MUST READ from New York Times Magazine: "Arms and the Man"
08/22/2003 | Serhiy Hrysch
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/magazine/17BOUT.html?ex=1062507169&ei=1&en=1d4ac10bcb8b5a52
Arms and the Man
By PETER LANDESMAN
ictor Bout, by most accounts the world's largest arms trafficker, had agreed to meet me in the lounge of the Renaissance Hotel in Moscow, a monolithic post-Soviet structure populated by third-tier prostitutes and men in dark suits. Bout's older brother, Sergei, waited with me, as did Richard Chichakli, a Syrian-born naturalized American citizen who lives in Dallas. Sergei helps run Bout's many air-cargo companies. Chichakli, an accountant, calls himself a former business associate of Bout and his ''friend and brother.''
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As we waited, Chichakli tried to discourage me from pressing Bout about his connections, suggesting that there were some things I didn't want to know. ''They'll put you on your knees before they execute you,'' he said. Then he nodded toward the doorway. ''Here he comes. Does he look like the world's largest arms dealer to you?''
Bout, who is 36, six feet tall and somewhat expansive in girth, nimbly made his way through the crowded lounge. He didn't shake my hand as much as grip it, with a firm nod. Icy blue eyes like chips of glass punctuated a baby face. We sat on one of the lounge's dingy couches, and he placed a thick folder of papers on his lap.
''Look, here is the biggest arms dealer in the world,'' Chichakli said, half mocking me and half mocking Bout. Bout opened his blazer. ''I don't see any guns,'' he said with a shrug. Then Sergei raised his arms. ''None here either.'' (Both spoke excellent English.) ''Maybe I should start an arms-trafficking university and teach a course on U.N. sanctions busting,'' Victor Bout said. The brothers looked at each other and laughed.
No one in the lounge seemed to be paying attention to Bout. Behind us sat four Israeli men who may or may not have been listening. Chichakli, who says he speaks Hebrew, said they were waiting for a phone call to confirm a deal for diamonds.
Bout leaned forward. ''I woke up after Sept. 11 and found I was second only to Osama.'' He put his hand on the papers. The truth, he said, was much bigger than his personal story. ''My clients, the governments,'' he began. Then, ''I keep my mouth shut.''
Later he said, ''If I told you everything I'd get the red hole right here.'' He pointed to the middle of his forehead.
The world of the arms trafficker often feels like the script of a bad Hollywood thriller come to life. At times you are tempted to laugh at the B-movie dialogue and cloak-and-dagger intrigue. But the political and financial stakes are high. And, as a Western intelligence agent in Moscow told me, this isn't celluloid, and the dangers are of a much more complicated sort.
In the summer of 1999, faced with multiple conflicts in West and Central Africa, the National Security Council authorized electronic surveillance of government and militia leaders in war zones like northeast Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Every morning, N.S.C. officials cross-referenced transcripts of overheard telephone conversations with American satellite imagery and with field reports by British spies on the ground. The documentation was massive, without obvious patterns, until, finally, astute analysts noticed that every conflict had something in common: Victor Bout.
The name surfaced in various permutations, and always in one of three contexts: airplanes, diamond transport or weapons shipments. Gayle Smith, the N.S.C.'s top Africanist, whose staff uncovered the Bout connection, sent an e-mail message to her fellow N.S.C. members: ''Who is this guy? Pay close attention to this. He's all over the place.''
An answer was provided by a C.I.A. aviation expert from Langley, who showed up at the White House with covert photographs shot at various African jungle airstrips between 1996 and 1999. The photos, according to a former White House official who studied them, show different Antonovs and Ilyushins, Russian cargo planes built to land on (and escape from) almost any surface. In the pictures, the planes' bellies are open. African militiamen in fatigues are off-loading crates of weapons. One photo shows a younger Bout standing before one of the planes. The White House official said the planes were traced to Bout.
