Protecting the boss
Bodyguards have a new clientele
NEW YORK--Although he was my lunch guest, John Fiordaliso quickly usurped my responsibilities as host. He urged me out of the elevator first so that he could keep an eye on me. Before glancing at the menu, he checked out the location of the exit doors. And he assured me that as soon as the shooting started, he would throw himself across the table, pull me to the floor, then drag me a yard or so behind the stone columns, which would offer protection from bullets.
A retired police sergeant, Fiordaliso is owner of Gold Shield Executive Services of New York, and he was explaining to me how a bodyguard would shelter a client under attack. Fiordaliso is one of a host of able-bodied men, and increasingly women, dedicated to protecting business people in an edgy and dangerous world. An attack could come from one of several classes of adversaries: a disgruntled employee, an animal rights or antiglobalization activist, a kidnapper, a mentally disturbed family member or associate, or, of course, a terrorist. "Threat is a living, breathing animal, and it changes from day to day," says Kirian Fitzgibbons, director of operations for the San Francisco-based Steele Foundation, which specializes in protecting executives and others traveling internationally.
While new threats emerge every day and old ones recur, almost no one--the president and some other top government officials excepted--requires what experts call constant "close protection." Celebrity executives like Warren Buffett sometimes use bodyguards while traveling, as much to discourage supplicants who might try to waylay them on the sidewalk as to prevent real harm. The many business people who voyage to Iraq and Afghanistan do face genuine danger, of course. Protecting them has created an enormous boom in the industry. From an individual executive's perspective, however, the need for a bodyguard usually runs from no more than a few days to a few weeks, occasionally to months.
Interloper. That is fortunate, because close protection can be very intrusive. In an extreme case, a bodyguard accompanies the client all the time, waiting just outside the room during a business meeting, keeping surveillance on the house from a car overnight. Children are often embarrassed to be driven to school by a bodyguard, while a spouse, if female, may not welcome a bodyguard tagging along to the mall, although the arrival of more women into the bodyguard corps has made that relationship more comfortable. Many female executives also prefer women as bodyguards.
Close protection is also very expensive. The fee for a bodyguard runs from $100 to $200 an hour, and a high-risk environment, as in Afghanistan, might require a bodyguard, a driver, and an advance person. Before a bodyguard is deployed, a responsible service assesses the seriousness of the threat. Timothy Horner, senior director at Kroll, a global risk consulting company with 60 offices worldwide, says that although some threats, such as terrorism, are exotic, a surprisingly large number are commonplace: One third of the executives seeking close protection whom Horner sees are concerned by what he calls the "crazy nephew" syndrome. That is, the executives are worried they will be harmed by a relative or, say, a former business associate who feels cheated and promises to get even.
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