Chapter 13: Barry McDaniel and Stratesec

At the WTC, Barry McDaniel was in charge of the security operation in terms of what he called a “completion contract,” to provide services “up to the day the buildings fell down.”[1] McDaniel came to Stratesec directly from BDM International, where he had been vice president for seven years. BDM was a major subsidiary of The Carlyle Group during that time. 

In the decade prior to 9/11, KuwAm held a controlling interest in Stratesec. The previous chapter reviewed links between KuwAm’s leadership and the first Gulf War, BCCI, and other deep state entities. Also reviewed were Stratesec’s business dealings with people that were convicted of conspiracy.  

Unfortunately, there has not yet been any government investigation into this company or its leaders. After 9/11, journalist Margie Burns asked Barry McDaniel in a brief telephone interview whether the FBI or other agents had questioned anyone at Stratesec about the company’s 9/11-related security work. McDaniel answered simply, “No.”[2] 

Regardless of the FBI’s lack of interest, however, the public deserves to know whether Stratesec’s access to the WTC and other 9/11-impacted facilities might have contributed to the events of that day. That access was controlled and utilized by the company’s COO, Barry McDaniel, who should be scrutinized.

Iran-Contra, Carlucci and Saudi Arabia

During the years when Frank Carlucci was running the “spook central” company called Sears World Trade (SWT), McDaniel was the Deputy Director for Readiness at the U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC). In this role, McDaniel was responsible for selling Army materiel and services to allies. The weapons sales to Iran (via Israel and otherwise) as part of the Iran-Contra crimes were managed by the AMC when it was led by McDaniel. The U.S. arming of Iraq, referred to as Iraqgate, also occurred during McDaniel’s tenure.

In an interview as he was leaving the AMC job in 1988, McDaniel recalled his supervision of acquisition officers worldwide.[3] He made mention of the importance of the Southwest Asia Petroleum Distribution Project during his tenure. Apparently, pipelines and petroleum in that area of the world, which includes Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, had something to do with the deployment of U.S. Army materiel during the mid 1980s. What McDaniel’s exact role in that deployment was, and what it might have had to do with arming the Mujahideen, needs to be further investigated.

McDaniel’s choice to leave his long career in military logistics to go into industry was understandable, despite the fact that he was on track to become an Assistant Secretary of Defense by his own assessment. Although BDM was mired in the Operation Ill Wind scandal after Carlucci’s tenure as secretary of defense, it was a lucrative company to hire onto considering the extensive contracts it continued to secure. When McDaniel started at BDM the company began getting a large amount of government business “in an area the Navy called Black Projects,” or budgets that were kept secret.[4]

Philip Odeen, the former assistant to Henry Kissinger, was president and CEO of BDM Holdings, the holding company for both BDM International and its subsidiary, the Vinnell Corporation. At the time McDaniel joined the company, Odeen was bullish on the company’s growth prospects, saying “Defense and national security remain areas of major emphasis.”[5] A year later a special taskforce of the Defense Science Board, led by Odeen, recommended a vast increase in the outsourcing of intelligence.

BDM was a prominent contractor in areas like missile defense and advanced weapons research. However, in the early 1990s the company was beginning to branch out into work on “air traffic control and airspace management” and “space sciences and applications.”[6] In 1993, BDM won a huge contract to consolidate the U.S. Air Force computer systems. 

In the three years before McDaniel left BDM for a relatively minor position at Stratesec, BDM contracts with Saudi Arabia grew exponentially. The company received over a trillion dollars in work from Saudi Arabia, for things like training the Saudi National Guard and building the Saudi Air Force.[7] Throughout this period, McDaniel was BDM’s vice president of Material Distribution and Management Systems.

Just before McDaniel left BDM, the company’s Vinnell subsidiary was the target of one of the earliest terrorist attacks attributed to Saudi Arabian extremists.[8] At the time, Richard Secord was working for Vinnell, which was considered another “spook outfit.”[9] Having been a major contractor in Vietnam during the war, Vinnell was saved from impending bankruptcy in 1975, receiving a large contract to train the Saudi Arabian National Guard.[10] Vinnell has since been seen as a private mercenary army that props up the Saudi monarchy using U.S. arms distributed by people like Barry McDaniel.

After McDaniel joined Stratesec the company secured at least one contract in the Saudi kingdom. This was “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.”[11]

Although McDaniel’s career change from government to BDM was predictable, his choice to leave BDM for Stratesec was not. He gave up a lucrative career as a vice president with a major defense contractor to become COO of Stratesec, a relatively small operation that was just getting by. When McDaniel took the job, the majority of Stratesec’s revenue was coming from its WTC and Dulles Airport contracts. 

There might have been undisclosed reasons why McDaniel’s expertise in military logistics was the right fit for running that airport and WTC security outfit. That is, McDaniel’s move would make sense if he came to Stratesec to manage an important project involving the distribution of military ordnance (i.e. explosives). In any case, like Carlucci’s inexplicable decision to quit his powerful position at the department of defense to join SWT, McDaniel’s move to Stratesec indicates something more than a typical career development.

