erik prince bak

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">text bak main 7/17</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">yahoomail 4 23</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, is making a <em style="outline: none !important;">third</em> attempt at his defamation lawsuit against The Intercept.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’ve spent over $200,000 on legal fees fighting off this action, on top of the countless hours spent on these cases by our internal legal team.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Make no mistake: We stand by our reporting on Prince 100 percent. As the founder of one of the most powerful private mercenary armies in the world, Erik Prince is absolutely worthy of journalistic inquiry.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NEW 4/19</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><span style="" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> House Intelligence Committee has sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater. House Democrats are accusing Prince of lying to Congress during his November 2017 testimony before the Committee, when he described a meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker before Donald Trump’s inauguration as a chance encounter. According to the Mueller report, the meeting was an attempt to establish a backchannel between the incoming Trump administration and Russia, and may have been arranged by the Trump team. The move is one of the latest actions placing Erik Prince in the spotlight after more than a decade of largely working in the shadows after Blackwater shut down. In a major new report, The Intercept looks at Prince’s latest actions, including his pitch to privatize the war in Afghanistan; his creation of a mercenary army for the United Arab Emirates; a history of mismanaged projects that have soured his relationships with leaders around the world; and his comeback, made possible with the help of the Trump administration. We speak with Matthew Cole, the investigative journalist who wrote the story. It’s titled “The Complete Mercenary: How Erik Prince Used the Rise of Trump to Make an Improbable Comeback.”</font></span></div><div><span style="" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 10px;"><a data-ga-action="Story: Related Link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/03/erik-prince-trump-uae-project-veritas/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px; line-height: 18px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Complete Mercenary: How Erik Prince Used the Rise of Trump to Make an Improbable Comeback"</font></a></li></ul></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/03/erik-prince-trump-uae-project-veritas/">https://theintercept.com/2019/05/03/erik-prince-trump-uae-project-veritas/</a></div><div>
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</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.cjr.org/analysis/beloit-college-erik-prince-free-speech-college-campuses.php">https://www.cjr.org/analysis/beloit-college-erik-prince-free-speech-college-campuses.php</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">B</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>eloit is a small liberal arts college</strong> in southern Wisconsin, seemingly far from the front lines of the global press freedom battles. I spent a week there as the </span><a href="https://www.beloit.edu/weissberg/chair/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Weissberg Chair</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">

in human rights, speaking to students, faculty, and members of the

local community about the threats to journalists around the world. As it

happens, my visit to Beloit coincided with a debate over free speech

that roiled the campus.</span>

</font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;">It started when a conservative

student group called Young Americans for Freedom decided to invite Erik

Prince to give a lecture. Prince is the founder of the private security

firm Blackwater, which has been implicated in numerous human rights

violations, including the killing of 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour

Square in 2007. Prince’s latest proposal is to provide private

contractors to replace the US military in Afghanistan. YAF, which has

only a handful of members on the Beloit Campus, is a national

organization that often courts controversy by hosting provocative

speakers.  </span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The massacre of 49 worshippers in

Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15 elevated emotions around the

Prince invitation. One student, Nate Acharya, expressed his anguish as a

Muslim on a </span><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/25/beloit-student-suspended-after-social-media-posts" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">student-administered Facebook page</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">,

writing, “To everyone with a basic sense of human decency, let’s

organize to repel the March 27th invasion of our college, lest we be

complicit in it and all that it represents.” Acharya also re-posted a

menacing message from an Islamic State follower, urging colleagues on

campus to be aware of the threat and “stay safe.” In another post, he

wrote, “Hey if you post on 4chan or [8chan] I don’t care what board

you’re part of, you deserve to be shot for knowingly [participating] in

one of the biggest breeding grounds for white supremacist terrorists of

the modern era.”</span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Beloit College administration

began an investigation after being alerted to the posts by YAF president

Andrew Collins. Collins, who was tagged in Acharya’s original Facebook

post, told </span><a href="http://beloitcollegeroundtable.com/2019/03/25/student-returns-to-campus-after-suspension-for-controversial-social-media-posts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">the Beloit student newspape</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">r

that he did not feel personally threatened but “wanted security to be

aware of the heightened tensions surrounding the Erik Prince lecture

following Christchurch so they could take adequate precautions.”</span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;">In fact, the college administration

