notorious mercenary erik prince is advising trump from the...

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NOTORIOUS MERCENARYERIK PRINCE IS ADVISINGTRUMP FROM THESHADOWSJeremy Scahill

January 17 2017, 12:42 p.m.

LEIA EM PORTUGUÊS ⟶

Notorious Mercenary Erik Prince Is Advising Tru... https://theintercept.com/2017/01/17/notorious-m...

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Erik Prince, America’s most notorious mercenary, is lurking in

the shadows of the incoming Trump administration. A former

senior U.S. official who has advised the Trump transition told

The Intercept that Prince has been advising the team on matters

related to intelligence and defense, including weighing in on

candidates for the Defense and State departments. The official

asked not to be identified because of a transition policy prohibit-

ing discussion of confidential deliberations.

On election night, Prince’s latest wife, Stacy DeLuke, posted pic-

tures from inside Trump’s campaign headquarters as Donald

Trump and Mike Pence watched the returns come in, including a

close shot of Pence and Trump with their families. “We know

some people who worked closely with [Trump] on his cam-

paign,” DeLuke wrote. “Waiting for the numbers to come in last

night. It was well worth the wait!!!! #PresidentTrump2016.”

Prince’s sister, billionaire Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s nominee for

education secretary and Prince (and his mother) gave large sums

of money to a Trump Super PAC.

In July, Prince told Trump’s senior adviser and white suprema-

cist Steve Bannon, at the time head of Breitbart News, that the

Trump administration should recreate a version of the Phoenix

Program, the CIA assassination ring that operated during the

Vietnam War, to fight ISIS. Such a program, Prince said, could

kill or capture “the funders of Islamic terror and that would

even be the wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from

the Middle East, and any of the other illicit activities they’re in.”

Prince also said that Trump would be the best force to confront


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“Islamic fascism.” “As for the world looking to the United States

for leadership, unfortunately, I think they’re going to have to

wait till January and hope Mr. Trump is elected because, clearly,

our generals don’t have a stomach for a fight,” Prince said. “Our

president doesn’t have a stomach for a fight and the terrorists,

the fascists, are winning.”

Prince founded the notorious private security firm Blackwater,

which rose to infamy in September 2007 after its operatives

gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians, including a 9-year-old boy in

Baghdad’s Nisour Square. Whistleblowers also alleged that

Prince encouraged an environment in which Iraqis were killed

for sport. At the height of the Blackwater scandals in 2007, an-

other prominent Trump backer, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, praised

Prince, who once worked in his congressional office. “Prince,’’

Rohrabacher said, “is on his way to being an American hero just

like Ollie North was.’’

Ultimately, Prince sold Blackwater and now heads up a Hong

Kong-based company known as Frontier Services Group. The In-

tercept has previously reported on Prince’s efforts to build a pri-

vate air force for hire and his close ties to Chinese intelligence.

One of his latest schemes is a proposal to deploy private contrac-

tors to work with Libyan security forces to stop the flow of

refugees to Europe.

Prince has long fantasized that he is the rightful heir to the

legacy of “Wild Bill” Donovan and his Office of Strategic Ser-

vices, the precursor to the CIA. After 9/11, Prince worked with

the CIA on a secret assassination program, in addition to offer-


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ing former SEALs and other retired special operators to the State

Department and other agencies for personal security.

Blaming leftists and some congressional Democrats for destroy-

ing his Blackwater empire, Prince clearly views Trump’s vow to

bring back torture, CIA-sponsored kidnapping, and enhanced in-

terrogations, as well as his commitment to fill Guantánamo

with prisoners, as a golden opportunity to ascend to his rightful

place as a covert private warrior for the U.S. national security

state. As we reported last year, “Prince — who portrays himself

as a mix between Indiana Jones, Rambo, Captain America, and

Pope Benedict — is now working with the Chinese government

through his latest ‘private security’ firm.” The Trump presidency

could result in Prince working for both Beijing and the White

House.

The Blackwater founder has also endorsed some of Trump’s

overtures to Russia, saying: “Think about it: If FDR, Franklin De-

lano Roosevelt, can deal with Stalin to defeat German fascism in

World War II, certainly the United States of America could work

with Putin to defeat Islamic fascism. We don’t have to agree

with the Russians on everything, or even on a lot, but we can at

least agree that crushing ISIS in the Middle East is a very good

idea.” Prince described Democrats as “anti-Catholic, anti-Evan-

gelical,” saying the DNC hacks and leaks revealed “the disregard,

the disdain they have for the average American voter and citi-

zen.”

Prince has a close relationship with Breitbart News and Steve

Bannon, Trump’s senior counselor and chief strategist. Prince


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has appeared frequently — and almost exclusively — on Breit-

bart Radio. In August, Prince offered praise for Trump’s candi-

dacy, telling Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos: “I even like some of

his projects that have gone bankrupt, because people that do

things, and build things, and try things, sometimes fail at doing

it, and that’s the strength of the American capitalist system.”

Prince added: “We have kind of turned our back on the fact that

hard work, sacrifice, risk-taking, innovation, is what made

America great. Washington did not make America great.”

In September, Prince backed Trump’s proposal to commandeer

Iraq’s 2 million barrels of daily oil output. “For Mr. Trump to say,

‘We’re going to take their oil — certainly we’re not going to lift

it out of there and take it somewhere else, but putting it into

production, and putting a tolling arrangement into place, to re-

pay the American taxpayers for their efforts to remove Saddam

and to stabilize the area, is doable, and very plausible,” Prince

said on Breitbart Radio.

Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s nominee for education

secretary and she has all but vowed to embark on a crusade to

push a privatization and religious agenda in education that mir-

rors her brother’s in military and CIA affairs. Prince has long

been a contributor to the campaign of fellow Christian warrior

Mike Pence, and he contributed $100,000 to the pro-Trump Super

PAC Make America Number 1. Prince’s mother, Elsa, pitched in

another $50,000. That organization, run by Rebekah Mercer,

daughter of billionaire hedge funder Robert Mercer, was one of

the strongest bankrollers of Trump’s campaign.


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According to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in De-

cember Prince attended the annual “Villains and Heroes” cos-

tume ball hosted by Mercer. Dowd wrote that Palantir founder

Peter Thiel showed her “a picture on his phone of him posing

with Erik Prince, who founded the private military company

Blackwater, and Mr. Trump — who had no costume — but

joke[d] that it was ‘N.S.F.I.’ (Not Safe for the Internet).”

Not even Trump is brazen enough to give Prince a public post in

his administration. But Prince is operating in the shadows,

where he has always been most at home.

Top Photo: Erik Prince listens during an interview in Washington on Jan. 31, 2014.


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Blackwater Founder Remains Free andRich While His Former Employees GoDown on Murder Charges

ADDITIONAL CREDITS:

Additional Reporting: Matthew Cole.


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