Erik Prince

Eric Prince is the founder and former chairman of the notorious private security firm Blackwater Worldwide—later renamed Academi[1]—whose activities in Iraq and elsewhere led some observers to term it a modern-day “mercenary army.”[2] Bloomberg News has characterized him as “America’s foremost mercenary executive.”[3]

Prince’s track record also includes serving as an important financial contributor to the Republican Party, backing various conservative causes and rightist groups in the United States, and serving as an informal adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, where he has assisted efforts to train mercenary desert armies.[4]

The Blackwater scandal in Iraq is only one of Prince’s many controversies. In 2019, reports emerged that a new private security firm he started, called Frontier Services Group (FSG), had been contracted to build a training center in the Xinjiang province in western China. Xinjiang is the province where the Chinese government has imprisoned more than a million Uyghur Muslims in so-called “re-education camps.”[5]

Prince denied any connection to a project in Xinjiang and FSG took the announcement off its web site. But the incident struck a familiar chord for Prince’s critics, who had questioned his dealings with China.[6] Xinjiang had appeared on FSG’s radar two years before, when the firm announced it would set up an office in the province. The Chinese government did not dispute the Chinese media reports that FSG was going to build the training facility, and it was Prince, speaking on his own behalf, who denied the reports.[7]

Privatizing Conflict in Syria and Afghanistan

When Donald Trump’s plan to remove two thousand U.S. troops from Syria ran into strong, bipartisan opposition, Prince recommended that private mercenaries replace U.S. troops even though he did not seem familiar with the situation on the ground in Syria. “If there is not some kind of robust capability to defend from a ground invasions from the very conventional power that the Iranians and the Syrians have, our allies will be smashed,” Prince said. But the “allies” to which he referred were not primarily concerned with Syrian or Iranian forces. Their concern was with Turkey, who saw the resistance fighters as a threat because they were Kurds and had connections to Kurdish forces in Turkey. Indeed, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had made it clear to Trump that he intended to strike at the Syrian Kurdish forces.[8]

Prince’s pitch to use mercenary forces in Syria followed a proposal for a similar deployment in Afghanistan. In July 2018, Prince proposed that small teams of armed private contractors would mentor Afghan troops—training them and accompanying them into combat—and aircraft flown by contractors with Afghan co-pilots would support them. These small teams would, Prince suggested, take the place of U.S. troops and even those of allies, at a fraction of the cost.

Prince had first proposed the plan in 2017. He won the support of Steve Bannon, who was the key White House strategist at the time, and of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. But then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other officials opposed the idea and were able to block it.

By July 2018, Mattis had fallen out of favor with Trump, who had been intrigued by Prince’s idea. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, with whom Prince had discussed his proposal while he was still the head of the CIA, was also receptive to the idea. However, Pompeo reportedly considered that “Mr. Trump’s current strategy was working. The Taliban. … can no longer rely on waiting for US forces to pull out.”[9] But soon after, talks between the U.S. and the Taliban intensified, and by the end of 2018, Trump had announced his intention to cut the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by half, contradicting Pompeo’s statement, and opening the possibility that Prince’s idea could still be part of a U.S. exit strategy.[10]

Any such plan, however, would have to overcome the objections of the Afghan government. President Ashraf Ghani bluntly stated in October 2018, “Under no circumstances will the Afghan government and people allow the counterterrorism fight to become a private, for-profit business.”[11]

Trump Scandals

In May 2018, a report alleged that Prince was a key figure in putting together an August 2016 meeting between an Israeli expert in social media manipulation, a representative of key Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf, and representatives of the Trump campaign. The allegations appeared to bolster accusations that the Trump campaign worked with agents of foreign powers to gain unfair advantage in the 2016 presidential election.[12]

Shortly before that, Prince was the subject of scrutiny for his alleged involvement in illicit talks with Russian representatives about establishing a back-channel between the Trump transition team and Moscow and because of his close ties to people associated with the Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal.[13]

Blackwater was the subject of numerous criminal and congressional investigations related to weapons trafficking, corruption, and the use of excessive force, among other charges. Though he sold the company and moved to Abu Dhabi in 2010, Prince has continued to defend it against these charges. He complained that “The government chose to prosecute my people for doing exactly what was asked of them.”[14]

Prince also appears to have played a role in the scandal over ties between Russia and Donald Trump‘s presidential election campaign.

In May 2018, the New York Times reported that Prince arranged a meeting between an Israeli expert in social media manipulation, an Arab emissary from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the Trump campaign. At that meeting, the Times said, “The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president. The social media specialist, Joel Zamel, extolled his company’s ability to give an edge to a political campaign; by that time, the firm had already drawn up a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Mr. Trump.”

