The world’s most dangerous arms dealer | DW Documentary

they're all on the FBI's most wanted list murderers human traffickers millionaire fraudsters drug lords terrorists and this man he's a threat to world peace and a key figure in the struggle between superpowers his name is Lee fengwei but he also calls himself Carl Lee and uses several other aliases there's no criminal on the list with a higher Bounty five million dollars the CIA Mossad the German BND and other spy agencies have been pursuing him for decades one U.S president even intervened personally to no avail there still was this air of mystery around this Carly he reminded me of sort of like the Colombian drug lords you know like Pablo Escobar I would say that in all likelihood he is an individual who exists thank you foreign [Music] he's a hunter focused on a particular prey the most unscrupulous arms dealer on the planet my name is Aaron Arnold I was a intelligence Analyst at the FBI the Carly case was the most unique case that I ever participated in I don't really recall any cases that reached sort of this level of sophistication and intrigue The Hunt is for a phantom who among other things was able to help Iran obtain nuclear weapons and of whom there's just a single old photograph this is a sort of another mystery of Carly why aren't there more pictures why aren't there videos yeah it's uh it's kind of rare this day and age to be able to hide for so long without your photo being taken but this particular story has clung to him ever since it turned into you know one of these cases where you know after a day of trying to answer questions you'd end up with with more now many investigators intelligence agency operatives and diplomats have all had the same experience as Aaron Arnold a suburb of Washington home to many of those responsible for planning America's Wars and shaping U.S foreign policy among them the man who was probably the first to pick up Carly's Trail my name is Van van diepen for about 14 years I ran the office in the state department responsible for among other things missile non-proliferation preventing the spread of wmd and missiles is among the president's highest national security priorities for years he served as National Intelligence officer for weapons of mass destruction and proliferation and worked for the U.S Department of State until late 2016. so through all that time I had some level of responsibility for dealing with the Carly problem [Music] the Carl Lee problem when U.S intelligence agencies going about their daily business of collecting communication data first came across suspicious transactions by a Chinese businessman no one suspected the dimensions it would eventually assume it would have been in the early 2000s I think every day as part of my job responsibilities I would be reading the intelligence reporting that came in overnight and there would have been some what we call Raw intelligence reporting that would have you know first mentioned the activities of Carl Lee the U.S government soon realized they'd picked up the trail of a serial offender shipping material for the construction of ballistic missiles to Iran in breach of 2006 U.N security Council sanctions on Tehran he was pretty active and so you know probably every week or two something would come up and as things came up we would try to act on them behind the scenes they applied pressure the Department of State shared information on Carl Lee's shipment routes with the governments of other nations so they could take his containers out of circulation when the ship discharged its cargo sometimes you know something would come out of the other end of that process that you would you know put into play and watch develop and sometimes you weren't able either because we didn't know enough or the intelligence behind it was so sensitive that we couldn't risk compromising it you had to sort of sit back and let that one go and So within a few years Carl Lee became the trusted supplier to the Iranian weapons industry Israel's spy agencies also stumbled upon Carl Lee at the turn of the millennium they feared the businessmen from China could increase the range of their Arch enemy's missiles with dramatic consequences for Israel [Music] it was more than 20 years ago when the Iranians came first time to North Korea asking for missiles to buy Indonesia were very open towards their needs and they say we have here on the Shelf missiles by as many as you want your any question was very interesting what is the range of the missiles and when the North Korean told them that the range is 1000 kilometers they say we don't buy if it is less than 1300 we don't need it and we all run to the maps to see what the 300s will add to their capability and it was very clear if it is less than getting into the heart of Tel Aviv they are not ready to buy a difference of 300 kilometers to potentially cause hundreds of thousands of fatalities it doesn't matter where you hit you kill so crowded and you'll kill many Israelis no Israel is regularly hit by smaller missiles but partially due to Carl Lee's shipments the country came within range of Iranian missiles that were at least 15 meters long with a potential to carry nuclear warheads included replacing steel with aluminum installing better steering making the Warhead smaller and amending the stability of the aerodynamics suddenly you could shoot these missiles over 1 500 kilometers putting Israel within range the German Federal intelligence agency the BND British MI6 and other secret Services also begin homing in on Carl Lee during the 2000s [Music] but just who is the man who could plunge the Middle East into chaos a lot of my colleagues have spent countless hours you know digging through his marriage records death records you know legal records to find out as much as they they can about this guy investigators obtained Carl Lee's passport number a series of numbers that's like a fingerprint in China it lasts for life and reveals one's date of birth the 18th of September 1972. the first two numbers indicate the province where he was born 23 is hey long Jing [Music] an area in China's far northeast directly on the border with Russia or more precisely Siberia [Music] in the 70s the Chinese called this area the Great Northern wilderness to this day few foreigners stray into hey long Jing [Music] foreign it's thought that Carl Lee spent his childhood here in a place called chahayang at the time it was nothing more than a small agricultural Township he was born into one of the darkest periods of Chinese history Mao zedong's cultural revolution the nation was in the grip of a wave of fanaticism and violence children reported their own parents for speaking against Mao thereby signing their own death warrants many were forced into labor in heilongjing including educated young people from the cities it's very likely that Carl Lee's parents were among the million people who drained swamps planted fields and made heilongjing what it is today China's Bread Basket this is the Chinese Hinterland it's not a wealthy area it's a place that's heavily reliant on farming in the summer winter but that's completely cut off by snow in the winter It's a Long Way to the nearest port in other words it would be relatively difficult to manufacture anything to this day Western visitors see heilongjang as a mysterious lost almost exotic place it's where Lee fangwei spent the first years of his life thirty years later as Carl Lee he was giving the world's most powerful government the runaround it wouldn't have been long before we decided that we needed to try to figure out a way to go to the Chinese government because if we really