Drug Abuse, Addiction and Treatment and Rehabilitation Situation in Alaska
Due to it’s non-centrally location compared with the rest of the United States and common border with Canada, Alaska has become a transit zone for drug smugglers. The state also has become a major consumer of illicit drugs despite is remote location. The majority of the drug trade is carried out by the Mexican and Dominican drug organizations/cartels.
Over the past 2 decades, Alaska has seen some of the highest per capita use of controlled drugs and large drug seizures have become common. Associated with the illicit drug trade is one of the highest incidence of alcoholism, money laundering, violence, rape and suicide when compared to the rest of the United States.
The major drug trafficked in Alaska is crack cocaine. The trafficking is usually done by the Mexican and Dominican organizations. The cocaine originates from the Southern USA arriving via South America. Because of Alaska’s remote location and difficulty bringing in drugs, the drug cartels resell cocaine at exorbitant prices. In addition to cocaine, black tar heroin is also available in Alaska. The spread of this drug is done by the Mexican organizations.
Today, Oxycontin and methamphetamine have replaced heroin as the drug of abuse. Like all other states, methamphetamine abuse has become an epidemic in Alaska because of its easy availability and cheap price. To counter the methamphetamine abuse, legislation has been passed to remove pseudoephrine from cold remedies. This legal maneuver has helped decrease the abuse of methamphetamine. Drug trafficking organizations obtain the majority of methamphetamine for sale in Alaska from the Southern USA and transport it across state lines using various couriers systems.
Club Drugs are also becoming widely abused in Alaska and the business is very profitable for the traffickers. The club drugs are easily available at most night clubs and are the drugs of choice for abuse among college students.
Marijuana is the most abused and widespread drug in Alaska. Unlike other states, Bill HB49 has been introduced which re-criminalizes the use and possession of marijuana. The majority of marijuana is home grown in sophisticated laboratories. However, the potent and more pure form of marijuana known as BC Bud continues to be smuggled in from Canada.
Prescription drugs are the second most commonly abused drugs. These drugs are easily accessed by illegal dispensing and prescribing by physicians/pharmacists, prescription forgery, doctor shopping, drug thefts from pharmacies and online sales. The drugs most commonly abused include oxycodone (OxyContin®, Percocet, Percodan), hydrocodone (Vicodin, Lortab), and anabolic steroids.
DEA Mobile Enforcement Teams
To counter the drug traffickers, various DEA mobile enforcement teams have been established in Alaska. This cooperative program with state and local law enforcement counterparts were established in response to the escalating problem of drug-related violent crime in the State. While these mobile unit have not eradicated the drug problem, they certainly have led to more arrests of criminals and gangs.
Alaska has recently allowed patients to use medical marijuana if they have specified medical conditions, a state registry ID card and the advice of a physician. Caregivers must also have the ID cards to avoid prosecution for distribution of marijuana. This law was enacted in March of 1999 after voters passed Ballot Measure #8.However, a proposal is now being considered to over turn the state's lenient marijuana laws.
To assist victims of drug abuse, the State is now using money collected from drug traffickers to pay for Rehabilitation/Treatment programs. A few in-patient and outpatient programs have been established to help the victims.
Showing posts with label Romney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romney. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Recession , War Crimes, Health Care......
YOU, connect the dots.
Go to americanhealthcarefraud.blog to see more whree Rainwater REALLY got his money.
Betting on the coming storm: Sovereign Deed's bankroller sees disaster ahead
by: Ed Brayton
Sunday (12/09) at 23:01 PM
The article notes that Rainwater has been spending the bulk of his time researching peak oil theory and reading survivalist literature about the inevitability of economic collapse that will cause society to fracture:
And while Rainwater says he doesn't think that Kuntsler's worst-case scenario is likely to come true, he does believe that his dystopic prediction is closer to reality than most of us would like to believe and he's been buying copies of this book and handing them out in his circle of business associates. The key to all of this is the collapse of the oil market, which Rainwater considers inevitable, and the resulting societal strife:
PMC's such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, founded by Rainwater's partner in Sovereign Deed, Barrett Moore, have become notorious for trigger-happy behavior in Iraq. At home, the PMC entrepreneurs tout themselves as security for insecure America.
