Eric Prince, head of the company formerly known as Blackwater, must be one murderous thug good Christian Businessman. Or a really good bud of Satan Dick Cheney. Apparently, according to The New York Times, the CIA hired his firm to do their wet work (that’s super secret spy lingo for foreign assassinations) because why dirty your own hands when an allegedly homicidal fanatic for hire Good Christian Businessman will do the work for you. For a small profit, of course. After all, we are not communists:
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials. […]
The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said. […]
Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program. […]
A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress. “It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for,” she said.
I guess even the spooks got a little spooked by Mr. Prince. Nice to know some of them worry about the legal niceties of hiring mercenaries. I wonder how much money Mr. Prince made off this “off the books” deal? Or maybe he was just doing it for his pleasure. And with all the shoes dropping over this program you have to wonder also if the reason Prince’s contract was dropped by the CIA was because they noticed the his company wasn’t exactly all that discreet when it came to murder for hire. Indeed, they were downright sloppy about it, and rather indiscriminate to boot. Allegedly.
A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”
I wonder if Blackwater’s notorious record of slaughtering innocent civilians in Iraq mad the CIA back away from this “deal” especially after the well publicized massacre of Iraqi civilians in It also makes me wonder if Mr. Prince has any connection to any of the astroturf groups that created the “grass roots” protesters known as “tea baggers.” I mean, now that he has all this time on his hands. The idea of bring guns to public appearances by President Obama certainly strikes me as the sort of “tactic of intimidation” Prince could have suggested. But hey, that’s just me speculating.
Then again, who ever imagined Prince would be hired by the CIA in the first place. Allegedly. Or murder his own employees to keep their mouths shut. Allegedly. Or consider that he was on a mission from God to mount a crusade against Muslims. Allegedly.
… Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.
Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard.” Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince’s employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as “ragheads” or “hajiis.”
Now just imagine what would happen if the Republican party, in its current iteration, ever regained power. The Republican politicians now so vociferously complaining about Obama’s “death panels” would likely be hiring Prince and Blackwater Xe to do more than just have a rousing good time going on killing sprees in Iraq. And the assassination squads wouldn’t be limited to Muslim “jihadists.” In my opinion.
