The House Oversight Committee has released a list of questionable incidents and practices involving Blackwater:
A single Blackwater security contractor costs the government $1,222 every day to guard U.S. civilian personnel, or $445,000 per year. That’s six times the cost of getting a U.S. Army soldier to perform the same function.
The committee will convene a Blackwater hearing tomorrow. Spencer Ackerman will be providing our coverage at TPMmuckraker.
Back in December, when a drunk Blackwater contractor blew away one of Iraqi VP Adel Abdul Mehdi’s bodyguards, an official with State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security decided to low-ball the financial compensation for the man’s family so as not to give an incentive for Iraqis to “try to get killed to set up their family financially.”
The initial suggestion from Embassy personnel of $100,000 to $250,000 was lowered to $15,000 to the man’s family.
Harry Reid blasts Limbaugh “phony soldier” comment in Senate floor speech.
This week at TPMCafe, LA Times reporter Sam Quinones sits down at the Table for One to talk about Mexican immigration to the U.S. and his new book, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration.
He starts things off with a list of common misconceptions within the immigration debate.
William Hartung on why the U.S. should support a global Arms Trade Treaty.
Hillary signs on with binding Webb amendment opposing war with Iran.
In today’s White House press briefing, Dana Perino was on the defensive over the President’s threatened SCHIP veto and on the offensive against Sy Hersh and his anonymous sourcing.
Here at TPM we’re looking very closely at military security contractors in Iraq. Tomorrow, Blackwater CEO Erik Prince goes to Capitol Hill to testify before Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) House Government Reform and Oversight committee. One issue that’s got our attention about Blackwater is the firm’s ability to leapfrog a number of much older and well-established US firms in Iraq. And that’s got us interested in Prince’s Republican political credentials.
Along those lines, a few details about Prince to help frame tomorrow’s hearing.
Erik Prince is 37 years old. He founded Blackwater in 1997 with money he inherited from his father, Edgar Prince, the head of Prince Automative. The elder Prince and his wife were major Republican and conservative activists and funders. And Prince himself co-founded The Family Research Council with Gary Bauer and apparently provided the key early funding for the group.
According to Bauer, “I can say without hesitation that, without Ed and Elsa and their wonderful children, there simply would not be a Family Research Council.”
Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is married is the former Chair of the Michigan Republican Party and her husband is Dick DeVos, failed candidate for governor of Michigan and scion of the DeVos family, founders of Amway and major funders of Republican and conservative causes.
Amway is privately owned by the DeVos and van Andel families. And to give some sense of the scale of their political giving, according to a 2005 Center for Public Integrity study, Dick & Betsy DeVos were the fifth largest political givers in the country during the 2004 election cycle. Richard DeVos Sr. & his wife were ranked third. And Jay Van Andel was ranked second.
Let’s just say they give some real money to the Republican party and its candidates. And of course there are the DeVos Family Foundations which give money to conservative causes.
Back back to Betsy’s brother Erik Prince, founder and CEO of Blackwater. Back in 1990 Prince interned for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Blackwater’s lobbyist in DC is Paul Behrends, a former Rohrabacher aide who he met when the two worked for the congressman. Later he interned in the first Bush White House. But after doing so, he and his father broke with President Bush and supported the insurgent candidacy of Patrick J. Buchanan.
The then-22 year old Prince told the Grand Rapids Press, “I interned with the Bush administration for six months. I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with — homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.”
In addition to running Blackwater Prince also serves on the board of Christian Freedom International.
Thompson on Saddam Hussein: Good we got him when we did since he had WMD, had an active nuclear program and was about to become “new dictator of that entire region.”