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Kroll is a global risk consulting company headquartered in New York. Since its founding in 1972 by Jules B. Kroll, the company has expanded beyond private investigation and security services into all areas of corporate risk mitigation including background screening, business intelligence, market intelligence, forensic accounting, electronic discovery, and data recovery, among others. It is a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies.
History
Kroll began its trademark line of investigative work in the financial sector in the 1980s, when corporations in New York City approached Kroll to profile investors, suitors and takeover targets, with special attention to any perceived connections to disreputable organizations, suspicious business practices, personality and integrity issues, or any kind of corporate malfeasance. Kroll developed a name for itself as Wall Street's premier "private eye".
In the 1990s, Kroll went beyond its traditional business intelligence and investigations work, as a growing client base with considerable activity in mergers and acquisitions allowed Kroll to acquire other firms specializing in forensic accounting, background screening, drug testing, electronic data recovery and market intelligence.
In December 1998, Kroll acquired Schiff & Associates, Inc., a small security engineering and consulting firm based in Bastrop, Texas just outside Austin. The name was changed to Kroll Schiff & Associates then Kroll Security Services Group and finally to Kroll Security Group, which is what it is known as today.
In 2002, Kroll acquired Kelly McCann's firm Crucible. In September 2008, Crucible was acquired by its management and now operates privately.
Kroll was itself acquired by professional services firm Marsh & McLennan Companies in July 2004. Lead on the Marsh side as chairman and CEO was Jeffrey W. Greenberg, the son of AIG CEO Maurice R. Greenberg, but he had to resign from his posts at Marsh on October 25, 2004 in favour of Michael G. Cherkasky, who was formerly with Kroll.
Geographic reach
Kroll is headquartered in New York City, and has important offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Eden Prairie, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, and Washington DC. The Miami office serves as the headquarters for Kroll's operations in Latin America, where it also has offices in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.
The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region is one of Kroll's most important. Kroll's EMEA headquarters are in London, and the company has a strong presence in Spain, with offices in Madrid and Barcelona. The EMEA region is supported by offices in Paris and Milan, while Kroll's office in Dubai provides risk consultancy services in the Gulf.
Kroll's Asian operations are carried out by offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai, Beijing, Singapore and Tokyo.
Range of operations
Kroll maintains various lines of business, and there are plans to further integrate them. Kroll's parent company MMC is reportedly staving off Kroll's business lines which it does not consider to be "core Kroll", or consistent with MMC's other operating companies (which include Marsh, a risk brokerage, or the management consultancy Oliver Wyman). The following are core Kroll activities:
Business Intelligence and Investigations
Kroll's traditional business of delving into the backgrounds of companies and individuals has been strengthened by an active forensic accountancy division, and a larger group focused on financial investigations. Kroll's success at BI&I has seen numerous "copycat" companies spring up, offering similar services to Kroll and following a similar marketing "risk consulting" moniker. Many of these "risk consultancies" are headed by former Kroll directors.
Ontrack and Electronic Data Recovery
Kroll acquired a computer forensics, electronic discovery, and data recovery company named Ontrack, which has revolutionized Kroll's business operations. Kroll Ontrack has patented technologies and capabilities in recovering seemingly deleted files, including internet-based information cleared from the cache. In addition, Kroll Ontrack is the leading provider of legal technologies, with operations in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Kroll Ontrack's technology is expanding in-house, amplifying Kroll's capacities in its other divisions.
Background Screening
Kroll's Background Screening division provides comprehensive screening services that help organizations mitigate risks and make informed decisions in critical areas such as employment, supplier selection, investment placement and institutional admissions. From traditional background checks to specialized searches, Kroll’s services are tailored to meet the needs of its diverse clientele whose organizations span myriad industry sectors. Kroll's Background Screening division also includes the Kroll Fraud Solutions unit, which specializes in identity theft protection and identity restoration services.
Security Consulting
Kroll offers consulting services through Kroll Security Group, it's Security Consulting and Security Engineering & Design division. These services include Threat Assessments, Vulnerability Assessments, Physical Security Surveys, Security Master Planning, Policy and Procedure Development, Staffing Studies, etc.
Historical cases
The Heroin Trail case
In 1987, in the prominent First Amendment case over The Heroin Trail stories in New York Newsday, attorney Floyd Abrams enlisted Kroll's help to find an eyewitness: "But was it conceivable that we could come up with an eyewitness who could be of help? I called Jules Kroll, the CEO of Kroll Associates, the nation's most acclaimed investigative firm, to ask him if he could inquire, through the extensive range of former law enforcement officials employed by him, whether Karaduman was known to be a drug trafficker in Istanbul." [1] Kroll came through: two weeks into the trial the firm produced Faraculah Arras, who was prepared to testify he was involved in one of Karaduman's drug deals. "I was stunned," recalled Abrams.
Abrams used Kroll again in 1998 to investigate claims by CNN's Newsstand documentary that sarin nerve gas had been used in Vietnam in 1970 as part of Operation Tailwind. [2]
WTC & Sears Tower security
Kroll were responsible for revamping security at the World Trade Center after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. [3] They also took on responsibility for security at Chicago's Sears Tower following the September 11, 2001 attacks. [4]
Other products - Identity Theft Shield
Kroll entered into a joint marketing agreement with legal service plan provider Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. in 2003, to distribute an identity theft product to consumers, called the Identity Theft Shield, the first time Kroll offered a service to individuals. [5] As of June 30, 2006, Kroll had over 560,000 customers, according to Pre-Paid Legal's quarterly report. [6] In addition to the Pre-Paid Legal subscribers, Kroll's Identity Theft Shield serves about 500,000 other consumers.
Similar Companies
References
- ^ Abrams, Floyd (2005). Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment. Viking Press. pp. 124–137. ISBN 0670033758.
- ^ Robin Pogrenbin and Felicity Barringer (July 3, 1998). "CNN Retracts Report That U.S. Used Nerve Gas". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.ht...wanted=all.
- ^ Douglas Frantz (September 1, 1994). "A Midlife Crisis at Kroll Associates". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.ht...A962958260.
- ^ "About Us > History > Notable Cases". www.kroll.com. http://www.kroll.com/about/history/notable/.
- ^ "Pre-Paid Legal Services To Add Identity Theft Benefits Provided By Kroll Background America". 2003. http://www.kroll.com/news/releases/index.aspx?id=80. Retrieved 2008-04-03.
- ^ "Commission File Number: 001-09293, PRE-PAID LEGAL SERVICES, INC.". United States Securities and Exchange Commission. 2006. http://www.shareholder.com/ppd/EdgarDeta...&SID=06-00. Retrieved 2007-07-04.
External links
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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From 9/11 Encyclopedia:
Kroll Associates, a security consultant firm, which was renamed to Kroll Inc. in August 2001, started in New York City in 1972. In December 1997, Kroll merged with armored car manufacturer O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt to form The Kroll-O'Gara Company.
http://www.krollworldwide.com
O'Gara is responsible for the security of all US-Presidents since 1945. However the background of Kroll is very interesting, too:
In 1993, Maurice Greenberg's American International Group (AIG ->), became co-owner of the "private spy agency",
Kroll Associates, as a result of rescuing Kroll from bankruptcy with a cash infusion.
Kroll was notorious during the 1980s as the "CIA of Wall Street" due to the prevalence of former CIA, FBI, Scotland Yard, British secret service and British Special Air Service men Kroll employed for corporate espionage in takeover bids, as well as for destabilization of foreign nations. (See Greenberg , Maurice)
Maurice Greenberg was deeply involved in chinese trade in the 80s, where Henry Kissinger was one of his representatives.
In the China trade, Greenberg became very close to Shaul Eisenberg, the leader of the Asian section of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, and agent for the sales of sophisticated military equipment to the Chinese military. Maurice Raymond Greenberg was born in New York City May 4, 1925, the son of Jacob Greenberg and Ada (Rheingold) Greenberg.
The young man adopted the nickname "Hank" to make people think of a popular American baseball player with the name, Hank Greenberg. Greenberg served in the U.S. Army in the Korea conflict. He joined the insurance firm, Continental Casualty Co., in 1952. Continental executive J. Milburn Smith recommended Greenberg to the C.V. Starr insurance / spy organization, which made Greenberg its vice president in 1960, its president and CEO in 1967, and its chairman, succeeding Starr, in 1969. From 1988 to 1995, Greenberg was a director of the New York Federal Reserve bank * this branch of the system is the main instrument through which Federal Reserve chiefs and the Bank of England traditionally execute their U.S. political-economic policy.
Greenberg was deputy chairman of the New York Fed in 1992 and 1993, and New York Fed chairman in 1994 and 1995. During 1996, while Greenberg was deputy chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (See Cfr), he chaired the CFR task force on intelligence, which published "Making Intelligence Smarter: The future of U.S. Intelligence." This report mostly served to exhibit Greenberg's access to the intelligence community; but he parlayed it into a nomination by Senator Arlen Specter and others, for Greenberg to be Director of the Cia.
Greenberg has used his connections to covert intelligence, supranational institutions, private bankers and speculators, and his huge global cash inflow, to shape a unique personal empire. Since 1997, Frank G. Wisner, Jr., has been a board member of Kroll , and is currently Greenberg's Deputy Chairman for External Affairs. Wisner's father was a founder of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, who killed himself over the scandal from his being duped by British-Soviet masterspy Kim Philby. Frank Wisner, Jr., is a director of the George Bush-linked energy giant Enron (a client for whom AIG negotiated payments from Peru over nationalization of Enron operations).
In the early 1990s, Miami-based private investigator Lou Polumbo joined Kroll Associates. According to sources in the industry, Polumbo brought with him a personal history of involvement with the Medallin and other South American narcotics cartels; his business included helping relocate some of the capabilities of these cartels out of Colombia. The deal to bring Polumbo into Kroll was worked out by Avram Shalom, the former head of Israel's Shin Beth secret police. Shalom went to work for Kroll; he had been fired as Shin Beth boss due to a scandalous massacre of Palestinians in the Israel-occupied territories by his Shin Beth agents.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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[size=12]Welcome to the murky world of Kroll Inc - the private CIA[/SIZE]
By Ben Hills
[size=12]June 25, 2005[/SIZE]
They helped track down billions of dollars of treasure looted from Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. They finally proved that "God's Banker", Roberto Calvi, found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge with bricks in his pockets, was murdered. They were hired by Prince Charles to find the "Princess Di tapes".
Move over James Bond, this is the real-life fantasy world of the thousands of former cops and spooks, bodyguards, forensic accountants, journalists and criminal lawyers who made up what claims to be "the world's foremost independent risk consulting company", Kroll Inc.
Not for nothing did a former executive of the company describe Kroll as "like a private CIA".
"Of course, there's lots of boring stuff too - corporate profiles, background checks on employees, data recovery," says a rival in the business, "But these are the ones that get the adrenaline going."
In the process, inevitably for a company employing large numbers of former CIA, FBI and Special Forces people, the company has occasionally been accused of misconduct - the bugging scandal in Brazil is just the latest in which Kroll Inc has been embroiled.
Founded in 1972 by a New York assistant district attorney, Jules Kroll, the company expanded aggressively across America and internationally into 60 countries. In Australia, Kroll formed an ongoing partnership with the accountancy firm Ferrier Hodgson.
