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Inside the Life of the World’s Most Dangerous Arms Dealer · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: They're all on the FBI's most wanted list. Murderers, human traffickers,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: millionaire fraudsters, drug lords, terrorists, and this man. He's a
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: threat to world peace and a key figure in the
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: struggle between superpowers. His name is Lee fang Wei, but
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: he also calls himself Carl Lee and uses several other aliases.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: There's no criminal on the list with a higher bounty
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: five million dollars. This CIA Masade, the German BND, and
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: other spy agencies have been pursuing him for decades. One
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: US president even intervened personally to no avail.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: There still was this air of mystery around this Carli.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: He reminded me of sort of like the Colombian drug lords,
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: you know, like Pablo Escobar.
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: I would say that, in all likelihood, he is an
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: individual who exists.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: He's a hunter focused on a particular prey, the most
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: unscrupulous arms dealer on the planet.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: My name is Aaron Arnold. I was a intelligence analyst
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: at the FBI. The Carlei case was the most unique
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: case that I ever participated in. I don't really recall
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: any cases that reached sort of this level of sophistication
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: and intrigue.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: The hunt is for a phantom who, among other things,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: was able to help Iran obtain nuclear weapons, and of
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: whom there's just a single old photograph.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: This is a sort of another mystery of Carley. Why
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: aren't there more pictures? Why aren't there videos? You know,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: it's kind of rare this day and age to be
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: able to hide for so long without your photo being taken.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Aaron Arnold left the FBI for academia years ago, but
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: this particular story has clung to him ever since.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: It turned into, you know, one of these cases where
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: you know, after a day of trying to answer questions,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: you'd end up with with more.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Now many investigators, intelligence agency operatives, and diplomats have all
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: had this same experience as Aaron Arnold. A suburb of
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Washington home to many of those responsible for planning America's
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: wars and shaping US foreign policy, Among them the man
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: who was probably the first to pick up Carl Lee trail.
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: My name is Van van Deepen.
• 3:38
  Speaker 6: For about fourteen years, I ran the office in the
• 3:41
  Speaker 6: State Department responsible for, among other things, missile non proliferation.
• 3:46
  Speaker 6: Preventing the spread of WFD and missiles is among the
• 3:49
  Speaker 6: president's highest national security priorities.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: For years, he served as National Intelligence Officer for Weapons
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: of Mass Destruction and Proliferation and worked for the US
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Department of State until late twenty sixteen.
• 4:03
  Speaker 6: So through all that time I had some level of
• 4:06
  Speaker 6: responsibility for dealing with the Karl Lee problem.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: The Carl Lee problem. When US intelligence agencies, going about
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: their daily business of collecting communication data, first came across
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: suspicious transactions by a Chinese businessman, no one suspected the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: dimensions it would eventually assume.
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: It would have been in the early two thousands. I
• 4:34
  Speaker 6: think every day, as part of my job responsibilities, I
• 4:38
  Speaker 6: would be reading the intelligence reporting that came in overnight,
• 4:42
  Speaker 6: and there would have been some what we call raw
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: intelligence reporting that would have, you know, first mentioned the
• 4:50
  Speaker 6: activities of Carl Lee.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: The US government soon realized they picked up the trail
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: of a serial offender shipping material for the construction of
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: ballistic missiles to Iran in breach of two thousand and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: six UN Security Council sanctions on Tehran.
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: He was pretty active, and so you know, probably every
• 5:10
  Speaker 6: week or two something would come up, and as things
• 5:13
  Speaker 6: came up, we would try to act on them.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, they applied pressure. The Department of State
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: shared information on Carl Lee's shipment routes with the governments
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: of other nations so they could take his containers out
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of circulation when the ship discharged its cargo.
• 5:32
  Speaker 6: Sometimes you know something would come out of the other
• 5:34
  Speaker 6: end of that process that you would you know, put
• 5:36
  Speaker 6: into play and watch develop. And sometimes you weren't able,
• 5:40
  Speaker 6: either because we didn't know enough or the intelligence behind
• 5:43
  Speaker 6: it was so sensitive that we couldn't risk compromising it
• 5:45
  Speaker 6: that you had to sort of sit back and let that.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: One and go. And so within a few years, Carl
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Lee became the trusted supplier to the Iranian weapons industry.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Israel's spy agencies also stumbled upon Cara Lei at the
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: turn of the millennium. They feared the businessmen from China
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: could increase the range of their arch enemies missiles with
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: dramatic consequences for Israel.
• 6:31
  Speaker 7: It was more than twenty years ago when the Iranians
• 6:36
  Speaker 7: came first time to North Korea asking for missiles to buy,
• 6:42
  Speaker 7: and the nosth Kourini were very open towards their needs
• 6:45
  Speaker 7: and they say, we have here on the shelf missiles
• 6:49
  Speaker 7: buy as many as you want there. Any question was
• 6:58
  Speaker 7: very interesting, what is range of the missiles? And when
• 7:02
  Speaker 7: the North Korean told them that the range is a
• 7:05
  Speaker 7: thousand kilometers to say, we don't buy. If it is
• 7:09
  Speaker 7: less than thirteen hundred, we don't need it. And we
• 7:15
  Speaker 7: all run to the maps to see what the three
• 7:16
  Speaker 7: hundreds will add to their capability, and it was very
• 7:19
  Speaker 7: clear if it is less than getting into the heart
• 7:30
  Speaker 7: of Tel Aviv, they are not ready to.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Buy a difference of three hundred kilometers to potentially cause
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of fatalities.
• 7:41
  Speaker 7: It does matter where you hit, you kill. It's so
• 7:46
  Speaker 7: crowded and you'll kill many Israelists.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Israel is regularly hit by smaller missiles, but partially due
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to caral Lee's shipments came within range of Iranian missiles
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: that were at least fifteen meters long, with a potential
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: to carry nuclear warheads on.
• 8:08
  Speaker 8: The Cruzever, technical solutions included replacing steel with aluminium, installing
• 8:13
  Speaker 8: better steering, making the warhead smaller, and amending the stability
• 8:16
  Speaker 8: of the aerodynamics. Suddenly you could shoot these missiles over
• 8:20
  Speaker 8: one size and five hundred kilometers, puitting Israel within range.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: The German federal intelligence agency, the B and D, British
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: mi I six and other secret services also began homing
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: in on Carl Lee during the two thousands. But just
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: who is the man who could plunge the Middle East
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: into chaos?
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: A lot of my colleagues have spent countless hours, you know,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: digging through his marriage records, death records, you know, legal
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: records to find out as much as they can about
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: this guy.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Investigators obtained Carl Lee's passport number, a series of numbers
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that's like a fingerprint in China. It lasts for life
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: and reveals one state of birth, the eighteenth of September
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. The first two numbers indicate the province
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: where he was born. Twenty three is helong Jing, an
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: area in China's far northeast, directly on the border with
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Russia or more precisely Siberia. In the seventies, the Chinese
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: called this area the Great Northern Wilderness. To this day,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: few foreigners stray into Helong Jing. It's thought that Caral
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Lee spent his childhood here in a place called Chahyang.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: At the time, it was nothing more than a small
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: agricultural township He was born into one of the darkest
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: periods of Chinese history, Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. The nation
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: was in the grip of a wave of fanaticism and violence.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Children reported their own parents for speaking against Mao, thereby
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: signing their own death warrants. Many were forced into labor
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: in helong Jing, including educated young people from the cities.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: It's very likely that Karl Lee's parents were among the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: million people who drained swamps, planted fields, and made helong
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Jing what it is today, China's bread basket.
