Hollywood Fixer

OFTEN.ONLY

BY STEVEONEV

with one hand while grasping the wrist he has extended behind him with the other. His expression dares her pursu­ers to make a wrong move. Typically, however, Cohen relies more on cunning than muscle. Why expose a woman whose waiflike visage has graced 300 magazine covers to physical harm when a few well-chosen Hebrew words will part the waters?

"Tazeez otam achorah," Cohen says in a voice loud enough to carry above the din. The paparazzi fall back.

"Tazeez otam achorah," he repeats, and they fall back again.

Soon enough a passageway opens through the crowd, offering a glimpse of the promised land: a black 750 BMW that has materialized at the curb. It seems like a miracle, yet there's nothing miraculous about it. Two of the paparazzi besieging Moss are not paparazzi at all. Although outfitted with lights and cameras, they are IMS operatives and, like their boss, ex-commandos from Sayeret Duvdevan, an Israeli military unit that specializes in extracting terrorists from the occupied territories (in fact, IMS stands for Israeli Military Specialists). They know that Tazeez otam achorah means "Move them backward," and each time Cohen utters the words they elbow the Nikon-wielding

wolves toward the street. The theory is that the paparazzi, like members of any pack, are not so much creatures of free will as easily manipulated ani­mals. Get one to retreat and the rest will follow.

"Tazeez otam achorah," Cohen says a final time, and suddenly he and Moss are in the BMW. At the wheel sits another

IMS agent. "Thank you. Thank God," the model says as they pull away. Not that she is home free, as several of the paparazzi give chase in their vehicles. But Cohen, who works frequently with Moss, has an edge here as well. No sooner does their BMW enter traffic than a trail car driven by an operative falls in behind, keeping the paparazzi at bay on the ride to the Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip. All told, the task of delivering the model—in town to appear in an ad campaign-safely to her hotel takes four hours and requires six men. The cost: $7,000. "One of these nights the paparazzi are inad­vertently going to get someone killed," Cohen remarks afterward, "but it's not going to be one of my clients. The entire time I was thinking, Is this really what our culture has come to?"

IMS exists because the world is more dangerous than ever and Aaron Cohen knows it. * Now is a time when busi­ness disputes often end in death threats, trips abroad inspire fear of abduction and even B-list celebrities attract stalkers. With just 25 operatives (six full-time, 19 on call), Cohen's Los Angeles-based firm is certainly not the biggest in the business. Yet in composition (80 percent of his men are former Israeli special forces fighters) and areas of expertise (from close protection to counterterrorist

train- y

ing) IMS offers every­thing. As Cohen is

fond of saying, "Walk softly and carry a small Israeli team."

In the nine years since he founded his company, Cohen has worked for a wide range of clients. Entertainment man­ager Steve Katz first hired him in 2001 to protect Jackie Chan at the premiere of Rush Hour 2. The action-adventure star was being stalked by an obsessed woman, and Cohen served as his body­guard. Since then Katz has frequently engaged Cohen's firm. "A typical Holly­wood security guy is a hulking person there to intimidate people," says Katz. "Make no mistake, Aaron is tough, but his real weapon is his mind. He's an extremely sharp tactician. The wheels are always turning."

Lisa Kline, proprietor of the hip Los Angeles fashion boutique of the same name, employs Cohen whenever such customers as Eva Longoria Parker, Brit­ney Spears or Kate Beckinsale want to shop in private. "He makes sure no one gets near them," she says. "He helps them to and from their cars. He's profes­sional, but he's intense. He treats every job like a mission—no funny business." Not that there aren't light moments. When the paparazzi appear, as they inevitably do, IMS operatives posted around the Robertson Boulevard store open umbrellas in a synchronized tac­tic that blocks all sight lines. No one gets a picture.

Far from Hollywood, the sheriff of Houston County, Alabama also relies on Cohen. Andy Hughes has flown him in on multiple occasions to train his deputies. "He is an active instructor," says Hughes. "He doesn't tell you how to do things, he shows you—shooting in crowds, res­cuing hostages. I'm the coordinator of homeland security for my region of Ala­bama, and if something happens, we will be the first (continued on page 171)

HOLLYWOOD FIXER

(continued Jnmi page 124) responders. Aaron has taught us what we need to know. I'm not easily impressed. I'm impressed by Aaron."

