http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...dering-plan-to-privatize-afghanistan-war.html Report: Trump Is Considering Erik Prince’s Plan to Privatize the Afghanistan War
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/politics/erik-prince-project-veritas.html Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate Liberal Groups Mr. Prince, a contractor close to the Trump administration, contacted veteran spies for operations by Project Veritas, the conservative group known for conducting stings on news organizations and other groups. WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents. One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show. Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former C.I.A. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her. Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon’s role in the teachers’ union operation — detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union — has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince’s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group’s activities. Both Project Veritas and Mr. Prince have ties to President Trump’s aides and family. Whether any Trump administration officials or advisers to the president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear. But the effort is a glimpse of a vigorous private campaign to try to undermine political groups or individuals perceived to be in opposition to Mr. Trump’s agenda. Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has at times served as an informal adviser to Trump administration officials. He worked with the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during the presidential transition. In 2017, he met with White House and Pentagon officials to pitch a plan to privatize the Afghan war using contractors in lieu of American troops. Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, rejected the idea. Mr. Prince appears to have become interested in using former spies to train Project Veritas operatives in espionage tactics sometime during the 2016 presidential campaign. Reaching out to several intelligence veterans — and occasionally using Mr. Seddon to make the pitch — Mr. Prince said he wanted the Project Veritas employees to learn skills like how to recruit sources and how to conduct clandestine recordings, among other surveillance techniques. James O’Keefe, the head of Project Veritas, declined to answer detailed questions about Mr. Prince, Mr. Seddon and other topics, but he called his group a “proud independent news organization” that is involved in dozens of investigations. He said that numerous sources were coming to the group “providing confidential documents, insights into internal processes and wearing hidden cameras to expose corruption and misconduct.” “No one tells Project Veritas who or what to investigate,” he said. A spokesman for Mr. Prince declined to comment. Emails sent to Mr. Seddon went unanswered. Mr. Prince is under investigation by the Justice Department over whether he lied to a congressional committee examining Russian interference in the 2016 election, and for possible violations of American export laws. Last year, the House Intelligence Committee made a criminal referral to the Justice Department about Mr. Prince, saying he lied about the circumstances of his meeting with a Russian banker in the Seychelles in January 2017. Once a small operation running on a shoestring budget, Project Veritas in recent years has had a surge in donations from both private donors and conservative foundations. According to its latest publicly available tax filing, Project Veritas received $8.6 million in contributions and grants in 2018. Mr. O’Keefe earned about $387,000. Last year, the group received a $1 million contribution made through the law firm Alston & Bird, a financial document obtained by The New York Times showed. A spokesman for the firm said that Alston & Bird “has never contributed to Project Veritas on its own behalf, nor is it a client of ours.” The spokesman declined to say on whose behalf the contribution was made. The financial document also listed the names of others who gave much smaller amounts to Project Veritas last year. Several of them confirmed their donations. The group has also become intertwined with the political activities of Mr. Trump and his family. The Trump Foundation gave $20,000 to Project Veritas in 2015, the year that Mr. Trump began his bid for the presidency. The next year, during a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump claimed without substantiation that videos released by Mr. O’Keefe showed that Mrs. Clinton and President Barack Obama had paid people to incite violence at rallies for Mr. Trump. In a book published in 2018, Mr. O’Keefe wrote that Mr. Trump years earlier had encouraged him to infiltrate Columbia University and obtain Mr. Obama’s records. Last month, Project Veritas made public secretly recorded video of a longtime ABC News correspondent who was critical of the network’s political coverage and its emphasis on business considerations over journalism. Many conservatives have gleefully pounced on Project Veritas’s disclosures, including one particularly influential voice: Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. The website for Mr. O’Keefe’s coming wedding listed Donald Trump Jr. as an invited guest. Mr. Prince invited Project Veritas operatives — including Mr. O’Keefe — to his family’s Wyoming ranch for training in 2017, The Intercept reported last year. Mr. O’Keefe and others shared social media photos of taking target practice with guns at the ranch, including one post from Mr. O’Keefe saying that with the training, Project Veritas will be “the next great