Its customers were a who's who of the business world: Ford, Citibank, Hilton hotels, drug company Pfizer and Nestle among them. It has also worked for the US government.
Although its bread and butter work was legal corporate intelligence, such as profiling takeover targets, in countries such as Brazil, and now Iraq, where kidnapping is rampant, Kroll also specialised in "close body work" - bodyguards, protection and ransom.
In May last year, Julius Kroll received an offer he could not refuse. Marsh & McLennan, the New York insurance broker which claims to be the world's largest, took over Kroll for an eye-popping $US1.9 billion ($2.46 billion), more than $US100 million of which was pocketed by its founder.
Capitalised at $US6 billion, and with 60,000 employees in more than 100 countries - including Australia - Marsh & McLennan was the colossus of the industry, claiming a 40 per cent share of the global market for insurance broking.
But the company saw insurance as a mature market and wanted to expand into the related risk-management industry. No one could have foreseen when the takeover deal was signed in May last year that the sky was about to fall in.
Last October, New York's crusading district attorney, Eliot Spitzer, filed suit against Marsh & McLennan, accusing the company of having, for years, colluded with big insurance companies to "cheat customers in an elaborate charade of price fixing and bid rigging".
The three insurers he named were the giants American International Group, Zurich America Insurance Company and Ace Ltd. Adding spice to the story was the relationship between them: AIG was headed by the 79-year-old insurance industry legend Maurice "Hank" Greenberg; his son Jeffrey ran Marsh & McLennan, and; another son, Evan, was boss of Ace.
Spitzer claimed that Marsh & McLennan jacked up insurance premiums - thus increasing its commissions, and the profits of the insurers - with "fake bids, collusion, improper steering of business, payments by insurers to avoid solicitation of competing of competing quotes, and threats against those resisting participation in the fraudulent schemes".
The company "acted, in short, less like a broker with a fiduciary obligation to its clients than as the linchpin of a racket", Spitzer said.
Marsh & McLennan's shares tumbled more than 25 per cent, despite pledging it was "committed to getting all the facts, determining any incidence of improper behaviour and dealing appropriately with any wrongdoing".
Jeffrey Greenberg was forced to resign. His replacement was a man the company had inherited a few months earlier when it took over Kroll Inc, Michael Cherkasky, who was uniquely placed to steer the company through the scandal which threatened to destroy it.
For 16 years, Cherkasky was a white-collar crime buster for the New York District Attorney's office; Spitzer, now prosecuting Marsh & McLennan, was his protege. In 1994, Cherkasky joined Kroll - gamekeeper become poacher - working his way up to the chief executive's office.
Within three months, Cherkasky had overseen a clean-out of Marsh & McLennan's board, and the sacking of most of the executives deemed accountable for the corruption. In January, he persuaded Spitzer to drop the civil charges against the company by pledging to pay $US850 million to clients around the world - including Australia - that Marsh & McLennan had defrauded.
Criminal charges are still pending against 10 former executives of Marsh & McLennan and the insurance companies. In February, Kathryn Winter, the 50-year-old managing director of Marsh Inc, pleaded guilty to fraud in the Manhattan State Superior Court. She faces up to four years' jail, depending on how keenly she co-operates with Spitzer's investigators.
Cherkasky personally apologised to 120 of his biggest clients, and showed thousands of staff the door in a bid to restore the ailing giant to profitability.
He is now engaged on an even greater challenge - to convince outraged clients who had been deserting the company in droves, that Marsh & McLennan is serious about its reforms.
![[Image: pnguomDASqZsj.png]](http://osdir.com/ml/culture.discuss.cia-drugs/2005-07/pnguomDASqZsj.png) July 27, 2005 ![[Image: pngACUDAhNKyM.png]](http://osdir.com/ml/culture.discuss.cia-drugs/2005-07/pngACUDAhNKyM.png) Kroll Inc.
900 3rd Ave N.
New York, NY 10022
Phone: (212) 593-1000
Fax: (212) 593-2621
http://www.krollworldwide.com
Profile Company Principals Board of Directors Contract History Political Contributions Background
Kroll Associates, which specialized in internal fraud investigation initially, was founded in 1972 by the current executive chairman Jules Kroll. After the acquisitions of firms specializing in data recovery, forensic accounting, and corporate restructuring, the company managed to expand its traditional investigative expertise into a global risk consulting practice. In 1997, in a $101-million deal, the firm merged with the O'Gara Company, a company that traces its history back to the 1870s. Four years later, after a disagreement over which direction the company should take, Kroll-O'Gara sold its armored vehicle unit and dropped O'Gara from its name. Kroll Inc. is headquartered in New York, and the company has more than 60 offices in almost 20 countries.
Iraq contracts
According to the Financial Times, Kroll Inc. has a contract with USAID to provide security for the agency in Iraq. Kroll hired Aldwin Wight, a former commanding officer of the British 22nd Special Air Service Regiment and the Sultan's Special Force in Oman, to oversee company operations in Iraq. The value of the contract with USAID is not known, and it is not mentioned on any lists provided by the agency under a Freedom of Information Act request or on the agency's Web site listing of contracts.
Company spokesperson Jodie Rosenbloom told the Center, "We have been working for the USAID since the end of August, providing security for USAID staff in Iraq. The terms of the contract have not yet been finalized, therefore I cannot comment in any further detail on this matter."
Government ties
James R. Bucknam, Kroll's executive vice president for operations, served as senior adviser to former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh for three years and was an assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1987 to 1993.
President and CEO Michael G. Cherkasky was chief of the Investigations Division for the New York County District Attorney's Office, investigating mafia chieftain John Gotti and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. From 1978 to 1993, he served in the district attorney's office in New York County in various capacities, save for a few months in 1985 when he ran the re-election campaign of Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau.
Founder and chairman Jules Kroll started his career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.
Board member Judith C. Areen, who is dean of the Georgetown University Law Center, served as general counsel to President Carter's Reorganization Project and as special counsel for the Task Force on Regulatory Reform in the Carter White House.
Board member Raymond E. Mabus served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1994 until 1996. He was governor of Mississippi from 1988 until 1992.
?André Verlöy
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Oh, the places you go (when you follow the money)
Let's pick a story. Say, data recovery from the World Trade Center.
Remember? While the ruins still smoldered, some genuine questions were still being asked by the mainstream media, which were blessedly unaware of how awkward the answers might prove.
For instance, this story, from December 17, 2001:
German computer experts are working round the clock to unlock the truth behind an unexplained surge in financial transactions made just before two hijacked planes crashed into New York's World Trade Center on September 11.
Were criminals responsible for the sharp rise in credit card transactions that moved through some computer systems at the WTC shortly before the planes hit the twin towers?
Or was it coincidence that unusually large sums of money, perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster unfolded?
And this, from CNN, a few days later:
An unexplained surge in transactions was recorded prior to the attacks, leading to speculation that someone might have profited from previous knowledge of the terrorist plot by moving sums of money. But because the facilities of many financial companies processing the transactions were housed in New York's World Trade Center, destroyed in the blasts, it has until now been impossible to verify that suspicion.
That's where Convar Systeme Deutschland GmbH comes in. The company is helping reconstruct data from hard disk drives found in the ruins of the twin towers. While other data-recovery companies are also involved in the effort, the company says it has a special edge: a laser-based scanning technology developed about two years ago.
Peter Henschel, director of Convar, called the extent of the transactions "extraordinarily high."
Further:
"It could turn out that Americans went on an absolute shopping binge on that Tuesday morning. But at this point there are many transactions that cannot be accounted for, " Henschel said.... "Not only the volume but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that. There is a suspicion that these were possibly planned to take advantage of the chaos."
Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert at the company, said illegal transfers of more than $100 million might have been made immediately before and during the disaster.
"There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time of the plane crashes in order to move out amounts exceeding $100 million," Wagner said. "They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed."
As Convar recovered the data, at a cost of up to $35,000 per hard drive, the information was forwarded to its clients (apparantly telecommunications, accounting, and credit card firms), which in turn passed it on to the FBI.
A Reuters story claims "Convar has recovered information from 32 computers that support assumptions of dirty doomsday dealings." And an article dated May 30, 2002, says Convar "had recoverd the data from 39 computers...and was beginning to work on another 62.... [T[he next time you 'erase' something by clicking delete, it might help to remember Convar: once on view, always on recall."
So, what happened to the WTC data-recovery story, and the "dirty doomsday dealings"?
We need to step back, and ask, what happened to Convar?
In June, 2002, Convar was purchased by security firm Kroll Inc., which employs a number of former FBI and CIA officials, and has a reputation for serving as a cut-out of US Intelligence. It's reportedly known as the "CIA of Wall Street," due to its revolving door of former-and-future spooks, and its role in corporate espionage and the destabilization of foreign governments.
We can learn something about Kroll's reputation from a front-page story of The Washington Post, January 8, 1996:
The French, the CIA, and the Man Who Sued Too Much
William Lee is a 57-year-old Harvard-educated corporate lawyer whose specialty, until recently, was international mergers and acquisitions. But a year ago, the government of France charged that he was a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency, waging a secret war to destabilize French corporate interests in Asia.
...
Some of the French anxiety about Lee stems from what he did next. In mid-1992, he took a part-time position with Kroll Associates, a New York firm that provides investigative services for big companies and employs a number of former CIA and FBI officers.
For French officials, Lee's brief stint with Kroll tagged him as a suspicious person. According to French and U.S. sources, the French equivalent of the FBI, known as the Directorate of Surveillance of the Territory, or DST, suspected that Kroll's Paris operation was a CIA front. They bugged Kroll's Paris offices and harassed some of its clients, according to company executives.
And this story, from October of last year:
Brazil Raids Kroll Offices in SpyProbe
Police raided the Brazilian offices of international security consultant Kroll Inc. and arrested five employees Wednesday in an investigation into allegations of illegal spying by Kroll during the company's probe of a nasty corporate dispute.... Five Brazilians Kroll workers were arrested on conspiracy charges.
...The investigation began in July after Brazil's largest newspaper reported Kroll obtained copies of e-mails written by a top adviser to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the course of its investigation for Brasil Telecom Participacoes SA.
Interestingly, in August of 2001, it was then-Managing Director of Kroll, Jerome Hauer, who arranged for former FBI special agent John O'Neill, to be hired as chief of security at the World Trade Center.
Besides being in Kroll's service on September 11, Hauer was also running Rudolph Giuliani's "Office of Emergency Management," and its hardened "command and control" bunker on the 22nd floor of WTC 7. (Perhaps you remember what happened to that.)
I believe too little attention is paid to the role of extra-governmental agencies, both to the 9/11 story and beyond, because it is in their study that Danny Casolaro saw what he came to call the Octopus: the international network of spooks, former spooks, crooks and terrorists, pursuing trans-national criminal interests. To say "it's the CIA" is too simplistic, too black and white for the world of shadows. As Chaim Kupferberg writes:
It is, in fact, security firms like Kroll Associates, Burns Security, Teg, Wackenhut, and their ilk that should garner our interest at least as much as the web of conservative think tanks that have welded in place the parameters of "mainstream" debate - for it is through these very firms that the former stars of law enforcement have gone through the revolving door into the lucrative private sector. It is a world where former military types mix with various operatives of the CIA, FBI, DEA and any number of alphabet soup agencies charged with the security of our nation.
