The VonFrederick

Tempus  

May 2006 Volume 3 Issue 5

  Feature Article:

Terrorist Informants: Internal Security Measures

By Dr. Melissa Konrad Luke, Vice President & Group Director, The Von Frederick Group

 An organizations structure can be penetrated in many ways to allow areas of vulnerability internally and externally. Most white collar crime is directly related to financial gain for the perpetrator; however there is a more serious area of organizational crime which must be monitored at all times. 

Acts of terrorism on United States corporations are strategically calculated and executed with precision and internal KNOWLEDGE. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act heightens internal controls, which may reduce an informant internally from leaking information; however corporate chieftains must act responsibly and implement greater security standards to protect the employees and the shareholders against acts of terrorism

Terrorism edged out energy prices as the biggest short-term problem facing the U.S. economy, according to 26% of respondents, up from 20% in September. Energy prices represented the biggest fear of 23% of respondents, down from 30%. Worries about the twin deficits held near their levels of six months ago. In the longer run, health care costs, the federal deficit, and the growth of the dependent population are the primary problems, each chosen by over one-fifth of respondents. 
(National Association for Business Economics, 2006)

Terrorist informants can usually obtain the information needed within an organization prior to identification. The Enron scandal’s inception began in 1989, and the downfall triggered in 2001. It may take decades to identify white collar fraudulent activities due to inappropriate accounting methods, but a terrorist informant can gather information needed in less than a year and remain unidentified. A terrorist informant’s job is not for financial game, but is strictly related to the downfall of the organization and the demise of as many people as possibly fathomable. A terrorist informant has little concern for prison sentences or possible fines; they are not concerned with their own lives (or yours for that matter).

Profiling is virtually impossible in these situations. Consider the disgruntled employee who makes $50,000 a year and is offered $200,000 for internal information regarding the security standards of the organization? The employee may not understand who or what they are providing confidential information for, or may not even care. They may be providing documentation to a terrorist informant who has paid numerous other employees for additional information. Once all the data has been collected, a strategy of attack can begin. Many may be misled in thinking the individual or entity is/are competitors paying for information to gain a competitive edge. 

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“Déjà vu”

By George A. Torres, MBA, Law Enforcement Specialist

Mark Twain is quoted as saying those of liberal persuasion when they are young shows heart, those of liberal persuasion after the age of 40 shows they have no brains. There is much truth in many old sayings.

Having been educated in public academia entrenched with a lion’s share of liberals, as much brain washing occurred as learning. Reaching the age to vote an entrance was made into the world of politics. Due to influences of family and education, there was a natural hatred for Richard Nixon and opposition to the Vietnam War. 

Entering law enforcement resulted in the first real test of liberal values. An old sergeant challenged the repeated liberal slogan of the day and the opposition to the war with the dreaded why questions. Why the hatred for Nixon? Well, because he was a crook! Why was he a crook? There was no reasoned answer, as the liberals had only provided slogans. He would ask, why the opposition to the War? Well, corporate America was using the war to oppress the poor in Southeast Asia. The war was for rubber, big oil and American profits. He would ask how so? There was no reasoned answer, only a repeat of various slogans. He offered a challenge to research positions taken in order to support them with facts. His advice was accepted and followed throughout the years. 

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Consider the hatred still expressed by liberals for Nixon. Yes, he was a “crook”, which happens to be a common trait among politicians. Yes, he was involved in the Watergate affair and abuses by government. It was a petty burglary to obtain political dirt on democrat opponents and a botched cover up with governmental abuses and obstruction of justice; which was an activity commonly committed by predecessors and government abuses continue to this day.

However consider another explanation for the liberal hatred for Richard Nixon. Nixon was linked to the downfall of Alger Hiss, an FDR advisor, who tarnished the liberal god. Hiss was accused of being a communist spy and being a pivotal influence in FDR’s caving to Stalin at Yalta. These accusations were controversial and the primary accuser in the spying accusations was admitted spy Whittaker Chambers. Congressman Nixon pressed the allegations in congressional hearings. Spying charges could not be brought due to the statute of limitations, but Hiss was later tried for perjury. Based on evidence that his typewriter had been used to copy confidential government documents, he was found guilty on Jan. 21, 1950 and sentenced to five years in prison. Liberals held Nixon responsible for Hiss’s demise

Alger Hiss              W. Chambers           Nixon during hearings

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Iran is slowly but surely accessing a military nuclear power status and is bragging about it in the name of an obsolete, but universally recognized, self-determination right. Defying the Western calls for more openness of its nuclear plans and processing plants, and laughing at the Western (legitimate?) concerns caused by the radical speeches of its newly democratically elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (as democracy in a dictatorship of a radical religion), Iran is now filling the vacuum left by Saddam and making the news with threats and crazy speeches which defy diplomacy, reason and common sense. 

