Eric Prince Supporter Of The Legion Of Christ, And Black Covert Operations

Eric Prince is a financial supporter of the Legion of Christ. Of course, he's into way more than that and none of it surprises me.

Sometimes, you just don't want to follow the evidence. I have stated twice this week, that if Archbishop Chaput will do a real investigation into the Legion of Christ he will be apalled at what he finds about the rich supporters of this group. Maciel was, and the Legion still is, involved with quite the group of Evangelical Christians and Crusdader Catholics. Right wing Catholicism is being hi jacked for all the wrong reasons. Not all black ops are aimed at infiltrating national governments. Sometimes they are aimed at infiltrating religious institutions. Maciel and the Legion were ever so close to John Paul and they had ever so many people around them who potentially benefited from that closeness. Jesus weeps.

Blackwater’s Free-Market Crusade
By Nathan Schneider August 19, 2009-Religion Dispatches

New testimony from Blackwater whistleblowers alleges that the notorious military contractor murdered Iraqi civilians and destroyed the evidence, all in support of founder Erik Prince's vision of an epic battle for the defense of Christendom.

Erik Prince discovered a passion for freedom long before founding Blackwater.
Freedom is a mighty thing. Its exercise unleashes, its defense galvanizes. In the imagination, it conjures a dream that meets reality only in glimpses: an open field, a decisive choice, or a long-held desire finally in reach. Freedom, such ecstasy reveals, is the principle (or anti-principle) that organizes the whole universe. It is simple. But grasping it for oneself, without slipping into a new sort of bondage, is hard. (What a brilliant statement.)

The athletic, adventuresome son of a Michigan car-parts billionaire, Prince experienced the benefits of free-market business firsthand. After a short spell at the Naval Academy, he finished his undergraduate years at Hillsdale College, renowned in conservative circles for its stubborn libertarianism. Later, after returning to the Navy as a SEAL and inheriting from his father’s riches, he co-founded Blackwater and became a pioneer in the freewheeling growth industry of private military contracting. (didn't we used to call these guys and organizations blood sucking parasitic mercenaries?)

This turned out to be a fortuitous move. Only a few years later, a worldwide war on terror began in defense of—you guessed it—freedom, which the US government was ill-equipped to execute. In exchange for their help, Blackwater and its siblings won wide-reaching deliverance from the constraints of military and civilian oversight while implementing American government policy at home and abroad. Lucrative Pentagon and State Department contracts meant that, now a free-market businessman in his own right, Erik Prince had come full circle. (When you are outside the usual chain of command, the chain of command will use you to do what it can't. There was no civilian oversite-as in congressional-because they were never in the chain. This is hardly a novel approach.)

Prince’s freedom, however, may not last. On August 4, Jeremy Scahill reported in The Nation that the night before, a pair of anonymous former Blackwater employees had filed sworn affidavits (John Doe #1 and #2) against Prince and his company in a Virginia federal court. Neither informant feels at liberty to reveal his identity for fear of retribution. (I strongly suspect they fear not only for themselves, but for their families.)

The former employees allege that, during ongoing federal investigations, Prince “murdered, or had murdered” informants to keep them from testifying. Both say that Blackwater employees injured and killed Iraqi civilians without cause, at times with restricted weaponry, then destroyed the evidence. Prince’s private planes were used, says John Doe #2, to smuggle weapons into the country. He also alleges that Blackwater maintained a “wife-swapping and sex ring” at its North Carolina compound (which Prince seems to have encouraged), and that his men were in the habit of using child prostitutes. (Employees of another contractor, DynCorp, were found in 2000 to have been organizing a child sex ring in Bosnia.) Freedom to fire at will, the statements suggest, mixes in Blackwater’s culture with experiments in sexual liberation. (This fits the same profile used by the CIA in it's MK ULTRA program, and if you care to do the research, this is on the congressional record.)

