I love this arti­cle and the work of Daniel Hop­sick­er. I have one big mul­ti­fold ques­tion: in that regard, are “The Com­pa­ny” the real per­pe­tra­tors or orches­tra­tors of 9/11? Were Al-Quae­da mem­bers only sec­ondary stooges in the plot? Or worse, have been Al-Quae­da mem­bers des­ig­nat­ed and used as scape­goats for the attack?

I think I begin to under­stand why there is so much the­o­ries over the inter­net con­cern­ing 9/11. Con­trolled demo­li­tion, nano-ther­mites, US army mis­siles, scalar tech­nol­o­gy, par­tic­ule beams, mini-nukes, and the list goes. While it is pos­si­ble that some of those ele­ments were at play in the coup, it is clear that some­body is
try­ing to get us away from the hijackers...and the rest of the sto­ry.

[...] FTR #728 [...]

In relat­ed news:

Post­ed on Wednes­day, 09.28.11

South Flori­da
Top South Flori­da ICE offi­cial pleads not guilty of Inter­net child-porn charges

Author­i­ties Tues­day arrest­ed South Flori­da chief of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment on charges of traf­fick­ing images of child pornog­ra­phy over the Inter­net.

BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

The South Flori­da head of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, who spent decades bust­ing crim­i­nals, plead­ed not guilty to an indict­ment in fed­er­al court Wednes­day that accus­es him of child-porn offens­es on the Inter­net., includ­ing trans­port­ing and receiv­ing “visu­al depic­tions of minors engag­ing in sex­u­al­ly explic­it con­duct,” accord­ing to the Jus­tice Depart­ment.

Antho­ny V. Man­gione, 50, of Park­land, was charged with trans­porta­tion, receipt and and pos­ses­sion of child pornog­ra­phy. If con­vict­ed, Man­gione could face up to 20 years in prison, accord­ing to author­i­ties. Each of the trans­porta­tion and receipt charges car­ry min­i­mum-manda­to­ry sen­tences of five years.

Man­gione, who worked as a fed­er­al agent for near­ly three decades, was arrest­ed Tues­day by Broward sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents on charges of receiv­ing and pos­sess­ing dig­i­tal images of child pornog­ra­phy on his com­put­er. They arrest­ed him out­side a Pub­lix super­mar­ket in Coral Springs.

...

As spe­cial agent in charge of ICE’s South Flori­da office, Man­gione often praised the agency’s efforts to fight child pornog­ra­phy in both the cyber and real worlds.

Man­gione had planned to retire this sum­mer. He served his entire fed­er­al career with ICE and its pre­de­ces­sor, the U.S. Cus­toms Ser­vice.

When word leaked out about the inves­ti­ga­tion in April, fed­er­al offi­cials pri­vate­ly expressed shock about the alle­ga­tions.

Man­gione grew up in Rhode Island, grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Maine and start­ed his career as a clerk typ­ist at Cus­toms 27 years ago.

He began his South Flori­da Cus­toms career hunt­ing down dope smug­glers.

He was lat­er trans­ferred to the Wash­ing­ton office. Mangione’s biggest case, dur­ing a tour of duty in Cus­toms’ head­quar­ters, came in the mid-1990s. As the head of finan­cial inves­ti­ga­tions, he super­vised a team of Cus­toms agents in Los Ange­les that dis­man­tled a Colom­bian-Mex­i­can drug mon­ey-laun­der­ing net­work run by car­tels and bankers.

Man­gione tapped that expe­ri­ence to devel­op more com­plex inves­ti­ga­tions in his new Cus­toms post: head of the Fort Laud­erdale office, in 2001. Six years lat­er, he was pro­mot­ed to the top ICE job in com­mand of all of South Flori­da.