• 10:51
  Speaker 9: This is the Chinese hinterland. It's not a wealthy area.
• 10:55
  Speaker 9: It's a place that's heavily reliant on farming in the summer,
• 10:58
  Speaker 9: but that's completely cut off by snow in the winter.
• 11:00
  Speaker 9: It's a long way to the nearest life. In other words,
• 11:03
  Speaker 9: it would be relatively difficult to manufacture anything halt yet
• 11:07
  Speaker 9: to stand.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: To this day, Western visitors see helong Jang as a mysterious, lost,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: almost exotic place. It's where Lei fung Wi spent the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: first years of his life. Thirty years later, as Carl Lee,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: he was giving the world's most powerful government the run around.
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: It wouldn't have been long before we decided that we
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: needed to try to figure out a way to go
• 11:35
  Speaker 6: to the Chinese government, because if we really wanted to
• 11:38
  Speaker 6: stop him, we had to somehow persuade the Chinese government
• 11:41
  Speaker 6: to do it.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Initially, the US believed this approach would be successful.
• 11:55
  Speaker 6: And so then we would start dialoguing with the Chinese government,
• 11:59
  Speaker 6: providing them information about Carli's activities and trying to, you know,
• 12:04
  Speaker 6: see if we could somehow both assist and persuade them
• 12:08
  Speaker 6: to take action.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: At the time, China's government had just changed its approach
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to weapons exports.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: In the eighties and nineties, proliferation from China was focused
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: mostly on exports from major state firms, firms that clearly
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: were connected and controlled by the Chinese government, and these
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: firms were selling complete systems to countries of concern.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Along with the Chinese economy, Beijing's influence grew. China presented
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: itself as a responsible global power and endorsed several agreements
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: aimed at preventing missiles and warheads from falling into the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: wrong hands.
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: China definitely has international obligations to do something. I mean
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: their party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. They had
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: said that they are adhering to something called the Missile
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: Technology Control Regime. So coming back to car Lee. According
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: to that regime, China is meant to be controlling missile
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: related technologies of the type that Karlee is providing.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: also supported the two thousand and six sanctions on Iranian
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: nuclear activities, but Carl Lee continued to supply Tehran.
• 13:27
  Speaker 10: Every month, every couple months.
• 13:29
  Speaker 6: As the information came in, you know, we would, you know,
• 13:32
  Speaker 6: seek to what we called the marsh the Chinese government
• 13:36
  Speaker 6: about Lee and his activities. And so there's a you know,
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: a very long history of US to marshes to the
• 13:44
  Speaker 6: Chinese complaining about Lee and asking them to take action
• 13:46
  Speaker 6: about Lee.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: The talks more highly sensitive CIA spies were regularly disappearing
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: in China. Giving away too much information could endanger lives.
• 14:00
  Speaker 11: Is a balance to try to figure out how much
• 14:02
  Speaker 11: to tell to one's diplomatic counterpart about a problem that
• 14:06
  Speaker 11: you've learned about through intelligence. The nightmare scenario is I
• 14:09
  Speaker 11: go to a diplomatic counterpart and tell them that I
• 14:12
  Speaker 11: know something about a terrible problem that is happening in
• 14:14
  Speaker 11: their country and ask them to please stop it. They
• 14:17
  Speaker 11: go home and tell their security service what I have
• 14:20
  Speaker 11: told them, which allows them to identify the source and
• 14:22
  Speaker 11: shoot the poor fellow. So someone has died for having
• 14:25
  Speaker 11: done the right thing by trying to draw attention to
• 14:28
  Speaker 11: a problem. And we no longer get that information either,
• 14:31
  Speaker 11: and everyone thinks the problem is solved, except that it's not.
• 14:34
  Speaker 11: It's just that my source is dead.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: In the White House at the time, George W. Bush,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: despite the risks his administration, repeatedly chose to share sensitive
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: information on Karl Lee with China. In two thousand and eight,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: his Secretary of State stepped in personally. Conda Liza Rice
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: instructed her diplomats that the US US Embassy in Beijing
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: to ramp up the pressure. They were told to work
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: on the Chinese government to ensure its intervention in the case.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Rice and several secret dispatches heavily incriminating Carl Lee. They
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: were concerning the supply of machinery for missile construction and
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: harmless sounding substances such as aluminum and graphite.
• 15:23
  Speaker 8: When you can build thrusters of graphite which reach into
• 15:28
  Speaker 8: this tail into the missile's exhaust gases and change its direction,
• 15:31
  Speaker 8: to put it simply, so the missile can use the
• 15:34
  Speaker 8: stuff coming out of the back to steer itself.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: It's thought. Caral Lee also supplied Iran with a large
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: number of gyroscopes.
• 15:48
  Speaker 8: The gyroscope is essentially the missile's brain, it's sensory organs.
• 15:52
  Speaker 8: It allows the missile to determine where it's moving, where
• 15:55
  Speaker 8: it's going, how it's moving, counter steer, and stay on
• 15:58
  Speaker 8: course of course play.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: It's these instruments that turn inaccurate projectiles into precision weapons.
• 16:08
  Speaker 8: Is how the missile steers itself. The gyroscoup is like
• 16:11
  Speaker 8: the missile's nervous system, its eyes and ears.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Carl Lee appeared to be supplying enough of these for
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: an entire arsenal of missiles.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: Those are fine instruments that require careful calibration. You can
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: see in the quantities that car Lee has applied. I
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: mean you have hundreds, hundreds of accelerometers, hundreds of actuators
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: that have been supplied. So this is not one or
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: two pieces that are on needs. This is something that
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: they need for each and every missile that they're building.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, Barack Obama's Democrats moved into
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the White House the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: pursued her predecessor's course unchanged. After just a few weeks
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: in office, she had her diplomats deliver a message to
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the Chinese government. We strongly urge you to invest instigate
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: these activities, Signed Clinton.
• 17:11
  Speaker 6: There are certainly lots of things that he's doing that
• 17:13
  Speaker 6: are illegal in China. From our standpoint, there's plenty of
• 17:17
  Speaker 6: domestic legal basis for the Chinese to take action, but
• 17:21
  Speaker 6: for whatever reason, they haven't.
• 17:33
  Speaker 12: My name's Adam Kaufman.
• 17:34
  Speaker 13: I started working in the Manhattan District Attorney's office in
• 17:38
  Speaker 13: nineteen ninety four.
• 17:40
  Speaker 12: I was a.
• 17:41
  Speaker 13: Street crime prosecutor, starting with very minor crimes, working your
• 17:49
  Speaker 13: way up until you're handling more serious and violent crime.
• 17:53
  Speaker 13: I then went and worked in a narcotics bureau that
• 17:57
  Speaker 13: prosecuted international shipments coming up from Mexico and South America,
• 18:02
  Speaker 13: truckloads of usually cocaine, sometimes heroin. After that, I found
• 18:10
  Speaker 13: myself wondering what I should do, and I went and
• 18:14
  Speaker 13: spoke with mister Morgenthaw.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, Robert Morgenthaw was the District
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Attorney of Manhattan. He came from a Jewish family, that
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: had fled Germany escaping persecution. His father was US Secretary
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of the Treasury during World War II and creator of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the Morgenthaw plan to turn Germany into an agricultural nation.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: After the war, he supported the fledgling state of Israel,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: which left its mark on Robert Morgenthaw. In nineteen sixty one,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: his friend John F. Kennedy appointed him District Attorney of
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: New York. He went on to become one of the
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: most influential figures in US judicial history.