In pitching the Pellston project to state and local officials, the leaders of Sovereign Deed have outlined a business plan that clearly seeks to capitalize on this future dystopia. Retired Brig. Gen. Richard Mills, vice president of Sovereign Deed, told a town hall meeting that the company planned to offer disaster survival aid to the wealthy through a "country club style of membership." For an initial charge of $50,000 and a $15,000 annual fee, Sovereign Deed will come to the aid of their members in the event of a disaster, natural or societal.
They plan to use the Pellston airport as their base of operations, dispatching teams of armed men, mostly former members of the U.S. military's Special Forces, which Mills used to command, to protect the property of their members, to distribute survival rations and, if necessary, to evacuate them from a dangerous situation. At that town hall meeting, Mills was asked by a local resident about the ethics of providing such protections only for those wealthy enough to afford it when it is the government's responsibility to protect all Americans during such disasters.
"Every individual is responsible for preparing and supporting themselves," he said. The government cannot be everywhere all the time."
The person who asked the question, noting that this answer did not address his question about the ethics of selling heightened protection to the rich and leaving those who can't afford it to fend for themselves, tried to ask a follow-up question but was cut off by a local official who said it was not an appropriate forum for debate. That suggests this is not an issue that neither Sovereign Deed nor their local government advocates feels comfortable addressing. Rainwater, on the other hand, speaks in almost mystical terms about his ability to grasp the magnitude of the inevitable collapses that inevitably convinced him to finance this new company:
"This is going to get a little religious. I ask why I was blessed with this insightfulness. Everyone who has achieved something, scientists, ballplayers, thinks they were given their talent for a reason. Why me? Was I given this insightfulness at this particular time? Or was I just given this insightfulness?" He pauses. "I just want people to look out. 'Cause it could be bad."
Now, it seems, Rainwater doesn't just want them to watch out; he also wants them to pay him to bring the biggest umbrella to combat the coming storm.
Requests for an interview with Richard Rainwater for this story were unanswered.
Go to americanhealthcarefraud.blog to see more whree Rainwater REALLY got his money.
Betting on the coming storm: Sovereign Deed's bankroller sees disaster ahead
by: Ed Brayton
Sunday (12/09) at 23:01 PM
The article notes that Rainwater has been spending the bulk of his time researching peak oil theory and reading survivalist literature about the inevitability of economic collapse that will cause society to fracture:
And while Rainwater says he doesn't think that Kuntsler's worst-case scenario is likely to come true, he does believe that his dystopic prediction is closer to reality than most of us would like to believe and he's been buying copies of this book and handing them out in his circle of business associates. The key to all of this is the collapse of the oil market, which Rainwater considers inevitable, and the resulting societal strife:
PMC's such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, founded by Rainwater's partner in Sovereign Deed, Barrett Moore, have become notorious for trigger-happy behavior in Iraq. At home, the PMC entrepreneurs tout themselves as security for insecure America.
In pitching the Pellston project to state and local officials, the leaders of Sovereign Deed have outlined a business plan that clearly seeks to capitalize on this future dystopia. Retired Brig. Gen. Richard Mills, vice president of Sovereign Deed, told a town hall meeting that the company planned to offer disaster survival aid to the wealthy through a "country club style of membership." For an initial charge of $50,000 and a $15,000 annual fee, Sovereign Deed will come to the aid of their members in the event of a disaster, natural or societal.
They plan to use the Pellston airport as their base of operations, dispatching teams of armed men, mostly former members of the U.S. military's Special Forces, which Mills used to command, to protect the property of their members, to distribute survival rations and, if necessary, to evacuate them from a dangerous situation. At that town hall meeting, Mills was asked by a local resident about the ethics of providing such protections only for those wealthy enough to afford it when it is the government's responsibility to protect all Americans during such disasters.
"Every individual is responsible for preparing and supporting themselves," he said. The government cannot be everywhere all the time."
The person who asked the question, noting that this answer did not address his question about the ethics of selling heightened protection to the rich and leaving those who can't afford it to fend for themselves, tried to ask a follow-up question but was cut off by a local official who said it was not an appropriate forum for debate. That suggests this is not an issue that neither Sovereign Deed nor their local government advocates feels comfortable addressing. Rainwater, on the other hand, speaks in almost mystical terms about his ability to grasp the magnitude of the inevitable collapses that inevitably convinced him to finance this new company:
"This is going to get a little religious. I ask why I was blessed with this insightfulness. Everyone who has achieved something, scientists, ballplayers, thinks they were given their talent for a reason. Why me? Was I given this insightfulness at this particular time? Or was I just given this insightfulness?" He pauses. "I just want people to look out. 'Cause it could be bad."
