When the telephone on Fred Rustmann’s bedside table jarred him awake at 0300, he grabbed it on the second ring. Waking up instantly alert and ready to go is a trait he developed during 24 years with the CIA.

     The American businessman on the other end of the line quickly outlined his problem: A Latin American government recently changed hands and the new, leftist-oriented leadership was attacking American foreign business activities in general and his company in particular - stirring up public sentiment against Americans. The government was threatening to throw his senior representative in jail if a crowd of irate citizens didn’t kill him first. He wanted his man out of the country fast; but authorities had taken his passport and wouldn’t let him leave. The company needed help of a very special nature.

     Such an assignment was routine for Rustmann during his tours as a CIA station chief. While no longer routine, this type of assignment is still “business as usual” now that he has retired from government service and is running CTC International Group Ltd. - a Florida-based international intelligence/security firm staffed entirely by former members of the CIA. 

     By close-of-business the day of the phone call, the American businessman had been smuggled out of the country on a fishing boat and was en route to a remote island where CTC had a cooperative “contact.” At the same time, a small plane was winging its way south from the United States. By close-of-business on the second day, the executive was safely back home.

     Concerned that the new government would take additional sanctions against his company and its personnel - especially in light of his employee’s flight from the country - the CEO turned again to CTC for assistance. Using contacts developed over long years of CIA service, CTC operatives were able to use agents in country to stop harassment of company personnel and they soon resumed operations.

     The CEO counted himself fortunate to have at his disposal a resource that could do for his company what the CIA does for the U.S. government. Many other corporate leaders have had occasion to feel the same way.

     CTC takes its name from the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center (Rustmann commanded the center’s overseas station prior to his retirement). The company maintains a low profile and runs just like what it is: a miniature CIA with representatives in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok, Addis Ababa, Cyprus, Mexico and elsewhere. All dealings with CTC are conducted through the firm’s corporate head-quarters in Florida (Suite 220, Dept. SOF, 330 Clematis St., West Palm Beach, Florida 33401).

     The “can-do” attitude of the CIA, from which its employees are drawn, is readily apparent. While it can do, and has done, about everything possible in the world of business intelligence, its principal activities fall into five main areas:
     --Providing risk analysis for basic corporate decisions.
     --Finding international partners for American businesses.
     --Conducting targeted intelligence collection to obtain specific information needed by clients.
     --Conducting counterintelligence to protect clients from the loss of proprietary information and ensuring the safety of corporate personnel.
     --Conducting special operations such as exfiltration of threatened executives, the release of hostages or the return of children kidnapped and taken out of the country by a parent without legal custody.

     Each type of assignment requires skills CTC operatives developed at the CIA such as computer research, hostile area operations, contact interviews and information extraction and evaluation.

     Clients receive periodic progress reports and an end-of-assignment wrap-up written by operatives who are highly educated and experienced in producing intelligence packages for American and foreign leaders.

     “Providing risk analysis information is usually the mundane part of our business, although it occasionally gets exciting,” Rustmann said, “but without this type of information a business can’t be effective internationally.” Risk analysis information is a collection of basic information about a country’s economic, political and cultural data - a rundown on local business practices and the interplay between government and business. It also includes advice on criminal and, if applicable, insurgent/terrorist activities and how to deal with them.

     “Risk analysis is the foundation that any business must lay prior to getting involved overseas,” Rustmann insists. “It gives a company the information it needs to determine whether or not to expand into a given country and, if so, how to do it effectively.”

     Far too many businesses fail to address this area in their planning and pay a price for their neglect. According to Rustmann, a U.S. truck-exporting company expanded operations into a Middle East country without doing its homework. Once it had gotten in too far to gracefully back out, it discovered its major competitor was the brother-in-law of the ruler of the country. No one would buy a truck from any company that the brother-in-law did not control. The result was a costly failure for an American company and several “former” company executives. CTC could have easily alerted the company to the situation prior to investing in its expansion effort.