• 18:51
  Speaker 13: We had a tremendous amount of personal courage. He wasn't
• 18:55
  Speaker 13: afraid to take on difficult cases. He suggested that I
• 19:02
  Speaker 13: join this little bureau called Investigation Division Central.
• 19:07
  Speaker 12: It was a bureau that.
• 19:09
  Speaker 13: Sort of handled mister Morganhaw's interest in international markets. In
• 19:15
  Speaker 13: the recognition of the place that Manhattan played in global finance.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: With Wall Street as a close neighbor, Morganhaw set out
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to be more than just an attorney for Manhattan. He
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: saw himself as a prosecutor for international crime.
• 19:32
  Speaker 13: Manhattan's unique because we have so much of global finance
• 19:35
  Speaker 13: passes through Manhattan, international wire payments, international securities, so much
• 19:43
  Speaker 13: international global business takes place within a mile of the
• 19:48
  Speaker 13: courthouse in Manhattan.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: The Morgan thought ethos was his investigators could hunt down
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: any criminal whose money passed through Manhattan, which happened when
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: someone in the city made a dollar ansfer. That meant
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the long arm of Morgenthaw reached into every part of the.
• 20:04
  Speaker 13: World, and he was not afraid to flex those muscles
• 20:09
  Speaker 13: and to impose himself into international finance where really very
• 20:14
  Speaker 13: few district attorneys would be able to go.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: One day, when the district attorney was well over eighty,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: his path crossed Carl Leese. Morgenthaw had received a tip
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: off via one of his secret contacts.
• 20:30
  Speaker 13: It was probably around two thousand and five. He called
• 20:34
  Speaker 13: us into his office and he told us to buy
• 20:37
  Speaker 13: tickets and get on a plane and head to Israel,
• 20:43
  Speaker 13: being told that we were going to go meet with
• 20:46
  Speaker 13: Israeli intelligence officials.
• 20:47
  Speaker 12: I had no idea what to expect.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: When the New York investigators arrived, they'd never heard of
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Carl Lee. All they knew was their boss was very
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: worried about the country his father had once supported.
• 21:11
  Speaker 13: He viewed Iran as a threat to Israel, but he
• 21:14
  Speaker 13: also had a view based on terrorism. He also viewed
• 21:22
  Speaker 13: it as a threat to New York and to the
• 21:24
  Speaker 13: citizens of New York, you know, coming out of nine
• 21:26
  Speaker 13: to eleven.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: These were the years when the world found out about
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Iran's secret ambitions to build a nuclear bomb for Israel
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: an existential threat. The reason for a highly unusual meeting.
• 21:49
  Speaker 13: I had never heard of a local prosecutor going to
• 21:52
  Speaker 13: meet with foreign intelligence services. That was something that I
• 21:55
  Speaker 13: had never heard of. You know, we're not the federal government,
• 22:00
  Speaker 13: and we weren't the CIA, we weren't anyone like that.
• 22:03
  Speaker 13: But for mister Morgan Thaw, it was sort of business
• 22:05
  Speaker 13: as usual. The Israeli has had an extensive program, as
• 22:13
  Speaker 13: you would expect, focusing on Iranian WMD and missile procurement.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: The Foreign Spy Agency MASSAD had been watching Carl Lee
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: for a while, but China was one of Israel's key
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: trading partners and the government didn't want any open conflict
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: with Beijing. So all of a sudden, the New York
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: prosecutors were in a room with the head of MASSAD.
• 22:40
  Speaker 13: I remember sitting in a meeting with Meyer Degan, and
• 22:44
  Speaker 13: mister Degan saying, we don't want intelligence to sit on
• 22:48
  Speaker 13: a shelf. We want to act against it, and I
• 22:51
  Speaker 13: understand that mister Morganhaw feels the same way, and so
• 22:55
  Speaker 13: we want to help you make cases if we can,
• 22:59
  Speaker 13: that you can bring to expose what Iran is doing.
• 23:02
  Speaker 13: And he said, we want to give you the tools
• 23:04
  Speaker 13: and if you can use them.
• 23:06
  Speaker 12: We want you to.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Israel's Masad began secretly collaborating with US prosecutors in regards
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: to a mysterious businessman in China.
• 23:19
  Speaker 13: They gave us some opening information and it was about
• 23:22
  Speaker 13: Carl Lee.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: To this day, the authorities believe he's here in one
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: of Asia's most important port cities. It's about one thousand
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: kilometers to the south of Carl Lee's home, hey long Jang,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: not far from the border with North Korea, a metropolis
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: of millions that profited in the nationwide economic boom of
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. At the time, the nation was opening
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: up to the west. Thanks to him. Deang Chaoping Mao's successor,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: he set up special economic zones in China where foreign
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: investment was possible. That's how Dang brought capitalism to China
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four. He also made Dallian a special
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: economic zone. It's not possible to say precisely when Carl
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Lee's family ended up there. Despite meticulous research, no details
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: of his youth exist. People that knew him didn't talk.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: The authority is divulged nothing, as though issued with a
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: blanket directive to remain silent. Rumors and vague scraps of
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: information are all we have to go on. It's thought
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: he attended a school in Dallian named Number twenty four,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: an elite school for the children of high ranking party officials.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: That would match the claim that Carl Lee's grandfather was
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a highly decorated colonel in the People's Liberation Army. It's
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: also thought that Carl Lee worked intermittently for the state,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: but it's not known in what capacity. One thing's for sure.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: He made full use of Dallian's advantages. The port city
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: is a great place to do business, legal or otherwise.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: You have a lot of foreign US firms or European
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: firms that have branches there that have manufacture things in China.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: From an opportunistic point of view, it's a great place
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: if you want to be a proliferator, because there are
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: a lot of places to hide.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Here. In Dallian. A business was registered in the late
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, its name Limped Economic and Trade Company. According
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: to the Chinese company's register, Carl Lee's father, Lea Gui
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Jin had himself listed as the company's legal representative on
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the fourth of June nineteen ninety eight. This company was
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the seed for Carl Lee's commercial empire.
• 26:28
  Speaker 13: The Israelis gave us some of the substance and content
• 26:32
  Speaker 13: of certain emails that showed references to WMD and other
• 26:37
  Speaker 13: materials for weapons procurement, missile production, things like that.
• 26:50
  Speaker 12: We would work until late at night.
• 26:52
  Speaker 13: We'd order in pizzas, beers and just work on this
• 26:56
  Speaker 13: thing all the time.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: The prosecutors were in luck because in one particular aspect,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Carl Lee had been extremely reckless.
• 27:04
  Speaker 13: Some of the email addresses were from US providers Hotmail
• 27:08
  Speaker 13: or Yahoo. Because they were in the US, there was
• 27:11
  Speaker 13: a procedure to get access to the content of those
• 27:14
  Speaker 13: emails from the email service providers.
• 27:17
  Speaker 12: So we had a starting point.
• 27:21
  Speaker 13: We had some very talented, tenacious prosecutors working on the case,
• 27:27
  Speaker 13: and they just dug into the information. They were making connections.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: What they found trumped all their findings to date. The
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: investigators stumbled upon innumerable transactions and a seemingly impenetrable network
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: of dummy companies.
• 27:46
  Speaker 13: We found so many channels of WMD proliferation of money
• 27:52
  Speaker 13: moving through different countries.