wanted to stop him we had to somehow persuade the Chinese government to do it thank you initially the U.S believed this approach would be successful and so then we would start dialogue with the Chinese government providing them information about Carly's activities and trying to you know see if we could somehow both assist and persuade them to take action [Applause] at the time China's government had just changed its approach to weapons exports in the 80s and 90s proliferation from China was focused mostly on exports from major State firms firms that clearly were connected and controlled by the Chinese government and these firms were selling complete systems to countries of concern along with the Chinese economy beijing's influence grew China presented itself as a responsible Global power and endorsed several agreements aimed at preventing missiles and Warheads from falling into the wrong hands China definitely has International obligations to do something I mean their party to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty they have said that they are adhering to something called the missile technology control regime so coming back to Carly according to that regime China is meant to be controlling missile-related Technologies of the type that Carly is providing as a permanent member of the UN Security Council China also supported the 2006 sanctions on Iranian nuclear activities but Carl Lee continued to supply Tehran every month every couple months as the information came in you know we would you know seek to what we call the marsh the Chinese government about Lee and his activities and so there's a you know a very long history of U.S demarshas to the Chinese complaining about Lee and asking them to take action about Lee the talks were highly sensitive CIA spies were regularly disappearing in China way too much information could endanger lives it's always a balance to try to figure out how much to tell to one's diplomatic counterpart about a problem that you've learned about through intelligence the nightmare scenario is I go to a diplomatic counterpart and tell them that I know something about a terrible problem that is happening in their country and to ask them to please stop it they go home and tell their security service what I have told them which allows them to identify the source and shoot the poor fellow so someone has died for having done the right thing by trying to draw attention to a problem and we no longer get that information either and everyone thinks the problem is solved except that it's not it's just that my source is dead in the White House at the time George W bush despite the risks his administration repeatedly chose to share sensitive information on Carl Lee with China doesn't Aid his secretary of state stepped in personally Condoleezza Rice instructed her diplomats at the U.S embassy in Beijing to ramp up the pressure they were told to work on the Chinese government to ensure its intervention in the case Bryce sent several secret dispatches heavily incriminating Carl Lee they were concerning the supply of machinery for missile construction and harmless sounding substances such as aluminum and graphite you can build thrusters out of graphite which reach into this tale into the missiles exhaust gases and change its direction to put it simply so the missile can use the stuff coming out of the bag to steer itself thought Carl Lee also supplied Iran with a large number of gyroscopes a gyroscope is essentially the missile's brain it's sensory organs it allows the missile to determine where it's moving where it's going how it's moving counter-steer and stay on course and of course play it's these instruments that turn inaccurate projectiles into Precision weapons it's how the missile steers itself the gyroscope is like the missile's nervous system its eyes and ears Carl Lee appeared to be supplying enough of these for an entire arsenal of missiles those are fine instruments that require careful calibration you can see in the quantities that Carly has applied I mean you have hundreds hundreds of accelerometers hundreds of actuators that have been supplied so this is not one or two pieces that Iran needs this is something that they need for each and every missile that they're building Barack Obama's Democrats moved into the White House the new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pursued her predecessor's course unchanged after just a few weeks in office she had her diplomats deliver a message to the Chinese government we strongly urge you to investigate these activities signed Clinton there are certainly lots of things that he's doing that are illegal in China from our standpoint there's plenty of domestic legal bases for the Chinese to to take action but for whatever reason they haven't [Music] my name is Adam Kaufman I started working in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in 1994. I was a street crime prosecutor starting with very minor crimes working your way up until you're handling more serious and violent crime I then went and worked in a Narcotics Bureau that prosecuted International shipments mostly coming up from Mexico and South America truckloads of usually cocaine sometimes heroin after that I found myself wondering what I should do and I went and spoke with Mr morgenthau in 2003 Robert morgenthal was the district attorney of Manhattan he came from a Jewish Family that had fled Germany escaping persecution his father was U.S Secretary of the Treasury during World War II and creator of the morgenthal plan to turn Germany into an agricultural Nation after the war he supported the fledgling state of Israel which left its mark on Robert morgenthal in 1961 his friend John F Kennedy appointed him district attorney of New York he went on to become one of the most influential figures in U.S judicial history we had a tremendous amount of personal courage he wasn't afraid to take on difficult cases he suggested that I joined this little Bureau called investigation division Central it was a bureau that sort of handled Mr morgenthau's interest in international markets in the recognition of the place that Manhattan played in global Finance with Wall Street as a close neighbor morgenthau set out to be more than just an attorney for Manhattan he saw himself as a prosecutor for international crime Manhattan's unique because we have so much of global Finance passes through Manhattan International wire Payments International Securities so much International Global business takes place within a mile of the courthouse in Manhattan the Morgan thought ethos was his investigators could hunt down any criminal whose money passed through Manhattan which happened when someone in the city made a dollar transfer that meant the long arm of morgenthal reached into every part of the world and he was not afraid to flex those muscles and to impose himself into international finance where really very few District Attorneys would be able to go one day when the district attorney was well over 80 his path crossed Carl Leese morgenthal had received a tip-off via one of his secret contacts it was probably around 2005. he called us into his office and he told us to buy tickets and get on a plane and head to Israel being told that we were going to go meet with Israeli intelligence officials I had no idea what to expect alive when the New York investigators arrived they'd never heard of Carl Lee all they knew was their boss was very worried about the country his father had once supported he viewed Iran as a threat to Israel but he also had a view based on terrorism he also viewed it as a threat to New York and to the citizens of New York you