ERIK PRINCE, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.
What began as an investigation into Prince’s attempts to sell defense services in Libya and other countries in Africa has widened to a probe of allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, is also seeking to uncover the precise nature of Prince’s relationship with Chinese intelligence.
Prince, through his lawyer, Victoria Toensing, said he has not been informed of a federal investigation and had not offered any defense services in Libya. Toensing called the money-laundering allegations “total bullshit.”
The Intercept interviewed more than a half dozen of Prince’s associates, including current and former business partners; four former U.S. intelligence officers; and other sources familiar with the Justice Department investigation. All of them requested anonymity to discuss these matters because there is an ongoing investigation. The Intercept also reviewed several secret proposals drafted by Prince and his closest advisers and partners offering paramilitary services to foreign entities.
For more than a year, U.S. intelligence has been monitoring Prince’s communications and movements, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence officer and a second former intelligence official briefed on the investigation. Multiple sources, including two people with business ties to Prince, told The Intercept that current government and intelligence personnel informed them of this surveillance. Those with business ties were cautioned to sever their dealings with Prince.
Photo: HKEJ
Erik Prince Sought to Recreate a Blackwater-Style Operation
In 2010, amid public scandals and government investigations, Prince began to sell off his Blackwater empire. Using new vehicles, he continued to engage in controversial private security ventures, including operations in Somalia and the United Arab Emirates. Eventually, the former Navy SEAL and self-proclaimed American patriot began building close business ties with powerful individuals connected to the Chinese Communist Party. In January 2014, Prince officially went into business with the Chinese government’s largest state-owned investment firm, the Citic Group, and founded Frontier Services Group, which is based in Hong Kong. Citic Group is the company’s single largest investor, and two of FSG’s board members are Chinese nationals.
Despite the provenance of FSG’s funding and Prince’s history of bad publicity, Prince was able to recruit an impressive line-up of former U.S. military and intelligence officers to run the company. Key to Prince’s ability to retain such personnel, given FSG’s ties to China, has been the firm’s strictly circumscribed mission, which does not include military-related services. FSG is a publicly traded aviation and logistics firm specializing in shipping in Africa and elsewhere. The company also conducts high-risk evacuations from conflict zones. Prince has described his work with FSG as being “on the side of peace and economic development” and helping Chinese businesses to work safely in Africa.
Behind the back of corporate leadership at FSG, Prince was living a double life.
But behind the back of corporate leadership at FSG, Prince was living a double life.
Working with a small cadre of loyalists — including a former South African commando, a former Australian air force pilot, and a lawyer with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Israel — Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept and interviews with several people familiar with Prince’s business proposals.
Several of the proposals for private security services in African nations examined by The Intercept contained metadata in the digital files showing Prince and his inner circle editing and revising various drafts.
Since 2014, Prince has traveled to at least half a dozen countries to offer various versions of a private military force, secretly meeting with a string of African officials. Among the countries where Prince pitched a plan to deploy paramilitary assets is Libya, which is currently subject to an array of U.S. and United Nations financial and defense restrictions.
Prince engaged in these activities over the objections of his own firm’s corporate leadership. Several FSG colleagues accused him of using his role as chairman to offer Blackwater-like services to foreign governments that could not have been provided by the company, which lacks the capacity, expertise, or even the legal authority to do so.
FSG’s CEO, Gregg Smith, a decorated former U.S. Marine who deployed twice to Beirut in the 1980s, vehemently denies the firm’s complicity in any such efforts by Prince. “FSG has no involvement whatsoever with the provision of — or even offering to provide — defense services in Libya,” Smith told The Intercept. “To the extent that anyone has proposed such services and purported that they were representing FSG, that activity is unauthorized and is not accepted or agreed to by the company.”
Smith said that any proposals advanced by Prince in Libya were not made on behalf of FSG, explaining that the company “has strict protocols in place and has a board-level committee to review any high-risk project, which would certainly include any proposal” involving Libya.
“He’s a rogue chairman,” said Prince’s close associate. “Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary.”
“He’s a rogue chairman,” said one of Prince’s close associates, who has monitored his attempts to sell mercenary forces in Africa.
That source, who has extensive knowledge of Prince’s activities and travel schedule, said that Prince was operating a “secret skunkworks program” while parading around war and crisis zones as FSG’s founder and chairman. “Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary,” said the source. “He’s off the rails exposing many U.S. citizens to criminal liabilities. Erik hides in the shadows … and uses [FSG] for legitimacy.”
Last October, FSG’s corporate leadership grew so concerned about Prince’s efforts to sell paramilitary programs and services that the board passed a series of resolutions stripping Prince of most of his responsibilities as chairman.
FSG also terminated the contracts of two of Prince’s closest associates within the company after management became suspicious that they were assisting Prince in his unapproved dealings, according to two people with knowledge of FSG’s inner workings. Smith declined to comment on internal FSG personnel matters.
In recent months, FSG employees became alarmed when they began to hear reports from sources within the U.S. government that their chairman’s communications and foreign travel were being monitored by U.S. intelligence. According to three people who have worked with Prince, his colleagues were warned not to get involved with his business deals or discuss sensitive issues with him. “I would assume that just about every intelligence agency in the world has him lit up on their screen,” said one of the people advised to avoid Prince.
A slide from a 2015 proposal for a private military force to help “support Libyan sovereign control.” Prince’s lawyer denies he has ever engaged in “anything regarding defense” in Libya.
Operation Lima: Prince Exploited Refugee Crisis to Peddle Paramilitary Services in Libya
Prince developed the paramilitary services proposal for Libyan officials in 2013, before FSG was created, according to documents and two people familiar with the pitch. He made several trips to Libya to meet with government officials there.
The Libyan proposal, reviewed by The Intercept, was code-named Operation Lima. It offered the Libyans an array of military equipment and services — including weaponized vehicles, helicopters, boats, and surveillance airplanes — to help stabilize eastern Libya. The ground force, according to a person involved with the plan, would consist of a troop of former Australian special operations commandos. Given the instability of the government and Prince’s inability to navigate complex Libyan factions to vet potential partners, he had trouble finding the right power brokers to help sell the proposal.
By May 2015, Prince had rebranded himself and claimed a legitimate public reputation as FSG’s chairman. Without the approval of FSG’s management, he returned to Libya offering a freshly repackaged proposal, according to a person involved with the plan. Rather than a counterinsurgency force, Prince proposed a similar set of equipment and services, but with a new justification: The mercenaries would be there to engage in border security.
Prince’s Libya proposal called for supplying “armed” vehicles, helicopters, boats, and surveillance planes to help stem the tide of migrants trying to reach Europe.
Prince told colleagues that he received preliminary approval for the border force from a senior Libyan official, but would need to secure European support to loosen up restrictions on Libyan money and weapons, which would otherwise impede the plan, according to a person who discussed the proposal with Prince.
By exploiting European fears of a mass exodus from the Middle East and North Africa, Prince believed he could obtain political buy-in from Europe to bring a foreign force into Libya.
Prince arranged a meeting in Germany to pitch the plan and also shared the proposal with the Italian government, according to two people familiar with his drive to drum up support for Operation Lima. In Italy, Prince found only lukewarm interest, according to a person with knowledge of the effort. The Intercept was unable to confirm the German response.
One slide from Prince’s Libya proposal stated that military trainers and surveillance planes would be provided by Frontier Services Group. Prince is FSG’s chairman, but the company’s CEO denies the company approved — or was even aware — of this proposal.
However, according to two people involved in the proposal, Prince grew frustrated with the failure to get European help in releasing the frozen Libyan funds, and began looking for other ways to get his border force funded.
By then, the U.S. government was already investigating Prince for possible weapons deals in Africa, according to the former senior U.S. intelligence official and the former intelligence official briefed on the matter. In the course of the surveillance operation for that investigation, U.S. intercepts revealed Prince appearing to discuss efforts to open bank accounts in China to help his Libyan associates.
“Money laundering for Libyan officials using a Chinese bank — that is the issue that pushed it over the edge” for the Justice Department, said the second former intelligence official.
The U.S. spies monitoring Prince soon discovered that he had traveled to the Chinese-controlled peninsula of Macau in an effort to open a bank account, according to two people familiar with the investigation. A well-connected source within the Macau banking community told The Intercept that Prince first attempted to open an account at the Macau branch of a European-connected bank, but was denied after a review by the bank’s European headquarters.
Later, Prince traveled to Beijing, where he met with Chinese agents from the Ministry of State Security, according to the second former intelligence official and a source familiar with the meeting.
In January, Prince returned to Macau and opened an account at the Bank of China, according to several sources, including the second former intelligence official and the source with close connections to Macau’s banking community.
“It was not a personal account,” said the former U.S. intelligence official briefed on the investigation. “He was doing it for the purpose of what is considered now — in the investigation — money laundering on behalf of the Libyans.”
“When he has legitimate business, he does legitimate business,” said Prince’s lawyer.
The CEO of FSG China is a former Chinese security official who was once described by a defense trade publication as “Prince’s right-hand man in China, oiling the wheels of his relationship with the government.”
“If Erik is fucking around with the Chinese, I don’t even want to imagine what the U.S. government is thinking about,” said Prince’s close associate with in-depth knowledge of his activities.
Toensing, Prince’s lawyer, confirmed that Prince successfully opened an account with the Bank of China. “He opened an account on behalf of a business,” she said. Toensing declined to say for which business he opened the account, but said that it complied with U.S. banking regulations. “This is not an FSG bank account,” a spokesperson for FSG told The Intercept.
As for Prince’s alleged meetings with Chinese intelligence, Toensing confirmed that Prince had met with internal security officials in Beijing, but claimed it was in connection to medical evacuation operations. Toensing was unable to answer allegations that Chinese intelligence assisted Prince in setting up a bank account in Macau because she could not reach Prince, whom she said was not in the United States. “What he told me about visiting China was that he was there selling his book and he’s given various speeches there,” she said.
While Prince’s re-invented Libya “border security” proposal was framed as a means of stopping migration, sources with knowledge of Prince’s business strategy allege that he had greater ambitions in that country. One person involved in Prince’s plan said the anti-migration force was seen as a vehicle for Prince to build a “backdoor” for so-called kinetic, or lethal, operations in Libya — a form of mercenary mission-creep. “During the day, you do interdiction of migrants — not kinetic,” said the person involved in the plan. “But those routes are used by weapons smugglers and drug traffickers at night. Insurgents too. Erik’s guys can then be offered to the Libyans to help with their other problems. That’s how you get kinetic.”
