Blackwater accused of serious crimes by former employees

Two former employees of Blackwater (now called Xe), a private military contractor founded by Michigan native Erik Prince, have submitted sworn affidavits in a federal court case in Virginia alleging that Prince is motivated by anti-Muslim religious fervor and that he and his company are responsible for serious crimes, including murder.

Prince, born and raised in Holland, is the heir to one of Michigan’s largest fortunes. The Prince family made billions in the auto parts business, which they have used to support a vast range of conservative causes for decades. They are closely aligned with the DeVos family, another wealthy conservative Michigan family. Prince’s sister Betsy is married to Dick DeVos, heir to the Amway fortune and former Republican candidate for governor.

The affidavits were filed under seal with the men referred to only as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2, but their testimony is sworn under potential perjury in official court documents. Both men testified to personal knowledge of Blackwater engaging in illegal arms smuggling into Iraq, Blackwater guards routinely engaging in unjustified violence against Iraqis and even of murdering other former employees who were ready to blow the whistle on them.

John Doe 1 is a former U.S. Marine who was hired by Blackwater and sent to Iraq as a guard for State Department personnel. He reports that immediately upon arriving in Baghdad to work for the company he witnessed Blackwater personnel unloading bags of dog food that were used for smuggling weapons into Iraq.

He also reports multiple incidents that he witnessed personally of Blackwater guards opening fire indiscriminately on Iraqi citizens, seriously injuring or killing them, without reporting the incidents to either the Iraqi government or the State Department as required by their contract.

Several of those incidents involved Blackwater guards firing into the vehicles of Iraqi citizens without provocation. At least two of those incidents involved a guard named Beau Phillips opening fire on vehicles with Iraqi citizens in them for no reason using a weapon that is illegal to take into Iraq, an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW. In neither case, the employee said, did the guards even bother to stop to see if anyone in the vehicles were alive and in need of medical care, nor did they report the incidents. And in no case was the guard responsible disciplined for their actions.

John Doe 1 also says that each of these incidents was recorded with a dashboard video camera. Every night they would watch the video from that day, then immediately erase the tapes to make sure no one outside of Blackwater would see them.

John Doe 2 worked for Blackwater for four years not as a guard but as a member of the management team under Erik Prince. He swore in his affidavit that he was filing under a pseudonym because, “On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince’s employ, Mr. Prince’s management has personally threatened me with death and violence.”

Both he and John Doe 1 said they had information from other Blackwater employees that the company “murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct.”

John Doe 2 testifies of his personal knowledge of Prince’s beliefs and attitudes and his allegations are very serious. Prince, he declares, “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.” He alleged that Prince went out of his way to hire guards who shared that viewpoint:

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting those men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard.” Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince’s employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis, such as “ragheads” or “hajiis.”

John Doe 2 also says that Blackwater routinely ignored the recommendations of both team leaders and mental health personnel who sought to avoid the deployment of certain men who they viewed as unfit due to excessive drinking, hatred of Iraqis or psychological problems. The company, he said, “hid from Department of State the fact that they were deploying men to Iraq over the objections of mental health professionals and security professionals in the field.”

He also corroborates the allegations of illegal arms smuggling from John Doe 1, declaring that Prince “made available to his employees in Iraq various weapons not authorized by the United States contracting authorities, such as hand grenades and hand grenade launchers. Mr. Prince’s employees repeatedly used this illegal weaponry in Iraq, unnecessarily killing scores of Iraqis.”

John Doe 2 also made more salacious allegations, including declaring that Prince, despite visiting the camps of his employees in Iraq regularly, “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.” He also alleges that the company had an “ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring, which was participated in by a number of Mr. Prince’s top executives.”

Both men also allege that Prince has a network of affiliated companies, both in the U.S. and in offshore tax havens, through which he launders enormous sums of money to avoid paying taxes.

Calls to Blackwater/Xe were not immediately returned, nor did they return multiple calls for comment from Jeremy Scahill of the Nation magazine.

The declarations filed by the two men are found below:

Declaration of John Doe 1

Declaration of John Doe 2