorting diplomatic personnel and guarding compounds while soldiers sleep. It flies helicopters over Baghdad, and effectively goes into battle beside the U.S. Army. It is the largest of the U.S. State Department's three private security contractors.

Early in the conflict, four Blackwater guards were ambushed at Fallujah. Their burnt and mutilated bodies were hung from a bridge in one of the most gruesome killings in the country. Prosaically, their mission had been to collect and deliver kitchen equipment.   The company was immune from Iraqi law until this year. It apparently took full advantage of that position. Soon, Blackwater personnel became resented by locals, levelling their guns at civilians who got too close.   One Iraqi says: 'They became a symbol of what was seen as an occupying force. They are always heavily armed with machine-guns, and wear body armour and wraparound sunglasses. Usually they are beefy men with goatees, covered in tattoos.   'They swagger around like something out of a movie. Their presence here has been deeply damaging.'   The company has received multi-million dollar deals from Washington to 'help' in Iraq, but a catalogue of evidence suggests they are failing to represent their nation effectively.  Up to last year, there were over 1,000 Blackwater operatives - many of them former U.S. Marines, or ex-Special Forces, working in Iraq.  
     Many Iraqis believe the U.S. military has allowed private companies to do its dirty work, and knows exactly what Blackwater was doing.  Locals claim 'cowboy' Blackwater employees regularly ran them off the road, while the company claims it acts only on State Department orders to clear the way for officials.  Its methods are, at the very least, controversial. Marshall Adame, a Democrat who is running for Congress and served as a State Department official in Iraq, says: 'I saw them shoot people, I saw them crash into cars while I was their passenger. There was absolutely no reason, no provocation whatsoever.'
     A security contractor for Triple Canopy, one of Blackwater's rivals in Iraq, says: 'The trouble with Blackwater is they got too much money, too quickly. There was a lot of work up for grabs and they snapped it up.  'At that time, it was like the Wild West out here. They recruited a lot of rednecks from Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and so forth, and they were a bit too trigger happy. It's not surprising they got into trouble.'   He adds: 'You've got to remember though, it was pretty hairy out there. These guys were taking risks for the money, and they wanted the Iraqi to end up with a bullet in his back, not them. It's easy to criticise from your front room.'

According to the court depositions, however, killings were not always in self-defence.
One of the statements by John Doe No 2 alleges that Prince 'views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe'. It says Blackwater ' encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life'.   John Doe No 2, who worked for Prince for four years, also claims Prince destroyed incriminating videos, emails and documents in a bid to hide criminal behaviour from the U.S. State Department.  Born into a wealthy family in Michigan on June 6, 1969, young Prince was brought up by his self-made billionaire father under a 'hard work, family and God' ethos.  Prince obtained his pilot's licence at 17, and served as an intern at the White House under the first President Bush, later saying: 'I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with - homosexual groups being invited in, the Clean Air Act, those kinds of bills.'   He earned a commission in the U.S. Navy SEALS after joining in 1992, performing secret missions in Haiti and Bosnia. He served until the death of his father in 1995.   The family then sold their company for $1.3 billion, giving Prince the money to set up Blackwater. In 1997, he bought 6,000 acres of the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, where he set up a state-of-the-art training camp, located near SEAL and Delta Force bases. He named his company after the swamp's black bogs.  Initially, there was little work. Then, in 2000, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen led the U.S. Navy to look for someone to train sailors to identify and respond to terrorist threats, and Prince had his first high-earning contract, worth around $200,000.  Blackwater were meant to be supporting the military, but many Iraqis fear them as vengeful mercenaries.  Unsurprisingly, business boomed after 9/11. In 2003, federal contracts brought in some £15 million, which soared to nearly £365million in 2006 - including a massive £194 million from the State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protective Service, which protects U.S. officials in conflict zones.   Around 40,000 people a year are now trained at Great Dismal Swamp, mainly U.S. military or police personnel. Prince is a major donor to the Republican Party, prompting accusations he bought his way to big military contracts. His critics call him a Christian supremacist, and a book on Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill claims the company is run on a Christian agenda by 'extreme religious zealots'.   Prince certainly possesses religious zeal, saying of Iraq: 'Everybody carries guns, like Jeremiah rebuilding the Temple in Israel, a sword in one hand, a trowel in the other.'  Prince, who operates from an anonymous unnamed office in Northern Virginia, is now, of course, phenomenally wealthy. He wears sharp, bespoke suits, but still sports a military crew-cut.

At a congressional hearing in October 2007, following the controversy related to Blackwater's conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan, he refused to discuss his company's finances, saying: 'We're a private company. There's a key word there - private.'   He also objected to the use of the word 'mercenaries', a 'slanderous term' or an 'inflammatory term they use to malign us', saying he preferred to call his employees 'loyal Americans' who 'bleed red, white and blue'.
That may be, but the John Doe No2 affidavit alleges that Prince likes to recruit men to Iraq "who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis". In a statement, the company said it would respond "to the anonymous unsubstantiated and offensive assertions put forward" in its brief, to be filed on August 17.   A spokesperson added: "It is obvious that plaintiffs have chosen to slander Mr Prince rather than raise legal arguments or actual facts that will be considered by a court of law. We are happy to engage them there. We question the judgment of anyone who relies upon an anonymous declarations."  The company failed to respond when I contacted it for further comment. Five Blackwater guards who pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges are awaiting trial over the Nisour Square attack. A sixth guard pleaded guilty.  For his part, Abu Suhad, a Baghdad local, has no time for company spokesmen and official statements. He lost his daughter in 2007 when she was driving her car near the Iraqi foreign ministry in central Baghdad.  He says: "Eye-witnesses told me that four white Blackwater cars went by her. They were already past when the last one shot her in the head at close range and killed her. The bullet came from the driver's window, which means that he got next to her when he shot her.  'The bullet entered from under the ear and left from the upper side of her skull. There were bits of her hair and skin on the car roof."   As he mourns his daughter, he is left wondering why a security company was supposedly allowed to act above the law by the U.S. government. It is a decision that might yet come back to haunt the American military.