He man­aged a depart­ment stretch­ing from Fort Pierce to Key West that inves­ti­gates both immi­gra­tion and cus­toms cas­es, a hybrid mis­sion result­ing from the cre­ation of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Note that he was head of the Fort Laud­erdale cus­toms office from 2001 to 2007. That’s trou­bling on its own giv­en the high poten­tial for black­mail and the incred­i­ble vol­ume of illic­it traf­fick­ing that could flow through that region.

And then there’s the stuff Hop­sick­er dug up down there....

In old arti­cles on Azi­ma scan­dal, I found this:

——
Names of indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies linked to the enter­prise sur­face reg­u­lar­ly at sev­er­al failed lend­ing insti­tu­tions. Among the most famil­iar of these are Frank Cas­tro, Farhad Azi­ma, Adnan Khashog­gi, Glob­al Inter­na- tion­al Air­ways, South­ern Air Trans­port, and the Egypt­ian- Amer­i­can Trans­port and Ser­vices Corp.

One of these fig­ures is Frank Cas­tro, a Cuban exile recruit­ed by the C.I.A. to over­throw the Cas­tro Gov- emment. The Postre­port­ed that he was part of a drug smug­gling ring that pur- chased Miami’s Sun­shine State Bank.

Cas­tro was arrest­ed in 1983 by the Drug Enforce- ment Agency for smug­gling 425,000 tons of mar­i­jua­na into the Unit­ed States.

The drug charges against Cas­tro were dropped in June 1984, after he began train­ing Con­tras at a camp near Naples, Fla.

http://www.romeroinstitute.org/docs/Christic%20scan%20archives%201/Convergence/Fall%201990.pdf
——–

“began train­ing Con­tras at a camp near Naples, Fla.”

The AP has an inter­est­ing piece on Farhad Azi­ma, a fig­ure who shows up in every­thing from Iran Con­tra to Wal­ly Hilliard’s 9/11-con­nect­ed flight school, that has some inter­est­ing echos to the recent hack­ing of Qatar’s news ser­vice that cre­at­ed a diplo­mat­ic cri­sis and sub­se­quent email hack of Yousef al-Otai­ba, the UAE’s ambas­sador to the US. The piece dis­cuss­es Azi­ma’s his­to­ry of work­ing with the CIA and how his appar­ent untouch­able sta­tus is now in ques­tion with US inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into alle­ga­tions Azi­ma bribed the gov­ern­ment of Geor­gia while he was medi­at­ing the sale of a Tblisi hotel to three Iran­ian investors. The hotel was owned by the UAE sheikhdom of Ras al-Khaimah and now that sheikhdom is suing Azi­ma for alleged­ly secret­ly try­ing to prof­it from the deal by arrang­ing for a 10 per­cent state for him­self.

Here’s where we get the echos of the cur­rent bout of Mid­dle East­ern gov­ern­ment hacks: Last year, Azi­ma’s emails were hacked and leaked on the inter­net and Azi­ma is suing Ras al-Khaimah for arrang­ing for the hack. And in those hacked emails we find dis­cus­sion of Denx LLC, a busi­ness part­ner­ship that Azi­ma appears to have owned along with two for­mer CIA offi­cers, Gary Berntsen and Scott Mod­ell. And what were they dis­cussing? A plot to over­throw the Kuwaiti monar­chy on behalf of a dis­grun­tled roy­al fam­i­ly mem­ber who want­ed to install “new, bold­er, more ener­getic lead­er­ship” by trig­ger­ing mass protests.

So it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see how that bribery inves­ti­ga­tion goes giv­en Azi­ma’s appar­ent ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with the CIA (or at least for­mer CIA agents who are in the gov­ern­ment-over­throw busi­ness) :

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press

‘Worth killing over’: How a plane mogul dodged US scruti­ny

By Jon Gam­brell, Jack Gillum and Jeff Hor­witz
June 21, 2017 at 2:22 AM

WASHINGTON — When a Kansas strip-mall bank with pos­si­ble mob ties fold­ed in the mid-1980s, fed­er­al author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ed whether a share­hold­er, Iran­ian-born avi­a­tion mag­nate Farhad Azi­ma, should face crim­i­nal charges.

