Trump White House handed plan for PRIVATE spy network because CIA boss doesn't trust his own agents - and it would be run by Erik Prince and Oliver North
By Francesca Chambers
Daily Mail
December 5, 2017
The White House is said to be considering a proposal developed by a private contracting firm to build a global spy network that would operate separately from U.S. intelligence agencies.
Blackwater founder Erik Prince reportedly developed the proposals with the help of Oliver North for the Trump administration.
In a story on Tuesday, The Intercept revealed the plan and its purpose, which is, according to sources, to work around 'deep state' actors trying to undercut President Donald Trump within in the U.S. intelligence agencies.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she was 'not aware' of anything like what was described this afternoon.
She denied that a new spy network was under discussion - although she admittedly had not had a conversation with the president about it.
A spokesman for Prince told DailyMail.com that the allegations 'are completely false' and claimed that the Intercept knew that when it put the article to bed.
According to the Intercept, Prince, a retired CIA officer, and North, a former marine, pitched the plan to keep enemies of the administration from interfering with the White House's covert operations.
The operation would see spies with no official cover deployed to 'denied areas' that government workers are prohibited from entering such as Iran and North Korea.
Referring to CIA Director Mike Pompeo, one source told the Intercept: 'Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him.
'It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,' the source said. 'The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.
North's role in the operation was the sell the proposal to the White House, the publication said.
A noted historian and author, North was a member of the National Security Council in the Ronald Reagan administration during Iran-Contra, an illegal arms selling scheme. He was convicted of crimes in association with the scandal in 1980s but they were vacated and dismissed by 1991.
Contributors to the effort are said to have met with Trump donors asking them to help fund the operation.
Spokespersons for the White House, the CIA and Prince have said the story is untrue.
'I can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or [White House] at all,' said Michael Anton, a spokesperson for the National Security Council. 'The White House does not and would not support such a proposal.
Sanders said during her daily briefing with reporters that she also is 'not aware of any plans for something of that definition or anything similar to that at this time.'
According to the Intercept, Pompeo himself lobbied the White House to adopt the plan.
A CIA official told the publication, however, that its sources were wrong. 'You have been provided wildly inaccurate information by people peddling an agenda.'
Prince's spokesperson likewise said in an email: 'The allegations made in Intercept’s latest article about Erik are completely false and this was made clear to them before the article was published.
'The Intercept has, once again, targeted Erik using his high profile as click-bait to promote its own website and indulge the fantasies of its reporters with no care or regard for the facts,' the statment said,
Prince is said to have been enlisted by Trump to help with numerous ventures since he took office, including a plan to use private contractors in Afghanistan.
His spokesman said in an email to DailyMail.com that 'any meetings' Prince 'did have with members of the intelligence community, current or former, focused on his well-publicised plan for saving the US taxpayer $42bn in Afghanistan.'
Prince is the founder of Blackwater, a since overhauled government security firm that had top-dollar contracts with the State Department and the CIA.
Blackwater has a checkered past, with three guards being convicted of manslaughter or murder in 2014 in response to an incident in Iraq seven years earlier where they opened fire and killed 17 people and wounded 20 more.
In 2009 Prince resigned as CEO. The next year he fully unsaddled himself and moved to Abu Dhabi to work for the crown prince.
His sister, Betsy DeVos, is the education secretary. Prince manages Frontier Resource Group, a private equity firm, and has residences in Virginia and the UAE.
He was seen in Washington at the end of last month on Capitol Hill as he testified before a closed-door session of the House Intelligence Committee.
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