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Viktor Bout has been so good at concealing his past that American intelligence agents who have tracked him for years joke that his birth was an “immaculate conception.” Bout’s DEA file says he was born in 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, when it was still a part of the USSR. His mother was a bookkeeper and his father an auto mechanic. He graduated from Moscow’s Military Institute of Foreign Languages, a feeder for the GRU, Russia’s brutally effective military intelligence arm. He joined the Soviet military, attaining, as can best be ascertained, the rank of lieutenant.
As the USSR began its slow, ungainly implosion in the Afghan mountains, Bout spotted his chance to cash in on the motherland’s demise. Aging planes were available cheap, arms factories were desperate for customers now that the nation had drastically cut back on its defense budget, and bureaucrats and soldiers in the former Soviet republics could be had for small bribes. He realized that the countries and rebels who were previously supplied by the Kremlin would still need weapons, and that the end of the Cold War would spawn a whole new generation of coup-plotters and malcontents in the most chaotic corners of the globe. With his unparalleled connections in the Russian military establishment, Bout knew he could get them anything they needed.
Bout began by snapping up aging Russian transport planes — rugged models like the Antonov AN-12, capable of landing on badly maintained runways. He used his military contacts to buy new arms directly from factories in Bulgaria or stockpiles in Russia and elsewhere, and then Bout, fluent in six languages, began to sell them worldwide.
Africa became his El Dorado, as he made deals with seemingly all sides in every conflict — insurgents and dictators from Liberia to Rwanda as well as the factions fighting in the long-term civil war that ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing an estimated 3 million. (Perhaps his best moment in bipartisan dealing came in 2003, when he was paid by the U.S. to fly supplies into Iraq at the same time he was supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan.) Bout provided arms and services for a pantheon of Africa’s villains: Mobutu and Kabila in Zaire-Congo, Savimbi in Angola, and the irrepressible and bloodthirsty Charles Taylor of Liberia, now being tried in the Hague for war crimes. Bout sold them AK-47s, mortars, ammunition, even helicopters. From 1997 through 1998, his planes flew an estimated $14 million worth of weapons to Angola.
Bout’s business plan wasn’t unique or even particularly clever, but few illicit arms dealers had his pull or could offer the range of services he brought to the negotiating table. He found the arms, delivered the weapons to airstrips or in air drops, accepted payment in cash or diamonds, and even laundered money for clients. He ran a vertically integrated weapons superstore. The only thing he didn’t do was pull the AK trigger for you.
“Bout built the largest arms-trafficking organization in the world by far,” says Lee Wolosky, who as a director of the National Security Council pursued Bout during the second Clinton administration and part of Bush’s first term. “He could deliver anything to anyone, anywhere.”
And he made hundreds of millions doing it. He bought a mansion in Belgium, a luxury apartment in Moscow, and a charm bracelet of Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers. Through it all he denied selling arms, claiming he ran an air-freight business. Not that there was anything morally repugnant about dealing arms, he’d say. In a rare interview with the New York Times in 2003, Bout blithely echoed a beloved talking point of the National Rifle Association: “Killing isn’t about weapons; it’s about the humans who use them.”
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December 15th, 2008 at 5:14 am
A reader’s closer examination of “Taking Down Arms Dealer Viktor Bout” will find the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Viktor Bout in Bangkok as disturbing as I do.
Bout was obviously arrested extrajudicially, that is, by agents of a foreign government (the US) on the soil of another country (Thailand). Bout has never been accused of any crime in Thailand, where he still languishes in remand prison. Bout’s arrest took place in Thailand because of close police relations of the two countries. It is still far from clear whether he can be legally extradited under Thai law.
Bout was arrested by a cabal of American DEA agents though he was never accused of any drug crimes anywhere. So we have the DEA acting as world police not so much of actual crimes but of morals.
How is the DEA’s elevation to world thought police different from the racketeering the US often invokes against so-called organized crime?
Most importantly, Bout is accused of making private profit using the same lucrative business model of many governments. The USA is, after all, the world’s biggest arms merchant and has a long history of selling to both sides. Can’t stand the competition?
I am not defending the arms trade. It’s time to stop the merchants of death, the lords of war, whether they are called illegal or are sovereign states. The world needs peace not war.
