Home > Bush’s Courting of Saddam
by Wayne Barrett
Sarkis Soghanalian, the international arms dealer who bought billions in weapons for Saddam Hussein, says he was approached at a Newark airport luncheon meeting in the early ’80s by a representative of then Texas oil entrepreneur George W. Bush, who was seeking to do business in Iraq.
Featured in lengthy interviews on 60 Minutes, 20/20, and PBS’s Frontline over the years, the twice-convicted Soghanalian was dubbed the "Merchant of Death." He was released from prison at the request of federal prosecutors who, as recently as 2001, cited his "substantial assistance to law enforcement." Justice Department officials questioned him in Washington this year about an ongoing case in Peru involving the sale of 10,000 assault rifles to Colombian guerrillas, but they did not extradite him though he is facing a possible 15-year jail sentence there for brokering the deal.
Soghanalian recalled in half a dozen phone interviews with the Voice that he met with a business associate of W’s whose full name he cannot recall but who, like Soghanalian, was Armenian. The meeting was arranged, he says, by a friend who was a leader in Armenian charity circles. Soghanalian recalls that the business associate told him: "George W. Bush wants to do business in Iraq."
"Unfortunately, I was pretty high-profile at the time," says Soghanalian, "and everyone was trying to get close to me. Why would I want their business? I knew his father. What did I need him for?" Soghanalian, who had a stopover in Newark on his way to Baghdad, says he can’t remember any specifics about the suggested business. The businessman, he said, "was sent on behalf of Bush" and "said to me, ’This is an important man.’ " Soghanalian claims that the man told him that W had "a lot of contacts overseas" and that Soghanalian replied: "I have contacts too. I don’t need more contacts." Soghanalian says he has known the senior Bush since at least 1976, when Bush was CIA director. Soghanalian has had such a long-standing CIA relationship that David Armstrong of the National Security News Service calls him the agency’s "arms dealer of choice."
Soghanalian says Bush’s representative continued to "chase me around" after the airport meeting. Living in an overseas location he did not want disclosed, the 300-pound, 75-year-old legendary dealer said: "I am not where I am and have never been where I was." Though he volunteered the story of the Newark solicitation, he expressed concerns about "angering" the Bushes and repeatedly cut off later interviews, citing health concerns.
It’s widely known that prior to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations maintained friendly ties with Hussein, but there has never before been any indication that the current president was seeking business deals with him. In the ’80s, the younger Bush managed a series of struggling Texas-based oil companies, one of which, Harken Energy, did secure a major oil deal in Bahrain that caused a public furor, since it appeared to have been awarded to earn favor with the Bush administration. Bush’s storefront start-up Arbusto (later renamed Bush Exploration) was in deep trouble in the ’83-’84 period when Soghanalian says the approach occurred.
The Soghanalian overture is only one of several Bush business intertwinings with the dark side, starting way back in 1974, when he was 28 years old. Like the Soghanalian adventure, each of these tales has CIA ties, which touch virtually every Bush business venture until 1990.