The Times said that while it was not clear if the Trump campaign had ever executed the plan, Donald Trump, Jr. reacted positively to the proposal.[15]

The report seemed to contradict Prince’s sworn testimony before Congress, where he claimed not to have had any formal contact or communication with the Trump campaign. One report stated, “Law professor and former special counsel member Ryan Goodman suggested the difference between the report and Prince’s testimony could constitute perjury.”[16]

One journalist suggested that this revelation was particularly vexing to Trump, even amid all the other investigations he was under at the time. “The figures in the story have emerged in recent months and inhabit an unmapped but potentially vast new territory in the investigation. Prince, George Nader—a lobbyist for various Middle Eastern interests—and the Gulf States have had some role in the financial and political nexus between Trump and Russia. The figures convened in a suspicious meeting in the Seychelles before the inauguration, which Mueller is investigating as an attempt to set up a back channel to Russia.”[17]

The Seychelles meeting was already controversial by the time the report of the August 2016 meeting emerged. In April 2017, the Washington Post reported that “the United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in the Seychelles this January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump.”[18]

In March 2018, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller began scrutinizing the Seychelles meeting more closely and gained the cooperation of another attendee of that meeting, George Nader.[19] Prince had testified to Congress that the meeting was not intended to set up a back-channel communication network between the Trump team and Moscow, but that he was in the Seychelles on business and had an impromptu “sit-down” with the Putin ally.[20] This testimony raised the possibility that Mueller was investigating whether Prince had perjured himself.[21] The subsequent revelations appear to have strengthened that possibility. Nader was reportedly cooperating with the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, leading to the conclusion that the new revelations were particularly vexing to Trump.[22]

The brother of Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Prince served as an adviser to the Trump campaign, advising the Trump team to adopt a strategy in Afghanistan that included using private mercenaries. He told Bretibart news in January 2017, “I say go back to the model that worked, for a couple hundred years in the region, by the East India company, which used professional Western soldiers who were contracted and lived with, trained with, and, when necessary, fought with their local counterparts.”[23]

Prince’s activities in support of Trump and, particularly, in connecting the UAE and other Gulf states with the Trump administration, dovetail with his effort to capitalize on the trend toward privatizing military endeavors since Trump’s election.

“Significant amounts of present and future military combat operations have been outsourced to the private sector with little, if any, government control,” wrote David Isenberg. “Consider what has been reported recently. The Trump administration is seeking to assemble an Arab force to replace the U.S. military contingent in Syria and help stabilize the northeastern part of the country. The Wall Street Journal reported that the idea “caught the attention of Erik Prince, the private businessman who founded Blackwater USA and who has helped the U.A.E. and Somalia set up private security forces.”[24] Prince said, “that he has been informally contacted by Arab officials about the prospect of building a force in Syria but that he was waiting to see what Mr. Trump would do.”[25]

In December 2017, The Intercept reported on a private spy network that Prince—along with Oliver North, the current chairman of the National Rifle Association (NRA) who was convicted of lying to Congress in the 1980s Iran-Contra Affair—proposed developing that could report directly to CIA Director Mike Pompeo and to President Trump, with no other oversight. The report cited a former U.S. intelligence official whom The Intercept said had first-hand knowledge of the proposal.  “Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him,” the anonymous source said. “It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books. The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”[26]

In 2016, Prince—referring to the hacked emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman that WikiLeaks had leaked to the public—said on Breitbart News Daily that “John Podesta’s emails, I can assure you, did not come from the Russians.” But, as CNN later pointed out, “The US intelligence community later announced that Russia was responsible for the Podesta hacks and had transferred the information to WikiLeaks as part of its plan to interfere in the election. This belief has since been reaffirmed by the leaders appointed by Trump to head the FBI and CIA.”[27]

Training the Chinese

In 2012, Prince formed Frontier Services Group, Ltd. The new venture was specifically targeting the Chinese and East Asian market. Prince claimed Frontier—which initially offered aviation and logistical services—would avoid security work. In 2013, he sold controlling interest to a group of Chinese entrepreneurs, but he stayed on as chairman. It later acquired a security training school and, although Frontier claims it is not engaged in security-related operations, human rights advocates in China claim, “that Frontier’s work there supports the Chinese authorities’ crackdown on the Muslim minority, a drive that includes sending people to reeducation camps.”[28]

In 2016, a group of Frontier executives and directors resigned over concerns that the corporation was engaged in potential violations of U.S. law by facilitating the sale of military planes to Azerbaijan. The matter was, investigated by the State Department, but the sale was cancelled when Frontier received a report that indicated that those involved could be prosecuted.[29]

While it is unclear whether Prince violated U.S. law, his involvement has caused discomfort among colleagues and critics in the United States. It has raised significant questions of whether he is actively working against U.S. interests.

