Isnt democrats are the only people who should care about this. This is a pretty important difference that really involves the effects of both political parties. The average democrat in congress cut the average republican spent about 1 of the congressional career doing workingclass jobs. The average democrat spent about 2 . So this isnt an issue that one party sort of bones. Host i know that you talk about it in the book but again, a country like ethnicity theres a lot to talk about the hispanic population and how its increasing and republicans really need to get on board with that. Those people are probably in the work. A lot of those people like immigrant are in the working class. Could that be an area have you thought about how ethnicity is in the workingclass framework . Guest i take race and ethnicity and the party seriously. But there are sort of background characters in the book the line controlling for them and making sure to account for them and the sort of statistical work that i do by refocusing on the difference is by social class and thats in part because political scientists have done already a good job of sort of exploring the differences between republicans and democrats and conagras or between men and women in congress or between legislators and different races and ethnic backgrounds. And so in the book whats new about this book is that theres never been a study of the differences between politicians from different social classes and any systematically using the sort of hard data so thats why in the book these are extremely important questions and does it matter that there are so few women in congress . Does it matter that congress is so much wider in the country as a whole these are extremely important questions. The reason why they have gotten a lot of really good attention on the Political Science so in this book i try to focus on the question that we paid less attention to which is does it matter that there are such few workingclass people. Host i want to ask about the tea party i know this book ends and 2008. But it seems to me like there is a lot of class issues that come up with the tea party. Guest it illustrates how difficult it is or it can be sometimes to talk about the class in a precise way. So during the election, joe the plumber coming out saying i am speaking on behalf of working people and i really conservative it turns out hes not actually a plumber, hes pretty well off financially and he is a business owner. And so i think the challenge im not an expert on the tea party, but what i do know is lots of the tea parties that speak on behalf of the working class are white collar professionals themselves. And i think its important to keep that in mind. And that is consistent with what i find in the white collar government. The most conservative sort of most probusiness lawmakers are the white collar professionals. Host thanks for taking the time. Guest thanks so much. That was after words book tv Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, Public Policy makers, legislators and others familiar with the material. After words there is every weekend at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday and 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch after words on line. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. Kti next on book tv erik prince the founder of black water talksrces about the mercenary group and the sacrifices that blackwater employees have made in the war on terror. This is about 50 minutes. [applause] many good morning everyone. Arly on its nice to see so many of youl here on a friday morning and ofa course the special guest is erie prince. For we will be talking about his end book civilians warriors but also have time for questions atg the end of the interview so i would encourage you as you are listening toin the interview to jot down some questions that you might have for erik at the end of the program. With that said, welcome. Lets get started. I want to talk to you a little bit about your father. As you say in the book, you or youre fathers son. He was a tremendous influence on you personally and professionally. He was an example of a Great American success story. I that was only 13 and he became the man of the family. I remember him having to install the hot water heater by himself and he would cut a length of pipe and measure it and to get to the Hardware Store and go back and install one piece at a time. I cant imagine my 13 or 14 year old son tackling that project now that he was working 40 hours a week already, put himself through college and supported the rest of his family. And then as the brief stint in the air force he worked for a company that was sold it he didnt like the new management, so he took the other guys in his mid30s and start again. And so that whatever risk that is taken when you risk being able to feed your family to pursue a business goal, that takes guts. He compensated them well and actually has the company grew, he wanted a way to get back in time for dinner. It was important to them and he ended up getting a small fleet of aircraft so the sales engineers and salesmen could get off to the customers and make their pitches and get back in time to see their families because he knew how important that was. Host what was said about that experience that got you thinking about starting a company in light blackwater . Guest i planned to be a seal for ten to 12 years because you could be operational, but he died very unexpectedly and my wife got sick with cancer and i got out and they were using