The Team House - Deep Dive on Erik Prince's Global Operations | Gregg Smith | Ep. 137

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

After serving in the Marine Corps, Gregg went into business with the founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince which saw him as the CEO of Frontier Services Group.  Today's Sponsors: Chill Boys Undies https://www.CHILLBOYS.com/ Save 15% on your first order by using our discount code TEAM15  And keep the boys cool! https://www.CHILLBOYS.com/ The Ridge Wallet Check them out at  https://RIDGE.com/team10  for 15% off your purchase and to let them know we sent you! Get your wallet game right with the Ridge! https://RIDGE.com/team10  Ten Thousand Apparel  https://www.TENTHOUSAND.cc/TEAM The brand believes in being Better Than Yesterday, a stoic dedication to continuous improvement, not overnight success. GO TO : https://www.TENTHOUSAND.cc/TEAM for 15% OFF YOUR PURCHASE! Thank YOU for supporting the companies that support the show! For all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month  -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon!👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch:  https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media:  The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #ErikPrince #BlackWater #GreggSmithBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Hey folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in, rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know

what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, The Team House, with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 137 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with co-host, David Park.

Tonight on the show, we have a great guest, Greg Smith. He is a former Marine. He was a longtime business partner of Eric Prince of Blackwater. And he was the CEO of Frontier Services Group. Welcome to the show, Greg. We're going to jump right into it. We have a ton of material to cover here tonight. Dave, if you want to give a shout out to our first sponsor for tonight.

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Keep those boys chill. So, Greg, thank you for coming and spending some time on a Friday evening with us. We really appreciate it. I thought we'd dive right into. it talking because we have so much to cover, but if you could briefly tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came into the Marine Corps and what your military career was like, we'd really like to get a sense of kind of who you are as a person. Yeah, sure, Jack. I graduated from high school in 1980, right in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis. And, you know,

as a senior in high school growing up in a small town in Michigan, we used to watch that on the evening news every night. And so the, really the day I turned 18, so I graduated from high school on 17, the day I turned 18, I went and signed up. I went find on the local gunnery sergeant and joined the Marine Corps. So I went in early 1981, went into the infantry, 3rd. 51 infantry assault. I spent four years in the Marines, 15 months Marine barracks Guam. Then I rotated to second Italian six Marines at LeJune Weapons Company. And I spent the rest of my career there. Deployed twice to Beirut in 1983. Did a Cax, the Jungle Warfare School, did a tour in Okinawa. You know, we were a very deployable unit at the time.

So, you know, I left the Marines in 1985 with the lasting memory of 241 of my buddies that didn't come home in 1983. So, you know, that's that has stuck with me. You know, it will never leave me. So I had a short Marine Corps career four years. A very deployable unit, though, went all over the world with second battalion six Marines. And actually did a short stint with First Battalion 8th Marines because we were the quick reaction for us on October. 23rd, 1983, and we replaced the headquarters element of First Battalion 8th Marines, unfortunately. And so what was your transition like out of the Marine Corps and sort of jumping into the private sector?

Well, there was no private sector, but I went in enlisted. So, you know, the guys who went in as officers, you know, they go from the military to private sector. The rest of us have to find our way in life. So I went back to Michigan State University, got a finance degree, went into banking, then investment banking. A couple years later, I went, got my MBA at the University of Michigan, ended up as a partner at Deloitte in New York running their corporate finance group, running the U.S. to corporate finance group. So I had a very nice job at Deloitte. And then, you know, as unfortunate things happened, my friends kind of call me the Forest dump, but on 9-11, 2001, I was on the, I guess, I think it was the sixth train, I guess, usually

stop at Fulton Street and walk through the Trade Center area and then to my office, the World Financial Center. And for some reason that morning, the train was not stopping. And someone whispers on the train, geez, I heard there was an explosion at the train center. So that's interesting. So our train stops at Wall Street, which is two stops from where it usually stops. And I'm getting off at the Wall Street stop coming up the stairs just as the second plane is slamming into the South Tower. Wow. So, you know, look at that.

And then, you know, as Marines were trained to, you know, march to the south. sounded the guns after conferring for several minutes with some folks. All as I could see was that my building looked like it was on fire, the World Financial Center, number two. So I started heading down the West Side Highway, and it took quite some time to get down there. And as I got to Albany Street, for those New Yorkers that are listening in today, I'm across from, I think it was the Marriott Financial Center that used to be across from there. So I'm standing there, and I'm talking to two firemen saying, you know, how do I get over here? You know, I'm pointing towards the World Financial Center. When we talk about going, you know, down by the water and all that,

and just then the South Tower starts collapsing on us. And when it started collapse, you know, looked like it was, the top was coming down on us. And I'm like, holy shit. And you guys probably had these moments, but it was that moment where you're thinking, well, I never thought I was going to die this way. Fortunately, I was able to run about probably 100 yards and then dive into a parking garage. And because we were getting impacted by the South Tower debris hitting us, me, two firemen, a cop, we just headed as low as we could. We went four stories underground.

About 45 minutes later, we were able to get back out after kind of beating our way through some doors. and I end up leaving lower Manhattan on 9-11 around 11 a.m. I was the only guy on a tugboat after we had evacuated everyone that we could see coming out of the South Tower area. And, you know, so that was kind of my second terrorist attack, if you will. It was actually the third because I was also in Beirut in April of 83 when they blew up the consulate there. So, you know, by the time I was a 38-year-old businessman, I had been through, you know, three terrorist attacks, and one of them, you know, ground zero New York City. So that's kind of that story.

Before we move on, Greg, I mean, that's an insane story. And I mean, thank God that the four of you were able to get undercover. But I just wanted to rewind for a brief moment because you told us that you had met Eric. Prince for the first time in 1996 prior to 2001. It's weren't if you could tell us a little bit about what that interaction was like before we jump a little further forward. Yeah, sure. I was actually going to hit Eric because Eric and I met up Thursday after 9-11 at Smith

and Walensky's at 43rd and 3rd for lunch. And I'll go into that here in a minute as well. But yeah, so in 1996, I was a managing director in Deloitte's corporate finance practice, in the automotive industry. So, you know, just kind of a run-of-the-mill investment banker. And one of my young guys, a guy who becomes important to the long-term story here, a guy named Jason Deionker, who ended up buying Blackwater in 2010, Jason comes to me.

He's about 27 at the time. And he goes, hey, I met this guy. He's a seal. You might get along with them, because you were a Marine. You know, this is before seals were as legendary as they are now. You know, a seal is just a seal. and Marines thought of any seals, just another sailor. The only sailors we really knew were Corman.

So in any event, I say, yeah, I like to meet the guy. And we all knew the Prince family from Michigan. You know, they had just sold the family business for a billion dollars. Eric's sister Betsy was very involved in, you know, in Republican politics in Michigan. So they were a big deal. I'd never even heard of Eric Prince before then. But Jason says, hey, yeah, Eric is, you know, he's, he's, out of the seals. You know, he's like my age. He's like 27. And he's got this training camp. He's

building down in North Carolina. And we're invited. So I got in the car a couple days later, drove from Detroit to Grand Rapids, Michigan to a little airport there. And we hopped on Eric's mom's jet. And we flew from Grand Rapids down to a, I think we flew into Elizabeth City, the nearest air strip there. and then we drove up to Moyak, North Carolina, the home of famous Blackwater Lodge and Training Center. And at that time, that's what it was, was a training center? He was set in something similar to like what Crucible is now or whatever. Yeah, it was hard leaving that.

So, you know, Eric, you know, Eric inherited hundreds of millions of dollars when his father passed away. He invested about $10 million or so in this piece of real estate, I think. And at that point, there was a fairly well-known seal by name of Al Clark. He was a firearms instructor and the seal teams that Eric was partnering with. And they were just at that point really just bulldozing the ranges. So even though it was a big piece of property in the swamps down there, that's what's called Blackwater, the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, it really wasn't much.

I mean, and the only money they were making, you know, occasionally maybe CEL Team would go down there, Eric's old CLE team and train, but they weren't getting much of that. And they were really making their money selling targets. They were building target systems, reactive steel target systems. So it was, you know, a couple thousand acres in the middle of the swamp, building some ranges, and a warehouse building targeting systems. And so that was your first meeting with, with Eric Prince, and then what came about, I mean, was there kind of a sustained contact between you two?

And what led to that sort of lunch a few days after 9-11? Well, yes. So, you know, from there on, Eric and I became friends. And I would literally talk to them or see them a couple times a month for the next 15 years. And then I literally talked to them every day for five or six. six years or saw him every day or spent time at his house or his billas around the world. And my teams, whether I was at Deloitte or when I moved on to a company called CIT, we were his investment bank.

So, you know, I helped him buy a mixer company, concrete mixer company. And then we helped him sell a company. And then we was looking at financing things at Blackwater. He would come to me for advice and council. you know, we talk about different financing options. And we would get that done. And I just became a business advisor or a friend. And on 9-11, unfortunately, Eric was in New York City because his first wife, Joni, was fighting cancer.

And she was at St. Vincent's. So he had to come up a couple of days after 9-11 for someone for treatment. So Eric and I, you know, he said, you know, where are you at, Greg? And I told him where it was. And we went over to Smith and what went. And, you know, I want to give people an idea of what we're dealing with here. And the folks that see me on Twitter are like, geez, this guy hates Eric Prince. It's actually not the case.

Eric Prince and I were friends for 20 years. I do not hate the man. However, what I have learned over the years is that some of the things he had the audacity to commit to overseas starting in 2010 and we'll eventually get there. came back to the US in 2016, 17, 18, and 19, 20. And that's what worries me. So it's not that I hate Eric Prince. It's not that I want to see him in jail.

I just don't want to bring what he was doing overseas back to America. And some of it's coming back to America. And I'll explain exactly where it's come back on a number of occasions. and it's just not right. So that's kind of where I am with Eric kind of psychologically. But we were very good friends for a very long time. You know, I went to his wife's funeral. I went to his weddings.

I've met all of his wives. I know all of his children. I've had hundreds of meals with a guy. I've been with him on four continents at least, probably in 30 countries. So we spend a lot of time together. I know Eric really well. I know Blackwater really well. And I know all the derivations that came out of that

and the people that circle around and some of the things that have went on are they're just not right. So after 9-11, of course, the global war on terror kicks off. And, you know, America changes, the American military changes. There's been a lot written about

and talked about the privatization of the military. I don't know how much. of a top level, high level conversation we necessarily need to or even want to have about that. But that was the atmosphere at the time. What was, how did Blackwater begin to evolve after 9-11? And how did your role with the company evolve at that time? Yes. So actually, there was probably about five different inflection points at Blackwater, right?

So as I said, between 96 and 98, it was really just. ranges in a swamp with a targeting system. And, you know, they would get local police and people come to use the ranges. And they had good trainers and it was interesting. But helping with my timing, I think the first big one was the coal. So when the coal was attacked in Yemen, that 2000, right? Was that 98?

