Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel
April 3, 2017 at 4:29 PM
The
United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between
Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President
Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a
back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect
Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.
The
meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s
inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials
said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker
the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to
curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump
administration objective that would be likely to require major
concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.
Though
Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team,
he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking
Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant,
according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.
Prince
was an avid supporter of Trump. After the Republican convention, he
contributed $250,000 to Trump’s campaign, the national party and a
pro-Trump super PAC led by GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, records show.
He has ties to people in Trump’s circle, including Stephen K. Bannon,
now serving as the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor.
Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump
administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in
New York in December.
U.S. officials said the
FBI has been scrutinizing the Seychelles meeting as part of a broader
probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged
contacts between associates of Putin and Trump. The FBI declined to
comment.
The Seychelles encounter, which one
official said spanned two days, adds to an expanding web of connections
between Russia and Americans with ties to Trump — contacts that the
White House has been reluctant to acknowledge or explain until they have
been exposed by news organizations.
“We are
not aware of any meetings, and Erik Prince had no role in the
transition,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary.
A
Prince spokesman said in a statement: “Erik had no role on the
transition team. This is a complete fabrication. The meeting had nothing
to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced
intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American
citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?”
Prince
is best known as the founder of Blackwater, a security firm that became
a symbol of U.S. abuses in Iraq after a series of incidents, including
one in 2007 in which the company’s guards were accused — and later
criminally convicted — of killing civilians in a crowded Iraqi square.
Prince sold the firm, which was subsequently re-branded, but has
continued building a private paramilitary empire with contracts across
the Middle East and Asia. He now heads a Hong Kong-based company known
as the Frontier Services Group.
Prince would
probably have been seen as too controversial to serve in any official
capacity in the Trump transition or administration. But his ties to
Trump advisers, experience with clandestine work and relationship with
the royal leaders of the Emirates — where he moved in 2010 amid mounting
legal problems for his American business — would have positioned him as
an ideal go-between.
The Seychelles meeting
came after separate private discussions in New York involving
high-ranking representatives of Trump with both Moscow and the Emirates.
The
White House has acknowledged that Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s original
national security adviser, and Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared
Kushner met with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey
Kislyak, in late November or early December in New York.
Flynn
and Kushner were joined by Bannon for a separate meeting with the crown
prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who made an
undisclosed visit to New York later in December, according to the U.S.,
European and Arab officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to
discuss sensitive matters.
In
an unusual breach of protocol, the UAE did not notify the Obama
administration in advance of the visit, though officials found out
because Zayed’s name appeared on a flight manifest.
Officials
said Zayed and his brother, the UAE’s national security adviser,
coordinated the Seychelles meeting with Russian government officials
with the goal of establishing an unofficial back channel between Trump
and Putin.
Officials said Zayed wanted to be
helpful to both leaders, who had talked about working more closely
together, a policy objective long advocated by the crown prince. The
UAE, which sees Iran as one of its main enemies, also shared the Trump
team’s interest in finding ways to drive a wedge between Moscow and
Tehran.
Zayed met twice with Putin in 2016,
according to Western officials, and urged the Russian leader to work
more closely with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia — an effort to isolate
Iran.
At the time of the Seychelles meeting
and for weeks afterward, the UAE believed that Prince had the blessing
of the new administration to act as its unofficial representative. The
Russian participant was a person whom Zayed knew was close to Putin from
his interactions with both men, the officials said.
Scrutiny over Russia
When
the Seychelles meeting took place, official contacts between members of
the incoming Trump administration and the Russian government were under
intense scrutiny, both from federal investigators and the press.
Less
than a week before the Seychelles meeting, U.S. intelligence agencies
released a report accusing Russia of intervening clandestinely during
the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House.
The FBI was already investigating communications between Flynn and Kislyak. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius
first disclosed those communications on Jan. 12, around the time of the
Seychelles meeting. Flynn was subsequently fired by Trump for
misleading Vice President Pence and others about his discussions with
Kislyak.
Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador in Washington, declined to comment.
Government
officials in the Seychelles said they were not aware of any meetings
between Trump and Putin associates in the country around Jan. 11. But
they said luxury resorts on the island are ideal for clandestine
gatherings like the one described by the U.S., European and Arab
officials.
“I wouldn’t be surprised at all,”
said Barry Faure, the Seychelles secretary of state for foreign affairs.
“The Seychelles is the kind of place where you can have a good time
away from the eyes of the media. That’s even printed in our tourism
marketing. But I guess this time you smelled something.”
Trump has dismissed the investigations of Russia’s role in the election as “fake news” and a “witch hunt.”
The
level of discretion surrounding the Seychelles meeting seems
extraordinary given the frequency with which senior Trump advisers,
including Flynn and Kushner, had interacted with Russian officials in
the United States, including at the high-profile Trump Tower in New
York.
Steven Simon, a National Security
Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa in the
Obama White House, said: “The idea of using business cutouts, or
individuals perceived to be close to political leaders, as a tool of
diplomacy is as old as the hills. These unofficial channels are
desirable precisely because they are deniable; ideas can be tested
without the risk of failure.”