Since acquiring Convar, Kroll itself has been purchased by Marsh & McLennan, a former occupant of Tower One's 95th floor. Last October, Kroll's former President, Michael Cherkasky, was named Marsh's CEO. (Formerly, Cherkasky had "spent 16 years in the criminal justice system, including serving as chief of the Investigations Division for the New York County District Attorney's Office.")
And what an upstanding corporate citizen Marsh turns out to be. Just yesterday, it reached a deal with New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer "that resolves the actions that were commenced against MMC and Marsh Inc. over questionable brokerage compensation and account placement practices":
As a result of this agreement, the company said it would enact reforms to lead the industry in transparency and service to clients and establish an $850 million fund to compensate clients.
Under the terms of the agreement, the company neither admits nor denies the allegations in the complaint filed by the attorney general and the citation issued by the insurance superintendent.
Corporate espionage, US Intelligence, High Crime, Big Money - you can't talk about any of them, without talking about them all. "We are not talking about only governmental levels. And I keep underlining semi-legit organizations and following the money," says Sibel Edmonds.
And what of those "dirty doomsday dealings" on the World Trade Center hard drives? They'll get back to us, I'm sure of it, any day now....
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/20...money.html
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Profile: Kroll Associates
Kroll Associates was a participant or observer in the following events:
After February 26, 1993: Threat Assessments Predict Possibility of Terrorists Crashing Plane into WTC
![[Image: 441_brian_michael_jenkins2050081722-12328.jpg]](http://www.historycommons.org/events-images/441_brian_michael_jenkins2050081722-12328.jpg) Brian Michael Jenkins. [Source: Rand Corporation]Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993), the New York Port Authority asks investigative and security consulting firm Kroll Associates to help design new security measures for the WTC. Kroll’s Deputy Chairman Brian Michael Jenkins leads the analysis of future terrorist threats and how they might be addressed. Assessments conclude that a second terrorist attack against the WTC is probable. Although it is considered unlikely, the possibility of terrorists deliberately flying a plane into the WTC towers is included in the range of possible threats. [ Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 11]
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp...sociates_1
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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I have long suspected that Kroll is one of the tentacles of Casolaro's Octopus.
However, this particular cephalopod has more than eight tentacles.
Indeed, Casolaro uses Octopus as a metaphor not a road map. :bandit:
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
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![[Image: dalailama.gif]](http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/images/avatars/dalailama.gif) Kroll, Inc., according to the corporation's web site, "is the world's foremost independent risk consulting company. For more than 30 years, Kroll has helped companies, government agencies and individuals reduce their exposure to risk and capitalize on business opportunities. Kroll is traded on The NASDAQ Stock Market® under the symbol "KROL." (1)
"With offices in more than 60 cities in the U.S. and abroad, Kroll can operate and restructure businesses; scrutinize accounting practices and financial documents; gather and filter electronic evidence for attorneys; recover lost or damaged data from computers and servers; conduct in-depth investigations; screen domestic and foreign-born job candidates; protect individuals, and enhance security systems and procedures. (2)
Kroll has been named as the private CIA and is one of the prime suspect of 9/11.
Kroll has merged with Marsh and always had American International Group as their biggest stockholder. The Blackstone Group was a stockholder from 1993 onwards. Just before 9/11 Kroll merged with Armor Holdings.
Key people
* Michael Cherkasky
* Thomas E. Constance
* Oscar Fanjul
* Maurice Greenberg
* Jerome Hauer
* John O'Neill
* Michael A. Petrullo
* Michael Shmerling
* J. Arthur Urciuoli
Kroll as the Private CIA
Maurice Greenberg, the CEO of AIG was destined to become Director of the CIA in 1975, however Bill Clinton gave the job to John Deutch and Deutch made a mess, because the Church Committee Investigation into the CIA started and they discovered all kinds of dirty deals. So George H.W. Bush was send in to replace Deutch and started to privatize all the dirty parts.
* National Endowment for Democracy became the privatized part of the Election Fraud department of the CIA.
* Rendon Group was very successful during the Panama invasion and got the Psyops department.
* There are quite a number of reports indicating that Kroll became the privatized variant of the CIA. (3,4)
The reason for privatization is that Congressional oversight does not apply to them. Also the former restrictions no longer apply and they can work for whatever government wants their services.
Example of them taking a job from the Russian government:
When the CIA was asked in 1992 by Kroll and Associates, working on behalf of the Russian government, to help locate $20 billion that was hidden offshore by the KGB and the mob, the George H.W. Bush national security team declined to cooperate. (5)
Example of something which they were not allowed to do previously: Operating a division to avoid negative publicity:
Risk management is a PR specialism which aims to help corporations strategically plan to avoid negative publicity, as well as to deal with it on an ad-hoc basis. PR agencies specialising in risk management include Regester Larkin and Kroll, Inc. (6)
You know, people on messageboards posting for years defending ridiculous theories like the OCT.
The world of Kroll
Welcome to the m urky world of Kroll Inc - the private CIA By Ben Hills June 25, 2005
(...) In May 2004, Julius Kroll received an offer he could not refuse. Marsh & McLennan, the New York insurance broker which claims to be the world's largest, took over Kroll for an eye- popping $US1.9 billion ($2.46 billion), more than $US100 million of which was pocketed by its founder.
(...) Last October (2004), New York's crusading district attorney, Eliot Spitzer, filed suit against Marsh & McLennan, accusing the company of having, for years, colluded with big insurance companies to "cheat customers in an elaborate charade of price fixing and bid rigging".
The three insurers he named were the giants American International Group, Zurich America Insurance Company and Ace Ltd. Adding spice to the story was the relationship between them: AIG was headed by the 79-year-old insurance industry legend Maurice "Hank" Greenberg; his son Jeffrey ran Marsh & McLennan, and; another son, Evan, was boss of Ace.
(...) Within three months, Cherkasky had overseen a clean-out of Marsh & McLennan's board, and the sacking of most of the executives deemed accountable for the corruption. In January, he persuaded Spitzer to drop the civil charges against the company by pledging to pay $US850 million to clients around the world - including Australia - that Marsh & McLennan had defrauded.
Criminal charges are still pending against 10 former executives of Marsh & McLennan and the insurance companies. In February, Kathryn Winter, the 50-year-old managing director of Marsh Inc, pleaded guilty to fraud in the Manhattan State Superior Court. She faces up to four years' jail, depending on how keenly she co-operates with Spitzer's investigators.
http://tinyurl.com/7fphk
France calls Kroll a CIA front
The French, the CIA and the Man Who Sued Too Much By David Ignatius, The Washington Post
William Lee is a 57-year-old Harvard-educated corporate lawyer whose specialty, until recently, was international mergers and acquisitions. But a year ago, the government of France charged that he was a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency, waging a secret war to destabilize French corporate interests in Asia.
The " William Lee affair," as it is known in Paris, appears to be a bizarre case of mistaken identity. Top CIA officials say the agency has no connection to Lee, and the French have dropped their allegations. But it adds a strange new chapter to what is becoming one of the world's hottest spy rivalries, now that the Cold War is over -- the battle between France and the United States over economic espionage.
(...) The Lee affair began to get nasty last Jan. 26, when French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua summoned U.S. Ambassador Pamela Harriman to complain about American spying against France. As has been widely reported, Pasqua demanded that several CIA spies leave the country.
(...) Some of the French anxiety about Lee stems from what he did next. In mid-1992, he took a part-time position with Kroll Associates, a New York firm that provides investigative services for big companies and employs a number of former CIA and FBI officers.
For French officials, Lee's brief stint with Kroll tagged him as a suspicious person. According to French and U.S. sources, the French equivalent of the FBI, known as the Directorate of Surveillance of the Territory, or DST, suspected that Kroll's Paris operation was a CIA front. They bugged Kroll's Paris offices and harassed some of its clients, according to company executives. (4)
Whistleblower Andrew Grove blames Kroll for 9/11
http://www.911blogger.com/files/audio/MeriaHellerRichar...
The Meria Heller Show – http://www.Meria.net
This man, Richard Andrew Grove, a whistleblower who worked for the big boys and money people behind 9/11 has come out with information to set the 9/11 movement on fire.
(...)
To offer a little contextual History, AIG was founded by OSS operative Cornelius V. Starr, the uncle of Bill Clinton’s friend Kenneth Starr. AIG was created for and is currently a front which provides cover for intelligence community illicit operations. In 2001, AIG owned a Risk Management firm called Kroll Associates.
Kroll played a major role in the events of September 11th, and continues to this day to enable events like the 7-7 and 7-21 bombings in the London Tube system… they then go on TV and provide “expert” counterterrorism testimony to the goldfish at home tuned into Fox News and the like.
While Kroll provided the necessary operational capability, in part, for what was perpetrated; AIG and Marsh were focused on participating in both short and long-term money schemes. Kroll’s Jerome Hauer (a long time personal friend of ex-FBI Counterterrorism & Osama bin Laden expert John O’Neill) hired O’Neill as head of security for the WTC.
Kroll had also managed the bunker in WTC 7 for Rudi Guiliani, and Kroll’s board of directors shared one peculiar member in common with AIG; that being Frank G. Wisner Jr., son of OSS co-Founder Frank Wisner. I won’t go into the history of the OSS, Reinhard Gehlen, or the Council on Foreign Relations / Allen Dulles affiliation with its creation, but I can recommend an excellent book, wherein its relevance is comprehensively documented; the title you’re looking for is: The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA by Burton Hersh (and printed in 1992).
(...)
On July 8, 2004, Kroll Associates was sold to Marsh and McLennan. I would mention at this point that Kroll Associates also provides protection, I mean, Kidnap and Ransom coverage for major corporations and their executives- and employs ex- and-current Intelligence Operatives, as well as ex-Scotland Yard, and freelance mercenaries. Kroll is at the heart of 9-11, though it’s but a sub-aspect of many other superimposed actions and operative details that took place on that day.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/dis...125x100059
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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January 2, 2007 -- SPECIAL REPORT
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/.
Scaramella-Berezovsky link to World Trade Center security firm
emerges in Italian law enforcement investigation.