Battle for the Defense of Christendom

John Doe #2’s testimony makes particularly troubling claims about more cosmic aspects of Prince’s leadership at Blackwater. Prince, he alleges, “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.” He adds, “Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.”

These remain unverified contentions, and anonymous ones at that. But they’re hardly surprising. Scahill is also the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, a book full of troubling revelations about the company and its founder. The fascination with medieval bloodshed appears to run deep; Scahill reports that some Blackwater bosses boast membership in the Sovereign Order of Malta, another Crusader brotherhood. “Some,” he observes (well before seeing John Doe #2’s affidavit), “appear to believe they are engaged in an epic battle for the defense of Christendom.” (The SMOM is a Catholic organization with quasi status as an 'extra territorial' soveriegn entity. Which means it has no real land claim to be a nation, but it does receive recognition by 103 other nations as a entity worthy of ambassadors. The property it does have is situated predominately in Rome. It's list of members is replete with intelligence operatives and government people. GW Bush is a member, as are various members of the Dulles family. This is one very unique organization with it's own military wing under the auspices of the Italian Army. It's stated charism is world wide medical charity, and it most certainly does a great deal of that. It's detractors maintain that this charism is the perfect front for all kinds of other things in any country in which it operates.)

Throughout, the book explores Prince’s longstanding ties with reactionary religion. Prince’s father, whose business success was referred to as “a boom built on Biblical principles,” by Republican operative Gary Bauer, bankrolled Bauer and James Dobson’s Family Research Council. The younger Prince converted to Catholicism in 1992, but his old ties with evangelical organizations has made him a bridge-builder among conservative Christians of both stripes.

Prince’s personal philanthropy goes through his Freiheit Foundation (freiheit is German for “freedom”). In addition to conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, many of its beneficiaries are expressly religious, including the embattled Legionaries of Christ, Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship, and Christian Freedom International. These are decidedly not militant organizations. But in the imagination of Erik Prince, freedom of militancy and freedom of religion go, literally, hand in hand. He once described his liberated militia thusly: “Everybody carries guns, just like Jeremiah rebuilding the temple in Israel—a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.”

It’s a fabulous prospect, to a certain habit of thinking, where freedom is the substance of things hoped for and its evidence can be seen in the wonders of free enterprise and powerful weaponry. The grace of an Invisible Hand falls upon its chosen ones with riches, as if proclaiming, “These are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased; listen to them!” Free-market war, like all free markets, promises to exceed the prospects of the alternative, creating more wealth for more people beyond our wildest imaginations. But it may be that warfare isn’t a wealth that we need to increase. Our imagination of it is already quite wild enough. (Eric Prince and his family were major beneficiaries of how world war impacted the auto industry. War makes people wealthy. War continues to make people wealthy. It always has, but hopefully it always won't. The current estimated cost of the war in Iraq is 675 billion. Blackwater surely has received their share of that cost. Like his father, war has made Eric Prince wealthy--or should I say wealthier.)

Through their arrangements with the Pentagon and the civilian government, Blackwater and companies like it achieved quite nearly the “armed and dangerous” epitome of market-driven freedom. If they flub up, there are no consequences to bind them except losing the contract or, as for Blackwater-turned-Xe, a public-relations makeover. So empowered, private armies can spread like viruses, everywhere the market they create can sustain them. For their employers, they become an addiction. In 2006, the Department of Defense officially began including contractors as part of its “Total Force.” Blackwater celebrated. “Hiring mercenaries was no longer an option,” Scahill writes of this sea change; “it was US policy.” (The sad thing is they are frequently playing to different agendas than they are paid for, and they get away with it because their extra curricular activities are not monitored. That they frequently create the need for their own presence is never noticed because it's hard to prove.)

