{"id":3656,"date":"2009-08-05T14:17:01","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T19:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=3656"},"modified":"2009-08-05T16:03:37","modified_gmt":"2009-08-05T21:03:37","slug":"censoring-the-truth-about-the-crusader-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=3656","title":{"rendered":"Censoring the Truth About the Crusader Prince?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Blackwater Helicopter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1306\/845864701_e25183639a.jpg?resize=500%2C375\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/p>\n<p>[digg-reddit-me]Scott Horton <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/blogs-and-stories\/2009-08-04\/blackwaters-new-whistleblowers\">apparently reported<\/a> on several declarations filed in Federal Court in Eastern Virginia that included explosive allegations regarding the military contractor Blackwater and its owner Erik Prince. <a href=\"http:\/\/andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com\/the_daily_dish\/2009\/08\/the-crusader-prince.html\">Andrew Sullivan linked to him<\/a> &#8211; but between Sullivan&#8217;s linking and my clicking on Sullivan&#8217;s link, the article was taken down. A search of The Daily Beast for Scott Horton&#8217;s article turns up nothing except a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/doc\/20090817\/scahill\">Jeremy Scahill of <\/a><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/doc\/20090817\/scahill\">The Nation<\/a><\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/doc\/20090817\/scahill\">&#8216;s recent piece on the same subject<\/a>. Andrew Sullivan had excerpted this summary of the charges contained in the Declarations on his blog:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Both men requested anonymity to avoid mortal threats. \u201cIt appears that Mr. Prince or his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities,\u201d said John Doe #1. John Doe #2 says he received personal threats after leaving Blackwater.<\/li>\n<li>Prince \u201cviews himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.\u201d He \u201cintentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Blackwater \u201cemployees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms of Iraqis and other Arabs, such as &#8216;ragheads\u2019 or \u2018hajis.\u2019\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Blackwater deployed to Iraq individuals who (a) made \u201cstatements about wanting to\u2026 \u2018kill ragheads\u2019 or achieve \u2018kills\u2019 or \u2018body counts,\u2019\u201d (b) drank excessively, (c) used steroids, and (d) failed to follow safety and other instructions governing the use of lethal weapons. Mental-health professionals who raised concerns about deployment of such individuals were fired.<\/li>\n<li>Prince obtained \u201cillegal ammunition\u2026 designed to explode after penetrating within the human body\u201d and smuggled it into Iraq for use.<\/li>\n<li>Prince distributed other illegal weapons for use in Iraq.<\/li>\n<li>Prince was aware of the use of prostitutes, \u201cincluding child prostitutes,\u201d at Blackwater\u2019s \u201cMan Camp\u201d in Iraq, which he visited.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The actual declarations can be found here &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/2parse.com\/\/docs\/JohnDoe1Affidavit.pdf\">John Doe 1<\/a> (pdf) &#8211; and here &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/2parse.com\/\/docs\/JohnDoe2Affidavit.pdf\">John Doe 2<\/a> (pdf). These papers were part of opposition to a motion &#8211; the complete set of which can be found here. (Beware &#8211; it&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/2parse.com\/\/?page_id=3657\">few hundred pages of pdfs<\/a>). I have emailed Scott Horton to see if he has any comment\/explanation for why his article is no longer up on the Daily Beast.<\/p>\n<p><em>Edit<\/em>: The Daily Beast still has not gotten back to me. Mr. Horton replied telling me that he was looking into why his article was taken down himself.<\/p>\n<p>[Image by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/johnrohan\/845864701\/\">John Rohan<\/a> licensed under Creative Commons.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[digg-reddit-me]Scott Horton apparently reported on several declarations filed in Federal Court in Eastern Virginia that included explosive allegations regarding the military contractor Blackwater and its owner Erik Prince. Andrew Sullivan linked to him &#8211; but between Sullivan&#8217;s linking and my clicking on Sullivan&#8217;s link, the article was taken down. A search of The Daily Beast [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,367,4,458,9],"tags":[58,2132,2135,2131,2130,2133,2134,908,1811,96],"class_list":["post-3656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iraq","category-national-security","category-politics","category-the-opinionsphere","category-the-war-on-terrorism","tag-andrew-sullivan","tag-blackwater","tag-erik-prince","tag-federal-court","tag-jeremy-scahill","tag-john-doe-1","tag-john-doe-2","tag-scott-horton","tag-the-daily-beast","tag-the-nation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-WY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3656"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3661,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions\/3661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}