Operation Relentless : Giving Viktor Bout the Boot

Notes from this okayish book. Rated highly. I think four stars is ok.

One tidbit - Royal Thai Police officers are not issued firearms and end up have to spend their own money on buying them. Consequently, they know their equipment and go for value.

Couple of good lessons - how do you plan for such ops? You can't - but you can prepare - in your mind, if you know how. You want one of your associates to give up his friend (till now, he's protested that he'll only cooperate if his friend has immunity). What do you do? You catch the friend on tape saying something that your associate will resent. How do you get the other guy to trust you? You pretend not to trust him. You want him to believe you're a bad guy who wants to buy weapons for no good reason. You make him earn your trust.

Mike Snow  - pilot - arms drop flights - the  bear - an ex SAS solder.

When Congolese soldiers needed to take to their heels, they rip off their boots so they can really run - so you see a huge pile of boots. 

Valuable lesson during SAS training : harness your fear and make it work for you. Channel adrenalin into energy and focus.

BMP : Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty - infantry tank - 80's soviet

A transponder - device that emits a radio frequency that can be detected by a receiver. Fancy name for a tracking device. If it can transmit to satellite, can be detected from space and tracked globally.

Snow stands up to Bout who claims "Russians invented the first turboprop in the world." "Eff off. You want me to believe that the Russians had horses and carriages in the 1930's and by 1950 they invented the turboprop? What horse shit!"

Carlos : You can't ever plan for this kind of thing because it'll change as soon as we hit the ground. It's not about planning. It's about state of mind. My way is like method actor. If I am supposed to be a big drugs dealer, I can see the bales of cocaine stacked up in my safe home. I can see it in my mind's eye. I got to believe it's there for real. Same with arms or cash. You've to see the deal. And the story 100% - total immersion. I tell you something else. I don't need to get Viktor Bout to trust me. Why? Because I only need to get Andrew Smoulian to trust me. That is key. And you know how I make Smoulian trust me? I pretend not to trust him. Only a genuine bad guy would not trust you upon first meeting, demand to frisk you and prove you're not a cop. You have to make the other guy believe he has to earn your trust. 

Peter Watson 1977 War on the Mind - sophisticated exploitation of psychology by the armed forces. Nowhere more apparent than in special forces. 1972 : troop of SAS had left Hereford for Malaysia ostensibly for training. The ones who fared the best in the first two days not necessarily the ones who did the best long term. They could figure out who would successful in Hereford : Tests remain secret, but are used to select troops for emergency deployment overseas. 

Mike knew that Smoulian was the enthusiastic early starter who tended to tire and lose heart as the mission progressed. He would need to be massaged, encouraged and supported to last the course. 

As they were alone and having such a heart-to-heart, Carlos felt tempted to raise the issue of the jealousy that he felt for Mike Snow. "You know my friend, I notice something. You have been very different since you come back from Moscow." "After you come back, you seem very different in front of Mike. You are not open in front of him like you were before. What's going on? What's worrying you?" Oh that? You see, trouble is, Mike's son works for the CIA - makes it hard to totally trust him. "But we trust him. He's been working with us for many years." Let's just say you can't trust Mike. He does weird stuff. The amount of shit I've had to put up with because of Mike - you wait and see. He'll blow everything. That's just M for you.  "No. No. We know Mike. We've done deals with him. He's not like that." He may be fine now, but he'll get bold and he'll burn you. And I'll tell you something else. My friend in Russia, he doesn't trust you either. He wants him kept out of the deal completely. "I tell you what. If you say so, we keep Mike out of the deal. He gets paid anyway, but not from this side. Important thing is, we want you and your friend to be happy." It's just safer that way. "Ok. If you say so, we take out Mike."

Alexander Harrowell - Yorkshire Ranter - Operation Firedump - expose on Bout's fleet.

Bout had a massive collection of personally shot video - which Maxim Pozdorovkin used to make "The Notorious Mr. Bout" which, I think, ought to be entertaining if nothing else.

Bout did not take the stand in his own defense. 

Matt Potter : Outlaws Inc - suggests this was a ploy to protect secrets. I would have added this to my reading list out of force of habit. But, I decided to see if it was available - not, and then look at reviews on Goodreads. A good one by Tony :

This book takes what is a truly interesting subject for about 40-60 pages and milks it over and over for 300 pages until bone dry. The basics can be summarized in a long paragraph:

The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to sudden unemployment for hundreds of thousands of former Soviet soldiers, and essentially free-for-all looting of former Soviet military supplies. A large number of experienced military pilots and crew immediately went into business as "no problem" couriers (as in, "any cargo, any place, any time -- no problem") using ex-military Antonov and Ilyushin cargo jets. Due to the complete inability of any international agency to comprehensively monitor planes, companies, and crews, and the complete porousness of borders and customs operations in most of the developing world, these crews have thrived as couriers of cargo ranging from completely legitimate food aid to international sanction-busting arms (although the bulk of the money is made in the "gray" middle). Some of these businesses are more legit that others, but even so, there's no way to really know whether a particular flight is totally clean or not, since the crews are often make their money by smuggling tons of personal cargo. The beauty of the ecosystem is that there's enough plausible deniability for all governments involved, as well as the owners, and crewmen. The so-called "kingpins" you may have heard about, such as Viktor "The Merchant of Death" Bout (upon whom the film Lord of War is largely based), are only middlemen, there are people higher up the food chain who may or may not be very highly placed in former Soviet states such as Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

That story is pretty interesting, however Potter isn't able to tell it in a fluid or concise way. To his credit, he has clearly put in tons of on the ground research hanging out with these aviators and interviewing people in the air freight business and international watchdog types. However, the book is incredibly repetitive, and structurally zig zags between a chronological account and a geographical one. Along the way, there are lots of interesting details buried here and there (someone needs to do a feature about these small communities of ex-Soviet airmen in the backwaters of Africa), but it is awfully repetitive and the topic could have been covered almost as well with a long magazine feature. Those interested in international relations and gray economies will find the content interesting, as will those with an interest in the former Soviet Union, but I'd be hard-pressed to recommend it to general audience.