Erik D. Prince, founder of private security firm Xe Services — formerly Blackwater Worldwide — has reached a deal to sell his company to a small group of investors in California. Blackwater became the center of a debate about using private security firms in foreign wars after an alleged skirmish between insurgents and Blackwater personnel in 2007 left 17 Iraqi civilians dead. In the wake of the controversy, the company lost a large State Department contract to protect the U.S. embassy in Iraq, but formed over 30 separate "shell companies" in order to continue to receive millions of dollars in other government contracts. What's next for the private security firm? 

A spokesman for Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said that he's demanding that all private security contractors disband in four months. Karzai has said that these companies undermine government security forces, however, it isn't clear that the country would remain secure without them. For more, we're joined by Allison Stanger, author of "One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy." She says that these contractors are "absolutely instrumental to our mission there."

Since September 11^th, the intelligence community has handed off many of its responsibilities to private contractors. The private intelligence industry has grown, and been paid billions by the government despite a culture of waste and mismanagement. Because the intelligence community and contractors now share many similar responsibilities, the line distinguishing the two is blurry.

You might call military contractors the absent presence in President Obama’s Tuesday speech announcing his new strategy in Afghanistan. There are currently 104,000 military contractors supporting the American mission there, and those numbers will grow as more troops deploy. Contractors serve meals, deliver munitions, run security for the U.S. Ambassador in Kabul, and help train Afghan police units... and according to an article in Vanity Fair this week, Erik Prince, CEO of Xe – the company formerly known as Blackwater – was involved in assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaida members.  Robert Young Pelton, author of "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror," and Allison Stanger, author of "One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy" join us to discuss how much contractors cost the U.S., and how accountable they are to the government who hired them.