James Bond ‘Supplier’ Has the Cure for Whatever Is Bugging You
Feeling vulnerable? Something bugging you? Then buy peace of mind from the company whose customers have included the Shah of Iran and the fictional James Bond.
But don’t be fooled by the front room of the Counter Spy Shop in Washington, one of CCS Communication Control Inc.’s eight stores. If it looks like an ordinary boutique selling designer telephones and fancy binoculars, that’s because the serious security goods are in the back room, where a salesman will show you an array of bomb sniffers, lie detectors, anti-bugging devices, tape-recording nullifiers, telephone voice scramblers, bulletproof clothing and infrared scopes that see through smoke and darkness.
Booming Industry
CCS claims to be the largest and most diversified company in the anti-espionage and anti-terrorist industry, which has been booming as a result of increased business spying, occasional kidnapings of executives abroad and such highly publicized incidents as the bombing of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s hotel.
The late Shah of Iran once ordered a $250,000 bulletproof Cadillac equipped with all the options, including ducts to emit tear gas, oil and smoke, portholes for machine guns, steel-reinforced ramming bumpers and a 6,000-volt shock for undesirables who dared touch the thing.
“This car could drive through hell,” bragged CCS Vice President Carmine Pellosie--although not, he admitted, without scorching the paint.
Unfortunately for the shah, he was deposed before the car could be delivered, and it was too wide to maneuver on the roads of Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he made his home in exile. So he forfeited his $50,000 deposit. The car, stripped of some of its options, was sold to an anonymous buyer in New York for $185,000.
$65,000 Bulletproof Car
If your tastes are more modest than the shah’s, you can buy a simple bulletproof vehicle for as little as $65,000. By necessity, air conditioning is standard because the windows do not open. This prevents human error--like rolling down the windows to chat with terrorists; you have to purchase an intercom for that. To pay tolls, a salesman said, you have to open the door or “call ahead and send a check.”
CCS has sold about 2,000 cars--from Fiats to Cadillac limousines--and they are are terrorist-tested tough. Take it from a South American general whose car was hit by 155 bullets and hacked at with axes during a roadblock ambush, according to Pellosie. The car was a little the worse for wear, but its occupants were unscathed.
However, the meat and potatoes of CCS’s product line are not limousines but briefcases. The company recently renamed its “Bionic Briefcase” the “Trionic Briefcase,” although CCS spokeswoman Alice Fribourg admitted that “basically, they’re the same.”
The complete “Trionic Briefcase,” described by Fribourg as a “suit of armor in a briefcase,” includes a bomb detector, a theft alarm, a tracking signal in case it is stolen, a bug detector, a wireless telephone with voice scrambler and a lie detector. It can emit a temporarily blinding blast of light. Of course, it can be used as a bulletproof shield. It can also carry papers. Yours for $20,000.
And the single most popular CCS product, according to Fribourg, is the “Secure Communication Control Center CC 7000 RC,” a telephone voice scrambler in a briefcase that changes the scrambling code every tenth of a second to discourage would-be eavesdroppers and code-busters. The price: $14,000 for a pair.
Equipment for Bond
If CCS sounds like something out a James Bond novel, it should. The company is an adviser to author James Gardner, Ian Fleming’s successor. Pick up such recent Bond novels as “License Renewed” and “Icebreaker,” and you will find the miniaturized CCS bug detector called the “Privacy Protector VL-34” and a Saab bolstered with protection from CCS.
CCS’s founder is a native New Yorker of Yemenite and French extraction named Ben Jamil, an importer of fancy French telephones who started selling bug detectors in 1967. The company opened its first store in 1978 in New York, where it designs its equipment and manufactures 70% of its products.
It has since opened stores in Washington, Miami, Chicago, Houston, Beverly Hills, Paris and London--where a bookcase opens to let customers into a hidden showroom. Stores are being considered for Geneva and Las Vegas, where, Fribourg said, casino owners are interested in voice stress analyzers, among other things, to check the honesty of employees.