those facilities since the 1970s and no one had ever done it on an industrial scale, so as a way to stay connected to the teams to serve that part of the community. It started as a Training Facility. It wasnt so much of the security piece until much later, right . We started as a place to practice and there were small units and the Survival Training for Police Officers and then columbine happened. Terkel attacked trying to kill as many people as they can and that was a time of kind of surrounding for the swat teams then and we built a mock high school outside of that to train them on how to do better and then the u. S. Fiscal was blown up and then ev came to us as we had instructors and even when we started in the seven ranges on the 3,000 acres it was the largest private Training Facility in the country and we were ready and in the up training tens of thousands to protect their shift and it wasnt until 9 11 when a lot of the same government customers that had been coming to us asked them to come overseas and help. How were you able to ramp up to that degree because it is more than the motion to have that many feet on the ground in the various places and it sounds like throughout the book you were able to wrap up quickly in all the situations. How did you do that . The Management Team from the special operations world they were seals or swat team and a lot of them had done a stint in the corporate america. Some kind of took the best of both worlds mentality that was on the seal teams. And i guess in an early attempt on the social media, we had the president gary jackson put together something called the black water tax which is a newsletter that we sent out and a kind of became an Affinity Group that would talk about the tactics and Lessons Learned for the police and counterterrorism world and as that group to eventually it was reaching to under 50 to 300,000 people a week. But as we had additional work that can and there was an immediate way to communicate the job offerings and we never missed a beat. So 9 11 happened and that is when things really began to change . Yes. Certainly the work started to accelerate by 20 o2 and we were called in to the security business and we interviewed the business and i had been flying planes since i was a little kid. I learned to fly when i was in high school and there was a reason the marine corps has its own wheen and its useful if he were operating in difficult places to have aircraft people are now that was the mentality and we did it and it worked. At one point he even brought a company to be able to have more aircraft. We had the right license is and the right people. Those were it cannot of the 160 it special operations, the Night Stalkers if youve ever watched black clock down those are the ones flying the helicopters and the helicopter equipped equivalent. You took a lot over those years for the number of government contracts that you received some of them being no bid contract. What do you say to those that were questioned on how it went about getting some of those big contracts . It is inaccurate that a lot of them were no bid did in the terms of the total revenue, 95, 97 of the revenue in the whole company was competitively bid so the government comes to you so urgently to say we need you to do this right now. And so you give them a price out of a government approved list and you go that we said there are some cases the government doesnt have time to spit it out, but we want this because we were ready and we try to anticipate what the next demand was going to be. Having a Training Facility certainly helps. We were the only ones in that whole competitive space to build up the large facility that could host and train. They serve before gm and chrysler but in the competitive push that came from the Japanese Invasion that occurred in the east being much more competitive forced them to be better and trying to figure out how to make even the deployment process. We kind of built up. I read a lot of the Production System and another book about streamlining production because the first thing i did beyond serving black water my dad started that made the machinery and was a nice business but it didnt have a lot of attention on it since the automotive business was so large. So i got some experience there and really tried to apply that at blackwater and build a process of how do you recruit that and train and deploy and support people that he will put in difficult places because we could be the lowcost ander because we integrated all those steps that squeezed out a lot of the waste. Need yourself indispensable. Well, there is another thing that i looked at in the business. There are three ways my dad taught me to approach business. One is product innovation. Make the next product something Somebody Just has to have and my dad did that with some of the automotive that they developed whether it is the garage door opener in your car and number two would be deficiency. You grind out and become a lowcost provider and that this kind of the walmart model and comer three yes customer intimacy where you become so ingrained and indispensable to the customer that its hard for them to get rid of you and would almost be like the model for their handling of the warranty returns and logistics flow for the production and that matters. So we tried to wring out the inefficiencies and become indispensable for the customers. Host i will talk about that but i want to ask more about the efficiency piece and being a lowcost provider and this i am taking a right from the book. You write that it had 71,000 of federal contract giving it and 200 to your of to 3. 