The plan called for a series of “border security” bases housing intelligence centers, helicopters, surveillance airplanes, and weaponized vehicles. Prince proposed a fully equipped, contemporary military force to be staffed in part by foreign mercenaries.
“This is Erik Prince using the refugee crisis in Europe in an effort to put mercenaries on the ground in Libya,” said Malcolm Nance, a former U.S. Naval officer who trained special operations forces and has extensive experience in Libya since the fall of Qaddafi. “They think they’re going to solve the migration problem with technology and a bunch of Western mercenaries?” Nance, who reviewed a copy of Prince’s plan provided by The Intercept, called the proposal “fantasy baseball.”
Government Investigation Focuses on Violations of U.S. Defense Export Regulations
Among the concerns of government investigators is that Prince’s attempts to provide defense-related services to Libya and other countries violate U.S. defense export regulations. Under federal law, U.S. citizens seeking to offer military services or technologies to Libya must have a license certifying that the services or articles are approved under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. “Many of these services and articles are designed to kill people or defend against killing people,” said John Barker, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for export controls. “To protect U.S. national security and foreign policy as well as that of its allies, the U.S. requires prior authorization.”
FSG officials told The Intercept that the company has no such licenses, nor has it sought them. “Since our inception, FSG has had bright-line policies against the provision of defense services and the purchase of U.S.-origin items that might be ITAR-controlled,” said Smith, the CEO of FSG.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which issues the licenses, told The Intercept that it would not comment on what licenses companies possess or lack, calling them “proprietary corporate data,” and asserted that information on the licenses is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Intercept has a long-standing FOIA request with the State Department seeking information on licenses granted to Prince and his former network of companies. To date, no information has been provided.
According to documents reviewed by The Intercept, as recently as 2014, Prince was registered as a defense services broker with the State Department through a limited liability corporation in Delaware, Westcomi LLC. That registration would permit Prince to engage in brokering without further authorization for some transactions in some countries, but not in Libya. Even with a valid brokering registration, according to legal experts, Prince would still need to get State Department approval for specific deals and report them to the U.S. government. “He could not solicit or promote the brokering of defense articles such as armored equipment delivered from abroad, or engage in or make a proposal to engage in brokering activities, absent prior U.S. government approval,” said Barker, the former state department official.
An FSG official said the company did not know if Prince obtained a license for his activities in Libya, but noted that he did not have one in his capacity as FSG’s chairman. One of Prince’s Libya proposals reviewed by The Intercept lists FSG as the commercial vendor for the project.
Last October, concerned about Prince’s unsanctioned international activities, FSG’s board approved a resolution clarifying that the company does not “engage in activities that require ITAR licenses.” A State Department spokesperson declined to comment, saying, “We are restricted under Federal Regulations from commenting on specific defense trade export licensing activities.”
Prince’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, told The Intercept: “I’m not going to get into what licenses [Prince] has.”
“You push the buttons on the company, but the main bad guy gets away and does it again,” said an official who tried to prosecute Prince.
Prince has run up against ITAR in the past. In 2010, Prince sold most of his equity in the companies that fell under the Blackwater umbrella. Claiming that left-wing activists, Democratic politicians, and lawsuits had destroyed his companies, he left the United States and became a resident of Abu Dhabi. The remnant of his network was renamed Academi LLC. Federal prosecutors eventually attempted to prosecute Prince’s former companies, culminating in a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement to settle a lengthy list of U.S. legal and regulatory violations committed from 2005 through 2008 when Prince was in charge, including ITAR violations.
A senior official involved with the Blackwater-related litigation, who has since left the government, told The Intercept that the Obama administration’s continued willingness to award contracts to former Blackwater entities while the case was active was a fatal impediment to a successful prosecution. The official, comparing the former Blackwater empire to a drug syndicate, added that prosecutors could not get anyone under Prince to testify against him personally. “This is very much the concern,” the former official told The Intercept. “You push the buttons on the company, but the main bad guy gets away and does it again.”
No criminal charges were filed against Prince.
In federal court filings, Prince’s former companies admitted to providing — on numerous occasions during Prince’s tenure — defense goods and services to foreign governments without the required State Department licensing. In some cases, they admitted to providing services even after failing to obtain a license from the State Department.
As part of their settlement with the government, Prince’s companies ultimately agreed to pay nearly $50 million in fines and other penalties and to implement compliance procedures to ensure such illegal activities did not continue. In September 2015, the deferred charges were dismissed after the U.S. government certified that the companies had “fully complied” with all of its conditions.
At that point, Prince was already deep into creating new companies registered outside of the United States and appeared poised to return to the conduct that had marked his time at the helm of Blackwater.
An internal document from Prince’s inner circle, reviewed by The Intercept, shows his team openly discussing the need to avoid U.S. and international defense export regulations and to mask the involvement of Prince and his cohort in efforts to provide mercenary services and military equipment to foreign governments. “Erik is always pressing the limits as to what is possible,” said the close associate of Prince’s.
Project November: Prince Offered Services to Nigeria to Fight Boko Haram
Several of the proposals for paramilitary services Prince has shopped around the world called for the use of a foreign force to conduct operations, according to the proposals and a person familiar with Prince’s plans. These documents, including one for Nigeria, were not authorized or approved by FSG and do not exist on any of its internal computer systems, according to company officials.
Prince has long been interested in raising a private military force to battle Islamic militant groups in a variety of countries. In 2014, he traveled to Nigeria and met personally with then-President Goodluck Jonathan to offer a $1.5 billion proposal to wipe out the radical Islamic group Boko Haram, according to a person familiar with Prince’s meeting. “It was a proposal to fix roads,” Toensing, Prince’s lawyer, said in a phone interview. “It was for fixing roads and not military related.”
Part of Project November — Prince’s proposal for Nigeria — envisioned air attacks in northeast Nigeria against the Islamic militant group Boko Haram.
Nigeria later hired Eeben Barlow, the legendary South African special forces mercenary — and Prince’s longtime business rival — to conduct a three-month operation inside the country to fight Boko Haram. Two sources close to Prince said that, as Prince saw it, Barlow had taken his plan and effectively stole the contract. “Erik was smokin’ hot” over that, said one of the sources.
In recent months, Gregg Smith and some members of FSG’s board, which includes retired Adm. William Fallon, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, began examining the possibility that Prince’s unauthorized activities could lead to a criminal indictment or other sanctions against the FSG chairman by the U.S. government. Toensing dismissed the notion Prince had broken any laws. “When he has legitimate business, he does legitimate business,” she said.
According to multiple sources familiar with Prince’s activities, as well as documents reviewed by The Intercept, Prince is considering an invitation to speak at a conference later this month in China sponsored by the country’s main domestic security organization, the Ministry of Public Security.
Internally, FSG executives determined that any presentations by the company’s U.S. citizen personnel at the conference could potentially violate U.S. laws against providing defense advice to China. Smith issued a directive that no U.S. personnel from FSG were authorized to attend. Erik Prince, Smith told his staff, would need to make his own decision.
Research: Sheelagh McNeill, John Thomason, Margot Williams, Josh Begley
An important point is that this company made its money from mostly government contracts. In essence taxpayer money has been used to pay bribes here and abroad.
Doesn’t the DoJ have more important things to do? Like maybe investigating AND prosecuting Hillary Clinton?
the evidence of “ties to chinese intel” (sub-headline) seems to be virtually zero. extremely thin or dubious.
in a time of widespread allegations and info war against russia and china, this seems opportunistic and contrary to good journalism. other information in the story is interesting and credible.
Domestically FBI contractors getaway with murder. Innocent civilians are victims of military Directed Energy Weapons. No-touch torture, slow kill.
if this investigations ends up uncovering even one of these claims, this is one of the biggest stories of the last five or so years. doj doesn’t just investigate anybody willy nilly. some of the accusations gesture toward treason and likely implicate others in the bush and/or obama administrations. seriously this is huge, really surprised that i haven’t seen anything about this from any other media outlets. thanks for coverage, please update as often as possible on this story.
Prince etal are the result of the Volunteer4ProfitArmy. Anonymous sources cited is indeed sufficient for now. If it isnot– thenfeel free to continue on and do a better job!
Hmm…..there sure are a lot of stars on the Africa map…….naturally they are pointing for a needed star in South Sudan. Too bad there are no pipeline security needs on the map….
If there were any justice in the world, Prince would be hanging by his fascist neck until he was dead…after a fair trial.
libre
Eric Prince (of Blackwater and Xe fame) is a Patriot – a rogue patriot just like Oliver North who swears to defend the constitution in one breath and then does everything he can to subvert it in another. Both undoubtedly feel that they’re adhering to the edict of “God, guts, and country,” the countries laws apparently just being a mere impediment. Prince’s operational slides read like plans for criminal operations. RIP in prison Erik Prince. @wreses #wreses .
“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”
– Ernest Hemingway
Hey Matt and Jeremy, this outstanding work on an important subject. Just a couple of things bother me about the article:
1. Lack of linkable cites
2. Unattributed references
3. Open-ended inferences
I watched the Democracy Now interview that wherein Victoria Toensing was prominently mentioned – very interesting!
In spite of Prince’s seemingly apparent legal troubles, I cannot help but think that this Ollie North style character is still operating with the blessing of the dark state. All of his purported business ventures, and corresponding legal woes, tend to provide him with layers of legitimate cover while he advances an agenda yet to be discovered. Nothing makes a hostile foreign entity salivate like a self-interested “rogue agent.”
A number of people in this thread have tried to attack this report for using some anonymous sources, and this is just more of the same. Notice the vague, non-specific nature of the complaints? “Lack of linkable cites – unattributed references – open-ended inferences?” What does that mean, specifically? Nothing at all – merely negative connotations without any specific examples. Such criticisms are BS.
The authors ran the claims of their anonymous sources past Frontier Services Group, past the State Department, and past Victoria Toensing, Prince’s lawyer. All had the opportunity to deny or confirm the claims, or to waffle about them, or to make no comment.
