![\"erik_prince.jpg\"](\"\/blog\/wp-content\/media\/images\/erik_prince.jpg\" "\\"erik_prince.jpg\\"")
<\/p>\nAuthored by Jessica Corbett via Common Dreams<\/p>\n
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An explosive New York Times report revealed<\/a>\u00a0Saturday that notorious war profiteer Erik Prince recruited former American and British spies to work with the right-wing group Project Veritas to infiltrate at least one Democratic congressional campaign and organizations \u201cconsidered hostile\u201d to President Donald Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n Prince is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos<\/a> and founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater<\/a>. Through a spokesperson, he declined the Times\u2018 request for comment on the piece, which is based on interviews and documents obtained by the newspaper, including internal Project Veritas emails.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth Project Veritas<\/a>\u00a0and Mr. Prince<\/a>\u00a0have ties to President Trump\u2019s aides and family,\u201d the Times noted. \u201cWhether 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\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n The results of the Times\u2018 investigation were described by readers on social media as \u201cchilling,<\/a>\u201d \u201cstunning,<\/a>\u201d and \u201cinsane.<\/a>\u201d Jacobin magazine assistant editor Alex Press declared,<\/a>\u00a0\u201cMy paranoid fantasies are all true!\u201d In response to a tweet about the reporting, author and activist Naomi Klein simply wrote, \u201cRead.\u201d<\/p>\n The consumer watchdog group Allied Progress responded with a statement Saturday night, calling on the House Oversight Committee to conduct an immediate investigation into what DeVos knew about Prince\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of dots to connect here,\u201d said Allied Progress director Derek Martin. \u201cSecretary DeVos\u2019 brother was directly involved in a spying scheme in her home state against a teachers\u2019 union she\u2019s been hostile with for years. If this doesn\u2019t clear the bar for an immediate Congressional investigation, nothing does.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe already know Secretary DeVos is no friend of public education, but if she gave the go-ahead to enlist former intelligence officers to steal documents from public education advocates that she disagrees with, it steps well beyond policy disagreement and into criminal territory,\u201d Martin added. \u201cIf Secretary DeVos was in any way involved, it will confirm that she stops at nothing to undermine public schools.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the Times:<\/p>\n \u201cOne 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\u2019 unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union\u2019s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.<\/p>\n Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former CIA officer who went on to win an important House seat<\/a>\u00a0in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her.<\/p>\n Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention<\/a>\u00a0using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians, and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon\u2019s role in the teachers\u2019 union operation\u2014detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union\u2014has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince\u2019s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group\u2019s activities.\u201d<\/p>\n The Times reported that it is unclear whether Seddon was involved in the Spanberger operation and the former British intelligence officer\u2014who is married to American diplomat Alice Seddon\u2014did not respond to the newspaper\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n James O\u2019Keefe of Project Veritas told the Times that his group is a \u201cproud independent news organization\u201d and \u201cno one tells Project Veritas who or what to investigate.\u201d Although he declined to discuss the details of the report, he also claimed that various sources are \u201cproviding confidential documents, insights into internal processes, and wearing hidden cameras to expose corruption and misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n Past targets of Project Veritas have included the nonprofit healthcare organization Planned Parenthood,<\/a>\u00a0the political group Disrupt J20,<\/a>\u00a0and recently, David Wright,<\/a>\u00a0a 20-year veteran political correspondent at ABC News. Project Veritas has also recorded<\/a> undercover video of a Times editor and approached<\/a> the Washington Post with a false story about Roy Moore,<\/a> a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama.<\/p>\n The Project Veritas operative inside AFT Michigan was Liberty University graduate Marisa Jorge, according to the Times. O\u2019Keefe and Seddon used the code name \u201cLibertyU\u201d for Jorge when discussing the operation over email. Jorge, who also reportedly infiltrated the Spanberger campaign by posing as a volunteer, did not respond to the newspaper\u2019s request for comment. The federal lawsuit that AFT Michigan brought against Project Veritas is scheduled to go to trial later this year.<\/p>\n In a statement to the Times, AFT president Randi Weingarten said: \u201cLet\u2019s 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\u2014and they got caught. We\u2019re just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage.\u201d<\/p>\n Weingarten added on Twitter Saturday, \u201cThey didn\u2019t succeed in their attempt to hurt our union but note what the right wing will do to try to eliminate workers\u2019 voice.\u201d<\/p>\n The Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill\u2014who released<\/a> the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World\u2019s Most Powerful Mercenary Army in 2007\u2014wrote<\/a> on Twitter Saturday that with this piece, the Times \u201cpushes the 2017 story from [The Intercept\u2018s Matthew Cole]\u2069 forward about Erik Prince attempts to infiltrate liberal groups via Project Veritas.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, Cole published<\/a> an article for The Intercept titled \u201cThe Complete Mercenary: How Erik Prince Used the Rise of Trump to Make an Improbable Comeback.\u201d<\/p>\n Noting that Trump gave Project Veritas thousands of dollars through his foundation and met with O\u2019Keefe shortly after announcing his run for president, Cole reported:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is unclear if Trump\u2019s support of Project Veritas spurred Prince\u2019s interest in the group, but in late 2015 or early 2016, Prince arranged for O\u2019Keefe and Project Veritas to receive training in intelligence and elicitation techniques from a retired military intelligence operative named Euripides Rubio Jr. According to a former Trump White House official who discussed the Veritas training with Rubio, the former special operative quit after several weeks of training, complaining that the Veritas group wasn\u2019t capable of learning. Rubio did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n In the winter of 2017, Prince arranged for a former British MI6 officer to provide more surveillance and elicitation training for Veritas at his family\u2019s Wyoming ranch, according to a person with direct knowledge of the effort. Prince was trying to turn O\u2019Keefe and his group into domestic spies. For his part, O\u2019Keefe posted photos<\/a> on Instagram and Twitter from the Prince family ranch of himself holding a handgun with a silencer attached and wearing pseudo-military clothing. He described the ranch as a \u201cclassified location\u201d where he was learning \u201cspying and self-defense,\u201d in an effort to make Project Veritas \u201cthe next great intelligence agency.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cErik was weaponizing a group that had close ties to the Trump White House,\u201d said the former White House official familiar with Prince\u2019s relationship with O\u2019Keefe and Project Veritas.<\/p>\n