Mario Scaramella, the Italian interlocutor for the poisoned Alexander Litvinenko and Russian-Israeli media/mobster tycoon Boris Berezovsky, is now under investigation by prosecutors in Rome, Naples, and Bologna for international arms smuggling, divulging official judicial secrets, conspiracy, international trafficking in radioactive materials, and the dumping of hazardous waste through unauthorized third parties. Scaramella was arrested last month by Italian police and his offices have been searched by police several times. The Italian media is reporting on transcripts of phone conversations between Scaramella and two former U.S. intelligence officers. One conversation, reported in La Repubblica, is a January 25, 2006 conversation between Scaramella and a mysterious ex-CIA agent from California who uses the name "Perry." In the conversation, Scaramella stresses to Perry that his activities are not "just my activity, but the activity of the organization.' It is becoming clear that the "organization" to which Scaramella is referring is a private and global intelligence organization involving former members of the KGB and Russian Federal Security Bureau (like Litvinenko), private military and intelligence companies, and ex-CIA and British intelligence officers. Scaramella discussed the political dirty “trick” they are preparing for Italian center-left leader Romano Prodi and it is clear from the conversation that Perry gives Scaramella his orders, though politely. When Scaramella goes into a tangent on his international activities, Perry merely replies, 'You must work on the Italian politics.' When Scaramella presents a list of the possible future options open to him, Perry very curtly suggests, “You could be part of the cabinet of the minister.” But Scaramella is pessimistic when he states, “most probably Prodi will win, even if we will launch our attack…" The "attack" is key to the conversation. WMR was the first media outlet to suggest that the Scaramella-Litvinenko affair was a dirty bomb plot gone bad and that the intelligence services of Russian President Vladimir Putin may have actually derailed the plot. Scaramella relates to Perry his conversation with then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in which he asked the right-wing and now-indicted politician for a job, preferably at NATO or the United Nations. Scaramella claims that he was first offered a seat in the Italian parliament but declined because he feared a rough political campaign against him after he had made public his "KGB claims" against Prodi and that he "preferred a post outside Italy in an international organization." The Italian paper Corriere della Sera is also reporting on a telephone conversation between Scaramella and Paolo Guzzanti, the Miktrokhin Committee's chairman on 28 January 2006, three days after the phone conversation between Perry and Scaramella that Romani Prodi was "cultivated by the KGB" and cited ex-KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky as his source. Guzzanti responds, "in that case he is our man?" "Yes," replies Scaramella's." "That's enough. I don't want to know anything else", Guzzanti replies. It has also been revealed that while talking to Perry, Scaramella declared that he had obtained taped testimony against Prodi from Gordievski and that the testimony was given in the presence of "Lou Palumbo," who has now been identified as a 22-year veteran of the CIA. Gordievski, who is under the protection of the British intelligence services, has since denounced Scaramella as a fraud. It is also clear that Scaramella's mission was to seek out prominent Russian exiles and defectors in order to trick them into brining false charges against leftist politicians like Prodi. Previously, WMR reported that Scaramella was linked by Italian investigators to Filippo Marino, who is involved in the security business and founded the Special Research Monitoring Center (SRMC), claims he was a member of the elite Italian Army 131st Regiment and member of an Italian law enforcement organized crime task force targeting the mob in Naples. One of Marino's companies, Securitydirector LLC, is registered at P.O. Box 190487, Miami Beach, FL 33119-0487. According to La Stampa, a link has now been discovered between Marino and Hallandale, Florida-based Incident Management Group (IMG). Marino has been a senior consultant for IMG, according to La Stampa. IMG's Managing Partner is none other than Louis F. Palumbo, Scaramella's task master in the reported attempt to tarnish Prodi. Palumbo's bio at the IMG website states that in 1977, he founded the security consulting firm Ackerman & Palumbo. The Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) lists a Louis F. Palumbo at 7980 N. Biscayne Point Cir., Miami Beach, FL 33141. Palumbo's partners at IMG include Daniel Donohue, a former CIA clandestine services agent in Southeast Asia and India; Harley Stock, a "forensic hypnosis" expert with the FBI and US Secret Service; and, perhaps most intriguingly, Christopher Hagon, a 21- year veteran of the London Metropolitan Police or "Scotland Yard." Hagon told La Stampa that Marino did work as a consultant for IMG as a consultant. In fact, IMG's consultant profiles list Marino as: "FILIPPO MARINO, SENIOR CONSULTANT, has 10 years of international experience in the areas of security and environmental crime prevention. Marino has worked on a variety of security-related assignments ranging from investigative support of judicial authorities to personal awareness training and private consulting worldwide. He is one of the founders of Special Research Monitoring Center (SRMC) and a founding member of the Permanent Intergovernmental Conference for Environmental Crime Prevention. He is currently Director of Security & Operations, for the SRMC. Marino served as an officer of the prestigious 131st Regiment of the Italian Army, and is an inspector for a law-enforcement, environmental task force against organized crime in Naples, Italy. He holds a magna cum laude B. A. in Behavioral Sciences from San Jose State University, and has obtained multiple certifications in security and protection services. He speaks fluent Italian and German." Note that Marino's links to Scaramella's ECPP is also cited above. Also of interest is the listing of a Curtis Perry as an IMG consultant: "CURTIS PERRY, SENIOR CONSULTANT, has 27 years experience in government and private sector security. He served for ten years in the CIA and was stationed throughout the Far East. Mr. Perry is fluent in several Chinese dialects and has access to numerous government agencies in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia. Previously he was employed as a Senior Consultant by the security firm of Ackerman & Palumbo and was a Managing Director for Kroll Associates in Manila from 1992 -1996. Mr. Perry has undertaken numerous investigations for Corporate America – including those involving kidnappings, extortions and product contaminations – in the Far East and Australia." Another IMG consultant is Robert Wager, whose bio claims he manages security for the US Embassy in Bogota, Colombia. Scaramella claims to have also worked in Bogota. The bio of another IMG consultant, Ned Timmons, states, "for two years Timmons directed an international import/export corporation operating undercover in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Central America [and] ... He currently serves as a consultant to the U.S. and Cayman Governments on drug trafficking matters." There is yet another Colombian link, "John Stabler, Senior Consultant, has 17 years experience in security management and consulting profession, with 13 years of specialization in Colombia. He has designed security for plantations, mines, pipelines, piers and airfields in hostile locations in Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and Chile." Also of interest is another "environmental" link that ties the various Scaramella-Litvinenko players under the cover of an international environmental network. An SEC EDGAR search revealed a stockholders' agreement between Harrison-Kroll Environmental Services, Inc. of Louisiana and Palumbo Partners, a Delaware corporation dated December 31, 1992. A Google search also revealed that former Secret Service Presidential Protective Division agent Jim Holt served as Training Director for Ackerman & Palumbo and was "one of the original directors and consultant partners with Palumbo Partners, Inc., Miami." An office of Harrison-Kroll Environmental Services is listed at 300 S. Grand Avenue, Suite 1300, Los Angeles, CA 90071. Kroll Associates is an enigmatic "security services" company which has close links to the CIA. Not only is Kroll active in private military contracting in Iraq but it has long been associated with dubious U.S. intelligence activities at home and abroad. According to a knowledgeable source, Jules Kroll, who founded Kroll Associates in 1972, obtained needed funding for his firm from Foothill Capital in the 1980s. Foothill was deeply enmeshed in the Savings & Loan collapses in the 1980s but salvaged itself to become a part of Wells Fargo Bank. Kroll, who helped Curtis Publishing (renamed Cadence Industries after a merger) cut waste in the 1970s (and pilfer the company's pension fund in the process), got his first big break when he helped locate the stolen millions of Philippine ex-President Ferdinand Marcos (he would later go after the off-shore bank accounts of Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier and Iraq's Saddam Hussein). According to our well-placed source, Ray Steffans (aka diStefano of New Jersey), Jewish mobster Gideon Chern, and Eddie Baker of Vanguard Petroleum met in Houston in September 1983 to discuss, among other items, funding for Kroll. In December 1977, Bernard Taubenfeld, Gideon Chern and Shalom Goldburd, officials of B'nai Torah Institute affiliate, Nutrition for Youth, were convicted of defrauding the government by submitting bills for food that was never served to poor children in the New York City summer lunch program. Chern's other organized crime activity in the 1980s reportedly had an important protector -- former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudolph Giuliani. The former New York Mayor and prospective GOP presidential candidate reportedly suppressed a wealth of evidence against Chern.
Litvinenko-Scaramella case now linked to World Trade Center security firm. Two days after the Houston meeting, a Jaguar supposedly with the body of Baker in it was found charred outside of Houston. A fire investigator later revealed that no body was found in the car at the time of the fire. Kroll, after Enron's bankruptcy, purchased Zolfo-Cooper, and thus owned Zolfo-Cooper's Steven Cooper, the attorney appointed by New York bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez to run Enron in bankruptcy. In July 2004, Marsh-McLennan bought Kroll and Associates. Marsh-McLennan is run by Jeffrey Greenberg, son of Maurice (Hank) Greenberg of AIG. Funny, since Chase and Citibank notes from Kenneth Lay/Enron were purchased in May 2001 by AIG and the MacArthur Foundation. Kroll was responsible for the security of the World Trade Center on 9/11, The firm had hired FBI top counter-terrorism agent John O'Neill as Director of World Trade Center security upon his retirement from the FBI. O'Neill dies in the 9/11 attacks. Kroll also markets Identity Theft Shield, the first time Kroll has offered its services to individuals as opposed to governments and companies. As of June 30, 2006, Kroll had amassed over 560,000 customers for its Identity Theft Shield program. The Chern link brings us back to the Russian-Israeli Mafia connections of Scaramella and company. Berezovsky's friend, former Yukos co-owner Leonid Nevzlin, a Russian-Jewish oligarch and former President of the Russian Jewish Congress who now lives in Tel Aviv and is wanted by Russia for tax evasion and corruption. As the Democrats prepare to assume control of Congress, Nevzlin is now in the United States, protected by the FBI from arrest based on Russian and Interpol arrest warrants. This is not Nezvlin's first visit to the United States. In the summer of 2005 he appeared before the US Congress' Helsinki Committee to criticize the government of Vladimir Putin. Nevzlin's sponsors were incoming House International Relations Committee chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA) and New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith. Nevzlin used the hearing to argue for the expulsion of Russia from the G-8. Another Nevzlin supporter is Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, another prospective GOP presidential candidate. In a further example of the dubious activities of the Arlington, Virginia-based Fellowship Foundation, dubbed the "Christian Mafia" by many local residents, two of Nevzlin's wanted Yukos fellow shareholders, oligarchs Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov, who were indicted in Russia on charges similar to those brought against jailed Yukos former chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, were invited the have breakfast with President George W. Bush at the February 5, 2005 "National Prayer Breakfast." The annual Prayer Breakfast contrivance of the Fellowship Foundation is a ruse designed to provide a series of top level intelligence and organized crime meetings under the sanctioning smile of "Jesus." The person who invited Brudno, Dubov, and the jailed Khodorkovsky to the prayer breakfast was Lantos, whose wife, daughter, and son-in-law are devout Mormons. Brudno and Dubov, citizens of Israel, were assured by the FBI that it would ignore the Interpol and Russian arrest warrants, just as the FBI is ignoring the arrest warrant for Nevzlin, who is now in the United States, most likely with the acquiescence of Lantos. Lantos, who has his own connections with mob-run unions operating at San Francisco International Airport, does not seem to mind the fact that Nevzlin has been under investigation by Israeli police for illegally laundering $500 million through a Tel Aviv branch of Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank. Nevzlin also took over assets of Khodorkovsky's collapsed bank, Menatep, which was also linked to money laundering involving the Bank of New York. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev supports Putin's attempt to bring the Russian-Israeli oligarchs to justice. He told Britain's Sunday Times that it is believed that the exiled oligarchs have hidden away $1 trillion. Nevzlin's and Berezovsky's activities with Litvinenko are the tip of a huge iceberg of private intelligence intrigue that involves a number of wanted Russian exiles, including Nevzlin, Berezovsky, ex- Russian media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Chernoy, Roman Abramovitch, and Chechen "Foreign Minister" Akhmed Zakayev. Berezovsky's [and Litvinenko's] spokesman, Russian exile Alex Goldfarb, freely operates out of both London and New York. All are involved in various efforts to destabilize Russia with the help of neo-cons in the Bush administration and the government of Israel. However, the Israel Lobby's pressure on the U.S. media, most notably the Associated Press, New York Times, and Washington Post, ensures that the Russian exiles' links to Israel and organized crime are studiously ignored.