Now, it seems, Rainwater doesn't just want them to watch out; he also wants them to pay him to bring the biggest umbrella to combat the coming storm.
Requests for an interview with Richard Rainwater for this story were unanswered.
Sovereign Deed , Richard Rainwater....BUSH!!! Oh yea!
Romney, Clinton take Michigan's presidential primary
Sovereign Deed CEO lied about military service, records show
by: Eartha Jane Melzer
Thursday (01/17) at 12:07 PM
Contractor made millions claiming Army stripes
In December 2003, the founders of Triple Canopy, a private security firm in Baghdad, caught their first big break, signing a contract with the Coalition Provisional Authority governing Iraq. Within four months, Triple Canopy had signed six contracts worth more than $28 million to guard U.S. facilities throughout Iraq.
For the military veterans who founded the company and Barrett H. Moore, who was then Triple Canopy's chief executive officer, these agreements launched the company on the path to what it is today: one of the leading private military contractors, sharing a $1 billion contract with Blackwater USA and DynCorp to guard U.S. personnel in the Middle East.
Moore, 43, a Chicago businessman, now presents himself as a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and business "visionary" who revolutionized the private security market but an Army spokesman said Moore was never an officer and never had intelligence training. Moore, fired by Triple Canopy in 2004, has launched a new private security firm called Sovereign Deed. He has parlayed his Triple Canopy success into political influence, persuading Republican and Democratic state officials to rewrite state law so that Sovereign Deed can receive $10 million in tax abatements and other incentives to establish a "national response center" for its private disaster relief business in northern Michigan.
Continued -
Eartha Jane Melzer :: Sovereign Deed CEO lied about military service, records show
In promoting Sovereign Deed, Moore has emphasized the military expertise of himself and the company's top officials. On the company's Web site, Moore states that he "served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, specializing in issues related to the non-proliferation of biological weapons and related weapons of mass destruction (WMD)."
What Moore's Pentagon patrons and political allies in Michigan have not known is the true story of Moore's military service. According to U.S. Army record keepers, Moore never completed his Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program in college and was discharged from an inactive branch of the Reserves in 1994 without ever having gone through basic training. Contrary to the claims on Sovereign Deed's Web site, Moore never served as an Army intelligence officer, or in any other branch of the country's armed forces.
Moore's brushes with law enforcement also escape detection. He was convicted of three counts of criminal fraud in Australia in 1992 and served time in prison, according to court records there. An appeals court later reversed Moore's conviction. But in a related criminal trial, Moore acknowledged participating in an "illegal enterprise" to smuggle cars from Chicago to Melbourne and admitted fabricating documents as part of the operation.
Moore did not return phone calls requesting comment.
Moore's story is another chapter in the remarkable emergence of private military contractors (PMCs) since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Caught shorthanded after the U.S. invasion in 2003, American authorities scrambled to find protection for U.S. facilities and personnel with few procedures for vetting the contractors' background or controlling their activities. As PMCs like Triple Canopy and Blackwater USA grew, their armed employees became embroiled in unprovoked shooting incidents and the killing of Iraqi civilians, and Congress and the State Department launched investigations that are still ongoing.
As the Barrett Moore story illustrates, the rise of the PMCs came at the expense of accountability. When Michigan Messenger reconstructed his career, the returning war zone entrepreneur who boasted to Michigan residents and politicians of an Army Intelligence career turns out to have more experience as a used car salesman.
Selling Military Expertise
According to interviews and public records, Barrett Holloway Moore, 43, is a creative businessman whose audacious style has won admirers and alienated former business partners.
In 1995, he made headlines in Chicago when he successfully proposed marriage to lawyer Mary Szews by hiring a helicopter to wave a banner outside the window of her office on the 73rd story of the Sears Tower. Last year, Moore registered more trademarks with government on behalf of Sovereign Deed than all but five U.S. corporations.
Moore has been sued for fraud three times since 2005, according to court records. One of the lawsuits has been settled, one went to arbitration with unknown results, and a third is still pending in Illinois state court.
Moore and his associates at Sovereign Deed have emphasized military experience as a key feature of the company. The firm's spokesman in northern Michigan is retired Brigadier General Richard Mills, a former deputy commanding general for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.
