Powering Through
The man blamed for 9/11's security lapses is on a mission of personal redemption and professional revitalization.
Tim Darnell, Editor
August 27, 2008
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Where was Frank Argenbright on Sept. 11, 2001?
Hear Argenbright describe what's it like for him each September 11.
Does he feel vindicated?
Also, here is a letter Argenbright wrote to members of the American Society for Industrial Security International, explaining to them his story about the events that unfolded after 9/11.
F rank Argenbright believes he can move my business card across the table, without ever touching it. "It's all about willpower," he says. "I believe I've got strong enough willpower that I can move your card. I truly believe that."
I, however, am not going to ask the chairman and founder of Air Serv and SecurAmerica to prove it. I've got better sense than to challenge a man who has overcome attention deficit disorder and poor grades to build one multimillion-dollar empire after another; battled cancer; was unilaterally blamed for the nation's worst terrorist attack in history; seen his reputation drug through a mudbath of cataclysmic proportions while forced to sit silently by, plotting out his own suicide; and endured one financial calamity after another, only to emerge alive and kicking, on the other side.
After finishing college with a 2.0 GPA, Frank A. Argenbright Jr. went to work conducting polygraph tests. In 1978, with $500, he started Argenbright Security, a polygraph testing firm. A year later he was providing shuttle transportation for airline employees. With clients like Delta and Republic on his side, Argenbright then offered parking lot security and, later, passenger screening. By the mid-1980s his company had annual sales of $40 million and was handling security and other services in 15 airports.
But just days after 9/11, Argenbright Security - which was, at that time, the largest provider of pre-departure screening services in American airports - was blamed publicly for allowing the American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 hijackers to pass undetected through Dulles International and Newark International airports, presumably with weapons (more on this later). And a compelling case can be made that Argenbright himself - who was no longer even the company's owner when the attacks occurred - was made the scapegoat for the entire tragedy (see sidebar: Unsafe at any altitude, page 33.)
But as the years have passed and facts made their way into public record, Argenbright today is on a mission of personal vindication and professional success, with a goal of building his latest ventures - Air Serv Corp. and SecurAmerica LLC - into the largest private security empire in the United States.
"There's not an entrepreneur alive who is my age (he just turned 60) who hasn't had financial ups and downs," Argenbright says. "But you always had your integrity and reputation. So I may lose money one year, but people have always said I was an honorable person. But after 9/11, it was, 'He's a bad guy, he has no integrity ...'
"I can replace the money, but I can't replace the reputation."
Ask Argenbright why he got back into the aviation security industry so quickly after 9/11 - AirServ was founded less than a year after the attacks - and he answers, "It's sheer drive and determination to prove people wrong about me. That's why I got right back into it - my old customers knew the truth, and they helped me get back into business. I had to build a business anyway and this is what I knew.
"Maybe I made too big a deal out of it, but if you think of one name at fault for 9/11, it's probably mine. That's horrific. I honestly don't believe any of the people who worked for my old company did anything wrong. (Boxcutters were the primary weapon used by the hijackers, and were allowed as carry-on items at that time. Indeed, Argenbright himself believes the boxcutters were planted on the planes the night before).
"None of the negative publicity that we received regarding 9/11 was true."
A Quest To Be The Biggest
With airport screening now overseen by the federal government (the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and its supremely competent employees), Air Serv operates in 26 cities with more than 6,000 employees.
Its list of clients and locations is a Who's Who in domestic aviation: Federal Express, Delta, Southwest, American, Lufthansa, Northwest, British Airways and United, with offices in Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Memphis, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Newark, Lexington, Salt Lake City, Reno, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
"Air Serv now is about a $150-$160 million business, and the plan is to grow into 9,000 employees, in 28 U.S. airports, and three in Europe," says Argenbright. "We want to grow it organically in the U.S. and through acquisition, as well as organically, in Europe. We hope to take Air Serv to $500 million in revenue in three to five years."
SecurAmerica was born in 2005, and Argenbright has grown it into a multimillion-dollar security company specializing in security and guards for office, industrial and corporate developments. Clients include FedEx, Southern Company, ChoicePoint, Hines, Barry Real Estate, Computer Associates, CB Richard Ellis, Jones Lang LaSalle, America's Capital Partners, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Hilton, Marriott and other Fortune-based companies. With $25 million in revenues right now, Argenbright has developed a 10-year, $1 billion in revenue plan for SecurAmerica.
"It's a tougher economic climate since 9/11, because 80 percent of my former customers have gone bankrupt," Argenbright says. "You have to be quicker, faster, and smarter in the aviation part of the business. And dealing with the TSA is a huge bureaucracy. There have been a number of times that our own employees have found a weapon on the other side of screening that doesn't even make the news."
