BY ARUN PRADHAN
"Set against the richly variegated backdrop of history, this is the story of a unique American who started with virtually nothing and built a worldwide security empire. An extraordinary life story spanning over seven decades, as well as a compelling — and often humorous — love story that proved to be the most powerful catalyst behind his success."
Sounding like a particularly bad late night movie, this is an extract from the authorised biography of George Wackenhut, entitled The Quiet American. George Wackenhut was a former FBI agent, the man behind the US-based Wackenhut Corporation.
All of Australia's detention centres are owned and run by Australasian Correctional Management (ACM), a subsidiary of Wackenhut Corporation.
In a documentary screened on SBS last year, George Wackenhut welcomed Australia's policies saying, "[Australia is] really starting to punish people, as they should have done all along". Shortly after he added, "This year we are going to make US$400 million".
In fact on May 4, 2001 the Wackenhut Corporation reported a 12% increase in first quarter revenues to US$663.5 million. At the close of 2000 the company had received contracts to develop and manage 55 detention facilities spanning the United States, Australia, Britain, Puerto Rico, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada and the Caribbean island of Curacao, with a total of over 40,000 beds.
Conditions in the camps
One ACM worker has described the company's Woomera Immigration Detention Centre as "like a concentration camp". Complete with razor wire, barbed wire, steel fences and patrolling officers, it is hard to deny the comparison.
The detainees themselves are treated as criminals and are dehumanised. They are assigned numbers corresponding to the prefix of the boat they arrived on, such as "Don 27" or "Rap 180". These were the same people who in August last year staged a desperate protest at Woomera, waving signs saying "save us from ACM".
Other detainees are used as cheap labour by ACM. According to reports in the Sydney Morning Herald last year, inmates work in kitchens and clean toilets, often working 12 hours a week in return for a $15 or $20 phone card.
Throughout 1999 a series of scandals damaged Wackenhut in the US. In Texas, Wackenhut was stripped of a $12-million-a-year contract and fined $625,000 for failing to live up to promises in the running of a state jail.
In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, five guards at a Wackenhut work-release facility were fired or punished for having sex with inmates. In April 1999 the state of Louisiana took over the running of Wackenhut's 15-month-old juvenile prison after the US Justice Department accused Wackenhut of subjecting its young inmates to "excessive abuse and neglect".
In the same year a New Mexico legislative report called for a near-total revamp of prison operations, including two run by Wackenhut.
US journalist Gregory Palast commented on the case: "New Mexico's privately operated prisons are filled with America's impoverished, violent outcasts — and those are the guards". He catalogued lax background checks before hiring guards, which led to several alleged cases of guards physically and sexually abusing inmates.
In the US, Wackenhut has appeared in the Federal Court 62 times since 1999, largely resulting from prisoners' claims of human right abuses.
The company has been accused of trying to maximise profits in its private prisons at the expense of drug rehabilitation, counselling and literacy programs. In 1995 Wackenhut was investigated for diverting $700,000 intended for drug treatment programs at a Texas prison.
Diversification
According to the Wackenhut Corporation web site (<http://www.wackenhut.com>), the company is not just about private prisons. Other areas of service include "physical security, alarms, cash-in-transit, cargo tracking, fire fighting and prevention, background checks and emergency protection".
Wackenhut provides cheap labour for corporations: in Austin, Texas, a company which produced circuit boards initially closed down only to re-open within one of Wackenhut's prisons. Prisoners now work in this factory producing goods for companies including IBM and Microsoft.
Wackenhut's surveillance service has made it the target of civil liberty groups. In March 1999 a federal district court in Alabama fined Wackenhut Corporation and its client, an aerospace company, US$8 million dollars over allegations of illegal wire tapping, theft of business documents and corporate sabotage.
Wackenhut's surveillance history can be traced back to the company's founding in 1954. A hard-line right-winger, George Wackenhut made his money during the McCarthy period, building up and selling dossiers on suspected communists.
Frank Donner, the author of Age of Surveillance, claims that the Wackenhut Corporation added to its files after the McCarthyism hysteria had ebbed and by 1966 Wackenhut maintained files on over four million suspected dissidents.
Several Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives have become Wackenhut executives upon retirement, but some claim this overlap to be more extensive.
William Corbett, who worked for the CIA for 18 years, told the US-based Spy Magazine, "For years Wackenhut has been involved with the CIA and other intelligence organisations. Wackenhut would allow the CIA to occupy positions within the company [in order to carry out] clandestine operations."
He also said that Wackenhut would supply intelligence agencies with information, and that it was compensated for this "in a quid pro quo arrangement".
Retired FBI agent William Hinshaw also told the magazine about Wackenhut's ease in snaring lucrative governmental contracts as being governments' way of "pay[ing] Wackenhut for their clandestine help".
"It is known throughout the industry that if you want a dirty job done, call Wackenhut", Hinshaw said.
Wackenhut has successfully moved into the niche market of protecting nuclear power plants. Now servicing 26 nuclear plants, Wackenhut's advertising material is quick to remind us of the national service they provide "in an age when threats of random vandalism, premeditated sabotage and terrorism are ever-present".
This has put them directly at odds with anti-nuclear groups who are potential victims of Wackenhut's "intelligence-gathering" ventures.
And of course, keep Wackenhut in mind for Christmas with its large range of products that can be bought online: George Wackenhut's biography, golf umbrellas, swiss army knives and a complete clothing line, all proudly bearing "Wackenhut" branding.
These sometimes bizarre diversifications reflect Wackenhut's ability to take advantage of trends in global capital as the preferred "outsourcer for the state". Policies such as privatisation and wearing away working conditions have gone hand in hand with "law and order" crackdowns and fortress policies to protect rich First World nations from refugees.
Wackenhut Corporation should not be viewed as an anomaly or an evil corporation, so much as an effective one. Ultimately their story is simply a case study — just one particularly nasty parasite in a system that allows millions of dollars to be made from institutionalised inequality.