The probe hit a dead end. Azi­ma, a U.S. cit­i­zen, essen­tial­ly had a get-out-of-jail-free card because of secre­tive work he had per­formed for the U.S. gov­ern­ment, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor involved in the case said. Azi­ma, a gun­run­ner lat­er tied to the CIA, was nev­er pros­e­cut­ed.

If he’s enjoyed a loose, infor­mal immu­ni­ty for years, it is now being test­ed as author­i­ties in the U.S. and abroad probe Azi­ma as part of a glob­al cor­rup­tion case.

Inves­ti­ga­tors are exam­in­ing whether Azi­ma, now 75, paid a kick­back to a for­mer Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates offi­cial to reap the prof­its from a hotel sale in Tbil­isi, Geor­gia. U.S. law enforce­ment began look­ing into the deal because Ira­ni­ans involved were lat­er black­list­ed by the Trea­sury Depart­ment, accused of help­ing Iran avoid sanc­tions over its nuclear pro­gram

More recent­ly, Azi­ma was involved in a plan envi­sion­ing mass protests in Kuwait forc­ing out its gov­ern­ment, appar­ent­ly on behalf of a dis­grun­tled mem­ber of the rul­ing fam­i­ly.

An Asso­ci­at­ed Press exam­i­na­tion into his past, draw­ing upon inter­views, court fil­ings and a recent­ly obtained trove of his hacked emails, reveals a man whose web of inter­na­tion­al busi­ness inter­ests helped him make mil­lions from fed­er­al con­tracts. A for­mer comp­trol­ler for one of his firms also described his company’s work with the CIA.

Through a spokesman, Azi­ma declined to answer writ­ten ques­tions from the AP or to be inter­viewed. He acknowl­edged his secre­tive work to his local news­pa­per last year, while side­step­ping ques­tions about his ties to the CIA.

“I’ve nev­er been employed by the CIA,” he told The Kansas City Star, though he acknowl­edged he may have been indi­rect­ly con­tract­ed. “I’ve done clas­si­fied work. . It’s not work­ing for the KGB or the ene­my. I’m proud of it.”

Jef­frey Feg­ley, the for­mer comp­trol­ler of Glob­al Air­ways, described the air­line as a “seat-of-your-pants oper­a­tion” run by brave pilots who flew car­go into hotspots world­wide.

“I was sim­ply the book­keep­er, the guy who filled up the brief­cas­es with $100,000 worth of small bills so you could bribe the ground crew to get your car­go unloaded in a for­eign land,” Feg­ley told the AP. “Oth­er than that,” he said dry­ly, “it was just busi­ness as usu­al.”

Asked who the airline’s main clients were, Feg­ley said a “rep­utable agency.”

Asked again, he was more direct: “CIA.”

These ven­tures con­tin­ued as fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors in the 1980s began look­ing into the col­lapse of a small bank in Kansas City, Kansas, part of a nation­wide inves­ti­ga­tion into finan­cial insti­tu­tions dur­ing the sav­ings and loan cri­sis. The col­lapse drew ques­tions because a lawyer sus­pect­ed of Mafia con­nec­tions was among its direc­tors.

Azi­ma was a direc­tor, too, and owed the bank hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars for out­stand­ing loans to his air­line.

But the inves­ti­ga­tion of Azi­ma was stymied by high­er-ups, who offered no clear rea­son why.

“It became appar­ent that we were not able to pur­sue pros­e­cu­tion of Azi­ma,” Lloyd Mon­roe, a retired pros­e­cu­tor with the Jus­tice Department’s orga­nized-crime task force in Kansas City, told the AP. “It was a source of real ten­sion.”

Now Azi­ma is under scruti­ny again by both Emi­rati and U.S. author­i­ties over a planned hotel deal in Tbil­isi in 2011.

