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A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. The documents ... include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war. Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded. The interviews ... underscore how three presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promises to prevail in Afghanistan. The interviews also highlight the U.S. governments botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistans thriving opium trade. With judges and police chiefs and bureaucrats extorting bribes, many Afghans soured on democracy. Meanwhile, as U.S. hopes for the Afghan security forces failed to materialize, Afghanistan became the worlds leading source of a growing scourge: opium. The United States has spent about $9 billion to fight the problem ... but Afghan farmers are cultivating more opium poppies than ever. Last year, Afghanistan was responsible for 82 percent of global opium production.
Note: How is it that Afghanistan became the leading opium producer in the world under the watch of the US, when the Taliban had all but eradicated opium in 2001? Read how Afghan officials and US contractors profited handsomely from the opium boom. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdads Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractors operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwaters top manager there issued a threat: that he could kill the governments chief investigator and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq. American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassys relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country. After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created an environment full of liability and negligence. The management structures in place to manage and monitor our contracts in Iraq have become subservient to the contractors themselves, the investigator, Jean C. Richter, wrote in an Aug. 31, 2007, memo to State Department officials. Blackwater contractors saw themselves as above the law, he said, adding that the hands off management resulted in a situation in which the contractors, instead of Department officials, are in command and in control.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war crimes news articles from reliable major media sources.
Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda. One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of ... one of the largest teachers unions in the nation. The next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former C.I.A. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations. Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide ... appears to have become interested in using former spies to train Project Veritas operatives in espionage tactics sometime during the 2016 presidential campaign. In 2017, he met with White House and Pentagon officials to pitch a plan to privatize the Afghan war. Mr. Prince invited Project Veritas operatives ... to his familys Wyoming ranch for training in 2017. [They] shared social media photos of taking target practice with guns at the ranch, including one post ... saying that with the training, Project Veritas will be the next great intelligence agency.
Note: Mr. Prince's Blackwater operation got caught systematically defrauding the government. Then Blackwater changed its name to Academi and made over $300 million off the Afghan drug trade. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
The Grab [is] a riveting new documentary which outlines the move by national governments, financial investors and private security forces to snap up food and water resources. What oil was to the 20th century, food and water will be to the 21st – precious, geopolitically powerful and contested. “The 20th century had Opec,” says [Nate] Halverson ... a journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting. “In the future, we’re going to have Food Pec. [In] rural La Paz county, Arizona, a Saudi company bought about 15 square miles of farmland [and] drained the region’s aquifers beyond a generation’s worth of rain. Residents describe going without water, discovering empty wells, their houses cracked and sinking, with little recourse. The film connects their confusion to the despair of Zambian farmers displaced, via a complicated and westernized deeds system, by mercenary militias to make way for commercial farmland controlled by outside actors from various countries – China, Gulf states, the US. The culprit is not one country or company but a shadowy network of mercenary interests. Halverson and his team [obtained] ... a year’s worth of emails within the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group, founded by Erik Prince, who also founded and was the CEO of the military contracting company Blackwater – a notorious mercenary group during the US invasion of Iraq. The emails, from 2012, reveal a clear plan to obtain, by whatever means necessary, land in Africa to fulfill competing national interests. "I just want people to have great information ... because right now the people that have this information are the CIA, and Wall Street, and foreign governments and very wealthy people.”
Note: Why is the founder of Blackwater, a US defense contractor tied to countless scandals and criminal activities, buying up land in Africa? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
The president has a clandestine network targeting a 'kill list' justified by secret laws. How is that different than a death squad? The film Dirty Wars, which premiered at Sundance ... tracks the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a network of highly-trained, completely unaccountable US assassins, armed with ever-expanding "kill lists". [Narrator Jeremy] Scahill and [director Rick] Rowley track this new model of US warfare that strikes at civilians and insurgents alike in 70 countries. They interview former JSOC assassins, who are shell-shocked at how the "kill lists" they are given keep expanding, even as they eliminate more and more people. Our conventional forces are subject to international laws of war: they are accountable for crimes in courts martial; and they run according to a clear chain of command. As much as the US military may fall short of these standards at times, it is a model of lawfulness compared with JSOC, which has far greater scope to undertake the commission of extra-legal operations and unimaginable crimes. JSOC morphs the secretive, unaccountable mercenary model of private military contracting, which Scahill identified in Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, into a hybrid with the firepower and intelligence backup of our full state resources. JSOC operates outside the traditional chain of command; it reports directly to the president of the United States. What does it means for the president to have an unaccountable paramilitary force, which can assassinate anyone anywhere in the world?
