G4S Secure Solutions

G4S Secure Solutions
Predecessor	•  Wackenhut •  Group 4 •  Falck •  Group 4 Falck
Formation	2004
Parent organization	G4S Secure Solutions, Group 4 Falck
Headquarters	London, UK, Florida, United States
Type	•  commercial •  security •  CIA contractor
Subgroups	•  ArmorGroup •  G4S Secure Solutions •  Wackenhut Corporation
Staff	618,000
Member of	Defence Manufacturers Association
Membership	•  John Connolly •  Ashley Almanza •  Michel van der Bel •  Clare Chapman •  Elisabeth Fleuriot •  Adine Grate •  Steve Mogford •  John Ramsay •  Barbara Thoralfsson •  Tim Weller
A British/American multinational security services company with deep ties to the US government and military complex

G4S is a British/American multinational security services company with deep ties to the US government and military. G4S is the world's largest security company measured by revenues. It has operations in more than 90 countries. With over 570,000 employees, it is the world's third-largest private employer, and the largest European and African private employer.

Corporate Name

In 2000, Group 4, a security firm formed in the 1960s, merged with Danish company Falck to form Group 4 Falck and by 2000 the company was described as "the world's largest private security systems company". In 2002 Group 4 Falck went on to buy The Wackenhut Corporation in the United States.

The Wackenhut Corporation

The Wackenhut Corporation was a US security company started in 1954. In 2002, it became a subsidiary of G4S. Wackenhut has had a long history with the US government and military.

"Wackenhut is a private company that provides security in prisons, hospitals, government installations and other facilities. It was founded by former FBI agents and has been called the modern "Robocop" organization."

In a 1992 SPY Magazine article, 18 year terrorism expert and CIA analyst, William Corbett, stated "For years, Wackenhut has been involved with the CIA and other intelligence organizations, including the Drug Enforcement Agency. Wackenhut would allow the CIA to occupy positions within the company [in order to carry out] clandestine operations." He went on to say Wackenhut provided the intelligence agencies with information and was paid in return "in a quid pro quo arrangement". This would explain in part the huge number of contracts awarded to Wackenhut in delicate areas of national security.

Surveillance of Dissidents

By 1965, Wackenhut was boasting to potential investors that the company maintained files on 2.5 million suspected dissidents—one in 46 American adults then living. In 1966, after acquiring the private files of Karl Barslaag, a former staff member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Wackenhut could confidently maintain that with more than 4 million names, it had the largest privately held file on suspected dissidents in America.

PROMIS

In the late 1960s, Lee Hamilton developed a software program called PROMIS, which he copyrighted in 1981. The program was able to track a vast number of people around the world by accessing utilities and many other databases, but also had an undetectable backdoor enabling a tap into the master database. The US and Israeli governments came up with the idea of selling this valuable program to governments and other intelligence networks all over the world. But first they had to develop their own version of PROMIS with the secret trap door.

The job was contracted to Wackenhut, which had a computer development unit located on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in California. The reservation was used by the company, which was contracted by the technical services division of the CIA, for developing special equipment such as hallucinogenic drugs. It was done on an Indian reservation because there was no state jurisdiction, and the federal authorities who would have jurisdiction turned a blind eye to the operation.

Revolving door

G4S has several ex-politicians in its employ, such as John Reid. Former Police Commissioner Paul Condon was deputy chair of the board until 2012.

You're nicked!

In September 2017, it was announced that G4S and Serco – the same two companies who were stripped of contracts for tagging prisoners because a Serious Fraud Office investigation revealed they were charging for tagging people who didn’t exist – are going to be trusted with the handcuffs by the Tory government and allowed the power of arrest.

Leadership

Early boards of directors included such prominent personalities of the political right as Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, General Mark Clark and Ralph E. Davis, a John Birch Society leader, by the 1990s the board have included much of the country's national-security directorate: former FBI director Clarence Kelley; former Defense secretary and former CIA deputy director Frank Carlucci; former Defense Intelligence Agency director General Joseph Carroll; former U.S. Secret Service director James J. Rowley; former Marine commandant P. X. Kelley; and acting chairman of President Bush's foreign-intelligence advisory board and former CIA deputy director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman. Before his appointment as Reagan's CIA director, the late William Casey was Wackenhut's outside legal counsel.

International

Wackenhut's right-wing politics have not been confined to supporting U.S. administrations. In 1977, Wackenhut obtained special permission to operate in Belgium; according to Edward Herman and Gerry O'Sullivan, Wackenhut 'quickly got involved with right-wing terrorists who were themselves linked to state security agents." Wackenhut's local director in Brussels, Jean-Francis Calmette, was a rightist who had hired and given combat instruction to members of Westland New Post, a Belgian fascist group. Wackenhut left Belgium in the early 1980s, following accusations that its guards were luring immigrant children into basements and beating them.

Orlando Shooting

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, who worked at G4S from 2007 until his death, committed one of the largest mass shootings in United States history, in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Subsidiaries

ArmorGroup North America