Stratesec Operations and Contracts

McDaniel joined Stratesec at the exact time that the company started to get more extensive work at the World Trade Center. Although Stratesec had completed a security evaluation at the WTC as early as 1991, and had worked with Kroll Associates to develop the security system after the 1993 bombing, its WTC work increased dramatically upon McDaniel’s arrival. 

Stratesec secured an $8.3 million WTC contract in October 1996. That year, KuwAm owned 90% of the company, either directly or through holding companies that it owned. Although this contract was nothing compared to the work BDM was getting, Stratesec’s new project generated 28% of overall revenues for the company that same year. In the first full year of McDaniel’s tenure as COO, the WTC and Dulles Airport contracts accounted for 75% of the company’s revenues.

Stratesec went public in 1997, raising more than $16 million from the stockholders mentioned below. A prospectus summary for the company listed some of the company’s other clients at this time. These included United Airlines, Washington National Airport (now called Reagan National) and several facilities of the U.S. Department of Energy including Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL).[12] 

McDaniel stated that Stratesec’s work for United Airlines was focused on one site, in Indianapolis.[13] McDaniel said that work was completed before he joined the board, which was in 1999.

In any case, it was unprecedented for a foreign-owned company to obtain the contract for any international airport, and certainly Dulles Airport. Dulles was “absolutely a sensitive airport,” according to security consultant Wayne Black, head of a Florida-based security firm.[14]

Aviation experts considered Dulles a very high profile target for terrorism because it was the primary international airport near the nation’s capital.[15] Serving as port of entry to fifteen international airlines, Dulles also hosted eight of the top eleven U.S. commercial airlines.

With regard to KuwAm’s ownership of Stratesec, Black said “Somebody knew somebody,” or the contract would have been scrutinized more closely. One reason for the concern was that such a security contract allowed access to all client information. Because KuwAm owned Stratesec, the two companies shared computer systems and together had access to the most sensitive information and systems at the WTC and Dulles Airport. 

At the WTC, Stratesec focused on electronic badging, security gates, and the closed circuit video systems (CCTV). These security controls could therefore have been set-up to be bypassed as needed. Former FAA special agent Brian F. Sullivan commented, “If they knew about the security system, they knew how to bypass it.”[16]

Examples can be found of other security lapses at the sites where Stratesec worked. For example, in 1999 a major security breach at LANL, involving the release of nuclear secrets to China, became big news.[17] The U.S. government made a weak case against an employee named Wen Ho Lee, but the charges were later dropped and Lee won a substantial settlement for damages. A federal judge had to apologize to Lee for the government’s misconduct.[18] The security breach itself was never solved and whether security systems were bypassed is a possibility that remained unaddressed.

Stratesec Investors and Directors

In June 2000, there was a mass sell-off of Stratesec stock.[19] Marvin Bush had apparently sold his stock in the company already, but the investors who remained formed a most surprising group.

• Baria Salim Al-Sabah was a Stratesec shareholder. She was the exiled Kuwaiti royal who had called for the ouster of Saddam, in a televised 1990 plea.[20] She was also the daughter of the former ruler of Kuwait (from 1965 to 1977), Sabah III. Two days after Baria’s plea, on September 11, 1990, President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and the American people and called for an intervention (and a New World Order).
• Journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave was an investor in Stratesec. De Borchgrave was editor-at-large of both The Washington Times and United Press International. He was also a director at CSIS, where 9/11 suspect John Hamre worked. Additional Stratesec stock was held by a trust in the name of De Borchgrave’s wife, Alexandra, who was the granddaughter of American journalist and financier Henry Villard. Alexandra’s father and grandfather both owned the left-leaning magazine The Nation.
• Another prominent Kuwaiti family, represented by Adel & Anwar Mustafah T. Alghanim, was a large volume stockholder in Stratesec. The family runs Anwar Alghanim Engineering in Kuwait.
• A man named Manuchehr Riah was a Stratesec stockholder. This appears to be the same person as Manouchehr (or Manoutchehr) Riahi, who worked for the Shah of Iran. It was said that Mr. Riahi’s family had “devoted itself to the service of the Persian royal families since the 1500s.” Riahi’s wife was the sister of the woman married to the Shah’s half-brother, Prince Abdul Reza-Pahlavi. Riahi fled to the United States when the Shah fell from power.
• A businessman of Iranian descent named Kamran Hashemi was both a director and large volume stockholder at Stratesec. Hashemi had worked many years for a U.S. defense contractor called Radian Inc., which was a subsidiary of Engineered Support Systems where William H.T. Bush (the younger brother of George H.W. Bush) became a director in 2000[21] Hashemi came to Stratesec when the company bought a firm called Security Systems Integration in December 2000. The two companies de-merged eighteen months later.[22]
• Additional Stratesec stock was held by the company’s director Harrison Augur, an attorney and financier. Augur was the sole business partner of Robert D. Van Roijen in a private investment firm called Patience Partners. He was also a fellow director with Wirt Walker at ILC Technologies, a maker of electrical arc devices. Throughout the 1980s, Augur was an executive vice president at the French firm Banque Worms, reported to be aligned with the Cercle Pinay network.[23]

Add to this interesting list of Stratesec stockholders an equally interesting list of board directors. There was Wirt Walker, Mish’al Al-Sabah, and, as of 1999, Barry McDaniel. But, additionally, there were a number of other directors who had remarkable connections to 9/11-related agencies and people.

