Exclusive investigative report by Eartha Jane Melzer at Michigan Messenger
In December 2003, the founders of Triple Canopy, a private security firm in Baghdad, caught their first big break, signing a contract with the Coalition Provisional Authority governing Iraq. Within four months, Triple Canopy had signed six contracts worth more than $28 million to guard U.S. facilities throughout Iraq.
For Triple Canopy chief executive officer Barrett H. Moore and the military veterans who founded the company, these agreements launched the company on the path to become what it is today: one of the leading private military contractors, sharing a $1 billion contract with Blackwater USA and DynCorps to guard U.S. personnel in the Middle East.
Moore, 43, a Chicago businessman, now presents himself as a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and business "visionary" who revolutionized the private security market but an Army spokesman said Moore was never an officer and never had intelligence training. Moore, fired by Triple Canopy in 2004, has launched a new private security firm called Sovereign Deed. He has parlayed his Triple Canopy success into political influence, persuading Republican and Democratic state officials to rewrite state law so that Sovereign Deed can receive $10 million in tax abatements to establish a "national response center" for its private disaster relief business in northern Michigan.
Incredible gumshoe reporting by Eartha and the gang at Michigan Messenger that lays out an intricate series of lies and deception by a military contractor in order to enrich himself.
Read the rest of the story here.