That’s good investigative journalism, and I doubt the authors are going to have to print a retraction on any of it – unlike, say, the endless cases where outlets like the New York Times have printed stories developed by reporters based entirely on their ‘anonymous sources’ without any such vetting at all. Such anonymous sources seem to be government officials who’ve been given the green light by their superiors to ‘leak’ their information to the press; in reality, such stories are little more than official press releases by White House or Pentagon or State Department spokespeople, fed to a reporter for the sole purpose of developing what’s called ‘third-party credibility’, i.e. they believe the general public will tend to believe an ‘independent news outlet’ more than they will a government spokesperson.
By the way, if you want to read another good investigative journalism article that uses some anonymous sourcing in a non-parrot manner, see this recent one from the Los Angeles Times:
“In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA”
Nabih Bulos , W.J. Hennigan and Brian Bennett, March 27 2016
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-isis-20160327-story.html
Of some interest:
“The CIA, meanwhile, has its own operations center inside Turkey from which it has been directing aid to rebel groups in Syria, providing them with TOW antitank missiles from Saudi Arabian weapons stockpiles.”
The story doesn’t mention how those TOW antitank missiles have somehow ended up in the hands of ISIS fighters, but it looks like the CIA’s covert games with Turkey and Saudi Arabia in Syria have blown up in their face, as they always seem to do.
Over four dozen anonymous sources were cited in this report… as was a plethora of unpublished documentation. As much as I am predisposed to viewing Prince’s purported activities with a jaundiced eye, this report is little more that a string of unsubstantiated accusations. If it was not for Jeremy’s stellar work on Blackwater (aka XE) in the past, I wouldn’t even feel compelled to weigh the implications raised by this article. Glenn Greenwald has incessantly criticized MSM journalists who engage in unsubstantiated accusations – so drop the BS about that which MSM outlets do (Mona).
You”re comparing apples and oranges.
If every piece of investigative journalism had to rely on named and published sources, there would be no investigative journalism at all. Remember Deep Throat?
As has been pointed out to you, this has zero to do with being fed lines by anonymous government controllers (obviously). If you disbelieve a reported fact in particular, say so and request clarification.
The verity of journalistic claims relies on the objective, verifiable facts that comprise them. Absent verifiable fact, journalism is mere opinion at best; at worst; it is propaganda. This article is subjective journalism once removed. Do you remember deep throat? Do you understand why W. Mark Felt used Bob Woodward to bring Richard Nixon down? Do you understand why Bob Woodward has been given unprecedented access into the “belly of the beast” to parrot that which is told to him by the likes of CIA director William Casey? Are you familiar with operation Mockingbird? Here is a little quote I will leave you (MONA) to consider why the rest of the readers wait for another one of your veiled attacks on those who would challenge shoddy journalism:
“We’ll Know Our Disinformation Program Is Complete When Everything the American Public Believes Is False.” – William Casey; Director CIA
Your posts are an amusing example of content-free verbiage.
Thanks for once again proving right Mona!
Ah, Patriotism; what did the man say? Yes; the last refuge of a scoundrel. Truer words never spoken. This guy is just one more example and a really low level one at that. He is a hands on murder though, even Hitler never did his own dirty work.
I coulda sworn someone said something about ‘the dogs of war’ awhile back… I’ll be damned if I can remember what
If Victoria Toensing is his shyster, he must be a traitor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Toensing
Toensing was retained by media organizations to comment on the Plame Affair. In March 2005 Toensing submitted an amicus curiae brief on behalf of Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, two journalists who were subpoenaed in the Valerie Plame investigation for refusing to reveal information obtained from confidential sources.
In the brief, she “argued that the law couldn’t have been broken when Valerie Plame’s cover as a CIA agent was blown because her status wasn’t really covert.”[2] She also contended that Ms. Plame didn’t have a cover to blow, citing a July 23, 2004 article in the Washington Times which argued that Valerie Plame’s status as an undercover CIA agent may have been known to Russian and Cuban intelligence operations prior to the article (by Robert Novak) that revealed her status as a CIA employee.
This is the thing which has been bugging the hell out of me ever since Amerika went with the so-called “volunteer military” concept: former US military types working for China.
Traitors one and all!
Love and hug the Chicoms all you want, but you will always be an enemy to Amerika!
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160324006325/en/Frontier-Services-Group-Comments-Media-Report
Prince is scum — and a criminal, IMHO. Go get ‘im.
Looking forward to this:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Assassination-Complex/Jeremy-Scahill/9781501144134
http://www.amazon.com/The-Assassination-Complex-Governments-Warfare/dp/1501144138
I wish I could say “just” Erik Prince fits a particular profile enough to cause doubt, but the truth is there’s a whole bunch of things that somewhere in the back of my mind fit that profile enough I harbor doubts about them. What if Prince’s motive to work with China wasn’t really as a shady entrepreneur at all, but as an infiltrator for empire – to dirty up Chinese business efforts in Africa? The fact Prince believes laws everywhere weren’t meant for him, and he’s been proven pretty much correct so far, is something that particular profile’s known for, as is militarily working with questionable powers in multiple foreign countries. The fact that the entire combined efforts of Ed Snowden and The Intercept also in ways fit that profile (microscopically by comparison to Prince), but perhaps as a counter the excesses of an out-of-control Big Brother, has never escaped me. All that takes is suspending disbelief at the possibility two monolithic agencies of empire, each with far more enduring authority and power than elected leaders, are at odds.
Others I know that came of age in the ’60s and ’70s also speak of remembering well a propaganda of that time, programmed into us by every movie or TV show you saw. NOBODY quits “the company” – ever, thus creating a very uncomfortable conundrum every time I read or hear the phrase “ex-CIA.” Oh yeah, it was also that exact same profile the entire first Mission Impossible movie was built around. But I warn you, once down this rabbit hole you’ll see the possibility much more than you like.
n-o
o-fficial
c-over
interesting. Sounds like the resurrection of a new Murder, Inc on a very large scale. All erik had to do after iraq was close the shop. But no. He had a better idea. I believe the primary active ingredient to this enterprise is that the company was allowed to be listed on the exchange.
This reporting is so important. Thank you for your ferocious diligence and thoughtfulness on such a polarizing topic. The U.S. government brings a misleading mindset (greedy war idiot) to so many areas of the world and then wonders how to stop the rogue animal they created when the infection spreads. It’s my hope that the cumulative effect of your reports, exposing the underbelly and realities of our unrepresented and often illegal military actions, could someday start to save lives.
Just remembered that Blackwater “helped out” in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I can imagine what kind of “kinetic” interdiction of African migrants Erik Prince is all excited about. He’s a case where it isn’t just money that motivates him (hence the “rogue” bit from the pov of cold blooded suits). Situations that offer the potential for murdering defenseless black and brown people really get him going.
I think Joseph Edward Schmitz might be on Trump’s sage team of advice givers, and no doubt Clinton would seek advice from people of the same caliber (Henry K. comes to mind).
It seems like-minded citizens motivated to vote for a Republican or Democrat in November can go on enjoying more of the same visceral pleasures. No buzz killing party poopers will be on the ballot.
Amen, brother, you said it all and quite nicely!
http://slavenation.com/index.php/2006/09/11/hell-or-high-water/
He’s counting on Cheney bailing him out after he funneled enough to make him really rich, without all the others Cheney made rich with his trumped up phoney ear to riches scheme
Oh, please please please please please !!!
“Two sources close to Prince said that, as Prince saw it, Barlow had taken his plan and effectively stole the contract. “Erik was smokin’ hot” over that, said one of the sources.”
I see a movie here, in about ten years: something like “Prince of Africa.” It will premier just as Prince is delivered to federal prison.
I dunno if this rates a movie, but I can definitely see/hear the Epic Rap Battle[1] of Eeben Barlow vs Erik Prince.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Rap_Battles_of_History
Ha!
Well of course it would be heavily fictionalized—based on a true story, don”t you know.
WHY is there no mention of Technology “Forensics” company and subsidiary of (Japan’s) SUN corporation the Israeli firm Cellebrite which has had an MOU with FBI since 2013 according to Reuters report 3/23/16..?? Celebrite has been back door extracting information from locked cell phones and more for years…needs to be exposed.
COMEY LIED. And attempted to rob american companies of _______ and americans of _________.
“Four former intelligence officers” spoke to Matthew Cole? That sure seems like a risk.
At risk for hangovers– past, present intel types & beltway insiders frequent the same watering holes….
Wasn’t it one of Prince’s ‘legitimate businesses’ in the Gulf that organized the recruitment of mercenary forces to flesh-out ‘security’ for the UAE? Then the UAE became a kinetic presence in Libya and, lately, its Colombian mercs have deployed to the massive involvement in Yemen. To a lesser extent UAE is also a Syrian protagonist.
One wonders if Prince’s ‘tail’ could be wagging the Emirate’s doggy.
The deal struck with the House of Saud involved the Prince of Michigan establishing a private security force that’ll protect army-less UAE from shia Iran’s perceived threat in an old dispute over 2 remote islands that the sunni princes insist are theirs. The reality is that disenchanted African paramilitaries and their Colombian counterparts as well as former military plus “ex” FARC & ZETA are based out of Abu Dhabi getting paid $ 6 figures for waging the Saudi’s proxy war’s genocide in Yemen. During the past 2 months, Colombia’s and Mexico’s narco presidentes made separate visits to Dubai for talks with some of the Saudis. Colombians, Mexicans, and Saudis will no longer require entry visas to one another’s countries.
Fascinating story, guys, however . . . reading it, I am reminded of countless columns and posts by Glenn denouncing “journalism” based largely or entirely upon anonymous sources and documents without provenance or pedigree. ;^(
I don’t think that’s a valid criticism, at all.
You’re talking about Greenwald’s criticism of people like Judith Miller using anonymous Bush administration sources for stories about Saddam’s dread arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, I assume?
That’s not the approach used in this Erik Prince story. Here, the reporters took the material they received from their unidentified sources and ran them back to Victoria Toensing, Prince’s lawyer, for affirmation or denial, which is a standard kind of procedure. There’s nothing wrong with using anonymous sources like these, as long as you vet their statements in a reasonable manner:
“The Intercept interviewed more than a half dozen of Prince’s associates, including current and former business partners; four former U.S. intelligence officers; and other sources familiar with the Justice Department investigation. All of them requested anonymity to discuss these matters because there is an ongoing investigation.”
Similar cases include James Risen’s unnamed CIA sources used in this book State of War, and most famously, Bernstein & Woodward’s secret source, (recently ID’d as Mark Felt, Associate Director of the FBI at the time).