Then there's a major social services agency in a large Midwestern city. Alter the agency, which is housed in a 22-story tower, received a series of bomb threats, the director of security contracted IMS to do an assessment. The results were unset­tling. Although the building was supposed to be inaccessible to vehicles, Cohen found an opening in a protective cordon of plant­ers and bollards and drove a car that could have been laden with explosives right to the front door. Later, with a few keystrokes on a computer, he e-mailed a panic-inducing message. "Because Aaron served in Israel, he sees things in a way we Americans just don't," says the security director, who pre­fers that he and his agency remain unnamed as it continues to be a target. "Aaron sug­gested a whole range of steps, and we took them. We rewrote our security manual."

Cohen is a rare hybrid of Hollywood heat and military know-how. One moment he'll talk about singer and occasional cli­ent Rihanna ("I wish I'd been there when Chris Brown went at her—it would have ended differently"), the next about pro­tecting the powerful and the rich in, as he likes to put it, "austere environments." By this he means not just the violent countries in which some business execu­tives must work but also the exotic lands in which the wealthy often vacation. (Jolt M4 Commando carbines, 70-foot repeat­ing towers for transmitting radio signals over vast distances, night-vision goggles, level-three under-armor concealment vests and rented helicopters—to Cohen these are simply tools of the trade.

"You don't find many guys like Aaron in Los Angeles," says Rob Weiss, an executive producer of IIBO's Entourage. "You find actors and writers, but you don't find com­mandos." That being the case, when Doug Ellin, Entourage's creator, was beset by a security problem last year, Weiss introduced him to Cohen. "It was a situation where someone had crossed the line and needed to be looked at a little closer," Cohen says with characteristic evasiveness. To be more precise, a wannabe Hollywood player was going around town trying to pass himself off as Ellin, who happened to be building a new home and felt particularly exposed. Cohen checked out the house, assessed its vulnerabilities and suggested solutions. Grateful for the resulting peace of mind, Ellin wrote Cohen into two episodes that aired near the conclusion of Entourage's 2009 season. The story was that a danger­ous stalker breaks into the pad shared by the show's fame-seeking ensemble in pur­suit of their movie-star leader, Vincent Chase. Their agent, Ari Gold, urges them to hire Aaron Cohen, played by veteran film tough guy Peter Stormare, perhaps best known for his role in Fargo. Cohen and his band of Israeli agents become part of the ensemble's lives, introducing a new level of paranoia into the series. Entourage

being a comedy, it all comes to an absurdly amusing end when the stalker is revealed to be a group of sorority girls after the underwear of posse member Turtle as part of a pledge-week prank. Cohen had clearly entered the popular culture.

On a warm spring morning, Aaron Cohen, clad in a white T-shirt, Gap jeans, New Balance sneakers and his always present Ray-Bans, walks into the Kings Road Cafe, an informal yet chic Los Angeles break­fast spot that serves as his unofficial office. "There's only one way in and one way out, and I get a 180-degree view," he says only half joking as he takes his usual seat at an outdoor corner table. "My back is to the wall by second nature," he adds. "When I sit down I do what is called a precision generalization. I know that's an oxymo­ron, but what I mean is I look at everyone around me. I don't want to come oil'like Jack Bauer, but I look at shirts to see how they're worn. I'm trained in lies—an itch or a blink, clothing that doesn't match bags. Everyone has a different tell. I know instantly if someone is wearing a pistol. It's always on. I can't turn it off. So I look around until I can dismiss all threats."

Today nothing untoward catches Cohen's eye as the cafe fills with the usual crowd of screenwriters pecking at laptops and actresses leashing their dogs to sidewalk chairs. But this does not mean the direc­tor of IMS can relax. At this very minute, for instance, Cohen is keeping track of Michael Douglas. Before the year is out, the actor will be battling for his life against cancer. But he is currently on a weeklong backpacking trip with his family in Mexico, where drug executions and kidnappings are the worry. Prior to departing, Douglas had contacted IMS, seeking advice on how to stay safe. Cohen's response was to outfit everyone in the party with miniature state-of-the-art global positioning devices. "I'm so excited about this," he says, pulling one of the $300 gadgets from his pants pocket. It's no larger than a cigarette pack. "We sewed them into all their backpacks. I'm checking in with Michael twice a day. I call on his cell and say, 'Are you standing next to so-and-so?' And he says, 'Yes.'"

