[NukeNet] Guards A Pathetic Joke Re Nuclear Plants, Materials

[Bill Smirnow]

  >One guard said he was given this direction in case of an attack: ''Call
the police.''

  >The security businesses' own trade group, representing the largest firms,
acknowledges the industry as a whole isn't >ready to recognize signs of
terrorism and respond to an attack.






   http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Homeland-Insecurity.html
    Private Guards a Weak Link in Security
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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 29, 2007
Filed at 3:23 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Legions of ill-trained, low-paid private security guards
are protecting tempting terrorist targets across the U.S.

Richard Bergendahl is one of them. He fights the war on terrorism in Los
Angeles, protecting a high-rise office building for $19,000 a year. Down the
block is an even taller skyscraper, identified by President Bush as a
building chosen for a Sept. 11-style airplane attack.

Bergendahl, 55, says he often thinks: ''Well, what am I doing here? These
people are paying me minimum wage.''

The security guard industry found itself involuntarily transformed after
September 2001 from an army of ''rent-a-cops'' to protectors of the
homeland. Yet many security officers are paid little more than restaurant
cooks or janitors.

And the industry is governed by a maze of conflicting state rules, according
to a nationwide survey by The Associated Press. Wide chasms exist among
states in requirements for training and background checks. Tens of thousands
of guard applicants were found to have criminal backgrounds.

''A security officer is ... not trained to be a G.I. Joe,'' said Paul
Maniscalco, a senior research scientist at George Washington University.

More than five years after the 9/11 terror attacks, Maniscalco is helping to
change the security guard culture. He recently developed an anti-terrorism
computer course for shopping mall guards, who are being taught that they now
have more concerns than rowdy teenagers and shoplifters.

The middle ground pay for security officers in 2006 was $23,620, according
to a Labor Department survey. The low pay reflects cutthroat competition
among security firms, who submit the lowest possible bids to win contracts.
Lowball contracts also mean lower profit margins and less money for training
and background checks for guards.

Some states require FBI fingerprint checks for every guard job applicant.
Others let the industry police itself. The following states don't regulate
the industry: Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska,
South Dakota, Kentucky, Wyoming and Idaho. The city of Boise and many Idaho
communities do regulate guards. Some states require background checks for
company owners but not guards.

In states that keep such records, the AP found that more than 96,000 out of
1.3 million applicants, about 7.3 percent, were turned down -- mostly, state
officials said, for having criminal histories.

The most important number, however, can't be found: individuals convicted of
serious crimes who were hired in states without background checks or in
states where they slipped through the system.

Congressional investigators reported last year that 89 private guards
working at two military bases had histories that included assault, larceny,
possession and use of controlled substances and forgery. The Army says it
has purged guards with criminal histories from its bases.

''I frankly was shocked, after 25 years in the FBI; I assumed those in the
private sector had gone through criminal background checks,'' said Jeffrey
Lampinski, the former FBI special-agent-in-charge of the Philadelphia office
who is now an executive with AlliedBarton Security Services.

The security businesses' own trade group, representing the largest firms,
acknowledges the industry as a whole isn't ready to recognize signs of
terrorism and respond to an attack.

''I would have to say no,'' said Joseph Ricci, executive director of the
National Association of Security Companies, when asked whether most guards
are trained to protect the homeland. ''Companies that hire private guards
began spending more for security after Sept. 11, 2001, but then began
cutting back. We've become complacent because we haven't had attacks.''

For guards at the Energy Department's nuclear weapons facilities, failure to
protect nuclear materials from terrorists could be catastrophic. That's why
their training is far more exhaustive than that of most security officer
recruits.

At the Nevada Test Site, the former nuclear weapons testing ground 65 miles
from Las Vegas, contract guards working for the Wackenhut Corp. train in
desert camouflage and military helmets, fire automatic weapons, put on gas
masks and kick up the desert dust in military Humvees with gunners on top.

They crouch behind cactus plants to shoot at targets, stalk ''intruders''
with drawn sidearms and burst through doors of buildings, first dropping
''flash-bang'' devices that have an explosive sound and fill the room with
smoke.

''Failure on our part is failure to protect a vital national security
asset,'' said David Bradley, the Wackenhut general manager at the federal
facility, where current operations include emergency response training and
conventional weapons testing. ''We don't see that ever occurring.''

Other sites protected by the security industry include drinking water
reservoirs; oil and gas refineries; ports; bus and rail commuter terminals;
nuclear power plants; chemical plants; food supplies; hospitals, and
communications networks.

Bergendahl, the Los Angeles guard who protects the high rise near the
formerly named Library Tower -- now the US Bank Tower -- thinks often of
Bush's disclosure last year that terrorists with shoe bombs planned to take
control of a jetliner and crash it into the building.

''It scares me,'' said Bergendahl, who has spent 28 years as a security
guard.