• Marvin Bush, the president’s brother, was reelected annually to Stratesec’s board of directors from 1993 through 1999. Bush was also a shareholder.
• Charles W. Archer became a director in March 1998. He had recently retired from his position as the FBI’s Assistant Director in charge of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division, under Louis Freeh. In that role he was responsible for the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which provided the nation’s authoritative database on terrorism.
• Robert B. Smith, Jr. became a director in 1995. He was formerly Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Government Operations Committee, which today is called the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
• Lt. General James A. Abrahamson, the former head of the Strategic Defense Initiative and head of Hughes Aircraft Company, became a director in December 1997. As noted before, he was business partners with a Pakistani man who claimed to be able to contact Osama bin Laden.
• Ronald C. Thomas was Stratesec’s President and Chief Executive Officer from 1992 to 1998. He was a member of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and was on that organization’s Fire Systems Subcommittee.

These directors appeared to have significant influence as Stratesec soon listed the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Department of Justice as clients. The associated projects were said to “often require state-of-the-art security solutions for classified or high-risk government sites.”[24] By the year 2000, the U.S. Army accounted for 29% of the company’s earned revenues. 

After George W. Bush’s election had been determined by the U.S. Supreme Court, in December 2000, Stratesec added a government division. As a result, the company secured “an open-ended contract with the General Services Administration (GSA) and a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with the agency that allows the government to purchase materials and services from the Company without having to go through a full competition.”[25]

As of 9/11, Stratesec director Marvin Bush had three relatives working for companies located in the impact zones of the Twin Towers. This included his uncle, Prescott Bush Jr. a semi-retired consultant at the Marsh & McLennan subsidiary Johnson & Higgins, his cousin’s husband Craig Stapleton, who also worked for Marsh & McLennan, and his cousin Jim Pierce, who worked for the impact zone tenant AON Corporation. Of these, Pierce had the most impressive 9/11 story because a meeting he had organized for that morning was moved from the south tower to the Millennium Hotel across the street, from where he watched the attacks unfold.[26]

McDaniel became the CEO of Stratesec in January 2002. When questioned, he declined on security grounds to give specific details about work the company did at the WTC. According to McDaniel, the contract was ongoing and “not quite completed when the Center went down.” Echoing the developing official account for the destruction of the WTC, he added that the contract “didn’t have anything to do with planes flying into buildings.”[27]

Stratesec and the World Trade Center

In terms of the WTC, the primary issue to be considered is the destruction of three tall buildings and how the possible bypassing of the security system could have contributed to that destruction. That is, how were explosives placed in those highly-secure buildings without that fact being noticed? 

As stated in the introduction, this book is not meant to revisit the overwhelming evidence for explosives at the WTC. It will be sufficient to say here that no tall building has ever suffered global collapse, either before or after 9/11, for any reason other than demolition. On 9/11, the official account says that there were three such instances – all on the same day and in the same place. 

Unfortunately, the NIST WTC reports are based on computer modeling which is not available for public inspection. The few actual physical tests that were completed failed to support the fire-based models, and the remaining steel evidence was destroyed.[28]

The evidence that is available, including eyewitness testimony, videos and photographs, and independent scientific studies, strongly supports the theory that the buildings were intentionally demolished.[29] Readers interested in that detailed evidence can find more information in the bibliography.

For the purposes of this discussion, it is useful to remember that McDaniel had worked for the U.S. government managing the distribution of military armaments. During that time, he was the main logistics administrator responsible for procuring and fielding all of the weapons systems for the U.S. Army. Therefore, in terms of logistics and ordnance experience, McDaniel’s background prior to joining BDM and Stratesec made him well suited to the job of acquiring and distributing explosive materials. 

In his role as COO for Stratesec, McDaniel had unparalleled access to the entire WTC complex. Because his company implemented the electronic security systems, McDaniel was in a position to grant the access needed to place the explosives. 

The timing of McDaniel’s arrival at Stratesec, which coincided with the company’s new contract for extensive work at the WTC, also matched the start of a project to install new fireproofing in the towers. 

There is a remarkable correlation between the floors that were upgraded for fireproofing during this time, and the floors of impact, fire, and failure on 9/11.[30] This relationship is unmistakable for WTC 1, the north tower, in that Flight 11 struck the exact eight floors, out of 110, that had been fully upgraded. On 9/11, these upgraded floors failed simultaneously, in accordion-like fashion, before the rest of the building fell.[31] 

The fireproofing upgrade project began in 1996, when McDaniel arrived, and was ongoing at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The floors of impact and failure had just been completed shortly before the attacks.[32] 

The upgrades called for shutdown of the affected floors and the exposure of the floor assemblies and columns while the new fireproofing was being applied. Other companies that were involved in the fireproofing upgrades, as indicated by documents released via the Freedom of Information Act, included Turner Construction and Phoenix Fireproofing.[33] The former was a well-established company tied to the Bush family and the latter was a little known contractor.[34]