intelligence agency.” Mr. Prince had hired a former MI6 officer to help train the Project Veritas operatives, The Intercept wrote, but it did not identify the officer. Mr. Seddon regularly updated Mr. O’Keefe about the operation against the Michigan teachers’ union, according to internal Project Veritas emails, where the language of the group’s leaders is marbled with spy jargon. They used a code name — LibertyU — for their operative inside the organization, Marisa Jorge, who graduated from Liberty University in Virginia, one of the nation’s largest Christian colleges. Mr. Seddon wrote that Ms. Jorge “copied a great many documents from the file room,” and Mr. O’Keefe bragged that the group would be able to get “a ton more access agents inside the educational establishment.” The emails refer to other operations, including weekly case updates, along with training activities that involved “operational targeting.” Project Veritas redacted specifics about those operations from the messages. In August 2017, Ms. Jorge wrote to Mr. Seddon that she had managed to record a local union leader talking about Ms. DeVos and other topics. “Good stuff,” Mr. Seddon wrote back. “Did you receive the spare camera yet?” As education secretary, Ms. DeVos has been a vocal critic of teachers’ unions, saying in 2018 that they have a “stranglehold” over politicians at the federal and state levels. She and Mr. Prince grew up in Michigan, where their father made a fortune in the auto parts business. AFT Michigan sued Project Veritas in federal court, alleging trespassing, eavesdropping and other offenses. The teachers’ union is asking for more than $3 million in damages, accusing the group of being a “vigilante organization which claims to be dedicated to exposing corruption. It is, instead, an entity dedicated to a specific political agenda.” Project Veritas has said its activities are legal and protected by the First Amendment, and the case is scheduled to go to trial in the fall. Other Project Veritas employees on the emails include Joe Halderman, an award-winning former television producer who in 2010 pleaded guilty to trying to extort $2 million from the comedian David Letterman. Mr. Halderman was copied on several messages providing updates about the Michigan operation, and in one message, he gave instructions to Ms. Jorge. Project Veritas tax filings list Mr. Halderman as a “project manager.” Two other employees, Gaz Thomas and Samuel Chamberlain, were also identified in emails and appeared to play important roles in the Michigan operation. Efforts to locate Mr. Thomas were unsuccessful. A man named Samuel Chamberlain who matched the description of the one employed by Mr. O’Keefe denied he worked for Project Veritas. He did not respond to follow-up phone messages or an email. Last year, Project Veritas submitted a proposed list of witnesses for the trial over the lawsuit. Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Thomas were on the list. Mr. Seddon was not. Ms. Jorge, 25, did not respond to email addresses associated with her Liberty University account. In an archived version of her LinkedIn page, Ms. Jorge wrote she had a deep interest in the conservative movement and hoped one day to serve on the Supreme Court after attending law school. In a YouTube video, Mr. O’Keefe described the lawsuit as “frivolous” and pointed to a portion of the deposition in which David Hecker, the president of AFT Michigan, said that one of the goals of the lawsuit was to “stop Project Veritas from doing the kind of work that it does.” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement: “Let’s be clear who the wrongdoer is here: Project Veritas used a fake intern to lie her way into our Michigan office, to steal documents and to spy — and they got caught. We’re just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage.” In 2018, Ms. Jorge infiltrated the congressional campaign of Ms. Spanberger, posing as a campaign volunteer. At the time, Ms. Spanberger was running to unseat a sitting Republican congressman in a race both parties considered important for control of the House. Ms. Jorge was eventually exposed and kicked out of the campaign office. It was unclear whether Mr. Seddon was involved in planning that operation. Mr. Seddon was a longtime British intelligence officer who served around the world, including in Washington in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He is married to an American diplomat, Alice Seddon, who is serving in the American consulate in Lagos, Nigeria. Mr. O’Keefe and his group have taken aim at targets over the years including Planned Parenthood, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Democracy Partners, a group that consults with liberal and progressive electoral causes. In 2016, a Project Veritas operative infiltrated Democracy Partners using a fake name and fabricated résumé and made secret recordings of the staff. The year after the sting, Democracy Partners sued Project Veritas, and its lawyers have since deposed Mr. O’Keefe. In that deposition, Mr. O’Keefe defended the group’s undercover tactics, saying they were part of a long tradition of investigative journalism going back to muckraking reporters like Upton Sinclair. “I’m not ashamed of the methods that we use or the recordings that we use,” he said. He was asked whether he had provided any of the group’s secret recordings of Democracy Partners to the Republican National Committee or any member of the Trump family. He said that he did not think so. In 2010, Mr. O’ Keefe and three others pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor after admitting they entered a government building in New Orleans under false pretenses as part of a sting.