Bergendahl said his training usually consists of a real estate manager
reading security measures to him every few months. His building rarely has
evacuation drills. Management's advice? ''Keep your coat buttoned. Keep your
shoes shiny,'' Bergendahl said.

Franklin Bullock, 51, a guard at the busy bus and rail commuter station in
Kent, Wash., said he's had no drills with police and fire responders despite
terrorist bombings of trains and buses overseas.

A supervisor once tested Bullock by walking him down the platform to see
whether he would spot a package he could hardly miss. It had ''BOM'' written
on it. That was the end of his useful hands-on training, Bullock said.

''Everybody's so afraid he's going to make a mistake,'' said the
$25,000-a-year guard, who spent most of his working life as a security guard
or correctional officer. ''There's no security at all.''

Maria Macay, 54, a former travel agent, has been working the midnight-to-8
shift guarding a hospital in San Francisco for about $25,000 a year. She
donned a protective suit and mask in a drill for a possible chemical or
biological attack, but she isn't confident she could handle a real attack.

''I don't think I learned a lot,'' she said. ''It's scary. Thank God, it
hasn't happened. If I had to be put in that situation, what is going to
happen to my family if something happens to me?''

The pay for security guards generally is low. In an annual survey of
employers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the median hourly
pay for security guards in 2006 was $11.35, compared with restaurant cooks
at $10.11, janitors at $10.45 and laboratory animal caretakers at $10.13.

Police patrol officers were at $23.27, emergency management specialists
$24.26 and firefighters $20.37. The median reflects the same number of
individuals above those amounts as below.

The Service Employees International Union is trying to raise guard pay by
negotiating master contracts with multiple companies in urban areas. The
union has contracts for guards in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and the San
Francisco Bay area. Negotiations are under way in Seattle, and the union
hopes for talks in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Calif., Washington, D.C., and
Boston.

Many industries pay lobbyists generously to keep government regulators away.
Large security firms want tougher regulation by state governments.

They want mandatory training requirements and a required national background
check for all job applicants that would be accessible to all security firms.
Currently, companies can access the FBI's national fingerprint database only
through state agencies. If the state doesn't require background checks,
companies are barred from the system.

''Imagine an industry saying, 'Please regulate me.' It's pretty unusual,''
said William Whitmore, chief executive and president of AlliedBarton.

Company executives are worried about their industry's reputation, and they
don't want to be caught hiring convicted felons to protect other Americans.

''Potentially you could have a small organization who might want to cut
corners and, God forbid, you're not sure who they're hiring,'' said Robert
Johnson, a vice president of Blackstone Valley Security in Cranston, R.I.

Rich Powers, owner of Guilford Security Agency Inc. of Greensboro, N.C.,
said, ''We've had everything from an arsonist to a burglar and a
shoplifter'' applying for jobs.

Nobody knows how private security guards would perform in an actual
terrorist attack, but several incidents serve as potential warnings:



--In September 2004, at the Energy Department's enriched uranium stockpile
plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a force of armed contract guards ran through the
dark to confront ''intruders'' -- a team of guards conducting a mock attack.
Some guards and outside watchdog groups said there was sufficient confusion
to potentially cause an accidental shooting. Bryan Wilkes, an Energy
Department spokesman, disputed the account, saying, ''No accidental shooting
came close to happening.''

--In fall 2005, an envelope with suspicious powder was opened by guards at
the Washington headquarters of the Homeland Security Department. The guards
carried the substance past the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it
outside and then shook it outside Chertoff's window without evacuating
people nearby. The powder turned out to be harmless.

--Since September 2001, guards have been caught napping or playing computer
games at nuclear power plants, and one was caught dozing at a federal
courthouse. Three security workers were investigated for ''inattentiveness''
at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 2005, said Ralph DeSantis, a
spokesman for the facility near Harrisburg, Pa., the site in 1979 of the
nation's worst nuclear accident.

--Guards with criminal backgrounds have committed criminal offenses on and
off duty in numerous cities.

Some companies have decided to conduct anti-terrorism training, regardless
of whether their clients will cover the cost.

At the AlliedBarton office in Washington's Virginia suburbs, training
instructor Richard Cordivari's class consisted of 13 company guards. Their
assignments included a financial institution, high-rise office buildings,
Washington's water and sewer utility, a university and a shopping mall.

Get to know the people who deliver packages and bottled water, Cordivari
instructed. Make sure the person repairing the air conditioner is supposed
to be there. Watch for people casing the location. Take note of odd smells.
Know how to conduct a thorough search.

Private guards at military bases, who feared they would be fired if
identified by name, told the AP they were trained to use handguns and
nightsticks to fight terrorists who might be equipped with assault rifles
and grenade launchers.

When guard companies learn military inspectors are on the way, these
officers said, patrols are increased. Anyone from the top supervisors to the
mailman can be sent out.

One guard said he was given this direction in case of an attack: ''Call the
police.''
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