304 Katyn signatures for Liquidation; Hitler's Secret Indian Army; Blackwater

Katyn signatures for Liquidation; Hitler's Secret Indian Army; Blackwater

(1) Katyn: Beria urges Liquidation, Stalin & Politburo add their signatures
(2) Katyn: a Stalinist response
(3) Hitler's Secret Indian Army
(4) Erik Prince, head of Blackwater, on US use of mercenary "armed private contractors"

(1) Katyn: Beria urges Liquidation, Stalin & Politburo add their signatures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/28/katyn-massacre-russia-documents-web

Russia posts Katyn massacre documents online

The publication of Soviet documents about Russia's 1940 massacre of Polish officers is the latest diplomatic gesture towards Warsaw

Luke Harding in Moscow

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 April 2010 16.30 BST

Russia today posted documents concerning the massacre of Polish prisoners in Katyn on a government website, and said it would release further archive material dealing with Soviet-era repression.

Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, said he had personally ordered the online publication of the archive on the massacre, which took place 70 years ago when Soviet secret police shot 22,000 Polish officers near Katyn in western Russia.

The documents have been published before in Poland and Russia. But the decision to publish them online is the latest positive gesture by Moscow to Warsaw after this month's air disaster that killed Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski.

The crash provoked an unprecedented Russian reaction, with Medvedev attending Kaczynski's funeral in Krakow and the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, leading the investigation into why Kaczynski's plane went down.

Medvedev suggested Russia would now release further classified documents on the massacre. "The Katyn archives are open. [But] there are certain materials that have not yet been forwarded to our Polish partners," Medvedev said.

Pledging greater openness, he added: "I have ordered that appropriate work be carried out and materials that are interesting to our Polish colleagues be handed over to them."

Human rights groups say that Russia has refused to hand over the most sensitive archive materials – which identify individual officers from the NKVD, the pre-KGB secret police – who carried out the killings.

Today, the head of Russia's state archives agency, Rosarchiv, Andrei Artizov, said the documents came from the top-secret archive of the politburo. They include a letter from Lavrenti Beria, the head of the NKVD, written in March 1940.

In it, Beria describes the Polish PoWs as "incorrigible enemies of Soviet power" and urges their liquidation. The archive includes the signatures of Stalin and other politburo members on a resolution authorising the murders – which Stalin subsequently blamed on the Nazis.

Artizov said all Soviet leaders after Stalin were told the truth about Katyn. He said the murders were carried out at three distinct sites: Pyatikhatka, near Kharkov; Katyn, near Smolensk; and Mednoye in Russia's Tver region. The largest number of Polish officers were shot dead in Mednoye, he said.

Historians said that the decision to post the documents on the internet was an important step to enable Russians to come to terms with their past.

Andrzej Kunert, a Polish historian, said the Kremlin's move was significant. "We can call the decision a breakthrough."

(2) Katyn: a Stalinist response
From: Jacob Jugashvili <jacob@jugashvili.com>  Date: 11.05.2010 03:18 AM
Subject: jugashvili

I'm sending you a link to my recent interview to GEORGIAN TIMES: http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=21385

Iakob Djugashvili: The more we leave Stalin behind the nearer we get to Hitler

http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=21385

Dictator or leader? Which was the real Stalin? Why is his grandson Iakob Djugashvili suing Novaya Gazeta and
Ekho Moskvi? GT has interviewed Iakob Djugashvili

Q: How can you defend the reputation of Stalin?

A: Stalin's epoch and Stalin's role in it are two different things. Stalin is called a dictator and is blamed what he did not do. A dictator has real power and controls the police structures in order to make the social, political and other structures of the country do what he wants. Stalin had no state post before 1941, not one policeman or solider was subordinate to him, but he was a leader. His colleagues believed in him because Stalin was not born in 1924 and they had come through the revolutionary struggle together. The structure of collegiate rule showed that everything Stalin said or wrote was put in practice.

Q: There are two opinions about Stalin. He is still worshiped by some in Georgia, while others condemn him. What did Stalin do for Georgia, good or bad?

