Reply #4: Bout worked for everybody

[starroute]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout

A former Soviet military translator, Bout had reportedly made a significant amount of money through his multiple air transport companies shipping cargo mostly in Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s. Just as willing to work for Charles Taylor in Liberia as he was for the United Nations in Sudan and the United States in Iraq, Bout may have facilitated huge arms shipments into various civil wars in Africa with his private air cargo fleets during the 1990s.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2007/08/book-wanted-cri/

The U.S. government paid a wanted international criminal roughly $60 million to fly supplies into Iraq in support of the war effort, a new book alleges. Intelligence officials have considered arms merchant and international trafficker Viktor Bout one of the greatest threats to U.S. interests, in the same league as al Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden. Interpol has issued a warrant for his arrest; the United Nations Security Council has restricted his travel. Yet from 2003 through at least 2005, Pentagon contractors used air cargo companies known to be connected to Bout to fly an estimated 1,000 supply trips into and out of Iraq, according to "Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible."

It could have been worse, the authors report. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Bout — whose arms shipments to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan were believed to have aided al Qaeda — pitched the CIA a multi-million dollar proposal to help rout the Taliban from the country and capture Osama bin Laden, according to Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun. Farah is a former reporter for the Washington Post; Braun is a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

The deal never came together. But Bout found business with the United States in 2003, flying supplies into newly-invaded Iraq as a subcontractor to U.S. military contractors, including Fluor and Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), the authors say, citing military flight records as evidence. The flights continued even after President Bush signed an order banning Americans from doing business with Bout or his associates, the authors report.