Alexander Litvinenko not the only Russian poisoned by Russian- Israeli mafia gangsters. In another full circle between Tel Aviv and Italy, Menatep's former chief for investment management Alexei Globuvich said, after his arrest last Spring in Italy, that Nevzlin may have tried to poison him and his family after mercury was found in his office, home, and car. Globuvich said he was a threat because he knew where Yukos and Menatep assets were located. Shortly thereafter, a Scotland Yard officer handed over to the British security firm ISC Global plans by the British government to extradite a number of Russian-Israeli exiles in Britain to Russia. ISC Global had been part of Menatep and Nevzlin was one of its chief customers. The London offices of ISC Global, now known as RISC Management, were visited in November 2006 by Litvinenko and Russian businessmen Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun and traces of polonium-210 were discovered there. According to the Sunday Times of London, Russian police are also investigating whether the poisoning of Litvinenko and the attempted poisoning of Globuvich are connected to the radiation poisoning death two years ago of Roman Tsepov, a former bodyguard of Putin when he was deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg. Tsepov was involved in the Russian government's tracking of Yukos assets. Also of interest are connections to the June 2004 assassination of Forbes Russian edition editor-in-chief Paul Klebnikov, a U.S. citizen who wrote a damaging expose of Berezovsky. Three Chechen contract killers were charged in Klebnikov's murder. The same Russian-Israeli mob ring is also being looked at in the investigation of the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya of Novaya Gazeta as a way to embarrass Putin.
Forbes Russian edition editor Paul Klebnikov murdered in 2004 by Chechen contract killers. Russian-Israeli tycoon Boris Berezovsky claims to be the godfather of the Chechen rebellion. Klebnikov wrote an anti-Berezovsky book. The connection of Nevzlin to the polonium and the receipt of classified British secrets is more of a reason for Russia's Prosecutor General's office to seek his extradition -- but the FBI refuses to cooperate due to the orders coming from people like Lantos, McCain, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and others who do the bidding of the Russian-Israeli mob and their Italian mafiosi underlings. The Russian Prosecutor-General's office has stated, "“A version is being looked at that those who ordered these crimes [polonium poisoning, etc.] could be the same people who are on an international wanted list for serious and very serious crimes, one of whom is ... Leonid Nevzlin." The connections now discovered by Italian and Russian investigators between the Russian-Israeli-Italian-British-US private intelligence network of former intelligence agents and billionaire mobsters suggest that the "serious crimes" committed may be more than the poisoning of Litvinenko and others with radioactive materials. The investigators are wise to pursue the links to U.S. security firms and former CIA personnel involved in pre-9/11 protection functions. The FBI cannot or will not investigate the actual perpetrators of 9/11. However, the Italian and Russian law enforcement professionals are beginning to get very close. It is a shame that American law enforcement is not interested in pursuing real leads in the biggest crime in American history.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Jan Klimkowski Wrote:I have long suspected that Kroll is one of the tentacles of Casolaro's Octopus.
However, this particular cephalopod has more than eight tentacles.
Indeed, Casolaro uses Octopus as a metaphor not a road map. :bandit: Good spot, mate. I didn't think of it this way.
______________________________________
Dumitru
Customs brokerage consultancy
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Marius Titulescu Wrote:Jan Klimkowski Wrote:I have long suspected that Kroll is one of the tentacles of Casolaro's Octopus.
However, this particular cephalopod has more than eight tentacles.
Indeed, Casolaro uses Octopus as a metaphor not a road map. :bandit: Good spot, mate. I didn't think of it this way.
______________________________________
Dumitru
You are new here. Welcome. Sadly, Jan is no longer posting here.
More on Kroll and 911 in this long [and very good] article!
Demolition Access To The WTC Towers: Part Two Security[/FONT]
[COLOR=#999999 !important][COLOR=#333333 !important] [/COLOR]August 13, 2009[/FONT][/COLOR]
Evidence and Research
Al Qaeda, American 77, CIA, Controlled Demolition, Cui bono?, Dulles, FBI, George W. Bush, Insider Trading, Jim Hoffman, Kevin Ryan, Larry Silverstein, Lockheed Martin, Louis Freeh, Marvin Bush, New York City, NIST, OEM, PNAC, Saudi Arabia, SEC, Securacom, WTC [/FONT]
[COLOR=#000000]by Kevin R. Ryan
Scoop Independent News
See also… http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0907/S00124.htm
Kevin R. Ryan: Demolition access to the WTC Towers
Who could have placed explosives in the World Trade Center (WTC) towers? This is the second essay in a series that attempts to answer that question. The first installment began by considering the tenants that occupied the impact zones and the other floors that might have played a useful role in the demolition of the WTC towers. [SUP][1][/SUP]The result was a picture of connections to organizations that had access to explosive materials and to the expertise required to use explosives. Additionally it was seen that, in the years preceding 9/11, the impact zone tenants had all made structural modifications to the areas where the airliners struck the buildings.
The management representatives of these tenant companies were seen to be secretive and powerful. Through these powerful people, the tenants were connected to organizations that benefited greatly from the 9/11 attacks, including the defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Halliburton, and Science Applications International Corp (SAIC). The tenants also had strong connections to the Bush family and their corporate network, including Dresser Industries (now Halliburton) and UBS, and to Deutsche Bank and its subsidiaries, reported to have brokered the insider trading deals. There were also links between these tenant companies and the terrorist-financing Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
Throughout this review we should keep in mind that, according to 2009 estimates, the membership of Al Qaeda's conspiracy network is estimated to be "as low as 200 or 300." [SUP][2][/SUP] Other reports suggest the group numbers in several thousands, and that Al Qaeda maintains a presence in at least forty different countries, not including the western countries that fear it the most. Including those western countries, however, it was reported in 1996 that Al Qaeda had an economic and financial establishment spanning more than thirteen countries. [SUP][3][/SUP] It is clear, therefore, that Al Qaeda is typically described as a "vast conspiracy". , [SUP][4,5][/SUP]
Given the considerable evidence in support of the WTC demolition theory [SUP][6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13][/SUP], it is reasonable to ask if Al Qaeda's reach allowed it to have unlimited and ![[Image: demolition-access.jpg]](http://img.911truth.org/demolition-access.jpg) secretive access to the three WTC skyscrapers that were destroyed that day, which were among the most well-secured facilities in the world at the time. If Al Qaeda did not have such a reach, we must wonder if other powerful people within the US or other western countries, specifically those who did have unlimited access to the WTC buildings, were involved in the attacks.
Approximately fifty people were named in the review of the WTC tenants and their possible links to explosive technology and expertise. Of course this assessment was not meant to suggest that all of those people were involved in planting explosives in the WTC buildings, but it merely answered the question of whether or not those who had the necessary access to the buildings, at the appropriate times, might have also had access to the necessary technologies. But it is worthwhile to note that, even if all of those fifty people were involved, we would still be well below the lowest estimates of the extent of the Al Qaeda organization. Therefore, the common claim made by those opposing any further questioning of 9/11 that any conspiracy involving insiders would have had to be too vast and could not be kept secret is not supported by the facts. In actuality, as we will continue to see in this series of essays, the hypothesis of insiders being involved remains a simpler explanation than the "outsider only" hypothesis in terms of the complexity of the conspiracy, in addition to being far more feasible logistically.
In this second essay, we'll review the security organizations and contractors that had access to the Twin Towers. Due to the complete rebuilding of the security systems at the WTC complex after the 1993 bombing, it is clear that a plan could have been developed at that time to allow access to those who might desire to bring the towers down. The few primary security companies involved could have enabled such access by installing loopholes or providing access keys to anyone, including demolition contractors. Other WTC contractors, particularly those hired to complete certain electrical or construction related upgrades, could have been involved in the installation of demolition devices or related infrastructure. The primary security companies might have also controlled access to certain areas in order to prevent others from discovering what was going on. Additionally, other authoritative groups (e.g. Silverstein Properties and local government offices) could have facilitated the plan.
Because access to explosives was well established in the first essay, evaluation of these security related organizations would be best approached by considering their tendency to be deceptive, secretive or corrupt, and by examining the possibility that they might have benefited from the events of 9/11. First, we'll take a look at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ).
The PANYNJ and its WTC DirectorThe PANYNJ is the quasi-governmental agency that directed the construction of the WTC towers, and managed the WTC complex for all but the last three months of its existence. The PANYNJ was created in 1921 to "run the multi-jurisdictional commercial zones in the region." [SUP][14][/SUP] As a result of their authority, the PANYNJ was responsible for managing both the WTC and Newark Airport, two facilities involved in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Within the towers, the PANYNJ was also a tenant, occupying much of the available space, including offices on floors 3, 14, 19, 24, 28, and 31 of the north tower (WTC 1).
PANYNJ management includes an executive director and a board of commissioners comprised of twelve members. Six of the commission members are appointed by the Governor of New Jersey and the other six are appointed by the Governor of New York. The board of commissioners then appoints the executive director, with recommendations from the governors. [SUP][15][/SUP]
On 9/11 the commission chairman was Lewis Eisenberg, appointed by Governor Christine Todd Whitman in 1994, and the executive director was Neil Levin, who had previously been Superintendent of Banks for New York State, and a general partner and vice president at Goldman Sachs. , [SUP][16,17][/SUP] Mr. Levin died in the towers during the attacks, after having been in the position less than six months. [SUP][18][/SUP] His wife, journalist Christine Ferrer, went on to be Mayor Bloomberg's representative to the 9/11 Families and was later appointed by Governor Pataki to the PANYNJ board of commissioners. Levin's predecessor as PANYNJ executive director, Robert Boyle, filled the position from February 1997 until Levin took over in 2001. Boyle had worked, for twenty-two years, as an executive and major stockholder in the construction industry prior to joining PANYNJ. After the attacks, Boyle returned to the PANYNJ position temporarily, and he is now the President of Empire Strategies. [SUP][19][/SUP]
Past Commissioners of the PANYNJ included Robert R. Douglass, a close friend of David Rockefeller and later chairman of Clearstream International. Clearstream was accused of playing a major part in the underground economy, of being a main platform for money laundering and operating "hundreds of confidential accounts for banks so they could move money undetected." [SUP][20][/SUP] It was reported that Bahrain International Bank, which has been suspected of moving Al Qaeda's money, had an account number at Clearstream, and that BCCI and The Carlyle Group also had accounts there. [SUP][21][/SUP]
Seven PANYNJ representatives contributed to the WTC report that was generated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2005. This report, for which both professionals and 9/11 victim's families have sought out formal correction, has since been found to be false in many ways, and appears to be intentionally deceptive. , [SUP][22,23][/SUP] Of those PANYNJ representatives that contributed to the NIST report, one stands out for his authority and control over the facilities Alan Reiss.
Alan Reiss was the PANYNJ's World Trade Center Director, and as such was considered "mayor" of the WTC. [SUP][24][/SUP]Reiss was employed at the WTC since 1984, working on building systems, the engineering and capital program, and eventually helping to secure major leases for tenants like Banker's Trust and Fuji Bank. In 1988, he was promoted to the position of the World Trade Center's supervising engineer, in charge of the complex's major systems. He was later promoted to Special Assistant to the Director, and eventually, WTC Director.
