{"id":103212,"date":"2017-12-11T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=103212"},"modified":"2017-12-07T10:16:04","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T10:16:04","slug":"trump-white-house-weighing-plans-for-private-spies-to-counter-deep-state-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/12\/trump-white-house-weighing-plans-for-private-spies-to-counter-deep-state-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump White House Weighing Plans for Private Spies to Counter \u201cDeep State\u201d Enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leia em portugu\u00eas <\/a><\/p>\n

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Erik Prince – Photo: Jacquelyn Martin\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

5 Dec 2017 – <\/em>The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a\u00a0retired CIA officer \u2014 with assistance from Oliver North, a\u00a0key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal \u2014 to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. 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\u00a0\u201cdeep state\u201d enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration\u2019s political agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cPompeo can\u2019t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him,\u201d said a former senior U.S. intelligence official with\u00a0firsthand knowledge of the proposals, in describing White House discussions. \u201cIt is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,\u201d this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. \u201cThe whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.\u201d<\/p>\n

North, who appears frequently on Trump\u2019s favorite TV network, Fox News,\u00a0was enlisted to help sell the effort to the administration. He was the \u201cideological leader\u201d brought in to lend\u00a0credibility, said the former senior intelligence official.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The proposals would utilize an army of spies with no official cover in several countries deemed \u201cdenied areas\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or [White House] at all,\u201d\u00a0wrote\u00a0Michael N. Anton<\/a>, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, in an email. \u201cThe White House does not and would not support such a proposal.\u201d But a current U.S. 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. 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 \u201cno record of [Prince] ever having met with or briefed the VP.\u201d North did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

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 said, \u201cYou have been provided wildly inaccurate information by people peddling an agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s transition team.\u00a0Amyntor\u2019s\u00a0role was first reported<\/a> by BuzzFeed News.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Prince and Maguire deny they are working together. Those assertions, however, are\u00a0challenged by current and former U.S. officials and Trump donors who say the two men were collaborating.<\/p>\n

As with many arrangements in the world of CIA contracting and clandestine operations, details of who is in charge of various proposals\u00a0are murky by design and change depending on which players are speaking. An Amyntor official said Prince\u00a0was not \u201cformally linked to any contract proposal by Amyntor.\u201d In an email, Prince\u00a0rejected the suggestion that he was involved with the proposals. When asked if he has knowledge of this project, Prince replied: \u201cI was\/am not part of any of those alleged efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the efforts scoffed at\u00a0Prince\u2019s denials. \u201cErik\u2019s proposal had no company names on the slides,\u201d this person said, \u201cbut there is no doubt that Prince and Maguire were working together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prince and Maguire have a long\u00a0professional relationship.\u00a0Maguire\u00a0recently\u00a0completed a stint as a consultant with Prince\u2019s company, Frontier Services Group, a Hong Kong-based security and logistics company partially owned by the Chinese government. FSG has no known connections to the private spy plan.<\/p>\n

Prince has strong ties to the Trump administration: His sister Betsy DeVos is secretary of education, he was a major\u00a0donor<\/a>\u00a0to the Trump election campaign, and\u00a0he advised the transition team on intelligence and defense appointments, as The Intercept has previously\u00a0reported<\/a>. Prince has also contributed to Pence\u2019s campaigns.<\/p>\n

Maguire spent more than two decades as a paramilitary officer in the CIA, including tours in Central America working with the Contras. He has\u00a0extensive experience in the Middle East, where he helped plan the 2003 invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Maguire and Prince met together\u00a0in September with a senior CIA official at a Virginia restaurant to discuss privatizing the war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Prince told a top fundraiser that Maguire was working on part of his Afghanistan plan, characterizing it as\u00a0the first part of a multi-pronged program. The fundraiser added that Prince never directly asked him for money. But sources close to the project say Maguire did seek private funding for Amyntor\u2019s efforts until a CIA contract materialized. \u201cThey\u2019ve been going around asking for a bridge loan to float their operations until the CIA says yes,\u201d said a person who has been briefed on the fundraising efforts.<\/p>\n

