Licensed to Kill by Robert Young Pelton

need. Within just three years, Blackwater would grow from this tiny ad hoc job to being the second largest provider of private security services, with three quarters of a billion dollars in annual billings.
    At the time he won his first contract from the CIA, though, Erik had one problem: His security empire consisted of only himself and Jamie Smith. Smith advertised in the
Washington Post
jobs section and both started working their contacts to put together their first team. The basic requirements were a Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) security clearance, experience working in hostile environments, and knowledge of the rigorous requirements of State Department personal security detail (PSD) training. Within weeks, Blackwater had hired, vetted, and trained enough men for the contract.
    The team headed over to Afghanistan in May 2002, flying in to Bagram Airbase. Erik Prince, owner, president, and CEO, went over himself for two weeks, ostensibly to work as a contractor, though Smith described Erik’s short trip as being closer to “playing CIA paramilitary.”
    The majority of the team would stay in the capital for the duration of the contract, providing security for the CIA end of Kabul Airport and the “Annex,” the CIA’s Kabul station based at the Ariana Hotel. The contractors’ job as part of the Global Response Staff—the CIA term for extra security help required to operate in a hostile environment—was to guard the compound and to ensure intel officers made it to and from meetings safely. One contractor was briefly dispatched to assist with a specific task in Herat, and the CIA requested two to be stationed at a tiny border post in Shkin to provide security for officers holding clandestine meetings with local leaders. Jamie Smith and Erik flew south from Kabul to begin the contract in Shkin. Jamie would stay for two months, but Erik would leave the mud fort after one week and return to Kabul to “schmooze” the Agency chiefs, as Jamie describes it.
    The helo flight to Shkin heads due south of Kabul, ascends to ten thousand feet to clear the mountain pass made famous by Operation Anaconda, descends past an old bin Laden compound and into what some call Fort Apache, a large mud fort complex set in the town of Shkin on a bleak dust-covered landscape just three miles from the Pakistan border. The CIA considered this “Indian territory” and chose the location because it was the farthest their Pegasus Air Mi-17 could fly to and from Bagram without a refueling stop. Shkin’s other claim to fame was that it was the first U.S. firebase built since the Vietnam War. A platoon of Rangers provided the firepower and ran night patrols. A Special Forces ODA, a Ranger Force, a British SAS team, and even Delta operated from the base as the secretive joint endeavor, Task Force 11—the group charged with finding bin Laden, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Mullah Omar, and other high-value targets. Since rumors persisted that bin Laden roamed freely right across the border in Pakistan’s tribal areas, tensions ran high at the base.
    Although Fort Apache was the most remote firebase, subject to regular attacks from enemies who would strike and flee back across the border into Pakistan, much of the day was spent exercising, housekeeping, and tanning on the dirt walls. When a call came in from a local informant, the contractors would scramble to set up a safe meeting place—typically a dead-end dry creek bed where one man could watch from the ridge while the other blocked the entrance. The case officer and a translator would then drive out to make the connection and the payoff. When the informant approached, the contractor guarding the entrance would step out to stop him, search him, and then send him on to the meeting.
    Most of the work would turn out to be blissfully routine, but the underlying sense of being always surrounded or watched by an unconventional, unpredictable,