Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Ah, the Blackwater guy just has gotta milk every misery for all the money he can. Erik Prince, one of the honcho contractors who likely defrauded Americans in his taking so much of the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The same guy who worked with the Trump team in their efforts to secure secret communication channels with Russia toward the 2020 election

More deranged speculation similar to Glenn Beck's kooky chalkboard? Perhaps -- if Page hadn't literally confirmed to Watkins that he is, in fact, the "Male-1" character noted in the government transcripts. Which he did. For the article. In other words, yes, Page confessed to being "Male-1" and was therefore in cahoots with Russian spies.

Meanwhile, we know for a fact -- again, literally -- that Paul Manafort and Rex Tillerson have extensive financial ties to Russian oligarchs and Putin himself. We know that Betsy DeVos is the sister of Blackwater chief Erik Prince, who tried to set up a backchannel on Syria with the Russians on behalf of the Trump team. We absolutely know that Mike Flynn has extensive links to Putin and Putin's puppet in Turkey, President Erdogan. We know that Trump's Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, was formerly the vice chairman of, and a major shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus, a reputed money-laundering front for vast amounts of Russian cash, including money that hopped from the Russian "Fertilizer King" to the Bank of Cyprus and then to Donald Trump's bank account in exchange for an overpriced, nouveau-riche property in Palm Beach [ http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.html ]
that was never lived-in and has since been demolished -- before winning Trump a colossal $60 million profit in the biggest single home real estate deal in American history.
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The guy who has worked with James O'Keefe to recruit spies to infiltrate Liberal groups; who was also in the private group building Trump's wall ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=160478111 .

GoFundMe Border Wall Campaign Implodes, Turns to Kris Kobach and Sheriff Clarke
[...]
Brian Kolfage’s crowdfunding campaign on the website GoFundMe .. https://tinyurl.com/y8osyy7s .. went viral in December, before news outlets uncovered previous instances in which the triple-amputee veteran appeared to have pocketed funds .. https://tinyurl.com/y98rjww2 .. raised through similar, if far smaller, campaigns billed as efforts to assist wounded warriors.
P - Now Kolfage, a prolific operator .. https://tinyurl.com/y7o7ce6r .. of conspiracy theory Facebook pages, has recruited a team of prominent figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit to run a new nonprofit outfit named We Fund The Wall to do some wall construction of its own. The new group’s board, Kolfage announced on Friday, includes Erik Prince, the founder of infamous military contractor Blackwater; David Clarke, the scandal-plagued former sheriff of Milwaukee County; Fox News contributor Sara Carter; Tom Tancredo, an immigration hardliner and former Colorado congressman; and former Kansas Secretary of State and voter fraud crusader Kris Kobach.
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And let's not forget Prince and China

The American mercenary behind Blackwater is helping China establish the new Silk Road
[...]
China’s largest state-owned conglomerate has expanded its stake in Erik Prince’s private security company with an eye to expanding operations across Asia, including western China and Pakistan
https://www.ft.com/content/97c14e0e-2031-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2c11
P -Jeremy Scahill shares some on Erik Prince in this excellent video
P - Jeremy Scahill on Trump’s Cabinet Shakeup, the Mueller Probe & the Iraq War 15 Years Later [The first part of this interview, i think, must be the bottom one.]

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Actually Erik Prince has been in the thick of the Republican camp for years

2007 - Republicans Gather In Secret Meeting With Blackwater Chief Erik Prince
P - Lawmakers set to meet Blackwater's Erik Prince at ‘special' RSC meeting
P - The following memo was sent to members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) for a Wednesday meeting.
P - "All RSC Members are encouraged to join Rep. [Patrick] McHenry [R-N.C.] in welcoming Blackwater's Erik Prince to a Special RSC Members' meeting ... As you may know, Mr. Erik Prince, founder and CEO of Blackwater USA, testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in October. His company has been under intense scrutiny by Congress, government agencies, and the media regarding contracts and actions in Iraq. Not only has Mr. Prince personally been targeted by partisan warfare repeatedly over the past months, but the use of contracting throughout the government has been under attack by this Congress."
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I wouldn't think Prince would be looking to make money out of the end of the American war in Afghanistan because he was short of cash. It would be more, hey i milked the cow in the beginning, gotta get a final squirt. It would be more like getting a final (in case) splash in a beginning to end greed screed for Erik. Repeat your



See also 2006

Revolving Door to Blackwater Causes Alarm at CIA

Plus: More on the Agency's “Wehrmacht”

Posted on Tuesday, September 12, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.

Blackwater USA [ http://www.blackwaterusa.com/ ], the private security contractor that has operated in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and New Orleans, has been booming the past few years. Founded in December of 1996, the company spent its early years “paying staff with an executive's credit card and begging for customers,” according to the Virginian-Pilot [ http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=108003&ran=206428 ]. But today, Blackwater reportedly has revenues of about $100 million annually, almost all of it from government contracts, and maintains “a compound half the size of Manhattan and 450 permanent employees,” according to the newspaper.

How did Blackwater rise so high, so fast? The “war on terrorism” got the ball rolling for the firm, but one suspects that political connections played a big part as well. Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, is a former SEAL who is deeply involved in Republican Party politics. Since 1998, he has funneled roughly $200,000 to GOP committees and candidates, including President Bush. In 2004, Blackwater retained the Alexander Strategy Group, the PR and lobbying firm that closed down earlier this year due to its embarrassing ties to Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. (Paul Behrends, a former national security adviser to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, handled the account for Alexander. After the firm shut down, Behrends moved on to a firm called C&M Capitolink, and took the Blackwater account with him.)

A number of senior CIA and Pentagon officials have taken top jobs at Blackwater, including firm vice chairman Cofer Black, who was the Bush Administration's top counterterrorism official at the time of the 9/11 attacks (and who famously said in 2002, “There was before 9/11 and after 9/11. After 9/11, the gloves came off.”) Robert Young Pelton [ http://www.harpers.org/sb-six-questions-robert-young-pelton-1157654152.html (F6 note -- my next post, a reply to this post)], author of the new book, Licensed to Kill [ http://comebackalive.com/site3.php ], says that an early Blackwater contract—a secret no-bid $5.4 million deal with the CIA—came in 2002 after Prince placed a call to Buzzy Krongard, who was then the CIA's executive director.

A CIA source with whom I spoke said that Prince is very tight with top agency officials and has a “green badge,” the security pass for contractors who have access to CIA installations. “He's over there [at CIA headquarters] regularly, probably once a month or so,” this person told me. “He meets with senior people, especially in the D.O.” (The D.O., or Directorate of Operations, runs covert operations; last year, it was absorbed by the newly created National Clandestine Service.)

Prince's visits are probably one reason that the revolving door to Blackwater keeps turning. Last fall, Rob Richer resigned from the post of Associate Deputy Director of Operations; he immediately took a job as Blackwater's Vice President of Intelligence. Richer is a former head of the CIA's Near East Division and long served in Amman, where, for a period beginning in 1999, he held the post of station chief. For years he was the agency's point man with Jordan's King Abdullah, with whom he developed an extraordinarily close relationship. “There have been some ups and downs in our relationship with Jordan, but the king has always been on good terms with the CIA,” said a person familiar with the situation. “The king's primary relationship is always with the CIA, not the American ambassador.”

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