SARKIS SOGHANALIAN…
The Man Who Armed Iraq
Kroft Sarkis Soghanalian is the arms dealer who armed Iraq. During the war between Iraq and Iran, despite a worldwide embargo, Sarkis sold billions in arms to Saddam Hussein.
This Lebanese Armenian has made a career out of breaking international embargoes – supplying arms to countries and groups with whom the United States in particular – did not want to be seen with in public.
Filling that niche made him rich. And supplying Iraq made him during the 1980s the largest private arms dealer in the world.
As you would imagine, Sarkis’s intimate relationship with Iraq’s military gives him unique insight into their strategy. For a couple of days earlier this week, he talked with us about the arms he sold to Saddam Hussein and gave us what his assessment of what might be in store for our own troops.
Sarkis Iraqi troops will never surrender to foreign troops. If they use Egyptians on a front line, you know, for psychological reason, maybe Iraqi soldier will say, I am surrendering to another brother, but to surrender to a foreign troop like Germans or French or American, they don’t . . . they will fight to their last bullet.
Kroft Sarkis Soghanalian not only provided weapons to Iraq, he inspected the front lines regularly during the war with Iran, checked out captured equipment, even helped develop Iraq’s military strategy. The day before the war began, Sarkis told us in his Miami office that Iraq would, in fact, put up little or no resistance to U.S. air power. But his predictions about a ground war that is almost sure to follow are not so rosy.
Sarkis The United States is facing hard core, tough battlefield trained ground forces.
Kroft It’s not going to be like Grenada?
Sarkis No. Grenada was a vacation. Panama was the same way. This is not Panama, this is not Grenada. And you’re fighting a different kind of people.
Kroft What do you mean . . . ?
Sarkis Well, Iraqi soldiers can go into the desert, into sand, and sit for two, three days. They don’t need no heavy arms. They don’t need no distilled water, no bottled water, you know. They can get milk out of a camel and survive, but they will dig in and wait for us to come in.
Kroft Sarkis thinks the real battle will come when allied troops try to push the Iraqis out of populated areas like Kuwait City.
Sarkis How we gonna kick those guys out of the houses? It’s gonna be like Berlin, wall to wall, and room to room… they will try to cause as much personal casualties as they can in order to embarrass our leaders here. That’s their tactic. This is what’s gonna be concentrated on. And Air Force superiority electronics-wise, maybe they jam all their equipment, that’s… they don’t care about that. But the major aim is how much casualty they can cause…. The [American] equipment is advanced equipment, but it is not for this war. You are not fighting in a climate like European climate, your fighting heat, rain, dust. It won’t work.
Kroft Sarkis says the equipment he sold to Iraq has been customized to withstand the heat and sand and dust of the Middle East. He says Iraq’s military hardware may be more reliable.
Sarkis Because it’s not electronic . . . it’s conventional weapons. Just like their tanks. They don’t have air conditioning, no stabilizer, no nothing. They just, you know, the old-fashioned conventional thing. They dig a hole, they circle a couple of times, they make a hole. They sit there like a sniper and wait for the enemy to come in. And they have artillery superiority.
Kroft You sold the Iraqis quite a bit of artillery, French artillery… the 155 Howitzer… self propelled?
Sarkis Yes.
Kroft Why is it superior to anything the United States has?
Sarkis We do not have the same range as this vehicle…. this gun has. It’s modified to 42 kilometers [25 miles]. What do we have in the field to match this gun?
Kroft The Iraqis have a 20 kilometer [12 mile] advantage in terms of artillery range.
Sarkis Yeah. They can fight from a distance.
Kroft And Sarkis says that the French artillery pieces he sold to Iraq, over one hundred of them, are backed by thousands of specially modified Soviet long-range cannons, as well as advanced artillery purchased from South Africa by way of Austria. Sarkis used Austria as a middle man to get around U.N. sanctions against South Africa. A lot of different people had their hands in this, one way or another.
Sarkis Oh, yeah the . . . the . . . war game.
Kroft What do you mean the war game?
Sarkis Well, some people lose blood, some people make money. That’s why I don’t want to get involved in this war. I don’t want to make money on . . .
Kroft You’re already involved in this war, aren’t you?
Sarkis Well, I don’t look at it that way.
Kroft A lot of that equipment that’s facing the United States right now was sold to the Iraqis by you, Sarkis.
Sarkis Yeah, but I didn’t sell it eight years ago to fight ourselves today. That was sold to fight Khomeini. And we were against Khomeini. U.S. had hostages there, and I said, I’ll go ahead and take my share in it.