Current and
former U.S. officials said that while Prince refrained from playing a
direct role in the Trump transition, his name surfaced so frequently in
internal discussions that he seemed to function as an outside adviser
whose opinions were valued on a range of issues, including plans for
overhauling the U.S. intelligence community.
He
appears to have particularly close ties to Bannon, appearing multiple
times on the Breitbart satellite radio program and website that Bannon
ran before joining the Trump campaign.
In a
July interview with Bannon, Prince said those seeking forceful U.S.
leadership should “wait till January and hope Mr. Trump is elected.” And
he lashed out at President Barack Obama, saying that because of his
policies “the terrorists, the fascists, are winning.”
Days
before the November election, Prince appeared on the Breitbart radio
program, saying that he had “well-placed sources” in the New York City
Police Department telling him they were preparing to make arrests in the
investigation of former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) over
allegations he exchanged sexually explicit texts with a minor. Flynn
tweeted a link to the Breitbart report on the claim. No arrests
occurred.
Prince went on to make unfounded
assertions that damaging material recovered from Weiner’s computers
would implicate Hillary Clinton and her close adviser, Huma Abedin, who
was married to Weiner. He also called Abedin an “agent of influence very
sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Prince
and his family were major GOP donors in 2016. The Center for Responsive
Politics reported that the family gave more than $10 million to GOP
candidates and super PACs, including about $2.7 million from his sister,
DeVos, and her husband.
Prince’s father,
Edgar Prince, built his fortune through an auto-parts company. Betsy
married Richard DeVos Jr., heir to the Amway fortune.
Erik
Prince has had lucrative contracts with the UAE government, which at
one point paid his firm a reported $529 million to help bring in foreign
fighters to help assemble an internal paramilitary force capable of
carrying out secret operations and protecting Emirati installations from
terrorist attacks.
Focus on Iran
The
Trump administration and the UAE appear to share a similar
preoccupation with Iran. Current and former officials said that Trump
advisers were focused throughout the transition period on exploring ways
to get Moscow to break ranks with Tehran.
“Separating
Russia from Iran was a common theme,” said a former intelligence
official in the Obama administration who met with Trump transition
officials. “It didn’t seem very well thought out. It seemed a little
premature. They clearly had a very specific policy position, which I
found odd given that they hadn’t even taken the reins and explored with
experts in the U.S. government the pros and cons of that approach.”
Michael
McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he also had discussions
with people close to the Trump administration about the prospects of
drawing Russia away from Iran. “When I would hear this, I would think,
‘Yeah that’s great for you guys, but why would Putin ever do that?’ ”
McFaul said. “There is no interest in Russia ever doing that. They have a
long relationship with Iran. They’re allied with Iran in fighting in
Syria. They sell weapons to Iran. Iran is an important strategic partner
for Russia in the Middle East.”
Following the
New York meeting between the Emiratis and Trump aides, Zayed was
approached by Prince, who said he was authorized to act as an unofficial
surrogate for the president-elect, according to the officials. He
wanted Zayed to set up a meeting with a Putin associate. Zayed agreed
and proposed the Seychelles as the meeting place because of the privacy
it would afford both sides. “He wanted to be helpful,” one official said
of Zayed.
Wealthy Russians and Emirati
royalty have a particularly large footprint on the islands. Signs
advertising deep-sea fishing trips are posted in Cyrillic. Russian
billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov owns North Island, where Prince William
and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, went on their honeymoon in 2011.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, president of the UAE, built a
hilltop palace for himself with views across the chain of islands.
The
Emiratis have given hundreds of millions of dollars to the Seychelles
in recent years for causes including public health and affordable
housing. But when the Emirati royal family visits, they are rarely seen.
“The
jeep comes to their private jet on the tarmac and they disappear,” said
one Seychellois official who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because he did not want to be seen as criticizing the Emiratis.
Zayed,
the crown prince, owns a share of the Seychelles’ Four Seasons, a
collection of private villas scattered on a lush hillside on the main
island’s southern shore, overlooking the Indian Ocean, according to
officials in the Seychelles. The hotel is tucked away on a private
beach, far from the nearest public road.
Current
and former U.S. officials who have worked closely with Zayed, who is
often referred to as MBZ, say it would be out of character for him to
arrange the Jan. 11 meeting without getting a green light in advance
from top aides to Trump and Putin, if not the leaders themselves. “MBZ
is very cautious,” said an American businessman who knows Zayed and
spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
subject. “There had to be a nod.”
The
Seychelles meeting was deemed productive by the UAE and Russia, but the
idea of arranging additional meetings between Prince and Putin’s
associates was dropped, officials said. Even unofficial contacts between
Trump and Putin associates had become too politically risky, officials
said.
Sieff reported from the Seychelles.
Julie Tate, Devlin Barrett, Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S.
Helderman contributed to this report.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that
Prince appeared on Bannon’s radio show in November. Bannon had left to
run Trump’s campaign by then. Prince appeared on the Breitbart satellite
radio program.
No comments:
Post a Comment