Blackwater CEO on being CIA Assassin, Navy SEALs & Most Corrupt Politicians | Erik Prince • 305
Julian Dorey · 27 May 2025 · 2h 49m
Guest: Erik Prince · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
This conversation traces the personal and professional history of the Blackwater founder, moving from his upbringing in Michigan under a self-made industrialist father, through his time at the Naval Academy and as a Navy SEAL, to founding a private military training company in the Great Dismal Swamp in 1997. He describes how contracts with the Navy and later the CIA and State Department expanded rapidly after the USS Cole bombing and September 11, and walks through disputes over how Afghanistan and Iraq were fought, arguing that Pentagon bureaucracy, lawyers, and conventional-force thinking wasted money and lives compared to leaner, contractor-driven or CIA-run approaches. He revisits the Nisour Square shooting in Baghdad in detail, defending his former employees as having followed rules of engagement despite a tragic outcome, and describes their eventual pardon under Trump. He also discusses being outed as a CIA asset by a former CIA director, his counter-piracy work off Somalia, years living in the UAE, a bike trip across China, and his views on Chinese-manufactured fentanyl, Mexican cartels, and immigration policy. Toward the end he offers a detailed account of a proposed but rejected plan to flood Hamas's tunnel network in Gaza using Texas drilling technology, along with broader criticism of Israeli tactics and of AIPAC's influence in Washington. Throughout, he frames much of his career as running up against, and being punished by, an entrenched government bureaucracy.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Childhood, father's business, early travel
- Naval Academy, SEAL training, and Hillsdale College
- Founding Blackwater in the Great Dismal Swamp
- 9/11, Afghanistan contacts, and rapid growth
- Critique of Pentagon strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq
- CIA knock program and being outed by Leon Panetta
- Nisour Square shooting and aftermath
- Somalia counter-piracy project and life in UAE
- China, fentanyl, and cartel policy
- Gaza tunnel-flooding proposal and Israel critique
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“All the [ __ ] after Nisser Square where they make you toxic and unbankable.”
“I'm not the first patriot to have been screwed by the US government and certainly won't be the last.”
“You can vote your way in and shoot your way out.”
“Kartthagio dende est. Carthage must be destroyed.”
“Well, last year I had to drill from one side of the Mississippi River to the other, and the boys and I had a bet, and so I was aiming for a steak in the ground, and I hit the steak. Is that good enough for you?”