Beginning\u00a0last spring and into the summer, Maguire and a group of Amyntor\u00a0representatives began asking Trump donors to support their intelligence efforts in Afghanistan, the initial piece of what they hoped would be a broader program. Some Trump fundraisers were asked to provide introductions to companies and wealthy clients who would then hire Amyntor for economic intelligence contracts. Maguire explained that some of the profit from those business deals would fund their foreign intelligence collection. Others were asked to give money outright.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Maguire] said there were people inside the CIA who joined in the previous eight years [under Obama] and inside the government, and they were failing to give the president the intelligence he needed,\u201d said a person who was pitched by Maguire and other Amyntor personnel. To support his claim, Maguire told at least two people that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, in coordination with a top official at the National Security Agency, authorized surveillance of Steven Bannon and Trump family members, including Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Adding to these unsubstantiated claims, Maguire\u00a0told the potential donors\u00a0he also had evidence McMaster used a burner phone to send information gathered through the surveillance to a facility in Cyprus owned by George Soros.<\/p>\n

Amyntor employees took potential donors to a suite in the Trump Hotel in Washington, which they claimed was set up to conduct \u201csecure communications.\u201d Some White House staff and Trump campaign supporters came to refer to the suite as \u201cthe tinfoil room,\u201d according to one person who visited the suite. This account was confirmed by another source to whom the room was described. \u201cJohn [Maguire] was certain that the deep state was going to kick the president out of office within a year,\u201d said a person who discussed it with Maguire. \u201cThese guys said they were protecting the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maguire and others at Amyntor have boasted that they have already sent intelligence reports to Pompeo.<\/p>\n

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Oliver North testifying before Congress in 1986, and Erik Prince testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2007, in Washington, D.C.
Photos: AFP\/Getty, AP<\/p><\/div>\n

Prince, Maguire, and<\/u>\u00a0North have long shared a\u00a0common frustration over the failure of the U.S. government to bring two suspects from a high-profile terrorist event in the 1980s to justice. Last summer, Maguire\u00a0discussed\u00a0rendering the suspects with White House officials\u00a0after learning the men had been located in the Middle East. Despite having no U.S. government approval, associates of Maguire began working on a snatch operation earlier this year, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Prince colleague.<\/p>\n

Maguire, concerned that the FBI would not take action, made an offer\u00a0to senior White House officials. The message, according to\u00a0a person with direct knowledge of the rendition plan, was: \u201cWe\u2019re going to go get these guys and bring them to the U.S. Who should we hand them over to?\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0rendition plan\u00a0was meant to be a demonstration that\u00a0Maguire and his associates had an active intelligence network and the capability to\u00a0grab suspects around the world. Prince maintains he has nothing to do with that plan. But according to a source with extensive knowledge of\u00a0Prince\u2019s networks, Prince was working in parallel to assemble a team to help apprehend the men.<\/p>\n

According to two people who have worked extensively with Prince in recent years, Prince has been contacting former Blackwater personnel who worked on\u00a0a post-9\/11 era CIA assassination program targeting Al Qaeda operatives. That program, which the Bush White House prohibited the CIA from disclosing to congressional intelligence committees, was revealed to Congress in 2009 by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta. The CIA\u00a0says the program did not result in any assassinations.<\/p>\n

Among the capabilities Prince offers is a network of deniable assets \u2014\u00a0 spies, fixers, foreign intelligence agents \u2014 spread across the globe that could be used by the White House. \u201cYou pick any country in the world Erik\u2019s been in, and it\u2019s there,\u201d said\u00a0a longtime Prince associate. \u201cThey\u2019re a network of very dark individuals.\u201d The associate, who has worked extensively with Prince, then began rattling off places where the private spies and paramilitaries already operate \u2014 Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, \u201call across North Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opaque contracting arrangements\u00a0are typical for Prince, who became a lightning rod in his Blackwater days and now prefers to minimize controversy by operating in the shadows, disguising his involvement in sensitive operations with layers of subcontractors and elaborately crafted legal structures. \u201cThat\u2019s his exact MO,\u201d said the longtime Prince associate, adding that Prince consistently attempts to ensure plausible deniability of his role in U.S. and foreign government contracts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have zero to do with any such effort and saying that I did\/do would be categorically false,\u201d Prince said in his email to The Intercept. \u201cKnowingly publishing false information exposes you to civil legal action. The only effort I\u2019ve quite publicly pitched is an alternative to Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Erik Prince, then-CEO of Blackwater Worldwide, drives through campus where he could conduct training in Moyock, N.C. in 2008. Photo: Gerry Broome\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

The intelligence and<\/u> covert action program would mark an unorthodox return to government service for Prince, the onetime CIA contractor who built a mercenary force that became notorious during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would also raise new questions about Prince\u2019s foreign entanglements since he sold Blackwater.<\/p>\n