A: I am very much against discussing Stalin in terms of Georgia or even Russia; he was the leader of the Soviet Union. Unlike the present day Russia and Georgia the Soviet Union served its people. Stalin should be considered as a unifying force, not only by the people of Russia and Georgia but all the people under the pressure of Western fascist marionettes.

Q: A memorial monument has been built for the Poles who were shot in Katyn during Stalin's rule. What do you think about this?

A: I will tell you some interesting things about Poland. In 1934 (after the Nazis had taken power in Germany) Poland became an official ally of Germany. In summer 1938, when Germany annexed Austria, Poland did not fulfil its obligations to its ally France and did not oppose the German invasion of Austria. In autumn of the same year under the Munich Agreement not only Germany swallowed Czechoslovakia but Poland too grabbed the Stettin region of Czechoslovakia.

Poland knew this would happen but did not agree it even with the parties to the Munich pact. Poland then wrecked talks with the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain about forming and anti-Hitler pact. On 1 September of the same year Germany invaded Poland and on 10 September the patriots, Government and Generals of Poland led by Sikorski leave Polish territory proudly and bravely.

On 13 April 1942 Goebbels, in order to split the Soviet Union from its allies, declared that in 1940 Jews from the Soviet Union had shot several thousand Polish officers. Two days later, on 15 April, exiled head of the Polish Government and ally of Britain Sikorski publicly confirmed Goebbels' statement without making any investigation or giving any facts.

In 1943 the British plotted to land forces in Norway to cut off the Germans in the Baltic. But the Germans found out about this. English patience ran out and in 1994 a plane Sikorski was flying from Morocco to England came down in the Straits of Gibraltar. Only the English pilots survived, Sikorski and his child died.

{'1994' is a typing error; should be July 1943: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Sikorski}

The Polish Government of that time betrayed all its allies (even its own people) and thus provoked the Second World War. Goebbels' propaganda trick brought 1.8 million volunteers into the German Army, prolonged the war and increased the sacrifice.

The issue of Katyn came to the fore again in 1989 when traitors were running the Soviet Union. They wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union and one of the essential means of doing so was to tear up the Warsaw Pact. Poland would then join NATO.

Now the fascist West needs the issue of Katyn to force the Russian Federation to pay it compensation. I have studies the material on this issue and it has convinced me that the Germans shot the Poles in the Forest of Katyn near Smolensk in 1941 when they controlled Smolensk. Today everyone blames the Soviet Union for shooting Polish people at Katyn and uses the issue to further their political career or for other purposes. These people are the spiritual children of Goebbels and I consider them my enemies.

The format of our conversation does not give me the opportunity to go further into this issue, which is why I advise people who still have dignity and clear thinking to read Yuri Mukhin's book Katyn Detective, his film Katynskaya Podlost and his latest book, Sud Nad Stalinim in which Yuri Mukhin, Sergey Strigin and Mikhail Shved, who have investigated this issue, present their arguments. I want to make your readers interested by telling them that Sergey Strigin discovered 43 signs of falsification in the arguments of Special Packet #1.

Q: Do you see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a negative thing? Do you not think that this was one of the darkest periods of Georgia's history?

A: Yes, it was a dark period. The cannibal Communists created such unbearable conditions that the population of Georgia increased from 2.7 million (according to data from 1914) to 6.7 million (according to 1986 Soviet data), of which 70 percent were Georgians. An unprecedented horror was inflicted on the education system, it was free of charge and one of the best in the world. But this is nothing compared to the cruelty called free healthcare. Not only hospitals but also medical-sanitation system (sanatoriums, cottages, pioneer camps) were free. I agree that this was really a genocide of the Georgian people, now without irony.

The Soviet Union, like any other country, was not immune to crises. These are normal. But it did not look like other countries because its philosophy was rather progressive. Hence it threatened other kind of crises. The trouble with the Soviet Union was that the avanguard of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party, turned into the shelter of the parasites. Stalin understood this very well even in 1936, when he sought to limit the powers of the party. Stalin presented a constitution in 1936 which would have allowed not only members of the Communist Party but others to participate in elections.

