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BlackwaterFounder, Prince, Feels Thrown Under Bus
RALEIGH, N.C. — The man who built Blackwater USA into one of the world's most respected and reviled defense contractors feels that he was thrown under the bus after serving the nation's security interests for years.
In a July, 21, 2008 file photo, founder and CEO of Blackwater Worldwide Erik Prince is seen at Blackwater's offices in Moyock, N.C. A spokeswoman for the company, now called Xe, said Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009, that Erik Prince will relinquish involvement in its day-to-day operations and give up some of his ownership rights. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File) Erik Prince's company, which renamed itself Xe
Services in February after an uproar over its Iraq operations, has
worked closely for years with the CIA, the State Department and the
U.S. military. But it became the target of a series of federal
investigations and congressional probes, primarily for its Iraq work.
Most recently, officials disclosed that the CIA tapped the company to
work under a program to capture or kill terrorists.
The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune told Vanity Fair in an interview released Wednesday that Xe now pays $2 million a month in legal bills. The company is headquartered in Moyock in northeastern North Carolina,
"I put myself and my company at the CIA's disposal for some very risky missions," Prince told Vanity Fair for its January issue. "But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus."
Prince likened his case to the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity — a disclosure that led to a special prosecutor investigating the matter.
"Well, what happened to me was worse," Prince said. "People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it."
With his auto parts inheritance, Prince founded Blackwater in 1997 along with former colleagues from the Navy SEALs. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the company quickly developed a presence providing security and later won a lucrative contract to protect diplomats in Iraq.
A September 2007 shooting in a Baghdad square that led to federal charges against company contractors triggered outrage in Iraq and the United States and prompted the eventual State Department decision not to renew Blackwater's contract protecting diplomats in Iraq. Executives at the company bemoaned that the work had tarnished the company's image.
"The experience we've had would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at risk," Prince said in a 2008 interview with The Associated Press.
The company's work for the U.S. government was lucrative. The Iraq contract at one point consisted of one-third of company revenues, and executives have for years been eyeing a goal of $1 billion in annual revenues, although the privately owned company does not release financial figures.
Prince announced earlier this year that he would relinquish involvement in the company's day-to-day business as part of a management shake-up, and company spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke said Wednesday that Prince also plans to give up some of his ownership rights. He is considering becoming a high school teacher.
Joseph Yorio, recently a vice president at DHL and a former Army special forces officer, is Xe Services new president. Danielle Esposito, who has worked within Xe for nearly 10 years, is serving as chief operating officer and executive vice president. The CEO position has not been filled.
- Posted in
52 Comments so far
Show AllHe feels like he's been thrown under the bus? Now there's an idea......
Oh cry me a river, Erik . . .
CommonDreams is really enabling my schadenfreude this week!
Yesterday, I smiled at the thought of Goldman-Sachs banksters' reported rush to pack heat resulting in accidental but badly-needed thinning of the bankster herd from self-harvesting.
Today, I can't get off the image of Prince Erik being lifted up by the ghosts of his Iraqi victims and thrown under a bus. Literally, if one can apply "literally" to ghosts.
A big, fast-moving bus at that. And with a cadre of praetorian stormtrooper mercenary goons unable or disinclined to intervene.
I have no stomach for war porn, but I admit I'd watch an online video of the event at least once.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Mr. Prince, for sure you know who threw you. Whatcha gonna do about it?
They are still living it up on the blood of others; you are apparently on your way to one of the most thankless jobs in the country.
with some good "christian soundtrack music" playing in the background
on jesus loves everyone or some similar vacuous stupid music playing in the
backround to really make surreal as well!
You were probably supposed to smile at this fake "victim" story.
I'm starting to believe that all those photos of stockbrokers killing themselves (during the First Major Depression) were actually faked just to make the starving masses believe that "everyone was suffering."
This story lets you believe that the people who ripped you off "are suffering as well."
Suffering through their guilt maybe. But media will probably provide them with a cure for that naturally occuring sensation.
Pip, you took the words right off my keyboard!
"He is considering becoming a high school teacher" WTF!!!!
He'd be more than welcomed in many schools in the South. Anywhere else in the country I would doubt it. I know if my kid was being taught by that opportunistic idiot, I would have my kid pulled from that school.