It should be of interest to investigators that Stratesec’s client LANL was among the few laboratories in the world at the cutting edge of research on thermitic materials.[35] Prior to 9/11, LANL had a program for the development of nanothermite, similar to that which has been found in WTC dust.[36] Overall, the evidence for the use of thermite in the demolition of the WTC buildings is substantial.[37] 

Contrary to the common misperception, the fireproofing at the WTC was not insufficient. In fact, the upgrades resulted in extraordinarily thick fireproofing where it counted – on the floors of impact and failure. This thickness was reported to be on the order of 3.25 inches, more than twice what was needed.[38]

One possibility to explain the extra-thick fireproofing was that electrical components for explosives, or incendiary materials like nanothermite, might have been applied beneath the fireproofing. The presence of such materials could explain some of the otherwise inexplicable dynamics of the towers’ destruction, including the unusual fire dynamics on the floors of impact and in the debris pile afterward. Use of thermitic materials would also explain the environmental data obtained at Ground Zero over a period of months after 9/11 and, perhaps, some of the unusual illnesses suffered by first responders.[39]

A close inspection of the upgraded fireproofing might have revealed such a deception. Unfortunately, although Rudy Giuliani’s Department of Buildings (DOB) was supposed to inspect the upgrades, it never did. In fact, Giuliani’s DOB took steps to weaken the City’s oversight of WTC fire code compliance which allowed tenants to make modifications without the intrusion of government.[40] Tenants like Marsh & McLennan and Joseph Kasptuys’ Baseline Financial, located in the impact zones of the two towers, made unsupervised modifications in the exact areas that were impacted.[41]  

The fireproofing upgrade project would have allowed for the placement of whatever explosives or incendiary materials were used. One hypothesis to consider is that the buildings might have been preliminarily rigged with the necessary electrical systems and devices during these upgrades, so that the actual charges could be easily placed within those systems at a time closer to the event.

The fireproofing upgrade project was not the only opportunity for contractors to place explosives or related equipment at the WTC. In 1994, a company called ACE Elevator won the contract to service the WTC elevators, over the more established Otis Elevator Company. In the year prior to 9/11, ACE worked on an extensive project to upgrade the WTC elevator system.[42] 

The elevator system in the WTC towers was located in the core of the building, which was supported by an inner and an outer framework. As with the fireproofing upgrades, those working on the elevator project had direct access to structural steel. 

Engineer Gordon Ross pointed out that the behavior of the towers as they fell indicated that elevator access was emphasized in the demolition plan. Ross reported that “columns which were situated adjacent to and accessible from inside the elevator shafts failed at an early stage of the collapse. Those columns which were remote from the elevator shafts, and not accessible from the elevator shafts, survived the early stages of the collapse.”[43] In fact, the outer framework of the core, which was less accessible via the elevators, was left standing after the inner framework had completely collapsed.

It was not just the behavior of the falling structure that indicated explosives had been placed in the elevator shafts. ACE Elevator’s mechanics were widely reported to have fled the scene unexpectedly, before the towers fell. In such crises elevator mechanics are expected to stay and help rescue people trapped in the elevators.[44] Why the ACE mechanics did not help was a mystery, but foreknowledge that something was wrong with the elevator shafts might have been the cause. And like Stratesec and the other KuwAm companies, ACE Elevator went bankrupt shortly after the attacks. 

What role McDaniel might have played with regard to the fireproofing and elevator upgrades is not publicly known. As COO of Stratesec, however, he was in the position to offer access to the related areas of the towers while those areas were otherwise off-limits. He was also in the position to deny access to ensure that secret activities would not be inadvertently revealed.

Other Interesting Leads

Many people are still not aware of the third skyscraper that fell on 9/11. This was World Trade Center building 7, or the Salomon Brothers building. This building was 47 stories tall, making it taller than any building in 33 U.S. states. It was not hit by a plane and yet, at 5:20 in the afternoon on 9/11, it fell through the path of what should have been the most resistance. It kinked in the middle and collapsed inward, falling vertically and symmetrically in 6.5 seconds.

Salomon Smith Barney (SSB) was the company that occupied all but ten of the 47 floors in WTC building 7.[45] SSB even shared the much-discussed 23rd floor with the New York City OEM. More striking is the fact that Donald Rumsfeld was the chairman of the SSB advisory board, and Dick Cheney was a board member as well. Rumsfeld served as chairman of the SSB advisory board since its inception in 1999, but had to resign in 2001 when he was confirmed as George W. Bush’s defense secretary. And Cheney resigned at the same time when he became vice president.

Cheney and McDaniel had a close colleague in common as will be reviewed below. In any case, covert access to WTC 7 was likely not a problem, considering the other tenants in the building. 

Carl Truscott knew WTC 7 because he had worked at the Secret Service’s New York field office, the largest of its kind, which was located in that building. Also located in WTC 7 was the largest field office of George Tenet’s CIA, as well as offices for Rumsfeld’s department of defense and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC lost many important documents on 9/11 when WTC 7 was destroyed, including much of what was needed to effectively prosecute Enron and WorldCom, the two largest securities scandals of the time. 