In community meetings about Sovereign Deed's plans in November, Mills received hearty applause when he was introduced as a 30-year military veteran. He said he was proud to associate with veterans whom he called "the most magnificent of people."
In a phone interview Mills said that Moore was among the people who brought military experience to Sovereign Deed, adding he knew people who had served with him. He declined to provide any names.
But a spokesman for the National Personnel Records Service in St. Louis, which maintains records on all armed service personnel, said the NPRS has no record of Moore's service. Another search by the Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Va., determined that Moore never completed his college ROTC training at DePauw University in Indiana in 1985-86, had never gone into basic training or been on active duty or had intelligence responsibilities.
In response to questions from Michigan Messenger, a Sovereign Deed official stressed the accusation, if true, was quite serious.
"Stating that one has falsified military service goes to the very core of pride, honor, and integrity of those who have served," wrote Glenn Collins, the chief operating officer of Sovereign Deed, in an email.
Collins provided three documents that he said supported Moore's claims to have served in U.S. Army Intelligence.
The first document Sovereign Deed provided was a letter, dated Sept. 11, 1985, from Col. Nicholas Fritsch who served as the lieutenant commander of the 476th Military Intelligence Detachment in Indianapolis. As a member of ROTC, Moore served in the unit under Fritsch's command.
"Cadet Moore is one of the most impressive service members with whom I have served throughout my career," Fritsch wrote in recommending Moore for commission as a military intelligence officer." "…[He] has shown the personal traits and skills of a natural leader."
In a telephone interview with Michigan Messenger, Fritsch, now retired and living in Florida, recalled Moore as "a high school all-star type, … good looking, … smart, possibly athletic, a person of tremendous capability."
Fritsch said that Moore's claim of Army intelligence service was "making a mountain out of a mole hill."
"At the level of Moore's service he would have no first-line connection to high-ranking intelligence," Fritsch said. He added that he thought public boasting about intelligence work was inappropriate because it could compromise security.
The second document provided by Sovereign Deed was a May 1986 letter notifying Moore of his transfer to a U.S. Army Reserve unit until his expected graduation later in the year. The third document was an honorable discharge certificate dated April 21, 1994. Moore's rank at the time of discharge was blacked out on the copy of the document provided by Sovereign Deed.
The records confirm that Moore participated in the ROTC program as an undergraduate but provide no evidence of active duty intelligence work. Collins did not respond to a request to share additional records.
Moore's intelligence work is not part of the public record, Collins stated in his e-mail. "Mr. Moore worked for various agencies during his military service such that his records are kept outside of the NPRS," he wrote.
"I hear that all the time," replied Master Sergeant Keith O'Donnell, a spokesman for the Army Human Resources Command. O'Donnell said he checked the Army's classified holdings and protected data bases that log the educational records of enlisted and commissioned personnel. Moore's record shows none of the training that would be required of an Army Intelligence officer, he said.
O'Donnell pointed out that service personnel are retired at their highest rank, and Moore was discharged from the Reserves as a grade of Sergeant (E5), meaning he was never an officer.
"He never went anywhere with a military career," O'Donnell said.
'A tissue of lies and deception'
Moore did not go into the military after graduating from college, according to fraternity brothers and former business associates. They say Moore moved to Australia after graduation from DePauw in December 1986. By March 1988 he was working as an equity options trader at a bank in Sydney and moonlighting for a company called Eurotek that imported and resold used cars.
Court records show that the Australian customs service raided Eurotek's office in May 1989, seizing five cars and documents that showed Moore had kept two sets of records, one of which systematically undervalued the imported cars.
In February 1992 Moore was indicted and convicted of deceptively obtaining over $300,000 in connection with the used car business, according to court records (PDF). He was sentenced to a 16-month prison term. He was released after serving a portion of his sentence. In 1993 he testified against his former Eurotek associate in a related criminal trial in Sydney.
The judge in the second case described Moore as a key figure in the enterprise, which procured used Rolls Royces and Porsches in the Chicago area and shipped them to Australia with fraudulent documentation of their value. The cars were then resold at a profit. While accepting some of Moore's testimony, Judge J. Byrne said Moore was "a man who had so enshrouded himself in a tissue of lies and deception as to be a witness whose credit is of little value."
Byrne ruled that Moore's associate, an Indonesian man named Hiran Jayakody, was "the moving spirit" behind Eurtotek. Jayakody was ordered to pay a fine of approximately $1 million. At the date of Moore's discharge from the U.S. Army Reserves in April 1994, he was still fighting legal charges in Australia.
