Erik Prince, Blackwater founder/wingnut

Blackwater Chief at Nexus of Military and Business

By JAMES RISEN
Published: October 8, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 — Erik D. Prince, the crew-cut, square-jawed founder of Blackwater USA, the security contractor now at the center of a political storm in both Washington and Baghdad, is a man seemingly born to play a leading role in the private sector side of the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is both a former member of the Navy Seals and the scion of a fabulously wealthy, deeply religious family that is enmeshed in Republican Party politics. As a result, the 38-year-old Mr. Prince stands at the nexus between American Special Operations, which has played such a critical role in the war operations, and the nation’s political and business elite, who have won enormous government contracts as war operations have increasingly been outsourced.

Republican political connections ran deep in his family long before Mr. Prince founded Blackwater in 1997. When he was a teenager, religious conservative leaders like Gary Bauer, now the president of American Values, were house guests. James C. Dobson, the founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, gave the eulogy at his father’s funeral in 1995. “Dr. and Mrs. Dobson are friends with Erik Prince and his mother, Elsa Broekhuizen,” Focus on the Family said in a statement.

Mr. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, married into one of the most politically active conservative families in the Midwest. She has served as the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Michigan, and last year, her husband, Richard DeVos Jr., ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan as the Republican candidate. Mr. Prince and his family have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and other conservative and religious causes, records show. One favorite: the prison ministry of Charles Colson, the former Watergate felon turned Christian prison evangelist.

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