To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. LEADERSHIP PROFILE BY DAVID SILVERBERG JEFFREY STARR SAYS HE CAN REMEMBER A TIME WHEN “A WACKENHUT” WAS A DEVICE THAT LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS COULD PUT ON A CAR TO TRACK IT. That was in the early 1960s, not long after George Wackenhut, a former FBI agent, had founded the corporation that bears his name. Wackenhut intended to provide his customers with solutions that addressed their particular needs. It was a formula that worked.Wackenhut grew over the years, providing a widening array of services and consulting and became one of the premier names in the private security market. In 2002, it was purchased by Group 4 Falck, based in Denmark, which then merged with another company, Securicor, in 2004 and was renamed Group 4 Securicor plc. Today, G4S Wackenhut is becoming better known in the United States as G4S and, as such, is the second largest corporation in the world, with 580,000 employees and contracts around the globe, including many with governments. In 2007, the company’s turnover was about $6.5 billion. To oversee G4S’ corporate development in the United States, the company turned to a veteran security professional with experience in both government and the private sector. Sept. 11, 2001. “After 9/11, I spent a lot of time in central Asia,” he recalled. He was involved in special operations, low intensity conflict, and he started a counterterror finance program in cooperation with the Treasury Department to identify terrorist financial networks. It was his expertise in finance that led him, upon retirement from government service in 2006, to Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York, where he was vice president of the business intelligence group and in charge of evaluating and mitigating all potential hazards to the firm and its innumerable transactions. JEFFREY STARR Senior Vice President G4S Wackenhut “Our approach is intended to become much more holistic and intramodal in nature, so that we can not only address the immediate requirements of the client but also address the factors outside the immediate requirement, even if we’re not talking about providing contract services.” involved in the shadowy world of the nuclear black market, buying up loose nuclear material for the US government. That work won him a 1994 medal from the secretary of Defense for a project that acquired over 600 kilograms of weaponsgrade, highly enriched uranium (enough for two dozen weapons) in Kazakhstan. He won a second medal for his work in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova, acquiring loose nuclear material and building ties with their governments. His work on the nuclear black market led him to investigate the financial networks that fueled the illicit trade—and gave him an appreciation of where nuclear proliferation was heading. “We kept running into evidence that countries like Iran were all over that,” he recalled. Starr’s work in the former Soviet republics put him in a good position to significantly assist US efforts after the attacks of The big picture Today, Starr is steadily building G4S’ business, but, characteristically, he’s taking a very broad approach. “Our approach is intended to become much more holistic and intramodal in nature, so that we can not only address the immediate requirements of the client but also address the factors outside the immediate requirement, even if we’re not talking about providing contract services,” he said of G4S’ efforts. However, Starr and G4S are looking well beyond their own immediate plans. “It’s in our interest that our industry be well perceived,” he reflected. “Everyone gets painted with one reputational brush, and so we feel it’s important to not only provide good services to our clients but provide a good service and some thought services and some thought leadership to those in positions to make decisions about broader security regimes in the homeland security area or thinking through how government should interact with security contractors.” To this end, Starr said he will be pursuing dialogues within and throughout the security industry with friends, outsiders and other companies to raise the general level of dialogue, as well as the caliber and character of the industry. Even as G4S and its rivals compete for contracts, Starr wants to make sure it’s done with the aim of serving the country and the world. The goal, Starr said, is “to ensure that the standards of our industry are in fact recognized as being ethical and effective. And then let us compete with the competition on other grounds, but let’s not pull the caliber or the character of the industry down around us.” HST On the frontlines During his 20 years in government, Starr was on the frontlines of security—from the most philosophical and arcane considerations of arms control in the highest reaches of Washington to the weeds and dust of counterterrorism and low intensity conflict on the plains of central Asia. Starr’s tutelage began with one of the stars of government service upon his initial 1986 assignment at the State Department. There he served as a special assistant to legendary arms control expert Paul Nitze. “I was a young guy, and it was heady and exciting to be in a working group on testing activities in space,” he recalled. Once the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Starr, like the rest of the government, had to shift his focus. He helped draw up new US military plans in light of the new reality and turned his attention to the newly independent former Soviet republics and their nuclear material. It was at this time that Starr became 56 May 2009 | Homeland Security Today Magazine This month’s issue is now available online at…