I enjoyed this news story about a private U.S. contractor buying two helicopters in Siberia for CIA operations in Afghanistan not long after 9/11.
The story is truly strange, especially the Army officer involved and the owner of the contract company ended up in prison in no small measure because the judge wouldn’t allow the defendants to mention that they bought the helicopters for the CIA to conduct earlier missions in Afghanistan post 9/11.
It should be noted that these guys were able to buy the two helicopters quickly and get them to the CIA, while, according to Wired, “ARINC, a major U.S. defense contractor, was paid $322 million dollars to buy 22 Russian helicopters under a U.S. foreign military sales contract.
Guess how many helicopters ARINC has delivered to Iraq after 18 months? Zero.”