A former military contractor who had worked with Prince said, “He clearly feels that the U.S. government and State Department betrayed him. He’s very, very angry. The Chinese paid him a lot of money, but he’s not doing this just for the money. He believes the Chinese have a better strategy to solve problems than we do and he thinks a global response is required.”

“The China stuff makes everybody uncomfortable,” a former intelligence official told the Washington Post. “In the intelligence community and the Pentagon, there was discomfort to begin with because he was courting the Chinese government at the same time as he was courting the American government for work…He is way out of bounds.”

“Erik Prince likes to present himself as the perfect patriot, but in fact he is the super mercenary,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a longtime Prince critic. “The definition of a country is having hegemony over the use of force, and Erik Prince blurs that…He wants to monetize war and peace.”[30]

The Rise and Fall of Blackwater

Prince’s involvement in the private military business dates back to 1997, when he and another ex-Navy SEAL, Al Clark, founded Blackwater, in part with assets Prince received from the sale of his father Edgar’s lucrative automotive business. According to one account, Prince and Clark initially planned to develop “a training center for police and military personnel. Prince later said the idea sprang from the lack of adequate facilities he experienced during his SEAL training. The men settled on a now-7,000-acre facility along swampland in North Carolina.”[31]

Prince recalled in 2007, “The special operations community had been using private facilities since the late ’70s, you know, individual shooting experts, schools, and no one had really done it on a grand scale. At the same time, there were a lot of government facilities that were maybe not the best maintained and not the most user-friendly. And so I started something like an individual shooting school, very relevant for operators, for SWAT teams, for military units on a much bigger scale, in close proximity to one of the largest concentrations of the military right there in the Norfolk, Virginia area.”[32]

Business was initially slow, but the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole “led the Navy to look for someone to train sailors to identify and respond to terrorist threats. Blackwater won a contract. But business really soared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks—from about $200,000 in federal contracts in 2000 to $25 million in 2003 to nearly $600 million” in 2006.[33] By late 2007, Blackwater had received $1 billion in federal contracts.[34] The U.S. government outsourced jobs previously done by the army, and Blackwater began taking on contracts to protect diplomats in Iraq, among other things.

Prince told Charlie Rose, “We got into the security business because we had excellent trainers, we had a great curriculum, and we had big facilities that we could do large amounts of personnel that needed to be trained to a very high standard to do high-end security. So when the government demand came for a lot of extra security, especially after 9/11, in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, we competed for a lot of those. We were called, ‘Can you do this, can you do this fast?’ And we answered the call and we got it done.”[35]

In fall 2007, Prince’s company came under intense scrutiny after its employees opened fire on and killed 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians who were apparently trying to flee the scene of a car bombing. The Blackwater guards were under a State Department contract. In the outcry that followed, the House of Representatives held a hearing on Blackwater and the privatization of military work. In his prepared statement, Prince insisted that though any loss of innocent life was tragic, “based on everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately.”[36]

In the aftermath of the killings, Blackwater claimed it had immunity from prosecution.[37] Some government officials, however, took a different view. “In my mind, the fundamental question that remains unanswered is this: Why have we come to rely on private contractors to provide combat or combat-related security training for our forces?” Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a July 10, 2008 memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen. “Further, are we comfortable with this practice, and do we fully understand the implications in terms of quality, responsiveness and sustainability?”[38]

In December 2008, the Justice Department announced the indictments of six former Blackwater contractors for their roles in the 2007 killings. Responding to the indictments, Prince tried to describe his company’s work as patriotic, writing in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, “Last week the Department of Justice announced charges against six Blackwater security guards for a shooting incident in Baghdad in September 2007. But before the histories are written, it is crucial to understand the often mischaracterized role of security contractors in this unique war … While some of our critics seize upon inaccurate labels, I doubt they have ever known one of our contractors personally or been protected by them. Our teams are not cooking meals or moving supplies. They are taking bullets. They are military veterans who have chosen to serve their country once again. Very few people know someone who would voluntarily go into a war zone to protect a person he has never met. I know 1,000 of them, and I am proud that they are part of our team.”[39]

