Blackwater (company)
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| Private | |
| Industry | Private security services contractor |
| Founded | 1997 North Carolina, U.S. |
| Founders |
Erik Prince Al Clark |
| Headquarters | McLean, Virginia, U.S. |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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Craig Nixon |
| Products | Law enforcement training, logistics, close quarter training, and security services |
| Services | Security management, full-service risk management consulting |
| Website | www |
Academi is an American private military company founded in 1997 by former Navy SEAL officer Erik Prince as Blackwater, renamed as XE Services in 2009 and now known as Academi since 2011 after the company was acquired by a group of private investors. The company received widespread notoriety in 2007, when a group of its employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad for which four guards were convicted in a U.S. court.
Academi provides security services to the United States federal government on a contractual basis. Since 2003, the group has provided services to the Central Intelligence Agency, including a 2010 contract for $250 million. In 2013, Academi subsidiary International Development Solutions received an approximately $92 million contract for State Department security guards.
In 2014, Academi became a division of Constellis Holdings along with Triple Canopy and other security companies that were part of the Constellis Group as the result of an acquisition.
Blackwater USA was formed in 1997, by Al Clark and Erik Prince in North Carolina, to provide training support to military and law enforcement organizations. In explaining Blackwater's purpose, Prince stated: "We are trying to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did for the Postal Service". After working with SEAL and SWAT teams, Blackwater USA received its first government contract after the bombing of the USS Cole off of the coast of Yemen in October 2000. After winning the bid on the contract, Jamie Smith ran the program at Blackwater that trained over 100,000 sailors.
Prince purchased approximately 7,000 acres (28 km2) of the Great Dismal Swamp, a vast swamp on the North Carolina–Virginia border that is now mostly a national wildlife refuge, from Dow Jones executive Sean Trotter. "We needed 3,000 acres to make it safe," Prince told reporter Robert Young Pelton. There, he created his private training facility and his contracting company, Blackwater, which he named for the peat-colored water of the swamp.
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Wikipedia