2000. Yeah. Okay. So it was actually Columbine that came first time. Okay. reflection. So the attack on Columbine, Eric quickly saw the opportunity there that he didn't think that the police forces were reactive enough, right? That they were standing off instead of going in. Right. So he set up something down to Blackwater called, Are You Ready High School? And they

started bringing in cops, I mean, hundreds and thousands of policemen from around the country to train at Blackwater. So that was the first when they finally got their legs and started making some money. And that was to train folks how to go and go after an active shooter. Right. Okay. So that was that was big for Blackwater. The second big thing for Blackwater was the USS Cole. So that's when the Navy discovered that those sailors up there on deck carrying those M-14s didn't know how to use them. So the entire East Coast fleet was set down to Blackwater to train in small arms. So that was the second big contract. So he started getting all the police, local state, county police,

and then he started getting the East Coast, the entire East Coast Navy. So those were the two big inflection points. And then it was really when we went into Iraq that the business completely took off. And when there was a contract that went out to all the security companies, basically to provide security guards for the green security. own. And most of the folks, and David, you mentioned earlier like the Crucible, you know, my good friends, Kelly McCann and Jack Stradley, they looked at that contract and they said,

we'd love to do that contract, but it's not possible for us to put people in there with the equipment you want to legally and the time frame you want us to. Right. So folks like the crucible and T's triple canopy, no gar, and a bunch of folks, they said, we can't even bid on that contract. Blackwater raised their hands. They said, we'll do it. They just shipping contractors into the green zone. And that business went from zero to three thousand contractors in the course of about eight months. It was interesting because, I mean, for security, for interpreters, for services, like there was this immediate need for these mass amount of peoples. And generally the companies that had like these GSA contracts, right,

just kind of the open-ended contracts for government services were able to find a way to utilize those contracts to get in there. And there was a need. I don't, you know, I don't think anybody would argue that the security person, personnel, like all these support personnel weren't necessary, and the military couldn't do it. But you had some really shady organizations going on. I remember, like, the one organization, Custer Battles was, like, meeting their guys at the border with, like, broken down AKs. And, like, there was a lot of shady stuff going on.

Oh, no, there was a lot of shady stuff. And the Blackwater guys weren't shady. Right. They just, they weren't trained properly. And I wanted to go back to my first meeting down in Blackwater and, you know, kind of set the tone on culture because this is permeated for the next 25 years then. So if you kind of look at the culture, the first time I went to Blackwater, I'd mention Al Clark, who was a firearms instructor, you know, in the SEAL teams. I think with SEAL team eight, but maybe with some other teams too. And Al was, he was really good on the range.

And I remember going down to the range, and I'm talking to Gary Jackson, who became the president of Black. And you could just feel the tension. I can feel the tension between Eric and Al. And there's another guy there and I think his name, was Dale Ford. And I pulled Gary aside. I said, what the hell is going on? He goes, well, we're going to have a gunfight.

And I've been watching Al on the range for the last hour. And I'm like, if you're having a gun flight, I'm on their team. But, you know, that kind of started the culture. You know, if you're looking at a business, a KFC business, PMC business, like a dying, Corp, it starts with a very, you know, it's got compliance, it's got leadership, it's got rules, it's got that. Right. This started with four seals on the range.

Five years later, there's 3,000 of them being deployed. Right. And there was no infrastructure, and they never caught up with it. Right. In terms of the things that are important to make sure things are done right. Right. You know, it started with we're going to have a gunfight to, literally seven years later, we've got four bodies hanging from our bridge and

efflution of Blackwater contractors because something went wrong they didn't have to go up. Right. Right. Yeah, you, I know that like, like T.C. and some of those other companies, they had very strict, like, quality control standards. They had a training program that, if you messed up, you were out, things like that. But I think Blackwater just got this contract. I can, you know, when you're, when you tell the government that you can have, you know, 800 people with these qualifications overseas in this amount of time, you don't have those people on hand. You're not paying them.

So you've just got to start flooding people. Yeah. And the problem is once you start trying to catch up, you can never catch up. Right, right. And, you know, Gary Jackson will end up running Blackwater for most of the time up until 2007. Gary is a great guy. Sealed teammates, other SEAL teams did a lot of drug interdiction stuff in the Caribbean and South America. And I loved spending time with Gary as much as any other human being on the face of the earth.

He was a lot of fun. He was full of energy. But he was a seal. And then he was running a company doing $500 million a year in revenue like four years later. Right. He had zero trading for that. Right. The legal and the compliance and the quality control, it just never, ever caught up.

And that's why to those of you that spend time over there, Blackwater probably felt and looked out of control. Well, it was out of control. And, you know, that was kind of proven out. Obviously, Nisor Square in 2007. But, you know, the fact remains that Blackwater ultimately, they're two top executives. pled guilty to firearms violations. Eric himself had to sign up for a deferred prosecution agreement for the same firearms violations and sanctioned violations.

And after Neesore, the business more or less fell apart. So how, I think we have to, do we have to get the sponsors real quick? Real quick. And then I want to ask your question about the firearm. Go ahead and ask, Dave. Um, hey guys, so, uh, our other sponsor is Ridge Wallets. Um, now, I don't know if you guys, I like, I hate carrying a wallet in my back pocket. Ridge has these great little wallets that are actually front pocket wallets. Uh, they expand. You, they have a little screws in them. They have a

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. So in the initial part, because I talked about like what custom battles are doing, how did Blackwater manage to get the weapons, you know, into, because they're security guys, they've got to have weapons. They're not getting, you know, there's no arms room, military arms room they can draw from. How did they manage to get the weapons into the country?

And was it, I did they have to fudge it initially? I think initially they did. I heard a lot of stories from a lot of the guys around that office when I'd go down there. And I'll just leave it at that. I think they did in order to get all the folks in there and the weapons they needed to equip them. You know, so that early part of, what was this, 03, I guess. You know, I think that was just chaotic. Yeah.

for Blackwater. But, you know, they kind of caught up a little bit on that front in terms of the logistics front. Right. You know, so by the time we got to, you know, Fallujah in, was that 04, you know, Blackwater, it was running pretty well in terms of it was clicking. It was making a ton of money, but it was growing like crazy. And, you know, it went from, like I said, basically a couple thousand acres in the swamp and some ranges being built. Now they had 3,000 contractors. They had a new headquarters building.

They had two airstrips. They had 25 ranges. They had ranges built just for the CIA that none of us could go down there too. They had the best ranges in the country. They had a 72 aircraft that were moving around in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You know, so the business between 01 and 2004 literally went from 15 million a year in sales to 400 million a year in sales, which is, you know, a bit insane. And they were starting to get their legs. They were bringing in more professional contractor folks to help with the contracts. They were trying to catch up with attorneys in compliance folks, although I don't think they ever did. And, you know, then, you know, Fallujah happened, which threw their reputation into a little bit of a tailspin, but it also made them really well known, right? You know, those were the Blackwater contractors. They probably made more money because of that.

And then the end of Blackwater, even though Eric didn't sell it to 2010, and I advised them on that sale, came in 2007 with the Nesore Square shooting. Right. Now, can you tell us for the people who may not be old enough or may not just remember, what was the Fallujah incident and then the Nesore Square incident? Well, the Fallujah incident, Blackwater was running, I think it was a couple of food trucks through Fallujah. And they had a security detail of four folks. I think it was two former Rangers and two former seals. And basically, they just got ambushed.

So they got ambushed and they got executed immediately in their cars. And then their bodies got dragged out of the cars, got dragged through the streets, burned and eventually hung from a bridge in Fallujah. And I forget those people that are too young to remember this. But that was a Syrian image for all of us looking at those bodies of those four American veterans hanging from that bridge in Fallujah. Yeah. And ultimately that led to, I think it was the Fifth Marines and some other

regiments had to move into Fallujah. And basically they went house to house and destroyed that town over the next 12 months. And then Nisor Square, you made some references in the case of both of these incidents that you felt they didn't have to happen. But there were questions that weren't asked. There were oversight that didn't happen. I mean, from your point of view, What should have happened? Why do you think those incidents happened?

Well, from my understanding, in Fallujah, it was a matter of the folks hadn't been in country long. They weren't given the proper orientation to what it was supposed to be done and what the environment looked like. And they went out completely unprepared to be ambushed. I think they were in a goddamn sedan at the time that they were ambushed. So, I mean, it was, they weren't equipped, properly, they weren't oriented properly, they didn't have the right maps, and they just flat out got ambushed. Brave men, good military guys, and I don't think things worked out, you know, it just wasn't right. By the time we got to 2007, though, in Nesor Square,

you got to remember, you know, when I talk about the Fallujah guys, those were all special operators, right? By the time you look at the guys that got convicted in 2000, for the 2007, and Nesor Square massacre of those civilians. Those were not special operators. Those were young Marines, young soldiers, you know, E4s and E5s, that hadn't spent a lot of time in theater, maybe none at all, right? And so you got a completely different situation when you pull into a town square and you think you're taking fire, but you're not taking fire and you're trying to figure it out.

And the guy to your left starts shooting and you're wondering, did I just get shot at? or was that outbound? And then all of a sudden there's 17 dead civilians. So by the time we got to 2007 at Blackwater, it was really a matter of they had thrown so many people into the theater so quickly that you went from having top-notch tier one operators to run-of-the-mill Marines. And I'm a run-on-the-mill Marines, so I get that. And, you know, my training wasn't such, and I've been in combat. I've been in firefights. But I tell you, my first fireflight,

I'm trying to figure where the hell is something, where did that just come from? You know, who's shooting? Am I shooting? You know, where's it coming from? And I think we had folks that weren't qualified to be there behind machine guns and with automatic weapons in a very crowded roundabout.

Yeah, that's something that definitely happened, especially with the security companies, is when the war first kicks off, yeah, you can get, you know, Delta and SEALs and Rangers and SF and these guys because, you know, they got out. Now they're, you know, you're giving them $600 a day. But then as the contrast get more competitive and you run out of those guys who are willing to deploy, right? I mean, there's only so many, you know, veterans of, you know, from those units. But you still need to push the numbers and you start getting.

Anybody who has a military, you know, a DD-214. Yeah. No, that was pretty much it. And, you know, so when Nisor Square, I had been talking to Eric for several years before Nisor Square. And I was like, basically, you know, I'm an investment banker. I'm like, you need to monetize Blackwater. You're just pouring money into it.

So, you know, if you describe Blackwater without saying the name and you say, well, it's owned by a guy that dropped out of the Naval Academy, that quit the seals pretty much right after he got it through buds, that under a deferred prosecution agreement, its two senior executives have been convicted of crimes, that's had 30 of its employees killed in the field, that just had 17 innocent civilians massacred by its employees. If you just describe that, you know,

Greg, what do you talk at you? What is that even a company? Right? How is that? So, I mean, but that's what Blockwater was. And that's what the leadership was. So I had been trying to convince Eric since about 2005 to sell the damn thing. You can make a billion dollar sell it.

They could have made a billion dollars. So after Neesore Square happened, Eric literally called me that day. He said, Greg, can you come down to Boyok? We have a problem. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I just read about it. So I went down to Moyoc and Eric says, let's put it up for sale. I said, okay, it's a little late. Should have done that yesterday, not today.

But we actually, as I had a great team of investment bankers, this wasn't because of me. And because we had one rich guy that really wanted to own this company, we cut a deal with Steve Feinberg, who owned Dine Corp, he owns Remington, he owned the private equity firm's Cerberus. And we're going to sell it to Steve. 49% of it. So Eric was going to maintain control, but he was going to get $250 million. So it's still pretty good. Still, you get to maintain control because that's his baby, he gets to keep the company. And we cut that deal with Feinberg, and then the New York Times ran an article.

Feinberg was going to buy Blackwater. And at the same time, Feinberg was trying to get some bailout money. It was by now we're in 2008. The economy's melting down. Feinberg also owns Chrysler Corp. and he's begging the government for bailout money. And basically the government at that point, you know, we're transitioning from Bush to Obama. And they said, you're not going to get that money from us if you're buying Blackwater. So he bailed on the Blackwater deal. So for the next three years, we tried to sell Blackwater. We eventually did.

