|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
July 24th,
2006 - Blackwater’s Top Brass |
|
By the Virginian-Pilot July 24, 2006 Erik Prince, 37,
Blackwater’s founder and chairman, has deep roots in conservative Republican
politics in Michigan. His father, Edgar Prince,
turned a small die-cast shop in Holland, Mich., into a major auto parts
supplier with a specialty product: a windshield visor with a lighted mirror.
After his death in 1995, the company was sold for $1.4 billion. Edgar Prince
was a confidant and financial backer of Gary Bauer, a conservative activist
and onetime presidential candidate. Erik Prince’s sister Betsy,
a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, is married to Dick
DeVos, billionaire son of the founder of marketing giant Amway and this
year’s likely Republican candidate for governor of Michigan. Erik Prince went to private
schools in Michigan, earned his pilot’s license at 17 and attended the U.S.
Naval Academy. He later joined the Navy and was deployed with a SEAL team. Prince was living in
Virginia Beach when he founded Blackwater in 1996. He now runs the Prince Group,
Blackwater’s parent company, from an office in McLean, Va. His first wife, Joan, died
of cancer in 2003. He has since remarried, and has six children. Prince is a board member of
Christian Freedom International, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping
persecuted Christians around the world. Since 1998, he has made
nearly $200,000 in contributions to Republican committees and candidates,
including President Bush and indicted former House leader Tom DeLay,
according to Federal Election Commission records. Gary Jackson, 49,
Blackwater’s president, has been with the company almost from the beginning.
Like Prince, he is a former SEAL, having retired as a warrant officer after
23 years in the Navy. He is the senior executive
at Blackwater’s 7,000-acre headquarters and training compound in Moyock. Jackson makes no secret of
his political leanings. As editor of Blackwater’s weekly electronic
newsletter, he posted this headline at the top of the edition after the
November 2004 presidential election: BUSH WINS; FOUR MORE YEARS!! HOOYAH! He has made $9,000 in
contributions to President Bush and Republican congressional candidates since
2004, according to Federal Election Commission records. Among the recipients
of his donations were DeLay; Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee; and Rep. Jerry Lewis, chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee. Cofer Black, 56, joined
Blackwater in February 2005 as vice chairman after three decades in the
Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department. He was the CIA’s director of
counterterrorism when al-Qaida hijackers struck the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. In congressional testimony
in 2002, Black said the CIA thwarted plans by Osama bin Laden to kill Black
when he was stationed in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1995. In his book “Bush at War,”
Bob Woodward said Black gave these marching orders to an undercover agent he
dispatched to Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks: “Get bin Laden, find
him. I want his head in a box.” According to a United Press
International report, Black was incensed when U.S. and Afghan forces failed
to catch bin Laden at Tora Bora and complained about it anonymously in The
Washington Post, prompting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to derail his
CIA career. Black has denied that he was forced out of the agency. In 2002 Black moved to the
State Department, where one of his duties was managing security for the 2004
Olympic Games in Greece. In 2003, Blackwater won a contract to train security
teams for the games. Company officials say there
was no connection. Joseph Schmitz, 49, became
chief operating officer and general counsel of the Prince Group in September
2005 after a stint as inspector general at the Defense Department. Schmitz was the senior
Pentagon official responsible for investigating waste, fraud and abuse. Now
he faces a congressional inquiry into accusations that he quashed two
criminal investigations of senior Bush administration officials. The inquiry
is continuing, according to a spokeswoman for Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. A graduate of the U.S. Naval
Academy, Schmitz was a special assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese III
in the Reagan administration. He was awarded the Defense Department Medal for
Distinguished Public Service on his retirement from the Pentagon. Schmitz’s father, John G.
Schmitz, was a two-term Republican congressman from California and a
prominent member of the John Birch Society, an ultra-conservative group that
flowered during the Cold War. He ran for president in 1972 as the candidate
of the American Independent Party after its founder, George Wallace, was
paralyzed by a would-be assassin. John Schmitz’s political
career ended with the revelation that he had a mistress who bore two of his
children. He then moved to Washington, where he bought a house once owned by
Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Joseph Schmitz’s sister,
Mary Kay LeTourneau, also became embroiled in a scandal. As a married teacher
in Washington state, she went to prison after being convicted of having a
sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student with whom she ultimately had
two children. The two have since married. External link: http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=108028&ran=144012 |