The devices cannot, of course, guarantee that Douglas will avoid mishap, but if some­thing bad does occur he will have a better chance of survival. "It's extremely advanta­geous to know someone's last coordinates," says Cohen. "In the event of trouble, I'd dispatch my team there. I'd contact the Mexican authorities, the U.S. consulate, and I'd call in some favors from my Israeli friends. We would find him.

"I have this crazy idea that eveiy mother and daughter and every couple traveling in South America will one day have one of these," he adds, turning the global positioning device over in his hands. "Why didn't Natalee Hollo way have one of these in Aruba?"

Simultaneously, Cohen is monitoring an international pop diva right here at home—a five-bedroom estate in Sher­man Oaks just off Mulholland Drive. lie will not disclose her identity because her problem—unlike those of clients he does

discuss by name-—is ongoing. "She had a number-one album several years ago, and a stalker was introduced into her life," Cohen says. "Then another stalker appeared. He was a crazy who believed she'd ripped off one of his songs. The claim had no merits, but he was making direct threats on her website. The police were called in and found he had a fel­ony assault arrest. 1 went to the California firearms registry and found he had a reg­istered firearm. At that point she decided to acquire full-time security."

The protection is comprehensive, tech­nologically advanced and heavily armed. It begins wTith two dozen closed-circuit cameras in critical areas of the grounds around the singer's home that feed into high-resolution screens in a control room in her basement. Her property is also criss­crossed by invisible radio-frequency beams that tie into a custom-fabricated electric map in the control room. If a breach occurs, the map lights up, pinpointing the spot. The house is guarded 24 hours a day by a revolving team of IMS agents who carry Clock 19 semiautomatic pistols in tactical holsters concealed in their waist­bands. Periodically the operatives walk the perimeter, swiping access cards over digi­tal readers to confirm that all areas have been checked. They also monitor the star's website for disturbing e-mails and chart street traffic to make certain no one is cas­ing the neighborhood.

From the curb, the Spanish Revival house is the picture of tranquility—a circular drive, lovely greenery, gym equipment in back. The singer has relied on Cohen to keep it this way since 2006. The price: $500,000 a year.

Protecting clients is an obsession for Cohen. "He doesn't have an oil switch," says Entourage's Weiss. "I don't know what he does to take it easy," adds Steve Katz, the entertainment manager. "I've been out with him, and he's very personable and funny, but he's preoccupied a lot of the time." Although Cohen dines at a fash­ionable Hollywood restaurant at least once a week (his preferred meal: a steak at Dan Tana's), the outings are as much for research as pleasure. lie likes to keep current on Los Angeles nightspots because the stars he represents frequent them. "I'm not a scenes!er; I never have been," says Cohen, who'd rather ride his Ilarley-Davidson in the hills above Malibu or hang out at home playing Led Zeppelin on his Martin acoustic. He has a girlfriend, but he deflects even innocent queries about her. "Security," he often declares, "begins with anonymity," and the rule applies just as much to him as to his charges.

To spend time with Cohen is to enter a hyperaware world where not everything is as it seems. During the course of a con­versation he may hold forth on stalkers, which in his business are a persistent threat. "They suffer from erotomania," he says, his tone, as always, earnest, almost scholarly. "They believe that they and the celebrity they see on-screen or in concert have a personal relationship. The cause is linked to low self-esteem. My task is to determine if a potential for violence exists." Or he may discuss the challenges of working abroad. "I recently had a job for an American billionaire in Tanza­nia," he says. "A few weeks before he was scheduled to take his family there, drug

lords gunned down several of his employ­ees, lie asked me to secure the property, which turned out to be several hundred thousand acres. It was really a military operation, and I hired five trained kill­ers. That's what was required."

