Erik Prince Offers to Train African Force to Save Darfur

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince tells the Wall Street Journal that he is willing to train and equip an African force to save Darfur.

And he doesn't want to make a nickel doing it. He's offering to do it at cost.

This amazing news is tucked way down in William McGurn's "Main Street" column that ran in the WSJ on July 29. McGurn writes:

Mr. Prince says that the 9,000 or so African Union soldiers in Darfur, as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force, are a good start. But he says that to be effective they need better training, communications and equipment. That is more or less the same message from a report released yesterday by the Darfur Consortium, a coalition of 50 African-based and Africa-focused NGOs. "One year ago the U.N. Security Council stood unanimous and promised Darfurians the strongest and largest protection force ever," says a coalition spokesman. "Today that force is just over a third deployed, lacks even the most basic equipment and is unable to protect itself let alone civilians."

Mr. Prince has a remedy. He believes that with 250 or so professionals, Blackwater can transform about a thousand of the African Union soldiers into an elite and highly mobile force. This force would also be equipped with helicopters and the kind of small planes that missionaries use in this part of the world. It would be cheaper than the hundreds of millions we are spending to set up a larger AU/U.N. force. And he says he'd do it at cost.

Blackwater would not do the fighting. Its people would serve as advisers, mechanics and pilots. Aid workers and villagers would be equipped with satellite telephones that include Global Positioning Systems.

When they call in, the troops would respond.

"I'm so sick of hearing that nothing can be done," he says. "The Janjaweed is a truly unfettered bully. No one has stood up to them. If they were met by a mobile quick reaction force of African Union soldiers, the Janjaweed would quickly learn their habits were not sustainable." And to ensure accountability, he says, the U.S. could send 25 military officers to observe how Blackwater is doing and serve as liaisons.

Up until Blackwater's offer, all the other "Save Darfur" activity is just useless talk. McGurn notes, "That's the point: Strongly worded resolutions, sanctions and boycotts are generally what you do in place of decisive action. I understand that the whole idea of Blackwater helicopters flying over Darfur probably horrifies many of the same people frustrated by Mr. Bashir's ability to game the system. But it's at least worth wondering what that same Blackwater helo might look like to a defenseless Darfur mother and her daughters lying in fear of a Janjaweed attack."

Any takers?

ABC Eats Its Words on Blackwater Report

Take a look at this attempted sleight of hand by ABC News. The network giant reported on its website that Cerberus Capital Management, the hedge fund that bought Chrysler, is angling for a $200 million stake in Blackwater Worldwide.

The Wall Street Journal countered with a blog story that the ABC item is untrue. Whereas ABC relied on an anonymous source, the Journal did something real journalists do: It called a real person and quoted him by name. After the inaccurate ABC report came out, a Journal reporter phoned Cerberus operations chief Mark Neporent, who acknowledged consideration of an investment in Blackwater but said no deal was in the works. ABC was wrong.

After the Wall Street Journal went online with the debunking, ABCNews.com pulled down its original story and replaced it with one headlined, "Exclusive: Investment Giant Ends Talks with Blackwater." ABCNews.com kept the same URL as the original inaccurate story, as if to fool people. (Imagine if Blackwater had done such a thing!)

ABC put the best spin on its reporting reversal, saying, "After news broke this morning on the Blotter on ABCNews.com of the ongoing talks between the investment giant Cerberus and the controversial security firm Blackwater, the talks have now ceased, and there will be no deal."

No word from the guys in Moyock.

Waxman Destroys Independent Oversight

Howard Krongard recently worked his last day as the State Department Inspector General, an event accompanied by some scathing remarks by the Wall Street Journal for Congressman Henry Waxman. From the article:

Howard Krongard... learned a hard lesson in the ways of modern Congressional "oversight." To wit, if you don't follow Henry Waxman's orders, he'll try to ruin you....

In July, Mr. Krongard testified before Mr. Waxman's House oversight committee [that]... he had inspected and found no evidence of human trafficking or human-rights violations [at the new US Embassy in Baghdad]. That's not what Mr. Waxman wanted to hear. In his opening statement, the California partisan insisted that State's approach to the inquiry was evidence of a "full bunker mentality."