Note: For more on JSOC, click here.
The United States spent more than $7 billion in the past 14 years to fight the runaway poppy production that has made Afghan opium the worlds biggest brand. Tens of billions more went to governance programs to stem corruption and train a credible police force. But ... more than ever, Afghan government officials have become directly involved in the opium trade. Some of the most important regional police and security commanders, including allies of American military and intelligence officials, are closely identified with the opium trade. Farmers said they paid [government officials] about $40 for each acre of poppies under cultivation. In 2015, that meant nearly $3 million in payments from the district of Garmsir alone. Garmsir is just one of several districts in ... the heart of poppy country. By the most basic metric, the international effort to curb poppy production in Afghanistan has failed. More opium was cultivated in 2014, the last year of the NATO combat mission, than in any other year since the United Nations began keeping records in 2002. Government complicity in the opium trade is not new. Taxation on a districtwide level in the main opium-growing centers, however, has been less common. Most who spoke about it did so on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. Farmers in Nad Ali said tax collection depended on ... ones relationship with the local police commander. In some cases, the teams sent by the government to eradicate crops collected the funds. In others, it was the local or national police.
Note: For solid evidence that rogue elements of the US government are making big profits from opium sales, read the riveting stories of two award-winning journalists. For more, read how US counternarcotics efforts have contributed to the Afghan opium boom.
Retired General Anthony Zinni [has demanded] up to 10,000 American boots on the ground to battle ISIS. Retired General Jack [Keane has made] more vague demands, such as for offensive air strikes and the deployment of more military advisers to the region. Many of these former Pentagon officials [have a vested interest] as paid directors and advisers to some of the largest military contractors in the world. Ramping up Americas military presence in Iraq and directly entering the war in Syria, along with greater military spending more broadly, is a debatable solution to a complex political and sectarian conflict. But those goals do unquestionably benefit one player in this saga: Americas defense industry. Keane is a great example of this phenomenon. His think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, ... has provided the data on ISIS used for multiple stories by The New York Times, the BBC and other leading outlets. Keane has appeared on Fox News at least nine times over the last two months to promote the idea that the best way to stop ISIS is through military actionin particular, through air strikes deep into ISIS-held territory. Left unsaid during his media appearances ... are Keanes other gigs: as special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater; as a board member to tank and aircraft manufacturer General Dynamics; a venture partner to SCP Partners, an investment firm that partners with defense contractors, including XVionics, an operations management decision support system company used in Air Force drone training; and as president of his own consulting firm, GSI LLC. Retired General Anthony Zinni, perhaps the loudest advocate of a large deployment of American soldiers into the region to fight IS, is a board member to BAE Systems US subsidiary, and also works for several military-focused private equity firms.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
Last month a three-year-long federal prosecution of Blackwater collapsed. The governments 15-felony indictmenton such charges as conspiring to hide purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosivescould have led to years of jail time for Blackwater personnel. In the end, however, the government got only misdemeanor guilty pleas by two former executives, each of whom were sentenced to four months of house arrest, three years probation, and a fine of $5,000. Prosecutors dropped charges against three other executives named in the suit and abandoned the felony charges altogether. But the most noteworthy thing about the largely failed prosecution wasnt the outcome. It was the tens of thousands of pages of documentssome declassifiedthat the litigation left in its wake. These documents illuminate Blackwaters defense strategy: to defeat the charges it was facing, Blackwater built a case not only that it worked with the CIAwhich was already widely knownbut that it was in many ways an extension of the agency itself. [CEO Erik] Prince [said] recently, Blackwaters work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked. In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the growing privatization of intelligence agency functions, click here.
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study. Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents. Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait. Dr Chris Busby, ... one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said ... "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened". US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
Note: For many reports from major media sources of the horrific impacts of the US wars of aggression in the Middle East and Central Asia, click here.