called the Beloit police, and suspended Acharya, requiring him to leave

the campus while an investigation was carried out. A group of students

rallied to support Acharya, marching on a meeting of the Faculty Senate

and </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdKUlZ7_xBsH2zsn4k6tChbIPVZ4Z9B7rcdAUIrLcvWaxd-Rg/viewform" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">circulating a petition</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">

stating that Acharya’s posts were “not threatening, nor do they incite

violence, which is more than can be said for the ideology (white

supremacy) Nathaniel spoke out against.” After carrying out its

investigation and holding a hearing, the administration allowed Acharya

to return to campus but placed him on probation. </span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;">But the debate over Prince’s visit

was far from over. While the college administration urged students to

find ways to express their disagreement while allowing Prince to speak,

anger boiled over. Last Wednesday, a group of students used drums and

musical instruments to disrupt Prince’s talk. They piled chairs on the

stage. </span></font></p>

<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, was supposed

to speak at Beloit College more than 30 minutes ago. So far, protests

seem to have delayed that...</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Prince retreated off campus where he

spoke to a small gathering of students, declaring in an interview with a

local newspaper that the </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Beloit

College president and the administration “lacked the moral courage to

enforce free speech and to defend free speech,” adding, “Fortunately,

President Trump will defend free speech and I think the college will be

hearing from the court soon on this because enough is enough.” Prince

was referring to a March 20 executive order signed by Trump that

threatened to cut off federal funding to colleges and universities that

failed to uphold free speech. In an </span><a href="https://pen.org/press-release/executive-order-campus-speech/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">analysis</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, PEN America called it </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">“a thumb on the scale for conservative voices on campus.”</span></font></p></blockquote>

<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;">For his part, Prince seemed more than

