Erik Prince

In Afghanistan, the viceroy approach would reduce rampant fraud by focusing spending on initiatives that further the central strategy, rather than handing cash to every outstretched hand from a U.S. system bereft of institutional memory.

I've certainly been mortared and rocketed a few times.

Any time you employ thousands of people, some people do dumb things.

Video games are an exciting medium. The creativity of design, the technology and the interaction represent the best of American innovation.

Blackwater's work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked. In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house.

The establishment, rigged, cozy system inside the beltway is not America.

For people to mischaracterize my time or ownership of Blackwater as being some great financial bonanza, it was not. It was most definitely not.

Why should I pay for business? Fly coach, you arrive at the same time.

In Iraq, State Department civilians and U.S. soldiers have been operating in the same location in an active war zone. While the troops have been facing insurgents, the State Department civilians have been working to rebuild institutions and infrastructure. Blackwater's role in this war evolved from this unprecedented dynamic.

The people we helped in the field, they know what the legacy is. The 40% or so of Americans that really can't stand the name of Blackwater, that's fine, I'll never really win them over anyway. And I really don't care.

If I could send a message back to my younger self, it would be: Do not work for the State Department at all.

I'm not sure whether a person can really gauge the quality of his work by the enemies he's made, but if I somehow upset Hamas and the Taliban and Henry Waxman, I must have done something right.