Is Erik Prince 'Graymailing' the US Government?

[L. Coyote]

Source: The NATION

By Jeremy Scahill
December 4, 2009

The in-depth Vanity Fair profile (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/01/blackwater-%20201001) of the infamous owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince, is remarkable on many levels--not least among them that Prince appeared to give the story's author, former CIA lawyer Adam Ciralsky, unprecedented access to information about sensitive, classified and lethal operations not only of Prince's forces, but Prince himself. In the article, Prince is revealed not just as owner of a company that covertly provided contractors to the CIA for drone bombings and targeted assassinations, but as an actual CIA asset himself. While the story appears to be simply a profile of Prince, it might actually be the world's most famous mercenary's insurance policy against future criminal prosecution. The term of art for what Prince appears to be doing in the VF interview is graymail: a legal tactic that has been used for years by intelligence operatives or assets who are facing prosecution or fear they soon will be. In short, these operatives or assets threaten to reveal details of sensitive or classified operations in order to ward off indictments or criminal charges, based on the belief that the government would not want these details revealed. "The only reason Prince would do this is that he feels he is in very serious jeopardy of criminal charges," says Scott Horton, a prominent national security and military law expert. "He absolutely would not do these things otherwise."

There is no doubt Prince is in the legal cross-hairs: There are reportedly two separate Grand Juries investigating Blackwater on a range of serious charges, ranging from gun smuggling to extralegal killings; multiple civil lawsuits alleging war crimes and extrajudicial killings; and Congress is investigating the assassination program in which Prince and his company were central players. "Obviously, Prince does know a lot and the government has to realize that once they start prosecuting him," says Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "In some ways, graymail is what any good defense lawyer would do. This is something that's in your arsenal."

Perhaps the most prominent case of graymail was by Oliver North when he and his lawyers used it to force dismissal of the most serious charges against him stemming from his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. ....

.............

"This is as old as the hills as a tactic and it has a long track record of being very effective against the government," says Horton. "It's basically a threat to the government that if you prosecute me, I'll disclose all sorts of national security-sensitive information. The bottom line here is it's like an act of extortion or a threat: you do X and this is what I'm going to do." Horton said that the Vanity Fair article was Prince "essentially putting out the warning to the Department of Justice: 'You prosecute me and all this stuff will be out on the record.'"

..............

Read more: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091221/scahill2

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This story could break wide open any day now. We are likely seeing only the tip of the iceberg.
There seems to be little doubt now Prince was not testifying fully when before Rep. Waxman.

===================
Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan Revealed
By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation. Posted November 24, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/story/144153/blackwater%27s_secret_war_in_pakistan_revealed


An elite division of Blackwater plans targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. And everyone's denying it.

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater's involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.

The White House did not return calls or email messages seeking comment .................

[Arctic Dave]

1. It's also a way to minimize what will come out in the future.

They will say the "hasn't all this been said already" with eye roll and whiny voice.

[xiamiam]

2. you know hes up to something..mr blackwater himself..founder and ceo of the worlds largest private

army...a stretch to believe the shit is not about to hit the fan..
:popcorn:

[L. Coyote]

3. Blackwater’s Pakistan Capers = by Scott Horton

Blackwater’s Pakistan Capers
By Scott Horton - http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/11/hbc-90006143


The disclosures about Blackwater USA (now Xe Services LLC) are coming at a steady drip now. The company first gained international notoriety following the massacre of seventeen Iraqi civilians in an incident at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square on September 16, 2007. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer) put the company right in the middle of a controversial program of drone warfare on the Afghanistani-Pakistani border. A recent New York Times story (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=Blackwater&st=cse) suggests that senior officers approved payments of $1 million to Iraqi officials to silence their criticism of the company, which would raise questions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act even if the payments were never made, as shown in the recent sentencing of businessman Frederic Bourke. As the judge in that case noted (http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202435347364&pos=ataglance), the Justice Department secured a conviction even though there was no substantial evidence of any bribe ever having been paid. Blackwater may of course be subject to a more lenient Justice Department view.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, newspapers have been filled with charges to the effect that the government knows of and is turning a blind eye to Blackwater’s operations on their soil. The Pakistani government has vehemently denied these charges, and Interior Minister Rehman Malik recently insisted that he will resign (http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-malik-resign-blackwater-qs-05) if Blackwater is proven to be operating in the country. The minister may be in for an unpleasant surprise. The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill offers up substantial detail about Blackwater’s Pakistani operations, which were evidently undertaken at the behest of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Scahill’s reporting confirms and substantially deepens reporting about a targeted killings program operated by JSOC under close supervision by former Vice President Cheney, in which Blackwater played a vital role. (http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/31/seymour_hersh_secret_us_forces_carried) (emphasis added)

..............

[baldguy]

4. From it's inception Blackwater was a CIA front company

Intended to subvert the rule of law & Congressional oversight.

[L. Coyote]

5. Worse still, was it a new form of front, Cheney's branch of the military?

More from Horton:

Scahill ... quotes Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief-of-staff at the State Department, on the curious relationship that developed between Dick Cheney and the JSOC operation. “Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions.” As a legal matter, the Vice President is not in the chain of command and has no business issuing orders to the military ... Cheney repeatedly assumed and asserted military command authority, and his usurpation went unchallenged by the Rumsfeld Defense Department. .... rules that normally apply to contractors never seem to apply to Blackwater ...

Why did Rumsfeld's Pentagon lay second fiddle to a "private contractor?"
To provide deniability or to avoid congressional oversight and laws governing DoD?
Or, because there was a secret military arm higher up the chain of command than a cabinet officer?

