Herman Cain hires alleged Biltmore bomber

By Carmela Kelly, December 2011
Editor-in-Chief

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks to an overflow crowd at Streeters Nightclub in Traverse City, Mich., Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011. The evening stop was the last of several through the state of Michigan. (AP Photo/ John L. Russell)

While Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain, gained Secret Service protection this month, his error in hiring as his campaign security director, Kristian Otto Herzog, an ex-con with an addiction to publicity and to celebrities, may be a more serious gaffe than has previously been reported.

"He is scary and dangerous," says Jason DeWitt, a private detective who investigated Herzog between 2010 and 2011 for a Hollywood celebrity who felt scammed by Herzog when he volunteered to be her bodyguard.

"He is not a bodyguard, and he never was," says DeWitt. "Bodyguards try to stay under the radar, not become the actual story. But this guy is unstable and wanted the TMZ type of fame that he apparently thought would give him credibility."

Herzog's addictions include intimidating others and playing at being a uniformed police officer.

"Herzog wants to be a celebrity," says Jesse Martell, a private investigator and owner of Martell Investigations based in Los Angeles. "Qualified executive protection agents are held to the highest standards. Many of them are required to be licensed in the state where they are conducting business. When proper screening and background checks are disregarded, one with a criminal past can easily get hired and infiltrate as security for a presidential candidate, a celebrity, or the head of a large corporation, consequently breaching all levels of security and perhaps endangering the lives of those he or she has been entrusted to secure."

DeWitt says it was frightening to see pictures of Herzog standing at CNN's Western Republican debate an official Republican presidential debate held in Las Vegas in October.

""He is not a protector. He's a fraud," says DeWitt. "The fact that he was allowed near any of these candidates, let alone apparently employed by Cain's campaign staff, is simply frightening. I would hope that whoever was responsible for that was fired. Not only have I not heard of any fall out, but one of the people that runs with Herzog's crew, Chris Jones (as per the PoliceBodyguard.com website), is still "protecting" Cain. I saw him as recently as a few days ago on television when Cain was with some medical staff and refusing to answer reporters' questions about women who have alleged inappropriate sexual conduct by Cain,"" says DeWitt in a Nov. 9 email.

The Associated Press reported Nov. 17 that Cain had asked for protection by the Secret Service after Cain received threats an unknown nature to the AP. Meanwhile, as TMZ reported in October, Herzog served jail time in California for impersonating a police officer, but his background in Arizona even more alarming.

Arizona court records show the Phoenix Police Department investigated Herzog regarding a bomb threat incident made to the Arizona Biltmore, a popular resort with celebrities and politicians. Other records show Herzog pled guilty to impersonating an officer in Scottsdale, Ariz. and once claimed to an Arizona peace officer at a Scottsdale healthcare center that he had shot himself cleaning his gun. Herzog continued his criminal behavior in California where 2009 Los Angeles court records show he pled guilty to two of six felony charges against him including carrying a concealed weapon and false imprisonment.

"Herzog was very difficult to get rid of," says DeWitt on behalf of his client. "He is addicted to media attention and creates his own stories. Almost every photograph on his so-called website is either doctored or one in which he steps in front of famous people and has someone with a camera (usually the paparazzi) take his picture. He then gets a copy of the picture and places it on his website, where he then indicates that he was working for the person. This is true with the Lohan family, the Hilton family, the Kardashians, Jessica Alba, Jack Nicholson, and others."

Herzog's website, thebodyguardgroup.com (also known as policebodyguard.com), includes photos of Herzog within feet of Britney Spears and her director of security, Edan Yemeni, exiting a shopping area. He wears a uniform that suggests he is a security guard or police officer. The site includes celebrities and politicians.

"He's a jumping jack," says DeWitt. "With all of these celebrities, he would pretend to provide security at a restaurant or nightclub frequented by celebrities. He has no license to do this and was simply pretending to be a security guard. He reportedly would phone various members of the LA area paparazzi and notify them that a celebrity was at the restaurant. When they showed up, again my information is, that some of them would then pay Herzog for the tip. Then, when the celebrities would leave, Herzog would jump in front of the cameras and walk in front of the celebrities to their cars and open the doors. He manufactured his own publicity."

"It's highly questionable why a candidate running for president would fail to pre-screen a bodyguard or even worse, hire someone with the knowledge that he has had repeated problems with the law," says Martell.

"Hiring the wrong person can be disastrous," says Martell who has been associated with Spears' security in LA court documents. "It places a person's family and others in a very vulnerable position by exposing them to all of the things they wanted to be protected from, such as a stalker or the paparazzi."

A simple Google search by Cain's camp would have revealed Herzog's criminal activities in California. A free search of the California Department of Consumer Affairs website would have revealed Herzog's lack of a license even as a security guard. A spokeswoman at the department's Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, says he's never applied for any kind of security license.

Cain's spokesmen, J.D. Gordon and Matt Martinez, did not reply to calls and email asking whether the oversight in hiring Herzog was related to Herzog volunteering to work free, as he did for Mel Gibson's ex-girlfriend, Oksana Gregorieva, and her daughter, Lucia, during a bitter, public custody dispute. The spokesmen also ignored a query on how Cain's camp hired Herzog and failed to vet his background. Herzog did not respond to a call and email request for comment.