willing to stoke the controversy in order to advance a partisan

political agenda. (Prince is the younger brother of Education Secretary

Betsy DeVos).
</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 400;">...
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OMFG</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/17/libyan_humanitarian_crisis_worsens_as_over">https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/17/libyan_humanitarian_crisis_worsens_as_over</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<strong style="letter-spacing: -0.2px; box-sizing: border-box;">GONZÁLEZ:</strong><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: -0.2px;">And could you talk about the <b>role of Erik Prince and his former mercenary organization, Blackwater, in Libya?</b></span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ANAS</span> EL <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOMATI</span>:</strong><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Well, it’s really the UAE’s role that is behind this. I think, in 2010,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> the<b> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">UAE</span>, Mohammed bin Zayed, gave over half a billion dollars to the Frontier Services Group, which is now led by Erik Prince, formerly of Blackwater. And since then, allegedly, according to Western print media, Erik Prince, alongside the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">UAE</span>, established an air base, a military base, a drone base, in eastern Libya between 2014 and '16. </b>Now, this is well documented by the U.N. Panel of Experts on the Security Council, where the year that Libya was supposed to be delivered an enduring peace, a sustainable peace, a concession by both sides in the civil war, in 2016, when they announced the beginning of this new chapter in Libya's history and delivered this Government of National Accord in Tripoli, was the very year that the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">UAE</span> violated the arms embargo in Libya in unprecedented levels but also began to establish the final touches and final pieces of this air base in eastern Libya called al-Khadim. Now, it possesses a massive arsenal of drones, Wing Loongs, which are Chinese kind of mimics of the American Predator F1 drone, but it also houses at least two Air Tractors, which are kind of industrial—industrial kind of aircraft that have been kitted out with air-to-surface missiles. And at the very least, this kind of move—I mean, it’s very, very difficult to pin down, so that’s why<b> I’m using the word “alleged,” because I don’t want to get sued</b>. But at the very least, there have been many, many investigations that have pinned this to Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px; letter-spacing: -0.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At least in the last two years, that arsenal of drones and Air Tractors have been used to support Khalifa Haftar’s ground offensives in Benghazi and in Derna, that have displaced around 100,000 people in Benghazi but have also led to 1,700 people being imprisoned in Derna. And many of those ground invasions, many of those military assaults, are now being investigated by the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ICC</span> for war crimes. So, I think it’s that kind of tacit and underlying kind of discreet military assistance that the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">UAE</span>provided, that the French provided in Benghazi, that has not only bolstered Khalifa Haftar in the east of the country but has been the platform and the pretext for this latest offensive in Tripoli.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px; letter-spacing: -0.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And we should remind ourselves that thi</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px; letter-spacing: -0.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Erik Prince hid information about his attendance at a 2016 Trump Tower meeting to discuss Iran while under oath.</font></p><div class="p1_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an interview with on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head,” Price stated that he was present at an Aug. 3, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower to “talk about Iran policy,” and that he disclosed information about that meeting even though it does not appear in a transcript of his testimony.</font></p><div class="p2_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Schiff, Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is dead wrong.</font></p><div class="p3_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There’s nothing wrong with our transcript,” Schiff explained. “There was nothing wrong with the reporter who transcribed his testimony. He did not disclose that meeting to our committee.”</font></p><div class="p4_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can watch the video below via NBC:</font></p></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">new</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/journalist-corners-trump-ally-and-super-mercenary-erik-prince-on-apparent-lies-to-congress-and-warns-mueller-may-be-coming/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/journalist-corners-trump-ally-and-super-mercenary-erik-prince-on-apparent-lies-to-congress-and-warns-mueller-may-be-coming/</a></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Journalist Mehdi Hasan held Erik Prince’s feet to the fire in an interview this week, and the man who has been dubbed a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/05/04/feature/a-warrior-goes-to-china-did-erik-prince-cross-a-line/?utm_term=.aa4927505a68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">super mercenary</a>” gave bizarre and contradictory answers under the pressure.</font></p><div class="p1_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prince is the shadowy figure who runs the military contracting company formerly known as “Blackwater.” He is also brother to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, an ally and supporter of President Donald Trump, and a key witnesses to some of the events in threads of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that have yet to be tied up.</font></p><div class="p2_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And when Hasan pressed Prince on one of these events, the mercenary seemed to back himself into a corner.</font></p><div class="p3_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hasan recounted the exchange in <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/08/erik-prince-trump-mehdi-hasan/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Intercept</a>. Prince, Hasan explained, confirmed the existence of a<b> meeting during the 2016 campaign that had been reported on but has still largely remains obscure. That meeting took place at Trump Tower in August 2016 with Donald Trump Jr., Trump aide Stephen Miller, adviser to the UAE George Nader, and Israeli social media expert Joel Zamel. Prince said the meeting was about Iran policy. According to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">New York Times</a>, Nader, who has been convicted of child sex abuse, was offering foreign assistance to the Trump campaign.