Americans working for a little known U.S.-based private military contractor have begun to come forward to media and members of Congress with charges that their work has involved using live ammunition for crowd control and other abusive measures against unarmed civilians seeking food at controversial food distribution sites run by the Global Humanitarian Fund (GHF) in Gaza. UG Solutions was hired by the GHF to secure and deliver food into Gaza. Israel put GHF in control of what used to be the UN-led aid mission. The UN, ... has called the new model an "abomination" which “provides nothing but starvation and gunfire to the people of Gaza,” referring to the 1000 Gazans who have been killed near or at the GHF centers since May. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been accused of shooting and shelling unarmed civilians. The American contractors say they have witnessed it and have been told to use live ammunition in their own crowd control efforts. UG Solutions is a mercenary group. They are not a party to the conflict in Gaza, were recruited to participate in hostilities, were not sent by the U.S. government, are not a national of a party in the conflict, are not part of a military, and are there for personal gain. Similar to Blackwater, they are primarily doing defensive operations and the U.S. State Department has helped fund the GHF but they are headquartered in the U.S. working for a foreign entity, in a combat zone, for money.
Note: Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.
Haiti could be Erik Prince’s deadliest gambit yet. Prince's Blackwater reigned during the Global War on Terror, but left a legacy of disastrous mishaps, most infamously the 2007 Nisour massacre in Iraq, where Blackwater mercenaries killed 17 civilians. This, plus his willingness in recent years to work for foreign governments in conflicts and for law enforcement across the globe, have made Prince one of the world’s most controversial entrepreneurs. A desperate Haiti has now hired him to “conduct lethal operations” against armed groups, who control about 85% of Haitian capital Port-Au-Prince. Prince will send about 150 private mercenaries to Haiti over the summer. He will advise Haiti’s police force on countering Haiti’s armed groups, where some Prince-hired mercenaries are already operating attack drones. The Prince deal is occurring within the context of extensive ongoing American intervention in Haiti. Currently the U.S.-backed, Kenyan-led multinational police force operating in Haiti to combat the armed groups is largely seen as a failure. Previously, a U.N. peacekeeping mission aimed at stabilizing Haiti from 2004 through 2017 was undermined by scandal, where U.N. officials were condemned for killing civilians during efforts aimed at armed groups, sexually assaulting Haitians, and introducing cholera to Haiti. Before that, the U.S. was accused of ousting Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he proved obstructive to U.S. foreign policy goals, in 2004.
Note: This article doesn't mention the US-backed death squads that recently terrorized Haiti. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world.
Erik Prince has been many things in his 54 years on Earth: the wealthy heir to an auto supply company; a Navy SEAL; the founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater, which conducted a notorious 2007 massacre in the middle of Baghdad. Last November, Prince started a podcast called “Off Leash,” which in its promotional copy says he “brings a unique and invaluable perspective to today’s increasingly volatile world.” On an episode last Tuesday, [he said] that the U.S. should “put the imperial hat back on” and take over and directly run huge swaths of the globe. Here’s are Prince’s exact words: “If so many of these countries around the world are incapable of governing themselves, it’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries ... ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. You can say that about pretty much all of Africa, they’re incapable of governing themselves.” Prince’s co-host Mark Serrano then warned him that listeners might hear his words and believe he means them: “People on the left are going to watch this,” said Serrano, “and they’re going to say, wait a minute, Erik Prince is talking about being a colonialist again.” Prince responded: “Absolutely, yes.” He then added that he thought this was a great concept not just for Africa but also for Latin America. Previous bouts of the European flavor of colonialism led to the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world.