"It is unimaginable to me how Herzog ended up with Cain," says DeWitt.

"Cain's staff was completely asleep at the wheel when they let Herzog in," says DeWitt, who was hired by a LA area celebrity to background check and monitor Herzog because he was deemed a danger and a threat to the celebrity and the celebrity's family.

"It's nearly as if celebrities and public officials go out of their way to hire idiots like him (Herzog), when there are plenty of well trained and law abiding individuals from which to choose," says John Sexton, private investigator and president of Sexton Executive Security of the Washington, DC area.

"You'll hear from time to time about the stock picking monkey—that's the monkey who throws darts at a list of stocks and often times picks more winners randomly than the financial gurus on TV," says Sexton, who is the also director of a state bodyguard and executive protection training academy. "It often seems that you could have a bodyguard picking monkey who throws darts at the security company section of the Yellow Pages and he could probably pick better bodyguards than many of the celebrities out there."

A history of debt accompanies Herzog's past in Arizona. Public records in Phoenix, Ariz. show Herzog owed $150,000 in July 2011, in back taxes and interest for tax year 2005. They also show a debt of almost $13,000 to Bank of America which turned over to a collection agency in 2009. Herzog has sundry other debts from over the years. Born in 1967, he began his troubling past early.

In 1998, Herzog plead guilty to disorderly conduct involving a weapon in Prescott, Ariz. In 2000, he became the director of security at the Arizona Biltmore, a popular resort to celebrities and presidential politicians. The hotel fired him within weeks for violating numerous hotel policies, say eyewitnesses to the 15 hours of bomb threats. Herzog's co-workers in security also told the Phoenix Police Department that the hotel also felt that Herzog's mental and emotional state had been deteriorating and he had become a liability. There was also a dispute involving a hotel guest, comedian Bill Crosby. Herzog testified, in a civil suit against the hotel a few years later, that Crosby told security that Herzog was the only real security man around him. Herzog testified that he wasn't sure of the exact verbiage, but his co-worker in security informed him that while he knew Herzog was supposed to be with him, Herzog was with him too much.

Evidence suggests Herzog, as the only suspect in the Biltmore case, began calling the hotel on June 26 at about 9:30 a.m. using the Biltmore's security radio frequency. The caller referenced himself a as security guard the hotel had fired two months earlier. As he continued to clear on the radio, he began making sexual remarks and statement referring to hard feelings against the hotel. Security called Phoenix police in the evening as the suspect began making more serious threats.

"Are you ready for fireworks?" says the caller that three security guards identified as Herzog. "Hey, boys in blue. Get the (explective) police out of there. Do you like fireworks? I want all the kids out of the hotel at midnight. If the place is still standing I'll be surprised. I'm gonna take the place to the ground."

The caller responded to the name Kristian several times, says the police report. The suspect said he could see police cars. He also wanted to know what one guard, who was on his computer, was looking at. The radio had a two to three mile range.

"When he left, staff said he walked off with a 2-way radio," says DeWitt. "He also showed familiarity with the layout of the building and grounds, and referenced staff on duty at the time by their actual names. Every person interviewed stated that they knew it was Herzog."

Detective Mark Brown, Phoenix Police Bomb Squad, who inherited the investigation, says the Biltmore's lack of a sufficient accounting of their radio inventory contributed to criminal charges, filed against Herzog in 2000, that were later dismissed.

Other factors included Herzog's father who provided Herzog with an alibi saying his son was visiting him during the bomb threats which ceased at around midnight. By then the Biltmore had 16 police officers, two K-9 units and two air units on scene, says a responding officer's report.

"I took up a conversation with Kristian on the Biltmore security radios," says the officer. "Kristian ranged from times of speaking calm and rational to bouts where he would cry and disguise his voice as other people. He told me that he had wired the hotel with sticks of dynamite that he had stolen from Kingman, Ariz. He gave us numerous deadlines as to when to have the hotel evacuated. He also made references that he was holding a hostage."

Despite hours of recorded conversations on tape, investigators were unable to positively conclude it was Herzog, providing perhaps one reason why prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss two criminal misdemeanor charges in March 2001, according to Herzog's civil lawsuit against the hotel.

Four years later, Herzog escaped a felony conviction of impersonating a police officer and pled guilty to threat and intimidation of a Scottsdale woman who hired him to train her dogs. After taking $250 cash in advance, he failed to show for their first appointment together. Instead he threatened to kill her if she called police and called her phone 30 times as recorded on caller I.D. She called the police.

As for Herzog and The Bodyguard Group of Beverly Hills that came later?

""There is (and never was) any such thing as The Body Guard Group of Beverly Hills," says DeWitt. "It's a figment of his imagination. There is no business license, no state private security operator's license, no nothing except a cheap website with pictures and lies on it. I guarantee that not one single celebrity on his site will state that, Herzog or The Bodyguard Group, actually provided security for them. Not one. A couple of guys that Herzog "hires" actually do have security guard cards but most do not.""

"In California, one must be licensed in order to provide executive protection services," says Martell. "The licensee, and those employed by the licensee to protect persons or property, must undergo a background check through the California Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If your state doesn't require the applicant to be licensed, conduct a background check on the applicant for a criminal history.

"Look for specific experience and training then verify the experience and the schools they received the training from. Don't be fooled and settle for one who provides you with photographs of himself or herself with celebrities."