Diarist's note: Back in 2006, when I first started following the body armor scandal, Armor Holdings was one of the biggest suppliers of armor to the military and had a potentially criminal relationship with some dubious testing of a competitor's product by the Pentagon. When Armor Holdings was purchased a year later by the British company BAE, I wondered who these Brits were and why they would be interested in Armor Holdings.
It only took a little bit of research to discover that the BAE-Armor Holdings deal was a match made in military-industrial heaven: If Armor Holdings was tainted with the patina of corruption, BAE was saturated with corruption on a grand scale, hip-deep in bribery and scandal and colorful sleazebags around the globe. If the world of corrupt arms dealers had its own version of TMZ, BAE would be featured on it every night, the Paris Hilton of bribery.
BAE is the largest arms exporter in the world. The reach of its slimy tentacles is long. The person chosen by President Obama to be No. 3 at the Pentagon, Michele Flournoy, represented the interests of BAE through the lobbying firm she and her husband own. Mitch McConnell was called onto the carpet a little over a year ago for trying to slip a $25 million earmark for BAE into a defense bill for a project not even the Pentagon had requested – after BAE had donated $53,000 to his campaign coffers and $500,000 to the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.
And BAE is not alone among those who traffic in the sale of body armor to the Pentagon; plenty of other unsavory, loathsome characters make up that number, including founder and former CEO of Point Blank Body Armor David H. Brooks. In this diary we'll hold our noses and turn over just a couple of rocks scattered around the fetid landscape of defense contracting. We'll start at the top, looking at a story of corruption on a grand scale. - o.h.
TO KILL A DOVE
On October 30, 2007, five jumbo jets belonging to the Saudi royal family pulled onto a private taxiway at London’s Heathrow Airport. As crew members began the three-hour process of unloading luggage, a fleet of 84 limousines transported the royal retinue from the airport into downtown London. It was the largest such delegation ever to arrive on the British Isles from the sheikdom - including as it did 23 personal advisors, more than 400 aides, and several of Saudi King Abdullah's wives - and the first Saudi state visit to the U.K. in 20 years.
King Abdullah was given the use of Queen Elizabeth's Bentley for the ride to Buckingham Palace. At the official state dinner later that night, guests dined on noisettes of venison, nibbled raspberry shortbread tartlet and sipped Bollinger Grande Année 1996 vintage champagne.
Putting aside all of its pomp and circumstance, the official state visit had as its ostensible purpose cementing U.K.-Saudi relations and exploring avenues to peace in the Middle East. But the Saudis undoubtedly had another goal in mind for their trip: to extort a pledge from newly minted Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government that it would finally drive a stake through the heart of an effort to revive an inquiry begun in 2004 by Great Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into al-Yamamah ("the dove" in Arabic), an arms deal 20 years earlier in which Britain’s largest defense contractor, BAE, had paid $2 billion to Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan as kickbacks in exchange for the Saudi government’s purchase of modern jet fighters.
Never before had such a delegation from the world's largest oil-producing nation visited the British Isles. But such is the level at which arms trading sometimes takes place that the Saudis would see fit to dispatch the largest delegation ever - and the British would see fit to bow to the Saudis' demands.
KING ABDULLLAH'S VISIT was the logical final step in an escalating series of threats made to the U.K. by the Saudis - Britain's biggest customer for arms - in response to the BAE bribery probe, an investigation that, to the Saudis' mounting annoyance, would not go away. The Brits' nosing around the BAE-Saudi relationship also was proving increasingly inconvenient to an ongoing $60 million slush fund that BAE maintained, a slush fund that provided Saudi royalty and functionaries with $ 300,000 Rolls-Royces, prostitutes, off-the-chain Las Vegas junkets and lavish stays in Beverly Hills. By the time King Abdullah's entourage touched down at Heathrow in October 2007, the Saudis wanted to know if no one would rid them of this meddlesome probe.
It had been more than two years earlier, in a meeting with then-Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2005 - the same month that terrorists had carried out a series of subway bombings in London that killed 52 people and injured 700 - that the Saudis first believed they had secured assurances that the inquiry would be stopped.