When the hotel’s own­er — the UAE sheikhdom of Ras al-Khaimah — was look­ing to sell, Azi­ma stepped in to medi­ate a deal for three would-be Iran­ian buy­ers. Ras al-Khaimah, like Dubai, is one of the sev­en emi­rates that make up the UAE, a staunch U.S. ally on the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la.

Now Ras al-Khaimah accus­es him of improp­er­ly try­ing to prof­it from the deal by secret­ly arrang­ing a 10-per­cent stake in the hotel for him­self with the Ira­ni­ans. Azi­ma denies the alle­ga­tions, say­ing Ras al-Khaimah knew details of the hotel deal.

Mean­while, inves­ti­ga­tors this year con­sid­ered whether Azima’s activ­i­ties in Geor­gia vio­lat­ed the U.S. For­eign Cor­rupt Prac­tices Act, which makes it ille­gal to bribe for­eign gov­ern­ments. Dis­cus­sions about Azi­ma focused part­ly on the hotel deal and numer­ous accounts he has at a Mid­west bank, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because the con­ver­sa­tions were not to be made pub­lic.

...

Azi­ma also filed his own law­suit against Ras al-Khaimah in fed­er­al court in Wash­ing­ton, accus­ing it of tak­ing advan­tage of, or orches­trat­ing, the hack of his emails.

The email cache, which was leaked on the inter­net last year, brought to light oth­er Azi­ma ven­tures.

One was a busi­ness part­ner­ship, Denx LLC, that he appears to have owned along with two for­mer CIA offi­cers, Gary Berntsen and Scott Mod­ell. Their names appear in the leaked doc­u­ments along with the amounts of their ini­tial cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tions.

The firm devised a scheme, appar­ent­ly on behalf of a Kuwaiti rul­ing fam­i­ly mem­ber, to install “new, bold­er, more ener­getic lead­er­ship” in the Gulf nation.

“The stakes are very, very high ($30+ bil­lion) and are eas­i­ly worth killing over,” it reads.

It was unclear whether Denx’s plans were ever put into action. Both Mod­ell and Berntsen told the AP that they knew noth­ing of the Kuwait plan, though an email address iden­ti­fied as Berntsen’s in oth­er cor­re­spon­dence sent Azi­ma the Pow­er­Point slide deck out­lin­ing it.

“We wrote pro­pos­als up and we didn’t exe­cute any of this,” said Bern­sten, who told the AP that he was in charge of the over­all Denx ven­ture, which is now defunct. He said that Mod­ell and anoth­er par­tic­i­pant in Denx dropped out short­ly after its cre­ation. He also said that he would not have tak­en part in an effort to under­mine a U.S. ally.

———-

“‘Worth killing over’: How a plane mogul dodged US scruti­ny” by Jon Gam­brell, Jack Gillum and Jeff Hor­witz; The Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 06/21/2017

“If he’s enjoyed a loose, infor­mal immu­ni­ty for years, it is now being test­ed as author­i­ties in the U.S. and abroad probe Azi­ma as part of a glob­al cor­rup­tion case.”

The guy cer­tain­ly knows how to stay busy. And note that Azi­ma’s present day activ­i­ties don’t just include shady hotel deals and planned gov­ern­ment over­throws. There’s also the arms deals, as star Wall Street Jour­nal report Jay Solomon recent­ly report­ed on recent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Reporter Jay Solomon fired by Wall Street Jour­nal over report of busi­ness deal­ings with source

By Ben Ter­ris
June 21, 2017 at 6:49 PM

At 3:08 pm on Wednes­day, the Wash­ing­ton bureau of the Wall Street Jour­nal received a cryp­tic email from their chief, Paul Beck­ett.

“Short-Notice staff Meet­ing at 3:15,” read the sub­ject. The team of 40 was told to gath­er at their usu­al spot. “We won’t need chairs,” he added. “It will be short.”