In December 1994, Moore's 1992 conviction was reversed. Though Moore had admitted that he acted to defraud Australian customs agency, the Eurotek trial raised doubts about the evidence used to convict him and his conviction was struck from the record.
In 1995, Moore enrolled in the University of Chicago business school. He received his master's of business administration in 1997, according to school records. A year later he filed for bankruptcy in Chicago, declaring that he was $2.7 million in debt and his two companies, Advanced Mittworks, Inc. and Knight International, were insolvent.
In a biography submitted last year to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in support of his bid for state tax incentives, Moore stated that Knight International included two companies and that "each was sold upon reaching revenue in the $50M range."
'Best Business Practices'
Moore was operating a software company in Chicago in the summer of 2002 when he first made contact with the men behind Triple Canopy. According to a court filing submitted by Moore's attorneys in the pending Illinois fraud lawsuit, Moore entered e-mail discussions with Matthew Mann, a former Delta Force veteran, about establishing a private security firm. Mann is listed on the Triple Canopy Web site as a co-founder of the company with a Special Forces veteran named Tom Fortis. Mann and Fortis declined to be interviewed for this article.
The company was founded in Chicago in 2003, according to its Web site. Moore was involved with the company by July 2003 when he applied to register trademarks for "Triple Canopy Group" and 90 other related names with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
After Triple Canopy started winning contracts in Iraq in late 2003, Moore presented himself as a leader in the burgeoning industry of private military contractors. In February 2004, he represented the company at a $995-a-seat business forum held at the National Press Club in Washington. He recommended that firms looking to do business in Iraq should find a local partner.
"You are in a position to mentor them and help them with perhaps best business practices from your country or your world, and at the same time, you're in a position to try to offer a series of services or products that don't exist in Iraq," Moore said.
In March 2004, Moore donated $2,000 to George Bush's re-election committee and identified himself as the CEO of Triple Canopy, according to federal election records.
Less than a month later, he was fired by Triple Canopy's board of directors. In a lawsuit filed in May 2004, the company charged him with fraud, with raiding the company treasury for his own profit, and seizing control of the company's Web addresses and communications infrastructure as a bargaining chip in negotiations of a severance package.
Moore denied the charges, saying he used company funds for business expenses with the knowledge of his colleagues. The lawsuit was settled out of court in September 2005. The terms of the agreement are confidential, but according to bank records filed in the Illinois fraud lawsuit, Moore received a $6 million payment in March 2006 identified as "Triple Canopy settlement."
Why did Moore's legal problems in Australia, his bankruptcy and his apparent misrepresentation of his military background not surface when it came to gaining millions of dollars in security contracts with the U.S. government?
One reason, according to the Office of Defense Trade Controls (ODTC), is that officers of companies applying for Iraq contracts need only swear that they have not been convicted of violations of the U.S. defense export laws.
"We might want to look at changing that," said Dave Trimble, chief of ODTC's compliance and registration division. "We have broad authority to take any derogatory information into account."
Where the PMC industry is going
Moore's latest venture in northern Michigan has won official support while stirring local opposition.
Moore's colleagues say he is eager to commercialize the market for privatized disaster response. Rick Johnson, the former speaker of the Michigan Legislature who now serves as Sovereign Deed's lobbyist, said Moore is "taking the industry where it needs to go next."
A community group calling itself We Don't Need Sovereign Deed says the company's claims of economic benefits are unsupported and that the idea of privatizing disaster response is undemocratic.
Moore's proposal to establish an operational center in the town of Pellston has been endorsed by a bipartisan cast of state officials. Earlier this year, Democratic state Sen. Gary MacDowell and Republican state Sen. Jason Allen drafted a bill to grant tax abatements to encourage Sovereign Deed to locate on 700 acres of municipal property adjacent to an airport. The state Legislature unanimously approved the bill, which was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
Opponents have asked questions about a proposed long-term lease of 700 acres of municipal property and the construction of a hangar to accommodate army cargo planes in Sovereign Deed operations. Elected officials in Pellston have declined to answer the questions, citing confidentiality agreements with the firm.
"Moore's smart," said resident Tim Boyko. "He set it up so people cannot question, and it's like these local officials' brains short out when they get around retired generals and homeland security-type people."
Credit: Photo of Barrett H. Moore courtesy of DePauw University archives.