But despite whatever impression the Saudis may have gotten from that meeting with Blair, the investigation wasn't stopped. On the contrary, it proceeded inexorably. BAE's attorneys dissembled and harrumphed in attempts to kill the probe - oddly, making no noises about any supposed threat to national security, the rationale later cited when the inquiry ultimately was dropped - but the Serious Fraud Office wasn't buying any of it, and its staff burrowed deeper and deeper into the matter.
Then, in September 2006, the SFO crossed the line, as far as BAE and the Saudis were concerned: its investigators convinced Swiss banking authorities to hand over their bank records.
The Saudis and BAE decided it was time to play hardball. A senior Saudi diplomat delivered a warning to Blair that if the British government did not back off, the Saudis would withhold their cooperation into any ongoing or future terror investigations, as well as – not insignificantly – canceling a planned £20 billion order for 72 Eurofighter jets, for which BAE was the major contractor. BAE in turn, reminded certain British politicians which side their bread was buttered on.
The response to that first round of warnings evidently did not satisfy the Saudis, so they ratcheted things up a notch. A couple months later, in November and December 2006, Great Britain's ambassador to Saudi Arabia met with the director of the SFO, Robert Wardle, to emphasize the seriousness of the situation. Evidently persuaded, Wardle proposed a deal wherein BAE would plead guilty to corruption in a limited fashion and thus "avoid any need to name members of the Saudi royal family in open court."
That wasn't good enough for the Saudis or BAE. The same day the British attorney general presented the plea-bargain idea to Blair, Prince Bandar himself flew to London. He told top Foreign Office officials that not only would Britain face more terrorist attacks if the investigation were not dropped, but that the multi-billion-pound Eurofighter deal was in imminent danger as well.
In the face of the prince's threat, Blair buckled. He instructed his attorney general to drop the Saudi investigation. Apologists for the Blair administration would later say that the choice was an agonizing one, that it was between bringing to light and holding to account for a decades-old corruption scandal, and the loss of "British lives on British streets." Blair warned of "real and immediate risk of a collapse in UK/Saudi security, intelligence and diplomatic co-operation, which was likely to have seriously negative consequences for the UK public interest in terms of . . . national security." Confronted later at the G8 summit in June 2007 about the matter, Blair said,
"I don't believe the investigation, incidentally, would have led anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital strategic relationship for our country in terms of fighting terrorism, in terms of the Middle East, in terms of British interests there, quite apart from the fact that we would have lost thousands, thousands of British jobs."
The inquiry was halted. The abrupt quashing of the investigation left the staff of the SFO "weakened, demoralised and humiliated," according to one account.
Even after Bandar's threat, though, the investigation wasn't dead yet - only mostly dead: two anti-corruption groups, Corner House Research and the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), had gone to Britain's High Court in an effort to reopen the investigation. So in order to ensure that it was never raised again, eleven months after Bandar delivered his terrorist warning, in October 2007, King Abdullah himself flew in with his entourage, as detailed above.
The Saudis' unprecedented royal visit did not stop the British High Court from ruling six months later in favor of Corner House and CAAT that Blair’s attorney general had been wrong in abandoning the investigation, and ordering that it be resumed.
The court said in April the Saudi threat over intelligence links was a "successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom".
Judges Alan Moses and Jeremy Sullivan added that the SFO and the government had made an "abject surrender" to "blatant threats".
But regardless of the High Court's ruling, it appeared that King Abdullah's over-the-top coming-out party and BAE's oh-so-gentle persuasion had combined to convince the very small group of people who most needed convincing: Great Britain's ultimate legal arbiter - higher even than the High Court - the so-called "Law Lords." In this case the matter was reviewed by five peers within the House of Lords, Britain's upper house of parliament (the very same House of Lords of which 139 members were recently revealed to be paid lobbyists), who proceeded last summer to overrule the High Court and rule instead that quashing the investigation had been the right thing to do. In effect, the Law Lords said that abandoning the inquiry was the pragmatic choice, never mind the legal principles at stake.
And thus was killed the investigation into al-Yamamah, the dove.
