The IRS and the Blackwater vendetta

Opinion Journal:
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Having launched Blackwater in 1997 as a rural North Carolina training facility for U.S. soldiers and police, Mr. Prince says he "kept saying 'yes' as the demand curve called—Columbine, the USS Cole and then 9/11." In 100,000 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, he says, Blackwater contractors never lost a U.S. official under their protection. But the company gained a trigger-happy reputation, especially after a September 2007 shootout that left 17 civilians dead in Baghdad's Nisour Square. 
At that point, charges Mr. Prince, Blackwater was "completely thrown under the bus by a fickle customer"—the U.S. government, and especially the State Department. He says Washington opted to "churn up the entire federal bureaucracy" and sic it on Blackwater "like a bunch of rabid dogs." According to Mr. Prince, IRS auditors told his colleagues that they had "never been under so much pressure to get someone as to get Erik Prince," and congressional staffers promised, "We're going to ride you till you're out of business." 
Amid several federal prosecutions involving Blackwater employees, most of which fizzled, Mr. Prince resigned as CEO in 2009 and now feels "absolutely total regret in every way, shape and form for ever saying 'yes' " to a State Department contract.
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He is now working with Chinese companies to help them with businesses in Africa.  But the US of the IRS as a tool for going after political enemies of this administration appears to have started very early.  Congress should find out where the pressure for destroying Blackwater was coming from.  I suspect it was the White House.

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