Executive Safety
The assassination of UnitedHealthcare (UHC) CEO Brian Thompson represents one extreme form of workplace violence. Like those who assassinate political leaders, those who assassinate business leaders are often motivated by unrelenting grievance. In the case of Mr. Thompson, UnitedHealthcare’s high rate of coverage denial—criticized in a September 2024 Senate report—is the likely source of this assassin’s grudge, hence the inscriptions “Deny,” “Defend,” and “Depose” on the live rounds and cartridge casings left at the scene. Mr. Thompson’s widow told NBC News that her husband had received threats from multiple people which she thought might be related to “lack of coverage.”
The case has attracted national attention, with considerable commentary on the anger directed toward health care insurers over denial of coverage. But this is not the only industry in which Executives experience threats and violence risk. Like celebrities, all executives face risks from their employees, contractors, customers, and others. Depending on the relationship of the aggrieved to the company, these risks include litigation, smear campaigns, vandalism, misuse of proprietary information, sabotage, threats, violence, kidnapping of executives and loved ones, and more.
Successful management and mitigation of these risks depends critically on two factors: early warning systems and target hardening.
The early warning system TAG has developed and marketed for the past 37 years has these components:
(1) Centralized reporting of unwanted behaviors (not just threats, but all manner of misconduct and grievance)
(2) Triage of reports
(3) Investigation when warranted
(4) Intervention when warranted
For decades, TAG has trained employees how to recognize and report unwanted behaviors, most often now through an e-learning lesson on unwanted visits, calls, and writings. Unless these reports are directed centrally to those trained to triage, investigate (including assessment), and intervene, the information will be lost, unassessed, and unaddressed, so we’ve been teaching companies how to systematically triage, investigate, and intervene since 1993. Today, TAG has developed apps for reporting and triage (to be released in January 2025) and to investigate the reports (to be released later in 2025). The early warning system as a whole is typically managed by an interdisciplinary team drawing on security, HR, legal, IT, and other departments.
Target hardening is the job of corporate security and includes all of the physical security provisions for corporate premises, such as key card entry systems; visitor badging, screening, and escorts; CCTV coverage and monitoring; parking lot security; and executive protection. Unfortunately, many corporate security directors are stymied in their quest for safety by executives who insist on an open campus with minimal barriers to entry and who refuse to use an executive protection team even when funding is available. Such executives are too often in denial about the risks they face, and they may overvalue freedom of movement on company premises and their own freedom to move about in public unguarded. It is for this reason that in my own Executive Briefings, I always try to include information on executive safety, giving examples of homicides and kidnappings of executives and their loved ones from my own forensic and research experience as well as close calls that have been prevented by their own security team. While TAG’s overall approach avoids scaring anyone, executives in denial need to be awakened to the risks they face.
As for Mr. Thompson’s assassin, I expect he has already been identified from video captures of his face, will be positively identified as the killer from fingerprint, DNA, and other evidence, and will be unable to mount a successful insanity defense if brought to trial because he checked into a hostel with a fake name, paid in cash, conducted pre-attack surveillance, lay in wait, wore a hoody, mask, and gloves, used a suppressed pistol, fled the scene, discarded evidence, and eluded capture for days, all of which prove he knew what he was doing was wrong.