Soon enough, Beck­ett deliv­ered to the jit­tery group the news many had half-antic­i­pat­ed: Ace nation­al secu­ri­ty reporter Jay Solomon, whose desk had ear­li­er that day been cleared off, had been fired. But as for the rea­son, Beck­ett said they’d have to read a forth­com­ing report from the Asso­ci­at­ed Press.

Min­utes lat­er, that sto­ry hit the bureau like a bomb­shell: Solomon had been fired, the AP report­ed, after “evi­dence emerged of his involve­ment in prospec­tive com­mer­cial deals — includ­ing one involv­ing arms sales to for­eign gov­ern­ments — with an inter­na­tion­al busi­ness­man who was one of his key sources.”

Accord­ing to the report, Solomon had been offered a 10 per­cent stake in a new com­pa­ny by an Iran­ian-born avi­a­tion mag­nate named Farhad Azi­ma. Solomon told the AP he nev­er “entered into any busi­ness deal­ings” with his source and nev­er intend­ed to. The Jour­nal wouldn’t con­firm or deny this part of the report but appar­ent­ly saw enough to let him go.

“We are dis­mayed by the actions and poor judg­ment of Jay Solomon,” the Jour­nal said in a state­ment. “The alle­ga­tions raised by this report­ing are seri­ous. While our own inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, we have con­clud­ed that Mr. Solomon vio­lat­ed his eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions as a reporter, as well as our stan­dards. He has not been forth­com­ing with us about his actions or his report­ing prac­tices and he has for­feit­ed our trust. Mr. Solomon is no longer employed by The Wall Street Jour­nal.”

Solomon is no slouch. His work cov­er­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign affairs had been sub­mit­ted by the paper for Pulitzer con­sid­er­a­tion, accord­ing to for­mer and cur­rent Jour­nal employ­ees. He’s the author of a book about Iran and is wide­ly con­sid­ered among the staff to be a favorite of Edi­tor in Chief Ger­ard Bak­er, who would often praise him in edi­tors’ meet­ings.

Solomon’s two decades at the Jour­nal includ­ed stints in Asia and Africa. While in Wash­ing­ton, he had become a well-sourced fix­ture on the for­eign pol­i­cy social scene. He’s known to have a close work­ing rela­tion­ship with Yousef al-Otai­ba, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates’ ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States.

He had drawn crit­i­cism, though, from some col­leagues and gov­ern­ment offi­cials who per­ceived his work to show a bias against the Oba­ma administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. In his 2016 book, “The Iran Wars,” Solomon wrote that the deal “rather than calm­ing the world’s most com­bustible region, risks inflam­ing it.”

No one, how­ev­er, saw him as a poten­tial busi­ness part­ner with his sources. That is, until the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, in the course of report­ing anoth­er sto­ry, came across emails and text mes­sages between Solomon and Azi­ma that Azima’s lawyers said were stolen by hack­ers. Over the past three decades, Azi­ma has been tied to the Iran-con­tra affair, dealt weapons to Per­sian Gulf and Balkan nations, and worked his ample con­nec­tions in Wash­ing­ton.

Hours before the Solomon sto­ry broke, the AP report­ed that Azi­ma, 75, is under inves­ti­ga­tion on sus­pi­cions that he bribed a for­mer UAE offi­cial in order to reap prof­its from a hotel sale in Tbil­isi, Geor­gia. It was in the process of report­ing this sto­ry that reporters came across his cor­re­spon­dence with Solomon.

In April 2015, the AP report­ed Wednes­day, Azi­ma wrote to Solomon about a pos­si­ble $725 mil­lion con­tract with the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, in which he asked the reporter to bring the pro­pos­al to a UAE gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive he was lunch­ing with the fol­low­ing day.

“We all wish best of luck to Jay on his first defense deal,” Azi­ma wrote to Solomon and oth­ers in the email.

And the exchanges went both ways. In one par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­pect instance from Octo­ber 2014, Solomon texted Azi­ma: “Our busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties are so promis­ing.”