Stalin campaigned against the oligarchs of the party. He lost this battle but survived. Stalin still tried to oppress them at the 19th Congress in 1952, but unfortunately this attempt cost him his life. He was killed. The direct successor of Stalin was Khrushev's anti-Stalin campaign, which was nothing more than the masking of this crime by halting the reforms launched by Stalin.

The Communist Party became a nest of non-Communists. Why are we surprised that today the words “Communist” and “Bolshevik” are terms of abuse? I believe wise and honest people were trying to cure the ills of the Soviet Union, but foolish and dishonest people wanted to wreck it.

Q: Your father Evgeny Djugashvili sued Novaya Gazeta…

A: Today we do not have normal conditions in Russia and it is impossible to demand that any person or mass media outlet be held responsible for their words. We used the court as an alternative forum for discussion. We got an unprecedented result because the process revealed the true nature of the anti-Stalinists. They had no arguments to defend their positions with.

Q: Now you have brought a second court case about Stalin…

A: At this moment a second case is underway against Ekho Moskvi, which stated that "Stalin signed a secret order according to which the death penalty can be applied to all juveniles above the age of 12 and charged with serving as "enemy of people" and other offences. Just think what kind of nonsense Ekho Moskvi is preaching. If this order was secret how did the court manage to pass the sentence? I will not make further comment. Let us wait for the court hearing.

Q: How did you assess Merabishvili's statement in his interview with Kommersant about offering the Russians money to blow up Stalin's monument?

A: Stalin's monument was not the issue. The truth and immortality of Stalin gives these people no rest. As someone once said, the more we leave Stalin behind the nearer we get to Hitler. The West is heading towards a new Hitler and with its lap-dogs pushes us in the same direction.

By Eka Buchukuri
2010.04.26 11:00

(3) Hitler's Secret Indian Army

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 26.04.2010 03:00 PM

By Mike Thomson

Last Updated: Thursday, 23 September 2004, 23:52 GMT 00:52 UK

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3684288.stm

In the closing stages of World War II, as Allied and French resistance forces were driving Hitler's now demoralised forces from France, three senior German officers defected.

The information they gave British intelligence was considered so sensitive that in 1945 it was locked away, not due to be released until the year 2021.

Now, 17 years early, the BBC's Document programme has been given special access to this secret file.

It reveals how thousands of Indian soldiers who had joined Britain in the fight against fascism swapped their oaths to the British king for others to Adolf Hitler - an astonishing tale of loyalty, despair and betrayal that threatened to rock British rule in India, known as the Raj.

The story the German officers told their interrogators began in Berlin on 3 April 1941. This was the date that the left-wing Indian revolutionary leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, arrived in the German capital.

Bose, who had been arrested 11 times by the British in India, had fled the Raj with one mission in mind. That was to seek Hitler's help in pushing the British out of India.

Lieutenant Barwant SinghSix months later, with the help of the German foreign ministry, he had set up what he called "The Free India Centre", from where he published leaflets, wrote speeches and organised broadcasts in support of his cause.

By the end of 1941, Hitler's regime officially recognised his provisional "Free India Government" in exile, and even agreed to help Chandra Bose raise an army to fight for his cause. It was to be called "The Free India Legion".

Bose hoped to raise a force of about 100,000 men which, when armed and kitted out by the Germans, could be used to invade British India.

He decided to raise them by going on recruiting visits to Prisoner-of-War camps in Germany which, at that time, were home to tens of thousands of Indian soldiers captured by Rommel in North Africa.

Volunteers

Finally, by August 1942, Bose's recruitment drive got fully into swing. Mass ceremonies were held in which dozens of Indian POWs joined in mass oaths of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. ...

In all 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion.

But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler's tanks rolled across the Soviet border.

Matters were made even worse by the fact that after Stalingrad it became clear that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer Bose help in driving the British from faraway India.

When the Indian revolutionary met Hitler in May 1942 his suspicions were confirmed, and he came to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones.

So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan.

Back in Germany the men he had recruited were left leaderless and demoralised. ...

A year later the Indian legionnaires were sent back to India, where all were released after short jail sentences.

But when the British put three of their senior officers on trial near Delhi there were mutinies in the army and protests on the streets.

