Wackenhut Advanced Technologies Corporation

Wackenhut Advanced Technologies Corporation, called WATCO in the parent's reports, was a technical consulting subsidiary of the Wackenhut Corporation at Reston, Virginia and later Fairfax, Virginia. Its Florida corporation was filed on December 29, 1978, the day after Wackenhut announced the purchase of NUSAC, a nuclear safeguards consultancy founded in 1968 as the Nuclear Surveillance and Auditing Corporation; the corporation took the name WATCO in 1984 and Wackenhut Applied Technologies Center, Inc. in 1990, and the state dissolved it in 1994.¹²

Nuclear Surveillance and Auditing Corporation, 1968 to 1978

Ralph F. Lumb, president of the Nuclear Surveillance and Auditing Corporation, announced in 1975 that its stockholders had voted to change the name to NUSAC, Inc. He described the company as established in 1968 to provide surveillance and auditing services during fuel fabrication and reprocessing, with activities by then that included representation at the gaseous diffusion plants of the Energy Research and Development Administration on uranium hexafluoride procurement, quality assurance during fuel fabrication, and assistance on licensing matters including physical security. Its offices were at 7777 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Virginia.³ Lumb had been the first chairman of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management and had chaired the Atomic Energy Commission ad hoc committee on safeguarding special nuclear materials.⁴

Papers by Lumb and Douglas E. George in 1972 give the corporation's address as Rockville, Maryland. In December 1973 the corporation, by then at Falls Church, was the originator of two draft standard formats for license applications for fuel reprocessing and certain special nuclear material facilities, one on the physical protection section (report number TID-26635) and one on the special nuclear materials control and accounting section (TID-26634).⁵

A winter 1974 notice announced that Lawrence D. Low had been named a vice president for services in materials and plant protection. He had retired from the Atomic Energy Commission in June 1972 after 25 years, during which he had directed the Division of Compliance and, before 1960, the Division of Security at the commission's operations office in Aiken, South Carolina, during the design, construction and initial operation of the Savannah River plants.⁶ David G. Schofield joined in 1976 on leaving government service and by spring 1980 was senior vice president over the Security Programs and Computer Security Divisions, whose clients the company listed as including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy and the United States Navy. Wilkins R. Smith joined in 1976 from Combustion Engineering and United Nuclear Corporation.⁷

Purchase by Wackenhut, December 1978

An announcement datelined Coral Gables, Florida, December 28, stated that the Wackenhut Corporation had purchased for an undisclosed sum the assets of NUSAC, Inc., and that a newly formed wholly owned subsidiary, NUSAC, Incorporated, would be a Florida corporation with headquarters remaining at McLean, Virginia. George R. Wackenhut was quoted as saying "NUSAC is and will remain an independent firm," and Lumb continued as president.⁸ The Florida filing for the new corporation, document 599071, is dated December 29, 1978; its principal address is the Wackenhut headquarters at 1500 San Remo Avenue, Coral Gables.²

The NUSAC board in late 1979 consisted of George R. Wackenhut as chairman, Lumb, Myron S. Malkin, then director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Space Shuttle program, and Robert E. Miller, executive vice president of Resource Science Corporation; the geographer Brian J. L. Berry of Harvard University was then elected to it.⁹ Staff appointments announced in 1979 included James P. Duffy, Jr., as manager of a computer security division, who came from the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he had managed data processing operations, and Jack E. Pevenstein as marketing director, from Planning Research Corporation.⁹ The parent's annual report states that in 1979 NUSAC added an Environmental Assessments Division.¹⁰

Dale A. Moul managed the Security Programs Division in 1981; he held a law degree from the University of Maryland and was responsible for NUSAC's security services for nuclear plants, reprocessing facilities, fuel fabrication plants and engineering laboratory facilities.¹¹ A 1983 paper by Lumb, Messinger and Tingey describes work for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in which NUSAC visited seven nuclear fuel fabrication facilities to evaluate their handling of material accounting data, and the parent's annual report states that under contract to the commission NUSAC completed an Automated Material Accounting Statistics System and was testing it at seven commercial fuel fabricators. The annual report lists the commission and the Defense Nuclear Agency among NUSAC's clients.¹⁰¹² A 1984 study by a NUSAC team for the commission's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research examined security actions during safety-related emergencies at nuclear power plants.¹³

