VETERANS SPOTLIGHT
Hiding in Plain Sight For years, Bruce Wimmer protected assassination targets. Then, he had to heed his own advice.
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ehind dark sunglasses, Bruce Wimmer surveys the scene. He’s driving his third different car this week, taking a road he’s seldom traveled before, but will take him to the same destination: Clark Air Base in Pampanga, Philippines. In gridlock traffic,Wimmer is a sitting duck. Cars have filled the roads while people walk through the streets, dodging the vehicles as if maneuvering a mine field. Be observant, keep a low profile, change your normal habits. He’s taught these practices to high ranking government officials dozens, if not hundreds, of times. He’s preached them and he’s demanded them. Now, he has to live them as an assassination target. For the past three months, Wimmer has had a bullseye on his back unlike anything he’s ever experienced, and boy has he experienced his fair share. He was in Vietnam in 1973 when the last United States troops left the country; he stood on top of the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on April 7, 1988, when thousands of students marched on the Embassy, hoping to burn it down while protesting the expulsion of a drug kingpin to the United States; he stood in Berlin on Nov. 9, 1989 when the Berlin Wall finally fell and watched as 2 million people from East Berlin and West Berlin joined in “the greatest street party in the history of the world.” But here in the Philippines in 1991, it’s different. As a Commander in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), Wimmer is now the target.The New People’s Army (NPA), the armed L to R: Bruce Wimmer; Phan Van Xoan Retired General with wing of the Communist Long Hai Security; Graham Potter, Client Relations, Long Hai Party of the Philippines, Security; and Robert Dodge, Executive Vice President, G4S Corporate Risk Services believes that if they can kill a leader of the Air Force’s federal law enforcement agency, they can send the message that they can get to anybody. “I’m used to being on the other side of it — protecting senior leaders. It’s harder to see why as a Lieutenant Colonel someone would try to kill me. I’m not that important,” Wimmer said.“A message came in (from
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U.S. sources in the NPA) that they wanted to kill Colonel Wimmer. I said, ‘I am Colonel Wimmer.’ “You’re not ready for that.When it’s you, it’s a stunning reality.” For three months, Wimmer navigated through the streets of Pampanga alone with no security detail while the NPA attempted to track him down. He changed cars on a near-daily basis, from bullet-proof government vehicles to rental cars. He changed the route he took, he changed which gate he entered the base through, he changed his entire schedule. He changed his life. “It’s pretty scary. I had to change my lifestyle and my way of thinking,” Wimmer said of knowing people are looking for you. “ Things that I taught senior leaders I had to employ myself. I had to be unpredictable and unknown amongst them because if I make a mistake and they do find me, I’m in deep trouble.” When Wimmer arrived at Clark Air Base, there were oftentimes teams from the NPA waiting outside the gate for him. “You’re really not thinking too deep of thoughts, you’re looking for reactions,” Wimmer said. “I just looked at their faces to see if I see a reaction, and be able to read that person if they recognized me.” They never did. All the while, Mt. Pinatubo had just erupted, covering the province in ash while clogging the streets. Subsequent rain led to flooding, and earthquakes caused buildings with heavy layers of ash to collapse. The U.S. military was pulling out, eventually leaving Wimmer as the last military member permanently assigned to Clark Air Base. But Wimmer never lost his focus on what truly mattered. “I had a family to go home to,” said Wimmer. “It wasn’t about me, it was about me coming back to my family. I’ve got a wife and daughter to get back to. I was determined to survive if at all possible.” Finally, the NPA redeployed their teams and gave up on Wimmer, just before he was given the heads up to go home. “For three months, everything was flipped upside down. On the tarmac (preparing for takeoff), I was praying. I had my fingers crossed saying, ‘can we just take off?’ I was just wishing to kiss the ground on the other side.” Now, Wimmer serves as a Senior Director for G4S Corporate Risk Services, again providing protection for individuals across the globe. “The nearly 22 years I spent in the military and what I do at G4S have a tremendous number of overlaps,” Wimmer said. “Dealing with criminals, terrorists and spies means the private sector faces the same threats I dealt with in the military. My leadership chain includes people with military experience and most of my colleagues have that or law enforcement backgrounds, so it is a comfortable match.”
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G4S Military Outreach Initiatives, Awards, Recognition & Statistics Most Valuable Employer (MVE) for Military by CivilianJobs.com - 2014
26%
12,822
Number of veterans hired by G4S since August 2011 in conjunction with the White House’s “Joining Forces” campaign
Estimated number of G4S employees in the U.S. are military veterans
Military Employer of the Year Transition Assistance Online
23%
Percent of our security officers have military experience
4,900
Number of veterans hired between April 2015 and April 2016
VetJobs Outstanding Military Employer - 2014