The Stoner Arms Dealers: How Two American Kids Became Big-Time Weapons Traders (Rolling Stone Exclusive)

Rolling Stone

The e-mail confirmed it: everything was finally back on schedule after weeks of maddening, inexplicable delay. A 747 cargo plane had just lifted off from an airport in Hungary and was banking over the Black Sea toward Kyrgyzstan, some 3,000 miles to the east. After stopping to refuel there, the flight would carry on to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Aboard the plane were 80 pallets loaded with nearly 5 million rounds of ammunition for AK-47s, the Soviet-era assault rifle favored by the Afghan National Army.

Reading the e-mail back in Miami Beach, David Packouz breathed a sigh of relief. The shipment was part of a $300 million contract that Packouz and his partner, Efraim Diveroli, had won from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan. It was May 2007, and the war was going badly. After six years of fighting, Al Qaeda remained a menace, the Taliban were resurgent, and NATO casualties were rising sharply. For the Bush administration, the ammunition was part of a desperate, last-ditch push to turn the war around before the U.S. presidential election the following year. To Packouz and Diveroli, the shipment was part of a major arms deal that promised to make them seriously rich.

Reassured by the e-mail, Packouz got into his brand-new blue Audi A4 and headed home for the evening, windows open, the stereo blasting. At 25, he wasn't exactly used to the pressures of being an international arms dealer. Only months earlier, he had been making his living as a massage therapist; his studies at the Educating Hands School of Massage had not included classes in military contracting or geopolitical brinkmanship. But Packouz hadn't been able to resist the temptation when Diveroli, his 21-year-old friend from high school, had offered to cut him in on his burgeoning arms business. Working with nothing but an Internet connection, a couple of cellphones and a steady supply of weed, the two friends — one with a few college credits, the other a high school dropout — had beaten out Fortune 500 giants like General Dynamics to score the huge arms contract. With a single deal, two stoners from Miami Beach had turned themselves into the least likely merchants of death in history.

Arriving home at the Flamingo, his sleek condo with views of the bay, Packouz packed the cone of his Volcano, a smokeless electronic bong. As the balloon inflated with vapors from the high-grade weed, he took a deep toke and felt the pressures of the day drift away into a crisp, clean high.

Dinner was at Sushi Samba, a hipster Asian-Latino fusion joint. Packouz was in excellent spirits. He couldn't believe that he and Diveroli were actually pulling it off: Planes from all over Eastern Europe were now flying into Kabul, laden with millions of dollars worth of grenades and mortars and surface-to-air missiles. But as Packouz's miso-marinated Chilean sea bass arrived, his cellphone rang. It was the freight forwarder he had employed to make sure the ammunition made it from Hungary to Kabul. The man sounded panicked.

"We've got a problem," he told Packouz, shouting to be heard over the restaurant's thumping music. "The plane has been seized on the runway in Kyrgyzstan."

The arms shipment, it appeared, was being used as a bargaining chip in a high-stakes standoff between George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. The Russian president didn't like NATO expanding into Kyrgyzstan, and the Kyrgyzs wanted the U.S. government to pay more rent to use their airport as a crucial supply line for the war in Afghanistan. Putin's allies in the Kyrgyz KGB, it seemed, were holding the plane hostage — and Packouz was going to be charged a $300,000 fine for every day it sat on the runway. Word of the seizure quickly reached Washington, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates himself was soon on his way to Kyrgyzstan to defuse the mounting tensions.

Packouz was baffled, stoned and way out of his league. "It was surreal," he recalls. "Here I was dealing with matters of international security, and I was half-baked. I didn't know anything about the situation in that part of the world. But I was a central player in the Afghan war — and if our delivery didn't make it to Kabul, the entire strategy of building up the Afghanistan army was going to fail. It was totally killing my buzz. There were all these shadowy forces, and I didn't know what their motives were. But I had to get my shit together and put my best arms-dealer face on."

Sitting in the restaurant, Packouz tried to clear his head, cupping a hand over his cellphone to shut out the noise. "Tell the Kyrgyz KGB that ammo needs to get to Afghanistan!" he shouted into the phone. "This contract is part of a vital mission in the global war on terrorism. Tell them that if they fuck with us, they are fucking with the government of the United States of America!"

Continue reading at Rolling Stone...

Comments

[DailyBail]

Sex, Drugs, and the Biggest Cybercrime of All Time

The fast times & hard fall of three teenage friends with a knack for illegal code

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/sex-drugs-and-the-biggest-cybercrime-of-all-time-20101111?page=1

The famous TJ Maxx Hack

[DailyBail]

Japan Weighs Entombing Nuclear Plant on Chain Reaction Risk

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/record-high-levels-of-radiation-found-in-sea-near-crippled-nuclear-reactor.html

[DailyBail]

U.S. electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA) sued the British Broadcasting Corp.’s “Top Gear” show alleging libel and malicious falsehood.