The Lead Federal Agency Responding to Protesters in Portland Employs Thousands of Private Contractors Congress needs to shine a light on the use of private security firms, including ‘Blackwater’ legacy companies, in Trump’s response to ongoing civil rights protests The Trump administration’s deployment of federal law enforcers in Portland, Oregon, as part of a supposed effort to protect government property has prompted at least two lawsuits alleging that their show of force has resulted in abuses of authority and the unnecessary use of violence against peaceful protesters, journalists and observers. What has not been reported widely in the media, however, is the fact that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unit that is coordinating the “crowd control” effort — an agency called the Federal Protective Service (FPS) — is composed largely of contract security personnel. Those contractors are being furnished to FPS by major private-sector security companies like Blackwater corporate descendant Triple Canopy as well as dozens of other private security firms. In fact, FPS spends more than $1 billion a year on these contract security guards who are authorized to conduct crowd control at federal properties, such as those in Portland. And, based on available photographic and document evidence, it appears those private contractors are now part of the federal force arrayed in Portland and are likely to be part of the federal response President Trump has promised to stand up in multiple other cities, including Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia and other urban centers led by Democratic mayors across the country. There are some 13,000 security guards nationwide employed by FPS via contracts with private security firms, a figure that can be expanded through existing and future contracts. Via contracts with FPS, more than 50 private security firms provide guards — referred to as protective security officers (PSOs) — to the agency in the Washington, D.C., area alone. Among the responsibilities of these contract guards is to assist federal law enforcers with crowd control at federal properties as needed. “The most difficult tasks PSOs are called upon to perform include standing for prolonged periods of time and interacting with large volumes of people,” states a past interagency agreement involving FPS, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. “Other demanding, but less frequent, tasks include responding to medical emergencies, performing CPR, and performing crowd control [such as is occurring in Portland in recent weeks].” There is a major problem, however, with using these FPS contract guards — who are supposed to be limited to patrolling and securing federal facilities and grounds — in long-running “civil disturbances” like those unfolding now in Portland, and elsewhere around the country. The FPS has a long history of failing to properly vet and adequately monitor and ensure that these guards have proper training and certifications, including proper firearms training. That lack of training can pose a great risk to the safety of protesters and the law enforcers they work with alike should a situation become heated. As outlined in a prior story on Medium, U.S. Government Accountability Office reports published between 2009 and 2014 on the FPS security guard program have uncovered guards with felony convictions; a large percentage of guard files examined with at least one expired certification, including a declaration they have not been convicted of domestic violence; and multiple security-guard files that were missing documentation on weapons training and security clearances, among other issues. The role that these private contractors are playing in current crowd-control efforts in Portland, and the role they will play going forward if Trump does expand the federal intervention to other cities across the nation, is best described as opaque — seemingly on purpose. The danger, however, is that Trump and his attorney general, William Barr, will expand this private contractor force in extending the reach of the federal response to recent civil rights protests — creating what is essentially a national paramilitary police force. One former U.S. Secret Service officer who was assigned to the White House raised an alarm when questioned about that prospect. “This concerns me, as FPS officers train with us at the federal law-enforcement training center in Glynco, Georgia,” the former Secret Service officer said, asking that his name not be used. “I can assure you that a contract officer isn’t law-enforcement certified. …This sounds very shady, and it sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.” Well, in fact, at least two lawsuits are now in motion, one filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Oregon and the other by the Oregon Attorney General’s Office, with both lawsuits alleging the federal response in Portland is violating the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens participating in legitimate, First Amendment-protected protests. “The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oregon today sued the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals Service, which have deployed federal agents to Portland, Oregon,” a press statement released by the ACLU states. “These agents, which have been deployed over the widespread objections of local leaders and community members, have been indiscriminately using tear gas, rubber bullets, and acoustic weapons against protesters, journalists, and legal observers. “Federal officers also shot a protester in the head … with a rubber bullet, fracturing the person’s face and skull.” The lawsuit filed this month by the Oregon’s Attorney General likewise accuses the federal