</b></font></p><div class="p4_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The meeting may be significant for any number of reasons, but Hasan zeroed in on one reason in particular. The meeting seems to show Prince lied to Congress when he testified that he had no “official” or “unofficial” role with the campaign.</b></font></p><div class="p5_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hasan explained:</font></p><div class="p6_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But why didn’t Prince tell members of Congress about his other secret meeting, in Trump Tower in August 2016? Especially if it was about a sensitive foreign policy issue like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2FlQHwi300" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Iran</a>?</font></p><div class="p7_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><div class="p8_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I don’t believe I was asked that question,” he replied.</font></p><div class="p9_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><div class="p10_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not true. I reminded him that he had been asked by a member of the House Intelligence Committee whether he had any “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/20171130ErikPrinceHouseIntelTranscript/2017-11-30--Erik%20Prince%20House%20Intel%20Transcript_djvu.txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">formal communications or contact with the campaign</a>.”</font></p><div class="p11_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><div class="p12_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Blackwater founder then switched tack. He “did” inform the committee about the meeting, Prince told me. Why wasn’t it in the <a href="https://archive.org/stream/20171130ErikPrinceHouseIntelTranscript/2017-11-30--Erik%20Prince%20House%20Intel%20Transcript_djvu.txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">transcript</a> of the hearing then, I countered? <b>“I don’t know if they got the transcript wrong,”</b> he said. Later in the interview, in response to a question from the audience,<b> he doubled down: “Not all the discussion that day was transcribed, and that’s a fact.”</b></font></p><div class="p13_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><div class="p14_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Got that? First, he said he wasn’t asked; then he said he told them about it; then he claimed that they made a mistake with the transcript; then he claimed that it was said off the record.</font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hasan also reported that other sources say he never mentioned the meeting to Congress at any point. And all of this is an entirely separate matter from Prince’s suspicious meeting in Seychelles with a Russian oligarch and Nader less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration.</font></p><div class="p16_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Prince has spoken to Mueller, but he says he hasn’t “heard from anybody in nine months</b>.” Hasan warned that the lies “could come back to haunt you,” but Prince seemed confident he is not at any risk of indictment.</font></p><div class="p17_18" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it’s not clear he should be so sure. Mueller has shown he takes lying to Congress seriously, and he’s brought false statement charges against many of Trump’s allies. If Mueller isn’t done yet with taking major prosecutorial steps, Prince may be next on his list.</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/08/erik-prince-trump-mehdi-hasan/">https://theintercept.com/2019/03/08/erik-prince-trump-mehdi-hasan/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The <span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">founder and former CEO of the notorious private security firm</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/blackwater-still-armed-iraq/" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Blackwater</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> — and younger brother of </span><a href="http://time.com/5053007/betsy-devos-education-secretary-2017-controversies/" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">hapless Education Secretary Betsy DeVos</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> — is a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump<b>. Prince donated</b></span><b><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?utm_term=.3ed096612e4c" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">$250,000</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">to help the president get elected in 2016.</span></b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">
</span></b></font></div><div data-reactid="181" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the election, however, his ties to the scandal-plagued Trump campaign have come under <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?utm_term=.0ad6c4155bac" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">increased scrutiny</a>. Prince has been <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/07/erik-prince-on-mueller-interview-would-rather-go-to-a-proctology-exam.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">questioned</a> by <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sco" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">special counsel Robert Mueller</a>, as part of the ongoing investigation into alleged collusion with Russia, and even provided Mueller “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/special-counsel-obtains-trump-ally-erik-princes-phones/story?id=56143477" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">total access to his phone and computer.</a>”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaking under oath before the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017, Prince denied any formal connections to the Trump campaign, saying that he “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/20171130ErikPrinceHouseIntelTranscript/2017-11-30--Erik%20Prince%20House%20Intel%20Transcript_djvu.txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">played no official, or really, unofficial role</a>.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet, in May 2018, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">New York Times</a> reported that Prince had “arranged” a meeting in Trump Tower in August 2016, three months before the election, attended by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son; Stephen Miller, then a senior adviser to the Trump campaign; George Nader, a convicted pedophile and an adviser to the United Arab Emirates; and Joel Zamel, an Israeli social media expert.</font></p></div><div data-reactid="183" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">This is far from over, however. Earlier this week, the House Judiciary Committee under its new Democratic chair, Rep. Jerry Nadler, sent out requests for documents to “</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/trump-obstruction.