know coming out of 9 11. [Applause] these were the years when the world found out about Iran's secret Ambitions to build a nuclear bomb for Israel an existential threat the reason for a highly unusual meeting I had never heard of a local prosecutor going to meet with foreign intelligence services that was something that I had never heard of you know we're not the federal government we weren't the CIA we weren't anyone like that but for Mr morgenthal it was sort of business as usual the Israelis had an extensive program as you would expect focusing on Iranian wmd and missile procurement the foreign spy agency Mossad had been watching Carl Lee for a while but China was one of Israel's key trading partners and the government didn't want any open conflict with Beijing so all of a sudden the New York prosecutors were in a room with the head of Mossad I remember sitting in a meeting with Meyer Dagon and Mr Degan saying we don't want intelligence to sit on a shelf we want to act against it and I understand that Mr morgenthau feels the same way and so we want to help you make cases if we can that you can bring to expose what Iran is doing and he said we want to give you the tools and if you can use them we want you to [Music] Israel's Mossad began secretly collaborating with U.S prosecutors in regards to a mysterious businessman in China they gave us some opening information and it was about coral League to this day the authorities believe he's here in one of Asia's most important port cities thank you it's about 1 000 kilometers to the south of Carl Lee's home hey long Jang not far from the border with North Korea a metropolis of millions that profited in the Nationwide economic boom of the 1980s at the time the nation was opening up to the West [Music] thanks to him dang Xiaoping Mao's successor he set up special economic zones in China where foreign investment was possible that's how dang brought capitalism to China in 1984 he also made Dalian a special economic zone it's not possible to say precisely when Carl Lee's family ended up there despite meticulous research no details of his youth exist people that knew him didn't talk the authorities divulged nothing as though issued with a blanket directive to remain silent rumors and vague scraps of information are all we have to go on it's thought he attended a school in Dalian named number 24 an elite school for the children of high-ranking party officials that would match the claim that Carl Lee's grandfather was a highly decorated colonel in the people's Liberation Army it's also thought that Carl Lee worked intermittently for the state but it's not known in what capacity one thing's for sure he made full use of dalian's advantages the port city is a great place to do business legal or otherwise foreign U.S firms or european firms that have branches there that have that manufacture things in China from an opportunistic point of view it's it's a great it's a great place if you want to be a proliferator because there are a lot of places to hide [Music] here in Dalian a business was registered in the late 1990s [Music] its name limped economic and trade company according to the Chinese company's register Carl Lee's father Lee GUI Jin had himself listed as the company's legal representative on the 4th of June 1998. this company was the seed for Carl Lee's commercial empire Israelis gave us some of the substance and content of certain emails that showed references to wmd and other materials for weapons procurement missile production things like that [Music] we would work until late at night we'd order in pizzas beers and just work on this thing all the time the prosecutors were in luck because in one particular aspect Carl Lee had been extremely Reckless some of the email addresses were from U.S providers Hotmail or Yahoo because they were in the U.S there was a procedure to get access to this content of those emails from the email service providers so we had a starting point we had some very talented tenacious prosecutors working on the case and they just dug into the information they were making connections what they found trumped all their findings to date the investigators stumbled upon innumerable transactions and a seemingly impenetrable network of dummy companies we found so many channels of wmd proliferation of money moving through different countries he had a real Global Network I remember that very well this mission was so fundamental especially when we started seeing what was in the emails themselves it became very real he wrote We are the same company the factory the people as the previous limped the only difference is that the company's English name has changed to Sino Metallurgy and Min Metals industry he would email people and say well don't worry about U.S sanctions I'm just going to change the name of my company I mean he was Brazen in the emails he urged his business partners Into The Fray this is very important he wrote otherwise the money can be blocked like last time [Music] foreign there were transactions between metallurgists all over the world providing material that Carl Lee would then provide to Iran and Carl Lee had to pay for those materials in U.S dollars U.S dollar payments almost always clear through banks in the U.S and especially back in the early 2000s most of those Banks were in Manhattan so if the water payment said Carl Lee or Lee Fong Wei then yes the banks would have stopped them but if the wire payment said the bright and shiny metal urges company then there's nothing for the U.S banks to see and the payment just goes through that was the whole idea of Carl Lee in setting up all of these dummy companies it was to fool the U.S banks into processing payments that otherwise would have been blocked although he was hiding thousands of kilometers from Manhattan instigators wanted face trial in New York the legal Theory we came up with was that by sending the wire payments in false names Carly caused the bank records of the Manhattan Banks to have false information and falsifying records falsifying the records of a business is a New York State Crime and so all of this came down to the falsifying of business records of banks in Manhattan after months of Investigations they indicted Carly the Manhattan district attorney Robert morgenthau announced a 180 an 18 count and died April 7 2009 was the press conference that we had to announce the indictment of Carl Lee it was the opportunity for Mr morgenthau to show to the world that this Chinese proliferator was sending material to Iran that was going to kill people wanted an indictment that said China is providing wmd to Iran he wanted the world to sit up and take note of this Robert morgenthau filed for the extradition of Carl Lee who was 36 years old at the time the big question is did the Chinese government know after all Chinese Banks were involved in some of these transactions Chinese companies have long been accused of using shell companies in the United States Kitty pilgrims Siena New York but the Chinese government appeared disinterested in the extradition attempt and Carl Lee was cautious it's thought he left China for business in Tehran on a direct flight that way he wouldn't run the risk of being detained on a foreign stopover and delivered directly to the U.S and I remember seeing his name a lot in U.S documents and and thinking you know who is this guy my name is Daniel Salisbury I'm a researcher at King's College in London where I research on proliferation and arms exports and arms embargoes Daniel Salisbury is a researcher at the department of War studies the academics maintain good connections with Western intelligence agencies and are