It is interesting that there was a meeting scheduled at WTC 7 the morning of 9/11 that included explosive disposal units from the U.S. military. The Demolition-Ordnance Disposal Team from the Army’s Fort Monmouth happened to have a meeting in WTC 7 that very morning with the building’s owner, Larry Silverstein. 

Silverstein “was reportedly planning to hold a meeting at 7 World Trade Center to discuss terrorism prevention efforts. The meeting, which was set for 8:00 a.m. [on 9/11], was canceled when one of his executives could not make it, said one market player who has spoken with Silverstein.”[46]

Richard Spanard, an Army captain and commander of Fort Monmouth’s explosive disposal unit was there to attend the meeting. “On the morning of September 11, he was enjoying breakfast at a deli 50 feet from the World Trade Center twin towers when the first plane hit. General hysteria inundated the deli. Spanard decided that he and the three soldiers with him should move to number 7 World Trade Center, where they had a scheduled meeting.”[47]

“The building was full of people in the midst of evacuating. A second explosion was heard, and people began mobbing the three escalators in a state of panic. Spanard and the now five soldiers with him began yelling for everyone to remain calm and walk to the elevators in an orderly fashion.”[48]

In yet another “eerie quirk of fate,” on 9/11 Fort Monmouth personnel were preparing for an exercise called Timely Alert II.[49] This was a disaster drill focused on response to a terrorist attack, and included law enforcement agencies and emergency personnel. The drill simply changed to an actual response as the attacks began.

Fort Monmouth was home to several units of the Army’s AMC, which McDaniel had led years before. The commander of Fort Monmouth at the time was Lt. Col. Stephen N. Wood, a U.S. Army intelligence officer. After 9/11, Wood was promoted to Colonel and assigned to a Joint Command at the National Security Agency. He went on to work in intelligence at the Transportation Security Administration and today is a federal officer in charge of security for three airports.[50]

Fort Monmouth’s response included the explosives unit and the Army’s Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM). As the drill was converted to an actual response, teams of CECOM experts were deployed to locate cell phone transmissions in the pile at Ground Zero. The remainder of the base’s explosive ordnance company was there by the afternoon of 9/11 and stayed for three days in order to help the Secret Service look for possible explosives in the debris.[51]

It appears that the explosive disposal/terrorism meeting was not entirely a request of Larry Silverstein, but was organized by the U.S. Secret Service field office. The U.S. Navy’s explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) Mobile Unit 6 had also been invited to WTC 7 that morning, again at the request of the Secret Service. As they arrived, the planes began to strike the towers.[52] 

Dulles Airport and Related Topics

Stratesec had worked at Dulles Airport since 1995. The project accounted for 22% of the company’s revenues in 1996 and in 1998. The issues of concern when investigating Stratesec’s ties to Dulles include not only access, but the evidence produced to implicate the alleged hijackers.

The company was not hired to manage the screening of passengers at Dulles. Instead, its contract was for maintenance of the airfield access system, the CCTV (closed circuit television) system, and the electronic badging system.[53] Each of these three systems would be of interest to any honest 9/11 investigation. 

Airfield access and electronic badging concerns were certainly raised after 9/11. As TIME magazine reported, investigators were originally of the opinion that weapons had been pre-positioned within some of the aircraft on 9/11, and it was suspected that the alleged hijackers “may have had accomplices deep within the ‘secure’ areas of airports.”[54] As the investigation proceeded, the evidence led officials “to broaden their investigative and security efforts to encompass not only the carry-on bag screening system but the entire aviation security apparatus.”[55] 

Stratesec and KuwAm’s role in managing the airfield access and electronic badging systems at Dulles should have led investigators to immediately investigate the company. Even a cursory review of Stratesec’s ownership and management would have revealed cause to investigate further. The same was true for the companies that handled passenger screening in the 9/11-impacted facilities, which should be briefly mentioned. 

A company called Argenbright managed passenger screening at Dulles and at Newark Airport, where Flight 93 took off that day. Argenbright also managed some security checkpoints at Logan Airport in Boston, where the two other 9/11 planes took off. Argenbright had been purchased in December 2000 by a British firm called Securicor. As discussed below, one of McDaniel’s colleagues today is an associate of the Lord Paul Condon of Securicor. 

The year before 9/11, Securicor was employing criminals in similar security functions, and three of its executives pled guilty to conspiracy.[56] Argenbright had pled guilty to falsifying employee records so that it could hire those convicted of drug possession and assault.[57]

After 9/11, Securicor faced about 30 lawsuits from victim’s families. Another director that Condon supervised at Securicor, Trevor Dighton, said of the company’s liability – “I’m not worried about it (the litigation) one little bit. The two planes involved weren’t those that crashed into the towers – that’s the first thing.” Dighton’s confidence might have had something to do with his opinion of Condon, whom Dighton said was “brilliant and knows what he’s doing.”[58]

Frank Argenbright Jr., the founder of Argenbright Security, went on to start another company called SecurAmerica LLC. One of the directors there was a senior advisor to Ronald Reagan and CEO of the Hill & Knowlton sister company, Burson-Marsteller.[59] When BCCI was facing criminal charges in the late 1980s, Henry Kissinger suggested the firm hire Burson-Marsteller to control its publicity.[60]

American Airlines contractor Globe Aviation Services of Irving, Texas managed the passenger screening at Logan Airport in Boston as it related to Flight 11. Globe Aviation was owned by Pinkerton-Burns, which had been acquired by Securitas Group of Sweden in 1999. 

