WILD WACKENHUT ALSO GUARDING NUCLEAR SITES

Michigan Messenger - Wackenhut, the private security company whose Armor Group employees were recently caught partying and neglecting security at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, is also responsible for guarding many nuclear facilities in the United States including Michigan’s Palisades power plant near South Haven. For several years, government oversight bodies, labor groups and whistleblowers have warned that the company’s lax behavior at nuclear plants endangers public safety. . . "The focus appears to be on creating the illusion of ’security’ not actually providing it." In a 2005 letter to then-U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called Wackenhut guards "the corporate equivalent of the Keystone Cops" and asked that use of the company at nuclear facilities be reconsidered. "In the past year alone," Markey said, "Wackenhut personnel have been found cheating on security tests, altering security training requirements, violating [Department of Energy] regulations, failing at security exercises and retaliating against whistleblowers — why hasn’t the company been permanently barred from guarding nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials?"