by James Risen
The Palestinian turns the Audi onto a narrow dirt road that winds into the rock-strewn hills. He climbs through gnarled olive groves and into the fresh, dry scent of high plains, toward his new weekend estate, still under construction.
He parks amid lush trees and walks the grounds, avoiding mud on his loafers or stains on his pressed slacks, urging on a dozen men as they scurry to finish installing the landscaping, the in-ground lighting, and of course the automatic sprinklers. The swimming pool is filled. Sparkling kitchen appliances have just come from their boxes. Finally, we sit for tea outside on his new patio, with a full view of the sweating, shirt-sleeved workers wrestling stone and, beyond, the brushed desert floor that falls away from the white-walled mansion.
The house could be in Scottsdale.
In a short profile that was on file with his American handlers, a secret Pentagon contractor, the Palestinian was described as “a well-known mafia figure” who has “excellent networks in Syria and Lebanon, as well as with underworld figures throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe.”
But most importantly, the Palestinian, Nazem Houchaimi, was an asset of a secret intelligence program for the U.S. Special Operations Command.
I was in Amman to meet with a Palestinian with a bent toward the creative movement of money because I had heard that some bizarre things were happening along the claustrophobic corridors of Washington’s intelligence community. Houchaimi was right in the middle of what appeared to be a runaway covert action program that had triggered a top-secret criminal investigation by counterintelligence agents from the FBI, amid allegations of attempted money laundering, illicit arms dealing, and other questionable activities. The existence of the criminal investigation of one of the Pentagon’s most sensitive intelligence operations was one of the most closely guarded secrets in the government. Above all, the tale of the secretive operation underscores how greed and the hunt for cash have all too often become the main objects of the war on terror.
The Pentagon has long been eager to expand its ability to conduct clandestine intelligence operations on its own, instead of relying on the CIA. In the early days of the Bush administration, the Defense Department moved aggressively to increase the intelligence-gathering role of U.S. Special Operations personnel, creating new, highly secretive teams that began to roam the globe seeking information far from any combat zone. The Pentagon’s new network of spies conducted their intelligence operations with little coordination with the CIA, setting off a bitter turf war over which agency would be in charge of espionage in the post-9/11 world.
Despite resistance from the CIA, the Defense Department has continued to move more heavily into the spy business ever since. But big problems have come with the Pentagon’s increased intelligence role. The Defense Department lacks the CIA’s experience in handling sensitive intelligence operations, and its bloated bureaucracy makes it a poor master of the secret arts of espionage. Those problems became apparent when the U.S. Special Operations Command turned to Mike Asimos—following his experience with Rosetta Research and Motley Rice—to handle one of its most secretive attempts to get into the intelligence business. Rosetta eventually collapsed amid mountains of unpaid bills and unanswered questions about the exact nature of its relationship with the government—and in the midst of an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general. But Rosetta’s messy aftermath did not block Special Operations Command from making Mike Asimos one of its secret agents.
U.S. Special Operations Command, the military command involved in the raid to get Osama bin Laden, experienced rapid growth in power and status within the Pentagon after 9/11. The global war on terror has relied heavily on small-unit combat, air-to-ground coordination, liaison with foreign forces, and covert operations, all areas in which special operators excel. With an expanded global role, Special Operations Command began to think that it needed its own version of the CIA. One idea was to set up front companies through which to conduct intelligence operations.
So in 2007, Asimos and one of his West Point classmates, Frank Lacitignola, created Alarbus Transportation, a small company based in Tampa, near the headquarters of the U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base. According to sources who were involved with the company, Alarbus received a secret, multimillion-dollar annual contract to conduct intelligence operations for Special Operations Command.
They then set up another company, Jerash Air Cargo (JACO), based in Amman, Jordan, as a front company through which they could conduct intelligence operations. On the surface, Jerash was an Amman-based air freight company, and Nazem Houchaimi was the head of the firm. But the business was really an intelligence front, and Houchaimi was working for Asimos, Alarbus, and U.S. Special Operations Command.
To help set up JACO, Asimos directed that $300,000 be transferred from Alarbus to Houchaimi in May 2008, according to an e-mail from Asimos. Alarbus account ledgers also show that an additional $300,000 was wired to Houchaimi for the same purpose the following September. Houchaimi in turn established JACO as a family enterprise, bringing in his father, Samir Houchaimi, as a paid intelligence asset, and his sister, Haifa, to manage the business.
Asimos was awarded a new contract with Special Operations Command in part because of the belief inside the Pentagon that Rosetta’s operation to lure Afghan drug lord Haji Bashir Noorzai to the United States had been a remarkable success, according to sources involved with the operation. Officials at Special Operations Command either didn’t know or didn’t care that Rosetta had collapsed soon after the Noorzai operation.