In addition to Prince\u2019s former assassination network, the hidden cadre of spies with no official cover \u2014 NOCs in CIA jargon \u2014 includes the assets of another key player in the Iran-Contra affair, CIA Officer Duane Clarridge, who died in 2016. Maguire, who worked under Clarridge as a young CIA paramilitary in Central America during the mid-1980s, took over the network of contract spies, who operate mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Last summer, as Prince pushed his public proposal to privatize the war in Afghanistan,\u00a0he and Maguire had broader ambitions, according to a person involved in the discussions. \u201cThe goal was to eventually get their network of NOCs worldwide, but they initially started with Afghanistan and Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPrince seems to be firing on a lot of cylinders and pitching overt and covert plans,\u201d said a current intelligence officer who has closely monitored Prince\u2019s career and been briefed on several of Prince\u2019s recent efforts, including the proposals to Pompeo. The official declined to discuss details of the plans but pointed to Prince\u2019s much-discussed pitch to privatize the war in Afghanistan as a smokescreen for offering other more controversial programs and operations.<\/p>\n

Prince\u2019s Afghanistan plan, which received substantial media attention and got a hearing at the highest levels of the Trump administration, \u201cwas brilliant because it changed the narrative and made him relevant,\u201d the officer said,\u00a0referring to Prince\u2019s scandal- and investigation-plagued career at Blackwater. The officer also added that the very public Afghanistan pitch, replete with cable news interviews and op-eds, provided a legitimate reason \u201cto justify meeting with people\u201d at the White House, CIA, or other government agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cErik has no hobbies,\u201d said the longtime Prince associate. \u201cCounterterrorism is his hobby.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some ways, these plans mirror operations\u00a0Prince led during the Bush-Cheney administration. When Prince was running Blackwater, he and a former CIA paramilitary officer, Enrique Prado, set up a global network of foreign operatives, offering their \u201cdeniability\u201d as a \u201cbig plus\u201d for potential Blackwater customers, according to internal company communications obtained by The Intercept.<\/p>\n

In a 2007 email, with the subject \u201cPossible Opportunity in DEA\u2014READ AND DELETE,\u201d Prado sought to pitch the network to the Drug Enforcement Administration, bragging that Blackwater had developed \u201ca rapidly growing, worldwide network of folks that can do everything from surveillance to ground truth to disruption operations.\u201d He added, \u201cThese are all foreign nationals (except for a few cases where US persons are the conduit but no longer \u2018play\u2019 on the street), so deniability is built in and should be a big plus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The longtime Prince associate said that the nexus of deniable assets has never gone away. \u201cThe NOC network is already there. It already exists for the better part of 15 years now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Prince has long admired 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\u2019s longtime friend, conservative California\u00a0Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, praised the Blackwater chief. \u201cPrince,\u201d Rohrabacher said, \u201cis on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was.\u201d<\/p>\n

North, a Marine lieutenant colonel on\u00a0the Reagan National Security Council, oversaw a scheme to divert proceeds from illicit arms sales to Iran to Contra death squads in Nicaragua. The resulting scandal became known as the Iran-Contra affair, and North was convicted of three felonies, though these convictions were later thrown out.<\/p>\n

Both North and Maguire attended a small reception in 2014\u00a0celebrating Prince\u2019s third marriage \u2014 to his former spokesperson Stacy DeLuke. \u201cIt was an intimate affair,\u201d said the Prince associate. \u201cOnly Erik\u2019s closest friends were invited to that reception.\u201d On election night in 2016, DeLuke posted photos on social media from inside Trump headquarters.<\/p>\n

On November 30, 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\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>, Prince presented himself as an unofficial envoy of President-elect Trump. The Intercept\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0last week that the fund manager was Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Prince repeatedly\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that he did not remember the identity of the Russian, but on Thursday, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Prince\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0that he did in fact meet with Dmitriev.<\/p>\n

Prince may have revealed part of his strategy in a July 2016 radio interview with Steve Bannon, when he proposed recreating the CIA\u2019s Phoenix Program, an assassination ring used in the Vietnam War, to battle the Islamic State. Prince said in the interview that the program would be used to kill or capture \u201cthe funders of Islamic terror, the wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

Top photo: Blackwater founder Erik Prince arrives for a closed meeting with members of the House Intelligence Committee, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington.<\/p>\n

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