Kroft So you sold the weapons to the Iraqis to fight the. . .
Sarkis Khomeinis…. not to fight the, you know, Americans.
Kroft Right. Because that would be best for America… and best maybe for Sarkis.
Sarkis Well, you get compensated sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with that. And if Sarkis wouldn’t do it, somebody else would do it.
Kroft And other arms dealers and countries did. Brazil provided thousands of armored vehicles. China and the Soviet Union sent tanks, missiles and munitions. German companies sold Saddam poison gas technology, and France, not only approved the sale of artillery to Iraq, but [also sold] armed helicopters and antiaircraft missile systems.
This Chilean arms manufacturer [shown on screen] sold Saddam deadly cluster bombs–reportedly with technical assistance from U.S. companies, and the United States allowed American computer technology to go to Iraq as well. It allowed Sarkis to sell Hughes and Bell helicopters. The U.S. government approved the sale after Iraq promised that they would only be used for civilian purposes. Sarkis told us that the helicopters were used as transportation during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
Sarkis I did it with the knowledge of U.S. authorities, policy makers–and also they have delivered weapons that are equally weapons as I did. I do not have anything on my conscience. I did not sell the weapons to kill the American boys.
Kroft Which agencies of the U.S. government knew about Sarkis and his deals with Iraq? Well, according to Sarkis, almost all of them. And federal court documents show that Sarkis Soghanalian had a relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies for decades, and has performed work on their behalf.
Not all of Sarkis’s deals with Iraq involve weapons. He arranged the sale of $280 million in uniforms to the Iraqi army. And Sarkis’s partners in the deal included former Vice President Spiro Agnew, a former Attorney General, Colonel Jack Brennan.
The partners used their influence to get ex-President Nixon to provide them with these letters of introduction [shown on screen] to heads of state around the world.
[To Sarkis] Do you think there was anything unusual about a former Vice President and a former Attorney General and a former Chief of Staff for the President of the United Stateas to want to be selling military uniforms to the Iraqis?
Sarkis They were not only in the uniform business. They would sell their mothers if they could, just to make the money.
Kroft Some of his partners in that deal aren’t talking to him at all today. They’re in court suing Sarkis over the multimillion dollar commissions they say he hasn’t paid them
… [To Sarkis] Are you a Merchant of Death? You are an arms salesman.
Sarkis No. I am a coordinator of industries that produce arms. But I am not a salesman. I don’t carry no bag. I don’t carry no catalogue in my pocket to sell arms to anybody.
Kroft Why did this international arms dealer [Sarkis]–who is currently under federal indictment in Miami–decide to talk with us? Well, Sarkis says this is one war he doesn’t want any part of.
Sarkis No, this war stinks. It’s not to anybody’s advantage. I don’t know who’s advising who. This is a dirty war for us. What are we gonna do with Kuwait? We lose so many men, and next spring the Emir of Kuwait is sitting in Monaco, in Monte Carlo, happy with European girls. I’d fight for anybody that I have faith in. … The man has 80 wives. Which one can he love, you know, if he’s raising a family or a country? What do you owe the Emir of Kuwait? Why? For all this much sacrifice, or for prestige?
Kroft Which do you think?
Sarkis I think it’s for ego, somebody’s ego. …
Kroft You don’t think it’s worth committing a half a million American troops to …
Sarkis Hell no. …go to die for this garbage war, no way, not me. I obey my country. I obey my President. He’s a lovely man. He’s a good man. He’s, ah, intelligent person, but how he’s making this decision, I don’t know.
Kroft And Sarkis Soghanalian made a decision too. He says Iraq has approached him about breaking the current embargo and selling them more arms. He says he’s not running their phone calls.
Sarkis It against my principle… to go against U.S. policy. I’m staying away 100 percent now because I don’t want to supply them with nothing. No spare parts or nothing. No vehicles, no shoes, no clothes, no nothing because they will support the enemy of today. A friend of yesterday is an enemy of today.
Kroft And tomorrow?
Sarkis Who knows? Maybe a friend again.
Kroft [closing] For the last three years Sarkis Soghanalian has been under a federal indictment for–among other things–conspiring to sell 300 American-built Hughes combat helicopters to Iraq.
The case has been stalled largely because U.S. intelligence agencies have been reluctant to turn over classified files that Sarkis says he needs to conduct his defense.