• 27:54
  Speaker 12: He had a real global network. I remember that very well.
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: I'm sure.
• 28:03
  Speaker 13: This mission was so fundamental, especially when we started seeing
• 28:07
  Speaker 13: what was in the emails themselves.
• 28:10
  Speaker 12: It became very real.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: He wrote. We are the same company, the factory, the
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: people as the previous LIMT. The only difference is that
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the company's English name has changed to Sino Metallurgy and
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Men Metals Industry.
• 28:25
  Speaker 13: He would email people and say, well, don't worry about
• 28:29
  Speaker 13: US sanctions. I'm just going to change the name of
• 28:31
  Speaker 13: my company. I mean, he was brazen in the emails.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: He urged his business partners into the fray. This is
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: very important, he wrote, otherwise the money can be blocked.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Like last time.
• 28:49
  Speaker 13: There were transactions between metallurgists all over the world, providing
• 28:54
  Speaker 13: material that Carl Lee would then provide to Iran, and
• 28:58
  Speaker 13: Carl Lee had to pay for those materials in US dollars.
• 29:02
  Speaker 13: US dollar payments almost always clear through banks in the US,
• 29:07
  Speaker 13: and especially back in the early two thousands, most of
• 29:10
  Speaker 13: those banks were in Manhattan, so if the wire payment
• 29:13
  Speaker 13: said Carl Lee or Lifang Wei, then yes, the banks
• 29:17
  Speaker 13: would have stopped them. But if the wire payment said
• 29:21
  Speaker 13: the Bright and Shiny Metallurgist Company, then there's nothing for
• 29:25
  Speaker 13: the US banks to see and the payment just goes through.
• 29:28
  Speaker 13: That was the whole idea of Carl Lee in setting
• 29:32
  Speaker 13: up all of these dummy companies. It was to fool
• 29:35
  Speaker 13: the US banks into processing payments that otherwise would have
• 29:38
  Speaker 13: been blocked.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Although he was hiding thousands of kilometers from Manhattan, investigators
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: wanted Carl Lee to face trial in New York.
• 29:52
  Speaker 13: The legal theory we came up with was that by
• 29:56
  Speaker 13: sending the wire payments in false names, caused the bank
• 30:01
  Speaker 13: records of the Manhattan banks to have false information and
• 30:06
  Speaker 13: falsifying records. Falsifying the records of a business is a
• 30:10
  Speaker 13: New York state crime, and so all of this came
• 30:13
  Speaker 13: down to the falsifying of business records of banks in Manhattan.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: After months of investigations, they indicted Karl Lee.
• 30:25
  Speaker 14: The Manhattan District Attorney, Robert Morgenthaw announced a one hundred
• 30:29
  Speaker 14: and eighteen count indictment against a Chinese citizen.
• 30:41
  Speaker 13: April seventh, two thousand and nine, was the press conference
• 30:45
  Speaker 13: that we had to announce the indictment of Carl Lee.
• 30:49
  Speaker 13: It was the opportunity for mister Morgenthaw to show to
• 30:53
  Speaker 13: the world that this Chinese proliferator was sending material to
• 30:59
  Speaker 13: Iran that was going to kill people. He wanted an
• 31:08
  Speaker 13: indictment that said China is providing WMD to Iran.
• 31:14
  Speaker 12: He wanted the world to sit up and take note
• 31:16
  Speaker 12: of this.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Robert Morgenthal filed for the extradition of Carl Lee, who
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: was thirty six years old at the time.
• 31:22
  Speaker 14: The big question is did the Chinese government know? After all,
• 31:26
  Speaker 14: Chinese banks were involved in some of these transactions. Chinese
• 31:30
  Speaker 14: companies have long been accused of using shell companies in
• 31:33
  Speaker 14: the United States Kitty Pilgrim Sierra New York.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: But the Chinese government appeared disinterested in the extradition attempt,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: and Carl Lee was cautious. It's thought he left China
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: for business in Tehran on a direct flight. That way,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't run the risk of being detained on a
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: foreign stopover, and delivered directly to the US.
• 32:10
  Speaker 15: And I remember seeing his name a lot in US
• 32:13
  Speaker 15: documents and thinking, you know who is this guy? My
• 32:18
  Speaker 15: name is Daniel Salisbury. I'm a researcher at King's College
• 32:21
  Speaker 15: in London, where I research proliferation and arms exports and
• 32:26
  Speaker 15: arms and pargos.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Daniel Salisbury is a researcher at the Department of War Studies.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: The academics maintain good connections with Western intelligence agencies and
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: are often interested in the same things. Their specialty is
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: digging up information accessible to anyone but found by few.
• 32:47
  Speaker 15: When you start looking at these cases, a lot of
• 32:50
  Speaker 15: information is kind of hidden in plain sight. So we
• 32:53
  Speaker 15: used help from some Chinese linquists and really started exploring
• 32:57
  Speaker 15: what was out there on the internet.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: The researchers used Chinese keywords to comb through commercial registers,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: customs and court databases. In this way, Daniel Salisbury and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: his colleagues were able to shed light on Carl Lee's
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: network of companies from their base in London.
• 33:17
  Speaker 15: We found that most of his businesses were linked to
• 33:19
  Speaker 15: two addresses. So the usual mentioned appears to be a
• 33:25
  Speaker 15: large office block in downtown daim There's not quite a skyscraper,
• 33:30
  Speaker 15: but it is quite tall, has a lot of flaws
• 33:32
  Speaker 15: and I imagine this is the administrative part of the operation.
• 33:39
  Speaker 15: Working with our Chinese linguists we were able to find
• 33:43
  Speaker 15: some pictures of the outside of the building and get
• 33:45
  Speaker 15: a sense for what it looked like and what kind
• 33:47
  Speaker 15: of things could go on there. You know, a lot
• 33:51
  Speaker 15: of businesses were registered their administrative functions, including iron people
• 33:57
  Speaker 15: and that kind of things.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: They made another discovery one that totally changed their impression
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: of Carl Lee. One of the companies they were able
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: to attribute to him had a website and it showed
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: it wasn't just a dealer.
• 34:12
  Speaker 15: You had a lot of product listings for various different
• 34:16
  Speaker 15: types of graphite. We actually realized that the address out
• 34:19
  Speaker 15: of town wasn't just a business address, a warehouse or
• 34:22
  Speaker 15: an office.
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: But it was actually the large graphite factory.
• 34:25
  Speaker 15: It really changed the scale of the problem in our mind.
• 34:28
  Speaker 15: You know, it was real kind of mind blowing discovery.
• 34:34
  Speaker 13: Looking at the.
• 34:35
  Speaker 15: Satellite imagery, it's a pretty big place. I think online
• 34:38
  Speaker 15: it was stating about eighty thousand square mesas well. It's
• 34:42
  Speaker 15: quite difficult to verify exactly what's going on inside those buildings,
• 34:49
  Speaker 15: but with a factory pumping these things out in China,
• 34:52
  Speaker 15: it becomes a completely different kind of problem.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Following months of preparation, a fact finding mission to China itself,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: in the city where investigators, spy agencies and the London
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: researchers believed Carl Lee was hiding. All the tracks left
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: by the world's most wanted arms dealer converged in this
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: city in Dahlian.
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: Since as a field of film and.