In July 2008, several months before the indictments, the company announced that it would pull back from the security business. The Associated Press (AP) reported, “Blackwater executives say they have unfairly become a symbol for all contractors in Iraq and thus the company is a target for those opposed to the war. It will continue guarding U.S. officials in Iraq but its future will be focused on training, aviation and logistics.” Prince told the AP, “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.” The AP reported that Blackwater “has expanded its aviation division, which provides airplane and helicopter maintenance and also drops supplies into hard-to-reach military bases. A 6,000-foot runway is under construction and a large map in the company’s hangar shows units based across the world, from Africa to the Middle East to Australia.”[40]

In March 2009, Prince announced that he was stepping down as CEO of Blackwater but remaining as chairman. He told the Wall Street Journal that he was “worn out by the whole thing, the politics of it all.”[41] Shortly before this announcement, the company undertook the first of a series of rebrandings, changing its name to Xe. Prince said that the new name was based on the chemical symbol for Xenon, explaining: “It’s an inert, non-combustible gas.”[42]

In June 2010, Prince announced that he would sell Blackwater Worldwide. In a statement explaining the move, Prince said, “Performance doesn’t matter in Washington, just politics.”[43] A month before the announcement, Prince honed his anti-government message in front of an audience in his hometown of Holland, Michigan: “The greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity is not al-Qaida, the Taliban, Iran or even China. It’s an idea, the idea that we can spend our way out of our problems without tightening our belt and paring down the very bloated government.”[44]

With Blackwater apparently behind him, Prince moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2010, where he found a job with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to create a battalion of troops comprised of Colombians, South Africans, and various other foreign nationals. According to the New York Times, “The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts, the documents show. Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest in their crowded labor camps or were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year.”[45]

The move came about just as new allegations emerged regarding purported sanctions violations by Blackwater and Prince. McClatchy Newspapers reported in June 2010 that Prince had been seeking out new business in East Africa, specifically defense contracts in southern Sudan while Sudan was under U.S. economic sanctions.[46]

According to a 2010 investigative report by the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill, Prince had been recorded advocating that the U.S. government “deploy armed private contractors to fight ‘terrorists’ in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, specifically to target Iranian influence.”[47] Prince is also heard on recordings responding to a question about the Geneva Conventions, saying: “You know, people ask me that all the time, ‘Aren’t you concerned that you folks aren’t covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, ‘Absolutely not,’ because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD mentality. They’re barbarians. They don’t know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there.”[48]

Prince’s contracting work did not end with his relationship with Blackwater. In October 2012, the New York Times reported that Prince had been involved in an ill-fated attempt to create a private anti-piracy force in the semiautonomous Puntland region of Somalia with backing from the United Arab Emirates. The effort was led by a Dubai-based company called Sterling Corporate Service, a successor company to the firm Saracen International, described by the Times “as a South African private military firm hired by the emirates and composed of several former members of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, the feared paramilitary squad during the apartheid era.”[49] Prince, in his role as an adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, “made several trips to the Puntland camp to oversee the counterpiracy training.”[50]

A 2012 United Nations report about the project called it a “brazen, large-scale and protracted violation” of the arms embargo in place on Somalia and alleged that Somali trainees were beaten, and some killed during training. The project created a force of some 500 well-armed soldiers, who were eventually abandoned and left unpaid by Sterling in early 2012. “Sterling is leaving behind an unpaid but well-armed security force in Puntland,” Andre Le Sage, an expert at National Defense University, told the Times in 2012. “It’s important to find a way to make them part of a regular force or to disarm them and take control of them. If that’s not done, it could make things worse.”[51]

Civilian Warriors

In 2013, Prince published Civilian Warriors, a personal memoir dedicated in part to dispelling what Prince claimed were misperceptions about the Blackwater record—particularly concerning its employees’ behavior in combat, the company’s secrecy, and his own political connections.[52] “Civilian Warriors is an angry book,” opined a Bloomberg Businessweekwrite-up of the memoir, “and some of Prince’s contentions have made immediate headlines: He argues that ill-conceived State Department regulations led to Blackwater’s many firefights in Iraq; he has accused former CIA Director Leon Panetta of blowing his cover as an intelligence asset; and he contends that, had Blackwater still been providing security for America’s diplomats, Chris Stevens, the ambassador killed in Benghazi, would be alive today.”[53]

The book is also a screed against government incompetence and a paean to military contracting. According to Businessweek, Prince wanted the book “to prove two things he strongly believed in: the dynamism of the private sector, and that some of the world’s most frustrating problems—piracy, warlords, genocide—could be solved by small groups of highly trained men with guns.”[54]