With the British now aware that the Indian army could no longer be relied upon by the Raj to do its bidding, independence followed soon after.

Not that Subhas Chandra Bose was to see the day he had fought so hard for. He died in 1945.

Since then little has been heard of Lieutenant Barwant Singh and his fellow legionnaires.

At the end of the war the BBC was forbidden from broadcasting their story and this remarkable saga was locked away in the archives, until now. Not that Lieutenant Singh has ever forgotten those dramatic days.

"In front of my eyes I can see how we all looked, how we would all sing and how we all talked about what eventually would happen to us all," he said.

(4) Erik Prince, head of Blackwater, on US use of mercenary "armed private contractors"

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 05.05.2010 10:57 PM

Secret Erik Prince Tape Exposed

By Jeremy Scahill , May 3, 2010, The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/blog/secret-erik-prince-tape-exposed

Erik Prince, the reclusive owner of the Blackwater empire, rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban journalists from attending and forbids recording or videotaping of his remarks. On May 5, that is exactly what Prince is trying to do when he speaks at DeVos Fieldhouse as the keynote speaker for the "Tulip Time Festival" in his hometown of Holland, Michigan. He told the event's organizers no news reporting could be done on his speech and they consented to the ban. Journalists and media associations in Michigan are protesting this attempt to bar reporting on his remarks.

Despite Prince's attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and reveals details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater. The people of the United States have a right to media coverage of events featuring the owner of a company that generates 90% of its revenue from the United States government.

In the speech, Prince proposed that the US government deploy armed private contractors to fight "terrorists" in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, specifically to target Iranian influence. He expressed disdain for the Geneva Convention and described Blackwater's secretive operations at four Forward Operating Bases he controls in Afghanistan. He called those fighting the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan "barbarians" who "crawled out of the sewer." Prince also revealed details of a July 2009 operation he claims Blackwater forces coordinated in Afghanistan to take down a narcotrafficking facility, saying that Blackwater "call[ed] in multiple air strikes," blowing up the facility. Prince boasted that his forces had carried out the "largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history." He characterized the work of some NATO countries' forces in Afghanistan as ineffectual, suggesting that some coalition nations "should just pack it in and go home." Prince spoke of Blackwater working in Pakistan, which appears to contradict the official, public Blackwater and US government line that Blackwater is not in Pakistan.

Prince also claimed that a Blackwater operative took down the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W Bush in Baghdad and criticized the Secret Service for being "flat-footed." He bragged that Blackwater forces "beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene" during Katrina and claimed that lawsuits, "tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills" and political attacks prevented him from deploying a humanitarian ship that could have responded to the earthquake in Haiti or the tsunami that hit Indonesia.

Several times during the speech, Prince appeared to demean Afghans his company is training in Afghanistan, saying Blackwater had to teach them "Intro to Toilet Use" and to do jumping jacks. At the same time, he bragged that US generals told him the Afghans Blackwater trains "are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan." Prince also revealed that he is writing a book, scheduled to be released this fall.

The speech was delivered January 14 at the University of Michigan in front of an audience of entrepreneurs, ROTC commanders and cadets, businesspeople and military veterans. The speech was titled "Overcoming Adversity: Leadership at the Tip of the Spear" and was sponsored by the Young Presidents' Association (YPO), a business networking association primarily made up of corporate executives. "Ripped from the headlines and described by Vanity Fair magazine, as a Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier and Spy, Erik Prince brings all that and more to our exclusive YPO speaking engagement," read the event's program, also obtained by The Nation. It proclaimed that Prince's speech was an "amazing don't miss opportunity from a man who has 'been there and done that' with a group of Cadets and Midshipmen who are months away from serving on the 'tip of the spear.'" Here are some of the highlights from Erik Prince's speech:

