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@ -16,34 +16,36 @@ born: 1919-09-03
died: 2004-12-31
location: "Coral Gables, Florida"
created: 2026-09-21
updated: 2026-09-21
updated: 2026-09-23
---
George R. Wackenhut (September 3, 1919 to December 31, 2004) founded the [[Wackenhut Corporation]]. He was born in [[Philadelphia]], attended the [[University of Pennsylvania]] and [[West Chester University|West Chester State Teachers College]], was drafted in 1941, and was an enlisted man in a combat engineer regiment in [[Hawaii]] during the attack on [[Pearl Harbor]]. He took a degree at the [[University of Hawaii]] and a commission in 1943. After the war he taught at the [[The Haverford School|Haverford School]], played professional soccer briefly, and from 1946 directed physical education and coached at [[Johns Hopkins University]], where he took a master's degree in 1949. He was a special agent of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] in [[Atlanta]] and [[Indianapolis]] from 1951 to 1954, working counterfeiting and bad check cases.[^1][^2]
George R. Wackenhut (September 3, 1919 to December 31, 2004) founded the [[Wackenhut Corporation]]. He was born in [[Philadelphia]], attended the [[University of Pennsylvania]] and [[West Chester University|West Chester State Teachers College]], was drafted in 1941, and was an enlisted man in a combat engineer regiment in [[Hawaii]] during the attack on [[Pearl Harbor]]. He took a degree at the [[University of Hawaii]] and a commission in 1943. After the war he taught at the [[The Haverford School|Haverford School]], played professional soccer briefly, and from 1946 directed physical education and coached at [[Johns Hopkins University]], where he took a master's degree in 1949. He was a special agent of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] in [[Atlanta]] and [[Indianapolis]] from 1951 to 1954, working counterfeiting and bad check cases.[^1][^2] A retired Philadelphia printer, William H. Wackenhut, a native of the city and a member of its Optimists Club who had moved to [[Florida]] about 1956, died in [[Hollywood, Florida]], in November 1961 at 72, survived by his wife, the former Margaret Keefe, and two sons, Harry and George.[^3]
### The Company
He went to [[Miami]] in 1954 as director of personnel, security, and safety for [[Giffen Industries]], and after six months formed [[Special Agent Investigators]], Inc., with three other former agents. By one account he ended a disagreement over the company's direction by knocking a partner, [[Ed Dubois]], unconscious. He bought the partners out in 1958 and gave the company his name. The law firm of Senator [[George Smathers]] set up a subsidiary supplying only guards, which put it outside the federal statute of 1893 barring detective agencies from government work, and contracts followed at [[Cape Canaveral]] and the [[Nevada Test Site]]. Revenues were 10.8 million dollars in 1964, 23.7 million in 1966, and 48.4 million in 1969. The company opened nineteen offices in 1967 and twenty-one in 1968. In 1971 six executives of Wackenhut, [[Pinkerton]], and [[Burns International|Burns]] were convicted of bribing [[New York City]] policemen for confidential records on airline job applicants.[^1][^3][^4]
He went to [[Miami]] in 1954 as director of personnel, security, and safety for [[Giffen Industries]], and after six months formed [[Special Agent Investigators]], Inc., with three other former agents. By one account he ended a disagreement over the company's direction by knocking a partner, [[Ed Dubois]], unconscious. He bought the partners out in 1958 and gave the company his name. The law firm of Senator [[George Smathers]] set up a subsidiary supplying only guards, which put it outside the federal statute of 1893 barring detective agencies from government work, and contracts followed at [[Cape Canaveral]] and the [[Nevada Test Site]]. Revenues were 10.8 million dollars in 1964, 23.7 million in 1966, and 48.4 million in 1969. The company opened nineteen offices in 1967 and twenty-one in 1968. In 1971 six executives of Wackenhut, [[Pinkerton]], and [[Burns International|Burns]] were convicted of bribing [[New York City]] policemen for confidential records on airline job applicants.[^1][^4][^5] In May 1962 [[Charles B. Flack Jr.]], a former FBI agent, merged his investigative firm into the company and became district manager of a Philadelphia office at 2 Penn Center Plaza responsible for "the Pennsylvania-New Jersey area." From April 24, 1962, to January 5, 1965, FBI headquarters barred its field offices from any contact with the company, because it had used misleading advertisements and traded on the former FBI affiliation of its staff, and its officials had "reportedly engaged in personal misconduct and questionable business activities."[^6]