(Ironically, perhaps believing that the Law Lords' final and unarguable killing of the investigation had earned him some brownie points with the Saudis, Prime Minister Brown shuffled cap in hand to the Persian Gulf states a few months ago seeking a handout to prop up the International Monetary Fund. He was ultimately to be disappointed - the Saudis had no desire to part with their petrodollars. And that £20 billion sale of Eurofighters? Well, the U.K. and the Saudis inked the deal in September 2007, but the U.S. might still be holding it up, since the Saudis still haven't taken delivery. BAE, meanwhile, continues to coo in King Abdullah's ear. And Prince Bandar, when asked by the BBC whether he believed bribery had taken place in the al-Yamamah case, replied, "Yes . . . So what?")
THE SUCCESSFUL ARM-TWISTING of the British government by BAE and the Saudis was a brazen example of the power wielded by international arms dealers and those who traffic with them. BAE is one of Great Britain's largest corporations and the biggest arms exporter in the world. BAE’s annual sales exceed $50 billion. It is far and away Great Britain's largest defense contractor, even though 55% of its sales are in the United States. BAE is considered so important to British defense and the British economy that the British government has a "special share" in the corporation, and thus might have veto power over any potential takeover. BAE, in other words, is considered by the British to be Too Big To Fail.
In spite of that, BAE’s allegiance is to no flag, as demonstrated in comments made by BAE’s outgoing CEO Mike Turner last summer. Turner, speaking before the Law Lords had issued their ruling that put the last nail in the coffin of the BAE/Saudi investigation, threatened to move BAE's operations to the United States. "I hope it doesn’t come to that," he intoned ominously. He made the same threat a few months later after leaving the company.
But Turner might have to deal with some other business in the U.S. - business that he would rather avoid.
THE SCENE SHIFTS: MAY 2008 - different continent, different airport, different welcome. BAE CEO Michael Turner lands at George H.W. Bush International Airport in Houston on his way to visit executives at the Armor Holdings plant in Sealy, Texas. Upon his arrival, Turner is detained by agents of the Federal Bureau of investigation, his computer and PDA taken from him as he is escorted to an interrogation room. Documents in his briefcase are photocopied. Turner is served with a subpoena. A similar scene is playing out at Newark Airport, where Sir Nigel Rudd, a member of of BAE's board of directors, is undergoing the same treatment. At the same time, several other BAE executives in the U.S. are served subpoenas at their homes or while in transit by the FBI in a coordinated operation. There is speculation that Turner might be extradited and have to face a grand jury.
The FBI acknowledged in July 2007 that it had opened an investigation into BAE and its payments to Prince Bandar (some of the money had been routed through a U.S. bank - namely, the infamous Riggs Bank). In August 2007 the FBI flew Peter Gardiner, the man who ran a $60 million BAE/Saudi slush fund, to the U.S. for questioning, taking him out of the U.K. via Paris to avoid detection by the British. U.S. investigators also obtained Swiss banking records. Learning of the FBI probe, Prince Bandar retained the services of former FBI director Louis Freeh to help fight any potential U.S. charges.
(It was just after this, in September 2007, that the Michigan town of Harper Woods filed a class-action lawsuit against Bandar, BAE and several of BAE's executives, including Turner and Rudd. The lawsuit sought damages to Harper Woods' city employee retirement fund resulting from BAE's fiduciary negligence and Bandar's illegal actions. The suit was dismissed last September, but that dismissal was subsequently appealed.)
When it became obvious that BAE wasn't cooperating with the FBI's investigation, Turner and Rudd were detained, and the other subpoenas served.
BAE AND BRITAIN: THE BRIBERY TWINS
If a titan of corruption such as BAE were to flourish anywhere, it is natural that it should thrive in Great Britain, a country that has received international recognition for its ethical laxity.
No fewer than 139 of the House of Lords' 743 peers are paid consultants (as the British like to call them). A recent investigative report in the London Times caught one peer - who just so happens to have been a longtime lobbyist for BAE - agreeing on videotape to modify legislation in return for a payment of £120,000. (Other presumably less accomplished peers, perhaps more sensitive to the harsh realities of the struggling British economy, offered the same service for discount rates as low as £78,000; whether a set of Ginsu knives was thrown in is not known.)