On Wednes­day, Solomon expressed regrets for his actions while at the same time insist­ing that things weren’t quite as bad as they may look.

“I clear­ly made mis­takes in my report­ing and entered into a world I didn’t under­stand.” Solomon told the AP on Wednes­day. “I nev­er entered into any busi­ness with Farhad Azi­ma, nor did I ever intend to. But I under­stand why the emails and the con­ver­sa­tions I had with Mr. Azi­ma may look like I was involved in some seri­ous­ly trou­bling activ­i­ties. I apol­o­gize to my boss­es and col­leagues at the Jour­nal, who were noth­ing but great to me.”

...

———-

“Reporter Jay Solomon fired by Wall Street Jour­nal over report of busi­ness deal­ings with source” by Ben Ter­ris; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 06/21/2017

“Accord­ing to the report, Solomon had been offered a 10 per­cent stake in a new com­pa­ny by an Iran­ian-born avi­a­tion mag­nate named Farhad Azi­ma. Solomon told the AP he nev­er “entered into any busi­ness deal­ings” with his source and nev­er intend­ed to. The Jour­nal wouldn’t con­firm or deny this part of the report but appar­ent­ly saw enough to let him go.”

Uh oh. Yeah, that sounds like a con­flict of inter­est. And note one of Solomon’s key jour­nal­is­tic inter­ests that could be extra con­flict­ed by get­ting into busi­ness with a Amer­i­can-Iran­ian glob­al shady oper­a­tor with CIA ties: Solomon is known for his report­ing on Iran and his oppo­si­tion to the US/Iran nuclear arms deal with Iran:

...
Solomon is no slouch. His work cov­er­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign affairs had been sub­mit­ted by the paper for Pulitzer con­sid­er­a­tion, accord­ing to for­mer and cur­rent Jour­nal employ­ees. He’s the author of a book about Iran and is wide­ly con­sid­ered among the staff to be a favorite of Edi­tor in Chief Ger­ard Bak­er, who would often praise him in edi­tors’ meet­ings.

Solomon’s two decades at the Jour­nal includ­ed stints in Asia and Africa. While in Wash­ing­ton, he had become a well-sourced fix­ture on the for­eign pol­i­cy social scene. He’s known to have a close work­ing rela­tion­ship with Yousef al-Otai­ba, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates’ ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States.

He had drawn crit­i­cism, though, from some col­leagues and gov­ern­ment offi­cials who per­ceived his work to show a bias against the Oba­ma administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. In his 2016 book, “The Iran Wars,” Solomon wrote that the deal “rather than calm­ing the world’s most com­bustible region, risks inflam­ing it.”
...

And guess which of Azi­ma’s com­pa­nies Solomon was offered that 10 per­cent stake in to help nego­ti­ate arms deals: Denx LLC:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

Wall Street Jour­nal fires cor­re­spon­dent over ethics con­flict

By JEFF HORWITZ, JON GAMBRELL and JACK GILLUM
06/21/2017

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Wall Street Jour­nal on Wednes­day fired its high­ly regard­ed chief for­eign affairs cor­re­spon­dent after evi­dence emerged of his involve­ment in prospec­tive com­mer­cial deals — includ­ing one involv­ing arms sales to for­eign gov­ern­ments — with an inter­na­tion­al busi­ness­man who was one of his key sources.

The reporter, Jay Solomon, was offered a 10 per­cent stake in a fledg­ling com­pa­ny, Denx LLC, by Farhad Azi­ma, an Iran­ian-born avi­a­tion mag­nate who has fer­ried weapons for the CIA. It was not clear whether Solomon ever received mon­ey or for­mal­ly accept­ed a stake in the com­pa­ny.

“We are dis­mayed by the actions and poor judg­ment of Jay Solomon,” Wall Street Jour­nal spokesman Steve Sev­er­ing­haus wrote in a state­ment to The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “While our own inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, we have con­clud­ed that Mr. Solomon vio­lat­ed his eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions as a reporter, as well as our stan­dards.”

