Pay Any Price (20 page)

Such legal limits and export restrictions create an opening for politically well-connected middlemen and arms dealers, who might want to take advantage of the potential premiums to be paid for creative deals that could get around American economic sanctions and export license requirements. According to extensive interviews with sources close to the program, Houchaimi and several individuals involved with or with close connections to Jerash Air Cargo considered selling advanced American-built UAVs to Jordan, as well as to Lebanon and possibly Syria. The attempts to sell them in the Middle East had nothing to do with the intelligence operation for Special Operations Command. It was purely a moneymaking proposition.

Proposals to sell drones to Lebanon or Syria raise even more serious concerns because of the likelihood that the sales would have benefited terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed terrorist organization is based in Lebanon and now has a major role in the Lebanese government. In addition, it is supported by Syria. Hezbollah has been locked in a bitter war with Israel for a generation, and air power and superior intelligence have always been essential Israeli advantages. A drone program for Hezbollah could alter the military dynamics along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Hezbollah, or its Syrian and Iranian protectors, would almost certainly pay a handsome premium for highly advanced drone technology. The profit margins for middlemen capable of delivering them would be immense.

Hezbollah, with the backing of Iran's clerical state and its oil wealth, has already proven to be a willing customer. Hezbollah has launched small, unarmed UAVs over Israel, and then flown them back over the Lebanese border. These drones were said to be simple, Iranian-built models, hardly much more than a hobbyist's remote-controlled plane. They don't pose any real threat, except to embarrass the Israeli Air Force, frighten the Israeli citizenry, and perhaps serve notice that Israel's technological edge may not last forever.

It would be far more significant if Iran, Syria, or Hezbollah or Hamas—let alone the Taliban or al Qaeda—could gain access to advanced U.S.-designed drones, with sophisticated guidance and surveillance systems, and perhaps even the aerodynamics required to carry a large weapons payload. An advanced fleet of missile-carrying drones could, overnight, turn a group like Hezbollah into a legitimate military power.

In an interview, one source involved with Alarbus and Jerash said that he attended meetings with others who had ties to Jerash Air Cargo to discuss a complex smuggling operation with a plan to purchase advanced American-built drones, supposedly for sale and shipment to Jordan. Since Jordan is such a strong U.S. ally—Jordanian intelligence is the CIA's favorite and most reliable Arab partner—it might have been possible to obtain the necessary U.S. export licenses authorizing the drones' sale and shipment. But in addition to drone sales to Jordan, the group was also seeking to find a way to sell to Lebanon and Syria, according to the source. The source said that they discussed a scheme through which drones would be shipped to a company based in Cyprus, where documents would be forged to make it appear as if the unmanned vehicles were from China rather than the United States. They would then be shipped from Cyprus to Damascus as if they had just been transshipped from China, leaving no official record of any shipments of American-made drones to Syria. The unmanned vehicles could then be easily moved from Syria to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, or even to Iran. The discussions about UAV sales in the Middle East apparently did not lead to any sales, although individuals with ties to JACO did meet with representatives of at least one drone manufacturer, according to people who attended the meeting.

Another questionable plan discussed by individuals involved with Jerash was for the purchase of chemicals from European suppliers that could be used to make certain types of high explosives preferred by terrorists, according to two sources who attended a meeting in Paris where the matter was discussed. They said there was discussion of a proposal to sell the chemicals to Turkish organized-crime figures.

One British business associate of several individuals involved with JACO said that he had attended the meeting but wasn't certain what the chemicals were to be used for. Still, he said that he was concerned about the discussion, enough to contact an official in the British Home Office to tell that person about the meeting. He said that the British government official told him that the chemicals they had discussed were often used in explosives, and that he should have nothing further to do with the group's plan. The proposed chemical sale raised red flags among intelligence officials in Britain, the business associate said.

Meanwhile, Nazem Houchaimi told others in the group about another side business deal: selling an ancient Jewish Torah written on parchment, one that had apparently been looted from Iraq. Houchaimi told colleagues involved with Jerash that he was working with associates in Amman who had custody of the Torah, and that they were willing to part with it for “several hundred thousand dollars.” He told two Americans working on the Jerash Air Cargo intelligence program that the artifact included “several chapters” of a “Jewish Torah or Talmud,” and that it was so old that it had been “written on deer skins,” according to an internal memo written for Alarbus.

But that was just a sidelight. Houchaimi and at least some others involved with Jerash were more interested in money laundering. According to several sources with direct knowledge of the intelligence operation, they wanted to move vast sums.

Nazem Houchaimi proposed using Jerash for money laundering on a huge scale, according to two sources involved with the program. In separate conversations, he discussed with two Americans involved in the program plans to use the program to launder hundreds of millions of dollars. He approached one American about a scheme through which he would gain access to bank accounts controlled by the American covert action operation in order to launder about $300 million. His plan seemed designed to take advantage of the fact that the intelligence operation's bank accounts might not be monitored or investigated, and that no one in the U.S. government would suspect that a clandestine program run by the Defense Department had been turned into an international money laundering scheme. Houchaimi told at least one American involved with the operation about his plan, and proposed splitting the profits in order to gain access to the bank accounts in order to launder the cash.

Houchaimi said that he was working with three Jordanians, including one intelligence officer, who were in turn working with a group of money launderers based in Brussels, including a “sheikh.” They were looking for “clean” bank accounts in Western Europe, Houchaimi told the American, and that if they were successful in moving the $300 million, they had more to launder beyond that. Houchaimi said they had “several lots” of additional funds to follow once the “beta test” was successful. He offered his American colleague a 35 percent cut—equal to $105 million, with about 10 percent of that lost for expenses—“ensuring the security, storage and movement” of the cash, according to an internal memo written for Alarbus.