In interviews, Prince admitted that publishing the book was in part about making money, claiming he “didn’t make a whole lot of money out of the whole Blackwater experience” after paying out legal fees from its various imbroglios. But he also took the opportunity to expand on his own political views, including on the military budget and social spending. “I think it’s very important to bring some budget sanity back to how America spends its money on defense, on intelligence, on everything, including social programs,” he told Talking Points Memoin December 2013. “I want to take away the notion that it’s unpatriotic to cut the defense budget because there’s plenty of room to do it to make it more efficient,” he added. “You know, can the right and the left then cut the grand bargain to do social programs, reduce defense spending, just cut everything, and have the country live within its means and really unleash the entrepreneur?”[55]

In remarks that surprised some observers, Prince also inveighed against the growth of the national security state. “America is way too quick to trade freedom for the illusion of security,” he told Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake. “Whether it’s allowing the NSA to go way too far in what it intercepts of our personal data, to our government monitoring of everything domestically and spending way more than we should. I don’t know if I want to live in a country where lone wolf and random terror attacks are impossible ‘cause that country would look more like North Korea than America.” Although he said that he was “all in favor of killing terrorists,” Prince also predicted that the United States would reap a “bitter harvest” from its targeted assassination program, calling it particularly “troubling” that the U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki “was killed with no due process other than he got on the ‘kill list.'”[56]

Since leaving Blackwater, Prince has entertained several other ventures, including advising the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, training mercenaries in Somalia, and “working with Chinese businesses to start projects in Africa.”[57] He said in December 2013, “There was a small announcement of an aviation company I bought being purchased by a Hong Kong company. There’ll be some more announcements coming up in the next couple months.”[58]

Conservative Connections

Prince was born into a prominent conservative family in Michigan. He served as an intern in 1992 in the White House of President George H.W. Bush and, later for Gary Bauer’s Family Research Council, an influential Religious Right organization that his father, Edgar Prince, helped found.

Prince apparently did not find his experience at the White House altogether positive, saying later, “I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with—homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kinds of bills.”[59]

In 1990, Prince worked at Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s (R-CA) office, where he met and worked with future Blackwater lobbyist Paul Behrends.[60]

A Naval Academy dropout, Prince eventually graduated from the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan. In 1993, shortly after graduating, Prince “landed a spot with the Navy SEALs, performing secret missions in Haiti and Bosnia.”[61]

In a 2007 exposé on Blackwater for Salon.com, Ben Van Heuvelen reported on Prince’s track record of “giving to Republicans and cultivating relationships with important conservatives.”[62] Observers have speculated a link between Blackwater’s success and Prince’s political connections. “[O]ne of Blackwater’s earliest contracts in the national arena was a no-bid $5.4 million deal to provide security guards in Afghanistan, which came after Prince made a call to then CIA executive director Buzzy Krongard,” Van Heuvelen wrote. “What’s more, Harper’s Ken Silverstein has reported that Prince has a security pass for CIA headquarters and ‘meets with senior people’ inside the CIA. But Prince’s most important benefactor was fellow conservative Roman Catholic convert L. Paul Bremer, former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American occupation government in Iraq. In August 2003, Blackwater won a $27.7 million contract to provide personal security for Bremer.”[63]

Prince, who converted to Roman Catholicism from the Calvinist Dutch Reform Church in 1992, has supported rightist Christian groups via the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, where he has served as vice president.[64] In fiscal 2006, the nonprofit foundation contributed nearly $8 million in grants to predominantly, if not exclusively, socially conservative groups, including $510,000 to the Family Research Council; $500,000 to the international proselytizing group the Haggai Institute; $1,000,000 to the Alliance Defense Fund; and more than $1 million to the Christian Calvin College in Michigan.[65]

Prince’s own nonprofit, the Freiheit Foundation, which he ran with his first wife Joan, funded a smaller but similar roster of conservative groups, including the Acton Institute, the Education Freedom Fund (where Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, has been a board member), and Christian Freedom International. In 2000, Prince’s Freiheit Foundation gave $500,000 to Prison Fellowship Ministries, a group that was once led by the notorious Nixon official Charles Colson, and contributed $30,000 to the American Enterprise Institute.[66] The FreiheitFoundation appears to have stopped operating after Joan’s death in 2003.

Prince also served on the board of Christian Freedom International, which reporter Robert Weitzel described as “a crusading missionary organization operating in the overwhelmingly Islamic countries of Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.”[67]

Prince’s family—including his late father Edgar, mother Elsa, and sister Betsy—has been deeply involved in conservative politics. Edgar, who founded the family automotive business, was a major backer of right-wing political and Christian groups, and was eulogized by Gary Bauer, who referred to him as his “mentor.” Betsy married into a powerful Michigan Republican Party family, the DeVoses, and Elsa (now Elsa Prince Broekhuizen after remarrying) has served on the boards of right-wing groups including the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.