     Rustmann explained that much of the risk analysis intelligence collection is done by contacting sources via computer modem, telephone and fax. However, he continued, “When necessary, we send experienced operatives to the area and do whatever is necessary to ensure that our clients get the data they need in order to make good decisions.” This is especially true when the client is considering moving into an area with a significant criminal, terrorist or insurgency problem.

     In servicing the needs of one Fortune 500 client interested in prospecting for oil in Ethiopia, Rustmann called upon contacts he made there in the ‘80s. The resultant risk assessment indicated that while the new Ethiopian government was friendly toward U.S. companies, insurgent groups operating in the Ogaden region - where the major oil reserves are located - could seriously affect drilling operations.

     Alerted to the insurgent threat, the oil company needed more information before it would consider making a large investment in the strife-torn Ogaden. The company asked if CTC could arrange for protection for its teams and equipment.

     Rustmann flew to Ethiopia and secretly met with an old CTC client: the infamous Sebhat Nega, founder and leader of the guerrilla army (TPLF) that drove Ethiopian strongman Mengistu Haile-Mariam into exile. Rustmann had originally met Sebhat Nega shortly after TPLF tanks entered the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The guerrilla leader asked the former CIA station chief to help locate several government officials who had fled the country after helping themselves to the government’s treasury. CTC quickly provided the information Sebhat Nega wanted and earned the guerrilla chief’s gratitude as well as a nice fee.

     So, when Rustmann approached Sebhat Nega with a personal request for a TPLF security force for the oil company’s exploration teams, he readily agreed. Thanks in large part to Sebhat’s personal intervention, the oil company explored the Ogaden successfully for two years without a single serious terrorist or security incident. CTC had again demonstrated its ability to deliver.

     CTC’s “bread and butter” activities are the diligent investigations it conducts. In many foreign countries, information on individuals and companies is not as readily available as it is in the United States. People are able to represent themselves and their businesses in ways that are difficult to verify. Americans who take on foreign associates often run the danger of becoming victims of fraud or, in a worst-case scenario, being used in criminal activities such as money laundering.

     “The smart businessman,” CTC associate Brad Robinson drives home in lectures, “has an expert check out his contacts before he gets into bed with them.” A leading cosmetics firm found this out the hard way in 1993 when it entered into a partnership with a British cosmetics firm without doing its homework.

     At first the partnership worked well, but when a story alleging possible stock manipulation and shady dealings appeared in Forbes, the company’s stock plummeted in a matter of weeks. The founder of the American parent company lost nearly $20 million in stock options, and the entire management team, including the former CEO, were indicted by the SEC. The CEO claimed he was simply a victim and hired CTC to investigate the British firm.

     CTC quickly found that the British company had been involved in several shady deals over the years, and had actually been convicted of counterfeiting brand-name perfumes. “The moral of this story,” Robinson said, “is that the CEO would never have entered into a business partnership with the British firm had he known in advance about the convictions, and today he would be $20 million richer and not facing a possible prison term.”

     According to Robinson, the quickest, easiest and most economical way for a company to find a reliable foreign partner is to ask CTC. “All they need to do is provide us with a profile of what they are looking for in a business partner.” CTC will sift through the large pool of possible companies and present the client with a list of five or six solid leads, all vetted to ensure they are reliable and above board. “It is a service,” Robinson proclaimed, “that we believe is unique with CTC. We have found viable and safe partners for a very large high-tech corporation and a number of smaller companies. It’s real smart business, and basically a no-brainer for the parent company. We do all the work for them, and they benefit immediately from the expansion.”

     Rustmann believes that targeted intelligence collection is another area in which CTC has a unique service to offer. “We are not ex-cops,” he explained. “While ex-cops do well on criminal-type investigations, especially in the United States, we have the expertise to get what our clients want internationally…which is a whole other ball-game.” As Rustmann pointed out, “We know the local languages and customs and we have the high-level, influential contacts in business and government from our Agency days. We get the job done, done right and done fast.”

