Erik Prince and Blackwater
In 1995, an industrialist by the name of Edgar Prince dropped dead of a heart attack in my hometown of Holland, Michigan. Prince, who made his fortune selling lighted visor mirrors to the auto industry, was the largest employer in Holland and was respected by the community for his local redevelopment work--he saved downtown Holland--and overall philanthropy.
When he died, his widow and children sold Prince Corp., where my sister worked, to Johnson Controls, Inc., for $1.35 billion. In a rare gesture in the cutthroat corporate world, the Prince family gave sizeable payments to both managers and rank and file employees to thank them for their service. I never quite figured Ed Prince for a Democrat--they're exceedingly rare in Holland--but I thought he must at least be a moderate Republican, if he had any politics at all.
How wrong I was.
Let us start by looking at Ed Prince's son, Erik Prince . When his father died, I learned only today, Erik used his inheritance to found Blackwater, the private security firm that operates as a mercenary army for the U.S. State Department in Iraq. I'll spare you for now my thoughts on the need for higher, not lower inheritance taxes. Blackwater, on Sept. 16, killed at least 17 Iraqi civilians at an intersection in Baghdad. The incident apparently began when a Blackwater guard in a convoy shot and killed an Iraqi man driving his mother to pick up her husband at the hospital where he worked.
Accusations have since been leveled that Blackwater personnel have killed other Iraqi civilians. Blackwater, it seems, whisks the involved mercenaries out of Iraq and pays off the families of the victims. The killers are fired, but don't face legal prosecution.
Erik Prince testified yesterday before a House committee chaired by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman. He defended his men, denied they were mercenaries, and even more corrosively funny, denied that political connections played any part in Blackwater's success in the no-bid world of Iraq War contracting.
Prince is about as connected as they come in the GOP and religious right, according to Media Mouse, a blog that tracks the religious right in West Michigan. His father, Ed Prince, was a backer of James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who wields major influence in today's Republican Party. In 1993, he provided seed money to start the anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-sex education Family Research Council and went on its board. Gary Bauer, the first head of the FRC, paid tribute to Ed Prince and outlined his role in this letter after his death. It makes interesting reading, and thanks to Media Mouse for putting it online.
But it doesn't stop there. Erik Prince's sister Betsy is married to Dick DeVos, Jr., son of the Amway/Quixtar co-founder Richard DeVos. DeVos, Jr., was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor of Michigan last year. Members of the DeVos family are likewise major backers of rightwing Republican candidates and causes. If there's anyone the Dick Cheney cabal would have listened to in handing out no-bid Iraq contracts, it's this bunch.
If there's any good side to this sordid tale for me, it's that Erik Prince isn't an alumni of Holland High School, where I went. He graduated from our Bible-thumping rival, Holland Christian High School. Nor did he attend Hope College, where I went, although his sister, Emilie Wierda, is on the board of trustees there. Sometimes I think Hope has been taken over by pod people--it was far less conservative when I was there.
Many in the Prince family are members of the ultra-conservative Christian Reformed Church that claims many, though not nearly all Holland residents as members. Erik Prince has since converted to Roman Catholicism, according to this article that originally ran in the Grand Rapids Press.
None of this should necessarily overshadow the considerable good that Ed Prince did for Holland. But since he helped in a major way to finance political activities I greatly oppose, I'll never think of him in quite the same way again.