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Ear to the Ground

Blackwater Founder ‘Implicated in Murder’

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Posted on Aug 5, 2009
AP / Susan Walsh

Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince is sworn in before testifying to the House Oversight Committee in 2007.

Jeremy Scahill in The Nation:

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.”

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

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By Virginia777, August 8 at 1:49 am #

This sheds new light on Mia Farrow contacting Prince to help “Save” Darfur:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4699eda6-3d65-11dd-bbb5-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Activists turn to Blackwater over Darfur

By Harvey Morris at the United Nations

Published: June 19 2008 01:54 | Last updated: June 19 2008 01:54

Mia Farrow, the actress and activist, has asked Blackwater, the US private security company active in Iraq, for help in Darfur after becoming frustrated by the stalled deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force.

Ms Farrow said she had approached Erik Prince, founder and owner of Blackwater, to discuss whether a military role was either feasible or desirable.

She acknowledged that many people might have reservations about Blackwater being involved in Darfur – the company’s men were involved in the fatal shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians last September – but said the threat of violence to refugees meant all options had to be explored.

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By Gary Baumgarten, August 7 at 3:30 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Harper’s Magazine contributing editor Scott Horton will be my guest Monday Aug 10 at 5 PM NY time on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com to discuss the allegations against Blackwater.

Please go to my blog, http://www.garybaumgarten.com to join in the conversation then.

Thanks,

Gary

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By FreeWill, August 6 at 10:21 pm #

When will we realize that the bigest threat to our peace and democracy, is from the Radical Extreamist,Religious, Zellots right here at home. People like Prince, who work hand and hand with their conspiring goverment handelers to promote their extreamism ways at all costs.  These people put all of us in danger with actions and do nothing but creat ill will world wide.
They are not PATRIOTS they are TERIORISTS and should be treated as such!

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By ChaoticGood, August 6 at 9:09 pm #

Prince is simply a businessman who sells assassinations for a living.  This is nothing new in history, it’s not even new to America.  There were dozens if not hundreds of vigilante groups throughout American history.  Why are some of us shocked?  The real question is: Under whose control are they?  Do they do our bidding or are they true mercenaries, up to anything if the price is right.
I hope they are simply mercenaries that can be purchased and controlled.  Otherwise we have the American version of the Templars on our hands and we will be forced to deal with them much like Pope Clement did. We must keep watch on them

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By purplewolf, August 6 at 7:11 pm #

Lost_sOuls_rembrd: check out MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachael Maddow Show. I saw it last night there.

hippie4ever: you forgot the worst of the worst-Dick Cheney and don’t forget Turdblossom either.

I saw some of the examples of Blackwater during the hurricane Katrina* fiasco and yes they would think nothing of killing Americans- all people are the enemy to them or just more target practice, no exceptions. They have no loyality to America, even though we are the ones footing the bill for their killing machine known as Blackwater- forget their name change-crap is crap no matter what name it is known.

As for Eric Prince of Darkness- since he is on a crusade-much like Bush 2- and wants to kill all people non-Christian, which brands of Christianity will him and his group of crusaders allow to live? Probably not yours.

*Spike Lee did an excellent documentary on this called “When the Levees Broke.” Had some really good footage of how the Bush Administration ordered Martial Law in New Orleans, which the majority of Americans still are unaware of and showing the goon squad on the brigde keeping people in the water and refusing to allow them to move up onto dryer land without being shot and killed.
Yep, those repukes really make you feel safe now don’t they, you betcha!

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By msgmi, August 6 at 6:34 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Prince’s Crusaders exist because of war profiteering. Its mission is not security but destabilization, and the politicians are its sponsors. When the military has its code of military justice, the Prince Crusaders have carte blanche blessings to sponsor mayhem in the name of the crusade..

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By dihey, August 6 at 3:45 pm #

And here is the 64 million dollar question: “why does the Obama administration continue to use and support this murderous organization albeit under a new pseudonym? This is perhaps the greatest real scandal of this administration to date.

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By PSmith, August 6 at 2:08 pm #

AMERICAN PATRIOTS, contd

This is _not_ a war against the Third World, that has killed 6 million to 20 million revolting peasants. John Stockwell does not know what he is talking about. Apart from his twelve years in the CIA and his participitation in three such wars.

JOHN STOCKWELL
?John Stockwell on Central America - torture, mutilations and worse -

?“I don’t mean to abuse you with verbal violence, but you have to understand what your government and its agents are doing. They go into villages, they haul out families. With the children forced to watch they castrate the father, they peel the skin off his face, they put a grenade in his mouth and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.”

