Issa dropped out of high school and enlisted for a three-year tour in the Army on his 17th birthday.[4][5] He served as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician, defusing bombs, after having been shown a movie about soldiers in that specialty during World War II. He would later claim his unit had provided security for President Richard Nixon, sweeping stadiums for bombs prior to games in the 1971 World Series, and that he had always received the highest approval ratings during his service.[6] A 1998 investigation by the San Francisco Examiner found that these claims were not true: Nixon did not attend any of that year's World Series games, and at one point Issa was transferred to a supply depot after receiving an unsatisfactory evaluation. According to Issa, the Examiner reporter had misunderstood an anecdote he had related.[4]
A fellow soldier, Jay Bergey, claimed that Issa stole his Dodge Charger in 1971 while they were serving together and that, the day after he confronted Issa, the car was found abandoned on a nearby expressway. Asked about this charge in 2011, Issa denied it and suggested it was possible that other soldiers stole the car or that Bergey, who he claims had a drinking problem, had abandoned it himself while intoxicated."[4]
After receiving a hardship discharge in 1972 following his father's heart attack, Issa earned his General Educational Development (GED) certificate and began taking classes at Siena Heights University, a small Catholic college in Adrian, Michigan. He continued his military service in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC)."[4]
Twice during that year he was arrested. In March, Issa and his brother William were charged with stealing a Maserati from a dealer's showroom in Cleveland. Issa says it was a matter of mistaken identity by the Cleveland Heights police; the case was later dismissed.[4]
Before that had happened, in December 1972, police in Adrian pulled Issa over for going the wrong way on a one-way street and, as he was retrieving his registration, saw in the car's glove compartment what turned out to be a .25-caliber Colt semi-automatic handgun inside an ammunition box, along with a military pouch containing 44 rounds, a tear gas gun and two rounds for that. Issa was charged with carrying a concealed weapon; ultimately he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of possession of an unregistered firearm. He was sentenced to six months' probation and paid a small fine.[4][7] At the time Issa told police that Ohio law allowed such possession of a handgun with a justification; his was the need to protect the car and himself. Years later, he said that the car and gun were his brother's, which William Issa supported. He had been unaware of the gun's presence when inadvertently driving the car the wrong way down the alley and that, to the extent of his knowledge, there had been no ammunition present. The entire incident, he had believed, had been expunged.[4]
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Issa soon turned Steal Stopper around, to the point that it was supplying Ford with thousands of car alarms and negotiating a similar deal with Toyota. But early in the morning of September 7, 1982, the offices and factory of Quantum and Steal Stopper in the Cleveland suburb of Maple Heights, caught fire. The fire took three hours to put out; the buildings and almost all inventory within were destroyed.[4]
The Ohio state fire marshal never determined a cause for the blaze. The initial theory was that it was electrical, but the insurance company came to doubt the theory when a fire analysis report it commissioned outlined evidence that the fire could be arson. It had exhibited two distinct areas of origin, both with "suspicious burn patterns" but without any "accidental source of heating power."[4] Investigators believed that a stack of cardboard boxes, which had burned in a manner inconsistent with an accidental fire, may have had a flammable liquid spread on them. The black smoke and blue flames generated by the fire strongly suggested the use of a hydrocarbon-based accelerant, and the report said the same mix of four distinct hydrocarbons had been found in samples of burned material taken from different locations in the ruins.[4] Adkins, still employed by Steal Stopper, told the insurance investigators that prior to the blaze Issa had removed not only the company's Apple II personal computer but all hardware, software and manuals for it, as well as diskettes containing all the company's customer records and financial information. He said that silkscreens used by Steal Stopper in the production of its circuit boards had also been placed in a fireproof box. Insurance investigators determined that a short time before the fire, Issa had more than quadrupled Steal Stopper's fire insurance coverage; they were also concerned that they could not determine the source of his initial investment in the company.[4]
Darrell Issa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