After denying the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad has pledged many times to destroy Israel and recently announced its willingness to transfer its nuclear technology and knowledge to other Islamic countries. Sudan, mind you, has been given first choice during the visit of its president Omar el-Bechir in Teheran, the same Islamic Sudanese president that supports the genocidal Arab militias known as Janjaweed. The Janjaweed are responsible for the well documented rapes, killings and other abuses which have left 1.2 million Catholic and Muslim black Africans homeless in Darfur and Chad. Actually, it is the same Islamic government that the rat-hole confined former leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, just supported in a now rare occurrence of video speech. Threatened by an imminent UN military intervention, el-Bechir just got the unexpected help from his former protégé, the Jihad-master Bin Laden, calling for the stockpiling of landmines and the gathering of freedom fighters in the Arab land of Sudan to prepare for the violent and bloody repelling of the soon to be invading UN crusaders. 

Call me paranoid, but I kind of worry about the crazy, hateful kid of the block preparing to purchase a couple of big guns for himself and his other crazy buddies. Diplomacy is obviously failing with the little mad man of Teheran and the US, the European Union and the UN have failed to even reach a semblance of a reasonable agreement with the uranium-stoned high religious and political leaders of Iran- where the moderate are keeping a very low profile (and I would not blame them, they could march against America in America and Teheran, but certainly not criticize Teheran in Teheran!). Call me paranoid, but I wonder about our future when I hear professional politicians stating officially that our standing firm on stupid principles such as non-proliferation or non-military, use are just plain mean and reinforce the Iranian anger toward us. Call me paranoid, but the prospect of Iran blowing up Israel, or sharing its technology with such a backward and genocidal country like Sudan does not ring too safe with me. Call me selfish, but not letting them gain access to military grade uranium might not be fair in the fuzzy-woozy scale of bleeding-heart things, but looks pretty reasonable to me. 

So what is it going to be for you? Do you believe that tomorrow, the crazy guy and his bearded radical mentors are going to play nice with military nukes and that the mutual assured destruction (M.A.D.) that was the core of the Cold War era nuclear deterrence is going to work? Do you believe that somebody should go there militarily and take the nukes out, one way or another, at the risk of starting a second Iraq-like war with its roadside bombs, insurgents, inter-ethnic and inter-Muslim bloodbaths? Do you pray for Israel to move its behind and go deal with the Iranian plants like they did with Saddam’s? After all, they already dedicated a spy satellite to the issue! Or do you just believe in peace, love, promiscuity, metrosexuality, medical marijuana, Ritalin, fairness, equal rights, American Idols, the power of prayer and forgiveness, equality, blah, blah, blah, the see-no-evil head-in-the-sand-ostrich thing? 

Have a good life, and as I tell my kids, make good choices!

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Recently, Salvador Tapia, a disgruntled former auto parts worker, opened fire on seven of his former co-workers at a Chicago, Illinois, auto supply warehouse. Four of the warehouse workers died at the scene of the shooting and two others died at hospitals. Tapia was shot and killed by police after the only survivor of the shooting incident managed to escape from the warehouse and alert police. 

The lone survivor described Tapia as being completely covered in blood and looking like some kind of devil. Police, friends and relatives described Tapia as having a violent temper with a history of making threats, including making threatening calls to the owners of the businesses who fired him. Tapia’s family members later told police that he had previously been arrested 12 times for a variety of assault and weapons offenses.

Similar workplace incidents have recently occurred across the nation. Doug Williams, an employee of a Lockheed Martin aircraft plant in Meridian, Mississippi, was attending a training session with co-workers on ethics and sensitivity when he abruptly left and returned armed with an arsenal of weapons. Williams shot five workers to death and wounded nine others before killing himself. Williams was described by work associates as being a gun enthusiast.