After discreetly delivering a stinging letter condemning London's record on policing corruption last June, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) came out with an equally unflattering report last October:
[T]he Government was slated for its failure to successfully prosecute a single firm for bribery, despite ratifying the body's anti-bribery convention 10 years ago . . .
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw - the same Jack Straw who had intervened in 2005 to try and halt the BAE/Saudi investigation - said in response to the report,
"The U.K. is fully committed to combating foreign bribery"
in spite of the fact that
Britain promised [the OECD] in June 2000 to introduce a law to criminalize foreign bribery, [and] has not yet done so.
The chairman of Transparency International (UK), Laurence Cockcroft, said today: "The Government's claim that the UK is leading the way in tackling corruption is fiction . . . There have been only two cases in the UK since the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention came into force. In contrast, there have been 103 cases in the USA, 43 in Germany, and 19 in France. The facts are plain to see, more prosecutions of companies and individuals are needed to send the right message to business," he said.
Not amused by the OECD report, with great fanfare the U.K. the following month proposed new anti-corruption legislation that would bring it into compliance with the rest of the civilized world - perhaps someday they'll actually enact and enforce it.
For its part, BAE, in an effort to polish its image after the OECD report, hired a former chief justice for $10,000 a day to conduct an "ethics investigation" that conveniently investigated BAE's ethics for the period beginning the day he was hired. And the company decided - because it had found ethics Jesus - to beef up its legal team to 120 lawyers - not that they won't be needing them, but really: nothing screams "COMMITMENT TO INTEGRITY" louder than the hiring of 120 lawyers by the most corrupt defense contractor in the most corrupt nation in Europe, right? Besides, if BAE were to implement the Woolf Report's 23 recommendations as well as it implements its own safety standards - well, let's just say there might be trouble.
But I guess BAE must be doing something right when it comes to reforming its ways - after all, Ethisphere thought highly enough of them to ask representatives from both BAE and the German company Siemens - no slouches themselves when it comes to bribery; Siemens recently paid the largest corruption penalty in history: $ 1.6 billion - to be highlighted speakers at a recent "Global Ethics Summit" in New York City:
Representatives from Siemens, BAE Systems . . . and other leading organizations will offer expert commentary during panel conversations covering anti-corruption topics such as communicating zero tolerance from the top down and corruption's hidden costs.
Well, you can hardly blame them: even BAE's outgoing CEO Turner said last summer that -
the company had never done anything illegal
Excuse me - I have to clean coffee from my monitor.
But BAE's expertise in bribery hasn't been limited to the kingdoms of England and Saudi Arabia. In fact, I'm pretty sure "BAE" means "corruption" in Tanzanian, Afrikaans, Czech, German, Swedish, and Spanish.
With all of the bribery cases they're involved in literally all over the world - besides Saudi Arabia, there's South Africa (whose president - surprise! - has decided not to pursue an investigation into bribery charges) Tanzania, Switzerland, Sweden, Zimbabwe, Chile, Romania, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Qatar - but check back with me after lunch, there might be more - oh, wait!: Liechtenstein! - it could very well be said that in the Olympics of worldwide defense-contractor corruption BAE is the undisputed gold medalist. Certainly no other defense contractor can boast an entire theme page on the U.K. Guardian website devoted solely to tracking its corruption.
It stands to reason that BAE does business in the United States in very much the same manner it does business everywhere else - with kickbacks, payoffs, bribes and influence-grabbing.
Within the United States alone, BAE and its various subsidiaries are involved in defense contracts ranging from the HAARP program in Alaska, in which an array of high-energy-emitting antennas is designed to literally alter atmospheric and geologic conditions on Earth for tactical and strategic military purposes, to the controversial Human Terrain program (although that might have just changed), to aerial refueling tankers, to individual body armor and MRAP armored vehicles. (They even make a controversial drug-testing kit.) And, like most modern multinational corporations, whether in the defense industry or otherwise, BAE does not let borders or political ideologies stand in its way: BAE advanced avionics components can be found on American-made Boeing tankers and MiG-29 fighters manufactured in Russia.
