Tuesday August 4, 2009, 1:35 pm


thenation.com:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

Read the whole story: thenation.com

Tuesday August 4, 2009, 1:38 pm



Thnx Blue!!

Tuesday August 4, 2009, 1:38 pm
If anyone else is having trouble getting to the article on the Nation, it's also here:

http://www.alternet.org/world/141763/blackwater_founder_implicated_in_murder/

Tuesday August 4, 2009, 1:39 pm

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Like most things connected with the Iraq war, this is something that many believed for years but is only now getting the publicity it deserves. And now there seems to be some evidence beyond the speculation prompted by some of the previous statements by Eric Prince and other radical Christians who sold this war to the American people and have made billions off it ever since.

Tuesday August 4, 2009, 2:04 pm
Everyone connected tof the Cheney Cabal are criminals. That is a given.

Tuesday August 4, 2009, 2:35 pm
Thank you Blue.

Wednesday August 5, 2009, 1:16 pm
I heard an interview with Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now this morning, these allegations are shocking!

Please sign the petition to demand that Obama and Congress investigate and end all contracts with Blackwater immediately: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/20/investigate-and-fire-blackwater-now

Wednesday August 5, 2009, 5:56 pm
Countdown: Jeremy Scahill on the Latest Revelations About Blackwater

Play Quicktime

Keith talks to Jeremy Scahill about the latest revelations implicating Blackwater in murder and gun smuggling and for having a radical right, neo-crusader agenda in Iraq.

Olbermann: As horrific as all of this sounds, it's just part of what you describe in the piece today. Flesh it out for us.

Scahill: Well, I mean obviously to hear the term murder and Blackwater in the same sentence is no great surprise, particularly to people who've been following the history of this company. It's been at the center of some of the worst violence in Iraq. Killing civilians repeatedly. Five of its men are going to be tried on manslaughter charges for the Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad in September of '07. Another one plead guilty. The Congress is investigating. The IRS is investigating. This is a scandal plagued company.

What is explosive about what's happened here, and you just went through some of the most explosive of these details is that you have two former Blackwater officials, I have learned from sources that John Doe #2 was actually in Blackwater management and was privy to some of the inner workings of the company.

Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater remains the sole owner of the company no matter that he stepped down as CEO and the founder of the company. He micro-manages every aspect of Blackwater's operations and that's well known. On the Christian supremacists angle, let's remember that Erik Prince used Blackwater as a neo-crusader force and has from the beginning. This is a guy who comes from one of the power-house families of the radical religious right.

His father was a major bank roller, and gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to start The Family Research Council, James Dobson, Focus on the Family. And then we have his forced deployed in Iraq as part of a war against a Muslim nation that George Bush characterized as a crusade.

What we have here Keith is a confirmation from insiders at Blackwater that in face Erik Prince did have a neo-crusader agenda, and most explosively, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals that were intending to or did cooperate in the investigation of Blackwater. This is deadly serious.

Scahill also appeared on Democracy Now to discuss Blackwater.