Tesla claims the show, one of the broadcaster’s most successful programs, faked a scene that appeared to show Tesla’s Roadster car running out of energy, according to papers filed at the High Court in London yesterday.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/carmaker-tesla-sues-bbc-s-top-gear-over-electric-roadster-test.html

[DailyBail]

In Japan, radiation levels in the seawater near the Fukushima plant continue to rise. They're now more than 3.5 thousand times higher than normal. Radioactive material has also been detected in soil at the facility. Japan's government described the situation as serious and unpredictable. Workers have been unsuccessfully trying to restore the plant's cooling system, in what is now the worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl. There's been some debate over whether there are any similarities between the two events. RT talks to Professor Christopher Busby, of the European Committee on Radiation Risks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MognnB0g56Y

[S. Gompers]

I guess letting them be low bidder, was a cost savings initiative. And then busting them was a way to get all the profits back and eliminate competition?

Like there is no "wrongdoing" going on elsewhere...

[john]

Most of the money seems to be going to the Ukraine and then disappears as has been shown in human trafficking , drug and 'other' trade. Note this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110331/ap_on_bi_ge/us_100_million_mansion

then this..... http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2009/06/yuri-milner-the-man-behind-the-facebook-deal.html

[S. Gompers]

I was hoping Cheyenne would chime in here about the issue of the government paying for the ammo when received by the customer (Afghanistan), and then going after the company. I thought the "evidence" (the ammo) for a trial would need to be confiscated, or do we do the same thing with other "evidence", like drugs, and leave them on the street as well?

Sounds like the ultimate shakedown...

[Howard T. Lewis III]

These guys had an uncle with connections. An uncle who was a bad influence. Somebody should have whacked their hands with a sledge hammer or actually shot them bad enough to disuade such corrupted ambition. Rolling Stone, I used to consider your commercial approach to pop music an interesting positive angle. Recently, your political writing was quite good and relevant. Now, you truely have degenerated to the level of dumb beasts. Mr. Thompson had himself so scattered so he would not rise up from the grave to fetch your filthy, self immoliating souls.

[one who knows]

Just a couple of "nice" jewish boys from s/florida selling death and destruction.

[CHuckFeney]

This may be one of the best kept secrets in Federal contracting.

Diveroli is claiming minority preference in contracting with the U.S. government under the minority Status preference that
Reagan gave to Hasidic Jews.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/nyregion/reagan-grants-hasidim-disadvantaged-status.html

This story covered Diveroli long ago.

Hasidic jews get "minority status" preference for Federal contracts.

http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/6233

[CHuckFeney]

REAGAN GRANTS HASIDIM 'DISADVANTAGED' STATUS
By RICHARD SEVERO (NYT); Metropolitan Desk June 29, 1984, Friday
Copyright New York Times Company Jun 29, 1984

They were talking about it in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn yesterday. Bearded men in dark coats under a hot sun, men known for their deep spiritual values, their belief in education and hard work, their pride in self-reliance.

They were all Hasidic Jews, and they were talking about President Reagan's decision, announced Wednesday, to add them to a list of minority groups considered ''disadvantaged'' by the Government.

The list already includes Hispanic people, blacks, Indians and other groups that are considered by the Government to have encountered severe economic problems because of discrimination.

The designation means the Hasidim are able to apply for Federal assistance in running businesses. They will also be eligible for programs that set aside work for minority-group businesses.

The designation took effect immediately.

Greeted With Hope
Most of the Hasidim did not know the details of what the decision would ultimately mean for them. But there seemed to be accord, at least among the thousands of Lubavitcher Hasidim who live on Crown Heights, that the Government had done a good thing for them. Zeb Katz, who was rushing to close his Kingston Avenue textiles outlet at 2 P.M. so he could go to Manhattan to study the Talmud, said he hoped the designation would enable him to better compete with other business people and, perhaps, aid him in expanding customer list nationally.

In the Bay Ridge section, Israel Szempow, who makes special items out of flexible vinyl at a business on 63d Street, said that the new policy would ''give us a great opportunity to move up in this country.''

He said that over the years he has been in business, there had been numerous occasions when he had bid for jobs but did not receive them, even when his bid was lower, ''because when I made the bid I was wearing a yarmulke.'' Some Fears Expressed

He said he has sensed the discrimination on occasion, then had it confirmed for him by a third party who knew for sure that a potential customer did not want to do business with people who look as the Hasidim do.

In the leadership of the Lubavitch movement, there were fears expressed the classification would not be properly understood, either by other Jews or by non-Jews. Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, who worked for years in Washington explaining to Government officials the reasons why such a designation was important to the Lubavitch movement, was visiting a Lubavitch center on Crown Heights and said he hoped the designation would not become a new way to stereotype the Hasidim.

Rabbi Shemtov made it clear he did not even like the term ''disadvantaged.'' Rather, he said, he preferred to think that the reason the Lubavitchers needed the designation was because their style of life gave them certain ''limitations.''

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/nyregion/reagan-grants-hasidim-disadvantaged-status.html

[DC Hilton]

Jewish kids of course. Just like those poor 'hikers' arrested in Iran. Oh, those wacky, adventurous kids!