That Nutty Wackenhut

PiTW's PJ Tobia responds to my "Wherefore Wackenhut?" query yesterday by pointing to a previous Scene article that has all the dirty details of Wackenhut's threatened lawsuit against Metro and its win-on-appeal in 2006 over a patron favored by the Purcell Administration. I completely forgot that I blogged on that article in 2006 and that even then there was bad news to be excavated about Wackenhut:

Wackenhut has reportedly been at the center of security problems at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, involving mistaken responses to initially unidentified white powder (which later proved to be benign). Thanks to a belated evacuation order, employees had gone to lunch, and they had to be rounded up and quarantined (how about some suspicious white powder to go along with those fries?). Wackenhut whistleblowers reported no WMD training, lightly guarded Homeland Security entrances, and no radios to communicate with each other. The Energy Department also concluded that Wackenhut guards improperly handled the transport of nuclear and conventional weapons during one of their tests. One whistleblower said that when he found a suspicious bag in a parking lot on another occasion he "didn't have a clue about what to do."

So, while Metro may have had its own patronage problems in originally jilting Wackenhut, it looks like even in correcting itself on appeal, it made a bad decision that could have eventuated failed security during the Christmas Eve theft of Election Commission laptops.

Now we know why they were hired, so the question remains, "Why were they hired?"