United Airlines contractor Huntleigh USA Corporation performed the screening of passengers related to Flight 175. Huntleigh was bought out in 1999 by the Israeli company ICTS International.

In early 1998, the FAA introduced a new process of selecting passengers for increased scrutiny at U.S. airports. Called the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS), it was a computer-based formula that assessed the likelihood of a “selectee” causing a problem during flight. In practice, the result was a much less effective screening process.[61]

The use of the new CAPPS process was cited as a potential root cause for the success of the hijackers in boarding the planes. However, the official account says that many of the alleged hijackers were identified by the system as selectees. When the FAA later investigated, however, the screeners “could not recall that any of the passengers they screened had been selected by CAPPS.”[62] 

The alleged hijackers were not only selected for extra inspection in the screening process, some of them failed to pass the metal detector screening. In two cases they failed twice.[63] 

Overall, the 9/11 Commission Report cited little evidence for its account of how the alleged hijackers boarded the planes. The most substantial evidence that was produced came from the security video system at Dulles Airport. The report referenced the security videotapes from Dulles as sources in footnotes 11, 14 and 15 to Chapter 1. The videotapes provided critical evidence implicating all of the accused Flight 77 hijackers. The men are shown in the tapes moving through the screening checkpoints and being checked with hand-held metal detectors in a process that was later criticized by a screening expert.[64]  

This critical evidence is interesting in that, shortly before 9/11, Stratesec was responsible for the closed circuit videotape processes that produced it. This certainly calls for further investigation. The Commission stated that neither Logan nor Newark had such security videotape evidence to provide and therefore Stratesec’s role was unique in terms of the 9/11 historical record.[65] 

With regard to security at airports, and at Dulles in particular, there is another company that should be examined. That is Security Storage of Washington (SSW), a storage and logistics company that worked for U.S. government agencies. KuwAm’s Robert Van Roijen was the chairman of the board. SSW provided high-tech storage containers and video surveillance for Dulles Airport. The company also performed background checks and drug screenings on potential airport security employees.[66]  

 McDaniel’s Current Colleagues

As mentioned earlier, McDaniel is currently business partners with one of Dick Cheney’s closest former colleagues, Bruce Bradley. Bradley was one of the founders of Bradley Woods & Company, where Cheney worked in between assignments for Nixon and Ford. Bradley’s business partner Alan Woods worked closely with Rumsfeld in the Ford DOD and also with Frank Carlucci at the “spook central” firm Sears World Trade.

The company that McDaniel now leads is called Lancaster Systems & Solutions (LS2). As CEO at LS2, McDaniel has a board of directors which is led by Bradley.[67] Shortly after independent investigators began to discuss this coincidence, the company removed its website from the internet.[68]

LS2 is a company that is highly focused on the military-industrial-counterterrorism complex’s response to 9/11. In fact, few companies are more focused on the 9/11 aftermath than LS2, whose mission is to “deliver a diversified suite of responsive defense solutions to government organizations and multinational corporations who provide military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and emergency response operations across the globe.”[69]The company’s subsidiary, Global Service and Trade, provides equipment for police state operations around the world.

The board of directors which Bradley leads for McDaniel at LS2 includes Larry Johnson, the former CIA employee and State department official mentioned in the discussion of L. Paul Bremer. Johnson was a paramilitary CIA officer from 1985 to 1989, but he also directed crisis management for hijackings and helped investigate the Lockerbie Bombing (Pan Am 103).

In 1994, Johnson started scripting special operations exercises for the State Department. From 1996 to 2006, as Deputy Director of Counterterrorism within the State Department, he led terrorism training for senior-level government officials and served as an expert witness in cases against al Qaeda suspects.[70]

Another director working with Bradley and McDaniel at LS2 is David Pillor, the former director and Executive VP of InVision Technologies. As the leading provider of bomb detecting equipment for airports, InVision had an interesting history which included installation of its equipment at most major airports prior to 9/11, including those from which the hijacked planes took off.

Sergio Magistri was the CEO of InVision from 1992 through 2004. In a court case related to this period, InVision was charged “with authorizing improper payments to foreign government officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).”[71]The case represented the first, and perhaps only, time that the U.S. Department of Justice decided to not prosecute a company that had violated the FCPA.

Magistri and LS2’s Pillor are now both board members at Vidient Systems, a video surveillance company that serves the “homeland security” industry. Vidient is in strategic partnership with Autonomy Corp, where we find the “Prince of Darkness,” Richard Perle. Fellow directors at Vidient include several people who played critical roles related to the events of September 11.