Send the Mercs into Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria

Prince painted a global picture in which Iran is "at the absolute dead center... of badness." The Iranians, he said, "want that nuke so that it is again a Persian Gulf and they very much have an attitude of when Darius ran most of the Middle East back in 1000 BC. That's very much what the Iranians are after." [NOTE: Darius of Persia actually ruled from 522 BC-486 BC]. Iran, Prince charged, has a "master plan to stir up and organize a Shia revolt through the whole region." Prince proposed that armed private soldiers from companies like Blackwater be deployed in countries throughout the region to target Iranian influence, specifically in Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. "The Iranians have a very sinister hand in these places," Prince said. "You're not going to solve it by putting a lot of uniformed soldiers in all these countries. It's way too politically sensitive. The private sector can operate there with a very, very small, very light footprint." In addition to concerns of political expediency, Prince suggested that using private contractors to conduct such operations would be cost-effective. "The overall defense budget is going to have to be cut and they're going to look for ways, they're going to have to have ways to become more efficient," he said. "And there's a lot of ways that the private sector can operate with a much smaller, much lighter footprint."

Prince also proposed using private armed contractors in the oil-rich African nation of Nigeria. Prince said that guerilla groups in the country are dramatically slowing oil production and extraction and stealing oil. "There's more than a half million barrels a day stolen there, which is stolen and organized by very large criminal syndicates. There's even some evidence it's going to fund terrorist organizations," Prince alleged. "These guerilla groups attack the pipeline, attack the pump house to knock it offline, which makes the pressure of the pipeline go soft. they cut that pipeline and they weld in their own patch with their own valves and they back a barge up into it. Ten thousand barrels at a time, take that oil, drive that 10,000 barrels out to sea and at $80 a barrel, that's $800,000. That's not a bad take for organized crime." Prince made no mention of the nonviolent indigenous opposition to oil extraction and pollution, nor did he mention the notorious human rights abuses connected to multinational oil corporations in Nigeria that have sparked much of the resistance.

Blackwater and the Geneva Convention

Prince scornfully dismissed the debate on whether armed individuals working for Blackwater could be classified as "unlawful combatants" who are ineligible for protection under the Geneva Convention. "You know, people ask me that all the time, 'Aren't you concerned that you folks aren't covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, 'Absolutely not,' because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD mentality. They're barbarians. They don't know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there."

It is significant that Prince mentioned his company operating in Pakistan given that Blackwater, the US government and the Pakistan government have all denied Blackwater works in Pakistan.

Taking Down the Iraqi Shoe Thrower for the 'Flat-Footed' Secret Service

Prince noted several high-profile attacks on world leaders in the past year, specifically a woman pushing the Pope at Christmas mass and the attack on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, saying there has been a pattern of "some pretty questionable security lately." He then proceeded to describe the feats of his Blackwater forces in protecting dignitaries and diplomats, claiming that one of his men took down the Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at President Bush in Baghdad in December 2008. Prince referred to al-Zaidi as the "shoe bomber:"

"A little known fact, you know when the shoe bomber in Iraq was throwing his shoes at President Bush, in December 08, we provided diplomatic security, but we had no responsibility for the president's security--that's always the Secret Service that does that. We happened to have a guy in the back of the room and he saw that first shoe go and he drew his weapon, got a sight picture, saw that it was only a shoe, he re-holstered, went forward and took that guy down while the Secret Service was still standing there flat-footed. I have a picture of that--I'm publishing a book, so watch for that later this fall--in which you'll see all the reporters looking, there's my guy taking the shoe thrower down. He didn't shoot him, he just tackled him, even though the guy was committing assault and battery on the president of the United States. I asked a friend of mine who used to run the Secret Service if they had a written report of that and he said the debrief was so bad they did not put it in writing."

While the Secret Service was widely criticized at the time for its apparent inaction during the incident, video of the event clearly showed another Iraqi journalist, not security guards, initially pulling al-Zaidi to the floor. Almost instantly thereafter, al-Zaidi was swarmed by a gang of various, unidentified security agents.