Here's how much business BAE does here: in a press release from one day in November 2007, the Department of Defense announced contracts with BAE and its subsidiaries Simula and Stewart & Stevenson totaling nearly $ 1 billion; that year, BAE did more than $8 billion in business with the U.S. military.
Meantime, Iraq and Afghanistan bin beddy, beddy good to BAE, which anticipates adding 8,000 jobs this year, after profits rose 42 percent in 2008.
BAE BRINGS ITS BUSINESS MODEL TO BODY ARMOR
In May 2006 the Pentagon conducted tests on Dragon Skin body armor. The testing was overseen by Col. John Norwood, head of Project Executive Officer - Soldier, the branch of the Pentagon responsible for outfitting U.S. troops.
At the time of the testing, the U.S. military's largest supplier of Interceptor body armor was a company named Armor Holdings, which had contracted that year for the sale of $360 million worth of Interceptor. If the testing of Dragon Skin were to reveal that its performance was superior to that of Interceptor, Armor Holdings stood to lose a lot of business. Fortunately for Armor Holdings, Col. Norwood stopped the testing early and declared that Dragon Skin had failed. Within a few months after the tests, Col. Norwood was hired by Armor Holdings as a senior vice president of their Specialty Defense Systems division.
A few months later, BAE announced that it planned to buy Armor Holdings - thus making BAE in one fell swoop the largest supplier of Interceptor body armor for the U.S. military, and making ex-Col. Norwood an employee of BAE. (In the photo at right, still-Col. Norwood enjoys the company of some of his future BAE colleagues in July 2005.)
GIVING MILLIONAIRE PLAYBOY ARMS DEALERS A BAD NAME
If you were to believe the portrait Hollywood paints of the world inhabited by international arms traders, you might think that it is a world full of sheiks and high-priced call girls, of obscenely wealthy rugby-playing sports-agent tobacco moguls, of Teutonic counts with Swiss bank accounts who live in far-flung castles, of modern-day Lawrence of Arabia types, of money-grubbing British lords and of wannabe high-rollers who think they can buy their way into high society and respectability.
You would be right, of course.
The Count and The White Sultan
Viennese count arrested amid bribery probe at BAE Systems
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, 55, a consultant for BAE Systems, was travelling from his Perthshire home - Dalnaglar Castle in Glenshee - to Austria when he was held.
[snip]
After his arrest, Mensdorff-Pouilly went with investigators to Carlisle, where the SFO have jurisdiction, with his chauffeur-driven car following behind.
As part of the probe, investigators raided his castle - where guests pay £250 a night - as well as three homes in London. Addresses in Hungary and Austria were also raided.
The count's wife, Maria Rauch-Kallat, was secretary-general of the Austrian People's Party from 1995 through 2003.
Mensdorff-Pouilly (c'mon, admit it: you love saying that name) was brought into the BAE deal by another character straight out of Ian Fleming: the late Timothy Landon, sometimes known as "The White Sultan."
Landon was perhaps the premier arms dealer in the Middle East, a longtime friend with the Sultan of Oman who helped his friend ascend to the throne of the oil-rich emirate in a bloodless coup in 1970.
Landon was, after all, a man whose murky fortune was created from a conflict in which he helped the current Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Sa'id, seize power from his own father in a coup surreptitiously orchestrated by the British government. He was a lifelong adventurer and arms dealer who filled his coffers through a close friendship with the secretive Arabian dictator, and later became a crucial strategic link between the UK and the Arab world . . .
Earlier this year [2007] Landon was named as a key figure in the BAE Systems affair, allegedly passing money to an Austrian aristocrat to ease an arms deal between the firm and the Czech government. The sale is being investigated in three European countries. Questions have been raised in the Hungarian parliament over Landon's international business activities. He is alleged to have been involved in arms deals to dubious regimes over several decades, and has been accused of breaking oil embargos to South Africa and Rhodesia.
He owned his own secretive hamlet in Hampshire and was at one time reported to be richer than the Queen herself.
Landon died in 2007 of lung cancer.
