Tracking Down Work in Kuwait : Roberts Protection & Investigations Looked Into It--and Got a Contract

Judging from the massive turnout at a recent symposium that met near here on rebuilding Kuwait, hundreds of Orange County companies are hoping to get a piece of the action once reconstruction begins in earnest.

One local company, however unlikely, already has a share: Roberts Protection & Investigations, a 10-year-old 100-employee firm run by retired Newport Beach police officer Lee M. Roberts.

The company, situated on a quiet street a few blocks from the County Courthouse, recently completed a three-week assignment to provide security and explosives-detection services in Kuwait for a contractor hired by the Kuwaiti government to inspect the country’s water and sewage facilities.

“We’ve built a pretty good reputation for doing the unusual and being able to supply the unusual services,” Roberts said. “In this case, those services were private ordnance disposal and VIP protection in a hostile environment.”

Roberts sent two men to assist a team of six engineers from a Texas-based environmental engineering firm to prepare a war damage report on Kuwait’s water and sewage facilities.

Roberts said a confidentiality agreement prevents him from disclosing the company’s name, but Operations Management International Inc., a Kingwood, Tex., subsidiary of CH2M Hill, a Denver environmental management firm, confirmed that it had the contract.

“The Kuwaiti government is a long-term client of ours,” OMI President Don Evans said. “We were working with them before the country was at war, and we look forward to continuing with that work.”

For Roberts’ company, the assignment presented a new challenge, and he picked two former police officers--one of them schooled in bomb detection and disposal, the other in corporate security--to fill the bill.

“We were inundated with people who wanted to go,” Roberts said.

One of the two chosen was Gregory E. Smith, a former Ohio and Texas law enforcement officer who most recently worked as head of corporate security for United Western Medical Centers, which has facilities in Santa Ana and Anaheim.

Smith and his partner, the explosives expert--the company said it could not disclose his name because of the sensitive nature of ongoing work--served as liaisons between OMI engineers and the U.S. and Kuwaiti authorities, and as point men as the team entered damaged facilities.

“We had to determine whether they were safe,” said Smith, 42. “Some were used as command centers, others were piled high with ordnance . . . if we determined they were unsafe, we didn’t go in.”

Roberts said his men did not themselves disarm any of the explosives left behind by the Iraqis, although they could have should they or the engineers have found themselves caught in a booby trap.

“If we could move (the explosives), we did that,” Roberts said. “We had someone there who was well-versed in explosive ordnance recognition and who, if we came into a situation where life was in danger, could have resolved it.”

On one occasion, Smith said, the engineering team was fired upon as it approached a remote pumping station. Smith said he is still not sure who opened fire--the shots went over their heads--but that he suspects that Kuwaiti resistance fighters were serving warning not to come too close too fast.

“We withdrew and made contacts in the area and let it be known that there wouldn’t be any utility service until we completed our job,” Smith said. “After that, the buildings were secured and we went in.”

When they were to pass through Palestinian neighborhoods, Smith said, the team donned red kaffiyeh --the customary Arab headdress--and wrapped the cloth around their faces to avoid being identified as Americans.

Although Smith and his partner entered the country unarmed, they made contact with the Kuwaiti national police, and both received commissions as lieutenant colonels--making passage through the country much easier and giving them the permission to carry weapons.

Smith said the Kuwaiti police expressed interest in hiring the company in the future to help retrain its force, which was decimated during the war.

Smith said several Kuwaiti officers asked him about the footage of the Rodney G. King beating, which they saw repeatedly on Cable News Network.

“They wanted to know if all the cops in the U.S. acted like the four guys did in L.A.,” Smith said. “I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ ”

Roberts is hoping to land more contracts as other construction and engineering companies venture into Kuwait.

For the OMI contract, Roberts charged about $80 per man-hour--twice the company’s normal rate. And he expects to raise his fees for similar work in the future.

“This was a real feather in our cap,” Roberts said of the assignment. “We know our client is going to need this type of service in the future. Fluor, Bechtel (two giant engineering companies in line for big Kuwaiti reconstruction contracts) and the rest, they’re going to need it too.”