Government officials and private security industry executives, many of them retired intelligence, military and law enforcement officials, described many if not most features of the American landscape as vulnerable to terrorist attack.
"Are you ready to get the show started?" Erickson asks the assembled crowd of salespeople, IT experts, private security company executives, and law enforcement officers (including at least two FBI agents), whose response to Erickson's question is muted.
The Virginia-based company provides private security guards for executives, diplomats and heads of state, at a steep cost: Each guard can bill up to $1,500 a day plus travel expenses.
Second-panel witnesses were executives of private security firms who spoke on oversight, responsibility and management, determination of inherently governmental functions, performance of armed PSCs, and identification and implementation of lessons learned.
Nick Buckles, the chief executive of private security firm G4S, has described his leadership style as "no excuses, please".
Earlier in his career he helped found two private security companies, Sandline International and Executive Outcomes, linked to some of the continent's most murderous civil conflicts.
A group of them had considered pooling money and paying for private security guards, said Jennifer Joyce, the executive director of retail development for the Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless, which runs the SoHo Partnership.
He said he would become chief executive of a private security firm that does consulting work for large police forces around the world.
During the 1990's he and another soldier of fortune, Tony Buckingham, worked with Executive Outcomes, a private security company that provided hired thugs to just about anyone in Africa.
The prosecutor is now a judge, the judge in the case has retired and a police detective who was one of the first on the scene is now an executive at a private security company several miles away.
