Your tax dollars down another rathole: Phony vet claims to haveextensive intell experience, gets mi

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 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."

http://www.michiganmessenger.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=727