Last month a three-year-long federal prosecution of Blackwater collapsed. The government's 15-felony indictment-on such charges as conspiring to hide purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives-could have led to years of jail time for Blackwater personnel. In the end, however, the government got only misdemeanor guilty pleas by two former executives, each of whom were sentenced to four months of house arrest, three years' probation, and a fine of $5,000. Prosecutors dropped charges against three other executives named in the suit and abandoned the felony charges altogether. But the most noteworthy thing about the largely failed prosecution wasn't the outcome. It was the tens of thousands of pages of documents-some declassified-that the litigation left in its wake. These documents illuminate Blackwater's defense strategy: to defeat the charges it was facing, Blackwater built a case not only that it worked with the CIA-which was already widely known-but that it was in many ways an extension of the agency itself. [CEO Erik] Prince [said] recently, Blackwater's work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked. In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house."