The fact that Houchaimi was in business with Jordanian intelligence officers was not a surprise to others involved in the program. He was known to have strong connections to the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), the Jordanian intelligence service that functions as the Praetorian guard for King Abdullah. Houchaimi claimed that he had two Jordanian intelligence officers on his payroll, although it was not clear whether they were currently serving or former officers. For a Palestinian, operating in an Arab monarchy where the royal family hates Palestinians (for trying to kill King Hussein in the 1970s), that was a remarkable achievement.

The American who was approached by Houchaimi about the possibility of using bank accounts controlled by the program for money laundering filed an internal Alarbus memo on his discussion with Houchaimi. “Disappointingly,” he wrote, Houchaimi wasn't telling him about the money laundering scheme in order to have it reported to the authorities, or to somehow leverage it for intelligence purposes for Special Operations Command. Instead, Houchaimi approached him about it because he wanted him “to consider how our group/company might facilitate this requirement [for the bank account] and subsequently profit from participation in the money laundering.”

The American said he gave the memo to Asimos, who was supposedly in charge of the intelligence operation, warning that Houchaimi's involvement in money laundering might mean he was also linked to terrorists. Houchaimi, the memo concluded, “is involved in several highly sensitive operations countering terrorism, and his identities and activities must be protected, but in (my) assessment, some of these activities have gotten out of hand and must be addressed. The possibility exists that [Houchaimi] may be privy to a significant money laundering scheme which involves currency from drugs which is funding Islamic terrorist operations.”

But when Asimos was presented with the memo about Houchaimi, he downplayed the whole matter and claimed that the “client”—Special Operations Command—already knew all about Houchaimi's plans, according to the American who wrote it. Asimos acted as if everything Houchaimi was doing was approved by the Defense Department, the American said.

Houchaimi also approached another American involved in the program about a similar scheme. Soon after the Alarbus/JACO program began, key members of the intelligence operation held a meeting in Amman. According to one American who attended, Houchaimi used the meeting of the Alarbus/JACO leadership to propose that Jerash's cargo planes be refueled in Damascus. Houchaimi said he could get a good deal on fuel if the aircraft were allowed to fly in and out of Syria. The American quickly objected to Houchaimi's proposal, because he believed that the Palestinian was proposing that the company violate U.S. sanctions.

Later, in another private discussion with the American who had earlier objected to flying into Damascus, Houchaimi proposed a money laundering scheme that the American believed made it clear why he really wanted to fly planes in and out of Syria. He told the American that he needed to move $300 million in currency out of Syria, the American recalled. Houchaimi said he wanted to launder the money, possibly through Russia, and hoped to take advantage of the American's contacts to arrange the transfer of the cash into Russian banks. Houchaimi claimed that this cash was actually counterfeit, almost certainly U.S. dollars printed to high specifications, possibly in Syria. Syria has in the past been accused of trafficking in counterfeit U.S. currency.

The two Americans Houchaimi approached about these deals said that they did not get involved in the schemes, and that they were uncertain whether they ever took place.

 

Nazem's father, Samir Houchaimi, also played a role in the Alarbus/Jerash Air Cargo intelligence program, according to an official profile of him on file with Alarbus. His life helps explain the Houchaimi family's connections both to the U.S. government and to the dark side of the Middle East.

Samir Houchaimi, now in his seventies and originally from Jerusalem, has claimed that he was one of the early members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), according to a short profile of him written for Alarbus. He even has claimed that he was one of the founders of Black September, the radical PLO terrorist group responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Like many early PLO operatives, Houchaimi was jailed in Jordan in the 1970s for trying to overthrow Jordan's King Hussein.

By the 1980s, however, Samir Houchaimi had moved into the international drug trade. In late 1986 or early 1987, according to federal court documents, Houchaimi traveled to Karachi, Pakistan, and met Mushtaq Malik, a Pakistani narcotics trafficker who went by the nickname “the Black Prince.” They eventually cut a deal to smuggle heroin into the United States. In September 1987, they agreed that Malik would deliver 8 kilograms of heroin to Cyprus, and Houchaimi would smuggle the drugs into the United States.

In January 1988, Houchaimi flew to the United States with 2.2 kilograms of heroin hidden in his luggage, court documents show. He made it through customs in New York and began looking for buyers. He eventually called someone he had met during an earlier stint in an American prison, and traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts, to close the sale. But when he arrived for the meeting he was arrested. He confessed and agreed to cooperate with the government against Malik.

Houchaimi agreed to call Malik and lure him into a meeting with an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent pretending to be a heroin buyer. Houchaimi reassured Malik that he had only been arrested on a minor immigration violation, but the suspicious Malik still refused to come to the United States. Instead, he agreed to meet the undercover DEA agent, who Houchaimi said was a contact named Costa, in Rio de Janeiro. In Rio, Malik told Costa and his bodyguard, another undercover DEA agent, that he was the Black Prince. He talked about heroin and his plans for future shipments. After their meeting, Brazilian police arrested Malik, and he was extradited to the United States, tried, and convicted.

That was apparently the start of Samir Houchaimi's long and profitable career as an informant and intelligence asset of the U.S. government.

 

There was only one member of the group involved with JACO who had any actual air cargo experience: Malcolm Bayes, a British expatriate living in a château in France. A former executive of a telecommunications company, he had become involved with a Johannesburg air cargo company run by a well-connected former African National Congress intelligence operative close to key South African military and intelligence officials. That air cargo company was eventually tied to a controversy in South Africa involving allegations of contracting “irregularities” at the South African defense ministry. (There is no evidence the air cargo company was found to have done anything improper.)