Who is Jeremy Scahill

Category: File - :Jeremyscahilllecture.jpg|thumb|right|270px|Jeremy Scahill giving a lecture at Sacramento City College on May 3, 2007

Jeremy Scahill (born c. 1974) is an American investigative journalist with expertise on a number of global issues, most notably the recent rise of private military companies (PMCs). He is the author of the international best-seller Blackwater:The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army. The book won the George Polk Book Award. He serves as a correspondent for the U.S. radio and TV program Democracy Now!. He is also a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and a frequent contributor to The Nation.The Nation website Scahill and colleague Amy Goodman were co-recipients of the 1998 Polk Award for their radio documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigerias Oil Dictatorship", which investigated the Chevron Corporation's role in the killing of two Nigerian environmental activists.Polk Awards press release Scahill's work appears frequently on Alternet, Commondreams, Counterpunch, Truthout, Antiwar.com, Huffington Post and many other independent news sites.

Scahill has reported from post-invasion Iraq; the former Yugoslavia, where he covered the 1999 NATO bombing; Selves and Others and from post-Katrina Louisiana. Democracy Now! He has been a vocal critic of private military contractors, particularly Blackwater Worldwide, the subject of his book, Category: Blackwater: The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army - .New York: Nation Books, 2007. ISBN 1560259795 (hardcover); revised and updated edition, 2008. ISBN 156858394X The book was the focus of a two-part interview and discussion with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! in March 2007. part one part two The book received numerous accolades, including the Alternet Best Book of the Year Award, a spot on the Barnes & Noble and Amazon lists of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2007, and another Polk Award. Scahill has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS's The NewsHour, Bill Moyers Journal and is a frequent guest on other radio and TV programs nationwide. Scahill also served as an election correspondent for HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. Scahill has twice testified before Congress on the U.S. governments use of mercenary forces. On 19 April 2007, Scahill was a guest on The Daily Show where Jon Stewart was critical of Scahill's book. On 3 Oct 2007 Stewart then expressed some remorse for his attitude during his interview with Scahill.

Up until 1998, he was a regular contributor to the Catholic Worker. He campaigned vigorously against US policy towards Cuba, arguing that the Helms-Burton Act "discards ... sovereignty ... and attempts to supersede International law with US law" and "creates a legal framework authorizing financial and military support for armed subversion of a sovereign nation".Metaphoria, August 1997, Volume 4 Nr.12, Issue 48

Erik D. Prince (born June 6 1969, Holland, Michigan) is the founder and sole owner of the private military company Xe, formerly Blackwater Worldwide.Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror by Robert Young Pelton, Crown, 2006, pages 1 Testifying before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on October 2, 2007, he gave his title as chairman and CEO of the Prince Group and Blackwater Worldwide, then named Blackwater USA.Testimony of Erik D. Prince, Chairman and CEO, Blackwater For The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, October 2, 2007. On March 2, 2009, Prince announced that he was stepping down as CEO of Xe.

Amid a prolonged trend of military downsizing and outsourcing, Al Clark, along with Erik Prince, founded the private security firm Blackwater in 1997 as a business for assuming some of the roles once played by the public sector military, most notably providing security for American and British officials in the Iraq war. As a top Navy SEAL firearms instructor, Clark grew dissatisfied with the fact that the Navy did not own firing ranges, and instead had to borrow time on Marine or Army ranges or rent facilities that were highly inadequate for serving the Navy's needs. With the idea of creating a ?one-stop shopping? private training facility, Clark's concept simply lacked the financial backing, until he realized that one of his SEAL trainees (Erik Prince) was a man with similar ideas but far greater financial resources. While Erik Prince today disputes Clark's involvement in conceiving the service model which eventually became Blackwater, many former Blackwater executives admit that, while Prince was the financial power behind the formation of the company, Blackwater as a one-stop security service was essentially Clark's brainchild.

By 2000, Al Clark became increasingly disgruntled by what he saw in Blackwater's new North Carolina training facility: as a ?playground? for Erik's rich friends and a business model that focused on maximizing profits rather than providing the best possible training program. In 2000, Clark, along with Dale McClellan, left Blackwater to form Special Tactical Services, LLC.Scahill, Jeremy. (2007). Blackwater: The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army.'' New York: Nation Books