“We do not parachute teams into the Soviet Union to haul families out at night and castrate the father with the children watching, because they have the Bomb, and a big army, and they would parachute teams right back into our country and do the same thing to us - they’re not scared of us. For slightly different reasons, but also obvious reasons, we don’t do these things in England, or France, or Germany, or Sweden, or Italy, or Japan. What comes out at you immediately is that these 1 to 3 million direct victims, the dead, and in these other wars, they’re people of the third world. They’re people of the Metumba mountains of the Congo, and the jungles of Southeast Asia, and now the hills of northern Nicaragua - 12,000 peasants. We have not killed KGB or Russian army advisors in Nicaragua. We are not killing Cuban advisors. We’re not killing very many Sandinistas. The 12,000 that we have killed in Nicaragua are peasants, who have the misfortune of living in a CIA’s chosen battlefield. Mostly women and children. Communists? Far, far, far more Catholics than anything else.”

?John Stockwell addresses the systemic flaws in the use of a Dept. of Operations, “Murder Inc.” if you will. Along with advice from Admiral La Rocque on what each of us _must_ do to help.

“Now, Helen Caldicott, at the end of her lectures, I’ve heard her say, very effectively, `Tell people to get out and get to work on the problem…. You’ll feel better’....”?

“‘What can I do?’.... If you can travel, go to Nicaragua and see for yourself. Go to the Nevada test site and see for yourself. Go to Pantex on Hiroshima day this summer, and see the vigil there. The place where we make 10 nose-cones a day, 70 a week, year in and year out. He [Admiral LaRock] said, `I’d tell them, if they feel comfortable lying down in front of trucks with bombs on them, to lie down in front of trucks with bombs on them.’ But he said, `I’d tell them that they can’t wait. They’ve got to start tomorrow, today, and do it, what they can, every day of their lives’.”?

John Stockwell -  “Third World War” - Forty years of Secret Wars of the C1A - 6 million killed - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ioJGMCr-Y

Secret Wars of the C1A - http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/StockwellCIA87_2.html

John Stockwell - http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/John_Stockwell.html

CIA - ON COMPANY BUSINESS - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3YH_ggYdc
Based on Philip Agee’s books

ALAN FRANCOVICH, director of On Company Business. Very highly praised by John Pilger. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Francovich

Very rare interview of John Stockwell, about On Company Business. Note very well what he says about judges and courts in Northern Virginia. For them Blackwater is doing God’s work - though not a new testament Christian God - more Maloch and Mars.

http://www.archive.org/details/AV_074-THE_CIA-_ON_COMPANY_BUSINESS

Bathwater - Erik Monday to Friday; Princess Erika on the weekends? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOTP5s_SbB4

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By PSmith, August 6 at 1:56 pm #

AMERICAN PATRIOTS

This is an outrageous slur on a group of fine upstanding public-spirited American patriots. These men are not brownshirts. Their organization is _not_ a private right wing SS, using Gestapo-like methods, poised to take over the nation with hundreds of thousands of ‘hopeless psychopathic killers’. They ‘regret’ the (necessary) murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans in the implementation of the Phoenix program / ‘El Salvador’ policy, as much as the next mercenary. Maybe. And if not today, then as soon as the PTSD kicks in.

This repeated phenomena, of murderous rightwing ‘Christian’ (using the term _very_ loosely) US, or US-backed, deathsquads slaughtering millions in order to save them from “communism” (aka anti-fascism) to make the world safe for right wing fascism, ER, US-style capitalism—repeated in Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, Pinochet’s Chile, Central America, Afghanistan 1, Iraq 1,  Bosnia,  Afghanistan 2, Iraq 2, Afghanistan (again) and many, many more (doughty Panama, mighty Grenada ...) _cannot_ be explained by the fact the the OSS facilitated the escape to South America of Nazi torturers like Klaus Barbie, lied to US Senators about their involvement and then used his methods of torture and murder in South America against revolting peasants there. And later everywhere they carried out their murderous campaigns.

This is _not_ a war against the Third World, that has killed 6 million to 20 million peasants. John Stockwell does not know what he is talking about. Apart from his twelve years in the CIA and his participitation in three such wars.

Klaus Barbie’s methods - http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Barbie.html

His US-organized escape - http://www.archives.gov/iwg/research-papers/barbie-irr-file.html

Monty Python - Revolting Peasants - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA

John Pilger - Torture is _so_ American - School of the Americas - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5L1VdlktOw

Father Roy Bourgeois - the School of the Assassins - http://www.hulu.com/watch/69785/global-voices-father-roy-inside-the-school-of-assassins

John Stockwell -  “Third World War” - Forty years of Secret Wars of the C1A - 6 million killed - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ioJGMCr-Y

Secret Wars of the C1A - http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/StockwellCIA87_2.html

Bathwater - Mel Brooks’s version - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K08akOt2kuo

Bathwater’s Princess Erika - after the war - Monty Python - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVxM5IBLeU4

Erik Monday to Friday; Princess Erika on the weekends? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOTP5s_SbB4

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By "G"utless "W"itless Hitler, August 6 at 12:56 pm #

The only honorable thing left for Prince to do is to lock himself in his bunker, bite down on his cyanide capsule, and pull the trigger.