often interested in the same things their specialty is digging up information accessible to anyone but found by few when you start looking at these cases a lot of information is kind of hidden in plain sight so we used help from some Chinese linguists and really started exploring what was out there on the internet [Music] researchers used Chinese key words to comb through commercial registers customs and Court databases in This Way Daniel Salisbury and his colleagues were able to shed light on Carl Lee's network of companies from their base in London we found that most of his businesses were linked to two addresses thank you so the usual Mansion appears to be a large office Block in downtown Dalian there's not quite a skyscraper but it is quite tall has a lot of flaws and I imagine this is the administrative part of the operation foreign working with our Chinese linguists we were able to find some pictures of the outside of the building and get a sense for what it looked like and what kind of things could go on there you know a lot of businesses were registered uh administrative functions including hiring people and that kind of things and they made me Discovery one that totally changed their impression of Carl Lee one of the companies they were able to attribute to him had a website and it showed he wasn't just a dealer you had a lot of product listings for various different types of graphite we actually realized that the address out of town wasn't just a business address a warehouse or an office but it was actually the large graphite Factory it really changed the scale of the problem in our mind you know it was real kind of mind-blowing discovery [Music] pitching out the satellite imagery it's a pretty big place I think online it was stating about 80 000 square meters well it's quite difficult to verify exactly what's going on inside those buildings [Music] but with a factory pumping these things out in China it becomes a completely different kind of problem following months of preparation a fact-finding mission to China itself in the city where investigators spy agencies and the London researchers believed Carl Lee was hiding all the tracks left by the World's Most Wanted arms dealer converged in this city feel the film and many many companies with an alleged connection to Cara Lee are registered in Dalian we assumed that if we were going to find him anywhere and that's where he'd be when the pandemic began China cut itself off from the rest of the world the government expelled many foreign journalists and stopped issuing visas for short-term reporters [Music] the only way of getting closer to Carl Lee for this film was to call on those who were long-term residents in China in this case Kristoff Geeson and Matthias bulinger who's the cameraman the two begin their search for a single individual in a metropolis of seven and a half million last year for all titles we test ourselves to visit many of the companies that are or were registered there and find out what we can actually see who can we talk to who might provide us with the next set of clues in this puzzle laid out in front of us we find clues that would ultimately verify his existence the first building we visited was an office tower block more or less in the center of Dalian Kings College report mentioned it as the presumed Center where a coral Lee's Empire is very likely to be based imperiums and it's hot thank you are said to have rented a whole floor there the 25th floor of this building so we took the lift up there was he actually there in person did he have bodyguards would he call the police at the end of the corridor a surprise there were eight offices or apartments we knocked on every single door and no one had ever heard of the businesses registered to that building [Music] the trail LED nowhere my name is Thomas Countryman I was a Foreign Service Officer for a total of 35 years from 1982 to 2011 I served in five different embassies overseas at the United Nations at the White House at the Pentagon mainly focused on issues in Eastern Europe and the Middle East countrymen has served several presidents over his career when it came to U.S foreign policy he was viewed as an all-rounder with a keen eye for detail then from 2011 to 2017 I was the United States assistant Secretary of State for non-proliferation in short the Bureau of International Security and non-proliferation has a job that we described as keeping the world's most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the world's most dangerous leaders and in that job one of my important tasks was to constantly raise with the Chinese government Our concern about the illegal exports of high-tech material that Mr Lee was organizing from China to Iran Twitter played a crucial role here Iranian embassy his usual means of contact was through the Iranian defense attache in Beijing the primary job of the Iranian defense attache in Beijing is to acquire technology that is needed for Iran's military programs when countrymen took up his post Carl Lee had already been doing business with Iran for a decade the problem was that he had become in essence the most valuable member of the Iranian ballistic missile team so you can't say that his arrest would have ended the Iranian ballistic missile program but we're convinced that it would have slowed it down significantly I spoke about him in every conversation that I had with Chinese counterparts we would often see each other at the same meetings in New York in Vienna in Geneva but we also met in each other's Capitals in Washington and Beijing questions between the two superpowers they sort of washed their hands of it saying hey this is in China this is some guy but on the other hand were incredibly put out by us sanctioning Chinese entity so they sort of tried to have it both ways and so you know oftentimes the the redder could get a little heated when it came to uh you know them being upset about us sanctioning Chinese entities including Carly China doing that Carl Lee must have had powerful allies within the Chinese government well I believe it's difficult for a mid-level official in the Chinese government to stop him if he is well connected if he's got lawyers if he's got influence that is more resources than the Chinese mid-level official somebody like me can use against him what concerns us is that the officials above that level did not seem to care about this sufficiently to take some action after public prosecutors in New York now the FBI America's most powerful investigative Authority set its sights on Carl Lee I think that the scope and scale of his sort of operation really eclipsed any other type of case that the FBI is familiar with at the time the FBI assigned an entire group of investigators and analysts to work on the case of the Chinese businessmen I'd rather not talk about sort of the specifics of like who and how many were working on those like any HR Personnel issues are kind of off limits with the Intel stuff it can't be in like a documentary but Carly was a major focus and something that was a priority investigation at the FBI um you know for a number of years when roughly the 2014 time frame not only had Carl's activities you know continue to develop and worsen but other options that other agencies were thinking about pursuing started to be you know become inviable so for example there would be some agencies that would you know would like to try to prosecute Carly in the U.S courts uh and after a number of years they sort of recognized that just wasn't gonna happen but it did become clear that we had both an obligation and an opportunity with the Chinese government to press harder to get