Reiss took the lead in the response to the 1993 terrorist bombing at the WTC, and it was reported that "As Special Assistant to the Director, he managed the design and construction team that restored the World Trade Center's infrastructure, allowing the Twin Towers to reopen within a month." [SUP][25][/SUP] At the time he was put in charge of reconstruction, "a job that required him to meet with top brass twice a day." Reiss said about this period "there were so many innovations we made…. After the 1993 bombing, we implemented a ten-year redevelopment program. We were spending half a billion dollars on upgrades. It was an engineer's dream." [SUP][26][/SUP]
Part of these upgrades involved constructing new command and control centers throughout the buildings. A new Security Command Center was built on the 22nd floor of the north tower (WTC 1), and a new Operations Control Center was constructed in the B1 level of the south tower (WTC2). [SUP][27][/SUP] Additionally, NYC officials responded to the 1993 bombing by establishing The Office of Emergency Management (OEM), over a period of years, "to promote unified operations between and among the various city emergency responder departments." The OEM was controversial, in that it was not appreciated by the NYPD, which already had an emergency center. But ultimately, "on September 11, 2001, the OEM center located at WTC 7 became ineffective as WTC 7 was evacuated." [SUP][28][/SUP]During Rudy Giuliani's run for President, he and his former employee Jerome Hauer traded accusations about who made the choice of putting the OEM in WTC 7. [SUP][29][/SUP]
When interviewed after the attacks, Alan Reiss "compared the energy of the planes' impacts to the detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon. But he said the buildings' construction may have saved some lives." [SUP][30][/SUP] Reiss had the highest level of access to the towers, as would be expected for the Director of the WTC. But what is most interesting about Alan Reiss is the evidence that he was not telling the truth after the attacks. The first part of this evidence has to do with his surprising story of what happened to him on that day, and the visible evidence of his experience.
Many senior managers at the PANYNJ who had knowledge of the buildings died on 9/11 trying to help others escape, [SUP][31][/SUP] but Reiss survived. In his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Reiss stated "We were stunned when 2 WTC was also hit by a plane. The police officers and I rushed to the rear emergency exit and looked up at the tower and realized we were at war…At the Port Authority Police's request, I then returned to the vicinity of 6 World Trade Center to assess the condition of One World Trade Center with then-Captain Whitaker, commander of the PA Police at the WTC, just as the tower began to collapse. We were both enveloped by this churning black debris cloud as we ran north on West Street. It was darker than any burning building I have ever been in as a volunteer fireman, and it was next to impossible to breathe due to the debris in the air."
One problem with Reiss' testimony is that people who had been "enveloped by [the] churning black debris cloud" were completely covered in dust. [SUP][32][/SUP] But Alan Reiss, who is said to have narrowly escaped the 1993 bombing as well, did not appear to have any dust or debris on him despite having been covered by the dust clouds. An interview with Reiss just moments after the destruction of the towers, in which Reiss' police escort turned his back on Reiss and appeared unusually uncomfortable, demonstrated this fact. [SUP][33][/SUP]
A second piece of evidence indicating that Alan Reiss was being less than truthful after the attacks includes this quote "Even if someone had told me the threat was a missile, I don't know what I could have done, let alone if someone had told me it was going to be a plane. No one ever thought about a hijacked plane being rammed into a building." [SUP][34][/SUP]
We heard this same false claim that no one had ever thought about a plane being rammed into a building from George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. [SUP][35][/SUP] After the public was presented with considerable evidence that many people in the US government had, in fact, thought about and planned for such an event before 9/11, Rice had to correct her comments in her testimony to the 9/11 Commission.
The reasons that Reiss should have been aware of the possibility included the fact that several people Reiss would have known had thought about this very scenario, including the WTC tower's design engineer, John Skilling. In a 1993 interview, Skilling said that, in the event of an airliner crash into one of the towers, "the building structure would still be there." [SUP][36][/SUP] One of Reiss' own staff members, Frank A. DeMartini, the Manager of WTC Construction, was videotaped explaining how the towers could have withstood multiple impacts from aircraft. [SUP][37][/SUP]Another person that Reiss would have worked with closely throughout the security upgrades, Brian Michael Jenkins, had also assessed the possibility of an airplane attack on the WTC. [SUP][38][/SUP]
From 1989 to1998, Jenkins was the deputy chairman of Crisis Management for Kroll Associates. Kroll directed the PANYNJ's response to the 1993 bombing in terms of security upgrades, as stated by Reiss' program manager for WTC security systems, Douglas G. Karpiloff, who died on 9/11. Karpiloff reported "After the bombing, we had the top security consultants in the nation, Kroll Associates, do a complete security analysis for us, and we followed their recommendations." [SUP][39][/SUP]
Stanley Brezeneoff, who was executive director of the PANYNJ from 1990 to 1995, emphasized the importance of Kroll's work at the WTC by saying "We have such confidence in [Kroll] that I have followed every one of their recommendations." [SUP][40][/SUP] Having taken over the PANYNJ from Stephen Berger (of Dresser Industries), Brezenoff had previously been the First Deputy Mayor under Ed Koch, and before that he was a Program Officer for the Ford Foundation. [SUP][41][/SUP]
Because Kroll's Jenkins led the analysis of future terrorist threats and how they might be addressed after the 1993 bombing, and Alan Reiss was the lead person in the PANYNJ response to the bombing, it seems very unlikely that Reiss was not aware of Jenkins' prediction of "terrorists deliberately crashing a plane into the towers." [SUP][42][/SUP]
Alan Reiss might have wanted to be untruthful about the events of 9/11 because he knew more about the attacks than he let on. But he certainly knew about the involvement of Kroll in creating the security program for the WTC complex after the 1993 bombing. And Kroll's work is very relevant to this analysis.
Kroll leaders and historyPrior to working for Kroll, Jenkins was chairman of the RAND Corporation's Political Science department and he directed RAND's research on political violence. He also had served as a captain in the Green Berets in the Dominican Republic and later in Vietnam (1966-1970). Later, in 1999 and 2000, Jenkins also served as an advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism, led by L. Paul Bremer. [SUP][43][/SUP] Jenkins returned to RAND after his stint with Kroll. Other RAND advisors during the times that Jenkins worked there were Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Carlucci of The Carlyle Group, Paul Kaminski of In-Q-Tel, and Project for a New American Century (PNAC) co-founder, Francis Fukuyama. [SUP][44][/SUP]
In 1996, Brian Michael Jenkins was appointed by President Clinton to be a member of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, where he worked with James Abrahamson of Securacom (see below), and John Deutch, then Director of the CIA. Deutch, who was later investigated for possible leaks of classified information, had worked for both Raytheon and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). [SUP][45][/SUP] The White House Commission on Aviation and Security also included Louis Freeh, then Director of the FBI. Freeh, who had led the investigations into many of the terrorist acts attributed to Al Qaeda, stepped down shortly before the 9/11 attacks, and started a business that profited from the new Homeland Security industry. Freeh is now the personal attorney for Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar, often called "Bandar Bush." [SUP][46][/SUP]
In 1997, the Commission represented by Abrahamson, Freeh, Deutch and Jenkins made several recommendations to President Clinton, including the implementation of new Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, from the Department of Defense, into all civilian airliners and the Federal Aviation Administration's Wide Area Augmentation System. [SUP][47][/SUP] Whether or not such GPS devices could have been utilized on 9/11 is not considered in this essay. But similar scenarios have been proposed and some of these appear to be worth consideration. [SUP][48][/SUP] In any case, it is an interesting coincidence that Brian Michael Jenkins helped plan for WTC security by formally assessing the possibility of an airliner attack on the WTC and (along with Securacom's Abrahamson) recommended that guidance devices be installed on commercial aircraft, and he was engaged in these activities in the few years before 9/11.
Despite Kroll's leading role in providing the security plan for the WTC, neither the 9/11 Commission nor the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) mentioned Kroll in their respective reports. But there are a number of reasons why Kroll should have been included in the investigation.
Kroll calls itself "the world's leading risk consulting company," [SUP][49][/SUP]and was founded by Jules B. Kroll in 1972. Mr. Kroll had been admitted to the New York Bar in 1967, and had spent several years as an assistant District Attorney for New York County. [SUP][50][/SUP]
Jules Kroll is a graduate of Cornell University, where he was a member of the secret society Quill and Dagger, as were former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Marsh and McLennan's Stephen Friedman, and National Security Advisors Sandy Berger and Stephen Hadley. [SUP][51][/SUP] Friedman figured prominently in the evaluation of WTC tenants, due to his role at Marsh & McLennan and his later role as George W. Bush's top economic advisor. Friedman was also a member of the Brookings Institution, the Bilderberg group, the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the board at In-Q-Tel. Berger was noted for stealing documents during the 9/11 investigation and for preventing Richard Clarke's response to Al Qaeda, with help from Hadley.
Kroll Inc. has been hired by some of the most powerful governments and organizations in the world. Beyond simply assessing risk, Kroll has operated as a private intelligence agency, and has been called "The CIA of Wall Street". In this role, Kroll traced and recovered the assets of Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, and Saddam Hussein (for Kuwait). Kroll also worked for the Russian government to recover funds, and for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the Savings and Loan scandal.
At times, Kroll worked for corporations that wanted to find fraud or secrets within a given organization. In some cases, when corporations were threatened with hostile takeover, Kroll helped out by finding embarrassing secrets about the takeover company's executives, thereby preventing the takeover. Former CIA spies, FBI agents, and prosecutors were hired by the firm, and made as much as twice the salaries they made in the public sector while investigating corporate and personal misdeeds. One of Kroll's more important cases involved the investigation of derivatives fraud at Daiwa Securities. [SUP][52][/SUP]
Kroll Inc. leaders have included Robert J. McGuire, who was President and COO of the company from 1989 to 1997, and was formerly the NYC Police commissioner. Kroll board member Raymond E. Mabus was Governor of Mississippi from 1988 until 1992, and ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1994 until 1996. James R. Bucknam, Kroll's executive vice president for operations, was senior adviser to (Bandar Bush's attorney) Louis Freeh. Bucknam was also an assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York (AUSA SDNY) from 1987 to 1993, during the same time that Rudy Giuliani was the US District Attorney for SDNY, and was investigating BCCI. [SUP][53][/SUP]
By 1991, due to his experience with international investigations, Jules Kroll had developed an expert knowledge of the terrorist financing bank BCCI and how it moved and hid money all over the world. [SUP][54,55][/SUP] Coincidentally, during the same time that Jules Kroll was gaining this knowledge, WTC tenant L. Paul Bremer was managing director at Kissinger Associates, a firm that had been having meetings with BCCI but would not later reveal any details to the Senate's investigation committee. [SUP][56][/SUP]
In 1993, American International Group (AIG), then led by Maurice Greenburg, bought 23% of Kroll. Greenberg's son Jeffrey, a member of the Brookings Institution and the Trilateral Commission, left AIG two years later for Marsh & McLennan. Jeffrey Greenberg rose to CEO of Marsh in just four years and was still CEO when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower, directly in the area where Marsh occupied the building. By 2001, Kroll was not only partly owned by AIG, but was also working closely with AIG on security issues. [SUP][57][/SUP]
In August 1996, as a result of the TWA 800 disaster, Kroll began issuing a monthly bulletin "that reviews air travel safety issues worldwide." [SUP][58][/SUP]What access to airline and airport information was provided to Kroll, as part of that responsibility, is not clear.