Sold in two pieces, the aviation piece to AAR Corporation. and then to the rest of it to a private equity firm run by at that point. Remember Jason Deonker who first introduced me to Eric in 1996? A private equity firm run by my buddy Jason Deionker bought the rest of that. And that was in 2010. So I think from here we need to get into, I mean, things get increasingly more interesting. What's at least talk a little bit about, you know, selling Blackwater, Eric Prince getting dragged in front of Congress. You told us before the show that was kind of an inflection point, perhaps, for Eric Prince himself personally.

What happened there with that and with Leon Panetta, if you could elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, so, you know, when I showed up at Blackwater in 2000, 2007 after Neeslor Square, Eric had a new general counselor in her name was Marybeth Long. Mary Beth is former Assistant Secretary of Defense and a longtime CIA case officer. Mary Beth plays into this. The reason I bring her name up now, Mary Beth was probably a tremendous CIA case officer. She's probably a great Assistant Secretary of Defense. she shouldn't have been the general counsel for blackwater. She had no experience for doing that.

So when Neesore Square happened, she was completely unprepared to help us maintain the value of that company or do anything else with it really, right? And that's the general counsel we're dealing with. And I still had a relationship with Mary Beth, you know, years on. But, you know, I just looked, I said, you don't have a general counsel that can even help us now

and you're in a crisis. And Eric's going to testify in front of Congress. And he is getting dragged through the ringer. I mean, again, a lot of folks don't know this. They don't remember it. But when he had to stand up there in front of Henry Waxman, and Eric hates Democrats, especially a California Democrat by name of Henry Waxman.

And he had to testify about what Blackwater did in Nesore Square and tried to justify it. Eric was just beside himself. I remember years later, I was listening to my iPod or my, some music, and I was listening to Rage Against the Machine. And I don't remember the name of the song, but it's like, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. And Eric says, that is the music I was listening to as I was walking in to testify in front of waxman.

So that's just a little aside. So he was very angry. And when he left that hearing, it was clear that the U.S. government was no longer to support Blackwater under his ownership. So over the next three years, he was really forced to sell blackwater by the U.S. government because they weren't giving him any more contracts. So when you get to a company when you're doing 700 million in sales, you can't ramp down. You've built up this infrastructure to support 700 million in sales. You can't ramp down. So all of a sudden the company's in trouble and he's getting

forced to sell the company and he blames the U.S. government. Doesn't blame ill training for guys in Neeslor Square, but he blames the U.S. government for forcing him to sell Blackwater. And he is just flat out angry about it. We have to point out here also, I mean, there have been these allegations that Eric Prince was also working for the Central Intelligence Agency, that there were other things nestled inside Blackwater. You know, yeah, you have a mobile protection and all this other stuff. But underneath that, there were other activities going on beneath the surface that the general

public wasn't aware of. Well, and that's where I was going to go, Jack. So that was him really starting to not be happy with the U.S. government, okay, when he had to go in front of Waxman, and they're forcing to sell the company. But then the other part of this, Eric hired Koffer Black, who was the number two guy in the CIA and handled all the dirtiest stuff that the U.S. government did. And he hired him, I want to say, 2002 or 2003. And Eric got deep into the CIA. I believe, and he's told me this, and I've no reason not to believe, that he was working for the CIA actively. And the Blackwater was doing things for the CIA, doing renditions, taking people to dark sites, doing all that type of stuff, right? And that was not publicly known until Leon Panetta,

another Democrat, I think it was in the Obama administration. He did it, outed Eric. I bring up the Democrats, because this will come in later. He outed Eric as being a CIA, working for the CIA. So now Eric has been forced to sell his company.

He's fuming at Henry Waxman. Panetta just outed him for working for the CIA, and he is just furious. And Panetta must have done that to try to get rid of him, right, to purge him out of the agency? Well, I think he was already out of the agency. But, you know, by that time, you know, now Eric, we've sold Blackwater, and Eric's went to the Emirates. he's went to the UAE. And I think that's why Panetta did it.

So, I mean, you know, it was it because of 2007 that the government said we're no longer giving your contracts? Yes. Yeah. It was 100% because of Nesar Square that they were not awarding Blackwater any new contracts. The only contracts that blackwater was getting awarded. in any material amount after that were some of the darker contracts that couldn't be transferred,

some of the black money contracts. So at this point, Eric's furious with the United States government probably feels betrayed after working with the intelligence community for a long time and the State Department security and elsewhere goes over to the United Arab Emirates. Tell us about that and about your continued relationship. How did that evolve and take that next step? Yeah, so it must have been August of 2010. I went to Eric's house and he was heading to the UAE that day.

And I said, what are you gonna do over there? He goes, well, we have some plans and I'll be in contact with you know a little bit. I said, that's fine. You know, so we were still working on the final sale of Blackwater. So Eric moved his entire family to Abu Dhabi at that point, late 2010. Now there was some speculation that he was doing it

because the UAE didn't have an extradition agreement, with the U.S. and he was still at that point trying to negotiate a settlement for the U.S. government over some ITAR issues, the arms trafficking issues, as well as some sanction issues. So there was some speculation that that was the reason. But I think the real reason was that Mohammed bin Zayed, MBC, who is the de facto ruler of the UAE, but at that point he was the crown prince, still the crown prince, but we don't even know if his brother's alive. That's another story.

But Mohammed B. Zayat, who Eric had got to know, got to know, invited Eric to come to the UAE and set up a mercenary battalion for him that was supposed to be for internal security. But this is why I start getting afraid of unintended consequences or intended but not known consequences. So Mohammed bin Zay had invited Eric to come to the UAE to form a mercenary battalion. And he invited Eric asked a good friend of mine at the time, a Navy SEAL, Harvard MBA, United States Naval Academy guy by name of Dean Valentine to come over and be his chief operating officer. And that business started up, and my understanding is it started up with 10,000. tens of millions of dollars in cash,

being delivered to Eric's offices at the Goldfish Tower on the Corniche in suitcases. And there's your startup money. And there they go. And so Eric started hiring mercenaries, mostly Colombian mercenaries and bringing them into the UAE. And they started trading them out near Albatine Air Base out there. And I think they're 600 personnel.

What did the UAE we want this mercenary army for? Well, you know, that's what's interesting, David, because it was always described as, well, you know, this is for internal security, almost like a palace guard. Right. You know, because if you look at the UAE, there's about 800,000 Emirates, maybe a million. But there's 15 million people that live there. And a lot of them are virtually servants. labor. Yeah, the Emirates. So, you know, I think Mohammed bin Zayyad was always worried about that. But a lot of those guys ended up in Yemen fighting the hoodies with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

So started out doing one thing, maybe, I don't know, ended up doing another thing. That our two business kind of blew up. And Jackie, you and I were talking about it before. the New York Times ran a kind of a front page article on it saying, you know, Eric Prince, Blackwater founder is running a mercenary camp in the Emirates. I mean, it's, it sounds like something right out of a spy novel or something that a former seal-turned PMC leader or CEO heads over to the UAE. and the royal family is bringing you suitcases filled with $100 bills to start a mercenary army. Yeah, but it's true.

So, you know, Clancy's stuff wasn't true. This stuff is true. And that happened. And here's, you know, my life, I'm obviously not a saint. I'm willing to go right to the edge of just about anything. So Eric invites me, early 2011. He first invited my good friend, Chuck Thompson,

who later became our chief financial officer, Frontier Services Group, great investment banker. He first invited Chuck over, who had worked on the sale of Blackwater, to help him out with some issues, because Eric wanted to buy a fleet of aircraft from Sheikh bin Khalifa, Mbz's half-brother. And Eric couldn't quite figure out how to do it.

And Chuck was over there for a couple of weeks he calls me, he goes, Jesus Christ, Greg, this is insane. Can you come over here? You know, at that point in 2011, I'd never been to Abu Dhabi. I'm like, yeah, sure. So I have a flight over to Abu Dhabi, and I get there as this news is breaking on the New York Times, right? And now it's just chaos. My buddy who had originally started running that business for Eric Dean Valentine has left the country. And he left the country because Eric, Eric fired him. And Dean would tell me years later, Eric fired him because he wouldn't do what Eric wanted to, which is the same thing Eric would do to me five years later, the Frontier Services Group, which is, in my case, it was arming aircraft. In Dean's case, it was something around illegal arms. I just don't know exactly what.

So Dean had left the country. Chuck and I are sitting there, you know, you're reading the New York Times, and you're looking up because Eric, Eric in the New York Times is saying, I have nothing to do with R2, Reflect Response. It's the name of the company. And he was swearing up and down. I don't have anything to do with it. And I'm like, well, I'm in the offices. You're directing all the people. The R2 CFOs over there.

And then in walks like the next day, this guy named Reno, Alberta. And Reno, Alberta is going to be the new president of R2. So he's come to the Goldenfish Tower, where Eric's offices are, to be with Eric. and he sets up his camp in there for a couple weeks before he moves out to Albertine. So Eric is clearly running R2. There's no question about it. And Reno, Alberto is an interesting character. If you read The Lone Survivor, or if you've talked to Marcus Latrell,

in his book there's this guy he calls Instructor Reno in his buds. This is Reno, Alberto. I think him and Eric were in the same buds. class, him in Reno. So Reno shows up and I think he'd been a stockbroker before he came over to run R2. He'd been out of the out of the seals and I'm like oh man here we go again. You know, another seal, but this time we have in the bank $600 million in cash by that point that had come in from Mohammed bin zayed to set up this mercenary camp. The former president, CEO, had just left the country, been fired by Eric. The new president, Reno Alberto, is coming in.

As far as I know, he'd been probably a fabulous seal, but he'd never run a company with $600 million in cash with 600 mercenaries sitting out in the middle of the desert that are getting pissed. That's where we were. And Chuck and I are sitting there going, so you want us to go talk to Sheikh bin Khalifa about buying some merit. And he was like, yeah, go get that done. All right.

So is there, I mean, if he's, if he's doing this under the auspice of, you know, the, the person running the country, is, I mean, is there anything illegal about this? I mean, it sounds, you know, is, is there anything wrong with what is going on right now? You know, I don't think so. I don't, I don't know. But for some reason, he wouldn't admit he was doing it. Right. Now, if you're... He was still trying to work out that deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. government at the time.

And if you're arming a foreign mercenary full of Colombian soldiers in the UAE on behalf of Mohamed bin Zayed, that might make your negotiations more difficult. But there's not, you know, the IATAR laws are also reasonably straightforward. As a U.S. citizen, you cannot provide defense services. or broker defense services for foreign government. So if you're building a palace guard, well, is that a defense service? Now, all these guys always try to just walk the line.

Well, that's not, that's police. That's not defense, right? Right. Now, these same guys end up being in Yemen. Right. Putting the hoodies, sounds like defense. Right. But you're calling them kind of a palace guard internal security.

So I think Eric was trying to walk a really fine line there. So is it illegal or not illegal? I'll leave that for the DOJ or someone else. Now, I'm just telling you what. To play like sort of devil's advocate, because I don't know this situation. And I mean, you were there. I wasn't. Is it like, is it possible that he went into this situation thinking,

well, we're just going to build this sort of police force? And then started getting other directions. There started getting mission creep that he just, it just became the slippery slope for him? Or did you ever get the sense that it was that or that he was actively pushing for, hey, you know, let's get some? No, no, Eric zip lines down the slippery slope. He gets down in a hurry.