CJ Hinke
Bangkok, Thailand
[Reply]
Guerrillero Reply:
August 15th, 2009 at 9:21 am
yes, you are right CJ countries like the states have a long record of double standard regarding things that are on their interest. i am not supporting the arms trade either, but i believe that that kind of abuse of power has to be stop.
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Sean C Reply:
October 1st, 2010 at 8:50 am
Actually the DEA has an extended scope since they were investigating FARC – who was allegedly using weapons (supplied by BOUT) against US citizens abroad and counter narcotic elements. As a part of their charter, they can investigate crimes involving violence against US nationals, which would encompass the use and supply of weapons by BOUT. As for the DEA arresting Bout in Thailand, has anyone ever heard of a International Joint Task Force?
If people actually researched before they speak, they may have found that it was actually a Thai Police special squad that arrested Bout under local and UN laws – they are a member state of the UN! As for
the US’s role to be doing this, well consider this… If FARC are responsible for 2 thirds of cocaine in the US and Bout is supplying this group with weapons, make the logical conclusion.
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Machinations Reply:
February 11th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
FARC being responsible for 2/3′s of Americas cocaine is RIDICULOUS.
Try the Colombian administration for ‘connected’ drug dealers.
You could kill every FARC in the country and the drug flow wouldnt even slow a drop.
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Amit @ Big Booty Reply:
May 11th, 2011 at 10:17 am
OMG ! that guy is freaking dangerous..
“Now comes the hard part: keeping him in jail”
Is he really in jail? or outside?
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December 15th, 2008 at 5:40 am
I missed the fact that Bout’s so-called nemesis in the DEA retired to work for an outfit called SPECTRE. The acronym was also used for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, nemesis to James Bond.
Pity he didn’t choose SMERSH. The whole Viktor Bout “takedown” is far more Man from U.N.C.L.E.!
CJ Hinke
Bangkok, Thailand
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December 22nd, 2008 at 11:10 am
Amen, CJ!! I had the same thoughts while reading the article!! Who made the DEA or the USA the world’s policemen? If we (Yes, I am an citizen of the US) are to be the world’s policemen, shouldn’t we have some better standards then we have be showing over the past 25 years! Mr Bout is certainly no angel, but who Braun represents is no better.
FA Lesh
PA, USA
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December 22nd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
It explains in the article that the U.S. Gov’t has expanded the DEA’s scope of enforcement… please people, read before making stupid assumptions about ‘morality police’
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December 26th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Adrian, if you read our statements, we did read and comprehended the DEA’s repsonsiblity, we were disagreeing that it is the correct action for the US to be taking!! The discussion was not “is this in the DEA’s scope”, but is this in the USA scope of responsibility!
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January 14th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Not everything is simple in this world. If not the US, then who? The Thai’s lack the capacity and the Russians the desire. I know it’s probably more satifying to wring your hands and criticize the US. I noted neither of you worried much about the Russian complicity or the lives taken by the weapons he’s sold world-wide.
I don’t know if the US ought to perform this policing action, but much like countering piracy in shipping lanes world-wide, someone has to do the job and no one else is stepping forward.
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August 10th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I’ll be there tomorrow at the criminal court to observe the final hearing. Here we go again…
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October 23rd, 2009 at 8:10 pm
In a January 2005 letter to Congress, then-Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz admitted the Defense Department “did conduct business with companies that, in turn, subcontracted work to second-tier providers who leased aircraft owned by companies associated with Mr. Bout.”
At the time, Bout was already a wanted international fugitive. Intelligence officials had considered Bout one of the greatest threats to U.S. interests, in the same league as al Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden. Interpol had issued a warrant for his arrest; the United Nations Security Council had restricted his travel.
But that didn’t stop U.S. government contractors from paying Bout-controlled firms roughly $60 million to fly supplies into Iraq in support of the U.S. war effort, according to a book released last year by two reporters who investigated Bout. And it didn’t prevent the U.S. military from giving Bout’s pilots millions of dollars in free airplane fuel while they were flying U.S. supply flights.
From 2003 through at least 2005, Pentagon contractors used air cargo companies known to be connected to Bout to fly an estimated 1,000 supply trips into and out of Iraq, according to “Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Plans, and the Man Who Makes War Possible” by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun. A Pentagon spokesman confirmed to the authors that the military gave 500,000 gallons of fuel to Bout’s pilots.
In an interview Thursday, Farah said he understood Bout may have worked on behalf of the U.S. government as recently as last year.
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