Corporate Security Worries Revived by Kidnap Plot, Bomb

Four years after two highly publicized hijackings raised safety fears among business executives overseas, concern about corporate security resurfaced this week in the aftermath of an alleged plot to kidnap Texas billionaire Robert M. Bass and a bomb explosion that killed a West German banker.

Although no corporate executives contacted by The Times on Friday would openly discuss the murky world of corporate security, firms that provide security services, as well as kidnaping insurance underwriters and companies that sell anti-terrorism devices, reported an increase in calls inquiring about protection after Thursday’s incidents.

“There has been a slight but steady increase in the number of inquiries we’ve been getting about kidnaping insurance, particularly for those (executives) that are planning to travel overseas,” said Oliver Leigh-Wood, an underwriter who specializes in kidnap and ransom insurance, among other services, for Lloyds of London’s Chicago office.

International Logistic Systems Inc., a Belleville, N.J.-based company that annually sells more than $20 million worth of anti-terrorist devices such as metal detectors and armored cars, said sales picked up substantially Thursday and Friday.

“We always get a lot of calls after highly publicized incidents like that bombing in Germany,” said Carmine Pellosie. “A lot of people watch too many James Bond movies; they get paranoid.”

Not since the mid-1980s, when Americans stayed away from Europe in droves following the hijackings of an Egyptian jetliner and the Mediterranean cruise ship Achille Lauro, has concern about corporate security been so widely discussed, experts say.

Alfred Herrhausen, the head of West Germany’s largest bank, was killed in a bomb attack Thursday while traveling to his office in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, a Tennessee man was held on racketeering and extortion charges in the alleged plot to kidnap Robert Bass and hold him for $5-million ransom, authorities said.

Ironically, 1989 had been shaping up as a quiet year for business executives.

Although there were a record 1,212 terrorist incidents directed against U.S. business and executives overseas in 1988, according to Business Risks International, a Nashville, Tenn.-based security consulting firm, the U.S. State Department has predicted that terrorist incidents would decline this year because of the Soviet Union’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and the decision by the Palestine Liberation Organization to renounce violence.

There are no reliable figures on kidnaping and extortions involving business executives in the U.S., but most experts believe domestic crime against executives was staying even.

“The average citizen runs more risk of getting assaulted in the street than being a victim of a terrorist incident” in the United States or overseas, said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica.

Still, security consultants say that executives are again seeking advice about altering their travel schedules, traveling in armored vehicles and even scrambling their voices to disguise telephone conversations.

“All of us are uncomfortable speaking about it, but there is a feeling out there that we are more at risk,” said Richard C. Heydinger, risk management director for Hallmark Cards Inc. in Kansas City, Mo. That’s true, he said, even for outfits like Hallmark “that are in a soft industry with a ‘good’ reputation.”

“We are always concerned about situations like this,” said Kenneth A. Mills, a vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank, referring to the bombing in West Germany. “But I think we are all fairly confident that our security measures are able to cope with situations such as these.”