Later, in Jefferson City, Missouri, Jonathan Russell shot and killed three co-workers at a manufacturing plant where he worked. Russell also wounded five others before shooting and killing himself. Russell was described as a quiet man with no prior criminal record. The night of the shootings, Russell clocked in for work, reported to his work post, pulled out a semiautomatic 40-caliber handgun, and began firing. Authorities were unable to establish a motive for the shooting.

Violence in the workplace is considered as one of the most extreme forms of homicide. According to the Bureau of Labor, workplace violence is the third-leading cause of fatal occupational death for men, and the first-leading cause of fatal occupational death for women in the United States. The term “going postal” has gained wide acceptance in the United States when referring to violent acts connected to the workplace. This term was first used to describe some of the early and most widely reported cases of workplace violence, which were associated with the United States Postal Service. 

Consider these conundrums: Would an understanding of why people kill other people they work with help reduce workplace violence? Would you rate workplace violence as a form of terrorism? Why do they kill themselves or rely on law enforcement to put an end to their misery? Many criminological theories can be used to answer and explain the same criminal behavior. Unfortunately, no single theory likely explains all forms of workplace violence and terror to everyone’s ultimate satisfaction. How do you answer it? 

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Did You Know? By Michelle Glisan Blevins         

• That the Se Cathedral in Goa Velha, India, began in 1562 and took around 80 years to complete and is the largest Christian church in Asia

• That India’s constitution recognizes 22 different languages and the country has 14 official languages, Hindi being primary

• That the exquisitely beautiful national bird of India, the Indian Blue Peacock, actually belongs to the pheasant family

• That Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India is the one of the world’s most populous cities with an estimated population of 12.8 million residents

• That that about 48% of the adult female population of India can read and write compared to just over 70% of the male population (2003 estimates)

The Indian flag is divided into three equal horizontal bands. The top is saffron (a light orange), white with a blue chakra, or Ashoka Wheel, centered in the white band and the bottom panel is green. There is no universally agreed upon significance to the colors.

Sir James Dewar 

James Dewar

1842 - 1923

Born in Scotland, James Dewar was the youngest of six boys and was orphaned at the age of 15. A chemist and physicist educated at the University of Edinburgh he became, among other things, a professor at Cambridge University. Dewar developed a process for producing large quantities of liquid oxygen, was co-inventor of cordite- a smokeless explosive which proved very valuable in WWI, and he discovered a new processes for creating vacuums which was useful in atomic physics. Dewar also developed the Dewar vacuum flask which is the basis for the common Thermos bottles we use today.

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 HOW TO DEAL WITH A SUSPICIOUS WHITE POWDER

	Hold your breath. As soon as you see suspicious white powder, stop inhaling. Anthrax spores are generally only fatal when inhaled in large numbers.
	Do not crouch to the floor. Unless aerosolized as a bioweapon, anthrax spores fall to the ground and stay there when released. Stand on a table or chair when handling the envelope or other container of the spores to reduce the chance of inhalation- when the spores fall to the floor, you’ll be farther from them.
	Stay upwind of the letter or parcel. Anthrax spores travel on wind gusts. Hold the envelope or other container away from you and down wind of any air vents or room fans. If outside, leave the envelope in place and get inside. Close all windows and doors.
	Cover your nose and mouth. For the best protection, wear a gas mask capable of filtering particles 1 to 5 microns in size. If no gas mask is available, use a surgical mask or a bandanna to cover your nose and mouth.
	Do not wash clothes or disinfect surfaces. Detergents may increase the virulence of anthrax spores.
	Call the authorities to report the incident.

Be Aware

	Anthrax cannot be transmitted from person to person, so it is safe to warn people around you of the danger.
	Anthrax spores may cause localized infection if they enter the body through the skin, especially through a cut. Wear rubber gloves when handling a suspect letter or parcel. (Piven and Borgenicht)

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The VonFrederick Group

Phone: (877) 207-1300
Fax:     (916) 488-7531
Email:

Dr. Lionel C.M. VonFrederick Rawlins
Lionel@VonFrederick.com

Dr. Melissa Konrad Luke
Melissa@VonFrederick.com

George A. Torres, MBA
George@VonFrederick.com

Eric Chevreuil
Eric@VonFrederick.com

Pat McLane
Pat@VonFrederick.com

Albert Globus, MD
Al@VonFrederick.com

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Cliff@VonFrederick.com

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