Bill Moyers Journal Devotes Broadcast to 'The Other Side of Blackwater'

Bill Moyers Journal Devotes Broadcast to 'The Other Side of Blackwater'

NEW YORK, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Hardly had Blackwater CEO Erik Prince completed a blitz of television interviews this week defending his private security firm when officials in Iraq said they wanted the company out of their country in the wake of the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians on September 16. Bill Moyers Journal, airing tonight at 9 on PBS, looks at what's behind Prince's press offensive and the questions he didn't answer and wasn't asked.

The program features an interview with award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who is the author of the best-selling book: Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Scahill's interview provides a chilling look at Blackwater which he says provides "the largest private army on the US government payroll in Iraq."

"No private actor in the occupation of Iraq has had more of a devastating impact on events in Iraq than Blackwater," Scahill tells Moyers.

While in recent reports State Department officials said Blackwater probably will be out of the business of guarding diplomats after its escort contract expires next May, Scahill outlines the diverse company activities that have allowed Prince, who founded the company, to grow Blackwater into a huge business that isn't reliant on its Iraq contracts and has lucrative domestic interests. Watch a clip from the interview now at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnVbulr2Pvw

"You have companies now that have been funded with billions of dollars in public money using that money to then build up the infrastructure of private armies some of which could take out a small national military," he says. "This is a man who is building up nothing short of a parallel national security apparatus."

Scahill has been following the rise of Blackwater for more than three years and says it has contracts to provide training to military and law enforcement in the US and has been the beneficiary "of the most radical privatization agenda in our nation's history."

"We're seeing it full blown in the war machine," says Scahill. "The very existence of the nation-state I think is at stake here."

Bill Moyers Journal airs Friday, October 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The episode will be available online immediately following the broadcast and Jeremy Scahill will take questions on The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

    Contact: Rick Byrne             Public Affairs Television             212-560-8406             byrner@thirteen.org  

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Source: Bill Moyers Journal

CONTACT: Rick Byrne, Public Affairs Television, +1-212-560-8406,
byrner@thirteen.org, for Bill Moyers Journal

Web site: http://www.pbs.org/moyers

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