Humans, guns, tobacco, diamonds: everything has a price
John Bredenkamp, one of Britain's wealthiest men and a former Rhodesian national rugby captain, is under investigation in at least two countries (the U.K., Sweden and South Africa) for various improprieties concerning a deal in which South Africa purchased Saab fighter jets from Sweden.
Bredenkamp, whose fortune has been estimated at up to £700 million, saw some of his properties in South Africa raided by special financial investigators in November in connection with a probe into the business dealings in South Africa of BAe Systems, Britain's biggest arms manufacturer.
But the US Treasury, blacklisting Bredenkamp in November, described him as "a well-known Mugabe insider involved in various business activities, including tobacco trading, grey-market arms trading and trafficking ... and diamond extraction.
Bredenkamp built his Casalee Group into the world's fifth-largest tobacco company before he sold it in 1993. His Masters International sports agency represented, among others, golfers Ernie Els and Nick Price.
The Peer Without Peer
What is the price of democracy?
That’s easy: £120,000 (about $175,000) – maybe cheaper if you find the right member of Parliament. If you want the services of former longtime BAE "consultant" and MP Lord Taylor of Blackburn, though, expect to pay full freight.
Lord Taylor is not bashful about the price he charges: as he will tell you, he is familiar with all parliamentary traditions – including charging for travel and lodging, for which he pocketed a tidy £400,000 ($580,000) for the period from 2001 to 2007. He most recently got his powdered wig in a wringer when he was caught on tape agreeing to modify pending legislation in exchange for an annual retainer of £120,000. (Three other MPs said they would do it for less.)
How can he live with himself, you ask, charging such outrageous sums for political favors? What - you think it’s cheap, dressing like this? The dry-cleaning and optometrist bills alone will bring you to your knees!
Scumbag Millionaire
International jet-setting counts, modern-day Lawrence of Arabia, billionaire tycoons, members of Parliament -
- and then we have David H. Brooks, just an average working schlub trying to make a buck. Any way he can.
(Brooks, much as he might want to, has nothing to do with BAE or any of its scandals. But he remains such a deliciously sordid figure - the gritty, grasping, uncouth American counterpoint to BAE's jet-setting cast of corrupt characters - that one can hardly be blamed for including him here. Right?)
In 1992, Brooks owned a trading firm with his brother. The Securities and Exchange commission suspended the firm and forbade the brothers from engaging in trading for five years after an investigation into insider trading. Brooks found a way around that ban to purchase Point Blank body armor three years later.
In 2003, workers at one of Point Blank's plants in Florida reported that the vests being made there were defective.
The employees—who were seeking union representation with UNITE (the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees)—alleged that Point Blank's management had ordered employees to ship out vests that were poorly made and had the wrong sizing labels sewn on.
Sandra Hatfield, Point Blank's chief operating officer who would later be indicted along with Brooks for insider trading and fraud, retorted,
"They've yet to find one [defective vest], and you know what, they will not find it — it's not there to find," she said. "And that's what I always said. It was union propaganda. That's all it was."
Thing was, though, Hatfield was lying: the vests were defective (PDF file) and DHB, the testing laboratories and the Pentagon all knew it; the Marines ended up recalling 23,000 of them.
So the lifestyle to which Mr. Brooks had grown accustomed was not to last long. He was sued and indicted, and among all of those court documents, we learned a little bit more about Mr. Brooks and what moved him. Evidently this bastion of patriotism
caused DHB to pay more than $1 million of the expenses of his personal horse business, including trainers’ salaries, the cost of feed and vitamins for the horses, stable fees and veterinary and legal fees," $20,000 for leather bound invitations to his son's Bar Mitzvah, $11,240 for acupuncture treatments for his family, and $101,500 Armored Vehicle for personal use. Some of the other expenses included $10,300 summer camp for Brook's children, a $12,835 gold bracelet with diamonds, and a $101,190 belt buckle studded with diamonds, rubies and sapphires -
(uh, that would be the belt he's seen wearing in the above photo, and that would be Brooks' indicted co-conspirator and former COO Hatfield he's got his arm around) - not to mention $122,000 for all the iPods that went into the goodie bags at his daughter's $10-million bat mitzvah - you remember that bat mitzvah, right? The one with Tom Petty, 50 Cent, Aerosmith, Kenny G, Stevie Nicks and Don Henley? Right? Yeah, that one.