For all this Cohen is anything but gung ho. He goes to extraordinary lengths to diminish the chances of confrontation. "The trick in my job is to manage risk, not exacerbate it," he says. "The goal, always, is to avoid a violent outcome. What I do is the opposite of what you see in a movie. In fact, if I ever had to pull a pistol it would be an admission of failure. It would mean I was so far behind that I had been beaten. My task is to see what a client is up against and then make sure it doesn't happen."

In part, Cohen's philosophy derives from common sense, but there is also something else. "Aaron doesn't wear his compassion on his sleeve," says Katz. "But as you get to know him it shows up. lie's an amalgam of a counterterrorist and a warm, caring person. He sees himself as the cavalry coming to the rescue. He works so hard because he empathizes with his cli­ents." Adds one of those clients, "He's not afraid to show you that he's vulnerable, and that actually encourages your trust in him. Most of these guys think they have to be 100 percent granite—not him."

"I come into people's lives when there is a lot of fear and doubt," says Cohen in a voice that suggests he knows a bit about such emotions himself. "You've got to be able to relate to them. In this busi­ness you have to want to help people. If you don't, you ought to be doing some­thing else."

"The first thing you need to understand about Aaron is that he is a little Jewish boy from Beverly Hills," says his client Lisa Kline. The stepson of Abby Mann, the Academy Award-winning screen­writer of Judgment at Nuremberg, Cohen grew up not only with money but in the highest reaches of Hollywood royalty. Ste­ven Spielberg, Warren Beatty and Tom Cruise regularly wandered by the house to discuss scripts. Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra dropped in for coffee. James Caan was one of his Little League coaches.

Although Cohen was raised in a rar­efied realm, he did not enter it until the age of 10, when his mother, also a screen­writer, married Mann. From the start, he never felt he belonged. "My mom and stepfather were too into their careers and themselves," he says. "I was an attention-seeking kid, and I wasn't getting any at home. I couldn't connect to them, and I acted out. I got into trouble." During his freshman year at Beverly Hills High School, Cohen absconded with the fam­ily BMW and charged some $10,000 on his mother's credit card. "When my mom found out what I'd done," he says, "she sent me to military school, the Robert Land Academy outside Toronto. I got a total ass kicking. It was a completely structured environment—beds made each morning, no violations, no attitude. But I

found out I loved the structure. In fact, I found out I excelled at it."

After a couple of years Cohen returned to Beverly Hills High School for his last courses and graduation. Unlike others in the class of 1994, however, he was not headed to an Ivy League college or a sum­mer internship at Creative Artists Agency. At Robert Land he'd become fixated on joining the Israeli army, so he bought a one-way plane ticket to Tel Aviv. "A lot of Jewish teenagers go to Israel," says an old friend, "but not very many go to join the army. Aaron had something to prove. lie was disgusted with the shallowness of his life in Beverly Hills. He wanted to find his own identity." Cohen puts it more suc­cinctly: "I was a fucked-up kid looking for a family."

Following 14 months of what he calls "a modern-day version of gladiator school," Cohen had acquired an array of lethal skills—chief among them Krav Maga, an Israeli hand-to-hand combat tech­nique that stresses relentless attack. He had also learned the Israeli art of decep­tion known as mista'araxnm. Working undercover, he would be able to speak convincing Arabic and wear the distinctive red- or blue-checked kaffiych. The payoff: He was accepted not just into the Israeli army but into Saycret Duvdevan, roughly equivalent to the United States Army's Delta Force, a rare honor for an Amer­ican. Duvdevan performs a specific and dangerous task. "Our single focus was to undertake stealth countcrterrorism opera­tions in the occupied territories," Cohen would later write in Brotherhood of Warriors, a memoir he co-authored with Douglas Century. "F.very single mission was an attempt to take down a terrorist leader. We were not after suicide bombers, but rather the planners...the command-and-control of groups like llamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad." The Duvdevan spe­cializes in serving so-called "terrorist warrants." Bluntly put, the unit abducts murderers and brings them back to Israeli authorities for interrogation.