Its times to correct the record regarding Sarkis Soghanalian and the US involvement in Iraq:
It was not the Bush administration that opened up “criminal charges” against Sarkis Soghanalian, but a Left-leaning US district attorney, Linda Tarby in Miami, Florida for her own political purposes as she was running for office. From the beginning of Soghanalian’s association with the US, he was considered a valuable double agent by US Intelligence, who was successful in keeping Saddam Hussein focused on its war against Iran, which caused both countries to be preoccupied in wars with each other and not the US or its allies.
It is often not acknowledged, that previous to Soghanalian’s contact with Iraq, Iran had imprisoned US hostages and had publicly stated that Iran had the further intention of waging war on the US and its US allies if given the opportunity and the resources. However, a war with Iraq served a double purpose and kept both Saddam Hussein and Iran from carrying out such a war against the US and its oil suppliers in the Middle East. US Intelligence then used Sarkis Soghanalian as a double agent to keep Iran and Iraq at war with each other and not the US and its allies.
After Soghanalian was arrested, outted, and convicted…Saddam Hussein made peace with Iran, rebuilt his army and invaded Kuwait, a major oil supplier for US markets. The rest is history. The US was then forced to defend Kuwait, and invade Iraq, and ten years later, invade Iraq a second time…because of the failure to protect or defend one of its best Middle Eastern double agents, Sarkis Soghanalian.
As an international arms dealer, not once did Soghanalian sell any US military equipment or hardware to Iraq. Soghanalian’s conviction for “six counts for possession of armament….” amounted to no more than one RPG and six rounds, accidentely left on one of his air planes parked at the Pan American airport in Miami, FL.
At one time, Hughes Aircraft considered selling “agricultural” use helicopters to Iraq, however, because they were found to be too easily modified for military use, the sale to Iraq was stopped. The number of “103” helicopters listed by Tarbe in the indictment, was the entire inventory of Hughes Aircraft Company.
Furthermore, in a seven year time period, Hughes Aircraft was also interviewed by the FBI many times before indictments were filed against the Hughes executives. During these interviews with the FBI, the Hughes executives willingly named and exposed all of their contacts in the Middle East and in Iraq and believed they were “sanctioned” by the US and the FBI. However, according to court transcripts, not once did the FBI state to Hughes Aircraft or its executives that they were engaging in any illegal operations or contacts with Iraq officials. Under US law, all such negotiations and contacts with foreign governments have to be cleared by the US and the FBI.
Executives of Hughes Aircraft “intent” to sell helicopters to Iraq was an overly aggrandized statement by the FBI at the behest of Linda Tarby, who knew that for several years that it was legal to sell helicopters and planes that could be used for agricultural purposes. However, Tarbe proceeded with the indictment. Before the sale to Iraq, Hughes executives tested the helicopters and found them capable of being modified to carry and fire LAW rockets…therefore, the Hughes executives scrapped the sale, which never went through. Under oath, and showing documentation of the FBI’s interview dates over seven years, Hughes executives stated that they willingly informed the FBI of all its negotiations and contacts with Iraqi officials.
Documentation of weapons sales during that period show conclusively that all of the weapons sold to Saddam Hussein, including planes, helicopters, rifles, germ warfare, satellite intelligence and mapping services came from the British, the French, East and West Germans, the USSR, Cubans, the Chinese, and the North Koreans.
Subsequently, Soghanalian sold materiel in the form of second-hand and defective weaponry to Iraq’s military, none of which came from US sources or companies. This was an operational design to keep Iran and Iraq nearly even in military hardware so that neither country could win and thus dominate the Middle East and to extend the war between the two countries to delay both countries aggression against the US and its allies. As was later shown, when Iraq stopped its war with Iran, it rebuilt its army and invaded Kuwait. Knowledge of Saddam Hussein’s plans to interrupt American oil supplies had been known by US intelligence for many years…therefore, Soghanalian acting as a double agent and asset who had Saddam Hussein’s confidence was a vital part in US Intelligence operations to secure US targets in the Middle East and prevent the necessity of a US war in the Middle East.
With the removal of Soghanalian, who was arguably one of America’s best double agents and assets in the Middle East and the world stage, it ultimately forced the US to send troops into battle, resulting in many unnecessary American casualties in two separate invasions. It can also be argued that such double agents are a vital necessity in keeping US intelligence operations on track to secure the defense of the United States and prevent having to go to war.
