Ah yes, those two great American Heroes, Erik Prince and Ollie North.
Such Patriots as these inspire me to follow the example of the old pig
in the following song:
One evening in October
When I was about one-third sober
And was taking home a load with manly pride
My poor feet began to stutter
So I lay down in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side
Then we sang "It's All Fair Weather"
And "Good Fellows Get Together"
Till a lady passing by was heard to say
She says, "You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses"
And the pig got up and slowly walked away
Yes, the pig got up and slowly walked away
Slowly walked away, slowly walked away
Yes, the pig got up and he turned and winked at me
As he slowly walked away
Carl Jarvis
On 1/19/17, M Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
© First Look Media. All rights reservedTerms of use
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Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Notorious Mercenary Erik Prince Is Advising Trump From the Shadows
Jeremy Scahill
2017-01-17T20:42:10+00:00
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Erik Prince, America’s most notorious mercenary, is lurking in the shadows
of the incoming Trump administration. A former senior U.S. official who has
advised the Trump transition told The Intercept that Prince has been
advising the team on matters related to intelligence and defense, including
weighing in on candidates for the Defense and State departments. The
official asked not to be identified because of a transition policy
prohibiting discussion of confidential deliberations.
On election night, Prince’s latest wife, Stacy DeLuke, posted pictures from
inside Trump’s campaign headquarters as Donald Trump and Mike Pence watched
the returns come in, including a close shot of Pence and Trump with their
families. “We know some people who worked closely with [Trump] on his
campaign,” DeLuke wrote. “Waiting for the numbers to come in last night. It
was well worth the wait!!!! #PresidentTrump2016.” Prince’s sister,
billionaire Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s nominee for education secretary and
Prince (and his mother) gave large sums of money to a Trump Super PAC.
In July, Prince told Trump’s senior adviser and white supremacist Steve
Bannon, at the time head of Breitbart News, that the Trump administration
should recreate a version of the Phoenix Program, the CIA assassination ring
that operated during the Vietnam War, to fight ISIS. Such a program, Prince
said, could kill or capture “the funders of Islamic terror and that would
even be the wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from the Middle
East, and any of the other illicit activities they’re in.”
Prince also said that Trump would be the best force to confront “Islamic
fascism.” “As for the world looking to the United States for leadership,
unfortunately, I think they’re going to have to wait till January and hope
Mr. Trump is elected because, clearly, our generals don’t have a stomach for
a fight,” Prince said. “Our president doesn’t have a stomach for a fight and
the terrorists, the fascists, are winning.”
Prince founded the notorious private security firm Blackwater, which rose to
infamy in September 2007 after its operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi
civilians, including a 9-year-old boy in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.
Whistleblowers also alleged that Prince encouraged an environment in which
Iraqis were killed for sport. At the height of the Blackwater scandals in
2007, another prominent Trump backer, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, praised Prince,
who once worked in his congressional office. “Prince,’’ Rohrabacher said,
“is on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was.’’
Ultimately, Prince sold Blackwater and now heads up a Hong Kong-based
company known as Frontier Services Group. The Intercept has previously
reported on Prince’s efforts to build a private air force for hire and his
close ties to Chinese intelligence. One of his latest schemes is a proposal
to deploy private contractors to work with Libyan security forces to stop
the flow of refugees to Europe.
Prince has long fantasized that he is the rightful heir to the legacy of
“Wild Bill” Donovan and his Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to
the CIA. After 9/11, Prince worked with the CIA on a secret assassination
program, in addition to offering former SEALs and other retired special
operators to the State Department and other agencies for personal security.
Blaming leftists and some congressional Democrats for destroying his
Blackwater empire, Prince clearly views Trump’s vow to bring back torture,
CIA-sponsored kidnapping, and enhanced interrogations, as well as his
commitment to fill Guantánamo with prisoners, as a golden opportunity to
ascend to his rightful place as a covert private warrior for the U.S.
national security state. As we reported last year, “Prince — who portrays
himself as a mix between Indiana Jones, Rambo, Captain America, and Pope
Benedict — is now working with the Chinese government through his latest
‘private security’ firm.” The Trump presidency could result in Prince
working for both Beijing and the White House.
The Blackwater founder has also endorsed some of Trump’s overtures to
Russia, saying: “Think about it: If FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, can deal
with Stalin to defeat German fascism in World War II, certainly the United
States of America could work with Putin to defeat Islamic fascism. We don’t
have to agree with the Russians on everything, or even on a lot, but we can
at least agree that crushing ISIS in the Middle East is a very good idea.”
Prince described Democrats as “anti-Catholic, anti-Evangelical,” saying the
DNC hacks and leaks revealed “the disregard, the disdain they have for the
average American voter and citizen.”
Prince has a close relationship with Breitbart News and Steve Bannon,
Trump’s senior counselor and chief strategist. Prince has appeared
frequently — and almost exclusively — on Breitbart Radio. In August, Prince
offered praise for Trump’s candidacy, telling Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos:
“I even like some of his projects that have gone bankrupt, because people
that do things, and build things, and try things, sometimes fail at doing
it, and that’s the strength of the American capitalist system.” Prince
added: “We have kind of turned our back on the fact that hard work,
sacrifice, risk-taking, innovation, is what made America great. Washington
did not make America great.”
In September, Prince backed Trump’s proposal to commandeer Iraq’s 2 million
barrels of daily oil output. “For Mr. Trump to say, ‘We’re going to take
their oil — certainly we’re not going to lift it out of there and take it
somewhere else, but putting it into production, and putting a tolling
arrangement into place, to repay the American taxpayers for their efforts to
remove Saddam and to stabilize the area, is doable, and very plausible,”
Prince said on Breitbart Radio.
Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s nominee for education secretary and
she has all but vowed to embark on a crusade to push a privatization and
religious agenda in education that mirrors her brother’s in military and CIA
affairs. Prince has long been a contributor to the campaign of fellow
Christian warrior Mike Pence, and he contributed $100,000 to the pro-Trump
Super PAC Make America Number 1. Prince’s mother, Elsa, pitched in another
$50,000. That organization, run by Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire
hedge funder Robert Mercer, was one of the strongest bankrollers of Trump’s
campaign.
According to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in December Prince
attended the annual “Villains and Heroes” costume ball hosted by Mercer.
Dowd wrote that Palantir founder Peter Thiel showed her “a picture on his
phone of him posing with Erik Prince, who founded the private military
company Blackwater, and Mr. Trump — who had no costume — but joke[d] that it
was ‘N.S.F.I.’ (Not Safe for the Internet).”
Not even Trump is brazen enough to give Prince a public post in his
administration. But Prince is operating in the shadows, where he has always
been most at home.
Top Photo: Erik Prince listens during an interview in Washington on Jan. 31,
2014.
Related
Contact the author:
Jeremy Scahill
✉jeremy.scahill@theintercept.com
t@jeremyscahill
Additional Credits:
Additional Reporting: Matthew Cole.
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