Via
Doug Farah, check out this
LAT piece on an investigation of a small Pennsylvania hunting supply store, and its sales of telescopic rifle scopes, binoculars and optics to a Moscow firm, Tactica, Ltd., known to be connected to Russian military intelligence, the GRU, and apparently as well to arms dealer
Viktor Bout. As Stephen Braun writes,
"The wire transfers showing an alleged financial relationship between Bout's organization and Russian intelligence marks the first time that the U.S. has found contemporary evidence that the two entities work in concert. Western intelligence officials have long suspected that Bout's entry into the air transport business and contraband arms trade in the early 1990s was staked either by the KGB or GRU, Russia's military intelligence wing... "Not a guy the US should be doing business with in Iraq, as it apparently has been. Led by? Oh yeah: "...Among the firms holding U.S. government contracts that officials said were using the [Bout] network's services [in Iraq]:
FedEx and KBR. The latter, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, is a subsidiary of
Halliburton, the Houston conglomerate formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and holder of a massive no-bid contract for reconstruction projects in Iraq." Braun: Bout's "planes had flown hundreds of clandestine flights into Iraq, ferrying weapons, supplies and personnel for the U.S. military and private American contractors."
Posted by Laura at 10:56 AM
December 01, 2006
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/005273.html
