February 13, 2009: Blackwater Announces Name Change

The private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide announces that it is changing its name to Xe. In addition, other business units within the group are to change their names. Blackwater Airships, which offers surveillance services for intelligence gathering, becomes Guardian Flight Systems. Blackwater Target Systems, the unit that develops and builds targets, is now known as GSD Manufacturing. The best-known part of the business—Blackwater Lodge and Training Center—will now be called US Training Center. Spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell says the company spent over a year searching for a new name before choosing Xe, which is pronounced “zee.” According to Tyrrell, the idea behind the name change is “to define the company as what it is today and not what it used to be,” because, “We’ve taken the company to a place where it is no longer accurately described as Blackwater.” She adds that the new name has no meaning. “It was just a choice of a name,” she says. “We thought of it internally.” Xe is also the chemical symbol for the element xenon. In addition, company executives also take on new positions. For example, Gary Jackson, longtime president of Blackwater Lodge and Training, now becomes president of Xe. The name change follows a series of problems the company has had in Iraq and Afghanistan (see, for example January 28, 2009). National security expert R. J. Hillhouse comments that the company is “obviously trying to distance itself from their image as reckless cowboys that’s etched into the world’s mind from [an incident where company employees shot several bystanders in Iraq].” With a new name, “there are a lot of people who probably won’t connect the dots,” she says. “In a year or two, people won’t remember that’s Blackwater.” [Washington Post, 2/14/2009]