Judy Weismonger PhD
Weismonger@yahoo.com
(Information for this “correction” is based on court transcripts, and hundreds of hours of interviews of individuals who worked for Sarkis Soghanalian, Pan American, and Hughes Aircraft Co., and interviews with a Cuban defector in Miami, Florida who worked in a germ warfare laboratory in Havana along side Iraqi, British, and East German scientists.)
Shalom Judy,
First, thank you for stopping in, for reading and, most importantly, for taking so much time to share your views. Building a community demands that its member engage in conversation.
Despite your obviously passionate and extensive research and thought on the subject of Sarkis Soghanalian, you do your cause great damage in your very second sentence when you assert that:
By definition, any U.S. District Attorney is in the employ of the current administration. U.S. attorney’s serve at the pleasure of the president. That makes Linda Tarby a member of the administration of President George W. Bush.
The real question here is simple: what is your dog in this hunt?
B’shalom,
Jeff
“It is often not acknowledged, that previous to Soghanalian’s contact with Iraq, Iran had imprisoned US hostages and had publicly stated that Iran had the further intention of waging war on the US and its US allies if given the opportunity and the resources.”
Iranian university students took over the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, it is true. It is also true that this had a lot of popular support in Iran at the time.
However, if we want to trace cause-and-effect to this, in order to find an excuse for America’s support for Saddam, why stop there?
Why not also acknowledge that the US Embassy was where operation TPAJAX – which overthrew a democracy in Iran in 1953 – was conducted, and that THIS was the primary reason for public anger against the US Embassy after the 1979 revolution – particularly in the aftermath of coup attempts immediately prior to the Embassy takeover?
Unless your goal is simply to make excuses for something (which is done by people who know that something is wrong), it makes no sense to stop at one place in history, when tracing cause-and-effect.
People aren’t stupid. It makes no sense to talk about good and evil, if all one can do is make a case for supporting Saddam in one set of circumstances, and attacking him in another.
If you are going to say that supporting him was good for America, you might also think of all of the dead Americans that resulted from propping him up, and then removing him.
One major problem Americans have is that they will never be experts on anything when they can’t even bother to get off a couch. You can’t become familiar with a subject simply by reading about it or watching TV.
One really has to make an effort to gain even a bit of real understanding, and unfortunately, convenience-loving modern American couch potatoes can’t do that.
Their patience and attention spans cannot sustain real learning effort.
I might add that it is an insult to one’s intelligence to imagine that a Third World country like Iran – with no industrial or manufacturing base, or technological capabilities, and totally devoid of any resources besides oil (which the West discovered), and completely lacking in expertise or know-how – could ever wage a real war against America.
Iran could not defeat Iraq in eight years (although admittedly, Iraq was propped up by nearly every major Western country, allowing it to have a huge arsenal and for its economy to sustain a huge standing army in proportion to its population).
How could it ever pose a threat to America?
It has almost no capability to run itself.
To both writers: I became very ill just a few days after my last submission in 2004. I’ve since recovered. And if this thread is still up, which I doubt…I’ll answer some questions.
First: The safety, security, and oil supply to the United States is of paramount importance. World politics is not the same thing as playing a football game with both sides “following the rules.” To those of you who are naif enough to think that “following the rules” all the time…even when others do not will secure the US, then you are deluding yourselves.
Secondly: No…the majority of the Iranian people were not for “ousting the Shah” and creating a religious police state with a nut case Moslem cleric in charge of the country… I’ve since met and interviewed many Iranians, and your statement is not correct.
Thirdly: According to my sources, it was Democrat Linda Tarbe’s idea, as she was running for office and needed both name recognition and a reputation to run on. That those in the GOP could have stopped Tarbe’s persecution of the executives of Hughes Aircraft and Sarkis…is secondary to the initiation of her prosecution. Furthermore, by the time Tarbe began to persecute the Hughes people and Sarkis, the GOP had other problems, one of which was the growing media assault against them. Now, ask yourselves…how would it look politically for the GOP to be “defending” a “gun runner?” Just how would the Left Wing Media use the GOP’s defense of Sarkis? Hmmm?