And I'll give you an example from a couple years later, right? So Eric went to the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo to meet with Joseph Cabela. and it's probably 2014, it might have been early 2015. And he went with a contingent from the Chinese Communist Party that set up the meeting for him. And at that point, what he did is, is I think you probably know,

the UN is a big peacekeeping force in the DRC. And they've had them there for years and they'll be there forever, right? And Eric went to Joseph Cabilla and said, let's replace the peacekeeping force. And we'll bring in gendarmes. You know, so we'll bring in, you know, it's French. So we'll bring in police to replace the peacekeeping force. It's not what he planned.

Gendarmed, you call it police, but he was going to bring in a bunch of mercenaries. He was going to bring in the guys from like executive outcomes to go in there and replace the UN. Now, Cabilla never took him up on his offer as far as I know. But, you know, so when Eric says it's going to be police or it's going to be oil field service security or oil pipeline overwatch, it means it's active kinetic military operations. And he knows that. So how did things end up going with R2?

I mean, I remember reading the contract when maybe it was in the New York Times. I mean, the entire contract that was signed. It was. It was, Jack. How did that end up going, you know, how did that pan out that entire deal? Well, it was a little bit like Blackwater. And that's why I said there's a continuum here. These things keep ending the same way, right?

So Blackwater ended with, you know, the U.S. government squeezing Eric out of his own business. And by the time we sold it, he paid more fines to the U.S. government that he received him proceeds from the sale. I mean, that'll make you mad, right? Sure. You got 13 years of sweat and tears into a business you love. You pay the government $45 million in fines and you take out less yourself. So he was, yeah.

So same thing happened in R2. Now, I don't know all the details. I was there a lot. So I spent a lot of time at 11 and 12 in the UAE with Eric. So he got squeezed out again, though, because MBZ was furious that he wasn't able to keep. their operation under wraps and end up front page of the New York Times. I guess, you know, and this is hearsay, because I never met with Muhammad Ben Zayyad. I'd met with his brother, and his brother's advisors, and I'd met with a bunch of bankers, but I'd never met with the Crown Prince.

I'm, you know, I'm an E4 Marine. Who the hell's going to meet with me? So, but what I was hearing through my friends in the grapevine was that Mohammed bin Zaid was furious, and he basically said, Eric, you're out of R2. And we're going to bring R2 in-house. So it's now going to be run by Emirates. He nationalized it. And you, Reno, Alberta, though, I want you to set up a aviation retrofitting business, basically arming aircraft for us.

So Eric got squeezed out. Reno ended up getting a really nice job, I think, and made a lot of money. And the reason I know, you know, there was, and Eric he compartmentalizes things. So I don't know everything that he's got going on. But, you know, at that point, he thought he was owed by about $30 to $50 million by the UAE.

And I remember it would have been Christmas, 2013. He went over to the UAE and he wouldn't leave until they paid him. And I think they finally just threw them out. So Art 2 ended a little bit like Blackwater Day. And now, meanwhile, you're trying to facilitate this deal to buy aircraft. I mean, how did it pan out on your end? Well, that didn't go very well. You know, so we met with SBK and his advisors.

I spent a lot of time in the outer offices of Sheikh bin Khalif, I was with my buddy Chuck Thompson, drinking shitty Turkish tea, waiting for SPK's advisors to come and meet with us. Eventually, we kind of worked out a deal, but when all this is happening, it ended up crater in the deal. You know, Reno eventually said, there's no way this can happen, Greg. Let me pay you guys a little bit of money and you guys go home. Okay. I mean, even if what like he was doing was shady or not shady or whatever, from his perspective, I can understand why his frustration is building first with the U.S. because he's, you know,

these people, you know, and then in the UAE where he's basically doing what they're, he's basically doing what want him to do, but he gets out by the New York Times. Like, that's not his fault. Well, it is and it isn't. Okay. Right? So was Neesar Square his fault? No, he wasn't in charge of Raven 23 on that day.

Right. But as the leader of the business, you set the tone, you build things, right? So it's not his fault that someone went to. Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Messetti with file cabinets full of information. That's not his fault per se. However, he lost control

of guys he was supposed to be working. They were supposed to be working for him. Right. Somebody must have been bitter or, you know, something. Or you did something that triggered them. Right. Right. Maybe you asked them to do something that they didn't think was legal. Right. And maybe when they blocked, you

fired them. And maybe when you fired them, they sent a bunch a shit to the New York Times. I don't know. Right, right. But that could happen as one does. Yeah, as one does. But if you're Mohammed bin Zayyad and your richest man in the

world and you're the ruler of the UAE, that does not happen. Right, right, right. I mean, you end up in a prison on the middle of the desert if you're Mohammed Ben Zayyat and you do that. Right. Yeah, can we not sink this person to the bottom of the Persian Gulf? What is problem here? I don't

understand. I've got a great Persian golf computer service story. We can go into that later, Jack. Making a note. Yeah. So R2 falls apart on Eric. He's really mad now because now he's mad at the New York Times. And this comes back full circle to today, though. I mean, when I say today, this week, right?

So that article was written by Mark Mazzetti. and I think Matthew Rosenberg's his name that wrote the article on Eric in 2011. If you read Project Veritas, James O'Keefe, who Eric does business with, is suing both of those guys today. And there was a big story in the news earlier this week

about O'Keefe, actually pictures of them, stalking Mark Mazzetti at like a Starbucks in D.C. So some of this stuff never goes away. We need to get into all of that. That kind of comes in a little bit later. Definitely want to talk about that. But I think you told me the next stop for Prince was South Sudan. Well, kind of.

So the next stop was really, so it was an overlap. While he was running R2, he was also setting up a private equity firm called Frontier Resource Group. He hired a really good guy, really smart guy by name was Sean Rump to run that for him. Sean somehow got hooked up with a guy named John McGuire, who was a famous CIA officer that was the elite guy. Oh, yeah, that name comes up again. He's in legal trouble right now. Exactly.

All these names always come up, right? But Sean's a young guy. He's like 27 years old. He'd been doing oil exploration in Kurdistan. I think. It sounded like a CIA cover operation to me, but who knows? And Eric hires him to start up a private equity firm and Frontier Resource Group. Sean is sharp, knows what he's doing, good finance guy, has a finance background,

actually worked at a bank, and he squared away, and they start buying up some companies. Okay. But the first thing when you start a private equity firm, you need money. So the two investors in the private equity firm were a guy named Eric Prince, who put in 50 million, and a guy named Sheikh Tanun, Tanun Ben Zayed, who's now the Minister of Defense in the UAE. So the two investors in this private equity firm, so Eric's business partner at this point in 2011 is Tanun,

and they start buying companies. And one of the first things that Eric, he doesn't buy, but he starts trying to build an oil refinery up near Pelosi, which is near the border of Sudan and South Sudan, that's when he enters South Sudan. In 2012, trying to do an oil refinery. Now, we come back to South Sudan in 2014, after we formed Frontier Services Group,

and we start using Eric's oil refinery as a forward operating base for Silvicare. It gets weird. Well, for the president of South Sudan. Yes. Okay. Okay, so what the hell were they doing? What were they using the oil refinery as a front for?

Okay, so let me just step back kind of in the middle of this. Okay. So we went from Blackwater. Okay. Eric's working for the U.S. government. Things are great for 10 years. It's making a ton of money. Neesore Square happens.

He winds it down over three years. He leaves the U.S. He's pissed. He's no longer working for the U.S. government. Okay. goes to the UAE, R2 comes and goes and melts down for him. Okay. Now we're on to Frontier Resource Group.

He brings me along as a senior advisor to Frontier Resource Group. I get paid on a retainer, and I'm supposed to help them find deals, right? So that's why I'm involved in Frontier Resource Group. Frontier Resource Group, we're not sure Teno never put his money in. The oil refinery in South Sudan gets caught in the middle of a civil war. His cement import operations, the DRC goes to hell because of a leaking Portuguese boat. And so he's not making any money at Frontier Resource Group. So I'm an advisor and I say, Eric, I have some friends that have some friends in Hong Kong

that may be willing to invest with you. And if anyone loves Africa, because that's where we were at that point, Frontier Resource Group, was a private equity firm to invest in African minerals. I said, if anyone loves Africa, it is the Chinese. Let's get over to Hong Kong, see if we can raise some money. So Eric and I, another Navy SEAL by the name of Chris Burgess, Sean Rump, good friend of mine by the name of Eric Weinberg, we get on a plane, we go to Hong Kong.

We meet a guy by name of Johnson Coe, who's a Hong Kong billionaire and some investment bankers, and they have $110 million in a shell company. and they want Eric to form Blackwater to on behalf of the Chinese. We actually go visit with Citic at this point, which is the Chinese state-owned enterprise. It's basically the Chinese sovereign fund. And they want Eric to start Blackwater too. And me and the lead investment banker guy named Brett McConagall were adamant.

No, we can't do that. But what we'd like to do is we'd like to start up a logistics business. to serve Africa. And we can help the Chinese who have hundreds of thousands of employees move around Africa safely. And they finally agree on that. We form Frontier Services Group. We do a reverse merger. It gets all details.

But basically, we form Frontier Services Group, which is a Hong Kong public company with everything that goes along with being a public company. They're pretty buttoned down in Hong Kong. 20% owners, CITIC. 20% Eric Prince, 20% the Hong Kong billionaire, and the rest is individual investors,

and we have $110 million of cash to spend. Okay, so we got that done in late October, and I become the CEO of the company. So that's October of 2013. So Eric has this refinery in the South Sudan. Civil War breaks out between ReactMashir and Civil Kier's forces in South Sudan, about the same time we're forming this company.

Okay. Eric's refinery business is done. $10 million investment. It's gone. Eric disappears into Juba, early part of 2014, for about nine days. If you ever been to Juba,

nine days is a long time to be in Juba. And he comes back out with a contract, our first contract for Frontier Services Group. So about a $100 million contract. And it's basically to provide logistics, at least I think it is, for the Sudanese Ministry of Petroleum, and to make sure all of their refinery, not the refineries, but their oil wells continue running. The pipelines continue flowing. So he comes back with that contract, and off we go.

when I say off we go, the next thing I know, I've got about 100 employees, most of them former executive outcomes guys. If you want me to go to executive outcomes, I will a little bit. Yeah, we've had even Barlow on the show before. Oh, okay. Yeah, I know. So Eric worships even Barlow. Really? Oh, my God.

Yeah. So the executive outcomes, guys, I've already been, they're very well. known to me by that point because Eric had just finished up and I skipped it. I'm part of operations in Somalia with these executive outcomes. I mean, to be, to be clear, I mean, executive outcomes is long defunct by this point, but you're saying former executive outcomes, people's, South African nationals are getting involved. Senior former guys, Chris Grovet, who was the executive, Chris was the executive officer for Eben. And we didn't hire LaFras, but LaFras, Lu Ting.

what was around us at that point as well. So was, was Lafras involved? Was who? Lafrasis? Yeah, Lafrasse. Yeah. No, he, I'm sorry.

LaFrauss was involved in Somalia. He was not involved in South Sudan. But I would see LaFraud's around a lot. Okay. So you brought a lot of these, a lot of these individuals into the fold? Oh, no, no, they are coming to the fold. And we rush about 50,

of them up into South Sudan. And I'm like, well, well, they're African, they're Afrikan, but they're also Africans. They understand the continent. They understand how to work and move things around. That kind of makes sense. But next thing I know, we've got them up at this, up at Paloshe, which was Eric's refinery up there. And the South Sudanese army is now using it for a forward operating base.

