Fighting the progs: Waller and a colleague explain why, as college students, they joined up with the Nicaraguan Contras

After more than 35 years, the Center for Security Policy‘s J. Michael Waller spoke publicly about why he joined up with the Nicaraguan Contras in 1984. The Center for Security Policy’s Senior Analyst for Strategy and Michael Johns were college students at the time, editors of their respective newspapers at the George Washington University and … Read more

Private ships of war

by J Michael Waller, Serviam, January 2, 2009. Privately owned warships are so deeply at the heart of American maritime tradition that a reference to them is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. With their own contract crews who rushed to the fight for independence during the American Revolution and in defense of the nation during … Read more

The first Thanksgiving – Brought to you by a private military contractor

by J Michael Waller / Serviam / November 15, 2008. When American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, private security and military contractors will have guarded the convoys bringing the turkey and gravy. If not for the private security contractor (PSC) business, there would have been no Thanksgiving at all. For it was … Read more

Private security contractors in America: 400 years and counting

by J. Michael Waller / Serviam / September-October 2007. The soldier-turned-private-contractor arrived in Virginia in shackles and leg irons. A war hero who fought an Islamic army, he had left the military with a sense of mission and adventure. Now he was part of a private, government-chartered company to lead security operations in an inhospitable part of … Read more