Fourthly: My dog in this hunt is that I am an investigative researcher who seeks to learn and understand the world, people, and events “as they are,” and not as how you and other utopian-minded, naif individuals “wish” the world to be…or “might be” if only_____________ fill in the blank. Where one learns this kind of folly, whereby world politics is perceived as some kind of game with set rules where everyone gets a fair chance and a fair shake is usually in some Leftist university. Unfortunately, such entities promote the idea that the United States is the “cause of all the problems in the world”…and if only (the US)_________________fill in the blank or choose a multiple-choice response: a) the US surrender, b) the US be nice, c) the US apologize, d) the US spread more of its wealth around, d) the US give up its position as a world power, blah, blah, blah…the world and such mentally deranged countries as Iran will become nice people and love us. I ask you…what research or basis is there for you to think that if the US apologizes-be nice-redistribute its wealth-play fair, etc…will there be any kind of change to secure the safety of the US’ and its interests? Do you have any examples? The US has caused Japan and Germany to be at peace for the past 70 years…simply because the US has troops stationed in these countries and is armed to the teeth. Do you for one second believe that after WW II, if the US left Japan or Germany…they would be “peaceful, democratic nation states” for the next 60 years?
This bizarre, and psychologically unrealistic and passive foreign policy is often taught by the Jimma Carter “I’m Ok, You’re OK School of Foreign Relations” and 100% of the time, ends up not only a failure but with the US in a weakened position. And in such ridiculous and simplistic terms… while the naïf US plays checkers, the rest of the world plays chess…with many of the chess pieces not on the table. Most of the time, the US has not a clue what kind of game the rest of the world is playing, and furthermore, they don’t care.
And you got one thing right. Ninty percent of Americans are couch potatoes, smothering their brains in chicken fat and barbecue sauce, and perversely its to our credit that they feel such safety that that they don’t have to care about world politics.
Just as Newtonian physics does not work in the vacuum of outer space. Football field rules of fair play judged and monitored by impartial referees do not work in foreign relations with countries who don’t follow the rules, and will most likely not follow the rules on a level playing field for the next 500 years or until they “evolve.”
And I daresay, that neither one of you has ever been in the field, in combat zones, or interviewed or observed the “Moslem” mind at work or how they “religionize” every problem. Subsequently, both of you are just as remiss in attempting to “politicize” world politics according to your own playbook…with only your version being the true version at play. This kind of narcissistic arrogance is why the US has failed in its relentless and ridiculous “mirror visionizing” of the world…whereby “everyone is, or desires to be just like us.”
Yes, I know you might bring up the “Arab Spring”…but that end game has yet to be played out and not even US intelligence…or those individuals living in the region have not a clue what is going on. And, this cluelessness is reflected in the American media’s superficial, and mindless interviews of the combatants. I do know this, that Mubarak has been a good ally of the US in its war on international terrorism.
Which brings me back to Sarkis Soghanalian being one of the best double-agents the US has ever had in that region of the world. And once again, I will restate the facts that Sarkis did not arm Iran…and I dare you to prove it. If you can find a single authentic picture of an Iranian soldier carrying any kind of American weapon, of flying an American plane, etc. I will send you a check for $10,000.
And I will reiterate that by removing Sarkis in the 1980s as a double agent working for OUR side, he could have acted as the canary in the coal mine and alerted the US as to the growth and intent of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and possibly interrupted the plots to blow up the USS Cole, the Twin Towers twice, and many other acts of terrorism against the US.
What I did could not mention at the time but am free to do so now, is that before the last Iraq invasion, Saddam Hussein had agents inside the US in every major city in the US. Sarkis and others on his staff who I have also interviewed…were aware of them and knew many of their identifies. And may I also remind you that one of the 9-11 hijackers, Mohammad Atta’s room mate in Hamburg, Germany was was one of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agents, who left for Iraq two weeks before the 9-11 attack. These associations between Saddam Hussein and 9-11 have yet to be fully linked…but they will be in time.
I have since met Sarkis in person at his home this last year, and reconfirmed what I had discovered in my research. He is very frail adn quite ill, as is his wife. But, he is visited almost daily by military and intelligence interests in which he is “schooling” them of what they should have known 25 years ago, when the Democrats and Tarbe’s jihad against Sarkis started. His mind is still clear and his memories intact.
In 2004, I seriously considered writing a book about Sarkis, but my illness prevented me from doing so…as did, someone entering my home while I was away on holiday, who took all my notes, my trial transcripts, and scrubbed my computers. I got the message. In the present, I cannot write about what Sarkis has done, or is doing…because its obvious he is still very much active in the American intelligence community. Therefore, because of my own selfish desire for the preservation of the country I live in, I will not interrupt this process.
Now, its my turn to ask a question: What is “your dog in this hunt?” What do you seek to gain by perversely presenting both Sarkis and the US as “the enemy” of all mankind and thus preventing a utopian world where we will all learn to love each other, if only _______________ fill in the blank.