4 million by 200 for the business had increased by 600 . By 2006, black water had the billion dollar mark in federal contracts you said that money was coming from every direction both at home and abroad. And certainly there was criticism of the details. Something like 20,000 to provide security. How do you respond to those who would say there was a lot of money to be made . That was an urgent and comparing contract for the first few months because the u. N. Ambassador to iraq had been blown up and killed and obviously the administration most concerned about that happening, so we were doing work for another Government Agency and we had to provide our own helicopters even. And the downside of the contract where the government isnt going to pay another dime if the conditions change. Our insurance provider was the same as those that were insuring the aircraft the was shot down by a missile and christa was three weeks after we got on the ground and they kind lee told us that they could cancel our interns or triple the rate and have to pass the coverage so at that point they became self injured so there are risks to this game and i talk about in the book the rescue which in april of 200 to more than a thousand army militia although the radical attacked the coalition for somebody surrounded and we had eight bodyguards and a handful of Communications Networks with the assault was on and they called up the resupply and the army wouldnt come and was just a few days after they had been ambushed and murdered in fallujah and we were going to do everything we could to prevent that from happening again so we sent the helicopters and we send them to resupply and actually be ended up medevacing a couple of the soldiers that were awarded the combat model. People only see the top line when it comes to the revenue number theres a whole lot of risks because when the helicopters went down that was all backed down. Three of the helicopters were shot down in combat during the time. There are even books with the word title. The war profiteer is a matter that comes up frequently. How do you respond when people use words like that to describe yourself and your company . We will take the mercenary question. Last time i checked, the oxford dictionary defines it as a soldier to fight in the cause is not for his own country. So really in our case americans looking for an American Company on a u. S. Government contract sidebyside with u. S. Forces doesnt by any definition qualify as a mercenary but if you still want to slander the name of a mercenary, the need to start probably removing some monuments in downtown washington, d. C. Across the street from the white house in Lafayette Park you have before professional military officers and contractors and mercenaries if you will that built the Continental Army and the u. S. Is having a hard time fighting the british, fighting for their independence until the professionals showed up and showed them how to train so the idea of the mercenaries and battled contractors really goes back to the founding of the country. Even as you were sitting down for thanksgiving dinner next week, think about those like john smith or miles. America was founded not by the british government, it was found by private companies. The Jamestown Colony was a oneman publicly traded company and they hired a guy like john smith was a professional soldier to come and protect the colony and later became the first governor and he was the same way. So the idea of contractors in American History being armed, nine out of ten were taken by private years. Private ship, crew, master issued a hunting license. Its called a letter of market reprisal as the hunting license that allows them to go after enemy ships. So, it is a lot more interlaced in history than people want to imagine. Host there is the technical definition but then there is also the meaning that has become attached to the word mercenary. Just the idea of profiting from blood shed and that sort of thing. How do you respond to that . Guest i will handle it the same way i have a quote on the wall in my basement. In the earlier 70s there was a congressional hearing and a debate between general westmoreland and friedman and this was at the time the u. S. Is transitioning from a draft army to a volunteer army. And he was complaining he didnt want to lead an army of mercenaries. That is what he called the military. The army of mercenaries to be paid a competitive wage for doing what they did. And the response was if you leave the army of mercenaries than i am served by a lawyer and a butcher and the mercenary barbour and the was the last the general spoke of mercenaries. So you are either doing something because you are paid and compensated or not and if youre doing it because you are coerced or not free then you are a sleeve so the idea of them getting paid an outrageous wage beyond the military gets paid, we did plenty of apples to apples comparison and so did the gao. The daily wage sparks peoples interest that they think they get paid so much more and that is just not accurate because typically they get paid every day they are in the hot zone but then when they leave it goes to zero and when you compare the soldier whose compensation in a war zone and all the other benefits, insurance, health care and retirement benefits, the compensation really equals out even if it isnt the same on the cash by cash basis. So they dont appreciate all of those other Legacy Benefits they get leader in life. What