I'm like, oh, that's interesting. and that just led to more of our problems with aircraft and other things. So Eric was trying to bail out his refinery operation, I think, by moving some of our folks up there and trying to, if you will, charge us rent for that property. Meanwhile, how did things pan out in Somalia? That was an anti-piracy contract, right? It was, and it was mostly funded by the UAE. There's actually a documentary done on it by.

Adam Jolowski and Sean Effron called, I forget what it was called, but it was a documentary. So I'd say it didn't turn out too well. The pirates stopped, but not because of what they did. They had some, you know, one of the former executive outcomes, Sergeant Majors was shot. They had a riot, guys didn't get paid, and, you know, kind of ended in the same shit show. A bunch of former South African armed forces guys got stuck in the middle of the desert. there. Yeah, Rolf von Heerden was out there, I believe, as well. Yes. Yes. Yeah. This is like one of the wildest episodes we've ever done. Why not? You were there, Greg. I apologize to you guys, but anyone else that's listening in, it's a little bit hard to fall. I'm trying to keep it chronological. Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, I went from FRG to Frontier Services Group, but I forgot the Somalia thing, which was important because that was going on too. But, you know, now we're at Frontier Services Group and we're supposed to be a logistics company. And our first big operation isn't really logistics. We had rushed, like I said, 50, 100 guys into South Sudan. I don't even know what they're doing. So at this point, I had just hard. here in a guy named Pete Phillips.

So Pete's important to your guys, this community, the special operations community. Pete was former deputy J-Socque. He was a Gold Squadron Seal Team 6 commander, 14 years in the SEAL Team 6. You know, he worked directly from McRaven and the Crystal. And he's one of the most squared away dudes I've ever met, especially in terms of planning, right? So him and Eric had spent, they had had a cup of coffee together at SEAL Team 8. back in the late 90s. And we're looking for a chief operating officer.

You know, Pete's a captain, 25 years. He's just getting out of the SEAL teams. And we hire him to be our chief operating officer. So I send my, he's one of my dearest friends now. I send my buddy Pete to Kenya. And we've got a couple team houses in Karen, right outside of Nairobi. And I said, Pete, can you figure what the hell is going on up in the South Sudan? So I send Pete up there, and he basically comes back.

He goes, well, whatever Eric told you we're doing isn't what we're doing, Greg. I go, what do you mean? He goes, well, I just had, so if you're familiar with the South Sudan and Silver Cair's tribe, they're the Dinkas. They're the largest human beings on the face of the earth. They're all six, five, and above. Pete Phillips is six foot five. So Pete comes back to me and goes, Greg, I just walked out of a meeting where I was the smallest guy in the meeting with five

South Sudanese generals. And they wanted to take me out back and kill me. And I said to him, this is what the Pete conveyed to me. And I believe it to be true. He said, look, you can either take me out back right now and kill me, which is fine, or you can pay me, but you've got to do one or the other because they weren't paying us the money they owed us. I'm like, okay, Pete, I thought that was you and not me. So he said, I said, Pete, why aren't they paying us? He goes, because the task orders that Eric showed you, the 17 task orders, are not the only things we promised them.

We promised them armed aircraft in military support. I said, well, that's fantastic, Pete. We don't have any armed planes. He goes, well, kind of. I said, all right. He goes, well, you know, we can put, you know, these gazelles could be armed. I said, well, they're not, right?

Because no, they're not. Not right now. I said, okay, well, that's good to hear Pete. And eventually, we wouldn't do what the South Sudanese generals wanted us do. They were furious. They quit paying us. I got 50 pissed off Afrikaners stuck in the country because they have nothing to do. You know, they were sent there for reason X and we can't do it anymore. But according to Pete's understanding from the generals,

Eric had promised kinetic operations from Frontier Services Group. We refused to give them to them. They kicked us out of the country. So we're kicked out of another country. Wow. Interesting enough, Matthew Cole from our last show wrote about this in 2016, where he wrote about the aircraft that trying to arm. I remember when all this came out.

Yeah, in Austria. And prop dusters, uh, and, and sell them to the government. It's fast. Well, and this is when I stopped on my Twitter feed the other day and I reached out to Jack and I said, Jack, I got too much to say. Can you give me a hand? And that's where we get to these crop dusters, right? So now, now we're out of South Sudan.

Okay. Yeah. We had a huge contract there. We never really got paid. I, we had a bunch of. South African mercenaries just hanging around with nothing to do. We bought a bunch of aircraft. We were never able to deploy.

And Eric comes to me at the beginning of 2000. So now we're in 2015, early part of 2015. He says, Greg, I have a great opportunity for us. So I sit down. So let's hear it. He goes, well, we have an opportunity to partner with a guy named Demetri's, who I didn't know, never heard of them, in Azerbaijan. And they want a ground mercenary battalion with aviation assets.

I said, all right. That sounds interesting. And what do they want these folks to do? Well, they want them all armed. They want the ground personnel armed and they want the aviation assets armed. And I said, well, Eric, I don't think. we can do that. Not at our company. And he got really, really bad at that point. He'd been mad at me before. It was like I said no before. But now he's furious at me because I'm saying we cannot do

that. He actually went to his attorneys at Steptoe Johnson and had them write a memo saying, well, you guys can actually do pipeline Overwatch, wink, wink up there with aviation assets and those personnel, but you couldn't do basically, you know, offensive military operations. I'm like, well, yeah, but we're just then calling a pig something else. And so I eventually told Eric, there's no way we're going to do it. If you're going to do it, you have to do it on your own outside of Frontier Services. So he goes, okay, I need two guys then. I said, well, if you need the two guys, take him out of the company.

And he wanted Serge Durant, who is a former Royal Australian Air Force fighter pilot, and who was the head of our special aviation division. And he wanted Chris Grove, the executive outcomes, former executive officer, to do all the planning for him. I said, if you're going to do that, just take them out, second them out of the company. They can't be part of the company. We can't pay them while they're setting this up.

Okay. So at this point, my relationship with Eric is pretty much gone. I've said no too many times. We said no in South Sudan. We weren't going to do that. And now we're saying no again in Osir Bishan. And then the story gets really, really strange. And it really all falls apart.

And it resulted in me, Admiral Fowlin, Pete Phillips, and most of the other Americans leaving Frontier Services Group. And the reason for that was these crop dusters that you had mentioned. mentioned, David. So we had made a proposal. God, damn. We did some weird shit. We made a proposal back in early part of, no, early part of 2014 to the Ministry of Defense in Mali. Either of you guys run into a guy named Tim Lawrence, former 10th group guy? What's his last name? Lawrence. I don't think so, no. Okay. So Tim, it's, set Eric up with, I think, the MOD and Mali. And they wanted basically the same thing he gave

to R2, the same thing he promised to give to Silverkir, the same thing they wanted an Azerbaijan. They wanted, but they mostly wanted the aviation assets. The ground stuff, they didn't want as much, but they wanted some aviation assets, including a light attack aircraft. And we said no, but we can give you an ISR aircraft. So we ordered from the United States to 510 G thrush aircraft. And we sent them to this company called Airborne Technologies in Austria to be outfitted with ISR equipment. Now, a little side note, Eric owns at least 25% of airborne technologies. So I think he actually owns more, but he owns 25% for sure.

It felt like he controlled the company. So we sent these 2510G aircraft, thrush aircraft crop dusters, to be outfitted with ISR equipment in Austria. And then they were supposed to be sent to Mali, but we never got that contract. And then they were supposed to be sent to the South Sudan. And one of them eventually ended up down there. But then Eric wants to use them in Azerbaijan. Right. So they're owned by Frontier Services Group.

These aircraft are. And Eric is doing this deal with Dimitri Shersinski away from Frontier Services Group. He's doing it on his own, kind of a side deal. He's going to get paid a ton of money. money and he says, well, I want to take these five, 10, you know, our thrush aircraft up to Azerbaijan. And I said, fine, we're not using them anyways. We'll sell them. We'll, you know, we'll lease them. You know, how do you want them? Just take them. Because we've spent a lot of money on him. And he brought in a guy by name of Roy Shepashnik to be the chief operating officer

up there in Azerbaijan for him. And I had known Roy, again, these circles are all, you know, So it's all the same people all the time. And Roy's former IDF, a lot of folks say he's Mossad. If you Google him, you'll see he was involved in the recent Jordanian coup attempt, actually trying to get the princess out of Jordan, not in a bad way. And so Eric says, well, call Roy and ask him, you know, how he wants to deliver the aircraft. And I said, great. And so Roy sends me a contract not for two ISR aircraft.

He sends me a contract, I think, for like eight light attack aircraft. And I'm like, Roy, we don't own any light attack aircraft. He goes, oh, yes, you do, Greg. So these aircraft that we'd sent to Austria for ISR had been retrofitted into light attack aircraft. I believe at the direction of Eric and Serge Durant, our role Australian Air Force guy. And there's emails and there's lawsuits and there's all kinds of stuff going on. And I'm like, well, Roy, we can't. Even if I did have light attack aircraft, I couldn't sell them to you.

So, you know, at this point I got, you know, Admiral Fallon on the other line saying, hey, Admiral, I think we got a big problem. You know, those ISR aircraft you thought you had, we've got at least two light attack aircraft now. and they're sitting in, one's in Austria, and one had ended up in Uganda. Long story, but we don't go in there, right? And these aircraft, Eric wants to sell them to Dimitri for his project in Baku. And, you know, so then, you know, we speed dial Kagan Spalding the law firm next to say, you know, what do we have here? What is the I-Tarre implications?

Can we even do this? And, you know, so we start a big investigation in late 2015 into these aircraft. And ultimately what we decide is we set investigators to look at them. The folks at airborne technologies tried to keep us from looking at the aircraft to inspect them, to see exactly what we had. They were trying to keep them away from us. From your aircraft. Initiated a lawsuit against this company owned by Eric Prince.

by the company that I was CEO of and he was chairman of, right? I think he did lose his mind on that one. So I initiated the lawsuit because they wouldn't give us our equipment. And Eric finally told me I had to dismiss the lawsuit, which we did. But by then we'd already sent investigators up there. We'd got to look at the aircraft. The investigative report we got back was, yeah, those are light attack aircraft. they have all the hard points, they have the pylons, they actually have switches and buttons for guns and missiles,

their light attack aircraft. There's no armament on them right now, but they're light attack aircraft. And if Eric tries to sell them the way he's trying to sell them, he'll be creating an ITAR violation for himself. Greg, what possessed them to convert these aircraft in Austria in Western Europe rather than bring bring them into country, say Uganda, Sudan, wherever, and have the technicians come in and make those modifications there? Very, very difficult modification. It's hard because you're putting so much more weight into the aircraft. They're hard to fly.

So Admiral Fallon, who is a pilot, it's done 1,300 carrier arrest. I mean, so the Admiral's looking at these specs on this, He goes, I wouldn't try to fly that. So it was a very, you know, the guys at airborne technologies are good at what they do. Now, they say they didn't remodify those to be light attack aircraft. They blamed this fictional, as far as I could tell, Bulgarian company called Laza. They said, well, we sent the aircraft to Laza, and they did it a Laza. But we couldn't find a Laza factory.

We couldn't find a Laza employee. So we believe they just kind of said, well, Laza did it, but we don't think the aircraft ever left Austria. So the reason he did it in Austria, the reason it was done in Austria is because you really needed good engineers to do it. Interesting. How did Libya factor into all of this? Because that was another stopping point in this whole story, isn't it? Well, Libya factors in a couple different ways. So let me just finish up with these aircraft.

