Is Blackwater Bailing Out?
Posted by MEC on July 22, 2008
The Guardian (via Truthout) reports that Blackwater, the notorious security firm founded by Bush crony and Dominionist Erik Prince, is getting out of the security biz.
Mr. Prince is blaming the media for repeating all those nasty rumors about Blackwater employees gunning down Iraqi civilians and generally being all reckless with human lives. It’s ruined Blackwater’s reputation and made leading a mercenary army just no fun anymore.
Mother Jones suspects that Mr. Prince is being just a wee bit disingenuous about his reason for “shifting focus”. It may have more to do with the increasing likelihood that the U.S. will finally be getting out of Iraq and taking its “contractors” with it.
Iraq will be better off without that collection of loose cannons running around the country.
But now we have to worry about what they’ll be doing instead to rake in the big bucks. Mother Jones warns us that Erick Prince
…has spent recent years diversifying his operations, branching out into manufacturing (of, among other things, armored vehicles), testing the waters in the humanitarian aid sector, and opening a private intelligence firm that caters to corporate clients.
Manufacturing? I get the impression that “quality control” is not Prince’s highest priority. Humanitarian aid? What would a theocratic imperialist’s priorities be in that sector? Private intelligence? What are the odds that the RNC is among his customers?
Whatever the likes of Erik Prince does is unlikely to be good news for our democracy.
jo6pac said
Not really they’re just coming home in time for ML.
jo6pac
Everything is on schedule, please move along
Stormcrow said
If Erik Prince tries to reinvent his company as a civilian sector service provider, the odds that he will fail and his company will fold are extremely high.
Companies which get hooked on provision of goods and services to the military, as their main line of business, almost never succeed in re-conversion.
Anyone who doubts this should examine the large numbers of aerospace firms that cratered in the mid 1990s, after trying and failing to convert from military contracting to civil aviation.
The only reason Boeing is still around is because most of their market, up until recently, was in passenger airliners.
Charles said
I don’t think they’ll get out of Iraq by election time, Jo. But I’m sure Prince would love to deliver jackboot justice to America even better than to Iraq.
Phoenix Woman said
I don’t think he’ll be able to make it in the civilian world. Look for Prince to try instead to cozy up to his buddies in the Christian-humanitarian sector. He might get a couple good contracts out of that, enough to last for a couple of years. But even they will get sick of him.
MEC said
It’s the “private intelligence” that worries me. I fully expect that they’ll be using their “intelligence-gathering apparatus” against people who get in the way of the corporatists and Dominionists. It won’t be corporate Spy vs. Spy, but attacks on the people defending the environment, civil liberties, etc.
Stormcrow said
Are they any good at “private intelligence”, MEC?
I’m an information security analyst by profession, and I’ve done open-source vulnerability and exploit intel work since 2004 as part of my job. Well, just about the whole of my job.
This isn’t trivial or even easy. Proper vetting of sources, reliability assessment, and impact assessment all require the full undivided attention of grown-ups.
Grown-ups don’t exactly grow on trees in outfits like Blackwater.
Charles said
Stormcrow, they consider it a success to find as many over-60 Quaker ladies as they can, create a database containing all sorts of false, exaggerated, and misleading allegations and let other law enforcement agencies harass them. One has to look in detail at the kinds of things that have been done, such as Handschu and the Denver police to understand just how out of control these operations get. Those cases clearly show that the intelligence operations were not interested in stopping or preventing violence. In many cases, they attempted to provoke it. Often, false or questionable information was given to employers. In Denver, Quakers were a primary target.
Vetting? Reliability? That isn’t consistent with the goal. In order to damage people’s lives and livelihoods, in order to justify spying on and jailing peaceful people, in order to justify committing violence against dissenters, law enforcement intelligence wants defective information.
Blackwater would fit right in.
Stormcrow said
Blackwater would get a disgusted horselaugh from any veteran officer of the Okhrana or the KGB. Yuri Andropov would spit in their faces. Heinrich Himmler wouldn’t use them to take out his trash.
And given the way things are going in this country, TPTB are liable to need the services of just such an organization if they want to stay in power. Or even in a reliable supply of oxygen.
If they’re relying on Blackwater poseurs for their “hard intel” when the shit well and truly hits the fan, they’re liable to get the same sorts of really short haircuts the French aristocracy got a couple of hundred years ago. If they’re lucky.
MEC said
“Proper vetting of sources, reliability assessment, and impact assessment all require the full undivided attention of grown-ups.”
Just like the “grown-ups” at Choicepoint/DBT gave full undivided attention to making sure Florida’s voter purge lists were accurate. Reliability assessment? As Charles said, the goal wouldn’t be reliable information, it would be damaging “information” about the enemies of the plutocracy.
Stormcrow said
Then just get used to the idea of these guys ending up as lamp post decorations some fine day.
Because they’re hiring people who’ll tell them what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear.
Phoenix Woman said
Yup. They will soon find out that all the money in the world won’t insulate them from their own bad choices, once they stray too far from the map of objective reality.