In a 2006 study on funders of anti-same sex marriage groups, scholar Sue O’Connell wrote that Elsa Prince Broekhuizen was the top individual contributor in Michigan to causes supporting amendments to limit same-sex marriage in 2004, giving $75,000 to Citizens for the Protection of Marriage.[68] O’Connell further explained Elsa’s family and political ties: “Broekhuizen is the mother of Betsy DeVos, who was serving as chairman of the Michigan Republican Party in 2004. Betsy DeVos is married to Dick DeVos, currently a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan. Dick DeVos’ father is Amway co-founder Richard DeVos Sr., who gave $20,000 to the committee [Citizens for the Protection of Marriage]. Two other DeVos family members gave a combined $30,000.”[69]

The Prince family also has strong ties to the Council for National Policy, a secretive right-wing nationalist group whose membership has included a number of high-profile conservatives, including Gary Bauer, Jeffrey Bell, Edwin Feulner, Jack Kemp, Edwin Meese, Tommy Thompson, and Paul Weyrich. Edgar Prince was a longtime board member; Prince Broekhuizen served as president for several years; and Erik Prince’s Freiheit Foundation donated money to the group.

 

SOURCES

[1] John Hudson, “Time for Blackwater to Change Its Name Again,” The Atlantic, August 8, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/time-blackwater-change-its-name-again/324954/

[2]  See, for example, Ali Gharib, “Blackwater: The Real “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”? Right Web, July 18, 2008, https://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/4934.html; see also, Mike Baker, “Blackwater dumps tarnished brand name,” Associated Press, February 13, 2009

[3] Bloomberg News, “Blackwater’s Erik Prince, China and a new controversy over Xinjiang,” South China Morning Post, February 10, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2185588/blackwaters-erik-prince-china-and-new-controversy-over-xinjiang

[4] Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, “Private Army Formed to Fight Somali Pirates Leaves Troubled Legacy,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/world/africa/private-army-leaves-troubled-legacy-in-somalia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[5] Umar Farooq, “China Has Detained a Million Muslims in Reeducation Camps,” The Nation, November 27, 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/china-muslims-detention-camps/

[6] Bloomberg News, “Blackwater’s Erik Prince, China and a new controversy over Xinjiang,” South China Morning Post, February 10, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2185588/blackwaters-erik-prince-china-and-new-controversy-over-xinjiang

[7] Alexandra Stevenson and Chris Buckley, “Blackwater founder says he had ‘no knowledge’ of new company’s plans to build camp in Chinese state known for Muslim persecution,” The Independent, February 4, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/blackwater-china-xinjiang-uighur-muslims-erik-prince-frontier-services-group-a8762146.html

[8] Richard Hall, “US troops in Syria could be replaced by private contractors, Blackwater founder Erik Prince says,” The Independent, January 15, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-us-troop-withdrawal-private-contractors-blackwater-erik-prince-trump-military-a8729121.html

[9] Kin Sengupta, “Blackwater founder’s plan to privatise America’s $76bn, 17-year war in Afghanistan,” The Independent, July 10, 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghanistan-war-privatised-blackwater-founder-erik-prince-interview-a8440781.html

[10] Richard Hall, “US troops in Syria could be replaced by private contractors, Blackwater founder Erik Prince says,” The Independent, January 15, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-us-troop-withdrawal-private-contractors-blackwater-erik-prince-trump-military-a8729121.html

[11] D. Parvaz, “Afghan officials have had enough of Erik Prince,” Think Progress, October 5, 2018, https://thinkprogress.org/afghans-to-erik-prince-no-we-dont-want-to-privatize-the-war-thanks-aa19ff2ea800/

[12] Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman and David D. Kirkpatrick, “Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election,” May 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html?auth=login-smartlock&login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock

[13] David Isenberg, Erik Prince And Big Data, “Lobelog, April 5, 2018, https://lobelog.com/erik-prince-and-big-data/

[14] Eli Lake, “Court Docs Reveal Blackwater’s Secret CIA Past,” Daily Beast, March 14, 2013, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/14/exclusive-erik-prince-on-blackwater-s-secret-cia-past.html

[15] Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman and David D. Kirkpatrick, “Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election,” May 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html?auth=login-smartlock&login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock

[16] Ellen Cranley, “The Trump-Russia investigation just got more complex than we ever expected,” Business Insider, May 21, 2018, http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-jr-trump-tower-meeting-makes-russia-probe-more-complex-2018-5

