Thom Hartmann: So what’s going on with Blackwater? We’re getting all these stories. When I, this isn’t, I mean this is a systemic problem. The corporate corruption of our political institutions, of our government, that went nuts during the Bush administration although it’s been an ongoing and increasing problem ever since the Reagan administration, arguably since long before that, but certainly since the Reagan administration. And Jeremy Scahill is with us, his website, RebelReports.com and he’s the award-winning independent investigative journalist and author of the best seller, “Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” Jeremy, welcome to the show, welcome back.
Jeremy Scahill: Thanks for having me back.
Thom Hartmann: Great having you with us. I’ve been watching your writings recently and it’s, it finally reached a critical mass for us, we’ve got to get Jeremy back and just fill me in on some of this stuff. I’m looking at these headlines. "Germany Launches Probe Into Blackwater/CIA Assassination Plot". "Blackwater and the Khost Bombing: Is the CIA Deceiving Congress?" "Two Blackwater Guards Arrested by FBI on Murder Charges". First of all, let’s start at the very biggest picture. What’s going on right now with Blackwater which has reinvented itself as what, Xe Services?
Jeremy Scahill: Right, well, the Obama administration, Thom, the bluntest way to put it, is continuing to do business with one of the most notorious actors to emerge in the so-called war on terror, supported radically by the Bush administration, placed at the center of some of the United States most sensitive operations. And what we’re seeing is that with the exception of losing one of it’s major contracts in Iraq, this company Blackwater which wants to call itself Xe or US Training Center, next week it’s gonna be the Fluffy Bunny Patrol, will just continue rebranding. Actually continues to do quite a robust business under the Obama administration and as you mentioned, Blackwater was actually at the center of that CIA outpost at Fort Chapman in Afghanistan. In fact two Blackwater operatives were among the dead that were counted as CIA operatives although they were in fact Blackwater employees. I understand from sources within the company that a third Blackwater operative was injured.
Let’s remember that that bombing by Mr. al-Balawi was the most devastating attack on a CIA outpost since the 1980s and so you had 3 of the individuals that were either killed or wounded in this bombing being employed by Blackwater and the man that they were meeting with that day was believed by US intelligence to be what they called the Golden Goose of an asset, someone that was alleged to have just met with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man in Al Qaeda. So that incident, while it should deeply be probed, what the Blackwater role is, if they were doing security how come this guy got so close to the person that the Blackwater guys were guarding. If they were doing something else, what on earth is Blackwater doing working in that capacity under the Obama administration. But overall it really confirms that Blackwater continues to be really at the center of things when it comes to US war strategy.
Thom Hartmann: Well, and my understanding is that the fellow who blew himself up at Khost did so, made a tape before hand and did so because he said he was avenging the murder by a CIA drone of a Mullah in Pakistan who was one of the leaders of the Taliban.
Jeremy Scahill: Correct, in fact he said that he specifically noted Baitullah Mehsud who was believed to have been killed in a CIA air strike and if Mehsud was killed by a CIA airstrike, it’s quite likely that Blackwater was part of the team that killed him, so.
Thom Hartmann: Well that was my question, was you know, are we seeing here an actor, not necessary a state actor, but are, al Qaeda, now starting to come after Blackwater or is Blackwater screwing things up? I mean, do you see Blackwater’s role in this as being benign or as, perhaps, part of the reason or part of the problem of this whole, this death of these CIA officers?
Jeremy Scahill: I think that we know that when it first emerged that the Blackwater guys were working on the CIA's drone bombing campaign and I also reported in the Nation that they were working parallel to that with the US special forces under the Joint Special Operations Command doing a parallel bombing campaign in Pakistan. It really caused a lot of anger in the region because Blackwater, of course, is well known for killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere and the idea that this company now is engaged in bombing raids in Pakistan I think added fuel to an already fiercely burning fire. This man who attacked that base, if he did know what he was doing, and he knew that he was going after really the front line of the US strategy against Al Qaeda, in hitting both the CIA and Blackwater, really did tremendous damage that sent a message and shivers up the spine of US intelligence, how deep this man was able to penetrate into what should have been an iron clad fortress of US intelligence gathering.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah. Grim. And Germany now is looking into Blackwater.
Jeremy Scahill: That’s right. Well this, Thom, is actually sort of Erik Prince’s own doing, the owner of Blackwater. He gave an interview to Vanity Fair to a man named Adam Ciralsky who himself is a former CIA lawyer that had problems at the agency and Prince clearly went to him because he viewed him as a sort of kindred spirit or a trusted soul and Erik Prince informed Vanity Fair that his men had organized in the years after 9/11 what essentially amounted to a secret CIA assassination team that trained not at the farm, the CIA training facility, but at Erik Prince’s own home in Virginia. And among the missions, according to Vanity Fair, that Erik Prince’s team went on after 9/11 was to go in dark, as they call it, into Germany, meaning they didn’t inform the CIA station chief or the German government. They send this team in and their objective was to try to assassinate a German citizen who was originally born in Syria but was a naturalized German citizen in Hamburg. And so these Blackwater guys reportedly go into Germany with the intent of killing one of their citizens and then the event was ultimately called off by official US Government forces but the German government is probing why on earth Blackwater was sent into the country without the knowledge of the German government. And one German parliamentarian said, Thom, imagine if Germany hired a front company to go and assassinate US citizens in New Orleans, what would the US government response be? So this is now making it all the way up to the point where some of the top supporters of Angela Merkel’s government in Germany are demanding answers from the United States government and it’s because Erik Prince himself put this material out in Vanity Fair.
Thom Hartmann: Isn’t it a felony to do that? I mean it’s an international crime, in fact, is it not?
Jeremy Scahill: Well, I mean, if you have, there’s two questions of potential criminal liability.
Thom Hartmann: This goes back to James Bond, 007, I mean it’s very rare that a spy has the authority to kill somebody.
Jeremy Scahill: Well, I mean, look. I believe that when the, when if an accurate history is written of this very dark period in US history we’ll find that Erik Prince was doing some of the dirtiest deeds for the Bush administration at the urging of Dick Cheney, he owns a summer home in Wyoming not far from the Cheney’s and I understand from sources that the two of them hang out. We know that Cheney was a big fan of doing things off the books and so if you have Erik Prince who is a billionaire, doesn’t exactly need the money, freelancing and paying for somebody’s operations himself it’s the ultimate form of plausible deniability. So are there potential federal crimes that were committed by this? Of course. But there’s also the issue of Erik Prince publicly identifying what certainly if they were official were classified operations. And so I would imagine prosecutors are going to want to look into Erik Prince’s bragging which I believe is a form of grey mail, essentially threatening the government and saying if you want to come after me criminally, prosecute me, audit me, whatever, come at me, but I have a lot of stuff I can tell what I did for you officially and unofficially.
Thom Hartmann: Right, so this was his warning. And just, you know, to put a punctuation point on this and we just have a couple seconds left. Blackwater, before Bush and Cheney came to office, was worth what and was what, it was virtually nothing, wasn’t it?
Jeremy Scahill: Clinton gave them their operating license. They were basically a training firm. They went from doing a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in government business to doing a billion 5 in no bid contracts in Iraq. 90% of their money, Thom, to this day, comes from federal taxpayers in the US.
Thom Hartmann: Amazing. Jeremy Scahill, RebelReports.com. Thank you Jeremy.
Jeremy Scahill: Thank you Thom.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