the Chinese government to stop Mr Lee from exporting this technology to Iran China was on the brink of a new era Xi Jinping took over the Reigns of power in 2012. for the U.S a chance to shine a spotlight on the matter with Carl Lee included a diplomatic approach to China that emphasized not only at my level but at higher levels of the U.S government the name has gone to President Obama I'm also aware that President Obama mentioned that name to the Chinese you know specifically complained about it foreign ly that did not result in any real change in Carl's activities and behavior the U.S government then launched a response of unprecedented scale in the case of an arms dealer we had several meetings sometimes at the state department sometimes at the executive office building next to the White House that's part of the White House spy agencies investigating authorities and several Ministries joined forces to plan a coordinated strike we became sort of a Carly Blitz that was uh rolled out by the interagency and so you saw you know a U.S criminal indictment you saw some additional sanctions including sanctions of new types coming out etc etc it included the legal pressure of the FBI so this was Carly's mistake that in his illegal transaction he used the American Financial system and so this was the lever that the FBI Department of Justice had to pull and ultimately ended up seizing almost seven million dollars of Carly's money you saw um you know a reward for his you know information leading to his capture the U.S announced a five million dollar Bounty for information leading to his arrest much like drugs lord El Chapo or Osama Bin Laden after his attacks on two U.S embassies you know if you look at sort of averages you know you usually see in you know million or so five is high it's significant it means something right yeah it's it's a lot of money [Applause] the next day the Chinese government issued its first public statement on the Carly case foreign Beijing and Washington started openly trading blows [Music] we are very clear about the activities that this individual has undertaken and their threat to International stability and security and that's why we were very clear from the state department that we would offer a reward for information about his whereabouts that could bring him to Justice if he's in China what's the need to put this well as the release said he's a fugitive right now uh so I'm not going to speculate on where he might be on Capitol Hill Senators Unleashed their Fury so the Chinese government says they can't figure this out they can't figure out how to shut him down or guys like him but the good news is they can figure out other things in China they figured out how to arrest five women who belong to a feminist organization last year they figured out how to jail 44 journalists last year they figured out how to put 27 000 Muslim minorities in the uygha region in prison last year they could figure that out but they can't figure out cowardly Mr Lee has money and lawyers and the uyghurs and the women's ngos and the others do not the Chinese government has demonstrated that it has the authority and the capability to put out of business anyone that it wishes to put out of business and then suddenly a website appeared online about Lee fengwei Alias Carl Lee the administrators said their aim was to spread information about him the page included drawings of Carly's face photo montages and articles in English Chinese and Arabic [Music] about his alleged complicity in the suffering of thousands of children in the yemeni Civil War where Iranian missiles are being deployed and about arms deals but who's responsible for the website it's a course project write the administrators who are evidently students a lecturer gave them the idea I can't imagine there's too many classes out there that are teaching Carly it's a very bizarre sort of topic a little as a you know a little kind of out there and I feel like myself and my colleague probably know all the people that are teaching on Carly and they have they have no idea what this you know who has created this site thank you [Music] I'm Jeff Stein I've been covering National Security issues for about 40 years now and that followed my own service in the Army as an Army intelligence case officer where I began to get insights into how the the clandestine mentality worked and that served me well over the years I was was Newsweek for many years in the Washington Post and now in my semi-retirement I am the founding editor-in-chief of spy talk a website that covers intelligence issues [Music] I think I first heard about him in around early 2015. I began to hear of sanctions being applied to this fellow who we call Carl Lee or Lee fungway so I began looking into it and I found that Federal officials were more than happy to brief me and let me know what was going on and I wrote a major story for Newsweek the title title how China helped Iran go nuclear it shared a number of details from intelligence agency sources he liked luxury cars but I was told also that he was sort of a stay-at-home guy he didn't go far from Dalian [Music] we didn't learn a lot more about him except that we did have a Stringer go there and do some reporting on him to locate his offices in his home so we knew he was there we knew he existed uh and uh but we couldn't gather any more information on him foreign then came the Trump Administration [Music] I'm angry when China's making 500 billion dollars a year and sucking our our jobs and sucking our money out of our country and we don't do anything about it the Trump Administration was on a campaign to blame China for everything and uh as part of that uh some white hat officials summoned me to come down to the White House and discuss the cases live long way and that was in 2018. and certainly the Trump White House well knew my feelings about its foreign policy which were negative and I often had testy exchanges with the White House spokespeople when I called them for a comment on something so that they reached out to me to talk about this case and invite me down to the White House or the adjacent old executive office building the talk was was quite unusual I mean I was very amused by that but we were on the same page with that issue with a leaf long way while the White House launched a Carl Lee PR offensive the threat posed by Iranian missiles was thrust into sharp Focus [Music] in late 2017 Trump's U.N Ambassador briefed the media standing in front of the wreckage of a ballistic missile fired on Saudi Arabia by Iran's allies in Yemen the missiles intended target was the civilian airport in Riyadh through which tens of thousands of passengers travel each day just imagine if this missile had been launched at Dulles airport or JFK or the airports in Paris London or Berlin that's what we're talking about here that's what Iran is actively supporting initially many wondered whether the U.S was once again telling the same old story just as they had done before the Iraq War presenting alleged evidence of Saddam Hussein's wmd program the state department we're working with the department but the experts were certain information the missile in its configuration was precisely what we knew from Iran but Iran had very proudly unveiled a few years ago in several videos and presentations one of the pieces of wreckage betrayed some information the logo of a certain Iranian Arms Company one of Carl Lee's most important clients attack on Riyadh marked the start of a whole series of strikes which continue to this day we see them using those missiles we've seen them using them in Iraq we've seen them using them in Saudi Arabia