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fnicholas-fandos&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=inline&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">81 agencies, individuals, and other entities tied to the president</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">” — </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/politics/house-judiciary-committee-list-letters/index.html" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">including Prince</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> — as part of its sweeping investigation into alleged corruption and abuse of power by the president and his associates. In December 2018, Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee told the</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-probe-democrats-want-another-shot-at-erik-prince" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Daily Beast</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">that the former Blackwater boss had been “discredited” and that they planned to recall him before their panel “even if we have to subpoena him.”</span>In an exclusive interview with me at the Oxford Union, for my Al Jazeera English show “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2019/03/blackwater-erik-prince-iraq-privatising-wars-trump-190307144602723.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Head to Head</a>,” Prince confirmed the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower for the first time. He told me it was about “Iran policy.” However, he then proceeded to misrepresent his 2017 testimony to Congress — and contradicted himself in the process.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which raises the question: What does he have to hide?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 30px;">SITTING ACROSS FROM</span> the 49-year-old Prince, a former Navy Seal who hails from a <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/09/the-strange-ascent-of-betsy-devos-and-erik-prince" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">hard-right, billionaire family</a>, can be unnerving. He tends not to smile. He has a cold, unbending stare that rarely betrays any emotion. And he likes to speak in short, sharp sentences.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">For much of the hourlong interview, in front of a 300-strong audience in Oxford, I pressed Prince on Blackwater’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/blackwater-security-guard-convicted-in-2007-iraqi-civilian-massacre-at-third-us-trial/2018/12/19/e8b3d8ac-fd5f-11e8-ad40-cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html?utm_term=.45c63ca235d9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">murderous</a> record in Iraq, his own racist remarks about Iraqi “<a href="https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1103388842294472709" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">barbarians,</a>” and his latest “<a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/31/i-was-a-mercenary-trust-me-erik-princes-plan-is-garbage-215563" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">garbage</a>” proposal to<b> privatize the NATO-led war in Afghanistan. (The Pentagon <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mattis-afghan-war-privatizing-wise-idea/story?id=57450697" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">isn’t keen</a> on the latter, though national security adviser John Bolton <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-adviser-john-bolton-possibly-privatizing-us-war/story?id=57261716" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">might be interested</a>.)</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prince, I discovered, seems to have a Trumpian relationship with the truth. He tried to suggest that a car bomb exploded at Baghdad’s Nisour Square “five minutes” before Blackwater guards <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/former-blackwater-guard-guilty-2007-massacre-baghdad" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">shot and killed 14 innocent Iraqis</a> on September 16, 2007. I reminded him that there was no such explosion at Nisour Square. He denied that his current company, <a href="http://www.fsgroup.com/en/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Frontier Services Group</a>, is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang/erik-prince-company-to-build-training-centre-in-chinas-xinjiang-idUSKCN1PP169" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">planning</a> to build a “training facility” in Xinjiang, China, where <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/08/13/china-muslims-uighur-detention/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">more than a million Uighur Muslims</a> are being held in Chinese detention camps, dismissing a press release confirming the news as a mistranslation from Mandarin. I had to inform him that the <a href="http://www3.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2018/0302/ltn201803021658.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">press release</a> was issued by his own company, FSG, in English.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Toward the end of the interview, I </span><a href="https://twitter.com/AJHeadtoHead/status/1104014038676185090" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">raised</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> the issue of “Russiagate” and the special counsel’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin government</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Prince was <a href="https://archive.org/stream/20171130ErikPrinceHouseIntelTranscript/2017-11-30--Erik%20Prince%20House%20Intel%20Transcript_djvu.txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">grilled by the House Intelligence Committee</a> over a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?utm_term=.201fd1f2956c" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">secret meeting</a> he had in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian oligarch described as a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/us/politics/george-nader-special-counsel-mueller-cooperating-seychelles.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">messenger</a>” to Putin by Prince’s friends in the UAE; the meeting was on January 11, 2017, nine days before Trump’s inauguration. “It lasted one beer,” he told me flippantly, in reference to the Dmitriev meeting, which has been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?utm_term=.201fd1f2956c" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">described</a> by U.S., European, and Arab officials as “an apparent effort to establish a backchannel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump.”</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But why didn’t Prince tell members of Congress about his other secret meeting, in Trump Tower in August 2016? Especially if it was about a sensitive foreign policy issue like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2FlQHwi300" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Iran</a>?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I don’t believe I was asked that question,” he replied.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not true. I reminded him that he had been asked by a member of the House Intelligence Committee whether he had any “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/20171130ErikPrinceHouseIntelTranscript/2017-11-30--Erik%20Prince%20House%20Intel%20Transcript_djvu.txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">formal communications or contact with the campaign</a>.