### The Files
By 1971 the company held files on 2.5 million individuals. Part of them came from [[Karl Baarslag]], a wartime [[Office of Naval Intelligence]] officer who had been a researcher for Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]], the [[American Legion]], and the [[Church League of America]]. The company published a monthly [[Wackenhut Security Review]]. Its library took its subscriptions to the publications it monitored under the names [[Carol Ascher]] and William Jones. The first twenty-seven folders of its surviving research files, headed "Subversive Activities," contain correspondence with federal intelligence agencies and material on protests against the war in [[Vietnam]]. Others cover the [[NAACP]], the [[Highlander Folk School]], the [[Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy]], the [[John Birch Society]], and the [[Minutemen (anti-Communist organization)|Minutemen]]. After the [[Fair Credit Reporting Act]] the company reduced its holdings to between 225,000 and 250,000 files, and in 1975 it gave many of them to the Church League, which, the archive's note observes, "was not bound by the legislation." The Church League, of [[Wheaton, Illinois]], had been directed since the 1950s by the former [[United States Air Force|Air Force]] intelligence officer [[Edgar Bundy]]. It dissolved in 1984. The files went to [[Liberty University]], which gave them in 1992 to the [[Tamiment Library]] of [[New York University]].[^5]
By 1971 the company held files on 2.5 million individuals. Part of them came from [[Karl Baarslag]], a wartime [[Office of Naval Intelligence]] officer who had been a researcher for Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]], the [[American Legion]], and the [[Church League of America]]. The company published a monthly [[Wackenhut Security Review]]. Its library took its subscriptions to the publications it monitored under the names [[Carol Ascher]] and William Jones. The first twenty-seven folders of its surviving research files, headed "Subversive Activities," contain correspondence with federal intelligence agencies and material on protests against the war in [[Vietnam]]. Others cover the [[NAACP]], the [[Highlander Folk School]], the [[Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy]], the [[John Birch Society]], and the [[Minutemen (anti-Communist organization)|Minutemen]]. After the [[Fair Credit Reporting Act]] the company reduced its holdings to between 225,000 and 250,000 files, and in 1975 it gave many of them to the Church League, which, the archive's note observes, "was not bound by the legislation." The Church League, of [[Wheaton, Illinois]], had been directed since the 1950s by the former [[United States Air Force|Air Force]] intelligence officer [[Edgar Bundy]]. It dissolved in 1984. The files went to [[Liberty University]], which gave them in 1992 to the [[Tamiment Library]] of [[New York University]].[^7]
### The CIA and Florida
The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] opened a file on Wackenhut in May 1960, granted him a covert security approval on November 21, 1961, and used the company to backstop the cover of its officers in Miami. In January 1967 the new governor of [[Florida]], [[Claude Kirk]], hired the company to conduct a "war on crime" that he promised would cost the taxpayers nothing. There were "anguished cries of 'Nazism!' and 'Dictatorship!'" At the end of the year the state owed the firm more than 300,000 dollars, and the legislature created a state law enforcement bureau to replace it. The agency rescinded the approval in April 1967, citing "the notoriety that Mr. Wackenhut had received in connection with his activities in Florida." Its science directorate recorded contract actions with the company from 1970 to 1975.[^6][^7]
The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] opened a file on Wackenhut in May 1960, granted him a covert security approval on November 21, 1961, and used the company to backstop the cover of its officers in Miami. In January 1967 the new governor of Florida, [[Claude Kirk]], hired the company to conduct a "war on crime" that he promised would cost the taxpayers nothing. There were "anguished cries of 'Nazism!' and 'Dictatorship!'" At the end of the year the state owed the firm more than 300,000 dollars, and the legislature created a state law enforcement bureau to replace it. The agency rescinded the approval in April 1967, citing "the notoriety that Mr. Wackenhut had received in connection with his activities in Florida." Its science directorate recorded contract actions with the company from 1970 to 1975.[^8][^9]
