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."Needless to say, if that's anywhere close to the truth, this just turned into nineteen different kinds of badness for us in Iraq.
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.
It gets worse. The affidavits, filed last night as part of a civil case against Blackwater by Iraqis seeking war crime restitution, clearly spell out Erik Prince as a James Bond villain.
The former employee, identified in the court documents as "John Doe #2," is a former member of Blackwater's management team, according to a source close to the case. Doe #2 alleges in a sworn declaration that, based on information provided to him by former colleagues, "it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct." John Doe #2 says he worked at Blackwater for four years; his identity is concealed in the sworn declaration because he "fear[s] violence against me in retaliation for submitting this Declaration." He also alleges, "On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince's employ, Mr. Prince's management has personally threatened me with death and violence."Nice guy, Erik Prince. We've got allegations of weapons smuggling, war profiteering, extortion, murder, and we set him loose in Iraq for years.
Doe #2 expands on the issue of unconventional weapons, alleging Prince "made available to his employees in Iraq various weapons not authorized by the United States contracting authorities, such as hand grenades and hand grenade launchers. Mr. Prince's employees repeatedly used this illegal weaponry in Iraq, unnecessarily killing scores of innocent Iraqis." Specifically, he alleges that Prince "obtained illegal ammunition from an American company called LeMas. This company sold ammunition designed to explode after penetrating within the human body. Mr. Prince's employees repeatedly used this illegal ammunition in Iraq to inflict maximum damage on Iraqis."And hey, war crimes too!
If even a fraction of this stuff is true, Erik Prince needs to be put in a very small room for a very, very long time. He certainly deserves his day in court, but these allegations have to be investigated throughly, and the implications are truly monstrous.
Read the whole article if you can stand it. And remind yourself who got us into Iraq and who hired Blackwater/Xe in the first place.
[UPDATE 5:14 PM] More background on Prince, Blackwater, and the nearly endless atrocities in Iraq from Steve Hynd at Newshoggers.
And if all the statements contain is true, it's still only the tip of the iceberg.As Steve wonders, how far up the chain did knowledge of Blackwater's alleged actions go? Who knew what and when?General Petraeus "lost" over 170,000 weapons in Iraq. His close aide, Lt. Col. Lavonda Selph pled guilty to accepting bribes in connection with another gun smuggling operation. At around the same time, his subordinate Col. Theodore Westhusing was found dead in Iraq, apparently a suicide. A note found by him said he could not support "support a [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and liars," and that he didn't know who to trust among his superiors any more.
We're going to be sorting through Iraq for years.
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5 comments:
Oh, oh wow. Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, seeing as he's right-wing christianist theocrat who supports right-wing christianist theocrat causes. Only this guy was at the head of a private army, who probably acted as armies do when they're headed by right-wing theocrats.
One thinks that it's not an issue of when he became a fucking evil piece of shit, it's how much of one he has been at various points in time. I don't think we're going to like the answer.
I still posit that the James Bond villain requirements have been met, at least for modern Bond bad guys: Legitimate cover as a powerful and successful businessman, cult-like organization of highly-trained armed followers, a massive black market gun-running scheme on the side for making mad cash, corruption and kickbacks to proper officials, and apparently a willingness to kill anyone who crossed him.
Throw in megalomania and some genocidal tendencies with a "doing the Lord's work" complex and bang.
Tell me I'm wrong here.
"Who the hell is running this company? Scaramanga?" -- Yahtzee, Zero Punctuation review of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., referring to the end of the game where the PMCs attack the US and try to kill the President.
Sorry, that was my first thought, and it made me laugh so hard I was told to shut up.
August 4, 2009 10:23 PM
"Bond Villain" is exactly what I thought of when I read these allegations. Don't forget that he was born into wealth and that he's a former Navy SEAL (meaning he could actually beat Bond up himself, rather than leaving it to thuggish underlings). Come to think of it, he sounds a bit more like a Steven Seagal villain.
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