Azi­ma was the sub­ject of an AP inves­tiga­tive arti­cle pub­lished Tues­day. Dur­ing the course of its inves­ti­ga­tion, the AP obtained emails and text mes­sages between Azi­ma and Solomon, as well as an oper­at­ing agree­ment for Denx dat­ed March 2015, which list­ed an appar­ent stake for Solomon.

As part of its report­ing, the AP had asked the Jour­nal about the doc­u­ments appear­ing to link Solomon and Azi­ma. The rela­tion­ship was uncov­ered in inter­views and in inter­nal doc­u­ments that Azima’s lawyer said were stolen by hack­ers.

“I clear­ly made mis­takes in my report­ing and entered into a world I didn’t under­stand.” Solomon told the AP on Wednes­day. “I nev­er entered into any busi­ness with Farhad Azi­ma, nor did I ever intend to. But I under­stand why the emails and the con­ver­sa­tions I had with Mr. Azi­ma may look like I was involved in some seri­ous­ly trou­bling activ­i­ties. I apol­o­gize to my boss­es and col­leagues at the Jour­nal, who were noth­ing but great to me.”

Two oth­er Denx part­ners — ex-CIA employ­ees Gary Bern­sten and Scott Mod­ell — told the AP that Solomon was involved in dis­cussing pro­posed deals with Azi­ma at the same time he con­tin­ued to cul­ti­vate the busi­ness­man as a source for his sto­ries for the Jour­nal. Bern­sten and Mod­ell said Solomon with­drew from the ven­ture short­ly after busi­ness efforts began and that the ven­ture nev­er added up to much. They pro­vid­ed no evi­dence as to when Solomon with­drew.

The emails and texts reviewed by the AP — tens of thou­sands of pages cov­er­ing more than eight years — includ­ed more than 18 months of com­mu­ni­ca­tions involv­ing the appar­ent busi­ness effort. Some mes­sages described a need for Solomon’s Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber to file the company’s tax­es, but there was no evi­dence Solomon pro­vid­ed it.

Denx was shut­tered last year, accord­ing to Flori­da busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion records.

In an April 2015 email, Azi­ma wrote to Solomon about a pro­pos­al for a $725 mil­lion air-oper­a­tions, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance sup­port con­tract with the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates that would allow planes to spy on activ­i­ty inside near­by Iran. Solomon was sup­posed to fer­ry the pro­pos­al to UAE gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives at a lunch the fol­low­ing day, the email said.

“We all wish best of luck to Jay on his first defense sale,” Azi­ma wrote to Solomon, Bern­sten and Mod­ell.

Under the pro­posed UAE deal, Azima’s firms were to man­age spe­cial­ly equipped sur­veil­lance planes to mon­i­tor activ­i­ty in Iran, Syr­ia, Iraq and Yemen.

In Octo­ber 2014, Solomon wrote to Azi­ma in a text mes­sage: “Our busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties are so promis­ing.”

In anoth­er mes­sage that same month, Solomon asked Azi­ma whether he had told a mutu­al friend about their busi­ness plans.

“Hell no!” Azi­ma replied.

The emails show Solomon’s rela­tion­ship with Azi­ma began pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as the reporter cul­ti­vat­ed the busi­ness­man as a source of infor­ma­tion about Iran­ian mon­ey in a Geor­gian hotel deal and oth­er mat­ters. A review of Solomon’s pub­lished work over the past four years indi­cat­ed Azi­ma nev­er appeared by name in the news­pa­per.

The hacked mate­ri­als also demon­strate that Azi­ma cul­ti­vat­ed close rela­tion­ships with fel­low West­ern and Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists, includ­ing those at the AP, and fre­quent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with them by phone, text and email. None appeared to involve the same lev­el of per­son­al involve­ment or ref­er­enced poten­tial busi­ness deals.

