Newsweek: Viktor Bout worked for KBR in Iraq.
Mon Dec 13, 2004 at 06:14:12 PM PDT
[editor's note, by daria g]Thanks for Newsie's heads-up. More links and details added.
Via Atrios, who found the link from Laura Rozen's terrific blog,
War and Piece..
The notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout, who we knew was nevertheless hired to work for the coalition making flights into Iraq, was actually working for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root.
Isikoff's story - Iraq: Government Deal With a 'Merchant of Death'?
Here's a CNN transcript from 2002:
CNN discusses Viktor Bout (post 9/11)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: This Russian, Victor Bout, known to U.S. intelligence for years as the world's most notorious arms trafficker, is now the subject of an international manhunt. CNN has learned that British military intelligence recently found documents and other evidence in Afghanistan that they believe proves Bout supplied arms to the Taliban and al Qaeda right up until September 11.
PHILLIP VAN NIEKERK, CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY: He's an extraordinary person and he's very big and the question has to be asked why, how one individual is able to go as far and to sell as many weapons to as many places as he does.
STARR: Two U.S. intelligence sources tell CNN there is also circumstantial evidence that Bout has shipped weapons technology into Iraq. U.S. intelligence believes he may have supplied Baghdad with a sophisticated missile guidance set. U.S. military officials urgently want Bout in custody to ask him about any possible link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Soj has been all over the Viktor Bout story so I have found links to a series of posts on this..
This is a guy who's been running arms all over Africa and Central Asia, and who helped to run arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11. Just after 9/11 his name was mentioned fairly often in the press for this reason, but the story of his work recently for the coalition has fallen off the radar.
Update [2004-12-18 15:3:21 by daria g]:
Here's the real research, now that this diary's recommended by Newsie (thanks!):
All links go to Soj's blog, Flogging the Simian.
War is the Crime (Bout part 1)
Viktor Bout part 2 - includes an interview with Bout from an article in the New York Times magazine in 2003.
Viktor Bout part 3
Viktor Bout part 4
Viktor Bout part 5
This story was covered by some of the foreign press earlier in the year. Here's my translation of an excerpt from Le Monde back in May, 2004:
Le Monde: For services rendered in Iraq, the trafficker Viktor Bout gains the aid of the United States
[...]
Viktor Bout seems to have returned to work in Iraq. According to several sources, his planes, flying under the name of an aviation company, British Gulf, (likely to disappear as quickly as it was created,) are there assuring the "transportation of material" for the use of the American army. The advantage, says a specialist in arms trafficking, has to do with the nature of the equipment and the airplanes from the Russian market: "They are used to landing in any kind of war zone without concern [??]. And if one of their planes is shot down, there's no risk of American pilots being dragged through the streets."
For the price of his services, Viktor Bout is in the process of earning a kind of amnesty which will allow him to return to his [trafficking] activities on a grand scale.
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