Trump mulls offer of a ‘Global Private Spy Network’!
REMEMBER ERIK PRINCE & OLIVER NORTH? THEY’RE BACK . . .
Selvam Canagaratna-December 23, 2017
"We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal."– Tenessee Williams, Camino Real, 1953.
With just about a year in office, few dispute the commonly held view that the White House is convinced that those currently in charge of the US intelligence agencies are actively, if covertly, working to undermine the Donald Trump presidency.
Needless to say, the growing crowd of ‘believers’ in the ‘undermining theory’ are being egged on by none other than Donald Trump himself.
And quick off the mark to profit from this perceived ‘ominous threat’ are Erik Prince, the notorious founder of the private security firm Blackwater, and Oliver North, who was a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Together, they have offered to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official US intelligence agencies, according to several current and former US intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering "deep state" enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency.
Details of the secret proposals were first revealed by investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, a founding editor of The Intercept, and Matthew Cole, an investigative producer for ABC and NBC News.
The point stressed by both Scahill and Cole is that the creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would also be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda.
"Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him," said a former senior US intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals, in describing White House discussions. "It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books," this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. "The whole point is this is supposed to report to the President and Pompeo directly."
Oliver North, who appears frequently on Trump’s favourite TV network, Fox News, was enlisted to help sell the effort to the administration.
Some of the individuals involved with the proposals secretly met with major Trump donors asking them to help finance operations before any official contracts were signed, The Intercept reported.
The proposals would utilize an army of spies with no official cover in several countries deemed ‘denied areas’ for current American intelligence personnel, including North Korea and Iran. The White House has also considered creating a new global rendition unit meant to capture terrorist suspects around the world, as well as a propaganda campaign in the Middle East and Europe to combat Islamic extremism and Iran.
"I can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or [White House] at all," wrote Michael N. Anton, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, in an email. "The White House does not and would not support such a proposal." But a current US intelligence official appeared to contradict that assertion, stating that the various proposals were first pitched at the White House before being delivered to the CIA.
Scahill and Cole report that The Intercept reached out to several senior officials that sources said had been briefed on the plans by Prince, including Vice President Mike Pence. His spokesperson wrote there was "no record of [Prince] ever having met with or briefed the VP." North did not respond to a request for comment.
According to two former senior intelligence officials, Pompeo has embraced the plan and lobbied the White House to approve the contract. Asked for comment, a CIA spokesperson countered: "You have been provided wildly inaccurate information by people peddling an agenda."
At the heart of the scheme being considered by the White House are Blackwater founder Erik Prince and his longtime associate, CIA veteran John R. Maguire, who currently works for the intelligence contractor Amyntor Group. Maguire also served on Trump’s transition team. Amyntor’s role was first rerported by BuzzFeed News.
Michael Barry, who was recently named NSC senior director for intelligence programs, worked closely with Prince on a CIA assassination program during the Bush administration.
Prince and Maguire deny they are working together. Those assertions, however, are challenged by current and former US officials and Trump donors who say the two men were collaborating.
As with many arrangements in the world of CIA contracting and clandestine operations, details of who is in charge of various proposals are murky by design and change depending on which players are speaking. An Amyntor official said Prince was not "formally linked to any contract proposal by Amyntor." In an email, Prince rejected the suggestion that he was involved with the proposals. When asked if he has knowledge of this project, Prince replied: "I was/am not part of any of those alleged efforts."
The former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the efforts scoffed at Prince’s denials. "Erik’s proposal had no company names on the slides," this person said, "but there is no doubt that Prince and Maguire were working together."
Erik Prince has strong ties to the Trump administration: His sister Betsy DeVos is the Secretary of Education; what’s more, Erik was a major donor to the Trump election campaign, and advised the Trump transition team on intelligence and defense appointments, as The Intercept has previously reported. Prince has also contributed to Vice President Mike Pence’s campaigns.
On November 30, 2016, Prince testified behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee about his January trip to the Seychelles to meet with Mohammad bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, and a Russian fund manager close to Vladimir Putin. According to The Washington Post, Prince presented himself as an unofficial envoy of President-elect Trump. The Intercept reported last week that the fund manager was Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Prince repeatedly maintained that he did not remember the identity of the Russian, but in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Prince admitted that he did in fact meet with Dmitriev.
According to The Intercept, Prince and Maguire have enjoyed a long professional relationship, Maguire recently completed a stint as a consultant with Prince’s company, Frontier Services Group, a Hong Kong-based security and logistics company partially owned by the Chinese government. [But FSG has no known connections to the private spy plan.]
Prince is reported to have told a top Trump fundraiser that he and Maguire are working together, and the two had been going around to Trump fundraisers to generate support for private military contracting efforts in Afghanistan until a CIA contract materialized for the project.
Prince has long admired Oliver North and viewed his role in Iran-Contra as heroic, said the Prince associate. In 2007, Prince testified defiantly before Congress following the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, in which Blackwater operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians, including women and children. Shortly after his testimony, Prince’s longtime friend, conservative California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, praised the Blackwater chief. "Prince," Rohrabacher said, "is on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was."
North, a Marine lieutenant colonel on the Reagan National Security Council, oversaw a scheme to divert proceeds from illicit arms sales to Iran to Contra death squads in Nicaragua.
In some ways, these plans mirror operations Erik Prince led during the Bush-Cheney administration.
"Erik has no hobbies," said a longtime Prince associate. "Counterterrorism is his hobby."
A very, very lucrative hobby, indeed!