I think the rule for using such sources is that you give the party being reported on the opportunity to respond to the anonymous source’s allegations, isn’t it? And the reporters did run the allegations past Prince’s lawyer, so what’s the problem?
If you stop and compare that to what people like Judith Miller at the NYTimes did, using Bush administration officials as anonymous sources for stories about non-existent Iraqi WMDS, while NOT running those stories by independent experts (such as United Nation weapons inspectors) for alternative opinions – instead just parroting the Bush administration party line with no qualifications at all – and then, later, blaming the utterly incorrect unvetted story on the sources?
That’s what the NYTimes and Judith Miller did – and that’s really bad journalism, more like serving as a government propaganda mouthpiece than anything else. Remember all those BS front page NY Times stories about Saddam’s WMDs? Claims like these were based on that approach:
“In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped. . .”
” Although administration officials say they have no proof that Baghdad possesses the smallpox virus, intelligence sources say they cannot rule that out. ”There’s a number of sensitive things,” said a senior government official who has studied the evidence for more than a decade. He added that ”on a scale of one to 10, I’d say it’s probably a six” that Iraq has the virus. ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-iraqis-us-says-hussein-intensifies-quest-for-bomb-parts.html?pagewanted=all
“You’re talking about Greenwald’s criticism of people like Judith Miller using anonymous Bush administration sources for stories about Saddam’s dread arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, I assume?”
I’m talking about what I said I was talking about: ” . . . [basing stories] largely or entirely upon anonymous sources and documents without provenance or pedigree.
That’s exactly what we have here. Exactly.
Actually, no, that’s not “exactly–Exactly” what we have here.
Read this, and open links for some background on The Intercept’s use of anonymous sources:
The Intercept is developing editorial standards for using anonymous sources
http://www.poynter.org/2015/the-intercept-is-developing-new-editorial-standards-for-anonymous-sources/363989/
“That’s exactly what we have here. Exactly.” – No, I don’t think so.
Read my post again. The difference is between:
1) a journalist using anonymous sources to assist a government propaganda operation without running their claims by independent experts, and
2) a journalist using anonymous sources to investigate a story, while allowing the party being reported on to respond to the claims.
I took a look at some Glenn Greenwald’s criticism of anonymous sources – but all such cases I could find fall into category #1.
Here’s an example of someone else complaining about the same thing you are, from some time ago – 2007, regarding a story on the Sunni-majority Anbar province in Iraq – a story which nicely illustrates why category #1 is typically garbage journalism:
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/post_4.php
“Unable to show that Klein got anything wrong, Greenwald instead attacks him for his use of an anonymous government source, which would be fine if he was being led astray by the source, but that’s not the case. Greenwald writes that, “the very idea of granting anonymity to government sources to do nothing other than repeat pro-government claims is both manipulative and moronic on its face”—but what he forgets (or maybe he doesn’t know) is that Klein is right, and that what is happening in Anbar is good news. If the tribes in Anbar turning on Al Qaeda is “pro-government,” then so be it, but Klein simply reporting on what is happening on the ground is just that – reporting. It’s neither pro- nor anti-government, it’s just the truth, and Greenwald should accept that.”
So how did that ‘truth’ work out, in the end? According to many media reports, by late June 2014, at least 70% of the Anbar Province was under ISIS control. All the positive glowing Pentagon press releases about the “success in Iraq” were just propaganda, and reporters who had bothered to dig into the story could have figured that out – but instead, they just parroted their ‘official government sources.’ That’s not investigative reporting – see the difference?
Maybe it’s just that investigative reporting is so rare in today’s media world that you’re not familiar with the methods that often need to be used?
If that’s the case, try reading Woodward and Bernstein’s “All The President’s Men” and consider their use of anonymous sources in the context of what they were reporting on, and again, compare that to the Judith Miller approach.
There is a big picture of war financing, secret alliances, lack of government transparency which appears as missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle. If you are not well versed in all the major players and contibutors and benefactors to what is going on, you wont be able to understand the reason for the _______ and will therefore ignorantly conclude that the circumstantial evidence is not conclusive for a jury conviction.
Get a clue. This is not a court trial. We are not privileged to confront the witnesses against us. You are going to have to exercise a little faith in some instances. And if you doubt that, consider the fools who believed WMD contrary to what the big picture would tell them.
Nothing wrong with skepticism but there is a lot wrong with denial.
I have to agree with DS here somewhat.
All the anonymous sources willingly talking to TI of all organizations suggests it’s an organized smear campaign to achieve a goal they can’t achieve through the legal process or it’s misinformation to provide cover for ongoing activities by Prince.
The story being spoon-fed to TI should be triggering skepticism… and I don’t think getting a comment from his lawyer makes the story based on anonymous sources “untainted” journalism.
And I can’t help but think the journalists who wrote the article have had similar thoughts cross their minds.
It would be nice for them to comment on that aspect.
The authors (Cole and Scahill) have been reporting on these kinds of stories for a long time, well before the Intercept was even founded, so they’ve had plenty of opportunity to develop sources over time.
Hence, your comment “All the anonymous sources willingly talking to TI of all organizations” is nothing but misdirection.
If you look into the background for this story, you come up with stories like this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-11/blackwater-founder-turns-white-collar-ceo-aiding-chinese-firms
But there, he was claiming to be doing little more than providing bodyguards for Chinese executives on business junkets to Africa – which is a bit different from providing a whole paramilitary warfare group-for-hire to the highest bidder, isn’t it?
OK.
I will repeat and restate my claim that I’d bet that Cole and Scahill both wondered if they were being used.
The NYT being used for authorized leaks is common and well known, so I don’t see how your example contradicts what I wrote.
And given that TI stories are generally adversarial to the establishment line, often using unauthorized leaks by whistleblowers, the numerous insiders opening up is unusual for this place… and in no way is that criticism of the integrity or quality of the authors nor raising doubts about their journalistic ability to develop sources… just different than what we are used to here.
It’s a great story.
It’s news.
But the Obama admin has been prosecuting leakers to the press, and for some reason, I don’t think anybody who spoke to TI for this story has to worry about that.
Doesn’t that make you wonder just a bit?
I don’t see what the big deal is. Dude wants to have a mercenary force to sell to the highest bidder. And the problem is? As long as he don’t challenge or go up against US Forces I say let him. Dude is just like everyone else trying to pay the mortgage.
“As long as he don’t challenge or go up against US Forces…”
And there is the rub.
NO u.s. politician would say that because they don’t care about the deaths of u.s. forces (friendly fire) instead what they do care about are
period exclamation point
*assets resources alliances power
There need to be more attributable sources. Without them, it seems like a barrage of uncorroborated allegations, seeing if any might stick. Sort of like the huge numbers of charges prosecutors pile on to hapless defendants on the theory that they only need to get conviction on one.
His family are BIG GIVERS to the GOP .. does that entitle him to a free pass? I’ve seen enough to consider him a cold blooded murderer. God, and those he has murdered, will be waiting for his soul to show up when his flesh body dies. They’ll deal with him then.
Greg: I think you have entirely missed Fran’s point, which is that, while the story is extremely interesting, and while it’s not hard to imagine that every claim and assertion is true, it is mostly a catalog of claims and assertions by unnamed officials and other individuals (secret sources), along with documents of unknown and/or unproven origin.
I think you’re just channeling the neocon-neoliberal garbage coming out of places like the Brookings Institute and the Lawfare Blog (where FBI Director James Comey holds forth on how he needs access to everyone’s phones).
https://www.lawfareblog.com/intercept-finds-anonymous-source-it-can-trust
Under investigation for mercenary services? Only read that far, but isn’t blackwater, xi, whatever, a mercenary company…?
The underlining principle why the U.S. government[s] (emphasis on intelligence) keeps cooks like Prince in the loop, they want to use his services when needed. This is to include but not limited to assassinations, money laundering and illegal weapon[s] transfers.
Eric Prince came out of the Calvinist brand of Protestantism says he’s “God’s Elect” and anything he does will be OK because he was “chosen” before he was born. Sad. Very sad.
Prince is like so many of these Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing that outwardly claim to be Christian but inwardly are among the most wicked men on Earth. Real Christians follow the tenets of their faith.
Real Christians NEVER ever ever judge people. “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Most don’t know about the 10% because they are never in your face. “Enter through the narrow gate for wide is the gate and broad the way leading to destruction, and many are those entering through it.”
A real Christian would never spill blood unless his immediate life was in mortal danger, right then and there. “Thou shalt not kill”.
Real christians are incredibly charitable and are anonymous in their duties. No “look at me! look at me”, per the principle of “That which you do unto the least of my brethren you do unto me”.
If anyone violates these core principles then you can rest assured with certainty that they are either sanctimonious phonies or wolves in sheep’s clothing, which means, sad to say, about +90% of self-professed christians unfortunately are anything but. When you meet a real one, and that is rare indeed, you will never feel threatened, nor judged, nor scorned, nor embattled. You will feel loved unconditionally.
Given that, how many times does THAT happen?
When you get the rare chance to meet one, progressives are genuinely wow’ed by them and even more sickened by the 90% or more that are absolute phonies, like Erik Prince and all of the so-called Christian leadership. I know one personally, and I wish I could be like him. I’m not, honestly, but I wish that I could be. His inner peace just beams out at you. Absolutely incredible man. Gay? Of no more concern to him than the color of your socks. Minority? So what? Jewish? Atheist? Would invite you into his home because it’s a “don’t care”. Doesn’t matter to him. Would never factor into his calculus. Charitable? It’s in his core and he’s very quiet about it.
I asked him once about his aura, his apparent inner peace. His answer? “My life is my testament to my faith. My words mean nothing”. Wow.
The right-wingers where I work (he’s a colleague) calls him a pie-in-the-sky dreamer. That’s your confirmation right there!
Now compare a man like that to Erik Prince. The other 90%.
A ch. 9 exerpt from Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Jane Mayber)
“The DeVos family’s stature and wealth were magnified by Dick’s marriage to the other royal family of Michigan’s Dutch Reformed community, Betsy Prince. Her father, Edgar Prince, had founded an auto parts manufacturing company that sold for $1.35 billion in cash in 1996. Her brother Erik Prince, meanwhile, founded the global security firm Blackwater, which the reporter Jeremy Scahill described as “the world’s most powerful mercenary army.”