in Syria where they've had significant impact we see also Iran proliferating these missiles across the region so for example Lebanese Hezbollah is the most popular proxy most popular customer of Iranian missiles but also now the houthis in Yemen have been using to a really significant extent Iranian missiles and when Iran and the U.S edged close to war Iranian missiles were a significant factor the one attack that stood out in recent years was the Iranian attack on the Iraqi bases hosting U.S forces in January 2020. Iran had launched a dozen missiles targeting these sites it was extremely dangerous it did result in over a hundred traumatic brain injuries among U.S service members who had this strike resulted in U.S fatalities we would have had seen a much more significant U.S response than really we had seen in past years and I don't know how far the escalation spiral would go down one thing is certain without Carl Lee's help Iran's ballistic missile program wouldn't be where it is today but what's the Chinese government saying the chance of finding an answer is highest outside of China [Music] conference an annual gathering for leaders and state ministers military officials and spy agency Chiefs from all over the world in February 2020 the guest list included one of China's highest ranking politicians [Music] foreign minister Wang Yi whose Ministry had been negotiating with the U.S over Carl Lee for two decades how are you thank you so much during their time in Munich Wang Yi and other guests from less democratic nations had to endure something that would never be allowed back home uncomfortable questions from reporters [Music] the question is why don't you stop Mr Lifan Wei also known as Kylie is on the FBI Most Wanted list people here it's a groundless charge the Chinese foreign Minister's response [Music] China doesn't admit of course providing any missile related materials or components to Iran so it's a little bit hard to have hard evidence here my own suspicion is that they find themselves to have something of a coincidence of interest in that trade [Music] Carl Lee's businesses align with XI jinping's strategy he views his Nation as the second remaining superpower soon to outstrip the U.S economically and militarily Chinese strategists believe a strong Iran would benefit China in this regard complicate U.S strategy perhaps encourage Western governments to become more distracted by Middle Eastern problems and less worried about what might be happening in the indo-pacific that China might be behind so that's very convenient for them for example in case China decides to carry out its threats one day if military Maneuvers turn into war and the people's Liberation Army launches an invasion of Taiwan but just where is the man who's become a key figure in the struggle of the superpowers of the past years and decades the reporter team in China is on its way to one of the most crucial companies in Carl Lee's Network the Dalian Kara industry the business is registered to this building it wasn't in office it was just a regular Chinese compound an Israel compound the company really does exist there's documented evidence of its exports it even won a court case against a supplier who was in breach of contract but the door is opened by an old woman holding a knife she's been chopping vegetables when we asked the woman where she came from she said and when we asked which region exactly and mentioned the name she said yes that's precisely where she came from the small agricultural Township where Carl Lee is thought to have spent his childhood more than a thousand kilometers from Dalian sure now that's a very very remarkable situation to find someone in another province that comes from precisely this place with around 10 000 inhabitants how is she connected to Carl Lee did she just let him use her address maybe she's known him since he was a child from their Homeland in the far north when we asked about Carl Lee her response was that she didn't know how to contact him then relatively quickly she referred to her age telling us she was over 80. and then it was our job to find him to this day this apartment here is the official HQ of Dalian karat industry at least that's what it says in the Chinese company's register [Music] in this story every answer leads to even more Mysteries such as the question of who's behind the website who is Lee fangwei [Music] one thing we do know the administrators don't want anyone to know who they are they've opted for an anonymous domain registration the content of the site is increasingly strange and elaborate [Music] the message of this comic is the unscrupulous and prophet-hungry arms dealer Carl Lee has nothing to fear from investigators and prosecutors because he can always hide behind the Chinese state [Music] it's incredible right I don't think we've we've ever seen that kind of thing done done with a proliferator either I mean it looks fairly sophisticated and well thought out it seems like someone has put some resources into this and I get a sense reading it as well and having seen various Chinese Comics that the Chinese government has used to talk to talk to people about National Security issues in in China it looks like someone has seen those and thought okay this maybe is a good way to talk to a Chinese audience and then suddenly a possible lead to the website creators does crop up on this Facebook profile the owner of the profile seems to be studying International Security in Germany and admits that the who is Lee fangwei website is theirs they are evidently studying in Heidelberg in any case they liked many sites connected to the university there and Heidelberg Student Life [Music] the strange thing is at Heidelberg University no one's heard of a student called changing boa never mind an Internet site or study project about a Chinese arms dealer neither relevant professors no on represented through our analysis of bank records and our analysis of emails we saw that he was doing a lot of business in Euros we did see that a lot of those payments cleared through Frankfurt and so we decided that we would go try to encourage the Germans to take an action similar to what we had done so we went over to Germany we had put together a book a dossier of the Euro payments that we had knowledge of so we were showing the originating Bank the parties the dates and the banks that were processing the payments through Europe and specifically the German banks that were clearing um the payments and we went over to uh Bond and we met with a woman of federal prosecutor in charge of uh sanctions enforcement in Germany and we met with a team of uh investigators from the federal police and we we presented our information to them we had a good meeting they asked the right questions they were clearly thinking about it and then the sort of team of police investigators took us out for dinner and beers we had a nice German dinner we had I think I think as I recall bratwurst a bunch of beers uh and then uh you know and then they excused themselves and I think my colleagues and I stayed out a little bit longer as we might from our perspective nothing ever came of it there was never a sort of a similar prosecution of Carly that that never that never happened there's one more lead on the ominous website to an Arab Facebook group linked to the site it's administrator's name Kareem mustapha it looks like they're also studying in Germany and living in Berlin [Music] strikingly the profile is structured precisely like that of Zhang Zhang boa both have non-descript profile images with glasses and a book and both were first active on Facebook within two days of each other