By setting up corporate fronts, Special Operations Command was copying a longstanding practice of the CIA, which uses what it calls “proprietary” companies to conduct clandestine operations in a way that cannot be traced back to the CIA. Combined, Alarbus and Jerash Air Cargo represented one of four intelligence “platforms” that Special Operations Command was creating in its secret program to set up false front companies, according to sources involved with the operation. But Alarbus/JACO was the only platform that ever became operational, according to sources familiar with the program.
Two sources involved with Alarbus said that when the intelligence program first started, there was talk that it would be used to conduct assassinations of high-value terrorist suspects.
One source involved with the operation said that when he was first brought into the program, Asimos told him that there would be different levels of operations. The most basic would involve intelligence gathering for Special Operations Command, but the most sensitive cases would call for the Alarbus/JACO program to target and kill individuals.
The source said that he was skeptical but that he attended a meeting with Asimos and an official at a large defense and intelligence contractor during which Asimos asked whether the defense contractor could provide his operation with poisons. The official with the defense contractor said that such items could be obtained, but the source who attended the meeting does not know whether any poisons were ever procured.
Another source said that the group’s main focus was providing detailed intelligence throughout the Middle East and in Afghanistan. There is some evidence that the group was capable of providing good intelligence early on in its operations. In one instance, some members of the group provided credible information to the New York Times in connection with the 2008 kidnapping of journalist David Rohde in Afghanistan. Rohde eventually escaped from his captors in 2009.
But a source involved with the operation said that the Alarbus/Jerash Air Cargo program was ultimately hampered by the fact that Special Operations Command did not really know what to do with it once it was created. While Special Operations Command wanted to field its own intelligence operation, to free it from the frustrations of relying on the CIA, it had not yet developed the infrastructure needed to process and analyze the information once it began to come in.
The CIA had analysts who could take field reports and, in combination with information from other sources
, synthesize them into finished intelligence that would be promptly distributed throughout the intelligence community. But unlike the CIA, Special Operations Command had not developed any real analytical capabilities, the source complained. Field reports, mostly from Afghanistan, would be sent in, but they would languish, the source said. One problem may have been that the intelligence was coming from sources with which U.S. military officers were not accustomed to dealing. Sources say that the group relied heavily on information from a small network of Afghan exiles living in the United Kingdom, who in turn provided contacts in Kabul and around Afghanistan.
But bigger problems soon developed with the operation, because there seemed to be little oversight from Special Operations Command. The lack of oversight was compounded by the secrecy that surrounded the operation, which meant that only a handful of officials knew about and understood the purpose of the program. That may have made it possible for the program’s reputation to be hyped within the Pentagon.
One source involved with the program said, for example, that despite Asimos’s assertions, Alarbus and Jerash Air Cargo never carried out assassinations. The source said that Asimos talked about a lot of grandiose plans that never came through.
Without adequate oversight and insulated by secrecy, some individuals involved in the covert program, or with some connections to the program, also began working on questionable side business deals. It is not clear whether any of these troubling side business deals were ever completed, but the fact that plans were being discussed and worked on by people involved with the covert program showed the degree to which the intelligence operation had lost its moorings. (There is no evidence that Mike Asimos or Frank Lacitignola, who jointly set up Alarbus, were involved in any of the questionable side deals or violated any laws.)
One business that Nazem Houchaimi and others with ties to Jerash Air Cargo attempted to enter was the international market for unmanned aerial vehicles—drones. Arab countries are tired of ceding control of their own skies to the Americans. Ever since the start of the global war on terror in 2001, when the Hellfire-laden Predator made its debut, the CIA and U.S. Air Force have held an enormous advantage over every potential adversary. They can launch high-flying pilotless planes that loiter over targets for hours at a time, taking photographs and video of people on the ground, eavesdropping on their conversations—and then killing them. And the United States can do it without sending any American personnel anywhere near the targets.
The drone is the ultimate imperial weapon, allowing a superpower almost unlimited reach while keeping its own soldiers far from battle. Drones provide remote-control combat, custom-designed for wars of choice, and they have become the signature weapons of the war on terror.
The Americans have tried to keep a virtual monopoly over this power for as long as possible, and have continually upgraded their drone technology, to the point where the CIA developed a stealth drone to fly high over Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan to spy on him. Just the threat of an Arab drone program, in fact, was enough to help scare Washington into war. During the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, one piece of intelligence that the Bush administration employed to justify the attack was evidence that Saddam was developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that he might use to deliver weapons of mass destruction—a claim that later proved to be specious. In 2011, Iran was able to down an American stealth drone flying over its territory, prompting U.S. officials to scramble to determine whether the Iranians had uncovered a weakness in the drone’s technology.
Every country in the Middle East, from the United Arab Emirates to Pakistan, is searching for ways to buy or build their own versions of the Predator. Even small Arab countries like Jordan have been eager to build up their UAV capability to liberate themselves from their chafing tether to American power. Drone sales are fast becoming bargaining chips in the international arms race; Israel sold advanced UAVs to Russia, but only after Russia agreed to drop its sales of advanced fighter jets to Syria.