• 35:35
  Speaker 9: Many many companies with an alleged connection to Carl Lee
• 35:38
  Speaker 9: are registered in Dahlian Gestriat, we assumed that if we
• 35:46
  Speaker 9: were going to find him anywhere, and that's where he'd be.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: When the pandemic began, China cut itself off from the
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: rest of the world. The government expelled many foreign journalists
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: and stopped issuing visas for short term reporters. The only
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: way of getting closer to Karl Lee for this film
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: was to call on those who were long term residents
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: in China, in this case Christophe Geeson and Mattias Bullinger,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: who's the camera man. The two begin their search for
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: a single individual in a metropolis of seven and a
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: half million.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: That's all tit is to feel.
• 36:32
  Speaker 9: We tesked ourselves to visit many of the companies that
• 36:34
  Speaker 9: are or were registered there and find out what we
• 36:38
  Speaker 9: can actually see. Can we talk to vimkamand who might
• 36:41
  Speaker 9: provide us with the next set of clues. In this
• 36:44
  Speaker 9: puzzle laid out in front.
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: Of us, Hutton.
• 36:49
  Speaker 9: Vain vised we find clues that would ultimately verify his existence,
• 36:56
  Speaker 9: asked Boyd Vine. The first building we visit. It was
• 37:00
  Speaker 9: an office tower block more or less in the center
• 37:02
  Speaker 9: of Dahlim. The King's College report mentioned it as the
• 37:07
  Speaker 9: presumed center where Karl Lee's empire is very likely to
• 37:11
  Speaker 9: be based.
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: Devashin Khali Akali's imperiums and it's hut.
• 37:24
  Speaker 9: In the past, Carl Lei's companies are said to have
• 37:26
  Speaker 9: rented a whole floor there, the twenty fifth floor of
• 37:30
  Speaker 9: this building. So we took the lift up there.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Kan Was he actually there in person? Did he have bodyguards?
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Would he call the police at the end of the corridor?
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: A surprise and THESEABOIDA hasn't done acht.
• 37:52
  Speaker 9: There were eight offices or apartments. We knocked on every
• 37:56
  Speaker 9: single door incident, and no one had ever heard of
• 38:00
  Speaker 9: the businesses registered to that building.
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: Golden at Niemutgerhut.
• 38:11
  Speaker 9: The Trail of Nowhere, Arischpoenznichts.
• 38:20
  Speaker 16: My name's Thomas countryman I was a Foreign service officer
• 38:23
  Speaker 16: for a total of thirty five years. From nineteen eighty
• 38:29
  Speaker 16: two to twenty eleven, I served in five different embassies
• 38:33
  Speaker 16: overseas at the United Nations, at the White House, at
• 38:36
  Speaker 16: the Pentagon, mainly focused on issues in Eastern Europe and
• 38:41
  Speaker 16: the Middle East.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Countryman has served several presidents over his career. When it
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: came to US foreign policy, he was viewed as an
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: all rounder with a keen eye for detail.
• 38:52
  Speaker 16: But then from twenty eleven to twenty seventeen, I was
• 38:56
  Speaker 16: the United States Assistant Secretary of State Proliferation.
• 39:04
  Speaker 10: In short, the Bureau.
• 39:05
  Speaker 16: Of International Security and Non Proliferation has a job that
• 39:10
  Speaker 16: we described as keeping the world's most dangerous weapons out
• 39:14
  Speaker 16: of the hands of the world's most dangerous leaders.
• 39:21
  Speaker 12: And in that job, one of.
• 39:23
  Speaker 16: My important tasks was to constantly raise with the Chinese
• 39:27
  Speaker 16: government our concern about the illegal exports of high tech
• 39:32
  Speaker 16: material that mister Lee was organizing from China to Iran.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: This building in Beijing's Diplomatic Quarter played a crucial role
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: here the Iranian Embassy.
• 39:47
  Speaker 16: His usual means of contact was through the Iranian Defense
• 39:51
  Speaker 16: Attache in Beijing. The primary job of the Iranian Defense
• 39:55
  Speaker 16: Attache in Beijing is to acquire technology that is needed
• 40:00
  Speaker 16: for Iran's military programs.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: When Countrymen took up his post, Carl Lee had already
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: been doing business with Iran for a decade.
• 40:09
  Speaker 16: The problem was that he had become, in essence, the
• 40:13
  Speaker 16: most valuable member of the Iranian ballistic missile team. So
• 40:18
  Speaker 16: you can't say that his arrest would have ended the
• 40:22
  Speaker 16: Iranian ballistic missile program, but we're convinced that it would
• 40:27
  Speaker 16: have slowed it down significantly. I spoke about him in
• 40:35
  Speaker 16: every conversation that I had with Chinese counterparts. We would
• 40:39
  Speaker 16: often see each other at the same meetings in New York,
• 40:42
  Speaker 16: in Vienna, in Geneva, but we also met in each
• 40:46
  Speaker 16: other's capitals in Washington and Beijing.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: The case put a huge strain on relations between the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: two superpowers.
• 40:58
  Speaker 6: They sort of washed their hands of it, saying, hey,
• 41:00
  Speaker 6: this is in China, this is some guy. But on
• 41:02
  Speaker 6: the other hand, were incredibly put out by US sanctioning
• 41:07
  Speaker 6: Chinese entities, So they sort of tried to have it
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: both ways, and so, you know, oftentimes the rhetoric could
• 41:14
  Speaker 6: get a little heated when it came to, you know,
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: them being upset about US sanctioning Chinese entities, including Carl Lee.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: But why was China doing nothing? The US had a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: hunch they thought Carl Lee must have had powerful allies
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: within the Chinese government.
• 41:35
  Speaker 16: Well, I believe it's difficult for a mid level official
• 41:40
  Speaker 16: in the Chinese government to stop him. If he is
• 41:44
  Speaker 16: well connected, if he's got lawyers, if he's got influence,
• 41:48
  Speaker 16: that is more resources than the Chinese mid level official
• 41:53
  Speaker 16: somebody like me can use against him. What concerns us
• 41:58
  Speaker 16: is that the officials above that level did not seem
• 42:04
  Speaker 16: to care about this sufficiently to take some action.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: After public prosecutors in New York. Now the FBI, America's
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: most powerful investigative authority, set its sites on Carl Lee.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: I think that the scope and scale of his sort
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: of operation really eclipsed any other type of case that
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: the FBI was familiar with at the time.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: The FBI assigned an entire group of investigators and analysts
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: to work on the case of the Chinese businessmen.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: I'd rather not talk about sort of the specifics of
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: who and how many were working on those, Like any
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: HR personnel issues are kind of off limits with intel stuff,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: it can't be in like a documentary. But Carley was
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: a major focus and something that was a priority investigation
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: at the FBI, you know, for a number of years.
• 43:07
  Speaker 6: When roughly the twenty fourteen time frame, not only had
• 43:11
  Speaker 6: Karl's activities you know, continued to develop and worsen, but
• 43:18
  Speaker 6: other options that other agencies were thinking about pursuing started
• 43:21
  Speaker 6: to become inviable. So, for example, there would be some
• 43:24
  Speaker 6: agencies that would you know, would like to try to
• 43:26
  Speaker 6: prosecute Karli in the US courts, and after a number
• 43:30
  Speaker 6: of years they sort of recognized that just wasn't going
• 43:32
  Speaker 6: to happen.