Continued
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Arms and the Man
By PETER LANDESMAN
ictor Bout, by most accounts the world's largest arms trafficker, had agreed to meet me in the lounge of the Renaissance Hotel in Moscow, a monolithic post-Soviet structure populated by third-tier prostitutes and men in dark suits. Bout's older brother, Sergei, waited with me, as did Richard Chichakli, a Syrian-born naturalized American citizen who lives in Dallas. Sergei helps run Bout's many air-cargo companies. Chichakli, an accountant, calls himself a former business associate of Bout and his ''friend and brother.''
Advertisement
As we waited, Chichakli tried to discourage me from pressing Bout about his connections, suggesting that there were some things I didn't want to know. ''They'll put you on your knees before they execute you,'' he said. Then he nodded toward the doorway. ''Here he comes. Does he look like the world's largest arms dealer to you?''
Bout, who is 36, six feet tall and somewhat expansive in girth, nimbly made his way through the crowded lounge. He didn't shake my hand as much as grip it, with a firm nod. Icy blue eyes like chips of glass punctuated a baby face. We sat on one of the lounge's dingy couches, and he placed a thick folder of papers on his lap.
''Look, here is the biggest arms dealer in the world,'' Chichakli said, half mocking me and half mocking Bout. Bout opened his blazer. ''I don't see any guns,'' he said with a shrug. Then Sergei raised his arms. ''None here either.'' (Both spoke excellent English.) ''Maybe I should start an arms-trafficking university and teach a course on U.N. sanctions busting,'' Victor Bout said. The brothers looked at each other and laughed.
No one in the lounge seemed to be paying attention to Bout. Behind us sat four Israeli men who may or may not have been listening. Chichakli, who says he speaks Hebrew, said they were waiting for a phone call to confirm a deal for diamonds.
Bout leaned forward. ''I woke up after Sept. 11 and found I was second only to Osama.'' He put his hand on the papers. The truth, he said, was much bigger than his personal story. ''My clients, the governments,'' he began. Then, ''I keep my mouth shut.''
Later he said, ''If I told you everything I'd get the red hole right here.'' He pointed to the middle of his forehead.
The world of the arms trafficker often feels like the script of a bad Hollywood thriller come to life. At times you are tempted to laugh at the B-movie dialogue and cloak-and-dagger intrigue. But the political and financial stakes are high. And, as a Western intelligence agent in Moscow told me, this isn't celluloid, and the dangers are of a much more complicated sort.
In the summer of 1999, faced with multiple conflicts in West and Central Africa, the National Security Council authorized electronic surveillance of government and militia leaders in war zones like northeast Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Every morning, N.S.C. officials cross-referenced transcripts of overheard telephone conversations with American satellite imagery and with field reports by British spies on the ground. The documentation was massive, without obvious patterns, until, finally, astute analysts noticed that every conflict had something in common: Victor Bout.
The name surfaced in various permutations, and always in one of three contexts: airplanes, diamond transport or weapons shipments. Gayle Smith, the N.S.C.'s top Africanist, whose staff uncovered the Bout connection, sent an e-mail message to her fellow N.S.C. members: ''Who is this guy? Pay close attention to this. He's all over the place.''
An answer was provided by a C.I.A. aviation expert from Langley, who showed up at the White House with covert photographs shot at various African jungle airstrips between 1996 and 1999. The photos, according to a former White House official who studied them, show different Antonovs and Ilyushins, Russian cargo planes built to land on (and escape from) almost any surface. In the pictures, the planes' bellies are open. African militiamen in fatigues are off-loading crates of weapons. One photo shows a younger Bout standing before one of the planes. The White House official said the planes were traced to Bout.