So anyway, now he's under house arrest, and not having a good time. Darn.
'CHEATER' SPITS OUT LAWYERS
But in the last two years, Brooks, who is under house arrest in his Manhattan apartment while awaiting a trial set to begin next April, has gone through at least a half-dozen defense attorneys - including hot-shot litigator Gerald Shargel, former federal prosecutor Paul Schectman, and former New Jersey Federal Judge Herbert Stern.
Sources say he throws world-class tempter tantrums, causing dedicated lawyers to call it quits if they don't get booted first.
One lawyer whom Brooks sued claimed Brooks once took off after him, shouting: "You aren't going to leave this city alive!"
The wild man allegedly chased the lawyer back to his apartment, grabbed a cord and began whipping it at him and his wife.
Feeling the heat as his trial approaches, Brooks late last year decided it might be time to try to polish up his image. While he may be a first class asshole in the real world where people die and lose millions of dollars investing with scam artists, on the Intert00bz and in the mind of his publicist he is practically a saint.
The press releases started coming fast and furious around December:
David H. Brooks - The Humanitarian?
It doesn’t stop there for David H. Brooks and his selfless acts of generosity. With the profit he has acquired from his life saving body armor he has donated to help charities all over the world. He has donated millions of dollars to the Kabbalah Centre. The Kabbalah Centre is a charitable non-profit organization that helps bring education, food, aid, and supplies to the third world country of Malawi. Malawi is a small country in southeast Africa. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. Where most of the population are suffering from diseases such as hepatitis, malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS/HIV. The people are suffering through poverty and poor health systems while their land is deteriorating from drought.
With the millions of dollars that David H. Brooks has donated to the Kabbalah Centre and others like it, the people of third world countries can live a little easier knowing that someone is trying to help. Someone is making sure that they receive health care and education and that they will be able to provide for their families like they want to be able to do.
David H. Brooks is one of the world’s greatest humanitarians. He has saved millions of lives all over the world by his various kind donations and technologies. David H. Brooks is trying to make a difference in the world and he wont stop until he has.
Or this one:
David H Brooks - David H. Brooks Taking on the World
I am NOT making this up. As Napoleon Dynamite would say, there's more where that came from. Here's Brooks' new "blog":
David H. Brooks Founder DHB Industries has managed to save thousands of lives over the years of developing body armor technology and has developed an ongoing legacy. David H. Brooks is also involved in a humanitarian mission in Malawi in Africa offering generous donations to help aid the grief stricken area, he also donates generously to multiple charities, and has managed to save a non profit organization "Ogen Shabbos" Recognition David H. Brooks
Oy.
His website:
David H. Brooks-Body Armor Pioneer and Humanitarian
And he's even not above posting on year-old comment threads.
Double oy.
When some of Point Blank's investors got wind of Brooks' "rehabilitation" campaign, they took umbrage, but that didn't stop him. The press releases continue to flow, with such inspiring titles as "Breaking News: David H. Brooks is Saving Lives Worldwide," "David H Brooks - Worldwide Active Philanthropist David H Brooks," "David H Brooks-Officer Shot at Wal-Mart Saved by Bullet Proof Vest made by David H Brooks and Co.," "David H Brooks starts one of the largest lifesaving legacies," and, I kid you not, "David H Brooks-The HumanitarianMastermind David H Brooks is involved in numerous worldwide charities." I fully expect to learn in the next few weeks that David H. Brooks has found a cure for cancer, created a perpetual motion machine that runs off of sunshine and goodwill, and taken steps to ensure that the Chicago Cubs win the 2009 World Series.
The safety of our soldiers is in good hands.
(Sorry this installment of the three-part series came so long after the first; I naively thought I had dug into BAE when in fact I'd barely scratched the surface. In the third and final installment, we'll look at defense contracting in the U.S., and what we're up against. Thanks so much for your patience, and for reading - o.h.)