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Blackwater founder then switched tack. He “did” inform the committee about the meeting, Prince told me. Why wasn’t it in the <a href="https://archive.org/stream/20171130ErikPrinceHouseIntelTranscript/2017-11-30--Erik%20Prince%20House%20Intel%20Transcript_djvu.txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">transcript</a> of the hearing then, I countered? “I don’t know if they got the transcript wrong,” he said. Later in the interview, in response to a question from the audience, he doubled down: “Not all the discussion that day was transcribed, and that’s a fact.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Got that? First, he said he wasn’t asked; then he said he told them about it; then he claimed that they made a mistake with the transcript; then he claimed that it was said off the record.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">My understanding — based on a conversation between one of my Al Jazeera English colleagues and a staffer connected to the Intelligence Committee, and also based on public comments made by </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rep. Eric Swalwell about Prince being “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/roger-stone-congress-testimony-762006/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">not truthful</a>” with Congress — is that the off-the-record sections of the transcript contain zero references to the Trump Tower meeting, which was later <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">revealed by the New York Times</a> and (reluctantly) confirmed to me by Prince</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> on “</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOB4V-ukpBI" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Head to Head</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.”</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a major problem for this major ally of the president. It is, of course, a crime to lie under oath; it is also a crime to lie to a congressional committee, whether you are under oath or not. “Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/10/17097692/seychelles-erik-prince-congress-mueller" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Vox notes</a>, “was convicted of lying to a Senate committee during the Watergate scandal.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So I couldn’t help but ask the defensive Prince: Did he not worry that Mueller might send him to prison for not telling the truth, as he did with <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/mueller-indictments-grand-jury" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Gen. Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and others</a>?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Nope,” he replied, giving me that dead-eyed stare once again, “not at all.”</font></p></div><div data-reactid="193" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will Prince have better answers for them than he had for me?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The former Navy Seal, lest we forget, has </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">made plenty of enemies over the course of his career in private security and his <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/default/news/2017/01/23/296947/the-devos-dynasty-a-family-of-extremists/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">role in the U.S. conservative movement</a>. Hawkish Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham mocked his proposal to privatize the war in Afghanistan as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/08/09/inside-erik-princes-secret-proposal-to-outsource-the-war-in-afghanistan/?utm_term=.d77c42c2e99f" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">something that would come from a bad soldier of fortune novel</a>.” Fellow mercenary Sean McFate <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/31/i-was-a-mercenary-trust-me-erik-princes-plan-is-garbage-215563" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">dismissed</a> Prince as an “amateur” with a “dangerous” plan. The former Blackwater CEO has also been denounced as a “war criminal” (<a href="https://www.codepink.org/war_criminal_of_the_week_erik_prince_the_great_escape_artist" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Code Pink</a>), a “Christian supremacist” (<a href="https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10192007/transcript4.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill</a>), and a “super mercenary” (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/05/04/feature/a-warrior-goes-to-china-did-erik-prince-cross-a-line/?utm_term=.08875c8515d1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Rep. Jan Schakowsky</a>).</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remember: The authorities famously got mob boss Al Capone on charges of <a href="https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/oct-17-1931-al-capone-guilty-of-tax-evasion/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">tax evasion</a>. Will they end up getting “super mercenary” Erik Prince not for alleged <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/four-blackwater-guards-sentenced-in-iraq-shootings-of-31-unarmed-civilians/2015/04/13/55b777e0-dee4-11e4-be40-566e2653afe5_story.html?utm_term=.43faecfdd1b5" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">war crimes</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/03/24/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-under-federal-investigation/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">money-laundering</a>, or <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24586396.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">sanctions-busting</a> but for … perjury?</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/special-counsel-mueller-reviewing-blackwater-founder-erik-princes-phones-and-computer-report">https://www.alternet.org/special-counsel-mueller-reviewing-blackwater-founder-erik-princes-phones-and-computer-report</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Robert Mueller is <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/special-counsel-obtains-trump-ally-erik-princes-phones/story?id=56143477" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reviewing the communications of Betsy Devos’ brother</a>, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a Donald Trump ally who said last week he “cooperated” with the Russia investigation.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As ABC News reports, Prince came under Mueller’s investigatory purview after he reportedly tried to establish a backchannel between Trump and the Kremlin. As the Washington Post reported, on January 11, 2017, <b>Prince met with Kirill Dmitriev</b>, a Russian wealth fund manager, in the Seychelles. Sources told the Post the purpose of that trip was to connect Trump’s team with Russian officials.