Erik Prince adopted his father’s behind-the-scenes demeanor, as well as his passion for right-wing religious causes, but with a twist. “Erik is a Roman Catholic,” said author Robert Young Pelton, who has had rare access to Prince. “A lot of people brand him in his father’s religion, but he converted to Roman Catholicism.”94 Indeed, many of the executives who would later form the core of Prince’s Blackwater empire are also Catholics, and when Prince’s first wife, Joan, died, Catholic Mass was celebrated for her both near her hometown outside Schenectady, New York, and near where the family lived in McLean, Virginia.95 In 1997, Lt. Erik Prince, U.S. Navy SEAL, blurbed a book called Christian Fatherhood: The Eight Commitments of St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers, saying that it “provides men with the basic training they need to complete (their) mission.”96 At the time, Prince himself had two young children. The book’s author, Stephen Wood, is the founder of Family Life Center International, a Catholic apologist organization specializing in providing “moral media… geared toward deepening a family’s love and knowledge of their faith and thus hopes to impact today’s society. We place a special focus on fatherhood and providing resources which aid fathers in fulfilling their vocation.” The “moral media” include books with titles like A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality and Breast Cancer and the Pill, among many others.
Taking a cue from his father’s funding of right-wing evangelical Protestant causes, Prince became a major funder of extremist, fringe Catholic organizations. In 1999 he contributed $25,000 to Catholic Answers, a San Diego-based Catholic evangelical organization founded by the Catholic fundamentalist Karl Keating. Keating dedicated his life to apologetics and defending Catholicism at all costs. During the 2004 and 2006 elections, the group promoted a “Voters Guide for Serious Catholics,” which listed five “non-negotiable” issues that it said are never morally acceptable under Catholic teaching: abortion, homosexual marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia, and human cloning.97 Issues that were identified as “Not Non-Negotiable” included “the questions of when to go to war and when to apply the death penalty.”98 When Prince’s wife was dying of cancer, he e-mailed Keating, who in turn asked his followers to pray for the Princes.99 The following year, Prince provided funding to the right-wing Catholic monthly magazine Crisis.100 He also gave generously to several Michigan churches, including $50,000 to Holy Family Oratory, a Kalamazoo Catholic Church, and $100,000 to St. Isidore Catholic Church and school in Grand Rapids, as well as Catholic churches in Virginia.101
But Erik Prince’s philanthropy has certainly not been limited to Catholic causes. The Prince family was deeply involved in the secretive Council for National Policy, described by the New York Times as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country [which has] met behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference” three times a year “to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.”102 The Council was started in 1981 by the Rev. Tim LaHaye, one of the founders of the modern right-wing Christian movement in the United States and author of the apocalyptic Left Behind novels.103 The idea was to build a Christian conservative alternative to the Council on Foreign Relations, which LaHaye considered too liberal. CNP membership is kept secret, and members are instructed that “The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before or after a meeting.”104 While membership lists are not public, CNP meetings have been attended by a host of conservative luminaries like Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, and Ralph Reed. Holland H. Coors of the beer dynasty and Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association, Richard and Dick DeVos, and the likes of Oliver North, Grover Norquist, and Frank Gaffney are also affiliated with CNP.105 Guests are allowed to attend “only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee.”106 George W. Bush addressed the group in 1999, seeking support for his bid for the presidency.107
The group also has played host to powerful players in the Bush administration. Shortly after the Iraq invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attended CNP meetings; in 2004 John Bolton briefed the group on U.S. plans for Iran; John Ashcroft has attended meetings; as did Dan Senor, the top aide to Paul Bremer, the original head of the Iraq occupation.108 Former House majority leader Tom DeLay and several other prominent Republican politicians have also attended meetings.109 Then-Senate majority leader Bill Frist was given the CNP’s Thomas Jefferson Award. In his acceptance speech, he told the gathering, “The destiny of our nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement.”110 Edgar Prince served a stint as vice president of the CNP from 1988 to 1989 and was CNP vice president at the time of his death.111 Elsa Prince was also a member of the organization. The DeVos family has donated at least $100,000 to the CNP, and the Princes gave at least $20,000 over a two-year period in the 1990s.112 While the lack of public records on the group makes it impossible to confirm that Erik Prince is a member, as his father was, the younger Prince has donated money to the CNP113 and has close relationships with many of its key players.
Erik Prince’s philanthropy and politics have also put him in bed with some of the most controversial political figures in recent U.S. history. Prince’s Freiheit Foundation, which is German for “liberty,” gave $500,000 to the Prison Fellowship in 2000.114 The Fellowship is a so-called prison reform organization that, among other things, advocates for “faith-based prisons.”115 It is the brainchild of Richard Nixon’s “hatchet man,” Watergate conspirator Charles Colson.116 In 1969, Colson was appointed Nixon’s Special Counsel; he was seen by many as the “evil genius” in the administration. 117 In 1971, Colson wrote what later became known as Nixon’s Enemies List, a catalogue of the President’s political opponents, who would be targeted by the White House.118 Colson was the first person sentenced in the Watergate scandal, after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the investigation of the break-in to the psychiatrist’s office of Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.119 Colson also allegedly tried to hire Teamsters thugs to beat up antiwar demonstrators and plotted to raid or firebomb the Brookings Institution. 120 Colson became a born-again Christian before going to prison and after leaving wrote the bestseller Born Again about his conversion, the proceeds from which he used to found the Prison Fellowship.