something else they have in common they're both untraceable the parents students aren't registered with authorities in Berlin or Heidelberg it's as though they don't really exist at all the fact that these people are ghosts and and basically don't exist would fit with a theory of this being run by uh by a state it leads us to think that you know perhaps this is uh you know a government um operation it might maybe a government operation to um to try to sort of get the word out about Carly especially in in states that spend a lot on intelligence and have you know many thousands of people working in this area it's it's quite possible that there's someone in an office somewhere whose job it is to run these kinds of operations uh you know maybe against Carly but also against other narcot traffickers or other non-state threats as well [Music] by agency personnel possible that people making those videos know something about him and and have a good sense of how he might react to something like that and you know it's obviously a very targeted uh thing to do in spy speak information operations or IO there's also sort of maybe also a name and shame sort of component you know maybe get under his skin a little bit um the idea of uh you were heard of like tickling the wire right so um you know maybe sort of doing something to cause a reaction right that you can perhaps monitor better um or enhance your own information by doing that just to sort of think okay maybe government taxpayers dollars somewhere or going into the making of these farting Pig videos you know is really something strange to see of all the possibilities two Nations stand out probably the countries that seem to have had the biggest interests in Carly so that that will be the U.S or or probably Israel Israel would be the most plausible the nation's intelligence services are known for unconventional cyber operations and no country faces a greater threat from Iranian missiles a threat that's continued to grow over recent Years also because of the activities of Carl Lee this is particularly evident in the North in the Golan Heights Israel captured this territory from Syria in 1967 and has occupied it ever since the rocky Plateau is of strategic importance for Israel to monitor one of their bitterest enemies Hezbollah which holds positions to the north of here in Lebanon Army spokesperson Jonathan conrikus was stationed here for a long time what you see behind us is really think of it as a highway as a smuggling Highway for Iran by which Iran transfers missiles components infrastructure Machinery to produce or to convert all of that is transported from Iran Iraq via Syria and the Very areas that you can see close to the Syrian Lebanese border Iran has been trying to supply its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon with Precision missiles based on what we know Carl Lee's businesses have been instrumental in the development of these very same projectiles what Hezbollah will try to use their precision-guided missiles for the most sensitive and high value targets like our Port our airport government facilities hazardous materials the entire nation became aware of the existential nature of this threat in connection with the port city of Haifa where thousands of tons of ammonia were stored if the chemical were to be released somehow that would potentially risk hundreds of thousands of lives something the leader of Hezbollah knew only too well has said without any shame yes I will aim for the ammonium container in Haifa I will try to strike it and I will try to kill as many civilians as possible foreign so that's the meaning of the enemy that we're dealing with the ammonia vat in Haifa was emptied following this threat from the leader of Hezbollah but there are other chemical plants in Israel that could be a target for Iranian precision-guided missiles also because for years Carl Lee supplied navigation instruments to Tehran and all Western spy agencies could do with look on powerlessly from the sidelines the officials I remember were very angry maybe that was just a trump Motif because they were always angry about China blaming China for this and that they were on a campaign against China so um I wrote the story in 2019 Jeff Stein published an article in Newsweek on new Donald Trump sanctions against Carl Lee and on the authorities cold Fury with the Chinese government they said to me this is just the start these new sanctions we're going to do more we're going to really teach China a lesson with Lee Funway [Music] at about the same time a member of the Trump Administration began denouncing Lee fungway Alias Carl Lee and China's government on Twitter it was the assistant Secretary of State at the time Christopher Ford Lee fungway was for a long time that perhaps the most notorious of the proliferation traffickers in China and nothing ultimately was done it continued to be a problem for a very long time when I was in government we stepped up that pressure on China trying to get them to pay more attention to it the Trump Administration started ramping up the pressure on both China and Iran at the same time the latter country was the responsibility of Brian hook a hardliner and close presidential confidante he was U.S Special representative for Iran at the time Iranian regime has been chanting death to America Iran has been very successful at its mission to try to terrorize the Middle East it is a corrupt religious Mafia that has it really impoverished its own people in order to fund an ideology that they export around the world what is different about this administration's approach is that we are putting in place a pressure campaign that doesn't have any historic precedent but strangely Brian hook remained tight-lipped over the man who was probably the most crucial foreign supplier to the Iranian missile program I don't have anything any comment on Carly I don't have any new information to share with you on that it was mid-2019 when all of a sudden silence fell over Washington well we haven't heard anything since then so what's going on assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ford also suddenly stopped commenting on Carl Lee I decided to stop tweeting that's about all I can say wow okay okay that's not helpful I understand [Music] the silence was deafening as they say it was it's a mystery to me [Music] and then I you know tracked these same officials a couple of years later every once in a while I would call say hey what's going on when they're not talking about it now visuals are reticent to talk about them at all or they have memory loss they suddenly can't remember I have to remind them you know Carly the Chinese oh that guy you know so they're not talking about Carly Carly may not even be on their mind at all and if he is on their mind they're not making it public what they're doing and then the website who is Lee Fong Wei went offline what's happened to Carl Lee on the investigative Trail in China the team travels northwards from Dalian it's thought that Carl Lee's graphite Factory is located 100 kilometers from the port town this according to information Unearthed by researchers at King's College in London the factory that distinguishes Carl Lee from many others in his particular line of work the one that makes him both a traitor and a manufacturer welcome reads the word on the chimney and the name of the company synotec carbon the company has existed since 2006. a quarter of the shares belong to Carl Lee and the rest belong to his younger brother Lee fangdong naturally the question was of course is it an industrial ruin now is there anything left of it are graphite products still being