There are currently about as many private contractors in Iraq as there are active-duty soldiers. And while much is made politically of plans to pull back frontline troops, the kinds of support and security roles contractors play suggest that they are likely to remain behind a good deal longer. Last week, Scahill reported that, despite losing their operating license with the Iraqi government, the US State Department continues to allow Blackwater/Xe to maintain an armed presence there. Wherever these contractors go, one can be assured that they will (freely) pursue their own interests ahead of their employers’, and the two might not always coincide. (This is so sick. How is it possible that Blackwater can still operate in Iraq when they have lost their license to operate. Is it diplomatic immunity under the State Department?)

Prince speaks of biblical swords, but what about ploughshares? There are other freedoms, other visions of liberty than what he learned at home and models in his company. One can long for freedoms from, as well as freedoms to: from never-ending wars for profit, from sexual exploitation, from fear of retribution for speaking out, and from murderous religious intolerance. These I find, in preference to Prince’s, to be the more splendid. (And one can long for freedom from double dealing, influence peddling, and terroristic intimidation.)

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Who is funding the Legionares and why are they funding them? I've asked that question before and now we're starting to get some more answers. Why wouldn't you fund the Legion when their charism specifically requests them to focus on people in the media? I bet you might get some good exposure, or at least mitigate the bad exposure. No one needs better press than government sponsored mercenaries, some of whom are fighting a holy war of their own.

Eric Prince is another funder with ties to the Legionares, the Knights of Malta, and the Evangelical New Apostolic Reformation, made wealthy by the evangelical President Bush. Apparently right wing folks with fascist tendencies will get in bed with each other no matter their actual religious affiliation. So much for the singular salvific mission of Catholicism. It's not about Jesus, it's about dominating the world for Jesus and Blackwater is doing it's part. Eric Prince is a crusader against Islam in a war no pope ever called. Maybe the Legionaires got a different memo.

When you start to tie all this together, you also find out that Eric Prince, like Sarah Palin, has ties to the "C" Street house and it's mostly Republican congressman. The central clearing agency appears to be Colorado Springs where James Dobson and the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation have their headquarters. That would be in the same state Archbishop Chaput has his archdiocese. Colorado Springs, and it's open emphasis on family values, is Archbishop Chaput's idea of ecumenism.

In the Legion investigation, Archbishop Chaput will certainly be forced to confront who he really is and what he is really about. If it's Christ and the Church He founded, Archbishop Chaput will refuse to go along with the rubber stampers of ostensibly Roman Catholic individual and their organizations which do not exist to represent the Church or it's founder's message. If he's under the financial influence of the Colorado Springs bunch or right wing Catholics like Eric Prince, the Legion will keep it's leadership and be exonerated of any taint of Marcial Maciel. Which of course will be a white wash cover up of immense proportions.

The existence of Blackwater sickens me as an American because we paid for it's existence. That Eric Prince is held up as some sort of Catholic icon sickens me even further. American Catholics who truly care about the Church Jesus founded need to get their heads out their asses and take a real good look at what their naivete is fostering.

I will have my eye on Archbishop Chaput as he delves into the funding and leadership of the Legion. The LCWR investigation is a smoke screen to divert attention away from the activities of the Legion in the US and other Catholic right wing groups like the Knights of Malta. Maciel's personal legacy has forced the Vatican's hand, and the uppity LCWR sisters may be nothing more than a diversion.

Oh and gee wiz, Maciel too, was involved in sex with minors. How totally novel that Blackwater would be involved in sex with minors. Is there a pattern here, or am I just being a paranoid psychologist?

On a totally other note, I am seriously in the midst of packing up my house in order to move the whole mess to Southern climes. It will be a mess too. I can only take organized packing for so long and then it's throw stuff in a box and label it miscellaneous.

I will make a real effort to keep posting, but there will be days that doesn't happen. Like Saturday and Sunday and Monday and most likely Tuesday. In the meantime, I wish all my readers a great week end and will keep you in my prayers. There will be a lot of those as highway hypnosis and prayer go hand in hand for me. It's amazing how fast the miles go when your mind is firmly planted elsewhere and some other part of yourself is doing all the driving.