Betsy DeVos, who eventually became the chairwoman of Michigan’s Republican Party, was said to be every bit as politically ambitious as her husband, if not more so. With her support, in 2002 Dick DeVos ceased managing Amway in order to devote more time to his political career. The results, though, were dismal. The DeVos family spent over $2 million in 2000 on a Michigan school voucher referendum that was defeated by 68 percent of the voters. The family then spent $35 million in 2006 on Dick DeVos’s unsuccessful bid to become the state’s governor.
In their zeal to implement their conservative vision, few issues were more central to the DeVos family’s mission than eradicating restraints on political spending. For years, the family funded legal challenges to various campaign-finance laws. Ground zero in this fight was the James Madison Center for Free Speech, of which Betsy DeVos became a founding board member in 1997. The nonprofit organization’s sole goal was to end all legal restrictions on money in politics. Its honorary chairman was Senator Mitch McConnell, a savvy and prodigious fund-raiser.”
Yesterday – Amy Goodman said Jeremy’s scheduled to join her this morning.
http://www.democracynow.org/
Matthew Cole is on too, most cool!
live now
Here is the link with Jeremy Scahill and Matthew Cole: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/25/erik_prince_in_the_hot_seat
I do have some intelligence and I try to be compassionate, but all that comes to mind is: The man is a grade-A turd, and this is the kind of guy Congress and politicians suck up to, and that they like to emulate, and will gladly take campaign donations from. For profiteers he is a god–most of Congress can claim the distinction of profiteer either via the benefits of in-trading or whatever.
I was already mostly aware of his weirdness. I bet Hillary would be happy to deliver a speech for him. Maybe she has already tapped him for the Clinton Foundation.
Ironic that a man named Prince is the latest example of how mercenaries are worse than useless.
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.
http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince12.htm
Beat me to it.
This is all bull! The bottom line is simple and easier to follow: when the USG threw down the hammer on Blackwater for doing what it was paid to do, it shattered into about 30 pieces. Greystone, Artemis, R2… you name it – they all still work for Prince. Think about it. Does anyone wonder why a small company like Artemis, whom no one has ever heard of, runs 80% of all base logistics in Afghanistan and is now on the Turkish/Syria border? It’s a Blackwater front… Greystone is the defacto air mechanic company for the Saudi Govt… R2 for the UAE… the list goes on and on… the same operations, except the pieces are shattered.
The Man Who Would Be King.
“told The Intercept that the Obama administration’s continued willingness to award contracts to former Blackwater entities while the case was active was a fatal impediment to a successful prosecution.”
As with Bush /Cheney/Rumsfeld et al. the Obama regime never had any interest or intention in pursuing a successful prosecution.
I think you’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. When I read the article, the name that kept coming to my mind was Cheney, Cheney, Cheney. How does one man come to a level of such disregard for law, such a level of arrogance? He hangs around with others, or at some time in the past, was close with those of the same mindset. That’s how. Just my opinion. But people do influence one another sometimes. Don’t they?
Someone’s gotta broker mercenary and murder-for-hire services. How else we gonna get the world’s bidness done…?
His name showed up momentarily in contractor documents RE: Flint’s alternative water supply. Then was quickly redacted. He and his family have their hands on most of the mineral rights and water deal in Michigan. Be prepared if you ever cross this family.
Regards,MCN
A link to read more?
THIS is the man who will play a central role in any planned right wing military type uprising in the United States of the near future.
Erik Prince will be the bag man and central supplier for the coming civil war, and the sooner someone can bring his head on a plate, the better.
There’s a reason he skipped town and moved to Dubai.
To quote a favorite of the media”At this point, what does it matter?”. So Erik Prince is doing what he does best, how is this shocking or even news?
One of the things that makes PMCs so popular with first world nations is that they are expendable(as in nobody cares when they die) and deniable(I never met that man and i know nothing about him). The long term obligation when they get blown up is not there, like it is with a soldier. it may suck in most places, but the VA is there for all military related injuries for the rest of that soldiers life.
Instead of focusing on Erik Prince, why not focus on why his offers are so enticing? Why would any country hire them? Maybe because what they have on hand is not working out for them and they seek an edge for short term gain. Or is it better to just have corrupt regimes and militaries that engage in periodic genocide. Or are you saying Erik Prince is at fault for Nigeria, Libya, Southern Sudan, Central African Republic, Irian Jaya, Syria, Iraq and all the other places people are extinguished on a whim?
Great article! I wondered if he was just operating freely with no one paying attention. What a piece of work is he! I still remember him at his hearing–pretty slimy-looking.
Enjoyed your book, Jeremy.
Best new book, The Devil’s Chessboard, shows what the Dulles brothers did to this country .
I started off loving the line, “Those with business ties were cautioned to sever their dealings with Prince.” I sometimes read into our current/former USG contracts and am amazed how often they hand out contracts to thieves and either unprosecuted or formerly prosecuted crooks.
More deferred prosecutions. It’s not just Wall Street; DoJ IS fair and justice IS color blind.
This is, after all, Eric Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos, (the Michigan DeVoses) who are mentioned as sitting alongside the Kochs. Bradleys, and Coorses as the founding members of the modern conservative movement. He has been living what I imagine he would call a “blessed life.” With heavy-duty patrons, I might even use that term (but I doubt it).
Mr Greenwald was on Democracy Now! for the hour this morning. So much to say, so little time.
GG – is Glen DeVos (Delphi) from this family?
What an excellent story.
Follow the smell–it always leads to money. I, agree, it’s an excellent story. These folks never disappoint me.
Unequivocal support albeit in a nontransparent manner by “Operation Domelight”
…..such a great article….
…..Macau, huh?……
……I suggest Mr. Prince may be over his head by many generations of intertwined relationships….
Domestic “Blackwater” GangStalking!
FBI STASI using Directed Energy Weapons on innocent civilians deemed dissenting. (Slow kill murder)
Evil, Inc.
Let us all hope this reichwing christian Mullah takes Cheney down with him.
Erik Prince is just a sacrificial lamb. He must have pissed off some State Department or DOD official for acting outside his approved graft operation or giving up some key info to Chinese intelligence in trying to turn a buck when his normal scams dried up.
Not like the US and its allies didn’t totally fuck up Libya, and now because it’s so fucked up they can’t get in to extort their vig via the Libyan oil fields and McDonald’s franchises.
Under normal circumstances the US would be onboard with Erik Prince going in to quell the natives. I mean anybody with half a brain knew who Ambassador Stevens was really working for and why he was specifically targeted in Libya.
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-syria-heavy-weapons-jihadists-2012-10
I wish I could find the link that prior to him being named Ambassador about his history in/out of Libya previously which led to about one immutable conclusion–he was CIA and running ops and facilitating arms transfers with various parties that probably made him a few enemies along the way. I mean there were a bunch of rumors that Ambassador Stevens was sodomized and mutilated and a whole bunch of other stuff before he died which sounds personal to me, not just some ax to grind with the symbols of America.
I mean for heaven’s sake the guy had multiple serious high ranking positions with the Foreign Service all over the Middle East hot spots and he barely spoke Arabic.
Then again, and maybe it’s just me, but if America can’t name Ambassadors to foreign nations who even speak the language of their host’s land then what does that really tell you about America’s respect for diplomacy?
Seriously, the vast majority of America’s ambassador and consular officials and their staffs are so interwoven with American intelligence agencies and DoD it really isn’t even funny. It’s the main way you give intelligence agencies “official cover” and immunity to go skulking around and spying on everybody if not carrying out covert operations.
You don’t think all those antennae arrays all over the tops of our missions and consular offices are to facilitate business transactions do you? That’s just silly. That’s what cell phones are for. Or encrypted cell phones. Sheesh people are naïve about how America really exerts its power–gunboat diplomacy/trade, the arms trade, and international banking. And when that fails they send in the mercs, the spooks and/or troops to blow the living shit out of your fine little country for not playing ball.
“Free-trade” agreements my ass. America’s MO has been the same since about day 1 and it isn’t changing anytime soon.
Regarding Syria, heavy weapons and ISIS:
http://levantreport.com/2015/01/01/isis-is-now-deploying-us-supplied-tow-anti-tank-missiles-in-syria/
“Conflict Armament Research was able to trace the serial numbers of weapons recovered by Kurds battling ISIS in Eastern Syria back directly to the CIA-Saudi weapons airlift program. While not as advanced and up-to-date as the current anti-tank systems being displayed in ISIS photographs, the weapons monitoring group’s official report provided evidence that portable rockets were making making it to ISIS hands as of 2013″
“M79 90 MM anti-tank rockets captured from IS forces in Syria are identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operationg under the ‘Free Syrian Army’ umbrella in 2013.”
“Expect more of US-made BGM 71E TOW systems to show up in ISIS hands. Eventually, enough photographic and serial inscription evidence will be available to establish direct chain of custody and origin. Expect the CIA, Pentagon, and their partners in the Gulf to be in full denial and defensive mode.”
See also on that site,
“How the CIA Helped Fuel the Rise of ISIS: Guest Analysis by Jeremy R. Hammond, Feb 2 2016″
I find the United States to be nothing but hypocrites. When the United Nations hired Blackwater in Africa on two different occasions the United States vote for hiring them. They are good at what they do and now they’re jealous that someone other than the United States is taking advantage of the mercenary business.
It would be wise for America to stay out of others business. The old saying is stick your nose in others business and it will be cut off.
look at that sweet wikkle face. Awwwwwww, pumpkin.
an’ puppy eyes like like a cute little updated Ollie North knockoff….
HUGE! Fantastic report on Erik Prince under Investigation for Money Laundering
Dick Cheney may now be indicted for promoting organized crime He is after all the criminal mind who promoted blackwater so he could have his private army do the bad illegal things that the normal u.s. army could not do. Dick Cheney could have been preparing blackwater for an overthrow of the U.S. Government which is treason. This was attempted before by Prescott Bush who solicited Marine General Smedley Butler who refused him. And now mercenaries, without real job prospects, are becoming the new face of organized crime.
Many have been calling the republican party the party of organized crime. That Jeb Bush would back a criminal who wants to carpet baum a country and promote torture and quarantine American neighborhoods is very Hitlerian. These Sig Heil facists should be charged for treason and have their citizenship revoked.
Any elected person who advocates a crime is unfit for America.
Phew, that means that Secretary Clinton in Honduras, 2009, is exempt. She didn’t do anything until after the coup.
Is anybody familiar with the dynamic duo of John Foster and Allen Dulles?
