Home pagePress CenterIn the Media James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Washington Times, "Reputed Global Arms Dealer Arrested."
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James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Washington Times, "Reputed Global Arms Dealer Arrested."
Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was usually a careful man, dealing with customers through intermediaries and ordering subordinates to throw away cellphones, receipts and anything else that could be traced.
After two buyers claiming to be Colombian guerrillas approached him last November, Bout tried to double-check their identities using photographs of known leaders of the group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, court documents say. [...]
"He took his Soviet military experience and used that to build a very lucrative business operation," said James A. Lewis, a former State Department expert on arms smuggling now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "His reputation was that he could deliver large quantities of weapons anywhere in the world. That was his competitive edge." Read the article
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