Was Blackwater The CIA?

Fascinating information has emerged from the federal government’s attempt to prosecute employees of Blackwater Worldwide for murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US government’s case against Blackwater fell apart because…Blackwater’s employees were perpetrating the crimes under direct orders from the US government. Blackwater, it seems, was not just a contractor hired by the US government and the CIA. In effect it was the CIA.

In an interview today, Blackwater founder Erik Prince admitted that Blackwater functioned as virtually a “private” extension of the CIA. Said Prince:

“In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house.”

In the course of the trial, thousands of documents were made public detailing the relationship between the CIA and Blackwater, including an interesting court document that lists “ErikP” as a CIA officer himself.

Prince was so patriotic he even agreed to forgo payment on many occasions for the “services” he provided the CIA. “I agreed to provide some services gratis because, in the wake of 9/11, I felt it my patriotic duty. I knew that I had the tools and resources to help my country,” he said in the interview.

Prince’s “patriotism” paid off: he was able to sell the scandal-plagued company, renamed Acaedmi because the name “Blackwater” was associated with torture, violence, and murder, for the princely sum of $200 million. It pays to provide cover for the CIA’s bloody worldwide rampage.

On Twitter @DanielLMcAdams

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4:20 pm on March 14, 2013