Sure. So in, throughout 2015, I had hired the law firm, Kagan Spalding, another law firm called Holland and Hart. And we hired some of the best lawyers in the country. Rob Her, who went on to be the U.S. attorney from Maryland under Trump, Gary Greenler, who was the number two person in DOJ under Obama, were our lead investigators. We had them take every email, everything off our servers. interview every employee of the company and everyone they could. And they came back to me and said, Greg,

you can't do anything with those aircraft. We think you may have already committed ITAR violations. And you need to voluntarily self-disclose those ITAR violations to the Department of State, which I did. And we had other violations in the Department of Commerce, and I disclosed those as well. And we also disclosed that because Eric tried to sell those, those aircraft, he may have had personal ITAR violations, right?

So we disclosed all that to Department of State, Department of Defense. We actually went over and talked to John Carlin at the DOJ and advised them on all this. And we had a board meeting in March of 2016 where I laid all this out for the board. And I said, you know, I was getting ready to say, look, either Eric goes or I go. Right? this franchise was, I've been CEO for slightly under three years. And before I could do that, first Eric gets up and he basically, for two hours, just tells the board what an awful human being I am, that I'm just jealous,

and I'm trying to steal the company from him. I said, that very well may be, Eric, but either you go or I go, I really don't care, right? So we're about ready to have a vote on that matter. And I think I got two votes for Eric leaving, me and Admiral Fowman. Right. The other board members are Chinese Communist Party members, Hong Kong businessmen, the former Nigerian Civil Aviation Commission Chairman, and I think Eric's already negotiated with them and, you know, has kind of their votes. But before we can have the vote, the two Chinese Communist Party members are on our board, they say, can we say something first?

I'm like, yeah, one of them's a vice chairman. I say, say whatever you want. I've been in this conference room for two days. I'm frustrated. I'm tired. So they stand up next to Eric and they say, Greg, we heard everything you have to say. We appreciate all your efforts with the company. However, going forward, Frontier Services Group, it is Eric Prince. So, okay.

So clearly I'm out at that point. It is Cidic, which is the Chinese sovereign fund. it is going to work with Belt and Road and it's going to provide security for Belt and Road. We weren't a security company at that point. So, I mean, it was literally one of those moments that take your breath away. I just remember looking at the Admiral Fallon,

and then I looked at these two, you know, Chinese Communist Party members, and I said, well, obviously I resigned. And the Admiral Fallon, like I said, me, he says, I'm resigned with Greg. So we announced our resolutions that day. It took between a week and a month to take care of the paperwork. Pete Phillips left the company, Chuck Thompson left the company.

Adams-Hurlowski left the company. So all the Americans basically left the company except for three people. The only Americans that stayed with the company. Go ahead, Jack. I just had something to interject there that I, well, first off, I wanted to point out for people who are listening, maybe don't understand, like China has a stents to, ostensibly a type of capitalism. They have private companies, but any of the bigger companies have Chinese Communist Party members embedded in them, just as Greg is describing here, that have

an oversight and represent the party's wishes in the company. I mean, ultimately that company is going to be subordinate to the People's Republic of China. And what that brings me to is my question, Greg, I want to ask you about Eric. This is a guy who, as you said, he hates Democrats. How does he feel about working with the Chinese Communist Party? I have a hard time squaring that circle. Well, I do too. And it's this. So obviously, when I was the CEO, we were working with the Chinese Communist Party, too. However, we were providing third party independent logistics around Africa. We'd never, we'd done one job for the Chinese since I'd been there. And that was repatriating some bodies from there was a terrorist attack in bombico before Chinese nationalities got killed.

We transported their bodies back for them. It was the only job we were did for the Chinese. So we took their money. They sat on our board, but we didn't do anything for them. So, you know, obviously I said earlier, I'm the sucker in the room. So we knew we were working with the Chinese Communist Party. But this is a game changer because we went from third party logistics. Right. Now we're going to provide security services. In China.

For Belt and Road. Right. I'm like, holy shit. So like you said, all the Americans walked away. So we had Admiral Fowlin, obviously a four-star former Sencom, P. Phillips, former deputy J-Sach, John Dolan, former senior guy, Sissigant. We had three or four other military guys. We had some former CIA guys.

We just all got up and walked away. Okay? And people stayed, go ahead. I was just going to say, and Belton Road is arguably like the overall, umbrella for part of the paramilitary operations going on against the Uighurs, right? Or at least supporting that in certain ways. Well, I mean, Belton Road is more overarching than that. It is the Chinese strategy to project across the globe.

So it's even, it's more than that day. Okay. Yeah, it's a way to go around American naval supremacy at the end of the day. Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, certainly they're in Jen, where the Uyghurs are. Right. However, that is to project Chinese power.

I mean, it's crazy that an American would stay involved. So Eric stayed, obviously, as chairman. A guy named Dave Whittingham stayed. He was Eric's primary interpreter, but he became much more involved later on. And then, you know, much to my chagrin, a guy named Rick Peregrino stayed. And Rick was in charge of training. Rick's a former recon Marine. former recon Marine.

And, you know, he stayed on as their chief security officer. I mean, I think he may even still be there. So basically from March of 2016 till today. So when I left, we did not have any security services of Frontier Services Group. Zero. Today, that company has 35,000 security guards deployed across the world. including, which really breaks my heart, in Hong Kong, where, you know, that population is completely repressed now. So Frontier Services Group, where Eric was the chairman, set up that Blackwater, too, that I talked about earlier, but I said we can't do.

And there's been some articles written about it. And I don't know exactly what is going on and who's armed and who's not. and I don't want to try to split the hairs between police services and defense services. So I don't know if it's legal or not legal for Eric to be doing that. That's for someone else to decide. What I do know is that no American should have been doing that. That's what I do know. You said earlier, Greg, that you felt from your point of view that some of the guys who were

forced out of the company out of the UAE and then when you were forced out, that Prince was trying to use you guys as a cover for other things he was trying to do behind the scenes. Well, absolutely. So, you know, if you really think of it, you know, so I'm with Eric right before this board meeting. And I'm in our CFO's office in Hong Kong, 394, the Far East Financial Center, overlooking the Chinese Army barracks. It's kind of funny. And we're getting ready on the board meeting.

meeting. And I said, Eric, some of the stuff you've been doing, I think, is illegal. And he looks at me, he just looks at me dead the eye and says, well, if I've committed any crimes, so of you. And I just said, fuck you, we'll find out. And literally, except for me saying, shaking his hand at the end of the board meeting when I resigned, it wasn't about the last two words I said to him. So, yeah, he won, you know, the reason I agreed to become CEO Frontier Services Group because it was a Hong Kong public company. And all my friends, my family, everyone said, you can't go into business with Eric. He's going to fuck you over.

And I'm like, no, no, it's a public company. We have to be above board. We can't do any of this weird shit. And I think Eric thought, well, this is the perfect cover to do all this weird shit. Right? A public company. I mean, you know, Greg Smith, he was a partner at Deloitte. He was a, you know, he was a senior guy on Wall Street, Admiral Fallon, P. Phillips. Oh, man, I just get me in their slipstream, no one's ever going to see me. Right. And that's the way I felt when I left. Now, whether that was Eric's intention to use this for cover, but then I look at my friend Dean Valentine, who I said at R2, went to start it. You know, Dean's a USNA guy. He was an investment banker, Harvard, as the school graduate, serious guy, great family guy. You know, he's not the kind of guy that gets involved in shady shit.

And I think Eric wanted to get in his slipstream as well. So, you know, it happened at least those two occasions. But there's others. You know, we had businesses all over Africa. And behind every legitimate business we had, there was always some dark shit going on. I mean, what was this dark shit going on? I mean, you found out about the airplanes being armed. I mean, did you ever get an inkling of what else was happening there?

Well, I mean, you talked about Libya. Jack, you'd ask about Libya. So let me segue there. Sure. We bought a company called Malath Arrow, which is headquartered in Malta. And this company is basically a charter aircraft business run by a guy named Mickle Bryant, a Brit, really smart guy really knows the aviation business. And basically what Mick does, he charters out aircraft and, you know,

he flies them wherever people want to fly. A lot of it's in Europe. I mean, for instance, you know, he had a 737 that was flying around Paris Saint-Germain football club. But we also did a lot of flights, or Mick used to, in and around North Africa. So Eric sent former SEAL and a former CIA guy. into Malta. And next thing I know, we've got charter aircraft running in and out of Libya.

So this is in 2015. Now, before that, I had flown into Tripoli with Eric in 2013. So I knew he had business interests there. And then he had told me that he met with Haftar at one point. And I wanted to say that was probably late 2014. early 2015. So Mick O'Brien, who owns, who is part owner of Malath, we own the other part, calls me one day, says, Greg, you have to come and get these guys. I'm like, well, why do I have to come and get these guys? He goes, it's insane what we're doing. I said, what are we doing, Mick?

He goes, we're running chartered aircraft in and out of Libya. I mean, the Civil War is raging at that point, right? And Haftar is moving from east to west, and the Emirates are helping him and you know there's all kinds of weird shit going on and he goes i think we're moving half tar uh you guys won't give me a manifest and i think we're moving um arms in the nautilbia i'm like come on nick so i went down to the airport you know i flew into malta i met with uh the guys i thought i was going to have a fist fight in the middle of the airport with ken viera he would whip my ass was you know he's a seal um and i said ken what the fuck are you doing because i'm just doing what I'm told. I'm like, I've told you not to do that anymore. He goes, well, but Eric told me to do it.

I'm like, God damn it. So we were moving a lot of chartered flights in and out of Libya during 2015. And then after I'd left, after I retired, became a ranch hand, I started reading reports about this company called Lancaster Six. that had went into Libya, something fucked up. They had to come back on ribboats, back to Malta on ribboats, which, you know,

it's a 100-mile trip through some pretty rough seas on a ribboat, 18 guys. And the guys involved were Serge Durant, my old special aviation division guy, the chief pilot for one of Eric's other companies, Bridgeport, a guy named Travis Mackey. They were involved in this.

I'm like, holy shit. did he just run more mercenaries or more aviation assets into Libya? So this was 2019, I think, that it went on. And then a lot of that was outlined in that UN report. I remember this. I think they accused Erica violating UN sanctions. What have I missed? Ah, are we out of time?

No, no, we're not out of time. I'm just trying to process all this insanity. I mean, yeah, all of this is pretty incredible stuff. And I mean, it also speaks to, I think, like a type of obsession for what you're telling me with recreating some sort of mercenary army. I mean, he's trying this all over the world everywhere he goes. It's like, hey, man, like maybe, you know, buy yourself a nice little cottage out in Cape Cod, write a novel. Sign up for some boxing classes. to two, skip the rest?

No, he used to do BJJ, the villas. You know, it's kind of funny. I once asked him, I said, dude, you don't have any hobbies. I think I was coaching Pop Warner football at the time. Yeah. You don't have any fricking hobbies. And even his wife would say to me, he doesn't have any hobbies. And he would say, Greg, my hobby is counterinsurgencies.

I'm like, oh boy, that's going to give you a short list of friends. Right. So from the time he left the U.S., remember I said earlier, he really worship even Barlow? He wanted to be executive outcomes. Yeah. I mean, look at the in Sierra Leone in Angola, the air assets, the ground assets. The way those guys from the old CCP went after, CCB went after it with the Ruff and the other guys, the RUF and the other guys, right? he wanted to recreate that and he's been trying desperately.

