Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story (35 page)

The last thing Stanley needed or wanted was a free lunch, but it set the stage for an extraordinary relationship.

Soon afterward, Stanley and I went to Maloney & Porcelli, the steak house on Fiftieth Street, near St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Just as we were about to sit down, Stanley said, “I have an idea I hope you like. Let’s go into business together.” He certainly caught me by surprise, but it was an intriguing idea to say the least.

I was growing restless at IGI, and the idea of starting a new firm as a full partner had great appeal. Being partners with Stanley represented just the type of opportunity I had been looking for. The waiter brought our menus, and Stanley wanted to split a steak. I don’t normally like the idea of splitting a steak, particularly since I had served in Argentina—the land of outstanding beef and huge steaks. But I was magnanimous. “If there’s a business opportunity, I’ll split a steak with you, Stanley,” I said. That’s how our corporate intelligence firm, The Arkin Group (TAG), got started in May 2000: nothing more complicated than a handshake over lunch. As it turned out, that shared steak marked the beginning of, in Stanley’s words, “a remarkable collaboration and a strong and supportive friendship.” In fact, our offices have been next to each other for the past fourteen years.

Arkin’s law firm, Arkin Solbakken LLP, specializes in white-collar criminal defense, complex litigation, and problem solving. The firm has a tradition of zealous representation of individuals and companies in intricate cases. Stanley believes that a legal case, like any dispute, is substantially driven by human emotions, motivation, guile, and a self-interest that may not be readily apparent. A case is, in essence, a story. But the litigation process is also a war, and to do it most efficiently, it is necessary to understand what motivates the other side and to know your adversary. While some lawyers rely solely on the litigation discovery process to determine what happened, Stanley also tries where possible to nail it down the details methodically, through investigative work. Not surprisingly, he often turned to investigators to aggressively pursue key pieces of information, but found many of them to be uninspiring and unimaginative—more plodding than savvy. In fact, when I joined him in business, almost no one in this field had a genuine international reach or a well-developed network of international sources. There was a real need for a higher-end product more closely resembling the strategic intelligence and rigorous professional investigations that characterize government intelligence at its best.

Unbeknownst to me, Stanley had long tinkered with the idea of starting an intelligence company. He recognized that there were very few people in the private sector with my intelligence experience, and that together we would make a formidable team. We realized that my Agency experience would differentiate us from competitors, making us more credible on the international stage and enhancing our marketability. Together we saw the potential to put together something unique, a corporate intelligence firm that married Stanley’s strategic legal advocacy with my three decades running complex CIA intelligence operations all over the globe. Although the use of intelligence to gain a business advantage is a pursuit as old as commerce itself, the world of global corporate intelligence as we know it today was in its formative days in the beginning of 2000, when we started together.

Stanley grew up in Los Angeles and worked his way through Harvard Law School. After apprenticing and then partnering with a distinguished attorney, Harris B. Steinberg, at age twenty-nine he began his own practice. By the 1970s he was already a prominent New York criminal defense attorney. In one of his important early cases, he represented Vincent Chiarella, a financial printer convicted of insider trading after he scoured confidential documents to glean the names of corporate executives targeted in fraud investigations and used the information to trade stocks. Stanley argued Chiarella’s case before the U.S. Supreme Court and won. The Court reversed Chiarella’s conviction, finding that he lacked either a confidential relationship or a fiduciary duty to anyone else involved in the stocks he traded. Stanley’s prominence grew throughout the financial scandals of the early 1980s, fueled by his aggressive and artful representation of Wall Street executives charged by the SEC with insider trading.

Stanley’s practice included difficult and sometimes exotic disputes, which reinforced his use of unconventional strategies alongside litigation. His representation of the international banker and philanthropist Edmond Safra was an example. In 1983, Safra sold his Geneva-based Trade Development Bank to American Express, only to split with AMEX the following year. Fearing that Safra was preparing to compete against them, individuals retained by AMEX executives proceeded to orchestrate a smear campaign against him in the press, peddling lies and misinformation to reporters in Europe and the United States.