As if on cue, "whistleblowers" emerged to accuse [Mr. Krongard]of being too cozy with top State officials, failing to pick up counterfeit computers in Afghanistan, and even of being a high-handed boss. The principal complainers were not under oath, nor did they offer much evidence. One accuser admitted that, "I have no proof, I want to make that clear it is just my opinion."

Democrats howled that Mr. Krongard had intervened in the audit of State Department books to help the department get a "clean" result. What really happened? He argued that the auditors should get extra time to complete their work -- a position supported both by the Office of Management and Budget and the Government Accountability Office.

Mr. Krongard was also said to have "impeded" a Justice Department probe into allegations of weapons smuggling by Blackwater Inc., the civilian contractor in Iraq. In fact, he was coordinating as far back as July on a civil audit of Blackwater contracts with the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Later that month, he learned that employees in his office were cooperating with a criminal investigation by the US Attorney in North Carolina....

To avoid the conflict of parallel proceedings within the office, Mr. Krongard instructed the employee to "stop immediately" any further work until Mr. Krongard could speak to the US Attorney's office, which he offered to do right away. In short, he was doing his job, which is to make sure investigations aren't tainted by conflicts of interest. Mr. Waxman also made much of the fact that Mr. Krongard has a brother who served on a Blackwater advisory board. But Mr. Krongard immediately recused himself on learning of his brother's Blackwater tie.

Every specific charge against Mr. Krongard was examined and refuted in a report by the committee minority. And as Mr. Krongard noted, he was not a big political donor, had never met President Bush, and had never been to the White House except as a tourist. Yet none of these facts interfered with Mr. Waxman's public smears that Mr. Krongard's "partisan political ties" had led him to "halt investigations, censor reports, and refuse to cooperate with law-enforcement agencies."

Mr. Waxman doesn't much care if any of this is true, because his larger goal is to send a message to every Inspector General in government: They answer to him. Mr. Waxman expects them to tee up political scandals in the executive branch and serve as witnesses for his prosecution whether or not the facts support it. Mr. Krongard's mistake was telling the truth.

Pentagon praises Blackwater for anti-narcotics work in Afghanistan

The Department of Defense is "very happy" with Blackwater's work in Afghanistan to train local anti-narcotics forces.

The Wall Street Journal quotes Richard Douglas, deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics, counterproliferation and global threats, as saying that Blackwater's training of the Afghans made them more effective in fighting illegal drug production. "We've been very happy with the results of our association with them in Afghanistan," Douglas said.

Wall Street Journal: Blackwater is poised to grow; is challenging industry giants

"Even as Blackwater USA seeks to extricate itself from a firestorm over the conduct of its private-security forces in Iraq, company founder Erik Prince is laying plans for an expansion that would put his for-hire forces in hot spots around the world doing far more than guard duty," the Wall Street Journal reports today from Blackwater headquarters in North Carolina.

"Blackwater faces criticism in the wake of a Sept. 16 shooting by the company's guards that the Iraqi government says killed 17 civilians, a crisis that appears to threaten the company's livelihood. Yet at Blackwater's headquarters here, where the sound of gunfire and explosions is testament to the daily training of hundreds of law-enforcement and military personnel, Mr. Prince's ambition is on display.

"Mr. Prince wants to vault Blackwater into the major leagues of U.S. military contracting, taking advantage of the movement to privatize all kinds of government security. The company wants to be a one-stop shop for the U.S. government on missions to which it won't commit American forces. This is a niche with few established competitors, but it is drawing more and more interest from big military firms.

"Already, the 10-year-old company -- which went from renting out shooting ranges for thousands of dollars in its early years to revenue of almost a half-billion dollars last year -- is bidding on military work against industry giants such as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. Mr. Prince says he is planning to build Blackwater's expertise in training, transportation and military support while expanding into making everything from remotely piloted blimps to an armored truck called the Grizzly that is tough enough to compete for the Army's latest armored-vehicle contract." For the full text of the article, click here.