• 43:33
  Speaker 16: It did become clear that we had both an obligation
• 43:39
  Speaker 16: and an opportunity with the Chinese government to press harder
• 43:43
  Speaker 16: to get the Chinese government to stop mister Lee from
• 43:47
  Speaker 16: exporting this technology to Iran.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: At the time, China was on the brink of a
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: new era. Chi Jingping took over the reigns of power
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: in twenty twelve. For the US, there's a chance to
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: shine a spotlight on the matter with Carl Lee.
• 44:05
  Speaker 16: Included a diplomatic approach to China that emphasized not only
• 44:10
  Speaker 16: at my level, but at higher levels of the US government.
• 44:19
  Speaker 6: The name has gone to President Obama. I'm also aware
• 44:23
  Speaker 6: that President Obama mentioned that name to the Chinese, you know,
• 44:27
  Speaker 6: specifically complained about it. Unfortunately, that did not result in
• 44:38
  Speaker 6: any real change in Carl's activities and behavior.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: The US government then launched a response of unprecedented scale
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: in the case of an arms dealer.
• 44:49
  Speaker 16: We had several meetings, sometimes at the State Department, sometimes
• 44:54
  Speaker 16: at the Executive Office building next to the White House
• 44:57
  Speaker 16: that's part of the White.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: House, by agencies, investigating authorities, and several ministries joined forces
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: to plan a coordinated strike.
• 45:08
  Speaker 6: There became sort of a Carle Blitz that was rolled
• 45:12
  Speaker 6: out by the Inner Agency. And so you saw, you know,
• 45:15
  Speaker 6: a US criminal indictment. You saw some additional sanctions, including
• 45:18
  Speaker 6: sanctions of new types coming out, et cetera, et cetera.
• 45:25
  Speaker 16: It included the legal pressure of the FBI.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: So this was Carly's mistake that in his illegal transaction
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: he used the American financial system, and so this was
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: the lever that the FBI Department of Justice had to
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: pull and ultimately ended up seizing almost seven million dollars
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: of Carle's money.
• 45:49
  Speaker 6: You saw, you know, a reward for his information leading
• 45:55
  Speaker 6: to his capture.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: The US announced a five million dollar bounty for information
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: leading to his arrest. Much like drugs Lord El Chapo
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: or Osama bin Ladin after his attacks on two US embassies.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: You know, if you look at sort of averages, you know,
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: you usually see you know, a million or so five
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: is high. It's significant, it means something, right, Yeah, it's
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: it's a lot of money.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: The next day, the Chinese government issued its first public
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: statement on the Karli case.
• 46:42
  Speaker 12: Mayfa e Union.
• 46:49
  Speaker 9: Shushut Energy.
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: Mayfa even did the j.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Beijing and Washington started openly trading blows.
• 47:07
  Speaker 17: We are very clear about the activity that this individual
• 47:10
  Speaker 17: has undertaken and their threat to international stability and security.
• 47:14
  Speaker 17: And that's why we were very clear from the State
• 47:16
  Speaker 17: Department that we would offer a reward for information about
• 47:18
  Speaker 17: his whereabouts that could bring him to justice.
• 47:20
  Speaker 13: If he's in China, what's the need to put this Well.
• 47:24
  Speaker 17: As the release said, he's a fugitive right now, so
• 47:27
  Speaker 17: I'm not going to speculate on where he might be.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: On Capitol Hill, senators unleashed their fury.
• 47:39
  Speaker 18: So the Chinese government says they can't figure this out.
• 47:43
  Speaker 18: They can't figure out how to shut him down. A
• 47:45
  Speaker 18: guy's like him. But the good news is they can
• 47:47
  Speaker 18: figure out other things.
• 47:48
  Speaker 10: In China.
• 47:50
  Speaker 18: They figured out how to arrest five women who belonged
• 47:53
  Speaker 18: to a feminist organization.
• 47:55
  Speaker 10: Last year.
• 47:56
  Speaker 18: They figured out how to jail forty four journalists.
• 47:59
  Speaker 10: Last year.
• 48:00
  Speaker 18: They figured out how to put twenty seven thousand Muslim
• 48:03
  Speaker 18: minorities in the Wiga region in prison.
• 48:06
  Speaker 10: Last year. They could figure that out.
• 48:09
  Speaker 16: But they can't figure out mister Lee has money and lawyers,
• 48:13
  Speaker 16: and the wigers and the women's and goos and the
• 48:16
  Speaker 16: others do not. The Chinese government has demonstrated that it
• 48:22
  Speaker 16: has the authority and the capability to put out of
• 48:27
  Speaker 16: business anyone that it wishes to put out of business.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly a website appeared online about Lee Fung Wei,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: alias Carl Lee. The administrators said their aim was to
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: spread information about him. The page included drawings of Carl
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Lee's face, photo montages, and articles in English, Chinese and
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Arabic about his alleged complicity in the suffering of thought
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: thousands of children in them any civil war where Irani
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: and missiles are being deployed, and about arms deeels. But
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: who's responsible for the website? It's a course project, right
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: the administrators who are evidently students, a lecturer gave them
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: the idea.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine there's too many classes out there that
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: are teaching Carl Lee. It's a very bizarre sort of topic,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: a little as a you know, a little kind of
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: out there, and I feel like myself and my colleague
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: probably know all the people that are teaching on CARLEI,
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: and they have no idea what this.
• 49:43
  Speaker 10: You know, who has created the site? I'm Jeff Stein.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: I've been covering national security issues for about forty years now,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: and that followed my own service in the Army as
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: an Army intelligence case officer, where I began to get
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: insights into how the clandestine mentality worked, and that served
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: me well over the years. I was with Newsweek for
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: many years in the Washington Post, and now, in my
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: semi retirement, I am the founding editor in chief of
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: spy Talk, a website that covers intelligence issues. I think
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: I first heard about him in around early twenty fifteen.
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: I began to hear of sanctions being applied to this
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: fellow who we call Carl Lee or Lee fung Way.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: So I began looking into it, and I found that
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: federal officials were more than happy to brief me and
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: let me know what was going on, and I wrote
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: a major story for Newsweek.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: The title of his article how China helped Iran go nuclear.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: It shared a number of details from intelligence agency sources.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: He liked luxury cars, but I was told also that
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: he was sort of a stay at home guy.
• 51:17
  Speaker 10: He didn't go far from Dag.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: Yet we didn't learn a lot more about him, except
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: that we did have a stringer go there and do
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: some reporting on him to locate his offices in his home,
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: so we knew he was there, We knew he existed,
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: but we couldn't gather any more information on him.
• 51:46
  Speaker 10: Then came the Trump administration.
• 51:54
  Speaker 13: I'm angry when China's making five hundred billion dollars a
• 51:58
  Speaker 13: year and shucking our our jobs and sucking our money
• 52:01
  Speaker 13: out of our country and we don't do anything about it.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: The Trump administration was on a campaign to blame China
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: for everything, and as part of that, some White House
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: officials summoned me to come down to the White House
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: and discuss the case of Theliflung Way.
• 52:20
  Speaker 10: And that was in twenty eighteen.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: And certainly the Trump White House well knew my feelings
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: about its foreign policy, which were negative, and I often
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: had testy exchanges with the White House spokespeople when I
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: called them for a comment on something, so that they
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: reached out to me to talk about this case and
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: invite me down to the White House or the adjacent
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: old Executive Office building.
• 52:55
  Speaker 10: The talk was quite unusual. I was very amused by that,
• 53:02
  Speaker 10: but we were on the same page with that issue
• 53:04
  Speaker 10: with the liflong way.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: While the White House launched a Karl Lee pr offensive,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: the threat posed by Iranian missiles was thrust into sharp
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: focus in late twenty seventeen, Trump's UN ambassador briefed the
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: media standing in front of the wreckage of a ballistic
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: missile fired on Saudi Arabia by Iran's allies in Yemen.