Safra retained Stanley to find out who was behind the misinformation campaign. Stanley assembled a team of operatives who tracked the media stories back to AMEX executives. Mounting a counterattack in the press, he published an article in the
New York Law Journal
that nailed AMEX. “Spreading false and malicious rumors or flat-out lies…” Stanley wrote, “in addition to likely violating the laws of defamation, may well amount to criminal fraud.” Within days, American Express was negotiating a settlement that included a public apology from its chairman, James D. Robinson III.

The matter that brought Stanley into my orbit was his representation of Alan Fiers, who led the CIA’s Central America Task Force and played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal. In May 2000, when Stanley and I formed The Arkin Group, I got a call from Clair George.

“You’ve gone with the enemy!!” George said without an introduction.

His comment caught me off balance momentarily, especially since I had been focused on the future, not the past—and certainly not on Iran-Contra.

“Clair, Stanley had a legal mission: help Alan, a fellow CIA officer,” I said. “He’s a highly successful and effective lawyer. He did what he had to do to save his client.” Clair went on laughingly to say that he understood but couldn’t resist pulling my chain, which he had done effectively. He was tough-minded and politically savvy and had no trouble understanding the realities of Washington politics and their legal ramifications.

Stanley and I quickly got to work building our enterprise and developing a high-quality worldwide network of assets appropriate for business purposes. We were inhabiting a relatively new and poorly understood market space. For the most part, our clients had never used the services of an intelligence firm, and they did not fully appreciate the powerful influence that strategic intelligence could have on critical business and legal decisions. Over the past decade, of course, the corporate world has changed in dramatic ways that have created a robust demand for the type of capabilities we have at our disposal. A new concern about terrorist financing resulted in enhanced due diligence in many sectors, particularly financial. In addition, the Bush and Obama administrations have placed an emphasis on enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. More prosecutions have brought greater attention to the issue of corruption for companies doing business internationally. The truth is it’s very hard to keep your house in order when operating in many of these far-flung places with likely corrupt business practices.

Our first step was to assemble a staff. From the start we made a decision that would shape the direction of our company and our business model. Rather than hire people with a narrow regional focus or a particular technical expertise, we recruited very smart generalists who had advanced degrees from top universities, understood international dynamics, had traveled and lived abroad, and had a track record of high performance. Many of our staff have served in the U.S. government in various demanding foreign policy and national security capacities. We wanted people who could communicate with business clients at the senior executive level and ride herd over our eclectic network of intelligence contacts all over the globe.

When we started, our network relied for a while on former American intelligence officers. After several months of using these sources, I realized that no matter how much I liked them, it was important, for reasons of substance and economics, to go directly to the sources on the ground. We soon created a leaner organization by working with local contacts who had direct access to the information we needed. We quickly came to understand that there are seasoned in-country intelligence assets and investigative companies of various sizes and shapes all around the world. Many of our sources came from the local intelligence, legal, media, and law enforcement fields. As we worked more closely with these people, we realized that each one of them had his own network of contacts, which created a multiplier effect for us.

Finding the local intelligence collectors, vetting them, and establishing relationships is what in the CIA we used to call “developmental work.” Our network has been painstakingly assembled over the past decade with a firm eye on quality and accountability. We have learned where to look for in-country contacts and how to manage them once they are brought on board. Many former senior intelligence and police officials around the world have set up consulting firms that themselves rely on a pool of contacts and reliable sources in the private sector. At TAG, I made it a habit of joining a number of international associations, where I was able to establish lasting relationships and friendships with a wide range of diverse operators. It is probably no overstatement to say that this core group of several hundred contacts represents tens of thousands of sources around the world. Our network also includes all types of specialists, such as forensic accountants, who follow complex money trails, and a corporate psychiatrist, who can analyze the personalities involved in a business dispute and identify which buttons to push and which to avoid. We have used Navy SEAL and Delta Force reservists for global security. Today there isn’t a location in the world where we can’t put together a tailored network of resources.

Another resource for identifying reliable sources in far-flung places is the Council of International Investigators (CII). Membership requires more than simply paying annual dues, and candidates are vetted carefully.