What an assanine and ignorant statement.
What an assanine and ignorant and vague and meaningless statement.
The South is not as conservative as the upper midwest. Have you visited the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Northern Nevada, and Eastern Washington/Oregon lately? Blackwater is heavily worshiped as a second church all over those places.
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
Maine-Ah sez: "He is considering becoming a high school teacher" WTF!!!!
***
It's just a stopover until he can join Yoo and Fredo in the upper halls of U.S. academia.
2 million$ a month in legal bills? That doesn't pay for the countless innocent lives your employees took simply because you employ a bunch of psychopathic crazies, give them guns, and tell them "NO RULES BOYS!" Being Atheist, I do not have the luxury to know you will burn in hell, but I can at least hope that Karma plays a role here (Or at least 'bad luck'.)
Let the bastard twist in the wind till the crows come for his eyes.
The only problem with this is that it wasn't a real bus.
aye henry we rarely agree but on this one
would you like to be the driver or passenger?
BUS? Lets throw him under a HUMVEE.
STOP THE CORPORATE WAR MACHINE!
He feels like he's been thrown under a bus? Ye Gods...maybe we should really throw him under a bus so he can speak from honest knowledge. It would be the only honest thing about him...
I'll just bet that it was with a sense of public service that he took all his money to the bank.
Yeah, ol' Eric's troubles just break my fn heart. If any CD readers/posters haven't read "Blackwater" by Jeremy Scahill...I highly recommend the book, even at this late date. It's a tome but prepare to be royally pissed off.
btw, mr. ppeters....THAT is also my full name...one of us is honored!
Tough shit, Erik. You cry baby.
If you can't trust mercenaries and war profiteers, who can you trust?
Look for the "career move". Erik is an ambitious 40yo richfilth animal with feral instincts and lots of money and lots of richfilth friends with money, networks of them. They constitute richfilth patrician America and they own this pig farm. I suspect the man may also enjoy the smell of napalm in the morning. Difficult to separate a rich patrician male from such tastes. Like little girls. Once acquired, difficult to shake. A sane country would not allow such questionable humans to reproduce...
He's surprised to find no honor amongst thieves?
bwaaaahahahaha
Wish there was a way to arrange a hunting trip for poor ol Eric, maybe Deferment Dick has one coming up soon. With any luck at all Eric will come down with a "heart problem" like Cheesedick....we should be so lucky.
Back up the bus and do it again.
Being from Wisconsin, I could sell him some cheese to go with that whine of his. Perhaps he should hook up with Sarah Palin - apparently these two pampered babies think they are extra special victims.
You want victims - visit the graveyards, morgues, hospitals, rehab centers, and streets that these poor babies' politics and policies have filled. Their ideas put into practice have killed and maimed enemies, soldiers, friends, and most of all innocent bystanders. They have also become rich beyond the imagination of billions of the people they care so little about.
Like the cheese remark - and I agree totally. Not only is the guy a murderer, he's a very dumb one.
Given all the murderers running about in the USA, I don't see why we should have been paying BlackWater such exorbitant fees when obviously we could have gotten the job done for so much less. I do of course feel sorry for Prince.
Only in America can someone like Erik Prince walk around free after engaging in murder for hire, racketeering, wiretapping, extortion, and torture. The only thing that makes him different from Osama Bin Laden is his lack of a beard. It's truly sad that he isn't locked up.
Too bad it wasn't a real bus. Maybe Sarah Palin's bus...oh wait, her "bus is a private jet now...
If anyone but a US Corporation did what they did, it would be called "terrorism"
ALL these comments echo my sentiments exactly - thank you, everyone!
To bad we can't get you before an international court. You, Bush and all your hinchmen should be hanged as terrorists. You give all americans a bad name
He is a symbol of everything wrong with hiring feral unregulated mercenaries to do work that should be done by regular military forces if at all. He showed once again how badly mercenaries do the job and what harm they almost invariably cause, not to mention the excessive cost. For what we paid each Blackwater mercenary, we could have paid for two US soldiers and still saved 20% on the total expense. Plus, we would have been less likely to be badly embarrassed in the process. For once, it would be nice if our politicians would bother to read history or conducted routine cost/benefit analysis. Maybe then, we would not keep repeating such colossal mistakes.
