Democracy Now Interview w Scahill on Erik Prince & Blackwater/Xe

In Explosive Allegations, Ex-Employees Link Blackwater Founder to Murder, Threats

-snip

Right. Erik Prince used to—you know, he said once that people that say those kinds of things about him don’t know anything about religion. Well, the fact is that if you look at Erik Prince’s life history, this is a kid who was sort of the crown prince of the radical religious right, if you look at it; not to be funny on words here, but Erik Prince was, in a way, the crown prince. His father, Edgar Prince, was one of the kingpins of the financial network that created the radical religious right. His dad, Edgar Prince, gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to start the Family Research Council; James Dobson, Focus on the Family. Close family friend of the Princes is Chuck Colson, who was Nixon’s hatchet man during Watergate and now has emerged to be one of the most powerful evangelical leaders in the United States, an adviser to President Bush.

Young Erik Prince interns at the George H.W. Bush White House but says it’s not conservative enough for him, so he backs Pat Buchanan’s insurgency campaign. Erik Prince converted to Catholicism, my sources tell me, because he wanted to be closer to the true tradition of the Church and to the Crusades. And then you have this individual serving in the military, leaving the Navy Seals then to start a private military training company, that once the so-called war on terror is launched by President Bush, a candidate who Erik Prince gave tremendous money to and his whole network funded—they were all Bush Pioneers—Bush then launches a war that he describes as a “crusade,” invading not one, but two Muslim countries, and putting Erik Prince and his private force of neo-crusaders at the vanguard of that occupation, guarding all of the senior people that Bush deployed in those countries to be his point men. Blackwater, effectively, under the Bush years, operated as an armed wing of the Bush administration, and now we know from employees that there, in fact, was a perception within the company that Erik Prince viewed himself as a crusader in a war against Islam.

The last point I’ll make on this is that what we also understand from John Doe number one is that these individuals inside of Iraq, the Blackwater operatives, some of them used call signs, identifying names, nicknames, that were taken from the realm of the Knights of the Templar, the original Crusaders, the warriors who fought the Crusades. And this is a very, very, I think, unsurprising development, in the sense that we’ve known many of these things about Erik Prince, but stunning to see it coming from insiders at Blackwater in sworn statements under penalty of perjury.

-snip



AND SCAHILL OFFERS ADDITIONAL INFO ON CHARGES WHICH OF COURSE, BLACKWATER & PRINCE SAY "HOLD NO WATER":



JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Well, I mean, first of all, anyone who knows anything about federal criminal investigations and grand juries knows that there can, at any given time, be multiple grand juries. Yes, it’s true that there was a grand jury that ultimately produced indictments of five Blackwater individuals over the Nisoor Square shooting. But, as a source that I have within the US Justice Department told me, there can always be other grand juries. So just because that was the outcome of that particular grand jury does not mean that there’s not a grand jury sitting right now. In fact, when I called the US attorney in—the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, working on this story, they said to me that they could not confirm or deny any action they may or may not be taking against uncharged individuals, and also said that, you know, “To be clear here, there was a grand jury there, but it doesn’t mean that there’s not a grand jury; we just can’t confirm or deny a grand jury.” So, you know, Blackwater is kind of playing with the facts there and playing with how the process actually works.

The reality is that we understand from the very pro-Blackwater book that was written by CNN executive producer, with Erik Prince’s cooperation, that Gary Jackson, the president of the company, has received some form of a target letter from the Department of Justice. And there’s a buzz going on right now in the circles of folks who follow this closely that there are more indictments of Blackwater figures that are going to be forthcoming. Whether or not Prince is going to be indicted is a totally different story. I do know, though, Amy, from talking to folks on Capitol Hill, that there is great interest in the Intelligence Committee and the Oversight Committee to pursue the allegations laid out by these two individuals in these sworn affidavits.

-snip

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/5/in_explosive_allegations_ex_employees_link


Interesting read/viewing for anyone following this story. I didn't know he converted to Catholicism, nor did I know of CNN's pro-Blackwater connection. Hoping info on the target letter is true!

I'm referring to Blackwater, the nighttime raids and the kidnapping of young girls.

If anyone followed her writings, remember when she described those raids but never could (or, did) identify who these people were? I found it strange that Iraqis or Al Qaeda types would be kidnapping the young girls and taking them off to houses for prostitution, since they have rather strict teachings in that vein. Am I wrong?

I realize that war changes people drastically, but I always feared it was people connected to our side. I didn't know anything about Blackwater until a short while ago, but I'm wondering if those kidnappers were Blackwater men?

Google Iraq War Riverbend and check out the blogs. One of the first that came up for me was about Iran being blamed for smuggling weapons into Iraq. Hmmmm! Coverup?

I will have to go back thru some of her writings and see if I can find postings about "them" coming at night...the neighborhood watches...the girls disappearing off the streets.

This is an evil man.

This proves, IMO, that it is our own people, supplying the means for the "insugency" and for the impetus of war. We are covertly arming the enemy, which gives Blackwater the excuse to kill as many Arabs as possible. They need to provide security because the other people that they gave the guns to, will shoot at them, which excuses their murderous actions against the Iraqi population, and also provided the Bush administration fodder for the media to claim Iran was getting involved. It it the Military Industrial Complex in full effect. I want investigations to be done, and I want all those involved charged for their crimes. This is unacceptable and should remain the type of stuff you read in a fictional novel.

Prince interned under HW Bush. You might recall previous sex scandals connected to Bush I Administration:

paints a very, very disturbing picture of what these guys are doing and have done. Who knows what else has been done that will never come to light? And why are we paying them to still be in Iraq?