In January 2001, Jerome Hauer, who had been Mayor Giuliani's director of the OEM from 1996 until February 2000, was hired to run the crisis management group at Kroll. Hauer had left the OEM to become vice president and associate director at SAIC's Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis. [SUP][59][/SUP] It is not clear if he spent only eleven months at SAIC, or if he continued to work there while also working for Kroll. But on 9/11, Hauer was also serving as "a national security advisor with the National Institute of Health." [SUP][60][/SUP] He was replaced as the director of Giuliani's OEM by Richard Sheirer.
Mr. Hauer has been scrutinized due to his positions at the OEM and at Kroll, and for potential links to the anthrax mailings via SAIC. He has also been considered suspect due to the interviews he did on 9/11. In one interview that day, with Peter Jennings of ABC, Hauer calmly said that "things were working as they should", and he acted as an expert as he described the need for continuity of government plans. [SUP][61][/SUP]
Jerome Hauer was one of very few people who seemed to know exactly what happened to the WTC buildings, despite the fact that no skyscraper had ever collapsed for any reason other than demolition. His interview with Dan Rather on 9/11/01 was particularly insightful in this regard, in terms of Hauer's ability to describe the official theory of impact and fire-based failure. In fact, when Rather asked Hauer directly "would it have required the prior positioning of explosives," Hauer responded quickly "No…the velocity of the plane had an impact on the building…[it was] filled with jet fuel that burned [causing] intense heat [that] probably weakened the structure causing collapse." [SUP][62][/SUP]
Later, in May 2002, Hauer was appointed as Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, thereby becoming a member of the Bush Administration. In December 2004, Hauer presented with military and Homeland Security representatives at the National Press Club in something called The BioDefense Briefing Series. Also there was George Lowell, Chief Scientific Officer at ID Biomedical Corporation. ID Biomedical, now a subsidiary of Glaxo Smith Kline, is manufacturing the H1N1 vaccine. [SUP][63][/SUP] Some have reported that the US military is preparing to deploy troops in support of nationwide vaccination for H1N1. [SUP][64][/SUP] A wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Management, called CEVA Logistics, has been contracted to ship the bulk vaccine to processing facilities under lock and seal. [SUP][65][/SUP] Apollo Management was founded by Leon Black, who is now on the PANYNJ Port Security Task Force, and company principals have included Jeffrey Benjamin of WTC tenants Bankers Trust and Exco Resources, Henry Silverman of Cendant and the PANYNJ, and A.B Krongard's wife, Cheryl Gordon Krongard.
In May of 2004 Kroll was purchased again, this time by the WTC impact zone tenant Marsh & McLennan for $1.9 billion, "more than $100 million of which was pocketed by" Jules Kroll. Kroll Inc's CEO Michael Cherkasky became the CEO of Marsh & McLennan after the deal, and he helped persuade his former protégé Eliot Spitzer to drop fraud charges that amounted to "cheat[ing] customers in an elaborate charade of price fixing and bid rigging." The charges that Spitzer had brought against Marsh were the cause of Jeffery's Greenberg's resignation as Marsh CEO. [SUP][66][/SUP]
Electronic Systems Associates and E.J. ElectricThe security plan at the WTC complex involved more than changes in infrastructure. Ongoing security also included the use of PANYNJ police (PAPD), as well as contract security personnel. In addition to those managed by the PANYNJ, some tenants had their own security contractors, and several of them died on 9/11. The PANYNJ itself lost a total of 84 employees, including 37 police officers, and its police superintendent.
But in terms of the placement of explosives in the Twin Towers, what is relevant is the facility modifications and construction work that was performed in the years before 9/11. The police were just doing their jobs, and clearly did not benefit from the terrorist attacks. In fact, the great sacrifice made by the PAPD, and other first responders like the FDNY, should be considered even greater because of the deception involved in the attacks.
Implementing the new security plan for the WTC complex after the 1993 bombing required years of work and involved many contractors. But there were four security contractors that led this effort. The contractors responsible for installation of the system throughout much of the towers were Electronic Systems Associates and E.J. Electric Installation, both of New York. For the security of the basement parking garages, a critical area for controlling access to the towers and the one area that failed so badly in 1993, a company called Ensec was hired. Another company, Securacom, was responsible for the overall system integration. [SUP][67][/SUP]
Electronic Systems Associates (ESA) was a division of Syska & Hennessey (S&H). S&H was an engineering firm whose largest projects in the past included serving as structural engineers for the United Nations building, WTC building 7, and King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. S&H had offices in Saudi Arabia, and before the Shah was ousted they had offices in Iran. [SUP][68][/SUP] In 1997, the firm was retained as the prime contractor to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Employees of ESA reported having worked on projects for clients such as The Pentagon, The Union Bank of Switzerland, March & McLennan and Hearst Publishing. [SUP][69][/SUP]
E.J. Electric Installation Company (E.J.) was founded in 1899, and hired Jacques Mann in 1912. Jacques' son J. Robert Mann, a 1951 graduate of Yale, later became chairman and CEO of the company. J. Robert Mann was a winner of the Yale Science and Engineering "Award for Meritorious Service to Yale University." He attended the university with several Bush family and Skull and Bones members, including Jonathan J. Bush, of Riggs National where Norman Augustine is a director, and George Herbert Walker III, the chairman of Stifel Financial Corporation who became ambassador to Hungary in 2003. The third generation of Manns, Anthony (Tony) Mann joined E.J. Electric in 1986.
E.J. Electric's biggest jobs in the past included the Rockefeller Center, "the Merrill Lynch primary data center at the World Financial Center, AT&T World Headquarters in Manhattan, and American Airlines, as well as installation and maintenance of all voice, data, audio, video, satellite, security, and fire safety systems for U.N. buildings in New York. New York City's 911 Police Command Center… Delta Airlines, Tower Airlines and British Airways at JFK Airport." [SUP][70][/SUP] It has been reported that the U.N. building in New York has been the site of electronic espionage. [SUP][71][/SUP] E.J. also worked for United Airlines, Silverstein Properties, Saudi Arabian Airlines, and the Federal Reserve Bank. E-J was awarded a maintenance contract at the WTC after doing the security wiring, fire-alarm systems and back-up power.
On September 11th 2001, E.J. Electric had an office in the south tower and had nine electricians on-site, including a man on top of the tower before the first strike. E.J. also had a team in the basement. Tony Mann, who was President of E.J. at that time, said that all of his electricians ran out of the building and kept going. "A lot of them didn't stop until they got to Central Park," Mann said. "They were lucky to get out early enough." E.J. also helped the FBI with its investigation. "We did the whole security system down there and we provided our entire database to the FBI last week," Mann said. "They had 10 FBI agents at our subcontractor's office in California to download the database, which included everyone that worked there including photographs." [SUP][72][/SUP]
Ensec InternationalAnother of the primary companies involved in the 1990s security upgrades for the WTC was Ensec International, originally founded in Brazil in 1983, by Charles N. Finkel. Ensec's Florida subsidiary had an office on the 33rd floor of the north tower (WTC 1). It's not clear how much business Ensec had in the eighties and early nineties. But Charles Finkel was, at the same time, the export sales executive for a company called Engesa, a manufacturer of tanks and other military vehicles for Operation Desert Storm. Engesa was a Saudi-approved supplier. [SUP][73,74][/SUP]
Ensec sold itself as a company that "designs, develops, assembles, sells, installs and services security systems for large commercial or governmental facilities ranging from single function installations to high-end integrated security systems." [SUP][75][/SUP] Ensec's responsibility at the WTC involved setting up a new system for securing the basement levels, particularly in the parking garages. It was reported that the access control system used was manufactured and installed by Ensec. The system included proprietary software, proximity card readers and vehicle identification tags for all registered vehicles. The system also included cameras, located "in critical locations within the complex, such as machine rooms, computer areas, visitor areas and other sensitive locations."
Another interesting connection to the first essay in this series is that it was Lockheed Martin IMS that first subcontracted the PANYNJ work to Ensec in November of 1996. [SUP][76][/SUP] Lockheed Martin (Lockheed) CEO Norman Augustine worked in one way or another with many of the people mentioned in the review of tenants in the towers, including Toru Hashimoto of Fuji bank, William Clark of the Washington Group, and Stephen Friedman of Marsh & McClennan. Augustine was also a board member of Riggs National, the BCCI-linked banking firm of (J. Robert Mann's fellow Yale alumnus) Jonathan Bush, and he is now a senior advisor for the investment company Frontier Group, where he works with Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group. [SUP][77][/SUP]
Throughout the 1990s, Augustine was at the forefront of US policy discussion on the need for changes to defense and space program spending. In 1990, he chaired the Advisory Committee that included Vice President (and PNAC signatory) Dan Quayle on the Future of the U.S. Space Program, known as the Augustine Commission. Also in 1990, Augustine co-wrote "The Defense Revolution", and later, along with WTC 2 impact zone tenant Joseph Kasputys, was thanked for his guidance in the 1996 book "Defense Conversion."
Augustine served as president of Lockheed when that company was formed in 1995, and became CEO later that year. He retired as CEO of Lockheed in August 1997. Therefore Augustine was the CEO of Lockheed when the subcontract was awarded to Ensec. Lockheed went on to benefit greatly from the War on Terror, through enormous increases in defense spending. [SUP][78,79][/SUP]
In late 1998, CIA Director George Tenet and his executive director A.B. Krongard called on Augustine to establish the investment company In-Q-Tel. Augustine later recalled that "We went through a very tough start because it was so different." At the time, it was considered, by congressional investigators, that Augustine and others involved in creating In-Q-Tel might be out to make a profit from this CIA-funded organization. Others were also suspicious of the CIA's intentions. Then, when 9/11 happened, those suspicions were forgotten. "That was the turning point," Augustine said. [SUP][80,81][/SUP]
In the press release that announced Lockheed's subcontract, Ensec CEO Charles N. Finkel reported that "Lockheed Martin has been actively engaged in the design, integration and implementation of security systems for many high profile installations including highly classified U.S. Department of Defense facilities and Department of Energy [DOE] sites. Consequently, we are very proud that Ensec has been selected as the supplier of a major component of this highly sophisticated system." In late 1997, Ensec signed a software license agreement, filed by SEC, with Lockheed. [SUP][82][/SUP]
Charles Finkel was also the "sole limited partner of Mayfair Limited Partnership," [SUP][83][/SUP] a joint venture between three companies including Apollo Real Estate Advisors. [SUP][84][/SUP] Apollo Real Estate Advisors was formed in April 1993 as the real estate affiliate of the private investment organization Apollo Management. [SUP][85][/SUP]
In late 1996, just as Lockheed was subcontracting the PANYNJ work to it, Ensec added two new directors. These were Raymond E. List of ICF Kaiser Engineers, an engineering and construction company with DOE contracts, and Terence R. McAullife, who in 2001 would become Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). [SUP][86][/SUP]
McAullife had been involved in suspicious dealings before. He was linked to Teamster related corruption [SUP][87][/SUP], and when he was DNC national finance chairman, he made a $1.35 million gift to the Clintons in what later became a scandal. [SUP][88][/SUP] McAuliffe was also involved in a lawsuit regarding Loral Space, a company investigated for collaborating, with, and giving secrets to, the Chinese for their satellite and intercontinental ballistic missile programs. In another interesting coincidence, this potential national security breach also involved James Abrahamson's Hughes Aircraft, through its subsidiary Hughes Electronics. Prescott Bush Jr. was working with Hughes to secure satellite deals with China. [SUP][89][/SUP]
The charges against McAuliffe in the Loral Space scandal were that he agreed "to participate in this scheme to sell seats on taxpayer-financed foreign trade missions and other government services in exchange for campaign contributions to the DNC" and "played a central role in selecting trade mission participants and, on information and belief, securing other favorable treatment from the Clinton Administration for Defendant Loral." It was also reported that " prominently figured among those selected for participating in the high-profile Commerce Department trade mission to China was Defendant Schwartz, who would go on to become the single largest contributor to the DNC." [SUP][90][/SUP] Bernard L. Schwartz was the billionaire CEO of Loral and Globalstar.