were they making on average . I would say the peak would be about a 600 to it also in comparison for that, that work day is probably going 14 to 16 hours for the other eight hours a day that you could be more rocketed or whatever. So you are literally in the hot zone every day. It was fascinating to read the way that he would have to transport people across the town. So you would have the humvees and the armored suvs and the helicopters overhead and then it occurred to me as i read that was that not over till . Was there a concern on your part or anyone else if anything we are attracting attention to him as opposed to even in trying to sort of blending. I address that in the new book as well. The challenge when the company worked for the state department really became a forced provider meaning operating in the thousand page contract is the kind of experience, the training, the evaluations and all of the things that we shall and shall not do and then we sent over the location and if they choose his routes and methods and the techniques and procedures and the rules of engagement. They ran that mission. When we ran the mission by ourselves if we were hired by a small ngo, we would get to pick and then we would use an Armored Vehicle albeit a beat up looking vehicle. I remember buying a bunch of the Lincoln Continental farmer and then destroying the paint jobs and painting them to look like to beat up taxis because the was the preferred method to be very low profile because it was hard to kill if they cant see. But im sure there are some deer hunters here but if you where do you want to send up the infrastructure of the trail and when the state department had youve run every day backandforth to the same ministries with the same than you and the same routes with vehicles and lights and sirens flashing their driving aggressively and it was one of the only tactics remaining. You know, just to characterize the did more than 100,000 movements in iraq and afghanistan, diplomats, ambassadors, reconstruction officials, members of congress and even senator obama. No one was ever killed or injured so the Diplomatic Security does matter. You know, the u. S. Ambassador other than in benghazi. Its not good when someone that represents the president of the United States gets killed and im sad to say if we hadnt been in benghazi then ambassador stevens would still be alive. Speaking of the losses and protection, blackwater itself experienced some enormous losses starting with fallujah as you pointed out just a moment ago. 41 of the men were killed during the job and these are just the kind of people that were retire year veterans that already served america in the military and Law Enforcement and they were hired for that experience and they went back to work again and volunteered again to go and serve. We as a volunteer organization we cant stop loss or make them go on a mission if they volunteer every day. So they have to make sure that they are paid on time, their families could be taken care of. We had to treat them as the great assets that they were. What was going on for you internally when you got that call that morning . It was obviously sickening. Id been in that area just three weeks before. I had been in the same vehicle right outside. I knew a couple of them and it was the first time that i ever lost anyone in my command per say either military or a contractor. That was about 2004 . It is where four of your men were attacked and brutally killed. They were moving Kitchen Equipment of all things through the outskirts and we havent to go through the downtown and they were led into an ambush by some of the bad iraqi police and was a madefortv ambush. The video taped it and i think they are trying to do a repeat of the 1993 black hawk down atrocities committed against the americans over there to try to scare off the americans. They were in on pacified areas and the forces had never even ruled through their and was kind of a main area of the families and soldiers of the iraqi public guard said they were in the regime and very hostile to the estimate and then came the square a few years later and at that point blackwater took a lot of heat for what happened. There were civilians that were killed in that exchange. What happened there and was that the beginning of the end in a sense . Its unfortunate the media tries to paint the whole organization of one incident and i will just give you a color of the whole event. That was and 2006 and 07 were violent times in iraq and the daily combat industries all over the entire country and really baghdad was the center of gravity for the insurgency. They were trying to put u. S. Forces out in the outpost and engage in the compact. One of the helicopters were shot down and two of the roadside bomb attacks that would slice through the metal through the armor and another small arms and bush. So that morning start with a big car bomb that went off and we had a u. S. Ebit senior official at a meeting and again to include one of those Traffic Circles one of those intersections a support team was sent to block traffic to make it possible for the team to move through quickly. While the team was there, 80 hickel wouldnt stop and didnt respond to the use of the force and the flashing lights and the sirens and even throwing Water Bottles and warning shots and lethal force was used in a firefight ensued and firefighter actually cut one of the vehicles that must cut the fbi actually recovered the ground and of course the modern electronic engine no radiator flew with laurentian said