crowd-control force — clad in riot gear and camouflage uniforms — of overstepping its legal authority. “Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum this evening will file a lawsuit in federal court against the United States Department of Homeland Security, the United States Marshals Service, the United States Customs and Border Protection (CPB), the Federal Protection Service and their agents alleging they have engaged in unlawful law enforcement in violation of the civil rights of Oregonians by seizing and detaining them without probable cause,” the Oregon Department of Justice said in announcing the litigation. What has not been addressed yet in this case is the unique legal and constitutional challenges posed by deploying a federal force against U.S. citizens that is composed of a mix of government agents and private contractors, including CPB’s Special Response Team [SRT], U.S. Marshals and DHS police — specifically the FPS, which is overseeing the effort and employs thousands of contract security personnel. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its components will continue to work tirelessly to reestablish law and order,” CBP said in a press statement related to the federal response in Portland. “The Federal Protective Service (FPS) is the lead government agency that CBP personnel are supporting. CBP personnel have been deployed to Portland in direct support of the Presidential Executive Order and the newly established DHS Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT). “ So, what evidence exists that private contractors working for FPS are actively engaged with federal agents in using physical force against protesters in Portland? For one, that is part of their responsibility as FPS officers. “As symbols of government, federal facilities are often the place where citizens congregate to express their concerns about an issue, often in the form of mass demonstrations or protests,” DHS’ website says in describing FPS. “When this happens, FPS law enforcement officers are on-site to ensure that all citizens can express themselves in a safe and peaceful manner. When demonstrations start to become violent against others, or disruptive to government operations, FPS officers will step in to regain the peace.” A manual for security guards produced by FPS includes an entire chapter on handling “civil disturbances,” such as the protests now occurring across the nation over racial injustice — sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. “You may be required to take actions to control crowds during civil disturbances,” states the FPS private-contractor manual, published in 2008 and marked “For Official Use Only.” “You also may be required to assist law enforcement personnel during such situations.” Photographic evidence from the protests in Portland also shows that FPS personnel are deployed in Portland as part of the federal crowd-control force. Some have described this federal force as a “secret police” unit because many of the federal police are clad in camouflage with no name tags and are extremely difficult to identify. Photographs taken by an ACLU observer (Doug Brown) demonstrate how the uniforms of this opaque federal force are creating unnecessary confusion. The photos also raise concerns over whether some of the FPS personnel involved in the Portland response are, in fact, contract security personnel. Image for post In the two ACLU photos displayed here, it is clear that in one shot [above] the group of law enforcers — with arm patches emblazoned with the letters SRT — is part of CPB’s Special Response Team. The other photo [below], however, shows uniformed FPS officers standing next to an individual in camouflage who also has an FPS shoulder patch. Why are they dressed differently and how can anyone reasonably tell if those are private security contractors employed by FPS or members of the much smaller cadre of government agents, some 1,000 nationwide, employed by FPS? Image for post And, if this federal tactical team is going to be deployed in multiple cities across the nation in the coming weeks, as Trump has threatened, how can that be accomplished without relying on FPS contract security personnel? Given FPS contract guards are expected to assist with crowd control, it’s reasonable to assume they are in this case as well. In addition to Triple Canopy, another security firm FPS works with is Paragon Systems Inc., which in 2013, for example, inked a deal with FPS to provide security guards for federal owned and leased properties in Ohio that had a total contract ceiling of $93.4 million. Within the past month, Paragon ran an online advertisement seeking to hire security guards for FPS to provide “proactive patrols of DOJ property” at an undisclosed location or locations. A similar recent job-opening advertisement from Triple Canopy notes that contractors it is seeking to hire for an FPS post “must be able to wear protective body armor as part of the duty uniform.” Image for post FPS spokesperson Robert Sperling responded to questions about the role FPS contract guards are playing in controlling crowds at recent protests by saying simply: “The Federal Protective Service protective security officers are manning their posts and do not have authority or jurisdiction beyond federal property.” The use of contract security personnel in actions targeting U.S. citizens raises serious questions about the future of policing accountability in America. The privatization of policing is a lucrative business, with numerous private security firms already taking in hundreds of millions of dollars annually from contracts with FPS — not to mention the privatization of prisons that has long been in effect. It seems determining the