From FBI reject to private warlord: the rise of George Wackenhut
www.muckrock.com
He gave his name to what would become the biggest private detention company in the world. But he got his start over sixty years ago here at home in Hoover's FBI. Meet George Wackenhut.

•A Brief History of America’s Private Prison Industry

•From FBI reject to private warlord: the rise of George Wackenhut

•By 1966, Wackenhut could confidently state that it had secret files on 4 million Americans

•Many of the Wackenhut documents and a series on student movements in California highlight the suspected connections between Communism, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the broader left counterculture of the 1960s, and document the right’s evolving definition of “subversion.”

•An ICE Contractor Is Worth Billions. It’s Still Fighting to Pay Detainees as Little as $1 a Day to Work. GEO Group, whose stock is valued at $4 billion, says that state minimum wage laws don’t apply to the cleaning services that it’s asked detained migrants to perform at facilities where they’re kept.

•Ice contractor plans for surveillance boom under Trump migrant crackdown: Geo Group, an Ice partner, is moving at ‘unprecedented speed’ to build out its monitoring, executive chair says

•Better know a private prison giant: GEO Group’s Board of Directors

•Feb 2025: Private Prison Exec Calls Mass Deportation Plans ‘Unprecedented Opportunity’ GEO Group Chairman George Zoley said the company stands to gain up to $1 billion in additional revenue from detaining and surveilling undocumented immigrants.

•The man who is making a killing from Trump’s current onslaught of immigrant persecution is himself an immigrant. In fact, if George Zoley had been born just 20 years later, he’d more likely be cowering inside the Aurora Detention Center instead of raking in the profits from it.

•George C. Zoley, chairman of the board and founder of GEO Group, the second largest private prison company is the United States, has been with GEO or its former parent company, the Wackenhut Corporation, since 1981. Zoley has called late George Wackenhut, the controversial right-wing founder of Wackenhut Corporation, the person he most admired.

Among the many concerning controversies involving Wackenhut corporations, one that might seem especially relevant in 2026, was their suspected involvement in several murders relating to the very convoluted Inslaw and PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information System) software scandal of the 1980s. The software was sold as an automation system for police and court data, and advertised as one day having the potential to predict crime before it even happened. It was allegedly stolen and modified before being distributed by the U.S. government and used to spy on other countries.

•We know from witness statements that the murders appear to be connected to the corruption surrounding Wackenhut and the PROMIS affair. We know from FBI’s own records that the Bureau looked into the matter. And most recently, we know that the FBI has not only repeatedly refused to release those files, but apparently removed the request from their FOIA tracking system.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      Shitdick seems like too kind of a euphemism. The guy sounds like he was written as a plot twist character in a Stephen King novel. Clean cut on the outside, deeply repressed authoritarian hang ups and control issues on the inside that lead him to act out as an authority ordained to police and control everyone else. Like any human he had moments where he snaps and lost his controlled exterior, but he seems to have unleashed it all on others in some rather curious ways.

      I feel like his name was meant to do a great job of conveying his personality as a warning to others. Wackenhut? What a joke. Definitely doesn’t sound like somebody who should be trusted with any power or authority…