Continued
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | Next>>
Відповіді
2003.08.22 | vujko
дeкілька цитат
Of all the republics outside of Russia, Ukraine got the most -- and most lethal -- weapons, enough conventional firepower, by many accounts, to sustain a million troops. The Ukrainian government made a public show of transferring its vast nuclear arsenal back to Russia. But between 1992 and 1998, it has been reported, $32 billion of large- and small-scale Ukrainian weaponry and ammunition, as well as other military property, simply disappeared.''The Ukrainian military was turned into a tool for revenue by a generation of politicians who took advantage of the factories and used them to manufacture and ship weapons for money to anyone who wanted them,'' Winer said.
Representatives from Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, the Taliban and Pakistan came calling. So, perhaps, did North Korea, by way of Pakistan, and Al Qaeda, through the Taliban. ''Whatever country has the worst governance but the best infrastructure becomes a honey pot,'' Winer said. ''In the 1980's, it was Central America. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it became Ukraine. There's concentrated power, resources in very few hands, no oversight, no separate functioning judiciary, a huge porous border, huge inherited military facilities, lots of airstrips, a bunch of old planes. Ukraine is the epicenter for global badness. It's worse than Pakistan. It's a one-stop-shopping infrastructure for anyone who wants to buy anything.''
Ukraine became the deepest and most reliable source of supply in the arms-trafficking underworld. What was missing was a way to move and sell the product. That's where Victor Bout and others came in. And the world was soon awash in weapons.
Last February, months before I met with Bout, I went to Kiev. The year before, Ukraine's president, Leonid Kuchma, had been caught personally directing illicit weapons sales. From 1998 to 2000, Kuchma's bodyguard, a former K.G.B. employee and Ukrainian intelligence officer named Mykola Melnychenko, had bugged the presidential office and then turned over tapes to an opposition member of Ukraine's Parliament. The tapes caught Kuchma apparently approving the sale of four world-class radar systems to Saddam Hussein for $100 million and ordering the director of Ukraine's intelligence agency to ''take care of'' a Ukrainian journalist who had been following the government's connections to illegal arms sales. Two months after that conversation, the journalist, Georgy Gongadze, vanished. His headless, acid-scorched corpse was found in a forest glade two months later. He was one of at least three Ukrainian journalists and five members of Parliament who died in the last few years under mysterious circumstances.
Before I left for Ukraine, I met with Melnychenko, who had taken refuge in the United States. He agreed to meet me at the information booth at Grand Central Terminal, and we moved on to the bar at Michael Jordan's restaurant to talk. A pale, nervous man, he seemed an unlikely candidate to try to topple the tyrannical Ukrainian president by himself. Had anyone put him up to the bugging, I asked? He shrugged: ''I'm an officer. I wanted to stop the crime.'' Asked if he knew Victor Bout, he at first said no, then yes and later, in a phone conversation, no again. Recently he said, ''I don't know him in person, but I know a lot about him.'' He told me that he is frequently warned by the United States about assassination plots against him.
Whether Melnychenko worked independently or for the K.G.B. or for the C.I.A. (I was told all three), the tapes are real, and ''Kuchmagate'' -- as the Ukrainian press has dubbed it -- provides a glimpse of the anatomy of the arms-trafficking underworld, of which state-sponsored arms trafficking is just one thread.
...
In late September 2001, two weeks after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, a Hungarian trading company in Budapest filed a request to ship Ukrainian cargo to an American firm based in Macon, Ga. No one had ever heard of the Ukrainian company with the vanilla name -- ERI Trading and Investment Company -- and for good reason. A Hungarian bureaucrat making a random inspection of the cargo discovered that the shipment included 300 Ukrainian surface-to-air (SAM) missiles and 100 launchers. SAM's are light, mobile and easily hidden, and American agents later feared that they were going to be distributed to terrorists near America's major airports. (The cargo wasn't permitted to take off; the American buyer was arrested in June.)
...
U.S. officials have connected Bout to both Alexander Islamov, a notorious Russian arms dealer, and Leonid Minin, a Ukrainian version of the same. I asked him if he had flown cargo for them. ''These are my clients,'' he said.