Note: Erik Prince's Blackwater served as a "virtual extension of the CIA." Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
A loud chorus of voices has appeared in the media to celebrate President Donald Trumps decision to assassinate Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a move that has sparked renewed tension in the Middle East, a new deployment of U.S. forces, and predictions of increased military spending. Many of the pundits who appeared on national television or were quoted in major publications to praise the presidents actions have undisclosed ties to the defense industry the only domestic industry that stands to gain from increased violence. Jack Keane, a retired Army general, appeared on Fox News and NPR over the last three days to praise Trump for the strike on Suleimani. Keane has worked for military companies, including General Dynamics and Blackwater, and currently serves as a partner at SCP Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in defense contractors. David Petraeus, the retired general who once commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, was quoted by multiple outlets in support of the slaying. Petraeus, notably, works for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co., the investment firm with holdings in several major defense contractors that is reportedly moving to build up its defense portfolio. It is imperative that viewers are aware when their news commentary is coming from someone with a financial incentive tied to the topic theyre commenting on, especially when so many lives hang in the balance, says Gin Armstrong, a senior researcher with the Public Accountability Initiative.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
President Trumps advisers recruited two businessmen who profited from military contracting to devise alternatives to the Pentagons plan to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan. Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trumps chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser. Soliciting the views of Mr. Prince and Mr. Feinberg ... raises a host of ethical issues, not least that both men could profit from their recommendations. Mr. Feinberg ... met with the president on Afghanistan, according to an official, while Mr. Prince briefed several White House officials, including General McMaster. In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in May, [Mr. Prince] called on the White House ... to use private military units to fill the gaps left by departed American soldiers. If Mr. Trump opted to use more contractors and fewer troops, it could also enrich DynCorp, which has already been paid $2.5 billion by the State Department for its work in the country. Mr. Feinberg controls DynCorp through Cerberus Capital Management.
Note: When Blackwater changed its name to Academi, the US paid $309 million to this company to conduct counternarcotics operations in Afghanistan. These operations reportedly contributed to the Afghan opium boom. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.
Last week, FAIR noticed that not one major media organization in the United States has covered the charge, reported in Colombia, that US military soldiers and contractors had sexually abused at least fifty-four children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the rapists were never punishedeither in Colombia or statesidedue to American military personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements. One of the rapes ... was allegedly committed by Army sergeant Michael J. Coen and an employee of a private security contractor, Csar Ruiz. The victim was a 12-year-old girl. They abducted her, they drugged her, they took her to the air base near the town of Melgar and raped her, they took videos of her. Colombian prosecutors issued arrest warrants [that] were not executed because of the immunity of Coen and Ruiz. Under a series of treaties ... members of the US military stationed in Colombia are immune from prosecution. That immunity has since been extended to private security firms. Another serious sexual assault that, like the rape described above, was covered by the Colombian press, both in print and on TV, but ignored in the United States: in 2004, 53 underage girls were sexually abused by mercenaries, who filmed and sold the tapes as pornographic material. The private security firm involved [was identified as] DynCorp, a Virginia-based contractor.
Note: Dyncorp is only slightly less infamous than Blackwater, having been involved in numerous international outrages, including a child sex slavery ring in Bosnia in 1999. Explore powerful evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
In a war full of failures, the US counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan stands out: opiate production has climbed steadily over recent years to reach record-high levels last year. One clear winner in the anti-drug effort is ... the infamous mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater. Statistics released on Tuesday reveal that the rebranded private security firm, known since 2011 as Academi, reaped over a quarter billion dollars from the futile Defense Department push to eradicate Afghan narcotics, some 21% of the $1.5 bn in contracting money the Pentagon has devoted to the job since 2002. The company is the second biggest beneficiary of counternarcotics largesse in Afghanistan. Only the defense giant Northrop Grumman edged it out, with $325m. According to the US inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, the $309m Academi got from US taxpayers paid for training, equipment, and logistical support to Afghan forces conducting counternarcotics. Far from eradicating the deep-rooted opiate trade, US counternarcotics efforts have ... contributed to the opium boom. In December, the United Nations reported a 60% growth in Afghan land used for opium poppy cultivation since 2011, up to 209,000 hectares. The estimated $3bn value of Afghan heroin and morphine represents some 15% of Afghan GDP. Academi and its former Blackwater incarnation have an infamous history in Afghanistan. It once set up shell companies to disguise its business practices, according to a Senate report, so that its contracts would be unimpeded by company employees killings of Iraqi and Afghan civilians.
Note: Blackwater, now called Academi, got caught systematically defrauding the US government, while serving as a "virtual extension of the CIA". The CIA has been linked to the Afghan heroin trade for decades. In 2000, the Taliban had all but eradicated Afghan opium production. Once Afghanistan was under US control, opium production surged to record levels.
