27-02-2025
Inside the Secretive World of Elite Private Security
A London billionaire industrialist recently convened a dinner at his mansion. The president of an oil-rich nation was invited, but the biggest surprise the host got was the intrusion into his tony abode of a most unexpected guest: a taster.
A taster is the member of a VIP's advance team who is tasked with going into well-appointed kitchens with a chemical kit to detect the presence of poison. The billionaire was somewhat taken aback by the cameo, but he was mortified by what happened next.
'The meal was all Indian dishes, and the live cultures in the yogurt sauces set off the kit's detector for biological agents. The whole banquet had to be scrapped and done over from scratch at the last minute, when everyone was already seated at the table,' said a stunned guest who witnessed the faux pas. 'It's getting Game of Thrones out there.'
That's the state of affairs these days among the Gulfstream gentry. In the aftermath of the killing of a titan of industry, Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, no security precaution is too extreme. Christopher Falkenberg, an attorney and former Secret Service special agent who founded Insite Risk Management in 2002, chuckles when he hears the anecdote about the taster.
'Unfortunately, the security industry is somewhat in the fear business,' he says. 'There's a guy named Bruce Schneier who coined the term 'security theater.' It means finding things to do to give the client the impression that they're doing something.' And there's always something to do.
Real life attacks on the ruling class—including Donald Trump's campaign season assassination attempts—as well as hit television series such as Black Doves (about high-class killers who look like Keira Knightley) and The Day of the Jackal (which follows an elite assassin who has an Elon Musk–like figure in his crosshairs), have thrown a spotlight on the niche world of executive protection, or EP. But it was Thompson's murder on a busy Manhattan sidewalk in December that swept the chessboard clean. Since then corporate America has been reevaluating security in an era notable for both vast income inequality and an armed populace primed to blame those at the top.
'The development of communications technology has made the threats worse,' Falkenberg says. 'There are social media apps that exacerbate people's sense of grievance and have greatly increased the number of people who are worrisome. But it has also provided us a more routinized and predictable way of identifying those people. So we know they're getting worse, but we also know where they are and can keep an eye on them more efficiently than in the past.'
Falkenberg's approach is to identify potential threats before they reach his clients. Part of that work is monitoring online chatter from what he calls 'professional agitators who enjoy collecting injustices on platforms from social media to the dark web.'
Healthcare suits are not alone in their C-suite anxiety.
Other high-risk fields include residential real estate ('where you're evicting renters'), finance ('where you're foreclosing on people'), commercial real estate ('where you're causing people to file for bankruptcy'), and even the blameless saints of journalism. 'Clients who are in businesses that have a significant negative impact on consumers, those people are really concerned right now,' Falkenberg says.
Historically, political figures like presidents, popes, and kings have been seen as the prime targets for kidnapping and assassination. But crimes targeting the families of business executives and other public figures emerged in the West a century ago. That can be attributed both to the shift in power and wealth from state and church entities to the private sector, and also to the arrival of mass media, which literally started printing the names and photos of the new Masters of the Universe, as well as their addresses.
The biggest news story of 1932, for example, was the Lindbergh Baby, which followed the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator, from his home in East Amwell Township, New Jersey. In 1969 criminals abducted and killed a woman who they believed was the wife of Rupert Murdoch. They got the wrong person by mistake, and her remains were never found.
And the world was riveted by the 1973 kidnapping in Italy of John Paul Getty III, the 16-year-old grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. The grisly nature of his abduction—kidnappers sliced off his ear and mailed it to a newspaper—and Grandpa's perceived miserliness over paying the ransom (he would offer only the amount that was tax deductible) turned the five-month ordeal into an international soap opera.
With the rise of celebrity culture, entertainers became targets for the first time. In New York, John Lennon's 1980 murder outside the Dakota apartment building on Central Park West became a generation-defining event. And in Los Angeles, 21-year-old television actress Rebecca Schaeffer was fatally shot at her door by a demented fan in 1989. That crime supercharged the private security industry in Hollywood, propelling West Coast protection experts like Gavin de Becker to national prominence.
In recent years de Becker has served as head of security for Jeff Bezos, who famously doesn't scrimp on protection. Star Trek Beyond star Chris Pine told reporters that when Bezos shot a cameo in the 2016 film, he arrived with 'like, nine bodyguards and three limos. It was really intense.'
Today the mix of high-net-worth clients for a top-tier executive protection firm might include business leaders, families with inherited fortunes, and high-profile entertainment figures. William Wilson Jr., who retired from law enforcement in 2013 as chief of police at the Southampton Town and Southampton Village police departments, runs one such firm, Wilson & Associates Security Consulting, with offices in New York and Florida.
'We live in a world now where there is a definitive need for proactive security measures,' he says. 'Threats can come from anywhere, from corporate espionage to mentally unstable individuals who take up a gun and start looking to do somebody harm.'
Buyer, beware: Clients who want premium security can expect a price tag to match. 'I've worked with families that will spend $250,000 a year on protection, and companies that spend $15 million a year,' Wilson says. 'A lot of it has to do with what the CEOs and their families are comfortable with. I know corporate executives who don't go anywhere without an armed protective detail and security drivers, right up to having armored SUVs.'
Mogul anxiety may have spiked since Thompson's murder, but it's difficult to pinpoint statistically whether violence targeting executives is on the rise overall, since the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting database doesn't break out high-net-worth America from the rest of the numbers. One thing security experts agree on, however, is that there's no rest for the wicked.
'Twenty years ago you had to spend $7 to buy a copy of Forbes to find out who the richest people are. Today there are many places publishing that information. And many people are intentionally generating animus against powerful, rich people, among those who are not influential and feel as though they've been disempowered,' Falkenberg says.
So, what of the rich? Should American oligarchs consider adding tasters to their entourages of lackeys, security chiefs, bodyguards, and armored vehicle drivers? 'If I were bringing a client to the home of a billionaire for dinner,' Falkenberg says, 'I'd be more focused on making sure the staff is washing their hands.'
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This story appears in the March 2025 issue of Town & Country, with the headline 'Where's My Bodyguard?.' SUBSCRIBE NOW
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