Muphen R Whitney - Reporter for HomelandDefenseStocks.com  
June 14, 2004   

They aren’t yet household names - they aren’t yet even listed on any stock exchanges - but three small, diverse, and interesting companies showed their stuff at McGraw-Hill’s Homeland Security Summit held recently in Washington, DC. From shatterproof glass, to keeping bacteria at bay, to improving government-community communications during disasters these three companies offer goods and services that many people may not immediately think of when they think of the Homeland Security/Defense industry. 

Unfortunately, Ted McMullen, Managing Director of the Irish firm McMullen Architectural Systems Ltd, has considerable experience with domestic and foreign terrorism that predates the United States’s 9/11 disaster. 

“We have had to deal with domestic terrorism throughout the UK for many years,” said McMullen, whose firm has developed and supplies a total system of shatterproof glass windows and glass walls for the construction industry. “We first developed our blast-resistant architectural glazing in the early 1990s in response to the difficult period of terrorism in Northern Ireland.” 

The McMullen product line consists of aluminum window and curtain walling systems that provide a protective environment while being aesthetically pleasing. Although there are no well-defined industry standards in the United States for such systems, the McMullen products have been tested at New Mexico Tech’s Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC). 

“We felt it was very important to have some testing data to offer our customers and to quantify what our products’ capabilities are,” said John O’Rourke, McMullen’s Contracts Director. “We now have testing data on blast resistance and weather resistance and we established a good relationship with EMRTC.” 

To capture the burgeoning U.S. market for terrorism-resistant building materials, McMullen recently established an office in Philadelphia under the direction of Paul Tsalolikhin.  

“We see great market opportunities here in both the private sector and the government sector,” Tsalolikhin remarked. “We can capitalize on the private sector installations we have in the UK – hotels, hospitals, office buildings – as well as the government installations we have done, such as police stations and embassies, throughout the world.” 

The company already has established its credentials in this country by being one of four companies approved as a supplier of windows to U.S. military installations. With their tested product line, emphasis on architectural integrity and aesthetics, and ability to supply complete design service for any type of building construction, Ted McMullen is confident that his company will become the standard of blast-resistant windows and curtain walling systems throughout the world. 

For more information on McMullen Architectural Systems Ltd and their blast-resistant products, call Paul Tsalolikhin at 215-888-9634 or visit their Web site at www.mcmullensystems.co.uk. Mr. Tsalolikhin’s Email address is pault@mcmullensystems.co.uk.   

Keith Moeller, one of the founding partners of American Biotech Labs (ABL), has great confidence in his company’s premier product: ASAP-AGX-32 – a colloidal silver solution that has proven to be a potent anti-microbial agent. According to Moeller, this broad-spectrum, non-toxic, and odorless surface disinfectant can make the world safe from all sorts of bacteria and dangerous biotech products including those, such as SARS and Anthrax, that are favored by terrorists.  

“We saw the need for a new ‘super disinfectant’ that was completely non-toxic,” said Moeller, who currently serves as ABL’s VicePresident and Director of Marketing. “We used silver, which has long been known for its anti-microbial properties, and created a new, patented form that has been approved by the EPA even against the most deadly of bacteria. 

“In recent tests for homeland defense applications, our product killed 81,000,000 bubonic plague bacteria per milliliter in less than 2 minutes. The EPA has approved our product for use in commercial, industrial, medical, and residential settings.” 

ABL was founded in 1998 by eight principals, all of whom are still involved in the Utah-based company. Although ABL is not itself a public company, approximately 30 percent of ABL is owned by Clifton Mining Company, a Utah-based company traded OTC as CFTN. 

“We bring great value to them (Clifton Mining) because silver sells for about $6 an ounce as a precious metal. The ABL process makes each ounce worth approximately $20,000,” said Moeller. “Clifton is an attractive company because it has interests in two growing markets: precious metals and biotechnology.” 

For more information on American Biotech Labs, contact Keith Moeller by phone at 801-756-1414 or via Email at keith@americanbiotechlabs.com. The company’s Web site is www.americanbiotechlabs.com. The Clifton Mining Web site is www.cliftonmining.com.  

While McMullen and ABL provide products to solve specific homeland security/defense problems, Claudia Bitner has seen her MyStateUSA.com Web site evolve from a site promoting Economic Development to an integral part of homeland security/defense communications. 

“I founded the site in 1999 in Idaho to help small communities have a place to promote their events,” Bitner said recently. “Now it has become a proven interoperable Internet information solution for communities, counties, tribes, States, and federal government agencies to provide rapid exchanges of information with their citizens. 

“Initially I saw a need in Council, Idaho for this small town to enhance its economic development opportunities when a mill closure caused significant job loss. This first site has attracted up to 60,000 hits a week and has greatly helped the economic recovery.” 

Small communities in the States of Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Oregon have signed onto the system. After 9/11, Bitner’s privately-held, woman-owned company attracted a small grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to provide two pilot projects – which will eventually be four sites – as a National Community Readiness Network. 

“Tribes, counties, communities, States, and agencies all have control of their own systems, but interoperability is the key, and it takes only 40 seconds after submission to complete all contacts. We will be able to provide immediate information, such as medical information and evacuation routes, down to an individual in the smallest community during disasters,” Bitner explained. 

Information is secure and can be targeted so that broadcasters, reporters, public information officers, hospitals, and schools all receive specific, secure communications. The system’s password protocol and 128-bit encryption ensures top-notch security while its granular information distribution ensures that information is geographically relevant and gets into the proper hands quickly and accurately. The system uses the Common Alerting Protocol, and its open source architecture allows quick integration with existing information systems and databases via HTTP and XML. 

Claudia Bitner can be contacted by phone at 208-472-5761 or via Email at cu@mystateusa.com. The company’s Web site is www.mystateusa.com/homeland.   

Muphen R. Whitney

Miss Whitney brings a background in systems analysis, journalism, and marketing/communications to her work with ECON. For more than three decades she has provided marketing/communications consulting services and writing/editing services to companies in the high tech, biotech, financial, medical, and legal fields. 

Her recent work as Acting Executive Director of the Alliance for Homeland Security gave her invaluable background, experience, and contacts in the areas of homeland defense and security. Miss Whitney’s degree in Economics is from Columbia University (she began as a Biology major, however, and has maintained a lifelong interest in science, technology, and medicine).

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