[17] Jonathan Chait, “Why the New Times Report on the Gulf Meeting Is Freaking Trump Out,” new York Magazine, May 21, 2 018, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/new-trump-tower-meeting-george-nader-erik-prince-don-jr-russia-mueller.html

[18]  Adam Entous, Greg Miller, Kevin Sieff and Karen DeYoung, “Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel,” Washington Post, April 3, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?utm_term=.afb266b47ed8

[19] Marshall Cohen, “Who Is Erik Prince?” CNN, March 8, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/politics/erik-prince-russia-seychelles-trump-transition/index.html

[20] “Testimony of Erik Prince,” U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, November 30, 2017, http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20171130/106661/HHRG-115-IG00-Transcript-20171130.pdf

[21] Jen Kirby, “Erik Prince may have lied to Congress about his Seychelles meeting,” Vox, March 10, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/3/10/17097692/seychelles-erik-prince-congress-mueller

[22] Jonathan Chait, “Why the New Times Report on the Gulf Meeting Is Freaking Trump Out,” new York Magazine, May 21, 2 018, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/new-trump-tower-meeting-george-nader-erik-prince-don-jr-russia-mueller.html

[23] Kristina Wong, “Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Recommends ‘Cheaper, Lighter’ Afghanistan Approach,” Bretibart, June 12, 2017, http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/06/12/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-recommends-cheaper-lighter-afghanistan-approach/

[24] Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. Seeks Arab Force and Funding for Syria,” Wall  Street Journal, April 16, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-seeks-arab-force-and-funding-for-syria-1523927888

[25] David Isenberg, “US And Russia Compete To Privatize Syrian War,” Lobelog, May 21, 2018, https://lobelog.com/us-and-russia-compete-to-privatize-syrian-war/

[26] Matthew Cole and Jeremy Scahill, “Trump White House Weighing Plans For Private Spies to Counter ‘Deep  State’ Enemies,” The Intercept, December 4, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/12/04/trump-white-house-weighing-plans-for-private-spies-to-counter-deep-state-enemies/

[27] Marshall Cohen, “Who Is Erik Prince?” CNN, March 8, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/politics/erik-prince-russia-seychelles-trump-transition/index.html

[28] Marc Fisher, Ian Shapira and Emily Rauhala, “Behind Erik Prince’s China venture,” Washington Post, May 4, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/05/04/feature/a-warrior-goes-to-china-did-erik-prince-cross-a-line/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4bbb28c7cc33

[29] Marc Fisher, Ian Shapira, and Emily Rauhala, “Behind Erik Prince’s China venture,” Washington Post, May 4, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/05/04/feature/a-warrior-goes-to-china-did-erik-prince-cross-a-line/?utm_term=.4a9888896063

[30] Marc Fisher, Ian Shapira and Emily Rauhala, “Behind Erik Prince’s China venture,” Washington Post, May 4, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/05/04/feature/a-warrior-goes-to-china-did-erik-prince-cross-a-line/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4bbb28c7cc33

[31] Jim Schaefer, M.L. Elrick And Todd Spangler, “Ready for Battle,” Detroit Free Press, October 7, 2007.

[32] Jim Schaefer, M.L. Elrick And Todd Spangler, “Ready for Battle,” Detroit Free Press, October 7, 2007.

[33] Dana Milbank, “The Man from Blackwater, Shooting from the Lip,” Washington Post, October 3, 2007, p. A2.

[34] Charlie Rose, “A Conversation with the CEO and Chairman of Blackwater, Erik Prince,” Charlie Rose Show, October 15, 2007.

[35] Charlie Rose, “A Conversation with the CEO and Chairman of Blackwater, Erik Prince,” Charlie Rose Show, October 15, 2007.

[36] Ali Gharib, “Blackwater: The Real “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”? Right Web, July 18, 2008, http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/4934.html .

[37] Matt Apuzzo and Mike Baker, “Blackwater Plans Shift from Security Business,” Associated Press, July 21, 2008.

[38] Eric Prince, “How Blackwater Serves America,” Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2008.

[39] Matt Apuzzo and Mike Baker, “Blackwater Plans Shift from Security Business,” Associated Press, July 21, 2008.

[40] Matt Apuzzo and Mike Baker, “Blackwater Plans Shift from Security Business,” Associated Press, July 21, 2008.

[41] August Cole, “Founder, CEO of Blackwater Steps Aside, ‘Worn Out’,” Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2010.

[42] August Cole, “Founder, CEO of Blackwater Steps Aside, ‘Worn Out’,” Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2010.