I doubt if I’ll get an answer for two reasons. Its been 7 years, and this site is probably no longer up and running. But, I wrote my answers anyway.
Most sincerely,
Judy Weismonger PhD
Sarkis is currently laying on his death bed on life support and will probably not make it through the week.
Hello Judy –
While I was searching obituaries describing my Father’s life I have come across your page. Being Sarkis’ son I was privy to many of my Fathers actions and some of his dealings especially in Iraq during the Hughes/McDonald Douglas Helicopter sales. As an Indicted co-conspirator in that helicopter case (until the eve of trial when all counts against me were dropped) I also have some firsthand knowledge about the layout, reasons and intentions behind that initiative to convict him. While you are a bit off center about a few facts in the case, I sure do like your grit and characterization about my Father. I am comfortable with this about that whole episode and the results of how it played out. Hughes Helicopter Executives, Carl Perry and Bill Ellis, also co-conspirators in the case but were tried separately and by a different judge, got a Directed Verdict. From what I know about the federal legal system, you have almost the same chance as getting hit with a chunk of falling space debris as getting granted that from a federal judge. The only difference of the 2 cases were that Perry/Ellis didn’t have the rocket launcher charge, Art Taylor who was a Hughes Helicopter witness died in between trials and Jack Real the president of Hughes Helicopter at the time “wasn’t able” to testify at my father’s trial, but did at Perry/Ellis. So, 1 charge, 2 witnesses, and a different judge down the hall = acquittal for those two while my dad sat in jail with a six and a half year sentence. Now that is “Fuzzy Math”.
I just came across this blog and found it to be very interesting and a real eye opener as to what goes on behind what an average American knows.
I am curious as to what happens with all of the billions and millions of dollars that crossed through the hands of an arms dealer such as Sarkis? I read that a deal was squelched at the last minute with Newt Gingrich & his first wife who offered to get the embargo lifted long enough for Sarkis to collect the $54 million owed to him that he was not able to collect until the embargo was lifted. The cut for the Gingrich’s would be $10 million dollars, ran through a business his wife was involved in. Did Sarkis ever get his money after the FBI called off the plan to expose this illegal deal just before it went down? I wonder how much the man behind these huge deals ended up with after everybody got their cut of the action. From all that I have read, I would have liked to be a little mouse in the corner to see how Sarkis worked his magic that changed the world, and who’s ability to deal with people could have saved so many lives over the years but had too many roadblocks along the way to reach his full potential. I am intrigued by this man and would love to read a book created about him. Is it true that the movie “Man of Wars” starring Nicholas Cage is written about Sarkis’s life? What other resources are out there? Thanks in advance for sharing more details about this man.
I knew Mr Sarkis in that I worked for Hughes Helicopters as a Technical Representative during the 1980’s. Saw him a few times, but never really spoke to him. As far as aircraft being sold and delivered to Irag through him; it did in fact happen. Not to mention the fact numerous personnel (Maintenance types) were sent to various locations throughout Iraq to support the operations. Sometime after the transaction when the aircraft were sold, I was assigned to give a tour of the manufacturing facilities to a group of Congressional leaders and Staff. At one point in the tour one of the tour members asked if what he was seeing was the Military or Commerical helicopters being manufactured? I responded that the aircraft in question were Commercial/Private. We continued with the tour of the plant. At the time of the tour the basic manufacturing processes for both Commerical and Military applications were similar, yet one major distiction between the two lines was that our Miltary configurations production line installed “Hard Points”. The Hard Points recieved weapons. During the Congressional Q & A that followed the tours was straight forward, with one exception: I was asked if a Commercial helicopter being manufactured by Hughes could be considered a military use aircraft? I responded simply by saying any aircraft can be considered in that state. I was asked how so, well simply stick any weapon out a door and the helicopter becomes a weapon system! Hence the term “Dual Use/Purpose Aircraft” was born. Shortly after the sale of the aircraft to Iraq, a memo went out to all departments reminding everyone that any parts etc leaving the country had to have State Department Approval prior to shipment.
It should be noted that not one (1) of the aircraft delivered to Iraq employed “Hard Points”!
I also knew Carl Perry and Bill Ellis. Carl was the President of Hughes Helicopters and Bill Ellis was the head of International Sales.
It’s kinda funny that no one has mentioned Hughes sold five 5 500D helicopters to the Jordainian Airforce about the same time the deal with Iraq went on. Not sure if Sarkis was involved or not!
Just A Small Part of History
M