The Arab demand for drones presents an exciting business opportunity, and the defense industry has been gearing up to supply the market, with companies in both the United States and Europe eagerly shopping their wares to new customers in the Middle East. But there are strict export controls and technology transfer limits that regulate shipments of advanced Western weapons like unmanned vehicles. Washington does not want the drones falling into the wrong hands.
Such legal limits and export restrictions create an opening for politically well-connected middlemen and arms dealers, who might want to take advantage of the potential premiums to be paid for creative deals that could get around American economic sanctions and export license requirements. According to extensive interviews with sources close to the program, Houchaimi and several individuals involved with or with close connections to Jerash Air Cargo considered selling advanced American-built UAVs to Jordan, as well as to Lebanon and possibly Syria. The attempts to sell them in the Middle East had nothing to do with the intelligence operation for Special Operations Command. It was purely a moneymaking proposition.
Proposals to sell drones to Lebanon or Syria raise even more serious concerns because of the likelihood that the sales would have benefited terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed terrorist organization is based in Lebanon and now has a major role in the Lebanese government. In addition, it is supported by Syria. Hezbollah has been locked in a bitter war with Israel for a generation, and air power and superior intelligence have always been essential Israeli advantages. A drone program for Hezbollah could alter the military dynamics along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Hezbollah, or its Syrian and Iranian protectors, would almost certainly pay a handsome premium for highly advanced drone technology. The profit margins for middlemen capable of delivering them would be immense.
Hezbollah, with the backing of Iran’s clerical state and its oil wealth, has already proven to be a willing customer. Hezbollah has launched small, unarmed UAVs over Israel, and then flown them back over the Lebanese border. These drones were said to be simple, Iranian-built models, hardly much more than a hobbyist’s remote-controlled plane. They don’t pose any real threat, except to embarrass the Israeli Air Force, frighten the Israeli citizenry, and perhaps serve notice that Israel’s technological edge may not last forever.
It would be far more significant if Iran, Syria, or Hezbollah or Hamas—let alone the Taliban or al Qaeda—could gain access to advanced U.S.-designed drones, with sophisticated guidance and surveillance systems, and perhaps even the aerodynamics required to carry a large weapons payload. An advanced fleet of missile-carrying drones could, overnight, turn a group like Hezbollah into a legitimate military power.
In an interview, one source involved with Alarbus and Jerash said that he attended meetings with others who had ties to Jerash Air Cargo to discuss a complex smuggling operation with a plan to purchase advanced American-built drones, supposedly for sale and shipment to Jordan. Since Jordan is such a strong U.S. ally—Jordanian intelligence is the CIA’s favorite and most reliable Arab partner—it might have been possible to obtain the necessary U.S. export licenses authorizing the drones’ sale and shipment. But in addition to drone sales to Jordan, the group was also seeking to find a way to sell to Lebanon and Syria, according to the source. The source said that they discussed a scheme through which drones would be shipped to a company based in Cyprus, where documents would be forged to make it appear as if the unmanned vehicles were from China rather than the United States. They would then be shipped from Cyprus to Damascus as if they had just been transshipped from China, leaving no official record of any shipments of American-made drones to Syria. The unmanned vehicles could then be easily moved from Syria to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, or even to Iran. The discussions about UAV sales in the Middle East apparently did not lead to any sales, although individuals with ties to JACO did meet with representatives of at least one drone manufacturer, according to people who attended the meeting.
Another questionable plan discussed by individuals involved with Jerash was for the purchase of chemicals from European suppliers that could be used to make certain types of high explosives preferred by terrorists, according to two sources who attended a meeting in Paris where the matter was discussed. They said there was discussion of a proposal to sell the chemicals to Turkish organized-crime figures.
One British business associate of several individuals involved with JACO said that he had attended the meeting but wasn’t certain what the chemicals were to be used for. Still, he said that he was concerned about the discussion, enough to contact an official in the British Home Office to tell that person about the meeting. He said that the British government official told him that the chemicals they had discussed were often used in explosives, and that he should have nothing further to do with the group’s plan. The proposed chemical sale raised red flags among intelligence officials in Britain, the business associate said.
Meanwhile, Nazem Houchaimi told others in the group about another side business deal: selling an ancient Jewish Torah written on parchment, one that had apparently been looted from Iraq. Houchaimi told colleagues involved with Jerash that he was working with associates in Amman who had custody of the Torah, and that they were willing to part with it for “several hundred thousand dollars.” He told two Americans working on the Jerash Air Cargo intelligence program that the artifact included “several chapters” of a “Jewish Torah or Talmud,” and that it was so old that it had been “written on deer skins,” according to an internal memo written for Alarbus.
But that was just a sidelight. Houchaimi and at least some others involved with Jerash were more interested in money laundering. According to several sources with direct knowledge of the intelligence operation, they wanted to move vast sums.