Erik Prince Proposes Blackwater Become Big Oil’s Enforcer

[midnight]

Erik Prince Proposes Blackwater Become Big Oil’s Enforcer
By: emptywheel Monday May 3, 2010 3:36 pm
Jeremy Scahill reports on a recording that was liberated from a recent Erik Prince talk in which Prince talks about all the great roles he thinks Blackwater should play in protecting Big Oil. Mind you, he didn’t call it Big Oil. But he proposed sending Blackwater to a number of countries to (seemingly) counteract Iran’s challenge of Saudi hegemony in the Middle East.

Prince painted a global picture in which Iran is “at the absolute dead center… of badness.” The Iranians, he said, “want that nuke so that it is again a Persian Gulf and they very much have an attitude of when Darius ran most of the Middle East back in 1000 BC. That’s very much what the Iranians are after.” . Iran, Prince charged, has a “master plan to stir up and organize a Shia revolt through the whole region.” Prince proposed that armed private soldiers from companies like Blackwater be deployed in countries throughout the region to target Iranian influence, specifically in Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. “The Iranians have a very sinister hand in these places,” Prince said. “You’re not going to solve it by putting a lot of uniformed soldiers in all these countries. It’s way too politically sensitive. The private sector can operate there with a very, very small, very light footprint.” In addition to concerns of political expediency, Prince suggested that using private contractors to conduct such operations would be cost-effective. “The overall defense budget is going to have to be cut and they’re going to look for ways, they’re going to have to have ways to become more efficient,” he said. “And there’s a lot of ways that the private sector can operate with a much smaller, much lighter footprint.”

In addition to his plot to use Blackwater to counter Iranian power, Prince also called to send Blackwater to Nigeria, in what would amount to propping up a corrupt (but US-friendly) government to beat back the indigenous opposition to the abuse, environmental degradation, and corruption related with the oil industry in that country.

Prince also proposed using private armed contractors in the oil-rich African nation of Nigeria. Prince said that guerilla groups in the country are dramatically slowing oil production and extraction and stealing oil. “There’s more than a half million barrels a day stolen there, which is stolen and organized by very large criminal syndicates. There’s even some evidence it’s going to fund terrorist organizations,” Prince alleged. “These guerilla groups attack the pipeline, attack the pump house to knock it offline, which makes the pressure of the pipeline go soft. they cut that pipeline and they weld in their own patch with their own valves and they back a barge up into it. Ten thousand barrels at a time, take that oil, drive that 10,000 barrels out to sea and at $80 a barrel, that’s $800,000. That’s not a bad take for organized crime.” Prince made no mention of the nonviolent indigenous opposition to oil extraction and pollution, nor did he mention the notorious human rights abuses connected to multinational oil corporations in Nigeria that have sparked much of the resistance.

Scahill doesn’t say it explicitly (nor did Prince), but this amounts to a plan to use mercenaries to shore up the hegemonic system the US build on big oil.http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/

[tanyev]

1. High school teaching gig didn't work out, Erik?

Maybe you're more suited for trash pickup. Or road kill recovery.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. If history shows us anything, it is that private armies are a horrible idea

I can think of nothing more grotesque than putting the profit motive into killing. Erik Prince is a deeply disturbed individual and the last thing the world needs is his dumbass and his private army stirring up shit to make a buck.

[leveymg]

3. That's nothing compared to the intel crimes that Blackwater execs have already carried out

Before they were rewarded with highly-paid Blackwater jobs after their forced retirement from the Agency, ranking CIA officers at the Counter-Terrorism Center (CIA/CTC) allowed the 9/11 hijackers into the U.S., and were then were put in charge of the hunt for bin Laden, who somehow managed to escape from Tora Bora across the strategically unguarded Pakistani border.

The Blackwater crew had a long acquaintance with bin Laden and Saudi intelligence. Prince was part of the DIA-CIA operation that helped al-Qaeda in Bosnia in the mid-1990s, at the time that Cofer Black was CIA Station Chief in Sudan while bin Laden had his base of operations there. After 9/11, Prince gave highly-paid Blackwater jobs to the CIA/CTC guys most responsible for the 9/11 "intelligence failure." These same Blackwater execs had also implemented the CIA programs that carried out torture, kidnapping, and assassinations within friendly countries. Blackwater was awarded CIA contracts for this work after these programs were privatized. Prince is among the dirtiest (and richest) of the black operators who have been responsible for the worst "intelligence failures" of the past decade. Yet, he's now upset that he's been "outed" by his former employer and Congress.