they were delayed and the Traffic Circle so they were doing the job that day on the u. S. Military veterans and many of them in the same theater. They served well and many of them had been decorated. Its sad to see if the had been on active duty and this kind of incident happened it wouldnt have been an issue. Is it possible civilian lives were lost that day . He had prosecuted saddam hussein. He was hired to go and meet with each of the families to handle the payments, the condolence payments under direction of the state d. , and when some of those people sought medical care and the bullets were educate tracted, it was found they came from from an ak, not from a u. S. Pep weapon. Be u. S. Weapon. And i just want to, you know, parallel that to an event you may not be aware of. October 3 in washington, d. C. This year, there was a 34yearold woman driving her car, and she got into a bit of a traffic altercation outside this year there was a 34yearold woman driving the car. She had gotten to a traffic altercation outside a building in the secret Service Secret Service opened fire on her. She was gunned down by the Capitol Hill Police and the baby was in the car. She had no weapons. She had no car bomb, she was just a woman having a bad day driving. No media outcry. The Security Officials got a standing ovation in the house of representatives. So i cant even imagine the human cry that would have happened if the contractors are doing the job and living in a form to employees of the government. I just want to draw the comparison there. As these guys are still being prosecuted now for the third time the Justice Department is going after them in a federal judge has turned it over once vigorously for prosecutorial misconduct so its up political prosecution at this point. So you still have several guys looking at it. So mother guys are very capable Legal Defense and im confident when all the evidence comes out they will again walk free but six years now after the event is contradictory to a speedy trial with constitutional promises. What was that like for you is the head of the company to know that civilians died at the hands as far as determined some of them at the hand of like water employees . Doing 100,000 missions in a war zone and having people and i also want to remind you that in the state department when you are doing that mission they log and record any firings, any discharge of a weapon and less than 1 2 of 1 of all those missions results in the discharge of firearms. Look, this is a very difficult and dangerous business and we know that. 41 of our men were killed doing the job and hundreds more wounded. Any innocent civilian is always a tragedy and the men tried desperately to avoid that but when there are people trying to kill you every day it is an unfortunate, given no that happens. Just like it happens to military, there are friendly fire with Collateral Damage and even talking about it Drone Program or closed for support, i feel you know one of my great satisfying moments i used to run the Afghan Border police and we would train these guys for eight weeks. You know, probably only a 30 Literacy Rate so we would have these guys for eight weeks and at that time we had to change the course to do intro to toilet use because they had never seen a flush toilet before. For eight weeks the lights worked. There was fuel for the vehicles. There was a batteries for the radio. The instructors knew what they were talking about. I would say we are happy to help train you because you have been suffering in the war for 30 years and enough is enough and we are it to be part of that solution trying to help you live a peaceful life rather in iraq or afghanistan. Was set and put incident that ultimately led to the expulsion of lack water a few years later . Correct. Was that the point at which he began to say i dont know if i want to continue to do this . No, it wasnt even that so much. It was the constant political haranguing and the bureaucratic inquisition. I would describe it as it listed of subpoenas from every agency directed by some members of Congress Just out to get you. When you have gone through your fifth audit from the irs and the irs comes to your arm and sits with my longtime and troutman and says man i have been doing this for 25 years but ive never been under so much pressure. It just doesnt seem like a business worth pursuing anymore. Before we go to our audience questions just a couple of things because i did say it wanted to come back to innovation. You talked in your book erik about spending 100 million on things that didnt go anywhere and you talked about the Armored Vehicle that blackwater was working on. There was a blimp at one point that was created and some other things and im wondering for those in our audience who are Business People themselves, who might be thinking gee i would love to be able to have some failures like that but the luxury i cant can afford. We know that allowing some room for failure is important. What would you say to that manager or the person who says i would love to be able to try some things but i just cant afford it . Well, you know blackwater started as a Training Area and the crew and i appreciated one of the complements i guess one of the employees gave me one time. I was giving a tour and he said we have grown. Like the good hockey player erik tries to anticipate where the puck is going to be. We have the facility and they built the track before we did any Security Work and we built an airfield and the air wing groove so trying to anticipate what they need