Vet­er­an jour­nal­ists at promi­nent out­lets such as the Jour­nal have con­tacts, exper­tise and influ­ence that can be valu­able in the busi­ness world, said Kel­ly McBride, a vice pres­i­dent for the Poyn­ter Insti­tute, a non­prof­it jour­nal­ism edu­ca­tion cen­ter based in St. Peters­burg, Flori­da. But seek­ing to exploit those assets while a jour­nal­ist would betray read­ers’ trust in a reporter’s impar­tial­i­ty.

...

Over decades, Azi­ma has glid­ed among dif­fer­ent worlds, fly­ing weapons to the Balka­ns, sell­ing spy gear to Per­sian Gulf nations, deal­ing with a small Mid­west bank and nav­i­gat­ing Washington’s pow­er cir­cles. In an April 2016 memo, a pub­lic rela­tions firm he worked with, Prime Strate­gies, sug­gest­ed Solomon could be called upon to “write a fea­ture sto­ry about Farhad” to help com­bat neg­a­tive cov­er­age.

In May 2015, Bern­sten — using an email under the alias “The Vic­ar” — told Azi­ma of a plan to help a dis­si­dent mem­ber of the Kuwaiti roy­al fam­i­ly insti­gate pub­lic protests over cor­rup­tion with the goal of bring­ing down the nation’s gov­ern­ment. Though the Kuwaiti plan involved Denx, Solomon was not includ­ed in the emails and said he knew noth­ing about it. It does not appear the plans were ever exe­cut­ed, as 87-year-old Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah remains in pow­er.

———-

“Wall Street Jour­nal fires cor­re­spon­dent over ethics con­flict” by JEFF HORWITZ, JON GAMBRELL and JACK GILLUM; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 06/21/2017

“In May 2015, Bern­sten — using an email under the alias “The Vic­ar” — told Azi­ma of a plan to help a dis­si­dent mem­ber of the Kuwaiti roy­al fam­i­ly insti­gate pub­lic protests over cor­rup­tion with the goal of bring­ing down the nation’s gov­ern­ment. Though the Kuwaiti plan involved Denx, Solomon was not includ­ed in the emails and said he knew noth­ing about it. It does not appear the plans were ever exe­cut­ed, as 87-year-old Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah remains in pow­er.”

Well, at least in Solomon’s defense he appar­ent­ly was­n’t involved with the Kuwaiti rev­o­lu­tion plot. But we can’t say the some about the plan to turn Azi­ma’s firms into the UAE’s fly­ing spy ser­vice:

...
In an April 2015 email, Azi­ma wrote to Solomon about a pro­pos­al for a $725 mil­lion air-oper­a­tions, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance sup­port con­tract with the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates that would allow planes to spy on activ­i­ty inside near­by Iran. Solomon was sup­posed to fer­ry the pro­pos­al to UAE gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives at a lunch the fol­low­ing day, the email said.

“We all wish best of luck to Jay on his first defense sale,” Azi­ma wrote to Solomon, Bern­sten and Mod­ell.

Under the pro­posed UAE deal, Azima’s firms were to man­age spe­cial­ly equipped sur­veil­lance planes to mon­i­tor activ­i­ty in Iran, Syr­ia, Iraq and Yemen.

In Octo­ber 2014, Solomon wrote to Azi­ma in a text mes­sage: “Our busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties are so promis­ing.”
...

So we have a long-time Iran­ian-Amer­i­can CIA asso­ciate offer­ing a star Wall Street Jour­nal reporter, who spe­cial­izes on Iran­ian affairs, a 10 per­cent stake in a busi­ness that includes two oth­er ex-CIA agent busi­ness part­ners. And this busi­ness offered ser­vices like foment­ing rev­o­lu­tions and/or major mil­i­tary con­tract­ing. It’s kind of a reporter’s dream sto­ry. With one notable excep­tion of course.