On Friday NBC ran a news service on security in American airports. The GAO tested 21 airports with homemade bombs that could have blown a good sized hole in any aircraft. The bombs went through security without a hitch. The GAO report is classified but TSA did comment on the progress they’re making in training personnel. The Transportation Security Administration told NBC News, “detecting explosive materials and IEDs at the checkpoint is TSA’s top priority.”
NBC has not mentioned the explosives detection systems (EDS) approved by the TSA that should be operational in American and international airports. This article will.
Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act on November 19, 2001. The legislation established the Transportation Security Administration to handle airport security. There was a fairly unrealistic goal set to install EDS’s in all major airports by the end of 2002. At the time there were only two FAA approved EDS’s, and it was InVision’s CTX system that got the lion’s share. 2000 machines were on order for an initial sum of approximately $ 2.5 billion tax-payer dollars.
Some critics noted that InVision’s CTX 5000 had gotten FAA approval while Frederick L. Roder was Technical Advisor at FAA. A suspected conflict of interest since he had developed the technology behind the CTX system at InVision. But not only had he worked with the FAA, he was also Portfolio Manager for Explosives in Homeland Security when InVision was awarded the no-bid contract.
Other critics noted that InVision may boast that they can find a different blade of grass in a haystack, but their machines can’t tell chocolate from gunpowder. NBC isn’t the first to breach airport security. The Birmingham Business Journal carried the story on February 11, 2002 and Sherrie Gossett covered it for World Net Daily in July 2002.
But what is InVision Technologies? Dr. Roder certainly had the brainchild, the original concept of computed tomographic explosives detention. But the company was set up and financed by Mario Rendo and his son Eugenio. The Rendo empire hails from Catania arguably the financial capital of Sicily, if General Dalla Chiesa’s opinion on the matter was of any value. The Rendos have been involved in everything from cutting-edge science and agriculture to construction and internet. Their unfathomable maze of societies makes it all but impossible to know their real worth, or interests. They’ve built bridges and galleries throughout Europe, the super-Phoenix in Lyon, and participated in the building of the Channel Tunnel.
Yet in Sicily they were known for their close-knit business dealings with several other Catania entrepreneurs which earned them all the nickname “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” But the numerous judiciary investigations into the obscure aspects of their business dealings either were wilfully lost in the Catania Hall of Justice or were amnestied by providential legislative decrees in Rome.
It is a coincidence that General Dalla Chiesa was brutally assassinated while he investigated mafia laundering operations that pointed to Catania. Exceptionally, the Catania mafia was part of the commando that murdered him in Palermo. And when Judge Carlo Palermo survived a mafia bombing he insisted on returning to his office to lock things up rather than go to the hospital, leaving an indelible trail of blood through the building. Coincidentally, he was investigating the four horsemen’s financial operations in Eastern Sicily.
But Mario Rendo’s run-ins with the law in Sicily were eventually sanctioned by the historical sentence in 1991 by Judge Luigi Russo, a sentence immediately decried as one of the blackest pages in judiciary history. Russo found that all the charges brought against Rendo and Costanzo (another “horseman”) were substantiated, but ruled that they acted out of a state of necessity. In other words, given that organized crime has such an overriding presence in Sicily, no businessman can work without coming to terms with this reality. So they’re sort of guilty but not quite. A point that the Berlusconi Minister of Infrastructure, Pietro Lunardi, reasserted in 2001 when he declared that the mafia is a reality that entrepreneurs have to come to terms with and resolve the dilemma of crime as one wishes, something Berlusconi has never had problems doing.
But let’s get back to InVision. As the company grew, the Rendos slowly pulled out, ostensibly because of different views on management. For a while, Mario Rendo had exclusive control over all foreign sales of the CTX series through his company ElectroParts, SA. Eugenio Rendo was accused of bribery and corruption in the mid-90’s over the High-Velocity train station in Milan. This did not show well for InVision. Eugenio Rendo sold his majority stake of 2,4 million shares to Harax Holding SA in Luxembourg for $ 5,000,000. Contrary to press reports, among which WSJ report on July 21, 2004, the lawyer, Arsene Kronshagen, is not the real beneficiary of the windfall. He is only the caretaker, as it were, of the shares. Exactly who owns Harax Holding SA is left to the convenience of hosting fiscal paradises on European soil.
InVision was bought by General Electric in December 2004 after InVision settled a contention with the SEC. According to MarketWatch, Invision settled for $1.1 million in penalties for “violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for making illegal payments to foreign government officials.”
Mr. Roder continues to work at Homeland Security as of late 2005.
Eugenio Rendo’s far flung empire is in great health but fairly difficult to keep track of. Judging by some of his investments in culture, he has taken Minister Lunardi’s advice to heart.
It appears their brainchild still can’t distinguish chocolate from gunpowder.
Cross-posted at Eurotrib by de Gondi.