Blackwater's Forward Operating Bases

Prince went into detail about his company's operations in Afghanistan. Blackwater has been in the country since at least April 2002, when the company was hired by the CIA on a covert contract to provide the Agency with security. Since then, Blackwater has won hundreds of millions of dollars in security, counter-narcotics and training contracts for the State Department, Defense Department and the CIA. The company protects US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and other senior US officials, guards CIA personnel and trains the Afghan border police. "We built four bases and we staffed them and we run them," Prince said, referring to them as Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). He described them as being in the north, south, east and west of Afghanistan. "Spin Boldak in the south, which is the major drug trans-shipment area, in the east at a place called FOB Lonestar, which is right at the foothills of Tora Bora mountain. In fact if you ski off Tora Bora mountain, you can ski down to our firebase," Prince said, adding that Blackwater also has a base near Herat and another location. FOB Lonestar is approximately 15 miles from the Pakistan border. "Who else has built a [Forward Operating Base] along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?" Prince said earlier this year.

Blackwater's War on Drugs

Prince described a Narcotics Interdiction Unit Blackwater started in Afghanistan five years ago that remains active. "It is about a 200 person strike force to go after the big narcotics traffickers, the big cache sites," Prince said. "That unit's had great success. They've taken more than $3.5 billion worth of heroin out of circulation. We're not going after the farmers, but we're going after the traffickers." He described an operation in July 2009 where Blackwater forces actually called in NATO air strikes on a target during a mission:

"A year ago, July, they did the largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history, down in the south-east. They went down, they hit five targets that our intel guys put together and they wound up with about 12,000 pounds of heroin. While they were down there, they said, 'You know, these other three sites look good, we should go check them out.' Sure enough they did and they found a cache--262,000 kilograms of hash, which equates to more than a billion dollars street value. And it was an industrialized hash operation, it was much of the hash crop in Helmand province. It was palletized, they'd dug ditches out in the desert, covered it with tarps and the bags of powder were big bags with a brand name on it for the hash brand, palletized, ready to go into containers down to Karachi [Pakistan] and then out to Europe or elsewhere in the world. That raid alone took about $60 million out of the Taliban's coffers. So, those were good days. When the guys found it, they didn't have enough ammo, enough explosives, to blow it, they couldn't burn it all, so they had to call in multiple air strikes. Of course, you know, each of the NATO countries that came and did the air strikes took credit for finding and destroying the cache."

December 30, 2009 CIA Bombing in Khost

Prince also addressed the deadly suicide bombing on December 30 at the CIA station at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. Eight CIA personnel, including two Blackwater operatives, were killed in the bombing, which was carried out by a Jordanian double-agent. Prince was asked by an audience member about the "failure" to prevent that attack. The questioner did not mention that Blackwater was responsible for the security of the CIA officials that day, nor did Prince discuss Blackwater's role that day. Here is what Prince said:

"You know what? It is a tragedy that those guys were killed but if you put it in perspective, the CIA has lost extremely few people since 9/11. We've lost two or three in Afghanistan, before that two or three in Iraq and, I believe, one guy in Somalia--a landmine. So when you compare what Bill Donovan and the OSS did to the Germans and the Japanese, the Italians during World War II--and they lost hundreds and hundreds of people doing very difficult, very dangerous work--it is a tragedy when you lose people, but it is a cost of doing that work. It is essential, you've got to take risks. In that case, they had what appeared to be a very hot asset who had very relevant, very actionable intelligence and he turned out to be a bad guy... That's what the intelligence business is, you can't be assured success all the time. You've got to be willing to take risks. Those are calculated risks but sometimes it goes badly. I hope the Agency doesn't draw back and say, 'Oh, we have to retrench and not do that anymore,' all the rest. No. We need you to double down, go after them harder. That is a cost of doing business. They are there to kill us."

Prince to Some NATO Countries in Afghanistan: 'Go Home'

Prince spoke disparagingly of some unnamed NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan, saying they do not have the will for the fight. "Some of them do and a lot of them don't," he said. "It is such a patchwork of different international commitments as to what some can do and what some can't. A lot of them should just pack it in and go home." Canada, however, received praise from Prince. "The Canadians have lost per capita more than America has in Afghanistan. They are fighting and they are doing it and so if you see a Canadian thank them for that. The politicians at home take heavies for doing that," Prince said. He did not mention the fact that his company was hired by the Canadian government to train its forces.