One director at Vidient is Richard Clarke, the former “Counterterrorism Czar,” whose job for nine years prior to 9/11 was to protect the United States from a terrorist attack.[72] At Vidient we also find The Lord Paul Condon, who was previously mentioned. 

Working with Pillor, Clarke and Condon is Michael Sheehan, the former U.S. State Department Ambassador at Large for Counterterrorism. Sheehan was a long time member of the U.S. Army Special Forces. He also served on the National Security Council for two presidents, George H.W. Bush (with Wayne Downing, who is discussed in Chapter 15), and Bill Clinton. 

After the bombing of the USS Cole, Sheehan asked Richard Clarke: “What’s it going to take to get them to hit al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al-Qaeda have to hit the Pentagon?”[73]That certainly seems like a prescient statement considering that, less than one year later, that was exactly what happened.

In summary, Stratesec and Barry McDaniel call out for investigation for the following reasons.

• Explosives were used to bring down the WTC.
• Stratesec’s security contracts allowed it unparalleled access to the WTC, Dulles Airport, and other related facilities.
• McDaniel had expertise in the acquisition and distribution of military ordnance.
• The timing of McDaniel’s unusual career move to become COO at Stratesec matched the timing of work at the WTC that provided opportunities to plant explosives.
• Official investigators suspected that the alleged hijackers may have had accomplices in the secure areas of the airports.
• Stratesec managed the airfield access and electronic badging for Dulles Airport. It had also managed the security video system that provided some of the rare and critical evidence implicating the alleged hijackers.
• The company was led by directors and investors who were linked to deep state entities and who benefited from the response to the 9/11 crimes.
• Barry McDaniel had links to the Iran-Contra crimes and to “spook” companies like SWT and Vinnell.
• After 9/11, McDaniel started a company that profited from the 9/11 Wars, with Dick Cheney’s old partner Bruce Bradley.

In the next chapter, a man who used 9/11 for his own political benefit is considered. As might be expected, a number of the same themes seen in previous chapters will be revealed again in a discussion of New York City’s 9/11 mayor.

