Victor Bout and the DoD

Two very good sources tell me that Victor Bout, arms trafficker to the world's worst regimes and wanted fugative in two countries, has, until very recently, had a lucrative DoD contract to fly munitions into Iraq for U.S. forces. The company he set up for the business, British Gulf, is still in business.

Peter Hain, a senior British official, dubbed Bout the "Merchant of Death" in 2002 for his notorious willingness to supply weapons to one and all: Charles Taylor in Liberia, the RUF in Sierra Leone, UNITA in Angola, the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan (and the Northern Alliance at the same time, no small feat). The UN recently asked its member nations to freeze all assets belonging to former Liberian president Charles Taylor and his closest associates--including Bout. A similar executive order has been at the White House, awaiting President Bush's signature, for several months. The U.S. and Britain initially worked to keep Bout off the UN sanctions list, but backed down in the face of adverse publicity. State's Richard Armitage publicly said last month that Bout should be on the UN list. The State Department has been pushing hard for DoD to end its contract with Bout to avoid embarassing publicity. State is also reportedly on board to get the EO signed and acted on. But there has been alot of foot dragging and the EO remains unsigned.

It is too late to stop the embarassment. Word of U.S. and British efforts to protect Bout has slowly leaked out in the European press, most notably the FT. But pragmatism seems to have trumped any possibility of embarassment. Bout had airplanes where airplanes are needed, his specialty. He flew U.S. forces into Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, when no one else could, earning the gratitude of the Bush administration and an apparent quid pro quo not to make his life difficult in the aftermath. Now a contract in Iraq. Seems there must be other people who could fly ammo to the troops there and that enriching one of the world's most notorious criminals was not a necessity.

Some U.S. officials are saying they didn't know who Bout was when his company was hired. But he is not an unknown entity. I did a chapter on him in my book, the Los Angeles Times and others traced his activities in Afghanistan, the New York Times magazine had him on the cover, and the CIA and NSC have known about him for years. A simple Google search could have saved U.S. tax payers from giving financial aid and comfort to Victor Bout.