So even the reports, and again, I'm not part of this anymore. Last time I saw the dude was at the end of March 2016, but I've read reports from reliable sources. He offered basically the same thing in Ukraine. He offered the same thing in Afghanistan, you know, since then. There were reports of a private CIA who was trying to set up. So there are so many talking to some of my friends. And actually, you know, so Pete Phillips, Captain Phillips would say when you leave the military,

you remain at that rank forever. I said, well, Pete, I'm going to be a corporal forever. He goes, no, you're different. You're too fucked up. They can still be a corporal. But he goes, in general, Greg, when you leave the military, if you leave the military as a lieutenant a JG, seal team guy. Your mind never gets past that, right?

So Eric left it, I think, wanting to be executive outcomes, and he's stayed that way for 20 years. And I can only base it on the evidence I've seen in front of my own eyes. He has tried what my friend Robert Young Pelt calls an army in a box, what 10 times? You know, Libya, Mali, South Sudan. Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, DRC. I mean, that's seven off the top of my head. Yeah, we zoom out from it.

You really see that pattern. Did he ever want to be the guy on the ground, or did he always want to be sort of the, you know, the overseer of all this? But, yeah, I don't know. You know, Eric never deployed. And, you know, I'm not a shrink. So I don't know what drives people.

Yeah. Greg, you said that you wanted to, one of the reasons why you wanted to talk was because you're seeing some of these methodologies, some of these templates that you saw developed during your time with these companies being brought back to the United States. There is some reporting in the past about Eric Prince working with Project Veritas and trying to set them up as a domestic intelligence survey. I don't know. I can't remember the exact verbiage that was being used. Could you talk to us about these developments and, again, what it is that you're seeing coming back home domestically that you find concerning? Yeah. So in 2016, when I left, I was obligated to do a couple things, including meeting with attorneys for Frontier Services Group. But I finished up my work with them in, say, May 2016. And then I largely disappeared for two years.

A lot of my friends could even find me, which I found fantastic. But as I'm sitting out there, I started seeing some stuff from Eric. And the first time I saw him pop back on the public radar screen was on November 4th, 2016, right before the election, when he went on Breitbart and said, you know, Weiner and Huma-A-Madine are about to flip. then Hillary's going to get arrested. And he heard it from the folks at one police plaza in New York City. I'm like, well, I was with Eric up with the six months ago.

He had no relationship with those guys. I'm like, well, that was kind of weird. But then Rudy came out with the same thing. I'm like, what the hell is going on? And then I saw him and his wife in pictures at Trump's private party, the night of the election. So there are only like 50 of them there. I'm like, okay.

So he got with Trump and he's a Trump supporter. get that. Not surprising. He was a Rand Paul advisor earlier in the election. But, you know, the fact he would he would have done anything for Hillary not to be elected. So I got that. So I'm still like, okay, I'm still letting that go. Nothing there. And then, uh, I saw reports that he'd went to the Seychelles. And I'm like, yeah, it's actually not that weird for Eric to be in the Seychelles with Mohammed Ben Zayat. It really wouldn't have been for us, right? We're like, fuck, he's in the Seychelles with NBC. However, it was him meeting with the Russian in some of the conversations you read about later in the Mueller report that I thought, wow, that's a little bit weird.

So I called my buddy Chuck Thompson, who had still had been the CFO at Frontier Services Group. And I said, what the hell was Eric doing there? He goes, Greg, it's worse than that. We paid for that flight. I'm like, so he went and met for Trump on your dime. Yeah, I think he eventually paid the money back to the company. So that's still not bothering me. What bothered me is, I think it was in 2018.

There's a open source reporter by name of Wendy Siegelman. Wendy does some of the best open source research I've ever seen. And I was just screening something I saw one day, and she said, well, the assets of Cambridge Analytica have been sold to a company by the name of EmmerData. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And the Emmer Data directors include a guy by name of Johnson Co. So Johnson Coe is the Chinese billionaire. That we talked about earlier. On the board of Frontier Services Group.

And all of a sudden, he ends up partnering with Rebecca Mercer. And they buy the assets of Cambridge Analytica. I'm like, well, that's impossible. But then I did a little bit more reading. and Steve Bannon's first trip after he left the White House was to a sit at conference in Hong Kong. I'm like, well, that's, that's, that's not a coincidence.

So I'm like, oh my God, Eric had Johnson Co. buy the Emerald, the Cambridge Analytica assets. And I'm like, well, that in itself, there's nothing illegal there. It's just sketchy you're working with the Chinese to bury Cambridge Analytica. It's just sketchy. Okay? And then I kind of worked a little bit backwards.

And the meeting that really bothered me, the one that said he's bringing it to America, is this. There is a former CIA officer by name of Joe Assad. His wife's also in the CIA. Her name is Michelle Assad. Yeah. I'll name them because they wrote a book.

Yeah. So I've heard of them. So I used to, Joe worked for Eric. So did Michelle. And I used to sit across from Joe at a desk in Eric's second villa in Abu Dhabi. And Joe used to be working on Psi-Ops types of things against the Iranians, targeted Psi-Ops campaigns. And he, I don't know if they ever deployed them or not, or if there's just an idea.

But I'm like, holy shit. when I read that Eric and a guy named Joe Sammel from the Cy Group and George Nader, the pedophile, met with Don Jr. in August of 2016 to talk about targeted micro-psychological operations types of things. I'm like, holy shit, that's the stuff that we were doing overseas that I thought was going to be targeted for Iranians, you know, to start a rubberer. evolution against the Itola. I didn't think that was coming home to America. I'm like, holy shit, that came home to America. And then the second thing that bothered me a little bit is on December 23rd, 2020. So about a month and a half after the election, and you started hearing

all the chatter about what was going to happen on January 6th. I got a call from the FBI. And the FBI agent who had talked to me before, she says, is there any way? one in your old network involved in any of these oath keepers, three percenters, proud boys. And I said, you know, truthfully, I do not have any actual knowledge of that. However, if you go to the Blackwater Worldwide website, you'll notice that they have been trying to gin up those types of folks through, you know, sell, you know, it's just subtle type of marketing, but it was selling like Portland or bus summer of love t-shirts, you know, trying to entice some of these LARPERS, as I'll call them, you know,

to kind of head up with the Portland. I said, I haven't seen it per se, but it looks like there's something going on the Blackwater Worldwide website that you might want to take a look at. I mean, it sounds like you have some pretty interesting circumstantial evidence. And I mean, it definitely piques my curiosity to say the least. but I mean this is like almost like some serpico shit at this point. And not to say it's not true, but I mean, this is pretty crazy, pretty beyond the pale if it's true.

Well, you know, but I guess what's true and what am I saying? I'm saying that the FBI was concerned enough whatever they were hearing that they called me to find out about my old colleagues. okay so in the other like said the only thing I could point towards was some internet traffic that I that I'd seen but the other stuff with Cambridge Analytica well well that's that's a fact that those those assets were sold to emmer data and Johnson Coe was a director with Rebecca Mercer and how the hell did Johnson Coe ever get introduced to Rebecca Mercer can anyone name one person they have in common um so you know it was just you know when I look at that I'm like well what's next then. You know, what's coming to America next? And I really don't want to know. So when people say,

well, do you have a vendetta against Eric? I said, no, no, I don't. I just want him to stop. Stop trying to sell your army in a box to ruthless fucking dictators. Just stop all the nonsense. Like you said, go get a hobby. Go get a cabin. Go fishing. What about this article that came out where he was, I'm sorry, it was a long time since I read it, where he was, where he was, taking bringing the project veritas people like onto his ranch and giving them paramilitary training and all this kind of weird stuff well i i think that happened because there were pictures of o'keefe and some of the guys from veritas at his ranch uh and i think el keith posted it on his instagram so clearly that happened i don't know any more about it than that you know i i don't

know those guys those guys kind of post dated me uh in in terms of everything you know what i will say what I do know, there is an investigation into those aircraft at Frontier Services Group, those thrush aircraft. That's an active investigation. I received a subpoena on October 15th to appear in federal district court on November 2nd or produced documents in lieu of that, which I did. So in the last four months, five months now, November 2nd. So on November 2nd, I know there was a grand jury looking into it. I don't know what's happened since then. I can't say for sure. Eric Prince was the target of that

because my subpoena simply said produced these documents for a criminal investigation, which I did. Where do you think this? I mean, maybe I'm being presumptuous, but where do you see this ending, Greg, for Mr. Prince? I mean, in a way, I mean, I don't want to say I feel like sorry for him or something like that, but it seems like he has some sort of obsessive, compulsive issue that he can't stop doing these things. Do you think the Department of Justice is eventually going to move on him? Because I will say it is pretty uncanny the way he has been able to do all of these things with very little legal consequence, from what I've seen.

Well, he paid $45 million in fines, which... It's not nothing. But if I did these things, I have a feeling I know where I would be. No, and that's why we all got the hell out of there because we knew where we were going to be. So, you know, I don't live far from a Florence Supermax. I don't want to live there, though. I don't know. So, you know, here's what's weird about the DOJ.

I told you I disappeared for like two years, two and a half years. Went off the grid. One day, two FBI agents show up at my door. And they said, well, we've had a hard time finding you. I'm like, that's good. I wanted it to be hard to be found. But they said, we really need to talk to you. And they talked to me about these aircraft.

And they were, this was 2019. They were full on investigating. One of them was a former Marine. former CPA. And they were hot, bothered. They took all my comms. They'd actually picked up six months before then a former chief compliance officer at the airport and took all of his comms. He's actually a pretty well-known guy.

He's an author by name of Adam Sri Lovsky, right for vanity fair. But he's also a very good attorney. And he was my chief compliance officer. He's the one who did the project on Somalia, the documentary. So Adam had his comm scooped. I had my comm scooped. These FBI agents told me they're hot and bothered and they really want to get into this. And then two months later, they completely disappear.

I get a call from some other FBI agents saying, we just want to make sure you're okay. Can't really talk about what's going on, but there's no more investigation. I'm like, oh, really? And then right after the election, right after January 6th, I had two more FBI agents coming to my home and tell me investigations back on. We're full bore again.

So I don't know. I accused them. I asked them point blank. I said, did Bill Barr shut down the first investigation? And the FBI agent said, no, that's not what happened at all. I'm like, oh, you sure? No, that's not what happened. I mean, this has been like a whirlwind tour and also an almost impossible to otherwise acquire a sort of class on how international contracted commercial security operations work.

I mean, this is a kind of information that a lot of people have questions about. And I mean, publicly, you never hear anything about. I mean, even some very good reporters, I don't think put together. some of the things that you have here today, Greg. Well, the difference between me and these reporters is I was in the room. Right. Yeah. It's just not me.

Right. So, you know, there's three or four other guys that I wish would speak out, but I understand why they don't. And frankly, I would completely just go away. No one would ever see me again if Eric Prince would quit popping up, you know, with proposal to Afghanistan. He pulls out of Ukraine. He shows up then and shows saying, you know, Putin's not that bad of a guy. He doesn't have any, you know, LGBT and his, you know, armed forces. I mean, if he would just, if Eric would stay away, I wouldn't have the compulsive need to pop up and say, that's bullshit. What do you think? And I feel in some of my own, like, writing and reporting over the years, and I come to this conclusion, and I want to ask for your opinion about this, because I think it's really important to talk to military. veterans out there about this particular subject that I feel that a lot of guys get out of the

military, they get out of special operations, not talking about anyone specifically. Let's just say generally speaking. They get out and they do not understand the context of working in the commercial security industry. And just like that seal you talk to in Malta, who's like, well, doing what I was told to do, what's the problem? Because you come from a military frame of reference, there's an assumption that your orders are lawful and legal and have been vetted. But oftentimes, special ops guys are hired by commercial companies to do things, and they're told to do things that are, in all actuality, completely fucking illegal. And the veteran has not pulled themselves out of that mindset yet, that they are no longer in the military, they are no longer operating under Title X

authorities. I wanted, as somebody who's been down this road a number of times, Greg, could you speak to that a little bit? I mean, what would you want to tell the seal, the ranger, the green beret, who's getting out of the military and going into this world? Yeah, well, I would say if you're going to go work for a foreign company or a foreign business or a foreign country, that you're probably going to be in such a gray area at the very least, that you might want to reconsider it. If you want to go work for Dyncore or even today's academy, the former Blackwater, which is squared away, if you want to go work for one of those companies, an American company under American rule of law with American compliance, that's a different matter.