was going to be, we started using Armored Vehicles ourselves. I remember after our guys were murdered in fallujah in the big attack in hud joff my joff i said enough is enough, we need armor so i contacted the audience mind who had the largest hummer vehicle collection in america. I said i need armor, where do i go . I flight to the u. K. And go to the military surplus yard and i say i will take that one and that one and that one and they were 10 grand teas. I could buy 13 of them for the cost of one armored spread and we put our beer can do is on the top and ship them to iraq and the guys whos been there. I knew how to build vehicles for my past life and our guys knew what we needed so we started building vehicles and we competed and put our vehicles and process. It was blown up and tested and they could still drive it away after was loan up but the decision was after the square tragedy and of course all things blackwater were terrible plan and so we were not selected. Its a good lesson albeit a painful lesson in selling anything to the dod that they are capable of making a marriage based decision. There was way too much politics involved and if i was announced for new or i wouldnt spend a dime on that kind of innovation anymore because you are really exposing yourself greatly. Would you do it again . I dont know. Someone asked me that on the radio yesterday and i said, you know if another 9 11 happens in people you trust in the government came to you in said erik we need your help, i dont know, once bitten twice shy. I know i wouldnt work for the state department. Thats another thing from a business perspective i learned a lesson that sometimes you have to say no and really dig your heels in with your customer. We have asked for cameras to be in our vehicles just like the dashboard cam like a Police Officer has and to do that to protect the citizens to protect the cop and to protect the police department. We asked for them and they denied them. We asked for them in our own vehicles for the ngos that we were barred from the state department. If i had done that to the point of saying there is a labor stoppage and we are not doing another mission until we get these cameras we would be good to go moving forward and we would not have been politically eviscerated like we were. Lets given our audience an opportunity to ask questions. We have folks with microphones who will come to you so yes sir right here. Thanks very much. A question for the guardian newspaper. Can you clarify when you mention the ak47 rounds he said blackwater wasnt responsible and secondly as a former intelligence or however you want to put a contractor employee operative etc. What you think about the nsas bold surveillance programs . The first part is look anytime any time innocent civilians are injured or killed its a tragedy. My point is the use of i believe the guys used the use of force dictum dictated and sometimes motors do irrational things to your car and when you do an irrational thing to your car in a city that is literally a combat zone where minutes before a car bomb went off people could make decisions that in hindsight you could look at and say it wasnt necessary, just like those secret Service Officers and Capitol Hill Police probably regret gunning down that 34yearold woman with a baby in the back of her car. Second gnome nsa stuff. I believe there are significant overreach by the nsa and how we monitor american citizens and collect data and i think its a duplicitous and so the media. James clapper is the dni now under Congress Andy already did this was asked if the nsa collecting on the American People and he said no and a few weeks later snowden comes out with documents that proved that they are. If that happened in the bush of administration they would have been screaming for his impeachment by now but you havent heard that much in the media or from the left. I think its important to not trade we as americans especially in philadelphia in the capital of american liberty lets stop trading freedom for the illusion of security because we are never going to live in a country thats absolutely free of risk and we keep saying to the government yes we trust you and keep collecting and every time an incident happens liberty roads a little bit more and its time to reevaluate some of those policies. Another question. Yes, maam. We will pass it down. It seems that we are facing a significant threat from bioterrorists with this whole field of synthetic biotechnology advancing and al qaeda calling for new recruits of microbiologists and genetic engineers. Do you have any thoughts on how we might protect ourselves from this new threat . Look, the lone wolf terrorist threat is probably the greatest one and one that you can never fully protect from. I think the best way to go after terrorism is to still go after their networks and to hunt them where they are and its not just going after the shooter or the scientist that going after their logistics guy, the documents guy, their money guy, all the things you need to do to make a network work. If you take out one of them just like you can take up out the cfo out of the business is certainly rocks your business or your purchasing guy or your shipping guys so there are lots of lakes to klafter but going after them wherever they are and denying them sanctuary. And you know that doesnt mean just going after them with drums because drones are a great tool but be very judicious in their use particularly in countries like yemen and pakistan they take it very seriously and when you kill