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prince told Congress he took the meeting for business, and was not acting on behalf of Trump’s team, but Mueller is reportedly examining evidence to the contrary. As ABC reports, “Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, a key witness given limited immunity by Mueller, told investigators that he set up the meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and Dmitriev, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News. Documents obtained by Mueller also suggest that before and after Prince met Nader in New York a week before the trip, Nader shared information with Prince about Dmitriev.” In <span style="text-align: center;"> a statement to ABC News, a Prince spokesperson acknowledged he provided Mueller with “total access to his phone and computer.”</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As Mr. Prince told the Daily Beast he has spoken voluntarily with Congress and also cooperated completely with the Special Counsel’s investigation, including by providing them total access to his phones and computer,” the spokesperson told ABC News. “Mr. Prince has a lot of opinions about the various investigations, but there is no question that they are important and serious, and so Mr. Prince will keep his opinions to himself for now and to let the investigators do their work. All we will add is that much of the reporting and speculation about Mr. Prince in the media is inaccurate, and we are confident that when the investigators have finished their work, we will be able to put these distractions to the side.”</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><p id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref <a href="http://www.salon.com/2017/06/03/erik-princes-dark-plan-for-afghanistan-military-occupation-for-profit-not-security/">http://www.salon.com/2017/06/03/erik-princes-dark-plan-for-afghanistan-military-occupation-for-profit-not-security/</a></font></p><p id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lost in the cascade of stories of potential White House criminality and collusion with foreign governments is the Erik Prince affair. It is reported that Prince, the brother of controversial  Education Secretary Betsy Devos who established his power in Washington with his</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> mercenary army Blackwater during the Iraq war, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2017/04/04/another-donald-trump-russia-contact-eric-prince-met-with-russian-sources-just-before-inauguration/" target="blank" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; text-decoration-line: none;">met with Russian intermediaries</a> in an obscure Indian Ocean archipelago to establish back-channel communication with Moscow, possibly in coordination with the efforts of Jared Kushner, who last week was reported to have sought a White House back channel to the Kremlin.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bloomberg<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-18/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-said-to-have-advised-trump-team" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> reports</a> that during the presidential transition late last year “Prince was very much a presence, providing advice to Trump’s inner circle, including his top national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.” While President-elect Trump, in reality show style, paraded administration applicants through the gilded front doors of of Trump Tower for the gauntlet of cameras, Prince “entered Trump Tower through the back,” reports Bloomberg.<span style="background-color: transparent; letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: right;">
</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Prince met at least several times with the Trump team, according to the multiply sourced reporting, including once on a train from New York to Washington, where Prince met with Peter Thiel associate Kevin Harrington, who would later join the National Security Council and be tasked with “strategic planning.</span>”<b> Prince is said to have advised Harrington, Flynn and others on the Trump transition team on the “restructuring of security agencies” and “a thorough rethink of costly defense programs.”</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The account sounds innocuous enough as reported, but Prince’s recent appearance on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” sheds considerable light on what the series of furtive discussions likely entailed. The appearance might have been an effort to generate public support for what Prince advocated in private. The man who reinvented mercenary warfare described to Carlson a vision for a corporate military occupation apparatus that makes his</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> infamous Blackwater look modest, despite its capturing of $1 billion in contracts during the Iraq war and occupation. Prince proposed nothing less than the revival of the <b>British East India Company model </b>of for-profit military occupation, wherein an armed corporation effectively governed most of India for the extraction of resources.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prince explained to Carlson how the almost 16-year-old war and occupation of Afghanistan is premised on a faulty model. “We’ve fought for the last 15 years with the 1st Infantry Division model,” he says. “Now we should fight with an East India Company model, and do it much cheaper.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“So you replace a military occupation with the ‘American South Asia Company’ or something like that?” asks Carlson.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Something like that, sure,” Prince replies. “If you look back in history, the way the English operated India for 250 years, they had an army that was largely run by companies — and no English soldiers. So cheap, very low cost.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: transparent; letter-spacing: 0.3px; text-align: right;">It was also “very low cost” to the English because the British East India Company funded itself by extracting wealth from the territories it occupied.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration-line: none;">writes</a> the author of “The Anarchy: How a Corporation Replaced the Mughal Empire,”William Dalrymple, “but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prince knows this. The British East India Company was not simply a mercenary army like his Blackwater but an armed corporation that colonized like a state power. It was not merely a government contractor like Blackwater but an autonomous military and administrative entity sharing the worst aspects of both the corporation and the imperial state. So, Prince’s first innovation is to do away with civilian-military control administered by the Department of Defense and overseen by civilian, elected leadership, as is currently in place, and replace that apparatus with an armed corporation.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The second innovation is to denationalize the armed force projecting the corporation’s power. Americans are expensive. Blackwater personnel regularly received six-figure salaries for work in Iraq. Prince envisions a sweatshop-ization of the mercenary force, relying on the cheap labor available in the ravaged domestic labor market of war-torn Afghanistan.