Catch the rest of Michigan Messenger's coverage of Sovereign Deed at this link.
Tags: Sovereign Deed, Jason Allen, security, privatization of disaster response, private security company, MI Disaster Capitalism, (All Tags)
Sovereign Deed CEO lied about military service, records show
by: Eartha Jane Melzer
Thursday (01/17) at 12:07 PM
Contractor made millions claiming Army stripes
In December 2003, the founders of Triple Canopy, a private security firm in Baghdad, caught their first big break, signing a contract with the Coalition Provisional Authority governing Iraq. Within four months, Triple Canopy had signed six contracts worth more than $28 million to guard U.S. facilities throughout Iraq.
For the military veterans who founded the company and Barrett H. Moore, who was then Triple Canopy's chief executive officer, these agreements launched the company on the path to what it is today: one of the leading private military contractors, sharing a $1 billion contract with Blackwater USA and DynCorp to guard U.S. personnel in the Middle East.
Moore, 43, a Chicago businessman, now presents himself as a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and business "visionary" who revolutionized the private security market but an Army spokesman said Moore was never an officer and never had intelligence training. Moore, fired by Triple Canopy in 2004, has launched a new private security firm called Sovereign Deed. He has parlayed his Triple Canopy success into political influence, persuading Republican and Democratic state officials to rewrite state law so that Sovereign Deed can receive $10 million in tax abatements and other incentives to establish a "national response center" for its private disaster relief business in northern Michigan.
Continued -
Eartha Jane Melzer :: Sovereign Deed CEO lied about military service, records show
In promoting Sovereign Deed, Moore has emphasized the military expertise of himself and the company's top officials. On the company's Web site, Moore states that he "served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, specializing in issues related to the non-proliferation of biological weapons and related weapons of mass destruction (WMD)."
What Moore's Pentagon patrons and political allies in Michigan have not known is the true story of Moore's military service. According to U.S. Army record keepers, Moore never completed his Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program in college and was discharged from an inactive branch of the Reserves in 1994 without ever having gone through basic training. Contrary to the claims on Sovereign Deed's Web site, Moore never served as an Army intelligence officer, or in any other branch of the country's armed forces.
Moore's brushes with law enforcement also escape detection. He was convicted of three counts of criminal fraud in Australia in 1992 and served time in prison, according to court records there. An appeals court later reversed Moore's conviction. But in a related criminal trial, Moore acknowledged participating in an "illegal enterprise" to smuggle cars from Chicago to Melbourne and admitted fabricating documents as part of the operation.
Moore did not return phone calls requesting comment.
Moore's story is another chapter in the remarkable emergence of private military contractors (PMCs) since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Caught shorthanded after the U.S. invasion in 2003, American authorities scrambled to find protection for U.S. facilities and personnel with few procedures for vetting the contractors' background or controlling their activities. As PMCs like Triple Canopy and Blackwater USA grew, their armed employees became embroiled in unprovoked shooting incidents and the killing of Iraqi civilians, and Congress and the State Department launched investigations that are still ongoing.
As the Barrett Moore story illustrates, the rise of the PMCs came at the expense of accountability. When Michigan Messenger reconstructed his career, the returning war zone entrepreneur who boasted to Michigan residents and politicians of an Army Intelligence career turns out to have more experience as a used car salesman.
Selling Military Expertise
According to interviews and public records, Barrett Holloway Moore, 43, is a creative businessman whose audacious style has won admirers and alienated former business partners.
In 1995, he made headlines in Chicago when he successfully proposed marriage to lawyer Mary Szews by hiring a helicopter to wave a banner outside the window of her office on the 73rd story of the Sears Tower. Last year, Moore registered more trademarks with government on behalf of Sovereign Deed than all but five U.S. corporations.
Moore has been sued for fraud three times since 2005, according to court records. One of the lawsuits has been settled, one went to arbitration with unknown results, and a third is still pending in Illinois state court.
Moore and his associates at Sovereign Deed have emphasized military experience as a key feature of the company. The firm's spokesman in northern Michigan is retired Brigadier General Richard Mills, a former deputy commanding general for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.
In community meetings about Sovereign Deed's plans in November, Mills received hearty applause when he was introduced as a 30-year military veteran. He said he was proud to associate with veterans whom he called "the most magnificent of people."
In a phone interview Mills said that Moore was among the people who brought military experience to Sovereign Deed, adding he knew people who had served with him. He declined to provide any names.