     Exactly what is targeted intelligence? It’s information that a company needs to increase its market share in a foreign country. This includes narrowly focused market research, which can sometimes border on industrial espionage. “We provide our clients with the competitive edge,” Rustmann explained.

     Rustmann pointed out that the intelligence services of foreign governments (notably the French, Japanese and Russian) are heavily involved in business intelligence, including classic industrial espionage. The French intelligence service was recently caught bugging a Concorde flight between New York and Paris in order to listen in on conversations of American businessmen. The French intelligence officers hoped to discover negotiating strategies the Americans planned to use against their French counterparts.

     Additionally, several of the Air France stewards and stewardesses were unmasked as French intelligence officers placed on the flights to collect intelligence through conversations with Americans. Co-opting hotel managers and staff by the French DST (France’s FBI) to provide access to the hotel rooms of American businessmen has been going on for years. “Once they’re inside,” Rustmann warned, “they copy documents, extract information from laptop computers, and bug the room.”

     “The DCI (director of the CIA) has stated that he will not provide the same service for U.S. businesses that the French intelligence service is providing to the French business community,” Rustmann commented, “and that puts American businesses at a disadvantage.” CTC, however, believes American companies need access to the same type of expertise as foreign businesses and is willing to provide it.

     Rustmann illustrated a classic example of targeted intelligence collection carried out by CTC. A Middle Eastern country was about to award a massive telecommunications contract to a European firm despite the fact that an American company’s bid was lower and the American equipment was superior. 

     The company hired CTC to find out why. “As you might have guessed,” Rustmann explained, “the reason was that the European firm had paid baksheesh (bribe money) to Middle Eastern contacts.” The American firm, armed with the evidence of the pay-off provided by CTC, appealed to the White House for help. President Bush threatened to reduce foreign aid to the country if the U.S. firm did not receive fair treatment. Half of the contract was awarded to the American firm and half to the European firm. 

     Investigations into the loss of proprietary information (processes, patents, copyrights, pirated products, etc.) is another area in which CTC is active. “It takes a spy to catch a spy,” CTC associate Robinson proclaimed. Robinson pointed out that, in this era of downsizing, many disgruntled or former employees are potential sources of information for competitors.

     With professional foreign intelligence officers going after American business secrets, traditional security measures designed to ferret out the criminal element are frequently ineffective. Experienced former CIA officers, however, having similar training and experience as their foreign counterparts - and a familiarity with their specific methods of operation - know what to look for. “We examine our client from the standpoint of how we’d obtain his secrets if we were tasked to do so and, once we’ve determined how we’d do it, we start looking for the signature of the French of the Japanese or whatever,” Robinson said. “We can find them every time.”

     The CTC operatives certainly have the training and experience to make good on Robinson’s claims. As CIA case officers, all CTC operatives have spent more than two years in formal intelligence training courses and an average of 18 years overseas perfecting the craft of developing intelligence sources, contacts and collecting, evaluating and reporting information in every corner of the globe.

     “It’s in the area of special operations that things sometimes get hairy,” Rustmann said. For security reasons Rustmann won’t go into details, but CTC does rescue children of divorce when the parent not awarded custody kidnaps the child or children and takes them overseas to avoid the U.S. court system. “We go into the country, conduct surveillance to determine how to best handle the rescue, then bring them out,” Rustmann explained.

     In one case, CTC operatives flew to a Central American country to reunite two children with their mother. The ex-CIA agents snatched the children who were being held illegally by their father at the beach. An air craft rendezvoused with the children, mother and CTC operatives at an isolated airstrip and whisked them away. “It was smooth,” Rustmann stated, “not only was no one hurt, but the children weren’t even frightened.”

     “We’re pros. There is nothing more to be said.”