The Company Formerly Known As Blackwater is now officially the Company Formerly Known As Xe Which Was The Company Formerly Known As Blackwater.
Xe has officially changed its name to Academi. CEO Ted Wright told The Wall Street Journal that he wanted to make the company more boring. Blackwater was frequently in the headlines for events like the 2007 shooting in Baghdad that left 17 dead; the 2004 ambush in Fallujah that left four Blackwater contractors dead and sparked a bloody invasion of the Iraqi city; the indictment of five Blackwater officials on federal weapons charges; and the 2004 airplane crash in Afghanistan that killed three U.S. soldiers.
Joe Neff came to The N&O in 1992 and has covered prisons, police, courts and the legislature. His most recent major work was "Agents' Secrets," a four-part series about problems in the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation. He can be reached at 