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus. The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program. "This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source. "They are two separate beasts." Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is "not really visible, and that's why nobody has cracked down on it," said the source. Blackwater's operations in Pakistan, he said, are not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. "It's Blackwater via JSOC, and it's a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis. Some of these strikes are attributed to [the CIA], but in reality it's JSOC. So when you see some of these hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes."
Note: Don't miss this key report in it's entirety. Why haven't other major media outlets mentioned the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) drone operations in Pakistan, running parallel to the CIA's?
The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an operation that will [develop] intelligence ... for clients in industry and government. The operation, Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former ... high-ranking figures from agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency's more controversial programs, including the rendition and interrogation of ... suspects and the detention of some of them in secret prisons overseas. Its chief executive is Robert Richer, a former CIA associate deputy director of operations who was heavily involved in running the agency's role in the Iraq war. Because of its roster and its ties to owner Erik Prince, the multimillionaire former Navy SEAL, the company's thrust into this world highlights the blurring of lines between government, industry and activities formerly reserved for agents operating in the shadows. Richer, for instance, once served as the chief of the CIA's Near East division and is said to have ties to King Abdullah of Jordan. The CIA had spent millions helping train Jordan's intelligence service in exchange for information. Now Jordan has hired Blackwater to train its special forces. "Cofer can open doors," said Richer, who served 22 years at the CIA. "I can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see. We ... can deal with the right minister or person." "They have the skills and background to do anything anyone wants," said RJ Hillhouse, who writes a national security blog called The Spy Who Billed Me. "There's no oversight. They're an independent company offering freelance espionage services. They're rent-a-spies."
Employees of Blackwater USA have engaged in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, in [the] vast majority of cases firing their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded, according to a new report from Congress. In at least two cases, Blackwater paid victims family members who complained, and sought to cover up other episodes, the Congressional report said. It said State Department officials approved the payments in the hope of keeping the shootings quiet. In one case last year, the department helped Blackwater spirit an employee out of Iraq less than 36 hours after the employee, while drunk, killed a bodyguard for one of Iraqs two vice presidents on Christmas Eve. The report ... adds weight to complaints from Iraqi officials, American military officers and Blackwaters competitors that company guards have taken an aggressive, trigger-happy approach to their work and have repeatedly acted with reckless disregard for Iraqi life. But the report is also harshly critical of the State Department for exercising virtually no restraint or supervision of the private security companys 861 employees in Iraq. There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwaters actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting episodes involving Blackwater or the companys high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation, the report states. Based on 437 internal Blackwater incident reports as well as internal State Department correspondence, the report said Blackwaters use of force was frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage. The State Department ... has paid Blackwater more than $832 million for security services in Iraq and elsewhere, under a diplomatic security contract it shares with two other companies, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.
More than a year after his plan to privatize the Afghan war was first shot down by the Trump administration, Erik Prince returned late last month to Kabul to push the proposal on the beleaguered government in Afghanistan, where many believe he has the ear - and the potential backing - of the U.S. president. Prince swept through the capital, meeting with influential political figures within and outside the administration of President Ashraf Ghani. Hes winning Afghans over with the assumption that hes close to Trump, said one well-informed Afghan. Prince also sparked what Ghani ... condemned as a debate within the country over adding new foreign and unaccountable elements to our fight. At the Pentagon, the head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, told reporters that I absolutely do not agree with Princes contention that he could win the war more quickly and for less money with a few thousand hired guns. Prince, the brother of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and a substantial contributor to Trumps presidential campaign ... has made a controversial career out of providing security for hire. Since severing his ties to Blackwater - the company he founded that was accused of heavy-handed practices, including the killing of civilians, while under U.S. contract in Iraq - Prince has cycled through several iterations of the same business and now runs a Hong Kong-based company called Frontier Services.
Note: A 2015 article titled, "Former Blackwater gets rich as Afghan drug production hits record high" describes some of Eric Prince's previous business activities in Afghanistan. Prince's companies also got caught systematically defrauding the US government while serving as a "virtual extension of the CIA". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