The CEOs of Hughes, Loral, and Lockheed co-wrote a letter to President Clinton in October 1995, asking the president to "transfer all responsibility for commercial satellite export licensing to the Commerce Department." All three companies later paid enormous fines for illegal exports of advanced missile technology to China, and Hughes was charged with 123 counts of national security violations. But in 1996, Clinton did move oversight of the satellite exports to the Department of Commerce and the three CEOs, including Augustine and Schwartz, thanked him publicly. [SUP][91][/SUP]
Lockheed Martin then bought most of Loral, in April 1996, for $9.1 billion. [SUP][92][/SUP] Schwartz, whose company had been close to bankruptcy, was much richer for it, and today, PNAC co-founder Francis Fukuyama is the "Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy" at Johns Hopkins University.
McAuliffe was linked to another company that was mired in scandal Global Crossing. It was reported that McAuliffe purchased $100,000 in Global Crossing stock before the company went public and cashed out several years later for $18 million. Richard Perle was a lobbyist for Global Crossing, which was a partner in several deals with the Chinese company Hutchison Whampoa, called an "arm of the PLA [People's Liberation Army]." [SUP][93][/SUP] Li Ka-Shing was the Chinese billionaire owner of Hutchison, as well as Cheung Kong Holdings. Li has invested in firms owned by Winston Partners, and has also employed Winston cofounder Marvin Bush's brother, Neil Bush, as a consultant. [SUP][94][/SUP]
Between his DNC role and his later job as campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton's Presidential run, McAuliffe worked as Vice-Chairman of Carret investments. McAuliffe was hired at Carret by Alan Quasha, who once "bailed out George W. Bush's failing oil company in 1986, folding Bush into his company, Harken Energy, thus setting him on the path to a lucrative and high-profile position as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and the presidency." [SUP][95][/SUP]
Alan Quasha had owned Carret since 2003. But he was previously known for his leadership of Harken Energy, and thereby, his connection to the many suspicious organizations related to Harken, including BCCI. At Carret and Harken, Quasha had a partner named Hassan Nemazee. An investor in Harken and the founder of the Iranian American PAC, Nemazee was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, and was also associated with RAND.
In any case, Ensec International and its leaders should have been investigated for possible security breaches at the WTC. The management structure at Ensec, including its arms dealer founder, Charles Finkel and its corrupt director Terry McAuliffe, should have led the 9/11 Commission and NIST to consider the problems that might have resulted from this company having rebuilt the access systems for the WTC basement levels. Additionally, the fact that Lockheed Martin had subcontracted the PANYNJ work to Ensec was one indicator that these companies might have benefited from the attacks.
SecuracomHaving recently changed its name from Burns & Roe Securacom, in October 1992, Securacom Inc. positioned itself as a firm offering "large-scale security and facility management for businesses and government." The company first began doing work at the WTC in 1993, following the bombing. [SUP][96][/SUP] It won a larger WTC contract in 1996, and a year later was forced to change its name again, to Stratesec, as a result of a lawsuit over trademark infringement. [SUP][97][/SUP] The court "found a deliberate effort by Securacom to financially bury' the plaintiff, Ron Libengood, and take everything he had' by filing a barrage of frivolous arguments…in multiple jurisdictions." [SUP][98][/SUP]This name change incident seems to be clear evidence of corruption, but where possible this essay will use the name Securacom for the sake of simplicity.
Other projects that Securacom was working on in 1997 were for Amtrak, Xerox, and "a joint venture agreement with Ahmad N. AlBinali & Sons Co., a large Saudi Arabian engineering and construction company, to develop and conduct business in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." [SUP][99][/SUP] Securacom also had contracts to provide security services for several facilities, other than the WTC, that were key to the 9/11 attacks, including United Airlines, and Dulles Airport, where American Airlines Flight 77 took off that day. Another client was Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where scientists were working on the development of nanothermite, a type of explosive material that has since been discovered in the WTC dust. [SUP][100][/SUP] "When Securacom went public on September 11, 1997, its prospectus for the Initial Public Offering prominently featured photographs of its clients the World Trade Center and Dulles airport, with a client list that included United Airlines and Los Alamos National Laboratories." Perhaps as a result, Marsh & McLennan subsidiary Putnam became one of Securacom's investors. [SUP][101][/SUP]
Securacom had a small board of directors that included James Abrahamson, of the White House Commission on Aviation Security as mentioned above, Marvin Bush, the brother of George W. Bush, and Wirt Walker III, a cousin of the Bush brothers. Other directors included Charles Archer (since 1998), former Assistant Director in charge of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, who had been recently been promoted by FBI Director Louis Freeh. Another Securacom director was Yousef Saud Al Sabah, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family. [SUP][102][/SUP]
It was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family who provided the critical testimony that swayed US public opinion in support of the 1991 invasion of Kuwait. That testimony was given to the House "Human Rights Caucus" by a 15-year old girl named Nayirah, whose family connections were not publicly known at the time. She told the world that she witnessed "Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die." It was later discovered that Nayirah's testimony was completely false, and that she had been coached to give that false testimony by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton. It was also discovered that she was Nayirah Al Sabah, the daughter of Saud Nasir al-Sabah, who was at the time the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. [SUP][103][/SUP]
Yousef Saud Al Sabah was also chairman of the Kuwait-American Corporation (KuwAm), which, between 1993 and 1999, held a controlling share of Securacom. It was an unusual arrangement, according to experts in the field, in that security services for sensitive US facilities were not typically managed by foreign-owned companies. The fact that Kuwam owned Securacom suggested, according to Wayne Black, the head of a Florida-based security firm, that "Somebody knew somebody." Black noted that when a company has a security contract, "you know the inner workings of everything," and if another company is linked to the security company, then "what's on your computer is on their computer." [SUP][104][/SUP]
The other owners of Securacom were Walker and an entity controlled by Walker and Al Sabah, called Special Situation Investment Holdings (SSIH). [SUP][105][/SUP] SSIH was said to form a group with KuwAm, and the group owned several other companies, including Commander Aircraft and Aviation General.
Securacom director and retired Air Force General James Abrahamson was a former NASA administrator, and a former director of Reagan's Space Defense Initiative (SDI). As director of the SDI program from 1984 to 1989, he worked closely with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, both of whom were signatories on PNAC documents. As a civilian, Abrahamson was President of Hughes Aircraft, and a director of Turkey's Global Group. He became a director of Securacom in December 1997. [SUP][106][/SUP]
Although the availability of explosives was established during the review of WTC tenants, we might note that NASA uses explosives extensively in the launching of spacecraft, and has done so for fifty years. Today, there are "more than 250 strategically placed and precisely timed explosive devices that detonate on the space shuttle each time the vehicle flies." [SUP][107][/SUP] Lockheed Martin is a major NASA supplier in that regard. [SUP][108][/SUP] NASA also uses thermite technology, for space separation explosives and for initiators, and as with the improvised explosive devices that kill our soldiers in the Middle East, there is no need for extensive wiring to detonate them.
Abrahamson was President of Hughes Aircraft from 1989 to 1992, when Prescott Bush Jr. was helping Hughes lobby his brother, the US President, to lift sanctions on the Chinese government. Abrahamson now serves on the board at GeoEye, the people who spy on us from above by way of satellites. [SUP][109][/SUP] He also co-founded a company called Crescent Investment Management (Crescent), with Mansoor Ijaz.
Abrahamson's business partner Mansoor Ijaz is the CEO of Crescent, and the board of advisors includes Maurice Sonnenberg and former CIA Director (and PNAC signatory) James Woolsey. [SUP][110][/SUP] Ijaz is a rare individual in that he claimed to have the ability to persuade several governments to extradite Osama bin Laden. After meetings with President Clinton and Sandy Berger, Ijaz said that he could not convince them to work toward the extradition. [SUP][111][/SUP]Additionally, Ijaz introduced the journalist Daniel Pearl, by way of a personal letter, to those in Pakistan who are believed to have been involved in his death. [SUP][112][/SUP] Ijaz went on to become a Fox News correspondent, and he was a strong promoter of false claims leading up to the Iraq War, including WMDs and ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. [SUP][113][/SUP]
Crescent's Maurice Sonnenberg was the Vice Chairman of L. Paul Bremer's National Commission on Terrorism (where Brian Michael Jenkins was an advisor). Sonnenberg was also a member of President Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1993 to 1995, with Stephen Friedman of Marsh and McLennan. At the same time, Sonnenberg was also a member of the U.S. Commission on Reducing and Protecting Government Secrecy, with Lee Hamilton and John Deutch, who replaced James Woolsey as Director of the CIA in 1995.
Marvin Bush was a director of Securacom from 1993 to 2000. [SUP][114][/SUP] Bush was hired as part of a new management team when Securacom separated from Burns and Roe. It was just at that time that the PANYNJ and Kroll began planning for the extensive rebuilding of the security systems at the WTC complex. As his stint with Securacom ended, Marvin Bush became a principal in the company HCC Insurance, one of the insurance carriers for the World Trade Center. Bush was also a director of Kerrco, an oil company in Houston.
Bush was the cofounder of Winston partners in 1993, a company that benefited greatly from the War on Terror. In 2000, Winston Partners invested heavily in a defense contractor called AMSEC, that was 55% owned by SAIC. It has been noted that SAIC was not only the largest non-governmental contributor to the NIST WTC report, it was also a company that had expertise in nanothermite technology. [SUP][115][/SUP]
SAIC was also involved in the investigation of the 1993 WTC bombing, boasting that "After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, our blast analyses produced tangible results that helped identify those responsible." [SUP][116][/SUP]As a company that sells "expertise about weapons, about homeland security, about surveillance, about computer systems, about information dominance' and information warfare'," and has been "awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America," SAIC has been paid huge sums to rebuild the NSA and FBI systems that supposedly failed before 9/11. [SUP][117][/SUP] John Deutch left SAIC to become Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1994.
Michael Braham, who took over as CEO of AMSEC in 2003, was previously Senior Vice President at Marsh Crisis Consulting, [SUP][118][/SUP] where his boss was J Paul Bremer. When Marvin Bush joined its board in 2000, AMSEC's revenues were $100 million. By 2007, its annual revenues had grown to $500 million. [SUP][119][/SUP]
Barry McDaniel became the COO of Securacom beginning in 1998. McDaniel ha
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
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