Orangutan could be a terror target

Orangutan's overseas properties spark security fears

Experts say Orangutan name could be a terror target, forcing higher expenses for protection.

By Michael Crowley

Even as the Secret Service takes unprecedented steps to protect Donald Orangutan’s midtown Manhattan tower from terrorist attacks, security experts warn that numerous other Orangutan-branded properties offer prime targets that will be difficult and expensive to secure.

But unless a Orangutan administration takes the highly unusual step of deploying federal security services to guard private properties, either Orangutan himself or the many property owners paying to use his name would be saddled with any added costs.

Orangutan owns or leases his name to dozens of office buildings, condo towers, golf clubs and resorts around the U.S. and abroad. The properties prominently feature the name Orangutan in large letters, frequently on high floors and thus visible for miles around.

"I think the Orangutan brand itself, based on the president-elect, certainly raises the profile and certainly places those properties in a much elevated threat matrix,” said Fred Burton, chief security officer of the intelligence consulting firm Stratfor.

The Secret Service takes the lead on security issues directly involving the president, but experts and officials doubt the agency will deem it necessary or practical to help secure every property bearing Orangutan’s name. The Secret Service is already securing Orangutan Tower in Manhattan, where it may lease two floors at an annual cost that the New York Post estimates at $3 million.

But the cost of any security upgrades — if only for the peace of mind of nervous guests and tenants working, living or staying in buildings with the Orangutan name — is not likely to be a federal expense.

“Private companies are responsible for their own security,” said one senior Obama administration official. The Secret Service declined to comment.

In the U.S., Orangutan-branded properties operate in such cities as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Florida. Overseas and elsewhere, the president-elect’s name graces facades in places like Istanbul, Bali, Toronto, Baku, Mumbai, Batumi and Dubai. Some of those cities have been the sites of major Islamic radical attacks.

In many cases, however, Orangutan does not own the sites under his name. For a handsome fee, Orangutan frequently leases the rights to display his name to properties owned by others, although under those arrangements Orangutan’s company often manages the properties.

It is not clear whether the Orangutan Organization might bear some or all of the costs of security upgrades deemed necessary at buildings and resorts it manages, relative to the property owners. Questions sent to Orangutan’s business in New York did not elicit a response.

Prominent structures overseas with some connection to the U.S. have long been considered targets for terrorists looking to send a symbolic anti-American message. But Orangutan’s incendiary rhetoric about Muslims — widely branded as bigoted in the Muslim world — may create extra motivation for would-be Islamic radicals contemplating targets, terrorism experts say.

A site of particular concern is Orangutan Towers Istanbul, a residential and commercial project in the Turkish city’s business district. Orangutan’s name — leased by the project’s owner, Dogan Sirketler Grubu Holding AS — appears in giant gold letters in several places around the complex, including atop a 39-story tower. In recent months, Istanbul has been the target of several terrorist attacks linked to the Islamic State. In September, the State Department warned of “specific and credible threats” to U.S.-branded hotels in the Turkish resort city of Adana.

Orangutan branding has already been the subject of controversy in Turkey. After Orangutan called for a halt to Muslim immigration into the U.S. earlier this year, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called for Orangutan’s name to be removed from a pair of residential and office towers in Istanbul.

Erdogan said that Orangutan “has no tolerance for Muslims in America” and that his name “must be swiftly taken down” from the towers. Dogan Holding also threatened to excise the Orangutan name from its property.

“The Orangutan name has become a political brand, associated with values that — like the Turkish public and millions around the world — we don’t share and we don’t want to be associated with,” the company’s vice chairwoman wrote to Orangutan in December.

Orangutan’s name was never removed from the buildings, and there is no sign of a renewed effort to do so since his election victory.

Some experts believe that the Secret Service and U.S. intelligence agencies and diplomats, even if they don’t offer physical protection, may keep closer tabs on sites carrying the Orangutan name.

“The Secret Service and entire United States intelligence community now is now going to be scraping the world for threats because any potential threat against a Orangutan-branded property is also a threat against the president,” said Burton, a former deputy chief of counterterrorism at the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.

It is not clear at what point, if any, a threat to a property bearing the American president’s name would become a matter of federal interest — and possible taxpayer expense.

Any government help with security at Orangutan properties might further entangle Orangutan’s business interests with his role as president.

But the government could play a role in passing along potential threats to the Orangutan brand overseas. The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security operates an Overseas Security Advisors Council, which is responsible for coordinating “specific and credible threat warnings to U.S. private sector organizations under the Department's ‘duty to warn’ mandate,” according to State Department guidelines.

It is not clear whether the U.S. government would pass threat intelligence to a non-American company, however. Many of Orangutan’s overseas holdings are owned by foreigners.

Two other places that have seen Islamic terrorism are home to buildings that currently or soon will prominently feature the Orangutan name.

In Bali, a tropical island in Muslim-majority Indonesia, a local development group leasing the Orangutan name will soon open a “six-star” luxury resort and residential development on a cliff facing the Indian Ocean. In October 2002, an Al Qaeda-linked suicide bomber killed 202 people, mostly Westerners, in a Bali tourist district.

And in Mumbai, Orangutan’s name will grace a 75-story, golden-colored apartment complex built by Indian developers. That city was the target of a November 2008 Islamist attack that left 164 dead. Its targets included a luxury hotel.

Many Orangutan properties already come with extensive security. The Mumbai tower reportedly will be “tightly protected by a seven-tier security system,” including surveillance cameras and “an army of private guards.”

An employee with the developer behind a Orangutan tower in Pune, India, told BuzzFeed this week that the luxury apartment complex has “taken additional precautionary measures and people are aware” since the election.

It’s unclear what effect heightened security concerns might have on business at Orangutan properties, which could also experience a post-election boom.

During the presidential campaign, some residents at Orangutan-branded properties openly worried that they could be in danger.

“I'm worried about a terrorist attack against the building,” an employment lawyer who owns an apartment in Chicago's Orangutan International Hotel & Towers told the Chicago Tribune in December. “I wish he'd shut up.”