[43] Jeremy Scahill, “The Nation: Blackwater For Sale,” National Public Radio, June 9, 2010, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127589029.

[44] Jeremy Scahill, “Eric Prince Says His Enemies are al Qaeda, Taliban and ‘Noisy Leftists,’” Jeremy Scahill’s Blog, The Nation, May 6, 2010, http://www.thenation.com/blog/erik-prince-says-his-enemies-are-al-qaeda-taliban-and-noisy-leftists.

[45] Mark Mazzetti and Emily Hager, “Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater’s Founder,” New York Times, May 14, 2011.

[46] Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay, Joseph Neff, “Blackwater ignored sanctions in Sudan,” McClatchy Newspapers, June 27, 2010, http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/06/27/1528008/blackwater-ignored-sanctions-in.html.

[47] Jeremy Scahill, “Secret Erik Prince Tape Exposed,” The Nation, May 3, 2010, http://www.thenation.com/blog/secret-erik-prince-tape-exposed.

[48] Jeremy Scahill, “Secret Erik Prince Tape Exposed,” The Nation, May 3, 2010, http://www.thenation.com/blog/secret-erik-prince-tape-exposed.

[49] Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, “Private Army Formed to Fight Somali Pirates Leaves Troubled Legacy,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/world/africa/private-army-leaves-troubled-legacy-in-somalia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

[50] Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, “Private Army Formed to Fight Somali Pirates Leaves Troubled Legacy,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/world/africa/private-army-leaves-troubled-legacy-in-somalia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

[51] Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, “Private Army Formed to Fight Somali Pirates Leaves Troubled Legacy,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/world/africa/private-army-leaves-troubled-legacy-in-somalia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

[52] Hunter Walker, “Five Things Blackwater’s Founder Thinks The World Got Wrong About His Company,” Talking Points Memo, December 5, 2013, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/five-things-blackwater-s-founder-thinks-the-world-got-wrong-about-his-company

[53] Drake Bennett, “What Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Learned About the Business of War,” Bloomberg Businessweek, November 21, 2013, http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/169418-what-blackwater-founder-erik-prince-learned-about-the-business-of-war

[54] Drake Bennett, “What Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Learned About the Business of War,” Bloomberg Businessweek, November 21, 2013, http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/169418-what-blackwater-founder-erik-prince-learned-about-the-business-of-war

[55] Hunter Walker, “Blackwater Founder Says He ‘Didn’t Make A Whole Lot Of Money,’” Talking Points Memo,” December 17, 2013, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/erik-prince-says-he-didnt-make-a-whole-lot-of-money-with-blackwater

[56] Eli Lake, “Blackwater Founder Erik Prince: War on Terror Has Become Too Big,” The Daily Beast, November 19, 2013, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/19/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-war-on-terror-has-become-too-big.html

[57] Hunter Walker, “Blackwater Founder Says He ‘Didn’t Make A Whole Lot Of Money,’” Talking Points Memo,” December 17, 2013, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/erik-prince-says-he-didnt-make-a-whole-lot-of-money-with-blackwater

[58] Hunter Walker, “Blackwater Founder Says He ‘Didn’t Make A Whole Lot Of Money,’” Talking Points Memo,” December 17, 2013, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/erik-prince-says-he-didnt-make-a-whole-lot-of-money-with-blackwater

[59] Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books, 2007), p. 148.

[60] Jim Schaefer, M.L. Elrick And Todd Spangler, “Ready for Battle,” Detroit Free Press, October 7, 2007.

[61] Jim Schaefer, M.L. Elrick And Todd Spangler, “Ready for Battle,” Detroit Free Press, October 7, 2007.

[62] Ben Van Heuvelen, “The Bush Administration’s Ties to Blackwater,” Salon.com, October 2, 2007.

[63] Grand Rapids Independent Media, “Holland’s Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation Major Local and National Supporter of the Religious Right,” Grand Rapids Independent Media, Media Mouse,http://www.mediamouse.org/features/022707holla.php.

[64] 2006 IRS Form 990-PF for the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation

[65] 2006 IRS Form 990-PF for the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation

[66] 2000 IRS Form 990-PF for the Freiheit Foundation.

[67] Robert Weitzel, “US Military’s Middle East Crusade for Christ,” CommonDreams.org, June 9, 2008.

[68] Sue O’Connell, “The Money behind the Marriage Amendments,” Institute on Money in State Politics, January 27, 2006.

[69] Sue O’Connell, “The Money behind the Marriage Amendments,” Institute on Money in State Politics, January 27, 2006.