Barry McDaniel and 15 Reasons to Investigate Stratesec

One of the men who led Stratesec, the World Trade Center (WTC) security company, has recently resurfaced on some small business websites. This is Barry McDaniel, the U.S. military executive who served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Stratesec from 1996 until 2002 and then briefly became the company’s CEO. The new websites provide rare photos of McDaniel and an opportunity to review some of the many reasons why he and his Stratesec partner Wirt D. Walker should be investigated for the crimes of 9/11.

Although McDaniel has been largely overlooked by investigators, Walker has been the focus of much investigation due to inquiries into his familial relationship to George W. Bush. The familial relationship is distant, unlike for Stratesec director Marvin Bush—brother to George W. and Jeb, but Walker’s background reveals many deep state connections.

Despite playing a central role in security for 9/11-related facilities, Stratesec was not investigated at all by U.S. authorities after 9/11. The company was a subsidiary of the Kuwait-American Company (KuwAm), foreign-owned and led by Walker and a young member of the Kuwaiti royal family. As described in my book Another Nineteen , there are many reasons to consider Stratesec, KuwAm, and their leaders as suspects in the crimes of 9/11. Here are a few.

1. Stratesec had unparalleled access to several of the facilities that were central to the events of 9/11. The company had pre-9/11 security contracts with the WTC complex, United Airlines, which owned two of the planes that were destroyed on 9/11, and Dulles Airport where American Airlines Flight 77 took off.

2. KuwAm was linked through its directors to the terrorist network BCCI. One of KuwAm’s principal directors, Hamzah Behbehani, came to the company after working for a BCCI partner bank from the 1986 until BCCI was shut down. Furthermore, KuwAm was ostensibly funded by Kuwaiti royalty, which had significant BCCI connections. The Chairman of Kuwaiti Airways, for example, was Faisal al-Fulaij, BCCI’s principal nominee. Al-Fulaij was deeply involved in the operations of BCCI and its U.S. subsidiaries. Kuwait’s Finance and Oil minister was Abdul Rahman Al-Atiqi, a major investor in BCCI.

3. Stratesec held its annual company meetings in office space leased by the governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, both of which benefited from the response to 9/11. The offices were at the infamous Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC.

4. Wirt Walker’s activities ran parallel to those of two known CIA operatives—Ted Shackley and Robert Sensi. All three men had unusual business relationships with Kuwaiti royalty and were involved in aviation and security operations. Like Walker, Sensi had an address in Oklahoma City.

5. McDaniel had expertise in the acquisition and distribution of military ordnance. He had worked for the D.O.D. as the Deputy Director for Readiness at the U.S. Army Material Command where he was responsible for procuring and fielding all of the weapons systems for the Army. This background made him well suited to the job of acquiring and distributing explosive materials.

6. McDaniel had links to the Iran-Contra crimes and to companies that conducted covert operations, like Sears World Trade and The Vinnell Corporation.

7. The timing of McDaniel’s unusual career move to become COO at Stratesec matched the timing of work at the WTC that provided opportunities to plant demolition-related devices. The fireproofing upgrade project began in 1996, when McDaniel arrived, and was ongoing at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The floors of impact had just been completed shortly before the attacks.

8. At the WTC, Stratesec focused on electronic badging, security gates, and the closed circuit video systems (CCTV). These security controls could therefore have been set-up to be bypassed as needed.

9. At Dulles Airport, Stratesec had managed airfield access and electronic badging, as well as the security video system that later provided unique and critical evidence implicating the alleged hijackers. The 9/11 Commission Report referenced the security videotape from Dulles in three separate footnotes. The Dulles video was used to implicate all of the accused Flight 77 hijackers. Neither Logan nor Newark airports had such security videotape evidence to provide— only Dulles.

10. KuwAm and Stratesec were led by directors and investors who were linked to deep state entities and who benefited from the response to the 9/11 crimes.

11. After Kuwait stopped funding Stratesec, the company’s primary stockholder was a shell company whose principals were convicted of money laundering and conspiracy. This was the company called ES Bankest that illegally transferred nearly 200 million dollars from a Portugese bank to various operations like Stratesec. ES Bankest’s owners, brothers Eduardo and Hector Orlansky, and their partners, were indicted shortly after Stratesec closed.

12. A stock purchase made by Walker and his wife, the week of 9/11, was flagged by the SEC as suspected 9/11 insider trading. Walker and his wife were never investigated, or even questioned.

13. KuwAm’s subsidiaries, including all three aviation companies and Stratesec, went bankrupt shortly after 9/11 and there are reasons to believe that they were fronts for covert operations. These reasons include some of the facts described above and that these companies were always able to maintain strong cash flow despite dismal business performance. They appeared to close only because Kuwaiti government funding dried up after 9/11.

14. KuwAm’s three aviation companies were operationally located in the same Oklahoma City offices—in the same isolated airport hangar—that have since been occupied by Zacarias Moussaoui’s flight trainer.

15. After 9/11, McDaniel started a “defense solutions” and police state equipment company with Dick Cheney’s old partner Bruce Bradley. When independent investigators revealed that remarkable association, the company’s website was taken down.

Considering these things, it’s a good idea for investigators to remain alert to the activities of Walker, McDaniel, and their associates. Photos of the elusive men are not really necessary and there are still no public photos available for Walker. But McDaniel’s face has finally made an appearance on the web, along with a few other details about his activities and associations.

McDaniel’s current colleagues are a noteworthy bunch with experience in hotspots around the world. They include Kallyan Chakravorty, a former officer in the Indian Army who lists Skylink Aviation on his resume. Skylink is a Canadian company that provides aviation services in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Pakistan. It looks a like a CIA airline but is owned by a Libyan-Israeli named Walter Arbib.

The internet resume McDaniel uses today says that he has been “providing logistical service and construction solutions on most post conflict areas of the world including Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.” He’s just a guy who happened to be the right person to put the security system together for the WTC before it came crashing to the ground, and just happened to have expertise in explosive ordnance. He also happens to be linked to the Iran-Contra crimes, and happened to be business partners with a close colleague of Dick Cheney. Or maybe there’s more to it than that.