Military Caught Aiding Former Enemy?

There is a possibility the US military was caught aiding a former Soviet spy and arms dealer.

Victor Bout served in the Soviet military as a spy posing as a translator in Africa at the height of the Cold War. But what does a Soviet spy do after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Turn to capitalism of course.

And Bout did well as a capitalist raking in millions of dollars making illegal arms trades, including modern surface-to-air missiles, to al Qeada, the terrorist group FARC in Colombia, and other western countries. It may turn out that one of those western countries was the US.

Quite why Mr Bout has now fallen into the clutches of the international justice system is still unclear. Previous attempts to nab him have fallen foul of Western disunity. Clinton-era efforts fizzled out during the Bush administration. Belgian and British attempts to arrest him seem to have been leaked (some blame America for that). Mr Bout appears to have been a useful contractor for American forces in Iraq, and to have trafficked arms to American-backed causes elsewhere. That may have endeared him to the Pentagon, even as the DEA and other agencies were hunting him on other grounds.

You may not hear much about this case in the US press if the DoD has anything to say about it. If this turns out to be true, this will be a huge black eye for the DoD and heads will roll because of it.

Curiously, Bout traveled Thailand to meet with agents posing as FARC members to make a small arms deal where he was caught by Thai officials. Bout is now waiting extradition to the US. But Bout doesn't seem to be worried. It appears he may have enough "greymail" to implicate the DoD and make a deal to be let free.