precise role private contractors are playing in using force against protesters, journalists and observers in Portland, and the role planned for them in other major urban centers in the weeks ahead, is fertile ground for congressional inquiry and legislation that will establish some firm bumpers for controlling the use and spread of this practice. A former supervisory DHS agent interviewed for this story lays out the dangers of ignoring this issue: “Before I left [DHS], I attended meetings about creating the private prisons. I was against it because of the lack of oversight,” states the former supervisory DHS official, who also asked not to be named. “Those meetings were used also to recruit like-minded personnel for high six-figure salaries after retirement [from their jobs as federal employees]. I was not invited back. “… Outsourcing [to private contractors] is the way to protect your actual mission,” the former DHS agent says. “Layering [mixing federal agents in with contractors] provides plausible deniability. Jurisdiction and authority are given by the attorney general [in this case, William Barr]. “They can also use the authority of another agency [i.e., FPS] by being next to them (implied authority) …. Finding thugs is not a problem. Remember, they used mercenaries to capture [DEA agent] Kiki Camarena’s torturers [in Mexico].”
https://www.businessinsider.com/gop...x-spies-infiltrated-liberal-groups-nyt-2021-6 Undercover GOP operatives trained by former spies infiltrated liberal groups to try and compromise them from the inside, report says GOP operatives trained by ex-spies embedded themselves in Democratic operations across the West, NYT reported. The operation was spearheaded by a hardline Trump ally and a former British spy. It highlights the GOP's push to dominate national politics by taking over at the state and local level. An ultrawealthy Republican donor and a former British spy spearheaded an effort to train GOP operatives to go undercover and infiltrate liberal organizations, The New York Times reported Friday. The donor, Erik Prince, is a hardline Trump supporter who founded the private military contractor Blackwater, now known as Academi. Prince worked with a former British spy, Richard Seddon, on a conservative operation to "infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle," The Times reported, citing extensive interviews and documents. The outlet reported that Prince first recruited Seddon at the beginning of the Trump administration and asked him to hire ex-spies to train Republican operatives in the art of political sabotage on his Wyoming ranch, adding a new layer to the term "ratf---ing." Two of the undercover operatives were Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca. They embedded themselves in the Democratic operation in Wyoming, and targeted both progressives and moderate Republicans they believed were a threat to the Trump administration. According to The Times, Maier and LaRocca were based in Wyoming but ingratiated themselves in Democratic politics in Arizona and Colorado as well. Neither Maier nor LaRocca responded to the NYT's requests for comment. And in retrospect, many of the personal details LaRocca offered to her new friends in Wyoming politics didn't add up: she claimed that she had to live in Colorado and not Wyoming because of her dog, and that she went under a fake name because of a stalker but changed it back because the police told her the stalker had "reformed." The outlet reported that Seddon secured financial backing from Susan Gore, the wealthy Gore-Tex heiress, by the end of 2018 and began recruiting operatives from the right-wing group Project Veritas. Project Veritas and its CEO, James O'Keefe, have trafficked in misinformation and propaganda and are known for selectively editing videos as part of sting operations against mainstream-media outlets. O'Keefe defended the group's work in a previous statement to Insider, saying that "not a single one of our videos has been deceptively edited or taken out of context." One of the targets of the undercover GOP operation was the progressive group Better Wyoming. The head of the group, Nate Martin, told The Times that he believed the operation's goal was to "dig up this information and you sit on it until you really can destroy somebody." After becoming deeply enmeshed with the Democratic party infrastructure in Wyoming, Maier and LaRocca got their feet in the door to a higher level of Democratic politics with sudden, substantial contributions to other western Democratic candidates like Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, raising questions about the duo's campaign finance activities. "Sometimes when you're looking at patterns of contributions, you start to see people with relatively limited resources making sizable political contributions," Brendan Fischer, director of the federal reform program at the Campaign Legal Center told The Times. "That can be a red flag." George Durazzo Jr., a Democratic fundraiser in Colorado who secured sizable donations from Maier and LaRocca, was outraged when The Times told him of the two operatives' true goal. "If they are indeed Benedict Arnold and Mata Hari, I was the one who was fooled," he said. The extent of Prince and Seddon's effort underscores the Republican Party's push to dominate national politics by taking over at the state and local level. Indeed, since the 2020 election and Trump's failed efforts to nullify Joe Biden's legitimate victory, Republican state legislatures across the country have passed a slew of laws that would not only make it more difficult for voters to cast ballots, but also make it easier for partisan forces to control and potentially overturn states' election results.