• 53:32
  Speaker 19: The missile's intended target was the civilian airport in Rheai,
• 53:37
  Speaker 19: through which tens of thousands of passengers travel each day.
• 53:42
  Speaker 19: Just imagine if this missile had been launched at Dallas
• 53:46
  Speaker 19: Airport or JFK or the airports in Paris, London or Berlin.
• 53:52
  Speaker 19: That's what we're talking about here, That's what Iran is
• 53:56
  Speaker 19: actively supporting on your way.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Initially, many wondered whether the US was once again telling
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: the same old story, just as they had done before
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: the Iraq War. From the presenting alleged evidence of Saddam
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Hussein's WMD program, the State Department the department, but the
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: experts were certain security.
• 54:17
  Speaker 8: The missile and its configuration was precisely what we knew
• 54:20
  Speaker 8: from Iran, what Iran had very proudly unveiled a few
• 54:23
  Speaker 8: years ago in several videos and presentations.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: One of the pieces of wreckage betrayed some information the
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: logo of a certain Iranian arms company, one of Karl
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Lee's most important clients. The attack on Riod marked the
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: start of a whole series of strikes which continued to
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: this day.
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: We see them using those missiles.
• 54:46
  Speaker 20: We've seen them using them in Iraq, We've seen them
• 54:48
  Speaker 20: using them in Saudi Arabia, in Syria, where they've had
• 54:53
  Speaker 20: significant impact. We see also Iran proliferating these missiles across
• 54:57
  Speaker 20: the region. So for example, Lebani's has Belah is the
• 55:00
  Speaker 20: most popular proxy, most popular customer of Iranian missiles. But
• 55:04
  Speaker 20: also now the Hufi's and Yemen have been using to
• 55:08
  Speaker 20: a really significant extent Iranian missiles.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: And when Iran and the US edged close to war,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Iranian missiles were a significant factor.
• 55:25
  Speaker 20: The One attack that stood out in recent years was
• 55:28
  Speaker 20: the Iranian attack on the Iraqi bases hosting US forces
• 55:33
  Speaker 20: in January twenty twenty. Iran had launched a dozen missiles
• 55:37
  Speaker 20: targeting these sites. It was extremely dangerous. It did result
• 55:42
  Speaker 20: in over one hundred traumatic brain injuries among US service members.
• 55:46
  Speaker 20: Had this strike resulted in US fatalities, we would have
• 55:51
  Speaker 20: seen a much more significant US response than really we
• 55:55
  Speaker 20: had seen in the past years. And I don't know
• 55:59
  Speaker 20: how far the esc lationis spiral would go down.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: One thing is certain. Without Karl Lee's help, Iran's ballistic
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: missile program wouldn't be where it is today. But what's
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: the Chinese government saying? The chance of finding an answer
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: is highest outside of China. The Munich Security Conference an
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: annual gathering for leaders and state ministers, military officials, and
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: spy agency chiefs from all over the world. In February
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the guest list included one of China's highest
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: ranking politicians, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, whose ministry had been
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: negotiating with the US over Karl Lee for two decades.
• 57:02
  Speaker 12: Here, how are you.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you so, mun.
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: Friend? Why for?
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: During their time in Munich, Wang Ye and other guests
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: from less democratic nations had to endure something that would
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: never be allowed back home, uncomfortable questions from reporters.
• 57:39
  Speaker 10: That's a question, man.
• 57:41
  Speaker 9: The question is, why don't you tell mister lefan Way
• 57:46
  Speaker 9: also known as ky Lee, is on the FBI most
• 57:48
  Speaker 9: Wanted list.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: For sure?
• 57:55
  Speaker 18: Home can.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: The groundless charge? The Chinese Foreign Minister's response.
• 58:10
  Speaker 11: China doesn't admit, of course, providing any missile related materials
• 58:15
  Speaker 11: or components to Iran, so it's a little bit hard
• 58:18
  Speaker 11: to have hard evidence here. My own suspicion is that
• 58:21
  Speaker 11: they find themselves to have something of a coincidence of
• 58:24
  Speaker 11: interest in that trade.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Carl Lee's businesses align with chi jinping strategy. He views
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: his nation as the second remaining superpower, soon to outstrip
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: the US economically and militarily. Chinese strategists believe a strong
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Iran would benefit China in this regard.
• 58:47
  Speaker 11: To complicate US strategy in the Middle East, perhaps encourage
• 58:52
  Speaker 11: Western governments to become more distracted by Middle Eastern problems
• 58:55
  Speaker 11: and less worried about what might be happening in the
• 58:57
  Speaker 11: Indo Pacific that China might be.
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: So that's very convenient for them.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: For example, in case China decides to carry out its
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: threats one day if military maneuvers turn into war and
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: the People's Liberation Army launches an invasion of Taiwan. But
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: just where is the man who's become a key figure
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: in the struggle of the superpowers of the past years
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: and decades. The reporter team in China is on its
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: way to one of the most crucial companies in Carl
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Lee's network, the Dalian Karut Industry. The business is registered
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: to this building.
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: It's va.