### Later Years
The company's directors came to include [[Clarence M. Kelley]], former director of the FBI, for whom a division was named; [[James J. Rowley]], former director of the [[United States Secret Service|Secret Service]]; General [[Paul X. Kelley]], former commandant of the [[United States Marine Corps|Marine Corps]]; General [[Julius W. Becton Jr.]]; General [[Thomas P. Stafford]]; and, from 1993, [[Jorge Mas Canosa]], chairman of the [[Cuban American National Foundation]]. Wackenhut told an interviewer in 1988 that the company guarded American embassies and had taken its first site behind the [[Iron Curtain]], in [[Hungary]]. It moved from [[Coral Gables, Florida|Coral Gables]] to [[Palm Beach Gardens, Florida|Palm Beach Gardens]]. He sold it in 2002 to [[Group 4 Falck]] of [[Denmark]] for 570 million dollars. His son [[Richard Wackenhut]] remained chief executive. He died of heart failure on December 31, 2004.[^1][^2][^8]
The company's directors came to include [[Clarence M. Kelley]], former director of the FBI, for whom a division was named; [[James J. Rowley]], former director of the [[United States Secret Service|Secret Service]]; General [[Paul X. Kelley]], former commandant of the [[United States Marine Corps|Marine Corps]]; General [[Julius W. Becton Jr.]]; General [[Thomas P. Stafford]]; and, from 1993, [[Jorge Mas Canosa]], chairman of the [[Cuban American National Foundation]]. Wackenhut told an interviewer in 1988 that the company guarded American embassies and had taken its first site behind the [[Iron Curtain]], in [[Hungary]]. It moved from [[Coral Gables, Florida|Coral Gables]] to [[Palm Beach Gardens, Florida|Palm Beach Gardens]]. He sold it in 2002 to [[Group 4 Falck]] of [[Denmark]] for 570 million dollars. His son [[Richard Wackenhut]] remained chief executive. He died of heart failure on December 31, 2004.[^1][^2][^10]
### Footnotes
[^1]: The Wackenhut Corporation, biographical sketch of George R. Wackenhut and annual and quarterly reports, 1969 to 1988, scanned company files on archive.org.
[^2]: "Security industry pioneer George Wackenhut dies at 85," *SecurityInfoWatch,* January 2005.
[^3]: Connolly, John. "Inside the Shadow CIA," *Spy,* September 1992, pp. 46-54.
[^4]: Hougan, Jim. *Spooks: The Haunting of America: The Private Use of Secret Agents*. William Morrow, 1978.
[^5]: Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, finding aid to the Church League of America Collection of the Research Files of Counterattack, the Wackenhut Corporation, and Karl Baarslag, TAM 148, series II, boxes 30 to 40. https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/tam_148/
[^6]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Wackenhut Corporation, SF# 493 364," memorandum for the record, July 28, 1975, JFK Assassination Records Collection, record 104-10130-10454; McDonald, James H., Director of Logistics, memorandum, 1978, record 104-10135-10200.
[^7]: "Florida: I, Claudius," *Time,* December 15, 1967.
[^8]: The Wackenhut Corporation, Forms 10-K405 and proxy statements, 1994 to 2001, Securities and Exchange Commission, CIK 104030.
[^3]: [Death notice of William H. Wackenhut], *The Philadelphia Inquirer,* November 26, 1961, p. 73. The notice does not give the sons' middle initials. https://www.newspapers.com/image/179325756/
[^4]: Connolly, John. "Inside the Shadow CIA," *Spy,* September 1992, pp. 46-54.
[^5]: Hougan, Jim. *Spooks: The Haunting of America: The Private Use of Secret Agents*. William Morrow, 1978.
[^6]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Wackenhut Corporation," headquarters file, section 1: SAC Newark to Director, May 4, 1962, enclosing Charles B. Flack Jr. to SA James Oakley, May 1, 1962; J. B. Adams to Mr. Callahan, 1966. https://archive.org/stream/WackenhutCorporation/Wackenhut%20Corp.-HQ-1_djvu.txt
[^7]: Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, finding aid to the Church League of America Collection of the Research Files of Counterattack, the Wackenhut Corporation, and Karl Baarslag, TAM 148, series II, boxes 30 to 40. https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/tam_148/
[^8]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Wackenhut Corporation, SF# 493 364," memorandum for the record, July 28, 1975, JFK Assassination Records Collection, record 104-10130-10454; McDonald, James H., Director of Logistics, memorandum, 1978, record 104-10135-10200.
[^9]: "Florida: I, Claudius," *Time,* December 15, 1967.
[^10]: The Wackenhut Corporation, Forms 10-K405 and proxy statements, 1994 to 2001, Securities and Exchange Commission, CIK 104030.