actively produced there a question that can only be answered in close quarters when you approach the building it almost feels like an industrial ruin a complex where you get the sense that nothing's happening there anymore but then you spot areas with the latest surveillance technology loads of cameras watching anyone approaching the site of the factory the investigation could be brought to an abrupt end at any moment but instead the opposite happens you can easily enter the plant grounds the gates are open why interestingly there was no one there to speak to at the time on the side of a factory owned by one of the World's Most Wanted men and indeed there are tons of graphite here the material so urgently needed by Iranian missile engineers and supplied to them in huge volumes by Carl Lee it seems dilapidated but it's not the case that there's no longer anything there production is clearly going on in one section of the industrial site foreign stealer in the world the FBI has put a 5 million bounty on this man and suddenly you arrive at what's supposed to be the Hub of his entire Empire and you think wow so this is the most dangerous guy and here it looks like we're out in the middle of nowhere then you do start to wonder does all this really matter the two men still have two cards up their sleeve two telephone numbers from Carl Lee's closest Circle [Music] so as not to jeopardize the filming they make the calls after the factory visit that was really quite a remarkable telephone call because he just confirmed many details for us he said yes they did business with Iran in the past but that they no longer do a second thing he said was that the factory is still active and that products are still being manufactured there so he confirmed what we saw on the site and said that unfortunately we wouldn't be able to meet his brother oh then we called another number there had been speculation primarily in the King's College research report that this could lead us to the older brother of the family um Alias he said he couldn't reach him himself at the moment where is Carl Lee and why is no one in Washington talking about him anymore at the beginning of the Biden Administration I made some sort of gentle inquiries uh about Carl Lee and zero zip not silence [Music] you know I'm a Former Intelligence case officer I've been covering the CIA and other intelligences for years so I wonder well maybe we doubled Lee one way maybe he's our guy now Carl Lee a double agent betraying his own business partners to the enemy it's a bold Theory but there certainly have been such cases in the past I mean I have no evidence of that whatsoever but that's the way my mind works I mean I couldn't find any other logical explanation why the U.S would suddenly go silent about Leaf long way but he wouldn't have a very long life in China I mean cia's operations in China from public reporting we know have been a disaster it was security lapses allowed dozens of CIA sources in in China to be rolled up and thrown in jail or executed so and then a new lead appears online for 31 minutes in the Chinese edition of Wikipedia in the article on Lee fangwei [Music] the version history reads on the 8th of January at 2021 at 6 58 a.m an anonymous user added the following Passage [Music] in April 2019 Lee fengwei was detained by the police on suspicion of smuggling goods and articles banned from Import and Export by the state in late 2020 Lee was held in pre-trial detention in the city of Dalian 7 29 am the passage was removed by the same user the reason provided that the information had not come from a reliable source [Music] is that the answer that he's in prison but then why is the FBI still trying to track him down with a 5 million bounty there's still one address to check out the last on the list [Music] the headquarters of a company 60 of which is still owned by Carl Lee personally in this garbage-filled compound there's a company that's still active films it's called Dalian trust industry and has made millions in sales official Customs data show that components for nuclear reactors have been exported from here foreign could it be right here the answer to everyone's questions went around the back and asked about coral leaf we're looking for a man named Lee Fang Wang do you know him I may have heard of Lee fangwei isn't he in prison where what do you mean he's in prison is he in trouble yes he was chilled for a few things you know what I mean think he's in prison then [ __ ] and suddenly he asked why we wanted to know and a short time later our conversation with him for bye you get a sense that everything's totally off absolute needs yeah yes these are private addresses these people are private individuals pensioners none of them are running any businesses [Music] they probably have no idea exactly what's being done in their name foreign it sounds like the perfect cover a defensive Shield of the unsuspecting a labyrinth that swallows up anyone trying to get near to Lee fungway to Carl Lee to Patrick David or Charles to Sunny bye or song da Hai whatever he calls himself but could the neighbor still be right that the 50 year old is now in jail because after two decades the Chinese government took him out of commission [Music] if anyone would know that it's Christopher Ford the senior official who suddenly stopped condemning Carl Lee and the Chinese government on Twitter it was one of the reasons that he might have been arrested at that point in time that you stopped tweeting as I say I'm not a position to talk about any specifics with respect to Carly Christopher Ford doesn't give a specific answer because recent developments in the Carly Saga are classified but his words do hint at something I always sort of suspected as we drew attention to Carly they if we were lucky they would actually stop some of the network if we were less lucky they might still do something to him in a way that would undercut our criticism and allow them to say that this is not a problem and have us be unable to contradict them in the past there are concessions from from trade and indeed During the period in question Chinese head of state Xi Jinping called on Donald Trump to avert the imposition of new heavy Goods tariffs Beijing did make some concessions at the time with indications that the arrest of Lee Fang Wei might have been one of them [Music] but even if that's true has the problem been solved is the world a slightly safer place for a long long time Lee fungway was sort of the as we say the the poster child for the the proliferation problem but I should say to Lee fungway were hit by a meteorite tomorrow the proliferation problem would not evaporate these are fairly well established institutions that appear to have some degree of official at least protection and perhaps permission to do this it's thought his Network continues to be active with or without him foreign murky area and it's it's something that we may hear about later or you might may never hear about it you know even when the archives are opened in in 30 40 years time this is kind of just the typical Carly story right it's just kind of more strange weirdness uh day after day a last ditch attempt another call to the younger brother's number where is Carl Lee the number you have done is not in service the number you have dialed is not in service [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 8,354,755

Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2022, documentary 2023, documentary, arms trade, US, China, intelligence agencies, geopolitics, Li Fangwei, Karl Lee

Id: gqDCrdZVZnk

Length: 90min 1sec (5401 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023