Notes to Chapter 13

1. Margie Burns, Bush-Linked Company Handled Security for the WTC, Dulles and United, Prince George’s Journal, February 4, 2003
2. Ibid
3. U.S. Army Materiel Command, Reflections of senior AMC officials, 1990
4. Dan Briody, The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of The Carlyle Group, Wiley publishers, 2003, p35
5. PRNewswire, BDM Anticipates Strong Year Marked By Continued Diversification, May 14, 1992
6. BDM Year End Financials, PRNewswire, March 5, 1992
7. Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties, Simon and Schuster, 2004, pp 296-297 
8. William D. Hartung, Mercenaries Inc.: How a U.S. Company Props Up the House of Saud, The Progressive, April, 1996
9. Ibid
10. Ian Urbina, Saudi Arabia: Vinnell and the House of Saud, Asia Times, May 17, 2003
11. SEC filing for Stratesec, May 2, 1997, http://www.secinfo.com/dS7kv.82.htm 
12. Securacom S-1A Securities Registration Statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 1997
13. Margie Burns, Security, Secrecy and a Bush Brother, The Progressive Populist, 2003
14. Ibid
15. Ibid
16. Ibid
17. James Risen and Jeff Gerth, Breach at Los Alamos: A special report.; China Stole Nuclear Secrets For Bombs, U.S. Aides Say, The New York Times, March 6, 1999
18. Wikipedia page for Wen Ho Lee
19. S-3 SEC Filing, filed by STRATESEC INC on 6/12/2000
20. News Film Online, Gulf Crisis: Exiled Kuwaiti Family, September 9, 1990
21. Comtex, STRATESEC Incorporated Acquires Security Systems Integration, December 4, 2000, http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=14940791 
22. Morningstar.com, Exhibit 10.2 Demerger Agreement, May 29, 2002, http://globaldocuments.morningstar.com/DocumentLibrary/Document/8a9e95dbff8fd9a2.msdoc/original/ex102.txt 
23. Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics, Le Cercle and the struggle for the European continent, https://wikispooks.com/ISGP/organisations/Le_Cercle.htm 
24. Ibid
25. Margie Burns, Security, Secrecy and a Bush Brother
26. Kevin R. Ryan, Demolition Access to the WTC Towers: Part One, Tenants, UnansweredQuestions.org, July 9, 2009 
27. Margie Burns, Security, Secrecy and a Bush Brother
28. See the Journal of 9/11 Studies for details.
29. For example, see Graeme MacQueen, 118 Witnesses: The Firefighter’s Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers, Journal of 9/11 Studies, August 2006
30. Kevin R. Ryan, Another amazing coincidence related to the WTC, 911Blogger.com, January 6, 2008
31. Ibid
32. See NIST WTC Report NCSTAR 1-6A page 45
33. See WTC Fireproofing Documents obtained by James Gourley via FOIA, 911blogger.com, February 2, 2009, http://www.911blogger.com/node/19271, and Aidan Monaghan, Port Authority of NY/NJ: Records For Reported WTC Renovation Work Destroyed On 9/11, 911Blogger.com, April 21, 2009
34. Kevin R. Ryan, Demolition Access to the WTC Towers: Part Four – Cleanup, 911review.com, February 11, 2010
35. Danen, W.C., Jorgensen, B.S., Busse, J.R., Ferris, M.J. and Smith, B.L. “Los Alamos Nanoenergetic Metastable Intermolecular Composite (Super Thermite) Program,” 221st ACS National Meeting, San Diego, CA, 1-5 April 2001
36. Niels H. Harrit, et al, Active thermitic material discovered in dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center catastrophe, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol 2, 2009
37. For example, see Steven E. Jones et. al, Extremely high temperatures during the World Trade Center destruction, Journal of 9/11 Studies, January 2008. 
38. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), WTC Report NCSTAR 1-6A, figure A-60
39. The fire dynamics in the impact zones of the WTC towers were unusual in that the fires died down after the initial explosive effects of impact, and then began to rage again much later. The behavior of the fires within the pile and the related environmental data can be reviewed in Kevin R. Ryan, et al, Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials, The Environmentalist, Volume 29, Number 1, 2009. For discussion of the illnesses suffered by first responders and how they might be attributed to thermitic materials, see Kevin R. Ryan, Energetic Materials as a Potential Cause of the 9/11 First Responder Illnesses, Foreign Policy Journal, February, 2010
40. Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, HarperCollins, 2006, pp 125-134 
41. Kevin R. Ryan, Demolition Access to the WTC Towers: Part One, 911Review.com, August 9, 2009
42. Robert Baamonde Jr., Drive to the Top, Elevator World, March 2001. The elevator upgrade project was also described by the firm Merritt and Harris, which provided a report to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in December 2000.
43. Gordon Ross, How the Towers Were Demolished, http://gordonssite.tripod.com/id2.html 
44. Dennis Cauchon and Martha T. Moore, Elevators were disaster within disaster, USA Today, September 4, 2002
45. List of tenants in Seven World Trade Center, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tenants_in_Seven_World_Trade_Center
46. Real Estate Finance & Investment, Silverstein Vows To Help Rebuild WTC Complex, September 17, 2001, 
47. SAGA, the newsletter of the Sigma Tau Gamma society, A Brotherhood United: Sig Taus share their personal accounts of September 11, 2001, Issue 2, Winter 2002
48. Ibid
49. Sherry Conohan, Training exercise quickly became reality, The Hub, September 21, 2001
50. Transportation Security Administration, TSA Names Stephen Wood Federal Security Director for Three Tennessee Airports, TSA Press Office, November 19, 2009
51. Debbie Sheehan, Force protection plan a ‘timely alert’, Fort Monmouth Public Affairs Office, September 21, 2001. Also see Sherry Conohan, Fort personnel fill many roles in tragedy’s aftermath From locating cell phones to dealing with explosives, CECOM experts are on call, The Hub, September 21, 2001
52. U.S. Navy Press Release, Ground Zero Chief Receives Navy and Marine Corps Medal for Heroism, Navy.mil website, December 4, 2002 
53. Margie Burns, Security, Secrecy and a Bush Brother
54. Sally Donnelly, TIME Exclusive: An Inside Job? TIME, September. 22, 2001
55. Ibid
56. Audrey Gillan and Stuart Millar, “Securicor could face legal claims over hijack airports,” The Guardian, September 13, 2001
57. Michele Orlecklin, “Airlines: Why Argenbright Sets Off Alarms,” Time, November 19, 2001
58. Tom Berry, “The Financial Director interview – Making crime pay,” Financial Director, December 8, 2003
59. SecurAmerica profile for Thomas D. Bell, http://www.securamericallc.com/about-us/executive-biographies/thomas-bell.php 
60. Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, False Profits, p 256
61. Arnold Barnett, The Worst Day Ever: The Sept. 11 catastrophe raises many troubling questions, OR/MS Today – December 2001
62. The 9/11 Commission Report, p 3
63. CBS News, A Hard Look At 9/11 Errors, February 11, 2009
64. The 9/11 Commission Report, p 3
65. The only other videotape evidence of the alleged hijackers moving through the airports was from Atta and Al-Shehhi’s oddly timed trip to Portland. There were some unexplained problems with that video, however. For example, when they checked in Atta and Al-Omari were observed wearing ties and jackets but in the security video footage taken minutes later, the jackets or ties were gone.
66. Kathleen Hickey, One of a kind: Security Storage lives up to its name with state-of-the-art, automated warehouse near Dulles international airport, Traffic World, February 24, 2003, http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-98465543/one-kind-security-storage.html 
67. Website for LS2, http://www.ls2global.com/team.html 
68. Investigator Jeremy Rys noted that the LS2 website was taken down after he posted images related to the research provided in this book at other high traffic web pages. 
69. Website for LS2
70. Website for Berg Associates, profile for Larry C. Johnson, http://www.berg-associates.com/ 
71. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Litigation Release No. 19078, February 14, 2005
72. Kevin R. Ryan, Questions for Richard Clarke on COG, the UAE, and BCCI, DigWithin.net, August 20, 2011
73. Richard Miniter, Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror, Regnery Publishers, 2003

Photo courtesy of Noah K. Murray.