"Republican political connections ran deep in his family long before Mr. Prince founded Blackwater in 1997. When he was a teenager, religious conservative leaders like Gary Bauer, now the president of American Values, were house guests. James C. Dobson, the founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, gave the eulogy at his father’s funeral in 1995. “Dr. and Mrs. Dobson are friends with Erik Prince and his mother, Elsa Broekhuizen,” Focus on the Family said in a statement." -NY Times Article |
James C Dobson, founder of "Focus on the Family" speaking from IHS (Jesuit) Platform. James Dobson and Rome ~Article |
Former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Edward Schmitz quit in 2005 to work for Blackwater. He is a member of Opus Dei and Knights of Malta. At least $2 trillion went “missing” from the Pentagon during his watch.
His father John Schmitz, was at one time regional director of the John Birch Society. |
Joseph Schmitz (Knight of Malta, Opus Dei), chief operating officer and general counsel: In 2002, President Bush nominated Schmitz to oversee and police the Pentagon's military contracts as the Defense Department's inspector general. Schmitz presided over the largest increase of military-contracting spending in history: As of 2005, 77 companies were awarded 149 "prime contracts" worth $42.1 billion, with hundreds of millions going to Blackwater. Unlike previous I.G.s, Schmitz reported directly to the secretary of defense -- a setup that both Democratic and Republican lawmakers objected to, given Schmitz's oversight responsibility. Schmitz even carried Rumsfeld's "12 principles" for the Pentagon in his lapel pocket. The first principle read, "Do nothing that could raise questions about the credibility of DoD."
Schmitz has many ties to the Republican Party establishment. His father, John G. Schmitz, was a two-term Republican congressman (And also one time director of the John Birch Society), and his brother, Patrick Schmitz, served as George H.W. Bush's deputy counsel from 1985 to 1993. Joseph himself worked as a special assistant to Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin Meese. |
The Schmitz family are international leaders of the notorious Federalist Society—theorists of the "unitary executive"--along with Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia (Jesuit trained and staunch Roman Catholic) and the William F. Buckley (CIA Knight of Malta) family [see "Federalist Society Infiltrates Germany", EIR, January 19, 2007].
Schmitz resigned in 2005 under mounting pressure from both Democratic and Republican senators, who accused him of interfering with criminal investigations into inappropriately awarded contracts, turning a blind eye to conflicts of interest and other failures of oversight. According to an October 2005 article in Time magazine, Schmitz showed the White House the results of his staff's multiyear investigation into a contract in which the Air Force leased air-refueling tankers from Boeing for more than it would have cost to buy them, then agreed to redact the names of senior White House staffers involved in the decision before sending the final report to Congress. Schmitz informed his staff on Aug. 26, 2005, that he was leaving the Pentagon; in September of that year, he went to work for Blackwater. ~Source
Joseph Schmitz, who is now Blackwater's General Counsel and chief operating officer, was the Defense Department Inspector General from 2002-2005, from where he covered up the crimes of torture in Iraq, and the corruption of Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board.
Malta ‘is Blackwater’s operational base’
A European Parliament working document drawn up by Giovanni Claudio Fava has claimed “Malta is the operational base of Blackwater, the organiser of private military militia which are increasingly taking on more and more roles which used to be undertaken by US forces in Iraq and elsewhere”. In 2004, Cofer Black passed from CIA to the State Department and thence became Blackwater’s vice-president. While still in the CIA, Black was in charge of the “special extraditions” organising the secret transfer of prisoners from Iraq or Afghanistan to countries less rigid against the practice of torture, such as Poland, Romania, Egypt, and so on. These planes, which travelled between Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan often made stopovers in many European countries such as the UK, Italy, France, Germany and Malta many times without the countries themselves being informed what was going on. Now the Swiss procurator Dick Marty has sent documents regarding the “CIA’s flying prisons” to the European Parliament and names two Blackwater subsidiaries – Presidential Airways and Aviation Worldwide Services.
'Family man and a believer' ~Source
In 1992, Erik Prince and his father split politically with his sister, Betsy DeVos, who was then 5th District GOP chairwoman. They backed Pat Buchanan for president. She supported President George H.W. Bush.
As a 22-year-old senior at Hillsdale, Prince explained his decision to The Press.
"I interned with the Bush administration for six months," he said.
"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."
Prince also found time in college to volunteer for the Hillsdale Fire Department.
The Rev. Robert Sirico, a Catholic priest and founder of the Grand Rapids-based Acton Institute, a conservative think tank, recalled a dinner meeting with Prince around 1990.
At that dinner, Sirico met with Dick DeVos, his parents, Rich and Helen DeVos, and Edgar and Elsa Prince. He recalled Prince joined the dinner later, coming in smelling like smoke from fighting a fire.
Sirico called Prince a "family man and a believer" who converted to Catholicism within about a year of that meeting.
Since then, Sirico has become a friend to Prince. He baptized four of his children. He also spoke at the funeral of Prince's wife, Joan, who died of cancer in 2003.
Sirico said he and Prince have had many conversations about the free market and faith.
He said they share many views, namely "that business leaders, in light of their calling from God to be creative, have a sacred obligation to use their creativity for the good, to deal honestly with others."
Sirico added Prince is "fundamentally a person who acts rather than talks."
At age 19, Prince made his first political contribution: A $15,000 donation to the GOP. By 2006, his total contributions had swelled to more than $235,000 -- virtually all to Republican or conservative causes.
After college, Prince re-entered the Navy in 1992 and was accepted into the SEALS, a special forces unit considered military elite.
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