Found this little tidbit (albeit by someone listed as Anonymous) as a reply to th e"George Washington" Blog on 9/11:
The link to the blog articl follows the quote...
Anonymous said...
Stratesec was briefly one of my clients. My employment was with an insurance broker and my role for Stratesec was to broker for them a surety bond line of credit from an insurance company. A surety bond is a third-party guarantee of a legal obligation - no connection or relationship to bonds in the sense of stocks and bonds. In this instance, the main purpose of the surety bond line of credit was to provide tender (bid) security and peformance and payment bonds to guarantee contracts for security systems work.
Stratesec came to my employer because the insurance company, Frontier, was broke. In a nutshell, Frontier had had too many contractors go broke and it cost them too much money in their claims from project owners.
Stratesec's first name was Securecom. Another firm had that name, so it was changed. Securecom was a spin-off from a security company named Burns. KuwAm, a firm controlled by Mishal Youself Soud Al Sabah, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, initially controlled Securecom directly and indirectly with 90% of shares. Other shareholders included President Geo. Bush's brother, Marvin Bush; Wirt Walker III (a cousin); Lt. General James Abrahamson USAF and Emmit J. McHenry, chairman of NetCom. McHenry's firm, Network Solutions Inc. (NSI), acquired by VeriSign in 2000 for $15 billion, developed the internet domain registry on a grant from the National Science Foundation. Abrahamson was appointed by Reagan to head the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars" program and I believe that he may have commanded the Air Force in the Persian Gulf War.
Albeit closely held, Securecom / Stratesec was a public company. 10-K and 10-Q documents are thus available online and they include much of this background information.
KuwAm repeatedly pumped additional capital into Stratesec to the tune of about $20 million to cover repeated annual losses. The official story is that Stratesec's original business plan was to increase revenue faster than the profit curve in order to rapidly acquire market share and thereby become a dominant national security firm. Actually, the term "systems integrator" is more appropriate.
A contract to install systems at the WTC towers was identified as a major problem. Contract losses reportedly resulted from problems in developing custom software that they subcontracted to a group of Berkely professors. Its President, blamed for the losses, left when that chapter was closed.
I discussed the WTC contract with Barry McDaniels, Stratesec's last President. He told me that acquisition of the WTC contract had been negotiated by Ron Thomas, his predecessor. McDaniels said that all of the people involved in the matter were gone, that the contract was poorly documented and that, in consequence, nobody understood it well enough to discuss it, so it just wasn't worth delving into. He said that Thomas did not delegate adequately but instead carried a lot of information concerning the contract in his head and that he wasn't available to discuss it either. Thomas had left with a golden parachute that included shares and and a consulting contract for which he had to do virtually nothing. This conversation with McDaniels was in 2000.
I suggest that an appropriate area of research might be to obtain 1) a copy of the contract to determine precisely what sort of equipment and software Stratesec was to install and 2) obtain a copy of the subcontract with the Berkley professors.
Another of Stratesec's major contracts at the time was installing security systems at TVA facilities. Maybe a dam or two will blow up next time.
Very interesting...
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-could-they-plant-bombs-in-world.html
TAM
The link to the blog articl follows the quote...
Anonymous said...
Stratesec was briefly one of my clients. My employment was with an insurance broker and my role for Stratesec was to broker for them a surety bond line of credit from an insurance company. A surety bond is a third-party guarantee of a legal obligation - no connection or relationship to bonds in the sense of stocks and bonds. In this instance, the main purpose of the surety bond line of credit was to provide tender (bid) security and peformance and payment bonds to guarantee contracts for security systems work.
Stratesec came to my employer because the insurance company, Frontier, was broke. In a nutshell, Frontier had had too many contractors go broke and it cost them too much money in their claims from project owners.
Stratesec's first name was Securecom. Another firm had that name, so it was changed. Securecom was a spin-off from a security company named Burns. KuwAm, a firm controlled by Mishal Youself Soud Al Sabah, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, initially controlled Securecom directly and indirectly with 90% of shares. Other shareholders included President Geo. Bush's brother, Marvin Bush; Wirt Walker III (a cousin); Lt. General James Abrahamson USAF and Emmit J. McHenry, chairman of NetCom. McHenry's firm, Network Solutions Inc. (NSI), acquired by VeriSign in 2000 for $15 billion, developed the internet domain registry on a grant from the National Science Foundation. Abrahamson was appointed by Reagan to head the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars" program and I believe that he may have commanded the Air Force in the Persian Gulf War.
Albeit closely held, Securecom / Stratesec was a public company. 10-K and 10-Q documents are thus available online and they include much of this background information.
KuwAm repeatedly pumped additional capital into Stratesec to the tune of about $20 million to cover repeated annual losses. The official story is that Stratesec's original business plan was to increase revenue faster than the profit curve in order to rapidly acquire market share and thereby become a dominant national security firm. Actually, the term "systems integrator" is more appropriate.
A contract to install systems at the WTC towers was identified as a major problem. Contract losses reportedly resulted from problems in developing custom software that they subcontracted to a group of Berkely professors. Its President, blamed for the losses, left when that chapter was closed.
I discussed the WTC contract with Barry McDaniels, Stratesec's last President. He told me that acquisition of the WTC contract had been negotiated by Ron Thomas, his predecessor. McDaniels said that all of the people involved in the matter were gone, that the contract was poorly documented and that, in consequence, nobody understood it well enough to discuss it, so it just wasn't worth delving into. He said that Thomas did not delegate adequately but instead carried a lot of information concerning the contract in his head and that he wasn't available to discuss it either. Thomas had left with a golden parachute that included shares and and a consulting contract for which he had to do virtually nothing. This conversation with McDaniels was in 2000.
I suggest that an appropriate area of research might be to obtain 1) a copy of the contract to determine precisely what sort of equipment and software Stratesec was to install and 2) obtain a copy of the subcontract with the Berkley professors.
Another of Stratesec's major contracts at the time was installing security systems at TVA facilities. Maybe a dam or two will blow up next time.
Very interesting...
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-could-they-plant-bombs-in-world.html
TAM
(and one more to make chuck happy)
