In June 15, 2010, The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill reported that “sources close to Blackwater and its secretive owner Erik Prince” had claimed that the embattled head of the world’s most infamous mercenary firm” was “planning to move to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).”

Scahill noted, “The Nation learned of Prince’s alleged plans to move to the UAE from three separate sources. One Blackwater source told The Nation that Prince intends to sell his company quickly, saying the ‘sale is going to be a fast move within a couple of months.’”

Two ex-Blackwater Worldwide executives pled guilty to one count of “failing to make and maintain records related to firearms.” They were sentenced by a federal judge to three years probation, four months house arrest with stipulations and fined five thousand dollars.

To understand how gentle this sentence happens to be and how it clearly shows the United States Justice Department threw the case, Gary Jackson, former president of Blackwater, and William Wheeler Mathews Jr., a former vice president, were indicted on April 16, 2010, on twelve counts and five counts respectively.

Erik Prince’s latest scam–to hide from the trial lawyers–involves using retired US servicemen to train Colombian mercenaries to “defend” the United Arab Emirates.

We learn from Dawn.com Tuesday that Raymond Davis, a US “consular employee” who killed two men on Thursday in Lahore, has been placed on the exit control list, barring his exit from Pakistan. Remarkably, Representative Darrell Issa led a small Congressional delegation that met on Tuesday with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zadari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, seeking release of Davis, according to Pakistan’s Online International News Network. Those meetings came a day after State Department spokesman Philip Crowley declared that as a consular employee, Davis has full diplomatic immunity.

Given that the State Department gave Blackwater follow-on contracts after Blackwater failed to keep Bhutto safe, then have they at least done a real assessment of what went wrong? Last we heard from Blackwater publicly, they had a purportedly perfect record. But they don’t. And no one told us that. If we’re going to give another $120,000,000 to Blackwater, have we at least studied, first, what went wrong with Blackwater’s notable failure with Bhutto?

Remember that Vanity Fair tell all in which Erik Prince offered new details about Blackwater ops? Though Michael Hayden has suggested Prince made up some of the details, it seemed to be a form of graymail targeted at those who approved Blackwater ops now under criminal investigation. Apparently, there’s a long form version.

We’re about to try Russia’s version of Erik Prince for the same kinds of things we know Prince was doing. Meanwhile, Prince is hiding out where Bout once took refuge.

I suggest these twin legal proceedings ought to be viewed in tandem.

Apart from aiming for another Pulitzer Prize, the other most (perhaps more) likely explanation for the style of the piece is that editors have tried so hard not to piss off the security establishment–and to stop short of voicing the conclusions that Dana Priest and William Arkin’s work support–that they’ve turned Priest and Arkin’s work into a bunch of disembodied fluff.

I’m not saying this is what’s happening. But if I were a big spook, I’d love to have someone with the skill set of Prince, off in a haven protected from American law, setting up an entity that can do what Blackwater does but do so with neither the legal oversight (as if that did us a damn bit of good) nor the requirement to be paid in cash.

As I noted in this post, the front page NYT story putting Petraeus in charge of the paramilitary groups I will call “JUnc-WTF,” which are deployed in allied countries, reminded me of Eric Massa’s allegations that Dick Cheney and Petraeus were plotting a coup (though, as Massa describes it, it sounds more like an “election challenge”).