Thank goobness. I was rilly worried ’bout Hilly there for a while there. She’s probably ordering Oxiclean in multiple 50- gallon drum lots by now. They’re gonna have hidden bloodgutters and suction pumps installed behind the walls in the White House when she gets in, along with the obligatory changing of the china.
nice call. good feedback. not familiar with dules and foster but do recall som misgivings of dulles in reference to lbj as best recall.
I just wrote a fairly detailed response to explain who they were and it disappeared off the website. I’ve never seen that happen before. I do not think I’ve been censored, but it’s curious to lose something I just spent fifteen minutes composing. If it doesn’t reappear, I’ll try later.
great. will look for it on this page. it could be that something OT gets scrubbed.
No VP or former President will ever go to jail for war acts. They can’t charge Cheney with anything because he isn’t a man anymore, he has enough metal in his body to be considered a cyborg. Plus going after Bush/Cheney would be the worst thing possible for foregin policy. I still think they are trying to make this guy the fall guy for a major screw up by either the CIA or VP. Plus our government hired him, they got what they paid for, and probably should of paid him more for his silence.
Agree. What about the high-ranking military and CIA?
This is the reason that inside the Beltway, bad behavior never changes and people fail upwards.
In my opinion, the shallowest words ever uttered by a politician or leader are, “We have to make sure that this never happens again.”
“Any elected person who advocates a crime is unfit for America.”
holy shit barabbas, y’all are making a joke here, right?
… that counts out pretty much everyone in Washington and everyone with a minimum of 3 degrees separation.
maybe you could ask a Kalahari Bushman to run for office – i’d have suggested someone from the Amazon Basin run as opposition, but i’m not sure the Brazilians can be trusted any more.
There was a short time when one had to take a lie detector test to get a job. The big Q was “Did you ever steal anything from any former employer?”.
I haven’t heard or seen lie detectors in fashion any more.
Probably because they are too subjective, depending on the operator. They tend to give both too many false positives and false negatives. The head of the polygraph section of the Army spy unit I was with in Germany advised me to never submit to a polygraph. This was in the 60s, and he was a past president of the professional group of polygraph operators in the US.
I have no doubt that Prince could beat a polygraph exam. We were convinced that our interpreter in Vietnam was a double agent, but he always passed the monthly polygraph test.
Another esteemed Country Club Republican
This was Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s other little scheme to go into Iraq. Cheney is Prince’s buddy and they were all worked up over making $$$ on a privatized army. Turned out real good. Real good.
“An internal document from Prince’s inner circle…”
That oughta make him twitchy.
Great work by Jeremy and Matthew, and “thanks” to those in his inner circle who are leaking docs…
Lord of War is a great movie that explains how ‘private mercenaries’ like Erik Prince and Victor Bout secretly serve the agendas of nation-states while pretending to be independent rogue operators:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTK8torOylM
“I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of those men are enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year, sometimes it’s embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can’t be seen supplying. So, you call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I’m a necessary evil”
A current example of “embarrassing” issues for the President is the collection of TOW-II antitank rockets seized by the Iraqi military from defeated ISIS forces around Ramadi. Those weapons have serial numbers; they could be traced back to their source via end-user-agreements, export licenses, and manufacturer’s records – but will they be?
That’s very embarrassing, considering that ISIS is sending their trained explosives experts into Europe to help with suicide bombings. The President would have to explain why it seemed like a good idea to arm the “vile sadistic” leaders of ISIS with high-end American-made weapons – the reason being that they are also the enemies of Assad in Syria, and the neocons (Bush clan) and neoliberals (Clinton clan) want to see Assad overthrown as part of their bloodthirsty “geopolitical chess game”, regardless of the side effects – floods of refugees into Europe, the empowerment of terrorist groups, etc.
So, if this is the case, why the investigation? If their ‘rogue agent’ got too greedy and started offering similar services to China, that would explain it – as with an ambitious drug dealer trying to cut deals with the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels at the same time, someone is bound to get upset.
The drug cartels move hundreds of tons into the U.S. regularly. That type of logistics demands a fixed hierarchy structure of persons and routes and protection until final distribution. That this is happening all the time for decades would mean that there are political and legal persons at the top.
The mexican political establishment is corrupt. The bush crime family which; took the place of the LBJ criminal operations, created and backed the blackwater (its all in the name) mercenary army, courted saudi salafist extremists, and now promote the carpet boomer guy, are in the thick of it.
And when HSBC gets caught laundering billions in Sinaloa cartel drug money, they get no criminal charges, instead Loretta Lynch offers them a “deferred prosecution agreement” and a fine, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone covered that:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/will-hsbc-deal-come-back-to-haunt-loretta-lynch-20150209
Even more ridiculously, current FBI director James Comey, now infamous for wanting to snoop into everyone’s phones, was serving on the HSBC Board directly before he got that job.
And to had to the hilarity, when the boss of the cartel whose money HSBC was laundering was caught in Mexico, Loretta Lynch said it was “a vindication of the rule of law in our countries.” – after which she did a big line of blow off James Comey’s butt in celebration.
wow. mentioned the lynch comey detail to friend. friend said “comey the fbi guy?” [me, yep] friend, “something sounds fishy”.
Well, supposedly he was brought in to help them ‘clean up’ their operation after they were busted laundering money for the cartels.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/hsbc-james-brien-comey-jr-money-laundering-429453
“HSBC has snapped up a former US Deputy Attorney General to strengthen its efforts to combat financial crime and bolster risk management after the group was rocked by a record fine related to money laundering for Mexican drug cartels last year.”
I just don’t buy it . . . more like that scene from Syriana where the attorney says, “We have laws against it precisely so we CAN get away with it. . .”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuBstLZINco
Someone’s still laundering all those millions in cocaine cash for the cartels, and the banks have probably just gotten better at hiding what they’re doing. They received a few helpful tips, maybe.
And Hillary and Poppy Bush are leaving him out to hang. He did not do it without their help. He did it for them, and he got a cut. And they are both laughing at him taking the full rap for it.
And they are both laughing at the American people.
“Lord of War” is a great movie that helps show how people like Erik Prince and similar actors like Viktor Bout secretly serve the agendas of major nation-states while pretending to be rogue mercenaries, as seen in this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTK8torOylM
“I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of those men are enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year, sometimes it’s embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can’t be seen supplying. So, you call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I’m a necessary evil.”
As a current example of issues that the President finds ’embarrassing’, the TOW-II antitank rockets that the Iraqi Army just seized from defeated ISIS forces around Ramadi are a prime example. They have serial numbers; they could be traced back to the source via looking at end-user-agreements, export licenses, manufacturer’s records – don’t expect them to be. Supposedly Libya was a major transit point for weapons shipments to ISIS, making one wonder if Prince was involved in that. . .
But why would America have helped arm ISIS, who is now sending their trained explosives experts into Europe to carry out suicide bombings? Because the “vile sadistic” leaders of ISIS are enemies of Syria’s Assad, and the neocons (Bush clan) and neoliberals (Clinton clan) want Assad overthrown as part of their bullshit ‘geopolitical chess game’, regardless of the bloodshed and destabilization it causes.
So why the investigation? Perhaps Prince got too greedy trying to cut similar deals with China . Kind of like trying to work for the Sinaloa and Juarez cocaine cartels at the same time.
We cant have unemployed mercenaries.
These mercs got into the caca with syria, crimea, ukraine, libya, egypt, iraq, and afghan. Hes only in trouble because the showdown in syria may end up resulting in global thermo nuke war. Gotta have a scapegoat.
Today, they change their names from aciada, to blackwater, to isis, to whatever.
unemployed mercs are the new terrorists and scapegoats.
Everytime they had state blessings. Unfortunately, the current snafu
Why did it take so long?
Privatizing military operations are by their nature a capitalized mercenary venture with no guarantees that those hired will remain loyal to those who initially “contracted” their services. They are subject to the demands and vagaries of the market and if they do “good work” there presumably would be competition for their services in the Free Market.
This is being played out in post 9/11 military privatization schemes (as this report shows) as it has historically whenever mercenaries were enlisted, hired, to fight for the powerful and the elite who did not want to bloody their own ruffled sleeves, but could not get enough of their lesser countrymen interested in fighting and dying for them.
The Hessians are always a good example of this… having been pushed off their ancestral lands by “reforms” that benefitted the rich and powerful of the time, and not having other options to provide for themselves (apparently there weren’t enough fast food chains around at the time), they became known as fierce fighters… being big, hairy and scary… in many wars and conflicts. They were often hired to fight by leaders on both sides of a conflict.
One of my own ancestors in the US is a good example of this; a gentleman by the name of William Halberstadt, was hired by the Brits to fight against the Yankee insurgents during the Revolutionary War. He was captured by the Yanks during the battle that Washington crossed the Delaware to get to, imprisoned, and then offered a better bargain, plus land and citizenship, if he would switch sides and work for the traitorous terrorists in the colonies. This he did and the rest, as it is said, is history.
LOL funny. How to stop a war in the midst of battle…
“hey. were’t you fighting with me over in bastionland? ”
“yeah . i bleev so. what are they paying you?”
“ah. we get all our debts paid and a home free and clear when we return victorious ”
“whoa. that’s a whole lot better than they’re givin us. HEY FELLAS! THE OTHER SIDE IS GETTING TRIPLE WHAT WE’RE GET’N. HOW ‘BOUT IT?”
– fighting halts abruptly. lessers switch sides. nobody left to fight.
Xmas in the trenches of France duringt he war to end all wars had to be stopped… they’d find out that they had more in common with each other than with the generals and politicians that got them in that hellhole
Jefferson used to make regular trips to POW camps in New Jersey where the captured Hessians were held. Ostensibly, according to the official history, this was to be reminded of European culture of which he was enamored and missed and in which the Hessians apparently were well versed. One wonders however… how many of them were enlisted as a secret network of warriors….?
And all these mercenaries take no oath to the United States Constitution and they are not legally bound to follow the UCMJ either:
http://www.ucmj.us/
I predict the next president will love Erik Prince.
Not to worry. George W. Bush will vouch for him.
Does anyone seriously believe that any South African PMC , let alone one run by Eeben Barlow, would need to ‘steal’ the concept of an American company in order to solve a conflict in Africa ?
South African PMC’s have an unequaled and unblemished record of success over the last 20 years or so in Africa. They hardly have to go around ‘stealing’ ideas from Americans. The US military has chalked up an abysmal record across the globe over the same period. One would presume that their PMC’s are no more effective, given their training and backgrounds in the US military itself.
