“It’s pretty much destroyed my life,” Helvenston said. “I haven’t known one moment of joy since Scotty was slaughtered. I think the worst party is the betrayal from my country. I feel so betrayed.”

Insurgents killed the four contractors, then mutilated the bodies, dragged the charred remains through the streets and hung two of the corpses from a bridge. Images from the scene were relayed around the world, and the event triggered a massive U.S. military siege known as the Battle of Fallujah.

Survivors of the contractors contend Blackwater failed to prepare the men for their mission and didn’t provide them with appropriate equipment, such as a map. Helvenston, Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Michael Teague were sent in Mitsubishi SUVs to guard a supply convoy. Their survivors argued they should have been given armored vehicles.

A congressional investigation concurred with that view, calling Blackwater an “unprepared and disorderly” organization on the day of the ambush.

Blackwater, however, argued that the men were betrayed by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and targeted in a well-planned ambush. The company said the result of the ambush likely would have been the same even if they had stronger weapons, armored vehicles, maps or even more men.

Following a 2007 shooting in Baghdad, Blackwater changed its management, name and eventually its ownership. USTC Holdings, an investment firm with ties to founder Erik Prince, acquired the company that’s now called Xe Services in December. The deal includes its training facility in Moyock, N.C.

Daniel Callahan, an attorney representing the survivors, said they plan to appeal the ruling. Helvenston said she doesn’t expect success from further appeals.

An attorney for Xe didn’t immediately repond to requests seeking comment.

Prince’s name has surfaced in the Somalia conflict amid the debate over how private security forces should be used in some of the world’s most dangerous spots. Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, became a symbol in Washington of contractors run amok after a series of incidents, including one in 2007 in which its guards were charged with killing 14 civilians in the Iraqi capital.

Though Somali pirates have seized ships flying under various flags, most governments are reluctant to send ground troops to wipe out pirate havens in a nation that has been in near-anarchy for two decades and whose weak U.N.-backed administration is confined to a few neighborhoods of the capital. The forces now being trained are intended to help fill that void. They will also go after a warlord linked to Islamist insurgents, one official said.

In response to requests for an interview with Prince, his spokesman e-mailed a brief statement that the Blackwater founder is interested in “helping Somalia overcome the scourge of piracy” and has advised antipiracy efforts. Spokesman Mark Corallo said Prince has “no financial role” in the project and declined to answer any questions about Prince’s involvement.

Prince’s role revives questions about the use of military contractors. Critics say it could undercut the international community’s effort to train and fund Somali forces to fight al-Qaida-linked Islamist insurgents.

The European Union is training about 2,000 Somali soldiers with U.S. support, and an African Union force of 8,000 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers is propping up the government.

By introducing contractors, “You could see the privatization of war, with very little accountability to the international community,” said E.J. Hogendoorn, a Nairobi-based analyst with the International Crisis Group think tank. “Who are these private companies accountable to and what prevents them from changing clients when it’s convenient for them?”

Although Hogendoorn’s concerns are shared by some U.S. officials, the director of one private security company welcomed the effort and Prince’s involvement.

“There are 34 nations with naval assets trying to stop piracy and it can only be stopped on land,” said John Burnett, director of Maritime Underwater Security Consultants. “With Prince’s background and rather illustrious reputation, I think it’s quite possible that it might work.”

Prince, now based in the United Arab Emirates, is no longer with Blackwater. He has stoutly defended the company, telling Vanity Fair magazine that “when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.”

Last month, the AP reported that the Somalia project encompassed training a 1,000-man antipiracy force in Somalia’s northern semiautonomous region of Puntland and presidential guards in Mogadishu, the ruined seaside capital. The story identified Saracen International, a private security company, as being involved, along with a former U.S. ambassador, Pierre Prosper; a senior ex-CIA officer, Michael Shanklin; and an unidentified Muslim donor nation. Prosper and Shanklin confirmed they were working as advisers to the Somali government.

Since then, AP has learned from officials and documents that Prince is involved and that a second 1,000-man antipiracy force is planned for Mogadishu, where insurgents battle poorly equipped government forces.

