U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, was evacuated last week from the Central African nation of Niger, where he was stranded during a coup, by a military contractor the outspoken congressman has railed against in the past.

Grayson was on a House Committee on Science and Technology tour last Thursday when a military coup closed the airport in Niger and then took over the government, violently entering buildings close to the U.S. Embassy compound where he was staying.

Grayson and others on his tour were evacuated from the embassy the next day aboard a helicopter owned by a subsidiary of Xe Services LLC. That company emerged from Blackwater USA after the controversial contractor reorganized following investigations into its international activities, including killing civilians in Iraq.

Grayson was not harmed, nor was anyone else on the trip, though they were close enough to the coup to hear shots fired, said Grayson's spokesman Todd Jurkowski.

Jurkowski initially said that Grayson did not know who owned the helicopter. But after a Xe executive boasted at a congressional hearing Wednesday that the company had recently evacuated a U.S. congressman from Niger, the Grayson camp checked and confirmed it was Xe helicopter, Jurkowski said.

The helicopter flew Grayson and others to the neighboring country of Burkina Faso.

Grayson has been an outspoken critic of private contractors working for the Pentagon; as a private attorney before going to Congress, he sued several for allegedly defrauding the government. As recently as January, he villified Blackwater during a fervent attack on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that loosened campaign finance laws for corporations.

"We can't let, basically, Blackwater take over the entire government," he said then.

"It's highly ironic," said Andy Seré, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "This is someone who essentially ran his campaign in 2008 against government contractors, and it's just too funny that he relied on one to save his life."

Jurkowski dismissed Sere's comments.

"The congressman does not deny that there is admirable work being done by some employees of private contractors," Jurkowski said. "However, he stands by his criticism of companies who have been found to cheat the American people, defraud our government, and unnecessarily risk the lives of members of our military, all in the name of making a profit."