Time to reconsider the Blackwater-Wyoming connections in light of Darth Cheney???

[Edweird]

6. If push comes to shove, he could find himself in a deep dark hole for

the remainder of his abbreviated life. Tim McVeigh's room opened up a little while ago. The CIA's response will be, as always, "Eric who? Never heard of him." It's a crime to divulge sensitive information. Furthermore, the federal government isn't an entity that anyone wants to play hardball with. If he walks, (and I am betting he will), it will be (IMHO) because the current administration understands the political reality of pursuing a previous administration - especially while continuing essentially all of the previous administrations policies.

[L. Coyote]

7. VIDEOS: Blackwater's Secret War In Pakistan

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x410009

VIDEO: RM: Blackwater - Erik Prince - CIA assassins - Afghanistan Click here to hide this thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x409975

[JohnyCanuck]

8. Maybe Erik Prince ought to avoid flying in small airplanes.

But given his line of work, he probably knows that already.

[L. Coyote]

9. Scahill: ‘The war is in Pakistan right now'

Scahill: ‘The war is in Pakistan right now’
By David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Friday, December 4th, 2009 -- 12:04 pm - http://rawstory.com/2009/12/scahill-us-military-in-pakistan/


In the wake of President Obama's plan to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, questions are being raised about the use of private contractors in US operations there. The acknowledgement by Eric Prince, founder of military contractor Blackwater, that he has been serving for years as a CIA asset only intensifies these concerns.

For Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestselling book Blackwater, however, the real concern is not Afghanistan but Pakistan, where according to an article in the New York Times, "the White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program."

"We need to view this sober reality," Scahill told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday. "The war is in Pakistan right now. There's no question about it. The question, though, is how much it's going to expand. ... These are actions that are going to destabilize Pakistan and are going to create new enemies for the United States because of the high civilian casualties. ... Here you have military operations inside a country that we don't have a declaration of war against."

Scahill emphasized that the most destabilizing actions come not from the CIA but from Blackwater mercenaries, ..............

[unc70]

10. Things that caught my eye in the VF article on Erik Prince

I previously posted in another thread about the flows of monies involving Prince and others involved with Blackwater, the convenient sales of companies to "related" companies (though relations are obscured), the nobid contracts, and the family ties to the Inspector Generals of State and Defense.

I think that the VF article is both a warning to key figures that Prince will expose them if they or the government goes after him and a fallback cover story attempting to define the talking points, the desired framing of the discussions, and preemptive attempts to explain away troubling items with the hope that they can be glossed over and that, if anyone happened to notice and have a question, the pre-planted cover story would be able to satisfy their initial curiousity.

(1) "(So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in suicide bombings in Pakistan.)"

Anyone examining even the possibility of a "false flag" operation is a raving CT nutcase and ignored. Tucking this little item in near the begining of the article strongly suggests to me that they have been involved in some way with bombings in PK.

(2) "Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy."

The laws on disclosure, killing of civilians, prosecution in various venues, war crimes, liability, and more are quite different for CIA, military in combat, and the various flavors of contractor/mercenary and details of their contracts.

(3) "Desperate to get home, Prince scrapped one itinerary, which called for a stay-over at the Marriott in Islamabad, and found a direct flight. That night, at the time Prince would have been checking in, terrorists struck the hotel with a truck bomb, killing more than 50."

My first thought was that he probably had at least some info about a possible attack and questions of whether BW had shared this info or worse, was BW somehow involved with the attack. But given all that bit concerning Prince flying coach to avoid attention, etc., why would he ever draw attention to himself by staying in the Mariott Islamabad instead of somewhere less "American"? Now I want to see what flights he took and what this alternative would have been.

(4) Is this article the first public confirmation of the secret program that had so alarmed Panetta? Has anyone else involved gone on record previously?


(5) Not specific to the VF article, I have problems with Prince's "resume", life story, and almost everything he

is quoted as saying. Why did he leave the Naval Academy after three semesters? How did he fit OCS, SEAL training, and all those deployments into less than three years? Was he officially a SEAL, or just almost one?

Prince seems really insecure, trying to hard to prove how great he is, needing to embellish every story just a bit more, searching for approval and probably received little of it growing up, likely carrying some dark secrets, and I suspect he might have fits of rage and become violent and abusive -- just a guess.

[L. Coyote]

11. I consider the Vanity Fair article total SPIN and FALLBACK, CIA crafted even.

There is beauty in choosing this author, a former CIA attorney who becomes a media star.
The "falling out" with CIA is likely just story too, for both Prince and the writer.

The thing about spin is that it structures what is being hidden from view. Lies have patterns!!!

[unc70]

13. I agree completely. I don't think it will hold.

This looks like a rush job, after too many facts have already bubble to the surface and a lot more are just below. When your framing/cover story is this bad, you are in deep trouble.

It doesn't appear to be one of those designed in cover stories, with multiple layers designed to slow and confuse investigation like those Russian boxes all nested with each other, with many distractions at each level.

[L. Coyote]

14. Perfect story for wingnut talking points.

Gotta keep Rush supplied with lies :rofl:

[L. Coyote]

12. VIDEO: Jeremy Scahill and Keith Olbermann on Blackwater: Murderous Crusaders for Christ

Scahill and Olbermann on Blackwater: Murderous Crusaders for Christ

Scary stuff. = http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/144231/scahill_and_olbermann_on_blackwater:_murderous_crusaders_for_christ/

[L. Coyote]

15. kick because "secret war" seems to have no traction