Lafras Luitingh, the chief operating officer of Beirut-registered Saracen International, said the company had sought to keep the project secret to surprise the pirates. He said his company signed a contract with the Somali government in March. He declined to say whether Prince was involved in the project and said he was not part of Saracen.

Since the signing, a new Somali government has taken office and has appointed a panel to investigate the Saracen deal and others, said Minister of Information Abdulkareem Jama. He said he had not been aware of Prince’s involvement. Separately, the U.N. is quietly investigating whether the Somalia projects have broken the blanket embargo on arms supplies to Somali factions.

The money is moving through a web of international companies, the addresses of which didn’t always check out when the AP sought to verify them.

There are at least three Saracens — the one registered in Lebanon, and two run by Luitingh’s business partner and based in Uganda, where government office employees told the AP the registration papers have disappeared. An AP reporter in Beirut could not find the address Luitingh’s company provided in the Somali contract. Lebanese authorities had no address listed for Saracen in Lebanon and said it is based in the United Arab Emirates.

Afloat Leasing, which owns two ships that have been working with Saracen, said it was Liberian-registered, but an AP reporter didn’t find it at the address given or in Liberian records.

The force’s mission may be more than just curbing piracy.

A former U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to talk to the media, said that besides targeting pirates, the new force in Puntland will go after a warlord who allegedly supplies weapons to al-Shabab, Somalia’s most feared insurgent group. Luitingh said he had never heard of such a plan.

Luitingh was a founding member of Executive Outcomes, a controversial South African mercenary outfit linked in the 1990s to conflicts in Sierra Leone, Angola and as far away as Papua New Guinea.

He said Saracen will ensure it does not recruit child soldiers, will pay recruits regularly, and will be legally answerable to the Somali government. One group of 150 recruits finished training in November in Puntland and a second batch will soon complete the training course there. Training has not yet begun in Mogadishu.

Saracen has declined to disclose the source of its financing. A person familiar with the project, insisting on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said Prince is overseeing the antipiracy training.

The intelligence report, in which the United Arab Emirates was identified as a funder and Prince as a participant, was given to the AP on condition its author and agency not be disclosed because the document was confidential. Several Western security officials said in interviews that those findings were trustworthy.

Pirates use long stretches of Somali coastline as a base to prey on busy shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Al-Shabab controls most of south and central Somalia and much of Mogadishu. Western governments fear Somalia could be used as a base for attacks on the West.

Some American officials worry that the Saracen projects encourage the idea that more guns and money — rather than better governance and transparent defense training — can defeat the insurgency. The Somali army has been weakened by defections because a series of corrupt administrations has been incapable of paying its soldiers.

The Somalis being trained by the European Union are supposed to earn $100 a month. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, said Saracen is offering $300 a month during training and $500 a month after graduation.

That could lure the best trained people away from the Somali army, the U.S. official said, and lessen the burden on the government to follow higher standards.

Many nations, including the Gulf states, have offered Somalia assistance. Several Arab nations who gave cash then found that the money could not be accounted for, said Hogendoorn, the Somalia analyst. That could be one reason for Arab rulers to support the Saracen project, he said.

——

AP writers Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Godfrey Olukya in Kampala, Uganda; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Juan Zamorano in Panama City, Panama; Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia; and Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman in Washington contributed to this report.

The company won the contract under one of its many alternate names, “International Development Solutions.” The contract is to protect embassies around the world.

It’s worth repeating that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her presidential campaign, promised to ban Blackwater from Iraq, going so far as to say:

For five years their behavior and lack of supervision and accountability have often eroded our credibility, endangered U.S. and Iraqi lives and undermined our mission.

Obama never made a similar promise.

This new State contract is hardly the first time Blackwater will be working for the Obama Administration. According to various reports, the company has been awarded an $100 million contract for the CIA in Afghanistan, another State contract to protect consulates in Afghanistan, and a Defense Department contract to do training and even “drug interdiction” work in Afghanistan.

So in case it wasn’t already obvious, it’s now safe to say Blackwater has been embraced by both Democrats and Republicans and will play a major role in U.S. foreign policy for years to come.