The mere suggestion is akin to a neurosurgeon seeking advice from a medical intern.
“Unblemished”?
Nice fairy tale dude.
Correct – unless of course you are able to demonstrate any proof to the contrary ?
Which category would you like to explore?
Legality?
Corruption?
War crimes?
Civilian casualties?
Facilitating coups?
Maintaining/installing dictators?
Unblemished my ass.
Which limb are you climbing out on?
Unblemished as in they accomplish the job they were hired to do.
You mention legality? When is a war legal?
Corruption? As in there is an honest way to kill people and a dishonest way? What’s your point?
Unblemished by any taint of morality, pity, or conscience. Pristine.
Similar to uncontaminated by cheese.
Nice.
The pretense of using the word unblemished for any mercenary outfit is exactly the point I was making.
Not one is unblemished unless you narrow the definition of the word to the point where it no longer resembles the dictionary definition or any commonly understood meaning… in a civilized society.
All of them if you please – I assume that you have proof in all of the categories that you list.
Real proof please – not simply allegations or rumours.
The defenders of the indefensible always play this game.
Or is your willfully ignorant defense of mercenaries just a hobby?
You will receive hard copies via FedEx if you strike out using your keyboard and google… which I will be monitoring… so no need to respond.
Your sarcasm is not warranted.
Please provide this ‘proof’ that you allude to and quit worrying about my motivation as it is irrelevant in this matter.
You are the one offering to provide this proof, so why now the hesitation ?
I’m curious: how does Prince get military equipment, automatic weapons, etc.? He would have to get it transferred from an authorized agency. Read 18 USC 922. It seems to me the Attorney General would have to know about this work.
Do these folks keep their equipment and gear?
Recently in Hollis vs. Lynch, the attorney published a FOIA regarding “machine gun” counts:
http://media.wix.com/ugd/c601ae_711341f759bb4086952d4e672a503988.pdf
Now, those numbers reported in FOIA response, given the information here and that there are authorized “arms salespersons” or “mercenaries” seems low.
It may be a problem when your mercenaries sell out to a foreign government. But that’s merely the free market at work. The US government should embrace capitalism; no other system maximizes profit to the same degree.
I understand the desire to limit Blackwater’s options; they must then rely on the US government’s good will instead of offering their services to the highest bidder. This might seem like a good way for the US government to save money. But as in any socialist system, where prices are artificially controlled, the quality of the services declines until the product becomes unusable. This is false economy.
Of course, the freedom of the marketplace works both ways. ISIS should be free to bid their services to the US government. Many will object they already do this – but it’s not done openly, and so the benefits of free competition are lost.
In addition, the US government should dictate the goals for the mercenaries, but not the methods. A contract should stipulate who is to be killed, or who is to be protected, and in what time frame – the rest should be the responsibility of the contractor. They have the best knowledge of their own resources, capabilities and equipment and can determine the most efficient method to achieve the specified goal.
If these things were done openly and transparently, you wouldn’t need an expensive investigation every time some contractor failed to provide appropriate kickbacks to the government procurement agencies.
As always sir I gobble up your tasty literary morsels, ensuring not to waste a single crumb.
All your tube socks in the laundry?
A-negro, you’re right, and I chuckle. Seriously, what most folks don’t know about the character “Benito Mussolini” is that it’s a cadre of writers, they’re not actually satirists, they write seriously. And they are the man behind the curtain in the U.S. Another character on here “Coram” is the legislative mind to this cadre.
With this knowledge, I heap praise and adulation on Lord Deuce, in the hopes that my loyalty is not questioned. Get on board A-negro, save yourself and your loved ones. Deuce sees you.
i concur – mostly and usually.
… BM has an aesthetic that demands you read the post.
… and a timbre that (almost) lulls the reader into agreement – even when proposing the most heinous scenarios (you have great dictator potential BM … ergo, a well chosen alias).
… however, that “if” in the concluding para should be “IF” … as that is a pretty fucking BIG IF.
You think the US government could get a better deal on services currently rendered by ISIS?
There’s also brand loyalty at play.
The US government didn’t have a problem with Prince when he was running his mercenary venture like a proper capitalist, gooning it up for American imperialism. But as soon as he tried to expand his enterprise to include other clients, the Empire came down hard on him for infringing on their territorial rights as the major global arms dealer.
Spot on.
They don’t seem to have come down on him yet. And if recent history is any guide, The Obama regime never will, any more than on, say, Jaime Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein. Similarly, Hillary certainly won’t, for exactly the same reasons, and Trump would support his deal-makin’ entrepreneurial brethren in a New York heartbeat.
So refreshing to read researched, documented journalism.
Thank you
Watch “The Night Manager” for a primer on the international arms trade.
Looking forward to that.
The book is worth the read, as are all of le Carre’s works.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Night-Manager-John-Carr%C3%A9/dp/0345385764
Erik Prince played the video game Metal Gear Solid, thought Big Boss a genius and is trying to replicate him.
And this surprises anyone? Erik Prince has been patriotic only to himself! People’s lives just more coins in his bank account.
Changing names of a business to hide extremely questionable activities…kill with remorse for money…in bed with the Cheney Administration….no consequences for killing for money and no questions ask type killings…above the law…granted immunity…I ask again. This info comes as a new startling revelation?! Though eye opening….
Great article…this is true investigative journalism that cuts to the bone without regard of who it will affect in the inner circle of those that only see dollar signs.
Isn’t this soulless slime already behind bars?
The Machiavellian Prince is finally going to get his comeuppance. I bet he moves to the UAE to avoid prosecution. If the coward is too arrogant and entitled to follow US law he should renounce his citizenship immediately.
The funny thing about US law enforcement, those in power decide how the law is enforced. What might have been okay in 1995, fell flat in 2002 and in 2009 another interpretation of the same law comes through. My point being, what you do today that is perfectly okay, may become a crime in the future. An example, 2007 Tahrir Square Iraq. The FBI dedicated agents to investigating this incident(under GW Bush, I would like to add). From the get go the purpose was to convict these guys. Any evidence that did not fit the sough after narrative was discarded. The funny thing is, technically there was no crime. The Department of State was the contractor, not DOD and not DOJ. The laws that were passed by congress that made contractors subject to the UCMJ applied only to DOD. But like I said before, expendable and deniable. The law means what those in power want it to mean.
Another Mid-East country he could move to comes to mind, but I guess he would be horning in on their racket.
I’m sure he’s shaking in his combat boots
Bush, Cheney and Blackwater. I can’t write what I think of all of them.
In case you missed it… it’s actually-
Bush, Cheney, Obama, Hillary and Blackwater.
It’s all there in black and white, so don’t delude yourself.
It sure is. And a whole staggering boatload more.
With sincere — I mean that — due respect, this list omits the biggest chunk: the millions of good, decent, educated people who are going to vote for more of the same in eight months. Tick tock tick tock…
I see Jeremy is keep up the theme of his dated book. Once Prince released his book Civilian Warriors your perspective is completely changed from he narrative in this with “un-named sources”. Even Jon Stewart recommends it.
Blackwater grew to solve needs the US couldn’t do. Provide training and security services. And grew using US veterans who did this very risky job.
“Blackwater grew to solve needs the US couldn’t do . . .”
Like covertly supplying TOW-II antitank munitions to ISIS forces in Syria, you mean?
Implausible denial . . . “daddy, what’s a blowback?”
Yeah. The US could certainly rely on such stalwart old allies as Saudi Arabia and Turkey for such activities.
Why bother with twerps like Prince?
Fuggin’ mercenaries. Straight up criminals. Murders and killers. Pieces of shttt and who deserve absolutely no support from the American People. Cancel their checks.
Fuggin’ mercenaries. Worthless piles of shtt, but cowardly, frightened neo-liberals and conservatives love these guys.
“frightened neo-liberals and conservatives love these guys.”
The idea of killing someone to feed yourself or take territory for yourself and be the king of your own domain is a fascination of fantasy, not to be confused with real love. But there is a cult in the u.s. in the uppers of politics and entertainment that is bent on conditioning the youth of america that such violence is acceptable and even desirable because the cult needs armies to fight their hegemonomic wars. It is the rise of evil.
The most amazing element of this article for me is the fact that Mr. Prince is always very near this line of international law that is already established. It seems to me that the only real difference between some organization that has the clearance under the “ITAR” classification and Mr. Prince is being vetted by some seriously high power. Just permission to be in the game. How does something like this get undone?
[“…“Money laundering for Libyan officials using a Chinese bank — that is the issue that pushed it over the edge” for the Justice Department, said the second former intelligence official…]
All he had to do was arrange a meeting with Lloyd Blankfein and *poof*, the DOJ goes away.
LMAO! Not just comical, but absolutely true.
and no doubt it will thus occur…
It is interesting to see the list of services to be provided in the Stage 3: Force Application/Deployment. Third from the bottom is “humanitarian assistance“. By including that objective, but only at the end of a very long list of other services designed to destroy all things humanitarian, Mr. Prince and his ilk are actively destroying the very concept and making actual purveyors of humanitarian services suspect. That’s a damn fucking shame.
As for the roads in Nigeria, according to Marcy Wheeler, he didn’t even need to leave his native Michigan if all he wanted to deal with were potholes, which I’m told are practically large enough for entire moose to disappear in at present.
Just another example of how right wing radicals are able to get away with anything. In America the laws only apply to minorities, immigrants and economically challenged. America is exclusively for rich white males who coincidently are the reasons why this country is going down the toilet….
What did his ties to the last Bush administration provide? There must have been an investigation to corruption with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Without a draft and need for services in the Iraq invasion by the U.S., this corrupt man who claims to be a “patriot” is really looking for easy money.
The first pardon of a Trump presidency right there …
The first security contract of a Clinton presidency right there …
Nah, I think the first pardon will be a white nationalist who murders a minority.
… could not make it up: Trump has tapped a former Blackwater exec as his foreign policy wingman [ http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/25/donald_trumps_top_foreign_adviser_joseph ]
Yes, I can see how that might present a problem… but it’s not, exactly, an unusual one with the Obama administration.
*I suspect it would be difficult to prosecute anyone only looking forward, and not backwards.