Even CCS’s catalogue is expensive. For $50, refundable with your first purchase, you can take home the “Survival Catalog,” which, in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, describes about 85 products and offers such services as customizing your car into a mobile bunker.
Credit Cards Accepted
If you decide to buy, CCS accepts credit cards, although a salesman said some customers prefer the anonymity of $100 bills stacked in a briefcase. Typical CCS customers are “low-key,” Fribourg explained. “They don’t advertise what they do for a living.”
CCS does not do business with just anybody: It draws the line, Pellosie said, at political groups that are “considered terrorist organizations.” Its customers include many blue-chip companies, famous entertainers and heads of state. The company makes 60% of its sales to foreigners, many of whom are from the Middle East and Latin America.
Pellosie said that the privately held company--only he and Jamil hold stock--has annual sales of about $30 million. Sales have tripled over the last five years, thanks to what the company calls a worldwide increase in terrorism and invasions of privacy.
CCS advertises in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Soldier of Fortune, a magazine that describes itself as “the journal of professional adventurers.” Its ads seem designed to make you look over your shoulder--and under your desk--more often. “Fight Big Brother; 1984 Is Here!” a recent advertisement in Soldier of Fortune warns.
‘Frightening Realities’
A pamphlet plugging CCS’s $350, one-day security seminar states: “Bugging, blackmail and bombings are no longer just news headlines. They are now the frightening realities that confront every phase of life.”
Are the ads overstated? “Look around,” Pellosie said. “The FBI and companies are accused of bugging. It’s so common. Look at the bombings in the past year . . . . In Boise, Idaho, the ad might create paranoia, but not in Belfast, Ireland.”
Nor, perhaps, in Washington, D.C., where CCS holds its security seminar at the Watergate office complex, made famous by the bugging of the Democratic National Committee headquarters during President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign.
Bug Detectors Popular
Bug and wire-tap detectors account for half of CCS’s sales, at prices ranging from $700 to $30,000. Pellosie recalls a woman who called CCS from overseas, contending that she was being bugged by her government. It turned out that she had been the mistress of the head of state, who had died about six months earlier; and, Pellosie said, the government, “worried he would reveal secrets in the throes of passion,” had been eavesdropping.
CCS found the bugs; the woman, to reassure herself that the government would not attempt a repeat performance, bought a CCS Tap Alert B-409 for $3,500 and a VL-33 Bug Detector for $4,900. “But, when you’ve got the problem,” said a salesman, “price becomes very insignificant.”
CCS can also make it easier for you to tape a conversation surreptitiously. A 1968 federal law makes it illegal to record a conservation between two persons who do not know they are being taped, but only 14 states (including California) forbid recordings when only one person is not clued in. Elsewhere, you can use the Executive Surveillance System B-405--which, according to the CCS catalogue, “poses as an innocent cigar humidor.”
Can’t Trace Phone Call
What CCS cannot do, despite numerous requests from potential customers, is pinpoint the place of origin of an incoming telephone call. That, says Pellosie, would require access to the telephone company’s computers, something that even CCS lacks.
CCS is still working on its most ambitious project ever: a nuclear-powered subcutaneous transmitter and Mylar antenna, complete with tracking satellite.
Translated, the concept is simple: A “beeper” powered by the same kind of long-life nuclear “battery” used in cardiac pacemakers would be surgically implanted under your skin, where it would transmit a signal using an antenna implanted around the shoulder. The beeper signal would be received by one of six orbiting satellites, allowing your position to be pinpointed.
Pellosie says that there is great demand for such an orbiting bloodhound because government officials and others “are kidnaped all over the world.” It would, he says, have found former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who was kidnaped and later slain by terrorists.
Radiation a Problem
Pellosie admits that there are obstacles. For one, the radiation emitted by the transmitter may pose a health hazard. For another, the transmitter must be encased in such a way that the body will not reject it. And then there’s a matter of cost. CCS will have to pay about $30 million to put each of the six satellites in orbit, which raises the specter of competition from a more conspicuous and primitive security alternative: bodyguards.
Regardless, Pellosie says that he expects CCS to get the project off the ground in three to five years.
