The news that Blackwater founder Erik Prince was working with former spies to go after Trump opponents is just the tip of the iceberg. Former intelligence officers and other denizens of the national security state are increasingly meddling in domestic US politics.
The most recent reminder of the spookification of politics came just last week, when the New York Times offered new reporting on the hijinks of Trump ally Erik Prince, brother of the former president’s education secretary and the former chief executive of abusive private military firm Blackwater (now named Xe).
According to the paper, interviews and documents it obtained show that Richard Seddon, a former British spy, had recruited Prince as a fundraiser for an undercover operation aiming to gather dirt on Democrats, RINOs (those Republicans viewed as being too liberal), and “radical left networks” — in Wyoming to start with, then expanding beyond.