But a spokesman for the National Personnel Records Service in St. Louis, which maintains records on all armed service personnel, said the NPRS has no record of Moore's service. Another search by the Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Va., determined that Moore never completed his college ROTC training at DePauw University in Indiana in 1985-86, had never gone into basic training or been on active duty or had intelligence responsibilities.
In response to questions from Michigan Messenger, a Sovereign Deed official stressed the accusation, if true, was quite serious.
"Stating that one has falsified military service goes to the very core of pride, honor, and integrity of those who have served," wrote Glenn Collins, the chief operating officer of Sovereign Deed, in an email.
Collins provided three documents that he said supported Moore's claims to have served in U.S. Army Intelligence.
The first document Sovereign Deed provided was a letter, dated Sept. 11, 1985, from Col. Nicholas Fritsch who served as the lieutenant commander of the 476th Military Intelligence Detachment in Indianapolis. As a member of ROTC, Moore served in the unit under Fritsch's command.
"Cadet Moore is one of the most impressive service members with whom I have served throughout my career," Fritsch wrote in recommending Moore for commission as a military intelligence officer." "…[He] has shown the personal traits and skills of a natural leader."
In a telephone interview with Michigan Messenger, Fritsch, now retired and living in Florida, recalled Moore as "a high school all-star type, … good looking, … smart, possibly athletic, a person of tremendous capability."
Fritsch said that Moore's claim of Army intelligence service was "making a mountain out of a mole hill."
"At the level of Moore's service he would have no first-line connection to high-ranking intelligence," Fritsch said. He added that he thought public boasting about intelligence work was inappropriate because it could compromise security.
The second document provided by Sovereign Deed was a May 1986 letter notifying Moore of his transfer to a U.S. Army Reserve unit until his expected graduation later in the year. The third document was an honorable discharge certificate dated April 21, 1994. Moore's rank at the time of discharge was blacked out on the copy of the document provided by Sovereign Deed.
The records confirm that Moore participated in the ROTC program as an undergraduate but provide no evidence of active duty intelligence work. Collins did not respond to a request to share additional records.
Moore's intelligence work is not part of the public record, Collins stated in his e-mail. "Mr. Moore worked for various agencies during his military service such that his records are kept outside of the NPRS," he wrote.
"I hear that all the time," replied Master Sergeant Keith O'Donnell, a spokesman for the Army Human Resources Command. O'Donnell said he checked the Army's classified holdings and protected data bases that log the educational records of enlisted and commissioned personnel. Moore's record shows none of the training that would be required of an Army Intelligence officer, he said.
O'Donnell pointed out that service personnel are retired at their highest rank, and Moore was discharged from the Reserves as a grade of Sergeant (E5), meaning he was never an officer.
"He never went anywhere with a military career," O'Donnell said.
'A tissue of lies and deception'
Moore did not go into the military after graduating from college, according to fraternity brothers and former business associates. They say Moore moved to Australia after graduation from DePauw in December 1986. By March 1988 he was working as an equity options trader at a bank in Sydney and moonlighting for a company called Eurotek that imported and resold used cars.
Court records show that the Australian customs service raided Eurotek's office in May 1989, seizing five cars and documents that showed Moore had kept two sets of records, one of which systematically undervalued the imported cars.
In February 1992 Moore was indicted and convicted of deceptively obtaining over $300,000 in connection with the used car business, according to court records (PDF). He was sentenced to a 16-month prison term. He was released after serving a portion of his sentence. In 1993 he testified against his former Eurotek associate in a related criminal trial in Sydney.
The judge in the second case described Moore as a key figure in the enterprise, which procured used Rolls Royces and Porsches in the Chicago area and shipped them to Australia with fraudulent documentation of their value. The cars were then resold at a profit. While accepting some of Moore's testimony, Judge J. Byrne said Moore was "a man who had so enshrouded himself in a tissue of lies and deception as to be a witness whose credit is of little value."
Byrne ruled that Moore's associate, an Indonesian man named Hiran Jayakody, was "the moving spirit" behind Eurtotek. Jayakody was ordered to pay a fine of approximately $1 million. At the date of Moore's discharge from the U.S. Army Reserves in April 1994, he was still fighting legal charges in Australia.
In December 1994, Moore's 1992 conviction was reversed. Though Moore had admitted that he acted to defraud Australian customs agency, the Eurotek trial raised doubts about the evidence used to convict him and his conviction was struck from the record.