But if you decide, look, I'm going to go, I got this gig, and I've heard this from so many guys, I got this opportunity in Saudi Arabia. I'm like, really? You do, do you? So, you know, if you want to get into the private security business, at the very least, get your feet wet with a big American corporation that's got to dot every eye, cross every T. Start there, or with one of the British companies. The Brits are squared away too. But if you're going to go off and do something in Azerbaijan or Libya or, you know, Khalifa Heftar needs some folks. It's just not a, it's not a good idea. unless you want to go, you know, if you,

if you want to go full-blown executive outcomes mercenary, that's where you're going. All right. Let's get through some questions. All right. Casey, Lovellas, thank you very much. Would you mind giving us a close-up of the rifles you have in the background, Greg? If not, I understand. Thanks for being on the show. No, I think what someone's pointing to is I have a couple of spring field 1870 trap doors there. So I live in Custer County, Colorado, and in honor of the guns that

helped get George Custer and the 7th Cavalry slaughtered, I keep those trap doors there to remember that, you know, you can get a Remington lever action, and they might have actually done some more damage. Line of Judea, thank you. Libia Aircraft and the guys who booked them all the time, which we covered. Thank you. Jackson, thank you. How has Academy's reputation transformed since Eric's departure compared to PMCs like executives' outcomes? How kinetic is Academy or other Prince PMCs? Yeah, I think, you know, my buddy, Jason Deonker bought Academy from Eric in 2010. I think they spun it off just in the last year or two. They brought in a lot of compliance and a lot of oversight. And I think that company is pretty well squared away at this point.

I think they're doing what we'd call it traditional, what I'll call DynC. type of stuff. They're not out there kind of front line trying to be offensive troops. Do they merge with T.C.? Yeah. Yeah. Zach, thank you for both of your donations. He asked two questions.

Who are the earliest leaders' agencies you can pinpoint who looked the other way and or enabled prints for a standing on principle and state? stopping him. The earliest leaders? Yeah. The earliest leaders slash agencies, you can pinpoint who either look the other way and enable them versus standing, you know, staying against him. Well, clearly the CIA.

I mean, clearly the CIA used Blackwater and then abandoned Eric Prince in his mind. So the CIA, you know, with Koffer Black there, and then, you know, I can't speak to, you know, that would be the one that empowered them and then walked away, the CIA. Now, Eric has a great disregard for the department of state as well, though, because if you remember, you know, his contract was a state department contract, the big one, the WIPS contract. and they completely they would not renew that contract after Nesor Square. So I'd say, you know, both state and the CIA.

And then as another question, if you could rewind this narrative, what's the most important thing you'd do differently? And how do you feel about your career in total? You know, what I would do differently, I would never have went into actual business with Eric Prince.

I was fine up until 2010, where I was an advisor. But once I became too close to him, part of the, if you will, the family, I wouldn't have done that again. You know, overall, you know, I've lived a interesting life. So, I mean, I feel fine with my career. I feel God awful though that we set up Frontier. services group in that enabled the Chinese to set up this private security contractor right now that's got 35,000 employees. I feel I feel literally sick about that. Yeah. Because Eric couldn't have done that without me and Brett McConagall and Pete Phillips couldn't have done it. Um,

Jen Colley, thank you very much. Jackie Lau, thank you very much. Uh, Elliot, uh, thank you. Does great thing to US will continue outsource to contractors. On one hand, it seems like a useful to on the other, it's clearly a liability. I think they are. I think we largely have now. There's no contractor in my view operating like Blackwater did the green zone. I think that's largely over. We can continue to use contractors and we will always, that will continue.

But I don't think the U.S. is in the contracting business anymore. Unfortunately, I think a lot of other countries. are in the business of shadowy things. And they actually learn from Blackwater. I mean, you know, Wagner and Russia is the best example. You know, the little green men going into Crimea technically, officially do not work for the Russian government. They're mercenaries.

Right. And then all over Africa, too. Yeah. All over Africa. Carlos Chisana, thank you. Is one potential reason the U.S. government allows Mr. Prince to continue operating that is organizations or organizations, or once linked to them, sometimes they used to serve U.S. interest when things are complicated.

Yeah, we've kind of talked about that a bit. I don't think the U.S. government, you know, Eric hasn't worked for the U.S. government since 2010, as far as I know. I mean, he obviously had a different relationship with the Trump administration, and, you know, he was trying to get some things done. But to my knowledge, Eric has not drawn any funds from the U.S. government since 2010. So I don't think that that's a relationship that exists anymore. So I don't quite understand what we're looking for in that question. And K Jam, thank you.

Thank you for the courage in spilling all this tea. Do you have plans to share with a wider audience? What are you talking about? We're huge. Take to the streets and tell people about the team house. What's the problem? I am particularly interested in the public learning, how to identify obstigrating public discourse.

Say that again, David. I don't quite understand that. Do you have the courage in spilling the tea? Oh, do you do. KJM said, do you have plans to share with a wider audience? I think particularly about the stuff you were talking about in the end, about operations to influence public discourse and public opinion. Oh.

The psychological operations. No, it's funny. Our attention span as Americans is about zero for this type of stuff. and a lot of it is just background noise now. So if I talk about Joe Zammel and George Nader, Eric Prince, trying to set up a psychological warfare and influence people on Facebook, that's old news. So now, you know, I'm done.

I'm actually probably done after this podcast in terms of really talking about Eric. I don't have anything left to say. I wanted to tell the story one time kind of chronologically from 1996 to 2016. and when people occasionally see me rant, and I only do it when Eric, if Eric doesn't pop up on, if he doesn't pop up on, I won't anymore. But I do it because I am concerned

that it's coming to America. I mean, there is a lot of angry people in America, and it doesn't take much to incite them. And if you're using CIA types of psychological warfare on America, and we're bringing it that way, I don't want to be part of that. BPA, Izzy, thank you very much for the donation. Zach, thank you.

Should Eric Prince have a U.S. passport? Yeah, is he a U.S. citizen? He hasn't been convicted of any crimes. True. Absolutely, he should. I mean, for God's sakes. We are a country of rule of law. Right, right?

And anything I said that I think today are just, you know, if I said I think something's illegal, it's probably because my attorney's told me it's illegal and we need to move on. But until someone from the DOJ slaps a set of handcuffs on someone and that person is then convicted in a court of law.

You can't strip someone of their civil rights without the due process. And then, Alex, thank you very much. I watched an interview recently on the Sean Ryan show indicating that the contractors in the Nisora Square were innocent. Would you agree?

Well, I mean, What were they innocent of? I mean, clearly they shot 17 unarmed civilians. And we're convicted. And we're convicted. So if someone, we're, what was it intentional? Or was it just a terrible tragedy? Right. Someone got it, you know, sport, you know, a trigger finger and no fire discipline. But what are you innocent of?

Right. There's 17 dead civilians and those guys shot them. Yeah. And then we have a couple of questions or we have one question on Patreon from Isaac. Do you know anything about Wagner? Do you think Prince has done any business with them? You know, I've seen reports, but I don't have any now. you know, Eric has a little bit deeper relationship with Russians than he admitted to the

congressional committee where I think he said he really didn't know any Russians. In 2014, Eric, I'm going to call him Eric's fixer, but he's like Eric's Michael Cohn. You know, Trump's got his Michael, he had his Michael Cohn guy that took care of stuff for him. Eric's got a guy named Dorian Barack that takes care of stuff for him. Eric sent Dorian Barack and our chief financial officer to Russia to meet with a company called Ross Tech, just as the sanctions were going in place for Crimea. So he knows people in Russia. He does a lot of work or did a lot of work with a investment firm called Renaissance Capital, which is Russian.

And obviously, Dmitry Strzinski, who I talked about, he partnered with in Azerbaijan. But I have no knowledge of him ever meeting with Wagner. And even though I've seen that reported, that's not the air prints I know. Yeah. And then I just said he adds one more question. But we also have Elliott. Oh, also, Jen, what's the story with L. Freud?

Elliot. What about it? Are you new to the show? It's the greatest Scotch ever agreed. And this is not a paid advertisement either. Yeah. Yeah, they should pay, yes. It should be, but it's not.

Oh, there was a, this is also from Isaac. There was a report that Eric Prince and assessed sister Betsy DeVos were trying to build an intelligence agency with a former member to spy and other intelligence officers. We talked about that. For the Republican Party, for the MAGA party to go undercover. Yeah, with Project Veritas. Yeah, you guys, you read the article on that. I mean, Greg answered as best he could. Yeah.

Yeah, he asked like dealing with Michael Flynn, met with even Barlow, Jen Gartner. And then contracts have a bad name because Blackwater earned the group that was beating the pipeline protesters at the Keystone pipeline protest. That, no, no. What do you believe they are still? That was Tiger Swan was out there as were a number of other contractors out at Dapple. I don't recall any of them actually beating protesters. They were just trying to infiltrate, right?

Amongst and agitate. They're also trying to agitate. But that's a whole other story. That was not Blackwater. Yeah. No. But he was saying Blackwater and that company. But do you believe they are still now necessary or should be managed with better discipline?

I mean, that's what we've been talking about through. this whole podcast, really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's flat out. The U.S. government will be using contractors for as long as there's the U.S. government. And there's absolutely a place for them.

Yeah. We shouldn't be using mercenaries. But that's different than contractors. Right. And Blackwater was never a group of mercenaries. Blackwater was a group of contractors that did not have the proper oversight. Well, and I mean, there, you. If anybody understands how these things build up in war, like, it was a big order to fill.

And they just outran their headlights. And that's not like any malintent. That's just sometimes what happens with a business when it blows up like that. Greg, can I get you stay for like 15, 20 minutes to do a bonus segment with us after? I got nothing to do. I'm out here in the middle of nowhere. I appreciate it, Greg. I do have there are a couple colorful anecdotes you mentioned that I'll bring up on the bonus.

segment and I'd love to hear. So everyone else, thank you for joining us tonight. Please check us out on Patreon if you want to support the show and get access to the bonus segments. Check out the sponsors of the show. We really appreciate it. And next Friday, we're going to have my friend, National Security journalist, Zach Dorfman on the show to talk about some of his work and even work we've done together. So I'm excited to talk to him. Greg, thank you so much, man, for sharing your story with us. Like I said, this is like a really unique insider's perspective that you're, I mean, I would not get anywhere else. I don't think anyone watching would either. And we really appreciate you sharing that with us. Jack, Dave, thanks for having me. Thank you. We appreciate it. Hey,

everybody, thank you for joining us tonight. Like, subscribe. Yeah, subscribe. Why haven't you subscribed? Hit the bell icon. Join our Patreon. Buy us LeFroig. You pay our rent. Thank you. All right. We'll see all of you guys next Friday. Thank you.