I doubt that former President Biden read “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” If he had, I suspect that he would not have authorized the swap of Russian international arms dealer Viktor Bout for Brittany Griner, an American woman professional basketball player who was sentenced to a Russian prison for nine years for possession of vape cartridges that contained hashish oil.
Back in April
2012, then-DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart announced that Viktor Bout was
sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiring to sell millions of dollars’
worth of weapons, including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles and over 20,000
AK-47s to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the “FARC”), a
designated foreign terrorist organization based in Colombia. Bout had been
arrested in Thailand after a DEA-led sting operation caught him negotiating a
deal with a DEA asset posing as a FARC representative. He had been convicted on
November 2, 2011 of all four counts for which he was charged.
According to Ms.
Leonhart, Bout understood that the weapons would be used to kill Americans in
Colombia.
“The crimes Viktor Bout committed represent the
worst-case scenario for modern law enforcement--the merger of criminal
international narcotics cartels with their terrorism enablers,” Ms. Leonhart
said. “But his sentencing today also reflects the best of modern international
law enforcement-- sophisticated, determined, and coordinated. Thanks to the
extraordinary efforts of criminal investigators and prosecutors in the United
States, Thailand, Romania, Curacao and elsewhere, the ‘Merchant of Death’ has
finally been held to account in a court of law for his years of profiteering
from death and misery around the world.”
Cathy Scott-Clark, a British
journalist and author, offers an in-depth look at the Russian arms dealer in
“Russia’s Man of War: The Extraordinary Viktor Bout.” Traveling to Russia, she
secured a series of interviews with Bout, his wife and daughter and some of his
associates.
“Bout insisted
that during the early days, when he flew weapons to dictators and murderous
rebel armies all over Africa, he was simply a businessman helping post-colonial
proto-communist liberation movements defend themselves in
government-to-government deals,” Ms. Scott-Clark writes in the book. “The West
was often arming the other side of right-wing regimes and authoritarian rulers.
Amid the decay that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
atomization of its client states rose warlords and new political fronts. Bout,
who flew carriers into these new conflicts, claimed he was not responsible for
what warlords and presidents did with the weapons, and he denied profiting from
blood diamonds or arming child soldiers. He was simply a logistician, not the
buyer, the seller, or the wielder of arms. His specialty was identifying “sweet
spot” opportunities to make money with his air fleet, and he had fully intended
to continue until someone stopped him.
“The U.S. government saw things differently. The CIA, FBI, the
Drug Enforcement Administration, and Departments of the Treasury and Justice
blamed Bout for hundreds of thousands of deaths—for arming rampaging militias,
who raped and tortured—even though the United States was by far the world’s
most prolific arms supplier. By 2023, Washington would be exporting $238
billion in arms a year, including almost unimaginable sums to Israel. In almost
all locations where Bout had ventured, the United States had been arming the
other side, often using proxies and cut-outs to transship weapons invisibly.
Sometimes, they would be competing to assist the same side, and to claim the
same assets in payment, mining concessions, or precious stones.”
Ms. Scott-Clark notes that by the time Bout was 30, he was a
multimillionaire and was known throughout the world as the “merchant of death.”
“He was a KGB officer, agent, or asset, doing the Kremlin’s
bidding and endangering the West, said the White House. He was a terrorist
facilitator and fire-lighting numerous conflicts raging across sub-Saharan
Africa and beyond, said U.N. weapons inspectors. He was an amoral master
criminal and the world’s most prolific arms trafficker, according to the U.S.
State Department, Interpol, the CIA, and MI6. At first, he enjoyed the
notoriety, but later it cost him his fortune and his liberty. The more Bout
protested his innocence, the more the West denounced him. After 9/11, the U.S.
National Security Council described him as the second-most dangerous man in the
world after Osama bin Laden. In 2005, Nicholas Cage portrayed Bout in the
Hollywood blockbuster Lord of War.”
Ms. Scott-Clark strikes me as biased against the U.S., but to her credit, she offers a counterbalance to her interviews with Bout with extensive interviews with DEA special agents and other U.S. officials who took Bout down.
Russia’s Man of War: The Extraordinary Viktor Bout