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By hippie4ever, August 6 at 12:21 pm #

“What unholy “bipartisan consensus” is protecting this evil man? Does he have pictures of Senators having sex with horses?”—Ed Harges

Ed, besides GW Bush, Condosleeza Rice, Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, and the RNC, Gerbeit-Fuhrer Prince can count on Dem. Dianne Feinstein, the highest-ranking war profiteer in the Senate. Google “Dick Bloom” if you don’t believe it.

As for your second question, roflol, I doubt it—why screw a horse when you can do the American people?

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By Ed Harges, August 6 at 11:48 am #

I can’t think of anyone more utterly vile than this guy. How in blazes is Blackwater, or whatever it’s now called, still enjoying US government contracts? What unholy “bipartisan consensus” is protecting this evil man? Does he have pictures of Senators having sex with horses?

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By Purple Girl, August 6 at 11:06 am #

If China offered Blackwater (XE) more money would they turn their mercenaries on US? Absolutely.
This is not an ‘American Co’ this is a company which happens to be located in the Unitied States because of Money and Pre trained ‘Talent’- for now.
There is no alliegence to US, not only for Business reasons (“It’s Business”),but from delusional Zealotry. A lethal Combination for National Security. If they were not currently on Our payroll- they’d be on the Terrorist Watch List- which would be justified.
These So Called ‘Christians’ are literally Hell Bent on destroying humanity, and the planet if allowed. They all think they have a Golden Ticket for the ‘Rapture’ bus.
This sociopathic ideology is no different than Heaven Gate, or Jim Jones, Or Keresh, Or even Charlie Manson. If they can’t convince you to join them on this suicidal mission, they’ll lie you into it or just out right murder you. But these folks are not just ‘Armed and dangerous’- their Trained to the Nines.
Heres a lil’ hint to tell a Real Christian from a Psuedo “Christian”- do they think Christ needs soldiers and an Army? He didn’t the last time around, only disciples and followers.Doesn’t Jesus defeat Satan ultimately with only the ‘Sword’ of The Word, anyway?
Only Satan requires the aid of mere mortals- Christ has the power of God behind him. In fact the epilogue was already written too- Christ Wins.
Apparently only His Opponent doesn’t see the Futility of armorment.
Those Who were born and Raised Christian- no matter if working out your own secular issues- should be outraged by this innately Non Christian doctrine being used to bastardize the religion. Christ did not have the Military Might, That was The Romans.
Side note- one has to wonder why the standard mode of torture and murder in ancient Rome is the standard Symbol of Chrisitianity- when so many aspects of Christ’s life bear so much more significance.
Prince and his Blackwater cutthroats are no differenet than the ‘Guns and God’Islamic jihadists. Iran’s backing AQ? Well were still backing XE.
Pres Obama must end this dangerous liason with this terrorist group.America doesn’t Torture nor hire Hit squads anymore. And those who did should be prosecuted to the Fullest Extent of the Law.

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By expat in germany, August 6 at 4:30 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Just change the angle of his arm a little…

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By LostHills, August 6 at 1:25 am #

I’m clairvoyant. I’m reading the future right now, and I can tell you that this criminal will never see the inside of a jail cell.

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By Outraged, August 6 at 12:59 am #

I would guess that this would be only the tip of the iceberg regarding this criminal operation run a madman.  (Bizarre how his haircut in this picture reminds me of one I’ve seen on Hitler)

Prince should be indicted.  Investigations should continue and this terrorist organization should be viewed in its rightful context.  Why is it Blackwater has spawned so many branches across the United States.  Routinely, a Blackwater van cruises past my house.  From what I understand, they have an office in the downtown area and have some type of contract with the Community College teaching certain aspects of police training.  A scary thought but not surprising.

This criminal operation needs to be shut down, completely.

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By Rodger Lemonde, August 5 at 11:45 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Let’s repurpose Gitmo to contain these miscreants.
It sure sounds like terrorist activity to me.

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By coloradokarl, August 5 at 10:37 pm #

IF this is true, I bet it leads to Cheney’s henchmen. This whole thing is soooo wrong. Bastards

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By Inherit The Wind, August 5 at 9:39 pm #

This is news?  It’s been clear all along that Erik Prince has been building a private army on the way to enforcing his neo-fascist pseudo-christian beliefs.  It’s been clear all along that Blackwater is TOTALLY out of control and not much different than the Afghani and Somali war-lord gangs, only better armed and better trained to kill.

The use of Blackwater thugs in the New Orleans may have been the most terrifying part of that whole disaster.

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By lOst_sOuls_rembrd, August 5 at 9:29 pm #

Jerry Scahill was interview about this breaking story on DemocracyNow today, 8/5/09.  The testimonies of Doe#1 and Doe#2 was given in private before a grand jury. 

It has been on Huffington Post but guess what?  It hasn’t hit cable news, lol.  Big surprise.

The Nation site is down from so many hits.

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By Fat Freddy, August 5 at 8:28 pm #

Sorry, I got excited and didn’t see the “read more” link.

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By Fat Freddy, August 5 at 8:21 pm #

You’re making this shit up, right? April Fools. I’m not biting. I want links.

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