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Loyalty is not cheap, of course, but Prince is imagining a project of colossal capitalization, likely far bigger than his Blackwater endeavor. The per-day base pay for Blackwater personnel in Iraq was somewhere in the neighborhood of</span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/30/AR2007093001352.html" target="blank" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> $600</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, nearly 50 percent higher than the annual </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/asia/middle-class-afghans-face-a-murky-future.html" target="blank" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; text-decoration-line: none;">per capita income</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> for Afghans. An Afghan might make more in a very short time fighting for Prince’s corporation than his countrymen make in a year.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that deluge of Blackwater money enabling such outsized salaries came from Pentagon and State Department contracts during the mercenary firm’s days in Iraq. Where would revenue come from for what Prince now proposes? Resource extraction, just as the East India Company operated on the subcontinent for British stockholders. This is the third innovation Prince offers.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“There’s a trillion dollars in value in the ground: mining, minerals, and another trillion in oil and gas,” Prince says of Afghanistan.</b> This would provide the revenue stream to replace government contracts. Prince’s firm would be self-funded, self-reliant, and thus autonomous to a degree more similar to a nation-state than a military contractor like Blackwater serving under a defense department.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The corporate rulers, Prince suggests, would even reorganize objectives away from the original mission — i.e., destroy the safe harbor for al Qaeda and other terror groups — and toward the prerogatives of profit. Prince critiques U.S. strategic aims in Afghanistan to Carlson: “Even the whole approach of placing bases U.S. bases was all done to control land and territory but not the arteries that make money.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prince’s plan to fund occupations by pillage would otherwise be simply an insane notion howled from the wilderness of policy thought were it not for Prince’s proximity to the president and Trump’s repeated assertion that the U.S. should have taken Iraq’s oil to recoup costs. Indeed in his first speech in his first full day in office, speaking at the CIA headquarters, Trump revived his campaign-season idea of taking Iraqi oil, even telling the audience, “maybe you’ll have another chance.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Prince’s innovations on the straight occupy-and-plunder model might excite Trump and his team far more, since it fully neoliberalizes war and occupation into a sleek corporate form, taking those vast Pentagon outlays off the federal budget and opening up those ventures to investment. It’s war that pays for itself! It’s likely an attractive prospect for a party whose central passions are to cut taxes and privatize government services.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But one needn’t be a graduate of the Wharton School to understand what happens when war and occupation are made into a fully capitalist enterprise. Capitalism operates with a simple directive: to increase and sustain profit, to expand. When capitalism doesn’t expand, ideally at a rate of at least 3 percent a year, it’s said to be sick, in recession. Corporations behave according to a genetic desire for permanence and expansion.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> In fact, the coercive competition of the capitalist market ensures that firms that don’t seek expansion eventually die. It’s not a choice; expansion is an existential imperative in capitalism.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; text-align: center;">The corporation must act like a cancer, always seeking new growth, conquering every cell and moving on to the next. The health of the capitalist economy depends on this propulsive hunger. U.S. military objectives, conversely, are finite. Victory is sought, at which point troops come home. American military failures of the post-war era have been when permanence and expansion complicate the imperative of victory (e.g., Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq).</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But if anyone knows about relegating matters of state to the hunger for profit it’s President Trump, whose extant ties to his business interests <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/02/23/donald-trump-is-violating-the-constitution/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration-line: none;">already complicate the constitutionality of his dealings</a>. In the same way that his intelligence memos are more interesting to the president <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/333788-nsc-official-include-trumps-name-as-often-as-possible-so-he-reads" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration-line: none;">when his name is included more often</a>, it could well be that making matters of state into matters of profit speaks to the president in a way that workaday statecraft, even the command of an empire, cannot. Might it be that, for the real-estate-mogul-turned-president, making countries into properties makes sense? Might it be that Prince, certainly Trump’s intellectual superior, knows this?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Appearing on Jeremy Scahill’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/podcasts/" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Intercepted podcast</a>, the Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman shared his dystopian worry about Prince’s potential influence on the president and Trump’s vulnerability to the sort of profit scenarios Prince is selling these days: “A few short weeks after this supposed back-channel conversation gets entered into between Kushner and [Russian ambassador Sergey] Kislyak, Erik Prince actually acts as a Trump back channel. How paranoid should we be, how paranoid should I be that someone with such extensive experience in running a paramilitary private company is kind of a go-to Trump guy? At my most paranoid, I’m asking, is this Trump’s contingency plan?”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;" open="Open" sans="Sans" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’ve witnessed the tension of military and money since Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, the introduction of capitalist profit into war-making and the predictable effect of an ever-expanding national security state at odds with the founders’ intentions. But Eisenhower’s critique of the arms industry only hinted at what a full subsumption of war by capital might become. A hypothetical American South Asia Company would have no more desire to end an occupation than Toyota would have to stop selling cars or Apple to stop selling electronics. It would, like any other corporation, seek sustenance and expansion. As Prince admitted to Carlson, the aims and objectives of war would immediately shift to “the arteries that make money.” Our problem, says Prince, is that we went to Afghanistan with the intention of combating terrorism, not seeking profit. Our problem, he suggests, is that we went to Afghanistan with the intention of leaving.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>