On September 16th, , Blackwater personnel shot and killed 14 unarmed civilians in Nisour Square, a traffic circle in Baghdad, and wounded 18 more. The committee was hearing testimony from officials regarding private-security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States promised to handle the case, which has dragged on for years. Last year, one of the guards convicted in the massacre, Nicholas Slatten, was sentenced to life in prison, and three others were resentenced to lengthy terms behind bars.
Lawyers representing victims and their families in the Nisour Square massacre obtained a confidential settlement with Blackwater. Prince felt badly burned, and he took his frustrations out by telling Vanity Fair about his CIA work , which burned his bridges at the spy agency. Most Americans were introduced to Prince when he took the witness seat before the Democrat-led congressional committee investigating Blackwater.
After burning intelligence-community bridges and facing a host of Blackwater-related lawsuits, Prince spent the next few years in a sort of self-imposed exile. He set about rebuilding his business by offering security services to some of the most repressive regimes in the world, and increasingly, Prince found himself in ethically and legally dubious territory.
In , Prince, four of his children, and the family dog moved full-time to Abu Dhabi. The relationship eventually soured, however, and Prince believes the Obama administration made that happen. Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Secretary Clinton, denied that she had played a role in disrupting his business. Prince looked further afield and found a new vein of overseas wealth to tap in China.
In , Prince traveled to China to offer investors there an opportunity to bankroll African mining and energy projects. The initial focus of the company was providing security and logistics in Africa, but Gregg Smith, the former chief executive of Frontier Services Group, tells Rolling Stone that he resigned after learning at a March board meeting that Frontier Services Group had become, in effect, an arm of the Chinese state run by Americans.
In addition, Smith tells Rolling Stone he was disturbed when, he says, the CIA told him that a key company official was affiliated with Chinese intelligence. Nearly 1 million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minority groups are held in extrajudicial detention in camps in Xinjiang, according to a group of experts cited by the United Nations.
The U. While Prince spent much of the Obama administration abroad, he never gave up on regaining the influential and lucrative place he once had in the military-industrial complex.
And he saw his chance for a homecoming with the rise of Donald Trump. Later that day, Prince texted Stone again. Assange had not chickened out. A few days later — hours after Trump was caught on tape bragging about serially sexually assaulting women — Wikileaks began releasing the hacked emails of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.
Prince was helping Stone with a project that aimed at dampening black voter turnout during the election. The effort involved Danney Williams, who claims to be the illegitimate son of former President Bill Clinton and an African American prostitute. For Prince, facing irrelevance in Washington power politics after his Blackwater debacle and acrimonious relationship with the Obama-Clinton Democratic party, Trump was a way back into the upper echelon.
Early on, Bannon was a key point of contact. The Blackwater founder asks, is it time to try something new? About Tara Copp. More In Your Military. Oklahoma Guard goes rogue, rejects COVID vaccine mandate after sudden change of command Less than 24 hours after an unexpected change of command, the Oklahoma National Guard rejected the Pentagon's vaccine mandate.
Mike Hilkert helped save the lives of more than 30 soldiers and airmen. Army vet arrested in DC for guns, explosives admits guilt Coffman, an Army veteran who served two tours in Vietnam, was arrested after police found multiple guns and incendiary devices in his pickup. Constellis offers similar protection services in 30 countries around the world to governments and private businesses. Last week, anti-American protestors tried to storm the American embassy in Baghdad.
The U. Constellis's financial problems come as investors are growing more optimistic about the prospects of defense contractors amid mounting tensions with Iran. In , contractors for a corporate predecessor to Constellis, Blackwater, were involved in a shooting that killed dozens of unarmed Iraqis in Baghdad.
Four Blackwater contractors were found guilty of murder for the shootings, but three were later acquitted of the charges.
The Kremlin had long denied suggestions that Russian contractors were operating clandestinely in Syria — going to great lengths to conceal their activity and hiding official death tolls coming out of the war-torn country. Officially, private military companies are illegal in Russia.
The St. Many observers also noted that the ad follows the resignation of U. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the planned replacement of Gen. Joseph Dunford as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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