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| Subject: George Wackenhut, 85, Dies; Founded Elite Security Firm | |
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Author: Dec 31, 2004 |
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Date Posted: January 09, 2005 12:55:44 EDT George R. Wackenhut, a former F.B.I. agent who built the Wackenhut Corporation into an international security firm that promoted the use of private guards at prisons, airports and nuclear power plants, died on Dec. 31 at his home in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 85. The cause was heart failure, said his daughter, Janis Wackenhut Ward. From the McCarthy era on, as America's appetite for security escalated, Mr. Wackenhut persuaded thousands of communities and government agencies to put private guards in public jobs, an idea law enforcement officials had long resisted. Started in 1954 as a three-man detective agency in Miami, the struggling company turned to providing guard services to stay afloat and later earned contracts with Lockheed Martin and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. To impress potential clients, Mr. Wackenhut dressed his guards in helmets and paratrooper boots, and he recruited former members of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and elite military forces to join management and the company's board. Over the next four decades, Wackenhut guarded corporate buildings during labor strikes, managed security for airlines at nearly 90 airports and supplemented municipal services like firefighting and emergency medical services in several small communities. Its guards patrolled the Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear test site in Nevada and a handful of American embassies. But the company's expansion into prisons and other correctional operations in the 1980's became its most profitable move. It was one of the first private security firms hired by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and has since received federal contracts from the United States Marshals Service and the immigration and customs enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security. The privatization of prisons has had its critics, however, and Wackenhut's guards have been accused of abusing inmates in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. The Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, the company's prisons subsidiary, now manages more than 40,000 prison beds , mostly in the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. As his company grew, Mr. Wackenhut recruited prominent directors like Clarence M. Kelley, former head of the F.B.I.; James J. Rowley, former director of the Secret Service; and Frank C. Carlucci, former defense secretary and former C.I.A. deputy director. Before Ronald Reagan appointed him director of central intelligence, William J. Casey was Wackenhut's outside legal counsel. Such connections fueled speculation that the company was working with the C.I.A., a relationship that Mr. Wackenhut denied. Mr. Wackenhut, outspoken in his conservative politics, was occasionally seen as overly zealous in his investigations. In 1967, when Gov. Claude R. Kirk Jr. of Florida appointed him chief of a private police force to investigate organized crime, Mr. Wackenhut was criticized for saying that he and his officers would not limit themselves to suspected criminals but would "investigate everyone and anyone who needs investigating." The police force was short-lived, but the company's tactics created a dispute again in 1991, when a Congressional inquiry found that it had spied on an environmental advocate by installing miniature cameras in his hotel rooms and taking documents from his home. George Russell Wackenhut was born in Philadelphia on Sept. 3, 1919. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawaii and a master's degree in education from Johns Hopkins University. He served in the Army during World War II. He joined the F.B.I. in 1951 as a special agent in Atlanta and Indianapolis and tracked down check forgers and Army deserters. He left three years later to join three other former agents in starting a detective agency that he later bought from his partners and renamed the Wackenhut Corporation. His son, Richard R., took over the company in 1986. In addition to his daughter, Janis, of Miami and his son, Richard R., of Jupiter, Fla., Mr. Wackenhut is survived by his wife of 60 years, Ruth; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Re: George Wackenhut, 85, Dies; Founded Elite Security Firm | Bob Tice | May 04, 2006 10:49:23 EDT |