Three things that jumped out despite not being the focus of the article-
– “the Obama administration’s continued willingness to award contracts to former Blackwater entities while the case was active was a fatal impediment to a successful prosecution”… in other words the corporate mercenaries continued to thrive off US taxpayer dollars at the expense of the rule of law or any semblance of justice due to active support by the neolibcon establishment
(gee thanks anti-progressive Obama/Clinton supporters)
– Nigeria is among many other countries hiring western backed corporate mercenaries (though not Prince this time) for wars being supported by the neolibcon establishment without any public debate or oversight
(gee thanks anti-progressive Obama/Clinton supporters)
– retired Adm. William Fallon, the former commander of U.S. Central Command working for a Chinese backed corporation while ostensibly avoiding violations of US laws for aiding Chinese defense with his expertise sure seems a lot like Wall Street offshoring US technology (and jobs of course) while pretending that doesn’t aid Chinese defense… in other words, profits through cooperation with a CYA PR veneer for plausible deniability.
Note how the CEO made clear that non-US FSG personnel making presentations to China’s Ministry of Public Security would be perfectly acceptable and “legal”
(gee thanks anti-progressive Obama/Clinton supporters)
Three excellent examples to present whenever the shills trot out the “Dems are better than Repubs” bullshit.
The neoliberal/neocon, two parties one system establishment, will continue as long as the suckers remain uninformed and keep voting for their latest “leaders” who don’t give a shit about our people, values or laws.
Don’t try to blame this shit on liberals. No one said Obama was perfect, but he’s better than any war hawk freak that was running against him. Your dear GOP is even worse. Party lines are ridiculous and politicians are well politicians.
You say party lines are ridiculous right after saying the GOP is even worse…too funny!
My dear poor deluded Diane
Look at the first quote in my comment, the summary at the end of my comment, and the ample record of US warmongering over the last 7+ years (perhaps there have been a few articles at The Intercept you couldn’t be bothered to read?).
The not perfect Obama is a “war hawk freak”.
You are the one defending the “ridiculous” party lines, not me.
You are one of the “suckers” to which I was referring.
And, if after reading my comment you believe I support the GOP, you have bigger problems than that.
I’m sure others may have some reading suggestions for you so you can inform yourself, but I’ll just point out that neoliberals ARE NOT liberals.
Wake the fuck up.
Diane,
Either you’re young and naive, or have been living off the grid in Idaho the past 7 years. Maybe you’ve just drank too much MSM Kool-Aid and don’t know it.
There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Obama and the GOP warhawk freaks. In fact, Obama retained or rehired several Neo-Cons from Shrub’s/Cheney’s coterie right out of the gate, and still has some in his Admin. The lies he peddled during his campaign to bring justice to the ‘Cons was instantly reverted when he said “let’s look forward, not backward”. How convenient.
If you don’t think that was well-planned beforehand, then you still haven’t understood how this stuff works.
Obama has supported fascist coups like the one in Ukraine, Hillary’s Libya coup, and currently the unsuccessful attempt in Syria (with covert CIA support to ISIL and other “terrorists”) to name a few. He’s as bad as Shrub & Dick for 9/11-A’stan and Iraq.
Smarten up, kid. The D’s and R’s are the same pack of vultures & jackals.
Spoken like a true american, independent or libertarian. cheers. What we need is a “skin in the game law” whereby if you are an elected official and you want a war, the first bucks on the front line has to be all your sons. And if you have no sons, you cannot vote.
I insist on it.
that’s sexist !
… why don’t daughters qualify as front-line cannon fodder?
Dec 3, 2015 – Women will be allowed to serve as fully-fledged members of front-line U.S. military combat units …
i’ve said it before (may be y’all are not allowed to read it b/c Julian Assange wrote the forward) but The WikiLeaks Files expose more than most of y’all want to believe is true … the extent to which the U$A empire will go is breathtaking … well worth reading.
“Nigeria is among many other countries hiring western backed corporate mercenaries (though not Prince this time) for wars being supported by the neolibcon establishment without any public debate or oversight”
Thanks to Wikileaks releases, we know one thing when it comes to Nigeria. Hillary Clinton received an email from Shell Oil informing her that “we now have so many of our people in the Nigerian government, that we effectively are the Nigerian government.”
It’s an important thing to note. How much have Shell Oil donated to the Clinton Foundation by the way?
Indeed.
A streetwalker would blush at the list of who Hillary is in bed with… though she is unfortunately by far not the only one staining our national mattress.
It’s a pity so few actually bother to benefit from the Information Age.
What? Say it ain’t so! The corrupt war profiteer that provided us with everything from mercenaries to mechanics is involved in criminal wrongdoing? How could that be from such a great example of American “exceptionalism?” You know, ‘the law is the same for all EXCEPT rich white people..?” .
Thank you, oh thank you. What great journalism. The Prince and DeVos families are to many of us in the mitten Pure Michigan Embarrassments. The more light shed on their activities, the better.
Again, and American patriot under investigation for made up allegations, while the whole time the USDOJ sells guns to Mexican drug cartels, has a U.S. Secretary of State running a illegal email operation, and numerous other problems, and they go after a Patriot. Just like the IRS targeted conservative organizations and the DOJ sat on their fat ass and did nothing. You people are a disgrace to America, the DOJ is corrupt to the core, Erik decided not to pay the ransom the liberal politicians wanted so they go after him. Ask why every senior politician ask for only Blackwater security when they came to Iraq, even fat ass Killary ask for them, she would accept no other security detail. Keep sitting on your couch at home and watching the lies of the Main stream news tell you what to think and believe, and your dumb enough to believe it.
predator is not spelled p-a-t-r-i-o-t.
You profess a high degree of knowledge in some very touchy areas. This would be most valuable if you could provide some greater detail of ongoing illegal operations for profit. Thank you in advance.
I think a big part of the problem with Blackwater is not what they did illegally, but what they were able to do legally. In Iraq, we shouldn’t have been using contractors to protect the state department. That should have been U.S. marines. And it should also be U.S. armed forces fighting Boko Haram, not Blackwater. I would be surprised if the investigation shows that they broke the law (but anything is possible). Erik Prince is trying to push the law to its absolute extreme without breaking it. But maybe in this instance he crossed the line? I would be surprised if he gets in trouble for anything, but you never know.
I agree with a Person. “In Iraq, we shouldn’t have been using contractors to protect the state department. That should have been U.S. marines.”… but that’s not fascist enough. And further we should not be in Iraq. Another U.S. Marine would likely agree: Smedley Butler.
This article does a good job of making standard business practices seem nefarious. Every major US and European defense contractor was in Libya after the regime change trying to get contracts. Thousands of Western companies have active contracts with state owned chinese companies. US law allows defense contractors to present marketing material and proposals without license so long as their is no transfer of sensitive military technology or plans. A license is only required prior to actual contract – the contract must be submitted with the license request. What this article says, in short, is that Prince tried to get some defense work in various locals but failed. That’s newsworthy?
You’re pretty much scrubbing the article and republishing it.
I mean, if you disagree, state it with some opposing evidence, please – not with nefarious faux plagiarism
He belongs in Gitmo.
These are the people who thrive on war and violence all the time pretending to represent peace and freedom.
Mr. Prince… just chill and enjoy your family’s fortune.
There have been a lot of news reports about things that Blackwater should be prosecuted for, but I do not like this business of having federal agents go around to business associates and telling them not to do business with someone. They should put up or shut up, with actual charges. I realize Prince is by no means the first person they’ve tried to have blackballed. Maybe in this case he deserves it, but even if it were right it’s not the right way.
I could not agree more. The Gov motto – if you can’t indict, go for character assassination.
@Wnt
I read that part as the government not trying to blackball Prince, but trying to protect people who are involved with him. It’s like the cops calling their buddies and telling them the illegal poker game they are playing in is about to get raided.
I think this was a heads up, not a blackball.
you are correct.
Regardless of what Prince and his associates are or are not doing, “having federal agents go around to business associates and telling them not to do business with someone” is a tactic that can be used against an innocent person to ruin him. If the feds. have sufficient evidence that the associates are doing wrong along with the principal, they too should be targeted for investigation. In the absence of such evidence, what basis is there to warn the associates?
If Mr. Prince is being investigated by the “Justice”
department of the fake U$A, it most likely means he was
not sufficiently corrupt for the fake U$A or
that the “Justice” department needs another pretense
to cover up their own corruption.
Great to see The_Intercept meeting/exceeding expectations of solid investigative reporting with reports like this. It should be instrumental in re-focusing public attention on America’s leading mercenary gangster.
This story reads like something right out of “The Night Manager”, with the Erik Prince as the rotten businessman, Richard Onslow Roper! Using humanitarian aid programs as cover for highly profitable mercenary operations and various arms trading.
One can only wonder if, just like in the 6 episode TV series, he has well placed officials under “consultancy” in order to thwart police/intelligence investigations, when necessary.
The whole concept of privatizing our military is one of lunacy. Let’s build an organization that has the potential to over through our government.
And we pay our political leaders salaries to do such irresponsible insane things.
Maybe, finally, this guy will go to jail. or (insert agency name here) will solve the problem.
See, this is the problem when you cut back on military funding. Poor Mr. Prince and all his employees just are not receiving enough contracts from the US government to show growth sufficient to impress the Wall Street analysts, so he has to go elsewhere to obtain funding. No different from, say, big Pharma, really. Oh, you might quibble that big Pharma sells things that save lives, but that is merely incidental. It is all about money. The only real question here is why the DoJ is investigating. Could it be that Mr. Prince did not make a large enough donation in 2012?
I’m confident that if either Hillary or Donald is elected in November, Mr. Prince’s problems will diminish, because like Mr. Prince, the Party is in the war business.
What a patriot.
you mean What? A patriot?
Man is a thrill seeking criminal with a hunger for action, power, and of course money. Hopefully his family is ashamed of him.
Wowee, bravo. Aren’t the NY Times and Wash Post — if not MSM as a whole — now gonna have to give some real countenance, however begrudgingly, to The Intercept’s existence? Keep up the great work, at least for so long as so few other news-organs
are serious, committed, and bothering to go for it.
Excellent comment. That same pimped out media sold u.s. wmd, an illegal invasion, and conspired to get thousands killed for profits in the process. Be interesting to see a poll about what americans do and don’t know, what connections they see and don’t see, what illusions they have about things, and their own personal estimates of how stupid or smart they think they are.
Mass media is all about programming perception, meaning and relevance. Bullytalk.