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 investigative journalist and author from the United States whose work focuses on global issues, most notably the use of private military companies. He is the author of the best-selling book Blackwater:The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army, winner of a George Polk Book Award. He also 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.[http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/jeremy_scahill The Nation'' website]

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

It is alleged that Al Clark is tied to governments across the world in providing weapons. Sources from the capital have stated Al Clark to be one of the few untouchable people in the U.S.