Reorganization as WATCO, 1984

The Florida corporation changed its name from NUSAC, Incorporated, on May 8, 1984.² The Journal of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management reported in spring 1984 that Ralph E. Caudle, formerly director of the Department of Energy Office of Safeguards and Security, had been named president of Wackenhut Advanced Technologies Corporation, a newly created subsidiary based at Reston. Four Wackenhut services were merged into it: the Systems Division, the Advanced Technologies Division, the Security Programs Division and NUSAC, Incorporated, described as a former subsidiary producing quality assurance and approved training programs for the nuclear industry.¹⁴ Caudle, a retired Air Force colonel, had joined the Department of Energy in 1975 as director of the Division of Operations in the Office of Military Application and in 1981 became head of the Office of Safeguards and Security, responsible for protection of nuclear weapons materials and facilities and classified information.¹⁴ His obituary gives his years as president of WATCO as 1984 to 1987.¹⁵

Brookhaven National Laboratory and WATCO were the performing organizations for a March 1985 report, NUREG/CR-4093, on safety and safeguards interactions during safety-related emergencies at nuclear power reactors, whose authors were Moul, M. K. Pilgrim, R. L. Schweizer and J. E. McEwen, Jr.¹⁶ A paper by M. B. Seaton in 1988 carries the affiliation Wackenhut Advanced Technologies Corporation, Fairfax, Virginia.¹⁷

Work in 1985 and 1986

The 1985 annual report describes WATCO as a wholly owned subsidiary at Reston and as a technical consulting firm offering a broad range of advanced security and engineering services to government and industry. Its services covered sensor design, signal processing, systems integration, robotics and mobile intrusion detection systems, special weapons systems security and technology transfer.¹⁸ The NUSAC division was described as a leader in nuclear material control and accounting, in its fifteenth year, providing quality assurance engineering and quality control to the power and energy industry, commercial and military manufacturers, regulators and government agencies.¹⁸

The Security Programs Division was selected in 1985 to formulate the conceptual design for the security system of the nuclear device assembly facility to be built at the Nevada Test Site of the Department of Energy. The 1986 report states that the division was then selected to provide the design and engineering for that security system.¹⁸¹⁹ The division's work in 1985 included vulnerability analyses, risk analyses, security program conceptual design, training and qualification plans, contingency and emergency plans and cost effectiveness studies.¹⁸ The Systems Division worked on requirements analyses, system design, systems engineering, systems integration and training for advanced systems at high-level security installations.¹⁸ In 1986 the company was also selected for the security system conceptual analysis and design engineering of the National Training Center of the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State, and completed a turnkey integrated perimeter and access control system for the federal government at an overseas location.¹⁹

The Wackenhut annual report that covers 1984 states that the Department of Energy chose Wackenhut that year to establish and operate a Safeguards and Security Central Training Academy at Albuquerque, New Mexico, under a three-year, $5 million contract that Wackenhut Services, Inc. won against 92 companies. The same report states that Wackenhut had guarded the Nevada Test Site since 1965.²⁰

Spy magazine reported in 1992 that Wackenhut received contracts to guard the Nevada test site after the law firm of Senator George Smathers helped it find a loophole in the Pinkerton law. The magazine also reported that surveillance equipment found in an investigation by the Energy Department's inspector general's office was sent to a Department of Energy training center at Albuquerque, which it stated Wackenhut operates.²¹

