If these affidavits, filed in federal court yesterday by two former Blackwater employees, are true, the founder and owner of the biggest security contracting company in Iraq during the previous administration is not just a felon, but a psychopath:
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.
These allegations, and a series of other charges, are contained in sworn affidavits, given under penalty of perjury, filed late at night on August 3 in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of a seventy-page motion by lawyers for Iraqi civilians suing Blackwater for alleged war crimes and other misconduct. Susan Burke, a private attorney working in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is suing Blackwater in five separate civil cases filed in the Washington, DC, area. They were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions. Burke filed the August 3 motion in response to Blackwater’s motion to dismiss the case. Blackwater asserts that Prince and the company are innocent of any wrongdoing and that they were professionally performing their duties on behalf of their employer, the US State Department.
And if any or all of the above is true, Steve Hynd adds, “it’s still only the tip of the iceberg.”
General Petraeus “lost” over 170,000 weapons in Iraq. His close aide, Lt. Col. Lavonda Selph pled guilty to accepting bribes in connection with another gun smuggling operation. At around the same time, his subordinate Col. Theodore Westhusing was found dead in Iraq, apparently a suicide. A note found by him said he could not “support a [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and liars,” and that he didn’t know who to trust among his superiors any more.
There are 154 open criminal investigations into allegations of bribery, conflicts of interest, defective products, bid rigging and theft in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Jonathan Landay of McLatchy newspapers said in a March 2009 interview that he believes U.S. officials — not U.S. contractors, but officials — are complicit and involved in the widespread corruption there.
Steve links to Daniel Schulman at Mother Jones, who in turn provides links to both sworn statements “here and here.”
Via Memeorandum.
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