Both of Argenbright's current companies are doing what AHL Services Inc. used to do - aviation and commercial security. Argenbright built AHL Services into a $980 million public behemoth, which formerly owned Argenbright Security. In 2000, Argenbright, who kept 51 percent of AHL shares for himself, tried to buy back his old company and turn it private. But he was outbid by London-based Securicor (now G4S), which paid $185 million. Argenbright kept the title of CEO for much of 2001.
Argenbright's last day on the job at Argenbright Security? Sept. 6, 2001. The next day, Securicor sent an e-mail to clients saying Argenbright had left the company. David James Beaton was the new CEO. Thus, on Sept. 11, 2001, Argenbright wasn't even working at the company. But America wanted someone to blame, and before anyone even learned how to pronounce "Al-Qaeda," there was Argenbright Security.
'Rot In Hell, You Sorry Bastard'
Two days after the attacks, the CEO of Seculior, Nick Buckles, called Argenbright and warned him not to talk to the press under threat of a lawsuit. The media already had made the connection between the Dulles and Newark screeners to Argenbright Security. Argenbright today says he was more than willing to talk. "But I had to say 'no comment,' which was awful, because that's not my nature. I'd have said, 'Look, we don't know what's going on; I don't work for the company anymore; I know these people and they're great screeners. Let's get the facts straight before we rush to judgment.'"
Seculior wasn't publicly acknowledging that it owned Argenbright Security. Two weeks after 9/11, Argenbright's public company, AHL Services Inc., was hit with lawsuits from families who had lost someone on 9/11. Since AHL didn't own Argenbright Security, the suits were thrown out, but the damage to company stock had been done.
"We finally went to Seculior and said, 'If you don't say you own the company, we will,'" Argenbright says. "That's when they sent out a press release acknowledging their ownership. Officially, Seculior did nothing to defend themselves, and didn't want anyone to know they owned this multimillion business called Argenbright Security."
Argenbright's King & Spalding attorneys advised him to remain quiet, because if he spoke to the press and Secuilor did sue, shareholders stood to lose $20 million because of various financial performance clauses in Secuilor's purchase agreement. "All of my holdings were in my public company," Argenbright says. "And when you're holding AHL stock and see family members
from 9/11 suing the company, and you don't know what's going on, you start dumping your stock. That crushed me financially."
The low point came on Nov. 9, when Beaton went on national television and announced he had replaced Argenbright as CEO of Argenbright Security ... even though Argenbright had left the company more than two months prior. And all the while Argenbright and his family were receiving death threats such as "I hope you die and go to hell for killing all those people" and "Rot in hell, you sorry bastard."
No Silver Bullet
At the time, Argenbright and his attorneys couldn't prove Secuilor - or anyone else, for that matter - had set up the Atlanta entrepreneur to be the fall guy for any 9/11 security lapses. There was no, in Argenbright's own words, "silver bullet" to be found.
Nonetheless, in January 2002 Argenbright threatened to sue Securicor for defamation as a result of its Nov. 9 announcement that he had been fired from a job he didn't even have.
"It came down to, what did I really want out of this? And I wanted enough money that people wouldn't think it was a frivolous lawsuit," he says. "And I needed enough money to get back in business and go right back after them."
Secuilor settled for $5 million ... and released him from his non-compete agreement. Later, after borrowing $6 million from friends, Argenbright called some old associates in the airline business and approached United Airlines, pitching his new company, Air Serv. United and, later, Delta signed on as clients, as did FedEx. He was on his way back.
Argenbright still was receiving phone calls and e-mails from former employees, begging him to defend them from a seemingly orchestrated campaign to offer them up as sacrificial lambs. "Screeners from [Dulles and Newark] were saying, 'Mr. Frank, we need you to defend us,' and I had to tell them, 'I can't say a word.' As part of that $5 million settlement, I had to agree I wouldn't say anything. I was in financial straits, and had to have the $5 million, so I had to suck it up. But I also had complete freedom to go after anyone in aviation services business."
Seculior sued Argenbright in Chicago and Memphis on the same day, seemingly to annoy Argenbright and dissuade him from going after business in those locations. A judge in Memphis threw out the case because Argenbright's no-complete clause had been voided, but the case actually made it to trial in the Windy City. The Chicago judge allowed Argenbright to tell his side of the story in a three-hour session on the stand ... thus sending, for the first time, Argenbright's version of 9/11 into public record. Since then, he's been free to say anything to anyone, at any time, about his version of those events.
"My favorite statement is typical of the way I do business: There are three types of people in the world - people who make things happen, people who watch things happen, and people who wonder, what happened. You just have to believe in and be true to yourself, and then just make things happen. I believe my willpower takes me through everything."
