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As the military shrunk, its tasks grew: the first Persian Gulf War, then Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. In each conflict, the U.S. military used more contract employees to do jobs once given to soldiers.

It wasn't just age-old tasks such as cooking meals and cleaning latrines, but fulfilling the technological needs of the modern military. Private contractors fix helicopters, run computers and maintain high-tech systems such as Patriot missiles and radar networks.

A business that barely existed at the end of the Cold War was on its way to becoming a $100-billion-a-year industry.

Education in politics

Prince didn't focus just on economics while in college. A series of internships showed him how politics worked in the nation's capital.

He was one of the first interns at the Family Research Council in Washington. He worked as a defense analyst on the staff of U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican from Orange County, Calif. And he interned in the White House of President George H.W. Bush, father of current President George W. Bush. In 1992, he campaigned for Patrick Buchanan.

"I interned with the Bush administration for six months," Prince told The Grand Rapids Press in early 1992. "I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with -- homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns."

Back at school, Prince volunteered on a more humble scale: He was the first college student to join the Hillsdale Volunteer Fire Department. He'd be sitting in class when his radio crackled. As amused classmates looked on, he'd dash out.

"When you've been on a fire an hour and a half and the crowd's gone, some of the guys want to sit on bumpers and have a soft drink," said Kevin Pauken, one of the squad's full-timers. "Other guys will be rolling hoses and picking up equipment so you can get out of there. That was Erik."

In 1992, Prince enlisted in the Navy, was commissioned as an officer, and the next year joined the SEALs, who get their acronym from the attack routes of sea, air and land. He spent four years with Seal Team 8 in Norfolk, Va.

"Prince was a first-class SEAL, he was the real deal," said Messing, the retired Special Forces officer.

Prince left the SEALs in 1996. His father had died the previous year, and Erik took over the family business. About this time, his wife, Joan, was diagnosed with cancer (she died in 2003 at 36). Also in 1996, the Prince family sold its automotive business to S.C. Johnson Controls for $1.35 billion in cash. Prince headed the Prince Group, which held several nonautomotive factories and the company that developed downtown Holland.

Prince took up a variety of causes. He sits on several boards, including Christian Solidarity International, a human rights organization, and the Institute of World Politics, a fledgling foreign relations school in Washington that teaches would-be diplomats from a Judeo-Christian perspective. And he has continued to open his checkbook to the Republican Party and conservative candidates, contributing at least $151,250 since 1989.

He shuns reporters and declined, through a spokesman, to be interviewed for this story. Photos of him are hard to find.

Opportunity knocks

Prince has been equally secretive about his biggest venture since the SEALs: At 27, he founded Blackwater USA, buying an expanse of farmland in Camden and Currituck counties. He saw an opportunity as the shrinking military closed some of its own training centers, and he wanted to build the SEALs a good one just a short drive from the unit's East Coast base at Little Creek, Va.

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