Prince also described how his private air force (which he recently sold) bailed out a US military unit in trouble in Afghanistan. According to Prince, the unit was fighting the Taliban and was running out of ammo and needed an emergency re-supply. "Because of, probably some procedure written by a lawyer back in Washington, the Air Force was not permitted to drop in an uncertified drop zone... even to the unit that was running out of ammo," Prince said. "So they called and asked if our guys would do it and, of course, they said, 'Yes.' And the cool part of the story is the Army guys put their DZ mark in the drop zone, a big orange panel, on the hood of their hummer and our guys put the first bundle on the hood of that hummer. We don't always get that close, but that time a little too close."

Blackwater: Teaching Afghans to Use Toilets

Prince said his forces train 1300 Afghans every six weeks and described his pride in attending "graduations" of Blackwater-trained Afghans, saying that in six weeks they radically transform the trainees. "You take these officers, these Afghans and it's the first time in their life they've ever been part of something that's first class, that works. The instructors know what they're talking about, they're fed, the water works, there's ammunition for their guns. Everything works," Prince said. "The first few days of training, we have to do 'Intro to Toilet Use' because a lot of these guys have never even seen a flushed toilet before." Prince boasted: "We manage to take folks with a tribal mentality and, just like the Marine Corps does more effectively than anyone else, they take kids from disparate lifestyles across the United States and you throw them into Parris Island and you make them Marines. We try that same mentality there by pushing these guys very hard and, it's funny, I wish I had video to show you of the hilarious jumping jacks. If you take someone that's 25 years old and they've never done a jumping jack in their life--some of the convoluted motions they do it's comical. But the transformation from day one to the end of that program, they're very proud and they're very capable." Prince said that when he was in Afghanistan late last year, "I met with a bunch of generals and they said the Afghans that we train are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan."

Prince also discussed the Afghan women he says work with Blackwater. "Some of the women we've had, it's amazing," Prince said. "They come in in the morning and they have the burqa on and they transition to their cammies (camouflage uniforms) and I think they enjoy the baton work," he said, adding, "They've been hand-cuffing a little too much on the men."

Hurricane Katrina and Humanitarian Mercenaries

Erik Prince spoke at length about Blackwater's deployment in 2005 in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, bragging that his forces "rescued 128 people, sent thousands of meals in there and it worked." Prince boasted of his company's rapid response, saying, "We surged 145 guys in 36 hours from our facility five states away and we beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene." What Prince failed to mention was that at the time of the disaster, at least 35% of the Louisiana National Guard was deployed in Iraq. One National Guard soldier in New Orleans at the time spoke to Reuters, saying, "They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here... We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq." Much of the National Guard's equipment was in Iraq at the time, including high water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators.

Prince also said that he had a plan to create a massive humanitarian vessel that, with the generous support of major corporations, could have responded to natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis across the globe. "I thought, man, the military has perfected how to move men and equipment into combat, why can't we do that for the humanitarian side?" Prince said. The ship Prince wanted to use for these missions was an 800 foot container vessel capable of shipping "1700 containers, which would have lined up six and a half miles of humanitarian assistance with another 250 vehicles" onboard. "We could have gotten almost all those boxes donated. It would have been boxes that would have had generator sets from Caterpillar, grain from ADM [Archer Daniels Midland], anti-biotics from pharmaceutical companies, all the stuff you need to do massive humanitarian assistance," Prince said, adding that it "would have had turnkey fuel support, food, surgical, portable surgical hospitals, beds cots, blankets, all the above." Prince says he was going to do the work for free, "on spec," but "instead we got attacked politically and ended up paying tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills the last few years. It's an unfortunate misuse of resources because a boat like that sure would have been handy for the Haitian people right now."

Outing Erik Prince

Prince also addressed what he described as his outing as a CIA asset working on sensitive US government programs. He has previously blamed Congressional Democrats and the news media for naming him as working on the US assassination program. The US intelligence apparatus "depends heavily on Americans that are not employed by the government to facilitate greater success and access for the intelligence community," Prince said. "It's unprecedented to have people outed by name, especially ones that were running highly classified programs. And as much as the left got animated about Valerie Plame, outing people by name for other very very sensitive programs was unprecedented and definitely threw me under the bus."

Jeremy Scahill is the author [1] of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [2].