The Argenbright File
Chairman and founder, Air Serv and SecurAmerica
Born in Madison, FL
Graduate of Florida State University. Degree in criminal justice. GPA: 2.0
Captain, U.S. Army Reserves
1991 graduate of the Owner/President Management Program at Harvard Business School
1989 and 1990 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist
1997 Entrepreneur of the Year award for business services from Ernst & Young
The Life Of A CEO With ADD
"I have ADD with hyperactivity and dyslexia combined, so it's very hard for me to read books. But I'm a ferocious reader of magazines. I fly two to three times a week, and my average spend on magazines, one way, is $30 to $50. I'll buy every single magazine from Popular Mechanics to TIME. I can do short paragraphs and then a picture, short paragraphs and then a picture ...
"I've always had to work for myself, because people wouldn't hire me. I graduated from high school with a 1.9 average. I was used to people saying I was stupid. I didn't know until years later that I had ADD. My mother sent me to a school in Tampa, for kids who were between high school and junior college who had potential but weren't quite there. One psychiatrist told me my IQ wasn't even high enough for me to be in this group of kids with problems ...
"But every job I had, whether it was selling cameras at Eckerd Drugs or whatever, I was always the top salesperson ...
"I lost a lot of money because I owned 51 percent of a public company. I could have cashed out, made $200 million, owned 10 percent and still controlled the company. But I've always felt like when people get to know me, because I don't know numbers; I'm not sophisticated in conversation; and I don't read a lot of books, they will automatically know they're smarter than me and eventually fire me from my own company. So if I own 51 percent of the company, I can't be fired ...
"I pick up my first voice mail at 4 in the morning, and leave my last one at midnight. I only sleep four hours a night. But I've done that for 25 years. Because of my ADD, I require very little sleep. But I leave at 5 pm. When our first child was on the way, my wife said, 'I don't care how early you go to work. But at 5 you leave, because of soccer and practices and all.' My kids will tell you I made all their games. And I'll leave at 5 pm today. But I'll be working at home while we're watching TV or at times like that. I work about 80 hours a week, but not all at the office."
Surviving Cancer
Frank Argenbright was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 (the American Cancer Society estimates in 2008 some 1,990 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed among men in the U.S.) He underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy, and was prescribed a female estrogen drug, which he was to take for a five-year period. He still was on the medication when 9/11 occurred, as well as its immediate aftermath.
"When you take estrogen, it makes you more emotional," Argenbright says today. "You have all this stress of fighting this stuff, and your whole life is up and down. I had to see my oncologist every 90 says, and I told her, 'This is breaking me down. I'm not going to be able to make it.' You consider suicide and all this other stuff. So against her better judgment, she took me off it, and then the testosterone kicks back in, and you're back to normal. Long term and health wise, it wasn't the best thing to do, but short term, it was."
Unsafe At Any Altitude
Six months after the 9/11 attacks, Joseph Trento was approached by a friend who worked at Delta Air Lines. "He asked if I knew anyone who could handle a serious, behind-the-scenes investigation into what really happened in Washington, D.C., after the attacks," Trento, who's been an investigative reporter for more than 30 years, says. "He knew a guy who could tell the real story."
That "real story" became "Unsafe at Any Altitude: Failed Terrorism Investigations, Scapegoating 9/11, and the Shocking Truth about Aviation Security Today," a 2006 book that Trento and his wife, Susan, co-authored. Frank Argenbright gave them complete access to his files, memos and records.
Numerous interviews and meticulous investigative reporting have produced a book that may make you think twice about getting on another jet airliner.
"The biggest problem was that Argenbright's name was on the company," Trento says. "I'm a pretty hard-bitten journalist, but I'd never heard anything like this. We began making some calls and realized something horrible was going on. Here's this rock-ribbed Republican who'd given money to the Bush campaign; one day he's worth more than the queen of England, and the next, he's $20 million in debt."
The Trentos' investigation found a remarkable chain of conversations and events that involved some of America's biggest political names at the time, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, all seemingly engaged in a game of who's- to-blame (domestically, that is)-for-9/11. One of the nation's biggest PR firms, Burson-Marsteller, also was involved. Argenbright says today that had he known much of what the book uncovers was taking place, he would have found his "silver bullet" and filed a $100-million lawsuit against Seculior.
"Argenbright has made a remarkable comeback ever since the Bush administration made a decision that Argenbright Security was an easy target after 9/11," Trento says. "Most people could not survive what he and his family went through. Even Ashcroft got on national TV and blamed the screeners. We know now that wasn't true."
Trento also has a damning view of today's TSA screeners. "They are inferior in every way," he says, compared to their private-sector counterparts of yesteryear. "Tests are regularly conducted in which fake bombs and the like are carried through screening, and the TSA screeners consistently fail those tests, 60 to 70 percent of the time. What we have now is eye candy and fake security, simply to make the public feel better."
For more information, go to www.unsafeatanyaltitude.com. Chances are, you won't find this book in an airport gift shop.
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