Erik Prince, the founder of XE Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, is writing a memoir. We feel safe in assuming he’ll have a different take on things than Jeremy Scahill. A source close to the company has already told the Washington Post that the memoir will cover the fact that Democratic officials in both the Clinton and Obama administrations approved of Prince’s most sensitive and controversial operations done on behalf of the CIA and other government agencies. “He’s going to drop the names of people who, before, were saying, ‘Yeah, go kill Osama Bin Laden’ and stuff like that, but went sideways on him when the investigations began,” adds the source.
Prince, who put the company up for sale earlier this year and moved to Abu Dhabi, recently worked out a $42 million settlement with the federal government over hundreds of violations of United States export control regulations including illegal weapons to Afghanistan and offering sniper training for Taiwanese police officers. His plan with the book is simple, says the source: “They think this will destroy the Democratic Party in the elections.”
Because these are the times we live in and Prince always sort of fancied being the sort of guy people would describe as having ‘movie-star good looks,’ he’s of course developing a screenplay based on his experiences.
With regard to the memoir, though, we wonder which controversial operations he’ll be pinning on the Democrats. Could it be the ones where his operatives were involved with civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or just the run-of-the-mill mercenary-for-hire type stuff?
Blackwater founder Erik Prince targets Democrats in memoir [SpyTalk/WP]
