Supernotes Update: Why Was the Chinese Mafia Smuggling Anti-Aircraft Missiles into the United States?

This had already become the most interesting crime story all year, and then I saw this:

A federal grand jury indicted two men Wednesday for allegedly conspiring to smuggle surface-to-air missiles into the United States for use abroad. Such missiles are designed to bring down aircraft.

The U.S. attorney’s office said the charges marked the first time a 2004 anti-terrorism law has been used. The law calls for a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years and the possibility of life in prison without parole if convicted.

Chao Tung Wu, 51, and Yi Qing Chen, 41, are naturalized U.S. citizens born in China, authorities said. The conspiracy did not involve domestic terrorists, and the two men were told by an undercover agent that the missiles would be sent abroad, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

The indictment specified that bribes, including one for $2 million, were to be paid to certain foreign officials. Authorities declined to identify the countries involved.

Delicious irony of the day: U.S. Attorney Debra Yang announced the indictments. The part that troubles me is that the cover story–we were going to the trouble of evading U.S. Customs so that we could re-sell the stuff in a third country–doesn’t make sense to me. The other alternatives this suggests are chilling, and it raises real questions about what the Chinese authorities knew.

To see how this story unfolds, start here.

Update: I wonder how the Chinese Embassy will explain this one:

Officials said Mr. Wu and Mr. Chen were caught in a sting and were conspiring to import Chinese-made QW-2 anti-aircraft missiles and launchers. The scheme involved a deal between an undercover federal agent and Mr. Wu and Mr. Chen, along with a Chinese company, unindicted co-conspirators in China — including a Chinese general — forged papers from a foreign defense ministry, and illegal payoffs to the relative of a foreign president, who was not identified.

The plan called for using a third country to mask the order for the missiles from the manufacturer, but the missiles would be shipped to the United States in containers. The missiles, among 24 containers of arms, were to be identified in shipping documents as civilian machine parts. One payment in the deal called for offering a $2 million bribe to a foreign official to allow an unidentified country to transship the missiles.

A sales brochure in the case described the missiles as built to attack U.S. F-15, F-16 and A-10 jets, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and a missile-firing unmanned aerial vehicle.

Thomas Barnett, call your office.