Crusader: Erik Prince's World of Mercenary War

From best-selling, award-winning journalists, an explosive investigation into the metamorphosis of Erik Prince after the collapse of Blackwater, revealing his nefarious ties in China, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, and the Trump / Pence White House. On March 2, 2009, ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince resigned as CEO of Blackwater, a company plagued by multiple scandals involving out-of-control mercenary troops' use of force against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company was broken up and sold for parts -- Prince's efforts to privatize war had been thwarted, and it seemed unlikely he'd ever recover. But Prince, the scion of a wealthy Christian, conservative family that has bankrolled far-right causes for decades, never stopped pursuing profit and power - first quietly, during the Obama presidency, and now, with Trump in the White House and his sister as the Education Secretary, unabashedly. As Jeremy Scahill and Matthew A. Cole report in the follow-up to Scahill's national bestseller Blackwater , Prince has been secretly building a new company, Frontier Services Group, based out of Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. While ostensibly driven by patriotic zeal during the Blackwater years, Prince is now positioning himself as a businessman, keen to partner with Russia, China and even Libya, offering services that range from a private air force to security and paramilitary services to surveillance and intelligence gathering. His aim is to privatize, control, and sell the entire supply chain of war. He envisions building a modern-day East India Company, unchecked by any government and dominant in its control of trade. Whether or not he pulls it off, he'll do plenty of damage along the way, undermining democracy and boosting tyrannical leaders. Prince is under investigation by at least 3 different congressional committees. He is one of the keys to understanding the full extent of the criminality of the Trump administration. As Scahill and Cole contend, Prince is the embodiment of the moral depravity of the U.S. as it struggles to maintain its global dominance.