In late 2008 Blackwater, already under fire because of accusations of abuse of his security guards in Iraq and Afghanistan, reconfigured a 183-foot oceanographic research vessel to a pirate-hunting ship for rent and then began looking for business from shipping companies seeking protection from Somali pirates. Company's CEO, Erik Prince, plan a trip to Djibouti to a promotional event in March 2009 and Blackwater had hoped that the American Embassy who would help, according to a secret Ministry of cable.
But with the Obama administration just weeks old, American diplomats in Djibouti is faced with a problem they are supposed. in order to be advocates for u.s. companies, but this was the Blackwater, a company that the Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had proposed ban from war zones when she was a presidential candidate.
The Embassy "would appreciate the guidance Departments at the appropriate level of engagement with Blackwater," wrote James c. Swan, the American Ambassador in Djibouti, in a cable sent on Feb 12, 2009.Blackwaters plans to enter the piracy business has reported in the past, but not the US Government's concern about the affair.
According to the cable had Blackwater outfitted its United States-flag ship with 50 caliber machine guns and a small, unarmed drone aircraft. Ship, named Mortensen, would make a crew of 33 to patrol Aden 30 days before returning to Djibouti to resupply.
And the company had already determined that its rules of engagement.' Blackwater does not intend to take any pirates in custody, but want to use deadly force against pirates, if necessary,» says the cable.
At that time, the company still pending approvals from Blackwater lawyers for its planned operations, since Blackwater had informed the Embassy there was "no precedent for a paramilitary operation in a purely commercial environment."
Lawsuits filed later of crew members on Mortensen made life on the ship sound slightly improved from Blackbeard days.
A former member of the crew according to legal documents, said that the ship's captain, who had drinking water under a port call in Jordan, ordered him "is placed in the irons" (handcuffs to a towel rack) after he was accused of giving an unauthorized to his hometown newspaper interview in Minnesota. Captain, threatened, according to the lawsuit, also to place the seaman in a straitjacket. another crew member, who is black, argued in court documents that he repeatedly was subjected to racial epithets.
Finally found the Blackwater Maritime security services no tax in the company of a pirate-chasing never attract potential clients and the administration of the Obama chose not to break the American government relationship with the company, North Carolina-based, which has collected more than $ 1 billion in security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Blackwater renamed itself the XE services, and earlier in the year, the company won a $ 100 million contract from the Central Intelligence Agency to protect the spy agency's bases in Afghanistan.