One on One With Jules Kroll, Founder & Chairman of Kroll Inc.
Monday, September 04, 2006SUSIE GHARIB: Our next guest has been a pioneer in providing security and crisis management services for large corporations and governments. Jules Kroll is the founder and chairman of Kroll, Incorporated. I met with him to follow up on a conversation we had shortly after 9/11, and to get his analysis of how corporate America is doing five years later.
I began by asking him how prepared are American businesses to handle another terrorist attack.
JULES KROLL, CHAIRMAN, KROLL, INC.: They`re much, much better prepared than we were before 9/11. Many companies, usually the best companies, have done quite a bit of work in this area in many, many respects, from IT to physical security, to knowing where their employees are. So there`s been a, generally speaking, a significant change.
GHARIB: Mr. Kroll, recently President Bush said that the United States is safer than it was before 9/11. Is that the case?
KROLL: No. No, but that has little to do with people`s attempts at defending themselves. The world situation has simply deteriorated. We`re fighting in three parts of the world. It is -- it`s just a more complex, more diffused situation. And for that reason, it is less safe.
GHARIB: When the British recently uncovered that plot to blow up several planes, some people said that the British have a better counterterrorism apparatus than the U.S. Do you agree with that?
KROLL: Well, the British counterterrorism apparatus is a lot older. Remember, they`ve had the IRA issue to deal with for decades. They also separate the function, the police function and the intelligence function. And I think we ought to think about doing that in the United States. I think it would work better.
The FBI is a great crime fighting organization. I think the intelligence operations, domestically, should be separated. Certainly not being done by the CIA in the United States, but separated out. It is a different activity.
GHARIB: It seems like the terrorists are thinking more and more out of the box, coming up with unthinkable ways of doing bad things. Do you think that governments and businesses are thinking enough out of the box, in terms of security measures?
KROLL: They really aren`t thinking that much out of the box. I think we just got to get -- we`ve got to bet better at the basics and the follow- through and the execution. If you look at the recent liquid explosive problem that existed in the U.K., this was the Ramzi Yousef situation when it exploded on him back in 1995.
There`s not a lot that`s really new. It`s old stuff. And it gets down to taking the offensive, understanding from an intelligence point of view, getting the information back to the respective authorities, and there has been headway in that respect.
GHARIB: What are you telling your clients to do in terms of safeguards for their businesses and their employees?
KROLL: Number one, you need to know where your employees are, and tracking those employees, particularly when they`re traveling, is very, very important. Number two, and I`ve said this in the past, you need to train people on how to get out of the building that they`re in should there be a problem. It`s critical. And the third thing is to look at the parts of the world in which you are attempting to do business. And there are clearly certain parts of the world that are much more chancy and much more difficult. Be selective about where you go.
GHARIB: For a company that doesn`t have a disaster plan in place, what would you say is the most important first step they should take?
KROLL: To not have a disaster plan, to not have business continuity planning in light of what we`ve seen in the world in the last five, 10 years, is grossly irresponsible. And so, the first thing they need to do is take stock; understand what their peers are doing -- their geographical peers, their industrial peers -- and use that as a starting point.
GHARIB: So is there any one take-away lesson in the five years since 9/11?
KROLL: What we`ve learned is these people are not going away. Their mission is to kill as many people as they can to promote their agenda. And we just have to assume that we have a long-term challenge ahead of us.
GHARIB: Mr. Kroll, thank you very much.
KROLL: You`re welcome.
