Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who has been called “America’s most
notorious mercenary” by author and journalist Jeremy Scahill, has
emerged as an influential advisor to the incoming Donald Trump regime.
Prince is also the brother of Betsy
DeVos, who is in the process of being confirmed as secretary of education —
and an advocate for the privatization of public schools.
The connection between these two
reactionary political players is no secret, but is one of those barely-known
facts that has remained mostly hidden in plain sight. Despite significant
press around the confirmation hearings for DeVos, the corporate media has not
called the public’s attention to her relationship to Prince. Plaudits go
to the The Intercept for publishing an article on January 17 by Scahill
about Prince's connection to Trump, and highlighting his connection to DeVos.
Prince’s biggest claim to infamy is
as the founder of Blackwater, a private security firm that hired mercenaries to
augment US military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, among many other
places. Blackwater, now transformed into a company called Academi,
had an intimate relationship with the CIA, and was regarded by many as
one of the CIA’s go to organizations when it wanted to contract out its dirty
work. Blackwater got into hot water more than once, particularly in 2007
when some of its mercenaries gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians, including a 9-year
old boy, in Baghdad.
Scahill reports that trusted
sources tell him Prince has been giving Trump advice on his staff picks for the
Defense Department and the State Department. Nothing like having friends
in high places if you want work.
Prince is close to another Trump
advisor, the racist Steve Bannon. Prince has often appeared on
Bannon’s Breitbart Radio. Last July, Prince told Bannon that a
Trump administration could and should create a new version of the Phoenix
Program, the CIA assassination program during the Vietnam War that
“neutralized” tens of thousands of alleged Viet Cong leaders. The new
assassination program would presumably target “radical Islamic extremists,” and
who knows who else.
DeVos, while not a public advocate
of murder like her brother, has worked for decades in an effort to undermine
and assassinate public education. A billionaire heir to the Amway
fortune, she is a prominent Republican donor and fund-raiser. Her
political efforts have centered around campaigns to give parents
taxpayer-funded “vouchers” so they can pull their children out of the public
education system and send them to private schools, including religious schools.
She has also campaigned to expand charter schools, which are publicly
funded but run by private companies.
She isn’t responsible for her
brother, of course, but the two are closely linked politically, as described in
a 2014 Mother Jones article — and there’s no sign
anywhere that she has said she doesn’t approve of his actions.
DeVos hails from Michigan, where
she is a political force to be reckoned with. She has been credited with
creating a network of charter schools in Michigan that are virtually
unregulated, despite the abysmal test scores of their students. Dick
DeVos, Betsy’s husband, led and funded the successful campaign in 2012 that
turned Michigan into a so-called “right to work” state, effectively outlawing
the union shop. That includes, of course, public schools.
DeVos was called the “the most
ideological, anti-public education nominee” for the office of Secretary of
Education ever by Randi Weingarten, the President of the American
Federation of Teachers. (See below)