Screw the bus, how about stick a hood on his head, pop him up on a box and wire him up.
So Erik you can dish it out, but the question is: can you take it?
AHHH POOR FILTHY-RICH BABE!! Shelling out 2 million a month for legal fees yet highjacking 1 billion or more a year in revenues....that still leaves a grotesque 976 million dollars a year in profits (or more)....TWISTED MUTHER--CKER!
Aaah, poor baby. Prince feels like he's been thrown under a bus, huh? Maybe someone should just throw him under one so he knows how it really feels! F**KING MURDERER!!!!!!!!!!!!
I too was thrown under a bus once. It was not so long ago. I remember the day well because I had finally consented to allowing my wife's manicurist to give me a blow dry after my wife moaned and moaned about how the other girls in her Monday morning prayer vigil group had nothing good to say about my cowlick.
Of course the incident with the bus completely destroyed the whole effect as well as my presentation for the "Torture is the way of the Lord" mid-day midweek organizational soiree with brats and weenies and the sacrament of the weak but willing in which we speak to the Lord and ask him for riches beyond compare and for ways to perfect our techniques for anal rape. I have to say I am always a bit squeamish about that one and much prefer electrodes on the genitals after reading from Psalms and the book of Jeremiah on the Toilet from the secret scrolls of Hydee-ho. But all the guys and our secretary Hillary forgave me and we all smoked medical marijuana until we had dreams of another Green Zone in Kandahar and could rejoice about the day when Uganda finally answers our prayers and starts executing gays by the truckload.
But Eric Prince is really a nice man. Just like Obama. So we should forgive him his blundering the secrets of the how to justify and make holy the massacre of whole families on market day or at the wedding of Cousin Towel head. It's not easy trying to fabricate a facial expression that conveys compete and utter intellectual vacuum in the face of polite questioning about mass murder and torture from congress people who dine with pleasure on the dime of armament manufacturers.
By the way, and this might matter (and even if it doesn’t I was impressed and still have dreams of those days) he was the most well-hung man in our unit of the Special Forces and he was so proud... as were we. Let me tell you, the showers were the only fun we had back then and we all had a blast trying not to look down.
Still.... being run over by a bus is no picnic. Someone should tell Obama that, because I can tell by his increasingly staccato cadences and gradually expanding monotone that he has trouble convincing people of things they know just ain't true and the sound of that diesel engine is getting closer and closer.
Thank-you for providing some sense to this debate
odoco
Ever think this could just be a ploy to get him disassociate with the legal jeopardy he is now so heavily engaged in???
These over Christianized people really make me sick. Two million a month, I'm sure that number is overblown like your ego. What do you want Eric? Sympathy,tarp money,what? That train metaphor is just projecting.
Excellent comments. I won't try to improve on them.
It's about time we exposed this corporation for what it is a too expensive fascist organization that robbed the United States of billions of dollars and dragged us down to the level of the nazis.
Nothing would please me more than to see xe destroyed and fined billions of dollars that belongs to us.
Never Give Up.
if it were a less expensive fascist organization that robbed the United States of billions of dollars and dragged us down to the level of the nazis would that be OK?
OK; AP is just collecting "news" and providing them for
the public ... but hey, is journalismn in the US
sooooo dead that it is not even necessary to provide
just a bit of detail on this "uproar" that hit Blackwater?
Like mentioning that some people accuse Mr Prince with a series of crimes?
This article is a good example for what is wrong with
the US on many levels.
"Blackwater Founder,Prince, Feels Thrown Under Bus." Poor baby. I'd like to throw him in the wood chipper.
I'm sorry but F--k him!
Do not be surprised if Prince shows up with his own radio/tv show on Fox. Ollie and G Gordon got their programs.
Where else but America!
Blackwater respected? Man! I must be seeing things! Now, y'all don't mind if, after reading an opening like that, I don't read the rest of the article, eh? I don't think I could stomach it.
However, somewhere else today, I heard that he's quitting Blackwater to become a teacher. ROFL! Who the F*^% in their right mind would let that monster teach their kids?
Answer from the little voice: "The righteous religious right, of course!" Oh, but, of course!