Thus it was that two and a half years out of Beverly Hills High, Cohen was sit­ting across from the third-ranking figure in llamas, at the Palestine Cafe in Kast Jerusalem. Hair dyed blond and a tape recorder in hand, Cohen passed himself off as a sympathetic journalist straight out of UCIA. Armed with only a Beretta concealed in his boot, he was all charm, knowing that if he made even the slight­est false move one of the Hamas leader's three bodyguards would shoot him. After receiving a message in a tiny earpiece that his comrades were in place, Cohen leaped across the table and beat his quarry senseless. It was a classic Duvdevan opera­tion: quick and brutal. The terrorist was whisked out of the cafe. Only when it was over did Cohen realize that much of the blood that covered him was his own. So savage was the attack that he'd ripped open his fists.

Cohen had become, by his own admis­sion, an "emotional automaton, a pure fighting machine" able to turn on "an inner killer—a survival mechanism

inherent in all of us but rarely used in normal, day-to-day Western society."

After completing his required one-year tour, Cohen did not reenlist in the Duvde-van. He had killed and had witnessed killing. (A teenage girl died in his arms in the midst of a horrific terrorist bomb­ing at the Dizengoff shopping mall.) He was scared—both of dying and of becom­ing a monster. lie was only 21, but to use a phrase common in the Israeli military, his dick was broken—badly. "I didn't stay in Israel, because I was burned out," he says. "My Israel wasn't joyful."

Still, no matter how terrifying the expe­rience, it had imbued Cohen with not just a profound feeling of accomplishment but a sense of belonging. "Israel was my mother," he says. "It gave me the atten­tion I needed and the skills I could use to cope later in life. I always say I was raised in Beverly Hills but I grew up in Israel."

Back in Los Angeles, Cohen was ini­tially at a loss. "I wanted to do something with what I'd learned in Israel," he says. "I didn't want it to have just been three years of finding myself. But I didn't know what that something was."

The answer came when Cohen applied for work with Professional Security Con­sultants, a southern California firm that provided bodyguards to celebrities. The timing was perfect. His first assignment was to protect Brad Pitt. The then rising star had arrived at his Hollywood Hills home one night to be greeted by a stalker named Athena Rolando. She had broken into the house, put on his shirt and was waiting for him in bed. "Brad was com­pletely freaked out," says Cohen. "For the next year and a half I was the team leader for six guys providing security at his prop­erty 24 hours a day."

After three years with PSC, Cohen went out on his own. From the start he hired former members of the Duvdevan. "I feel a duty to give back to Israel," he says. More important, Cohen trusts Duvdevan veterans. "I need to have guys on my team I can lean on," he says. "We do what most people would consider complex opera­tions, but the goal is to treat them as if they are second nature. I can't do that unless I know my guys have a certain level of skill. The Israeli special forces provide that skill."

Former members of the Duvdevan also share Cohen's philosophy, which puts a premium on understatement. F.xcept in rare instances, his men do not make a show of force. Indeed, at a typical prop­erty protected by IMS, there seems to be no security at all. As the maxim-loving Cohen likes to say, "What they don't know, they can't plan against."

Over the past several years Cohen has been trying to nudge his business toward becoming "a lean, private military com­pany." The focus, he says, will be on training police department SWAT teams and other small forces. Indeed, he recently conducted training sessions at two major nuclear reactors (one in Virginia, the other in upstate Michigan), training their secu­rity guards in how to retake the facilities should a terrorist group ever gain control.

"This interests me," he says, "because you have to move fast, otherwise the reactor's core might melt. You have no time."

Yet because of Cohen's ties to such nota­ble clients as Kate Moss and Rihanna and the publicity he gained from his associa­tion with Entourage, it is hard to imagine him leaving the world of celebrity. "The irony," he says, "is that I grew up utterly despising Hollywood, but not only am I continuing to work for it, more and more I'm working in it."

In a vacant Pasadena warehouse, Aaron Cohen, an U/.i in one hand and an ammo clip in the other, kicks open a flimsy door and shouts, "Hot range!" On cue, mixed-mai tial-arts star turned actress Gina Carano, also armed with an U/.i, follows him into a narrow passageway adorned with post­ers depicting ski-masked terrorists. At the sight of each one, the star of Haywire, Ste­ven Soderbei'gh's forthcoming thriller, fires a flame-spurting burst. "Keep shooting until you feel the guy is dead," Cohen urges. "Keep shooting." Carano does. Soon the floor is carpeted with shell casings.