See, my diaries at DailyKos about the Blackwater crew and their role at the heart of the worst "intelligence failures" of the past decade:

Blackwater "Perimeter Guard" Failed to Search Bomber of CIA
by leveymg
Wed Jan 06, 2010 at 10:08:23 AM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/6/822414/-Blackwater-Perimeter-Guard-Failed-to-Search-Bomber-of-CIA

The Virginia Pilot newspaper today identifies one of the dead in the suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan as Jeremy Wise, an employee of Xe/Blackwater. Wise was killed with six other Americans identified as CIA officers or contractors. http://hamptonroads.com/...

It appears from reports that this Xe contractor, along with two other guards working for the same private security firm, may have failed to pat down the bomber, resulting in the deaths of themselves and several CIA officers.

MORE below . . .
___________________

"Jordanian Double-Agent Behind CIA Attack" - 9/11 Intel Failure Redux?
by leveymg
Tue Jan 05, 2010 at 09:21:46 AM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/5/822069/-Jordanian-Double-Agent-Behind-CIA-Attack9-11-Intel-Failure-Redux

Source: Foreign Policy Magazine, from Wash Post report http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Jordanian double agent behind CIA attack

The suicide bomber who attacked an outpost in Khost, Afghanistan last week killing seven CIA agents and a Jordanian spy was a Jordanian double agent, recruited by both countries' intelligence services to provide information about al Qaeda's top leadership, according to Western government officials.

The Washington Post reports that Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi was a 36-year-old physician with a history of supporting Jihadist causes and was well known on extremists online message boards. Balawi was arrested by Jordanian authorities in 2007 and recruited as a double agent. Balawi gained the trust of Jordanian authorities and the CIA with a stream of valuable intelligence leaks, which may explain why he was allowed on the base without more thorough screening. SNIP

For those familiar with the details, this is precisely how 9/11 happened. Several of the suicide hijackers were CIA/Saudi General Intelligence Directorate (GID) double-agents. MORE, below . . .

________________________________

Erik Prince: American Bin Laden - CIA Asset, Money & Gunmen
by leveymg
Fri Dec 04, 2009 at 08:21:35 AM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/4/810764/-Erik-Prince:-American-Bin-LadenCIA-Asset,-MoneyGunmen

Erik Prince is the American Osama Bin Laden: a CIA asset with a lot of money and gunmen working for him.

The parallels extend further than recent reports that Prince was a paid CIA agent. See, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/...

The top people at Blackwater were CIA managers who ran a number of double-agents within al-Qaeda as Agency assets until 9/11. Before he headed a Blackwater subsidiary, Cofer Black was CIA Chief of Station in Khartoum in the mid-1990s at the time that bin Laden, Ali Mohamed, KSM and many other major terrorist figures were running CIA-assisted paramilitary operations against the Serbs and Russians from bases in Sudan. Al-Qaeda continued to operate against the Russians until 9/11, and at least thirteen of the 19 hijackers were originally recruited and trained to fight in Bosnia and Chechnya.(1) Erik Prince also got his start as a Special Forces Operator in Bosnia.

But, that's just the beginning of the strange network that binds together a group of CIA alumni, Blackwater, and al-Qaeda. MORE, below . . .
_________________________________

AP: CIA Torture Damaged Brains, Recall of 9/11 Suspects Hotlist
by leveymg
Tue Sep 22, 2009 at 08:19:45 AM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/22/785150/-AP:-CIA-Torture-Damaged-Brains,-Recall-of-9-11-Suspects

A new scientific study supports what I've been reporting since 2007. The effect of waterboarding and other torture techniques used on "high value" detainees during the Bush Administration led to the brain damage of witnesses and destruction of evidence. Those selected for the most damaging treatment had personal knowledge of CIA involvement with al-Qaeda prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Report: CIA interrogations informed by bad science

By PAMELA HESS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA's harsh interrogations are likely to have damaged the brains of terrorist suspects, diminishing their ability to recall and provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a new scientific paper.

The paper scrutinizes the techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology and determines the methods to be counterproductive, no matter how much the suspects might have eventually talked.

MORE
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[The Wizard]

4. Erik Prince

needs a good ass kicking and then locked up for the rest of his life.

[Karenina]

5. Sociopaths

running wild and loose in the streets...

[Enthusiast]

6. That son of a bitch

is completely out of his mind.