“Declassified
Documents Reveal More Information on Government's Opportunistic
Relationship with World's Biggest Arms Smuggler, Sarkis Soghanalian.
U.S. Cooperated with Arms Dealer Despite Record of Smuggling, Weapons
Sales to Saddam Hussein, and Reported Ties to Armenian Terrorists.
Soghanalian Tried to Link House Speaker Newt Gingrich to Bribery Scam
in 1990s; and Assisted Ferdinand Marcos in Coup Attempt in 1980s.”
“Sarkis
Soghanalian was the Cold War's largest arms dealer, made over $12
million a year at his peak, and had his hand in seemingly every major
conflict across the globe – with the U.S. government's tacit
approval. His largest weapons deal was a $1.6 billion sale to the
Saddam Hussein regime at the outset of the Iran-Iraq War that
included U.S. helicopters and French artillery, and he sold arms to
groups in Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, and Peru from the 1970s through
the 2000s.”
“Soghanalian
was nicknamed the 'Merchant of Death' for arming so many conflicts, a
moniker he dismissed by arguing Alfred Nobel was called the same for
inventing gunpowder, 'and then they named it the Nobel Prize.' At one
point the U.S. government indicted Soghanalian for, among other
things, wire fraud and violating United Nations (U.N.) sanctions, but
then freed him another once he provided useful intelligence.”
“The
U.S. relied on Soghanalian's unique intelligence so much that it kept
him out of jail – for the most part. In 1982 he was sentenced to
only five years probation for wire fraud in connection with reneging
on a 1977 $1.1 million machine gun deal to Mauritania, and a federal
judge dismissed all charges against him in 1986 after he was arrested
at the Miami International Airport for possession of – among other
things – two unregistered rocket launchers.”
“Despite
his oftentimes illegal arms trade, the longest prison term
Soghanalian ever served was two years in connection with the 1983
sale of 103 Hughes helicopters and two rocket launchers to Iraq in
violation of U.N. sanctions. The initial sentence was six and a half
years, but was reduced after Soghanalian helped Americans infiltrate
a sophisticated counterfeiting operation into his native Lebanon.
Soghanalian said, 'When they needed me, the U.S. government that is,
they immediately came and got me out.'”
“What
remains unclear is who Soghanalian's primary government contacts
were, aside from the FBI's Miami bureau. Most believe he was a CIA
informant, although others argue that Soghanalian's handlers were
primarily from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House,
in part because Sarkis found the CIA 'largely incompetent… [and] he
repeatedly ran into their less than stellar arms buying operations
and exposed and embarrassed them.'”
Full
Report and documents:
These
materials are reproduced from www.nsarchive.org with the permission
of the National Security Archive.
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