Erik Prince: The Visible Face of Legalized Terrorism

Published at: 13/08/2024 06:00 PM

Erick Prince is a conservative Republican who, thanks to the war, has managed to triple his family fortune, as owner of the company Blackwater , one of the largest contractors for security personnel in the US State Department since 2001, when the International Intelligence Agency (CIA) granted him around 600 millions of dollars in contracts classified both to your company and to the subsidiaries.

His success in business also goes hand in hand with his important political contacts, from his beginning as an intern at the White House, under the presidency of George Bush (father); former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards described him as a “political sidekick” of George W. Bush.

The growth of Prince 's warrior business has gone from being a modest training center for local police officers to a true military holding company with multiple branches. Since its founding in 1997 and especially since September 11, 2001, his firm has won multi-million dollar contracts for its protection services in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the six years following the attacks of 9/11, Blackwater billed the US government almost 850 million euros for different services, as part of the promotional offers of its business and in its marketing packages, it details “if they need planes or helicopters, Aviation Worldwide is there, or Presidential Airways, if spies are needed, Total Intelligence Solutions could help and for special or secret operations there would be a unit called Blackwater Select”, and so on with a series of increasingly specialized operations, such as those aimed at maritime security and armoured vehicles.

Despite the scandals surrounding his company Blackwater, now called Academi, experts say that the Barack Obama administration had a lot of help from Prince's business , whose forces were once known as George's shadow army W. Bush.

“It's about convenience and cost, the U.S. State Department became dependent on its contractors in Iraq because hiring them was easier than assigning enough of its own forces to certain tasks,” said Benjamin Friedman, an analyst at the Brookings Institute in Washington. Also, military strategy expert Sean McFate, of the New America Foundation, commented that this “dependency” not only encompasses “protection services in the field, but also the training of foreign soldiers and police.”

The fact is that during the Bush administration, Blackwater's role went far beyond protecting officials or guarding caravans or sensitive installations in Iraq. As revealed by The New York Times, the CIA would have entrusted him in 2004 with the search for Osama Bin Laden himself and his jihadist henchmen and even the Predator planes that were used in the war in Afghanistan was armed by one of the company's “secret” divisions.

Later, in an interview conducted by the newspaper La Nación in 2009, former consultant to the US Department of Defense, James Robbins, explained that Prince has been busy recruiting many of the figures in the CIA, like the current vice-president of the firm, Cofer Black, who was in charge of counter-terrorist operations after 9/11, the same one who warned that he would bring the head of the Al-Qaeda leader in a box with dry ice, assuring that Blackwater can be much more efficient in using experienced people,” he said Black, because at its operations center located in North Carolina, more than 40,000 uniformed personnel are trained annually, coming from different branches of the Armed Forces.

The American entrepreneur and mercenary, Erik Prince, is very close to billionaire Donald Trump, and as he said in a news published by the newspaper El Mundo in May 2019, “he has been trying for months to organize an army of 5,000 mercenaries to overthrow the regime of Nicolas Maduro”.

In addition, in that same year, the news portal Reuters explained that “Prince's plan is to create an army of between 4,000 and 5,000 soldiers operating from Colombia, specialists in intelligence and espionage tasks to overthrow Maduro. To date, the Government of Colombia has opposed acting as a basis for any type of armed action against Venezuela, despite poor relations between the two countries and the fact that Bogotá is bearing the bulk of the cost of the massive flight of Venezuelans from their country. The plan is also strange from a military point of view, since to invade and stabilize Venezuela, many more than 5,000 soldiers would be needed.”

Recall that already in January 2019, the US National Security Advisor , John Bolton, appeared at a press conference discussing the situation in Venezuela with a yellow notebook in which he had clearly written “5,000 troops to Colombia”.

Then, in 2021, the world was amazed by Prince's business proposal , in which “for 5,500 euros he takes you flying out of Afghanistan and for a little more you can hire the premium “door to door” package that includes mercenaries who pick you up at home and make sure you arrive at Kabul airport alive”, this antititle of the newspaper El Mundo made an impact to all, a war entrepreneur with decades of experience in making a cut from despair, chaos and violence.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Erik Prince, a former soldier and founder of the private military company Blackwater, profited from the pain and suffering of Afghans. According to the American newspaper, the billionaire was charging $6,500 per seat to all Afghans who wish to leave the country on a chartered plane.

Now, he “offers” as a savior for the Venezuelan opposition to get out of the re-elected president Nicolás Maduro, already at the beginning of the year, he intended to infiltrate Venezuela and use Guyana to activate colonizing plans, as the deputy Tania Díaz denounced in the month of February. It would seem then that the options of the Venezuelan right are never associated with democracy, only blood, violence and terror are their proposal for the country.

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team