"Great. Cool," says Cohen when Carano emerges from the far end of the course, and the two enthusiastically bump fists. As Carano walks oil"to reload, Cohen remarks, "When Gina started she didn't even know how to hold an instrument. Now she can flow in a tactical situation, firing her machine gun at a pretty advanced level."

On this sunny Wednesday afternoon, Cohen is deep into coaching Carano for her role as the lead operative of the fictional private military force at the center o[ Hay­wire. In the picture Soderbergh will attempt to bring the gritty aesthetic he perfected in Traffic to the slick world of espionage show­cased in the Bourne franchise. As technical advisor, Cohen is in charge of making sure the cast gives true-to-life performances. When he's finished with Carano, he puts co-stars Channing Tatiuu and Michael Fass-bender through their paces.

"God said, 'We shall make them war­riors, so warriors they will become,'" Cohen barks as he instructs the actors in the proper technique for drawing and hol-stering their Sig Sailer P228 pistols. "The first thing is to keep from shooting yourself in the ass," he advises. Once they have the hang of it, he shouts, "Smash and rock," and they open fire at targets emblazoned with the images of hooded malefactors.

"My goal is to give all of them a special-op training course," Cohen says as the men go through their paces. "I want them to look natural as they move with weap­ons. I am also giving them an immersion course in the very intense, emotional experience of working undercover. A couple of my guys are following them everywhere they go, and they have to e-mail me if they spot the surveillance. I've got them all living in a watered-down version of the dread and pressure I expe­rienced in the Israeli military."

That's just for starters. "Aaron has become a key part of my brain trust," says Soderbergh. "lie's really part of the core creative group on Haywire. There's not a

single aspect of the script I haven't run by him. When two of the operatives have a phone conversation, I ask him, 'How for­mal should they be, how colloquial?' I'm also relying on him to make sure we use the right technology. I don't want Gina carrying a weapon that real operatives wouldn't use. Basically, Aaron has been value added. That's how I describe peo­ple I like having around."

This being the case, it's no surprise that when filming begins several weeks later in Dublin, Ireland, Soderbergh casts Cohen as an operative and gives him a line. "It's one of my favorite bits in the film," says the director, who proceeds to enthusi­astically recite the dialogue uttered by Cohen's character, "So what do we know about the Spaniard, Rodrigo?" Soder­bergh was fascinated by Cohen's zest for the role. "I watched Aaron calibrate him­self to react to the other actors as he got into the work. You could sec him thinking, This is an interesting world, one I could be very interested in. Aaron looks great on camera, and he's actually a good actor. Someplace in there he's got the timing of a Catskills comedian. Of course, he can also rip your lungs out."

Cohen insists he has no desire to get into the movie business. lie relishes reality, not make-believe, and within days after the production wraps he's back from Europe, sitting again at his corner table at Kings Road Cafe, eyes hidden by his wraparound Ray-Bans. This morning he is obsessing over a new client, whom he will describe only as "a Midwestern manufacturer of a significant cog that's distributed around the world." A former business associate has threatened the manufacturer. "It was pretty direct," says Cohen. "The guy feels my client ripped oil'one of his ideas, so he e-mailed him and said, 'Stop selling this product or you won't ever sell anything again.' We've outfitted my client and his kids with global positioning devices, and cameras have gone up in his home. I'm running what I call a 'tentacle operation.' Not only am I watching my client, but I've got two of my operatives shadowing the guy who made the threats. He lives in Mel­bourne, Australia, and they're following him 24 hours a day. The purpose is to determine if he is capable of violence. If he buys a gun, meets with suspicious people or gets on a plane headed to my client's town, we contact the police."

A month into the job, the client has paid IMS $50,000. "He'was terribly spooked when he first called us," says Cohen. "But he's better now." In the end, this may be all that IMS, or any other protection agency, can offer—the reassurance that comes from knowing every possible measure has been taken. Of course Cohen also provides some comforting intangibles. As Soderbergh puts it, "Aaron reminds me of a line Anthony Minghella once used to describe Harvey Weinstein: 'He's a bull you'd rather have running alongside you than at you.'"

AKE.

JGH.

'MAKE NO MIS AARON STO

BUT HIS REAL WEAPON

IS HIS MIND.

THE WHEELS ARE ALWAYS TURNING."