In 1995, Moore enrolled in the University of Chicago business school. He received his master's of business administration in 1997, according to school records. A year later he filed for bankruptcy in Chicago, declaring that he was $2.7 million in debt and his two companies, Advanced Mittworks, Inc. and Knight International, were insolvent.
In a biography submitted last year to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in support of his bid for state tax incentives, Moore stated that Knight International included two companies and that "each was sold upon reaching revenue in the $50M range."
'Best Business Practices'
Moore was operating a software company in Chicago in the summer of 2002 when he first made contact with the men behind Triple Canopy. According to a court filing submitted by Moore's attorneys in the pending Illinois fraud lawsuit, Moore entered e-mail discussions with Matthew Mann, a former Delta Force veteran, about establishing a private security firm. Mann is listed on the Triple Canopy Web site as a co-founder of the company with a Special Forces veteran named Tom Fortis. Mann and Fortis declined to be interviewed for this article.
The company was founded in Chicago in 2003, according to its Web site. Moore was involved with the company by July 2003 when he applied to register trademarks for "Triple Canopy Group" and 90 other related names with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
After Triple Canopy started winning contracts in Iraq in late 2003, Moore presented himself as a leader in the burgeoning industry of private military contractors. In February 2004, he represented the company at a $995-a-seat business forum held at the National Press Club in Washington. He recommended that firms looking to do business in Iraq should find a local partner.
"You are in a position to mentor them and help them with perhaps best business practices from your country or your world, and at the same time, you're in a position to try to offer a series of services or products that don't exist in Iraq," Moore said.
In March 2004, Moore donated $2,000 to George Bush's re-election committee and identified himself as the CEO of Triple Canopy, according to federal election records.
Less than a month later, he was fired by Triple Canopy's board of directors. In a lawsuit filed in May 2004, the company charged him with fraud, with raiding the company treasury for his own profit, and seizing control of the company's Web addresses and communications infrastructure as a bargaining chip in negotiations of a severance package.
Moore denied the charges, saying he used company funds for business expenses with the knowledge of his colleagues. The lawsuit was settled out of court in September 2005. The terms of the agreement are confidential, but according to bank records filed in the Illinois fraud lawsuit, Moore received a $6 million payment in March 2006 identified as "Triple Canopy settlement."
Why did Moore's legal problems in Australia, his bankruptcy and his apparent misrepresentation of his military background not surface when it came to gaining millions of dollars in security contracts with the U.S. government?
One reason, according to the Office of Defense Trade Controls (ODTC), is that officers of companies applying for Iraq contracts need only swear that they have not been convicted of violations of the U.S. defense export laws.
"We might want to look at changing that," said Dave Trimble, chief of ODTC's compliance and registration division. "We have broad authority to take any derogatory information into account."
Where the PMC industry is going
Moore's latest venture in northern Michigan has won official support while stirring local opposition.
Moore's colleagues say he is eager to commercialize the market for privatized disaster response. Rick Johnson, the former speaker of the Michigan Legislature who now serves as Sovereign Deed's lobbyist, said Moore is "taking the industry where it needs to go next."
A community group calling itself We Don't Need Sovereign Deed says the company's claims of economic benefits are unsupported and that the idea of privatizing disaster response is undemocratic.
Moore's proposal to establish an operational center in the town of Pellston has been endorsed by a bipartisan cast of state officials. Earlier this year, Democratic state Sen. Gary MacDowell and Republican state Sen. Jason Allen drafted a bill to grant tax abatements to encourage Sovereign Deed to locate on 700 acres of municipal property adjacent to an airport. The state Legislature unanimously approved the bill, which was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
Opponents have asked questions about a proposed long-term lease of 700 acres of municipal property and the construction of a hangar to accommodate army cargo planes in Sovereign Deed operations. Elected officials in Pellston have declined to answer the questions, citing confidentiality agreements with the firm.
"Moore's smart," said resident Tim Boyko. "He set it up so people cannot question, and it's like these local officials' brains short out when they get around retired generals and homeland security-type people."
Credit: Photo of Barrett H. Moore courtesy of DePauw University archives.
Catch the rest of Michigan Messenger's coverage of Sovereign Deed at this link.
Tags: Sovereign Deed, Jason Allen, security, privatization of disaster response, private security company, MI Disaster Capitalism, (All Tags)
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