their cousin or an innocent Family Member of theirs they can come after you for the next 100 years. Other questions . Yes, maam. You talked about sorry. You talked about how when you were in the situations that you never lost a client so when our diplomats were in these war zones did you ever get the government to come back and thank you for never losing of our diplomats or the great work that you did for the government or was it is just you are paid for your contract work and that was good enough . There might be an individual thank you from one of them in a note or an email to one of our guys but never thank you. Oddly enough the only time there is any state department mention of a thank you that appeared in any of the publications was again two weeks after Nisoor Square approximately the polish ambassador to iraq was ambushed and some of his guards were severely injured and even killed he was severely earned 30 to 40 of his body. They called for military medevac they couldnt get in there so they asked if our guys could do it. They landed the little bird next to the small car and evacuated him from a bad situation and he later gave a polish military medal to the equivalent of the silver star and a bronze star to some of the people with ambassador crocker and general petraeus and that was a thank you from the polish ambassador, not from the u. S. State department. Yes, sir. Erik first of all thank you for your service to our country. My question is this. Should we have been in iraq to begin with . Well you know, but me back into that one and i can say now that iraq was lost. We have lost it completely to iranian influence. They did kind of like what they did in lebanon in the sense that they rebuilt militias into a powerful force and the real miss by the administration was in the last election there alawi won the election and his party, won a slim majority of the votes but almaliki through political blocking and a lot of ire armenian influence maintained his post as the Prime Minister so that is why you talk about disenfranchised voters that is why you are seeing so much violence there. They say hey we voted. This guy has squeezed us out and we are now floating with car bombs so that is why this set aryans close there. Look, im not a policy guy. Im a bottomsup practical guide i understand why the mentality of going into iraq happened. When you have a terror cell to knock down buildings in new york and attacked the pentagon and pull off that kind of attack its a cost of 5000. Thats what the 9 11 attacks cost and now we have been a shin state that has proven to use chemical and biological weapons on some people and is still pursuing bigger weapons of mass destruction. I understand that mentality to go into that country. So this hindsight is 2020. I am becoming a bigger and bigger advocate of covert action and hindsight may be more vigorous co covert action to overthrow saddam and put another in the sad thing is america didnt have an ally or decent iraqi forces and let it slip away after all that blood, toil and treasure let it slip away from say diplomatic indifference. The gentleman in the back there. Erik thank you for coming to talk with us. Benghazi, i know you werent involved and your company was not involved but what was not done properly from a security perspective and what shouldve been done . The beginning, the middle or the end . To start with they depended on basically a local mission a company that hired local libyans unfettered, untrained and even illequipped. There is evidence to believe that some of those alerted people in authority pending the attack that when the attack actually came they fled. Second, the Government Employees and security agents that were there were not adequate in manning equipment or fowler to defend that kind of an attack and third the response to the attack was even worse. You know the nx which was a short distance away, they denied the two contractors who eventually went to ceo contractors told them not to go and thank goodness they did violate those orders and went to the nx, went to the consulate and evacuated another 28 americans. That mob came to kill as many people as they could. Not just the ambassador and not just the i. T. Guy that was killed. They came to kill as many as they could in and those two guys with great valor move to the center of gunfire into the same tradition we try to keep the company wanting to sound the alarm bell. So they evacuated and later that night that nx started taking a lot of fire. The very professional mortar team which i believe to be Quds Force Iran to Armenian Special force with three or four rounds of mortar. You dont do that that takes some skill m. Beyond that the u. S. Military spent millions of dollars buying combat aircraft. Why . Because we go after our pilots if they are shot down because you dont leave anybody behind as a country. Well, we left them behind. There were special forces training just north of there in croatia on a c130, about 50 guys locked and loaded weapons equipment and everything they needed to get it done and they would turn around. The mentality that we were in the company with one of my proudest moments was when the colonel came up to me and he said he had just come back from the brigade command in baghdad. They knew if things went bad blackwater guys would come with no excuses. America didnt do that night and i think we should be ashamed about that. More questions . Yes, maam. Hi. Thank you for being here. Im wondering if you could comment a little bit on what the difference between ctm claim st