The Applied Technologies Center, 1989 and 1990

The Florida corporation took the name Wackenhut Applied Technologies Center, Inc. on January 9, 1990.² The annual report for 1989 lists the Center at Fairfax, Virginia, with Joseph A. Navarro as president, and describes four groups.²² The Systems Engineering and Integration Group supplied engineering, software and hardware integration for physical and electronic security systems. The Physical Security Concepts Group conducted surveys, wrote implementation plans and set safeguards standards for clients including the General Services Administration, utility companies and the Department of Energy. The Safeguards Group provided quality assurance and quality control to the nuclear power industry. The Defense Systems Analysis Group studied the effectiveness and survivability of military systems, built models and simulations for military application, performed threat and mission analyses, conducted arms control studies and crisis management planning, provided testing and evaluation support and forecast the impact of technology on future weapons systems.²²

The report names the United States Army Belvoir Research, Development and Engineering Center and the Army Survivability Management Office among the Group's clients. It states that the Center's staff "apply their skills and background in military operations, requirements and intelligence to support the Department of Defense," and that the Center is located in the national capital region.²² In the same report Timothy P. Cole is listed as president of Wackenhut Services, Inc.²²

A 1989 Department of Defense technical report, "Guide to Camouflage for Developers, Volume 1" (114 pages, project number 170-002), lists as authors William Schilling, Donald Farrar, Robert D. Carpenter, Stanley Johnson, Champlin Buck and Nicholas Smith, and its performing organization as Wackenhut Advanced Technologies Corporation, 10530 Rosehaven Street, Suite 500, Fairfax.²³ The same address, with Robert D. Carpenter as addressee, appears for the Wackenhut Applied Technologies Center in the distribution list of a later Defense Technical Information Center report, "Survey of Vulnerability Methodological Needs."²⁴

In December 1989 Collins International Service Company, the facilities manager of a United States government building at Reston and a subsidiary of Rockwell International, asked Wackenhut International, Inc. for a proposal for the building's security system, and Wackenhut International assigned the resulting hardware subcontract with Sygnetron Protection Systems to the Center in March 1990. The client rejected the Center's proposal on June 18, 1990. A jury awarded the Center $100,000 in compensatory damages against Sygnetron and its parent De La Rue and $1,000,000 in punitive damages against De La Rue, which the district court reduced to $350,000 under Virginia's statutory cap; the Fourth Circuit affirmed on November 10, 1992, describing the Center as a subsidiary of Wackenhut International.²⁵

Divestiture

The parent's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 1, 1995, states that the Wackenhut Monitoring Systems and Wackenhut Applied Technologies Center divisions were sold or discontinued in 1993, and that the combined operating losses of the Center and Wackenhut Monitoring Systems, Inc. were approximately $2 million in that year. The subsidiary schedule in that filing does not list the company.²⁶

The Florida record shows annual reports filed on June 25, 1991, July 8, 1992 and May 1, 1993, and an administrative dissolution for failure to file an annual report on August 26, 1994.² The last annual report lists George R. Wackenhut (title C), Richard Wackenhut, Alan B. Bernstein and Timothy P. Cole (title D), Michael A. DiGregorio (treasurer) and Paul N. Brownell (assistant treasurer), with James P. Rowan, the parent's vice president, general counsel and assistant secretary, as registered agent since November 3, 1987.²²² A Virginia entry for the Center, number F0346389, is listed by OpenCorporates as inactive.²⁷

Newsletter notices and personnel

An undated Wackenhut newsletter describes WATCO as specializing in applied research and development in nuclear safeguards and security policy, programs and systems, and as working through its Security Programs Division with the Wackenhut Training Institute. It describes a Touchscreen Station that replaced multiple keystroke entries with single touch commands for alarms, access control, closed-circuit television and response forces, with Walt Chrobak as project manager.²⁸ A notice in the newsletter congratulates Roy S. Lombardo, Timothy S. McCune and Robert L. Schwaizor on earning Certified Protection Professional status and states that all three were former United States Army officers with law enforcement and other security-related experience.²⁹

From September 1987 the vice president for national security studies and programs at WATCO was James B. Motley, a retired Army colonel. According to his resume in a June 1990 packet of Counter Terrorism Consultants, Inc., he directed operational analyses and assessments of national security issues, with a primary interest in terrorism, special operations and low-intensity conflict.³⁰