One additional valuable aspect of CII membership is the council’s conferences and events, at which you can make contacts and get to know potential sources. In October 2012, I participated in a CII conference at a game drive lodge in South Africa, not far from the border with Botswana. It provided an excellent opportunity to catch up with a number of investigative and intelligence contacts worldwide. Some of these experienced private investigators, or PIs, work with us on our foreign cases, obtaining detailed due-diligence records and commentary about individuals and companies of interest to us. This trip also allowed me to meet several of our more sensitive sources in Johannesburg and Cape Town outside the confines of the conference. Most of these sources specialize in the African continent and the Middle East and cover highly compartmented and complicated competitive intelligence issues.

One of the fascinating guest speakers at the conference was the renowned game tracker Ian Thomas, who has taken his lifetime of experience hunting lions and has made it a metaphor for the business world. His talk reminded me of certain aspects of the “good hunting” theme, especially his belief that we can learn much from the hunting approach of lions, which is deeply rooted in teamwork. The lioness’s pride (social group) is designed for survival in the bush. Each member of the pride has a distinct and crucial role to play in order to ensnare its prey. Teamwork is likewise a key ingredient of good hunting in clandestine operations.

When we reached Cape Town, Pat and I took a side trip to the Mulderbosch Vineyard, which we helped a client evaluate in the run-up to its purchase several years ago. It is located in an amazingly picturesque location in the wine-growing Stellenbosch Valley. The general manager, Chrianto, and his wine expert, Lucinda, treated us to a traditional South African
braai
(barbecue), which included thick ostrich steaks and wildebeest sausages. These delicacies were accompanied by a wine-tasting session under a large oak tree overlooking the estate. The wines were exquisite, especially the Chardonnay. The taste of the wine and food was enhanced by knowing that The Arkin Group had had a role in its acquisition.

On occasion, a new client will wrongly assume I can reach into CIA files and pluck out classified data. I’ve never gone back to foreign intelligence contacts for information, and I have never contacted people who I know are CIA assets. To the contrary, TAG’s network has been built through challenging cases and the development of new foreign sources.

When traveling, and when circumstances permit, I like to pay a call on local friends as a courtesy and to pass on my well wishes. On a trip to Europe, a highly skilled woman operator was most gracious in coming out to meet me despite her hectic schedule. For an hour we chatted about times past and the challenges facing the world today. We also chatted about the Agency flap in Paris in the mid-1990s that placed a strain on the relations between French and American services. It was good to learn that in the aftermath of 9/11 we had returned to our more traditional, close relationship with our French allies.

I wasn’t anticipating or looking for surveillance. However, I did sense there was something odd in the environment, but I let it go, since this was not a clandestine meeting or a confidential discussion. Sometime later, when she was back in the United States, she noted that during the Paris meeting she, too, had thought she detected surveillance, by a French couple seated nearby who were intently trying to eavesdrop. We both had a good chuckle about it. I suspect this was not the first time some of my old friends and foes decided to keep an eye on me, even though they know full well my interests nowadays are commercial.

I had had that same sense that I was not alone when Pat and I were passing through London on vacation some years earlier. Pat and I were browsing in a Camden antiques market when it began to rain. Rather than the typical light London drizzle, this was a New York rainstorm, so we quickly ducked into a store with a one-room showroom and wooden chairs hanging along the walls. Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness jumped in right behind us, with two bodyguards in tow, although I did not recognize him immediately. There is indeed a sixth sense that gets honed in the spy business, the feeling that something is wrong even if you cannot immediately spot the problem. This was one of those moments. I instinctively stayed clear of him and did not extend any greeting. I soon realized who he was. For his part, he, too, had spent a fair amount of time in the clandestine world and must have felt something was not quite right with his fellow rain dodgers. For a good twenty minutes, he looked at one end of the hanging chairs, and I looked at the other. There were only a few chairs on each wall, but somehow we both knew that we were not going to have a discussion, even if a bolt of lightning hit the front window. The shop owner must have been convinced that surely one of us would buy a chair, given our intense interest in them. To avoid any misunderstanding, I reported the encounter through appropriate channels. The answer I got back was, “We know.”