Viktor Bout, an arms smuggler so infamous that he is frequently referred to as "The Merchant of Death," has been sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Manhattan court for charges of terrorism and conspiracy.Before earning the ominous nickname, Bout was dubbed "The Sanctions Buster," as a gunrunner whose acumen could not be stifled by mere economic regulation or geopolitical blackballing. Bout's skills transcended United Nation embargoes: it is believed he got weapons into notorious human-rights violators like Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One of his customers was Charles Taylor, the former Liberian President, indicted on war crimes. He worked arms into Rwanda shortly after the genocide, was spotted talking to Hezbollah, worked with the Taliban, and, after Gaddafi was toppled in 2011 by a popular uprising, documents were uncovered that identified Bout's expanding existence in Libya.In 2008, Bout made the mistake of talking to DEA agents in Bangkok that he believed to be FARC members and pointed out that he could get them 700 to 800 missiles. He was arrested and tried last fall for conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to acquire surface-to-air missiles, conspiring to kill United States federal officers; and conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.Last month, Nicholas Schmidle wrote an exceptional piece about Bout's trial for The New Yorker in which he cited the one winnable argument that Bout's defense attorneys might possess: challenging the notion that Bout had any intention of killing Americans. Schmidle quotes Albert Dayan, one of Bout's lawyers, who contends that what Bout said to his customers merely reflected what they wanted to hear, "If you're selling a five-million-dollar object to people who are wearing Yankee hats, you are not going to tell them, 'I'm glad they lost in the first round of the playoffs.' "This defense obviously didn't work. However, it is worth revisiting for specific reasons. For starters, there is evidence that suggests Bout was prepped to furnish the Northern Alliance with arms in order to assist in America's war in Afghanistan. At least Sanjivan Ruprah, another arms dealer and former Bout affiliate, told authorities that in 2001.This fact potentially positions Bout as an apolitical, albeit morally depraved, businessman as opposed to an ideologically driven terrorist. One is reminded of the pimp from Catch-22 who proudly describes his lack of principles to a flabbergasted soldier: "I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, and I am an anti-fascist now that he has been deposed. I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the Americans, and now that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically pro-American. I can assure you, my outraged young friend. . .that you and your country will have a no more loyal partisan in Italy than me—but only as long as you remain in Italy."Bout's sentence not only ends an odious career punctuated by murder and mayhem, it seemingly closes the book on any investigation into just how far these aforementioned connections to American policy reach. After the sentencing, Kathy Lynn Austin, a security expert and 2011's Arms Control Association's Person of the Year, went on Democracy Now and, well, it's worth letting her tell it.KATHI LYNN AUSTIN: Well, Viktor Bout has served many governments in the past in their national security operations. So even when I was bringing forward compelling evidence—I collected forensic evidence, I collected documentary evidence in the field. And even as I was bringing forward that information, I was testifying before the U.S. Congress, I was talking to U.S. State Department intelligence officials—this is from the mid-1990s—still there was no action taken against Viktor Bout. And that was because the U.S. government saw that his services were very valuable for national security operations. The most recent case where American officials and American private security firms were colluding with Viktor Bout was during the Iraq war. And that is one of the startling reveals during the trial and the sentencing. Viktor Bout wrote to the judge, basically saying, “Look, I've also worked for the U.S. companies. I've flown 140 flights. They've paid me $6 million.” That's probably, by the way, just the tip of the iceberg. “And so, why would you be convicting me, when, in fact, at the time that I was providing these services for the U.S. government, it was in violation of a U.S. law, an executive order signed by President Bush at the time, and it was in violation of U.N. sanctions?” […]
AMY GOODMAN: … You're talking about calling for an investigation, further investigation, into U.S. relationship with Viktor Bout. Who would you be calling up for this investigation, if it ever took place?
KATHI LYNN AUSTIN: Well, we know President Bush in 2004 signed an executive order making it illegal for any U.S. entity to do business with Viktor Bout. We had a number of private security firms. We had Brown & Root, we had Halliburton, that were linked to former Vice President Cheney, who were involved at the time with Viktor Bout. Even as we investigators confronted the U.S. government about these illicit activities, these private security firms continued to use Viktor Bout in violation of U.S law, in violation of U.N. sanctions, even American agencies. On one hand, you had the Department of Justice issuing a list of all companies and entities that the U.S. government and U.S. private firms were prohibited from doing business with. Viktor Bout's companies were on that list. So you had the Department of Justice, on one hand, and yet you had the Department of Defense that continued to see—to seek out Viktor Bout's services.In a recent interview Bout claimed that, if the standards applied to him were applied to everyone, most of the arms dealers in the United States would be prosecuted, yet something tells me it wouldn't stop there.
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