• 59:54
  Speaker 9: It wasn't in office, it was just a regular Chinese compound.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: The the company really does exist. There's documented evidence of
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: its exports. It even won a court case against a
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: supplier who was in breach of contract. But the door
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: is opened by an old woman holding a knife. She's
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: been chopping vegetables.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: That's with frak vuziden hair came to the Halo Jiao.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 9: When we asked the woman where she came from, raq
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 9: she said Helong Jiang did. And when we asked which
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 9: region exactly and mentioned the name Chaha Yana, she said, yes,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 9: that's precisely where she came from.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 11: Is mocked.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Chaha yang the small agricultural township where Carl Lee is
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: thought to have spent his childhood more than a thousand
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: kilometers from Dallian.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: That's is sure.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 9: Now, that's a very very remarkable situation to find someone
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 9: in another province that comes from precisely this place with
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 9: around ten thousand inhabitants.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Stumped, how is she connect to Karl Lee? Did she
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: just let him use her address? Maybe she's known him
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: since he was a child from their homeland in the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: far North.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: I'd finach khli frakten.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 9: When we asked about Carl Lee, her response was that
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 9: she didn't know how to contact him to Then, relatively
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 9: quickly she referred to her age, telling us she was
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 9: over eighty, and then it was our job to find
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 9: him in Sophieton.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: To this day, this apartment here is the official HQ
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: of Dallian Cairot Industry, at least that's what it says
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: in the Chinese company's register. In this story, every answer
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: leads to even more mysteries, such as the question of
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: who's behind the website? Who is Lee fang Wi. One
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: thing we do know the administrators don't want anyone to
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: know who they are. They've opted for an anonymous domain registration.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: The content of the site is increasingly strange and elaborate.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: The message of this comic is the unscrupulous and profit
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: hungry arms dealer Carl Lee has nothing to fear from
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: investigators and prosecutors because he can always hide behind the
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Chinese state.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 15: It's incredible, right. I don't think we've ever seen that
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 15: kind of thing done with a proliferator either. I mean,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 15: it looks fairly sophisticated and well thought out. It seems
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 15: like someone has put some resources into this, and I
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 15: get a sense reading it as well, and having seen
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 15: various Chinese comics that the Chinese government has used to
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 15: talk to people about national security issues in China, it
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 15: looks like someone has seen those and thought, Okay, this
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 15: maybe is a good way to talk to a Chinese audience.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly a possible lead to the website creators
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: does crop up on this Facebook profile. The owner of
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: the profile seems to be studying international security in Germany
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: and admits that the who is liefang Wei website is theirs.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: They are evidently studying in Heidelberg. In any case, they
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: liked many sites connected to the university there and Heidelberg's
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: student life The strange thing is at Heidelberg University, no
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: one's heard of a student called Chung Zing Boa, never
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: mind an internet site or study project about a Chinese
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: arms dealer. Neither relevant professors nor student representatives.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 13: Through our analysis of bank records and our analysis of emails,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 13: we saw that he was doing a lot of business
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 13: in Euros. We did see that a lot of those
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 13: payments cleared through Frankfurt, and so we decided that we
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 13: would go try to encourage the Germans to take an
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 13: action similar to what we had done. So we went
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 13: over to Germany. We had put together a book, a
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 13: dossier of the euro payments that we had knowledge of.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 13: So we were showing the originating bank, the parties, the dates,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 13: and the banks that were processing the payments through Europe
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 13: and specifically the German banks that were clearing the payments.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 13: And we went over to Bond and we met with
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 13: a woman, a federal prosecutor in charge of sanctions enforcement
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 13: in Germany, and we met with a team of UH
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 13: investigators from the federal police and we we presented our
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 13: information to them.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 12: We had a good meeting.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 13: They asked the right questions, They were clearly thinking about it,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 13: and then the sort of team of police investigators took
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 13: us out for dinner and beers. We had a nice
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 13: German dinner we had. I think I think that I
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 13: recall brought worst a bunch of beers. Uh and then uh,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 13: you know, and then they excused themselves, and I think
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 13: my colleagues and I stayed out a little bit longer
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 13: as we might. From our perspective, nothing ever came of it.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 13: There was never a sort of a similar prosecution of
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 13: Carl le that that never that never happened.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: There's one more lead on the ominous website to an
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Arab Facebook group linked to the site. It's administrator's name
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: Kareem Mostapha. It looks like they're also studying in Germany
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: and living in Berlin. Strikingly, the profile is structured precisely
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: like that of Jangzeng Boa. Both have nondescript profile images
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: with glasses and a book, and both were first active
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: on Facebook within two days of each other. Something else
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: they have in common, they're both untraceable. These apparent students
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: aren't registered with authorities in Berlin or Heidelberg. It's as
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: though they don't really exist at all.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 15: The fact that these people are ghosts and basically don't exist.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 15: Would fit with a theory of this being run by
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 15: a state.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: It leads us to think that, you know, perhaps this
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: is you know, a government operation. It might maybe a
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: government operation too to try to sort of get the
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: word out about.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 15: Carly, especially in the states that spend a lot on
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 15: intelligence and have you know, many thousands of people working
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 15: in this area. It's quite possible that there's someone in
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 15: an office somewhere whose job it is to run these
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 15: kinds of operations, you know, maybe against Carli, but also
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 15: against other narco traffickers or other non state threats as well.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: So the site could be the work of spy agency personnel.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 15: It's quite possible that people making those videos know something
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 15: about him and have a good sense of how he
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 15: might react to something like that, and you know, it's
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 15: obviously a very targeted.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Thing to do in spy speak, information operations or I own.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: There's also sort of maybe also a name and chame
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: sort of component, you know, maybe get under his skin
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: a little bit, The idea of you wered of like
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: tickling the wire, right, so you know, maybe sort of
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: doing something to cause a reaction, right that you can
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: perhaps monitor better or enhance your own information by doing that.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 15: Just to sort of think, Okay, maybe Kovenment taxpayers dollars
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 15: somewhere or are going into the making of these falting
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 15: pig videos, you know, is really something strange to see.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: Of all the possibilities, too, nations stand out.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 15: Probably the countries that seem to have had the biggest
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 15: interest in Cali, so that that would be the US
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 15: or probably Israel.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Israel would be the most plausible. The nation's intelligence services
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: are known for unconventional cyber operations, and no country faces
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: a greater threat from Iranian missiles, a threat that's continued
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: to grow over recent years, also because of the activities
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: of Karl Lee. This is particularly evident in the north
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: in the Golan Heights. Israel captured this territory from Syria
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven and has occupied it ever since.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: The Rocky Plateau is of strategic importance for Israel to
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: monitor one of their bitterest enemies, Hesbelah, which holds positions
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: to the north of here. In Lebanon, Army spokesperson Jonathan
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Conricus was stationed here for a long time.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 21: What you see behind us is really think of it
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 21: as a highway as a smuggling highway for Iran by
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 21: which Iran transfers missiles, component infrastructure, machinery to produce or
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 21: to convert all that is transported from Iran Iraq via
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 21: Syria and the very areas that you can see close
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 21: to the Syria and Lebanese border.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: For years now, Iran has been trying to supply its
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Hesbela allies in Lebanon with precision missiles. Based on what
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: we know, Carl Lee's businesses have been instrumental in the
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: development of these very same projectiles.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 21: What Risbala will try to use their precision guided missiles
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 21: for the most sensitive and high value targets like our port,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 21: our airport, government facilities, hazardous materials.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: The entire nation became aware of the existential nature of
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: this threat in connection with the port city of Haifa,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: where thousands of tons of ammonia were stored. If the
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: chemical were to be released somehow, that would potentially risk
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of lives, something the leader of Hezbollah
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: knew only too well.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 21: Hassan Asala has said, without any shame, Yes, I will
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 21: aim for the ammonium container in Haifa. I will try
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 21: to strike it, and I would try to kill as
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 21: many civilians as possible.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 12: Z hawiyat ammonia Haifa nat.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 21: So that's the meaning of the enemy that we're dealing with.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: The ammonia that in Haifa was emptied following this threat
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: from the leader of Hezbollah, but there are other chemical
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: plants in Israel that could be a target for Iranian
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: precision guided missiles. Also, because for years Carl Lee supplied
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: navigation instruments to Tehran and all Western spy agencies could
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: do with look on powerlessly from the sidelines.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 10: The euphacials, I remember, were very angry.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: Maybe that was just a Trump motif, because they were
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: always angry about China, blaming China for this, and that
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: they were at a campaign against China.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 10: So I wrote the story.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, Jeff Stein published an article in Newsweek
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: on new Donald Trump sanctions against Carl Lee and on
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: the authorities cold fury with the Chinese government.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 10: They said to me, this is just the start these
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 10: new sanctions. We're going to do more. We're going to
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 10: really teach China a lesson. With leifong Wi.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: At about the same time, a member of the Trump
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: administration began denouncing Lee Fung Wei alias Carl Lee and
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: China's government on Twitter. It was the Assistant Secretary of
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: State at the time, Christopher Ford.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 11: Leifung Wi was for a long time that perhaps the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 11: most notorious of the proliferation traffickers in China, and nothing
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 11: ultimately was done. It continued to be a problem for
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 11: a very long time. When I was in government, we
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 11: stepped up that pressure on China, trying to get them
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 11: to pay more attention to it.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: The Trump administration started ramping up the pressure on both
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: China and Iran at the same time. The latter country
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: was the responsibility of Brian Hook, a hardliner and close
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: presidential confidante. He was a US Special representative for Iran
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: at the time.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 22: The Iranian regime has been chanting death to America. Iran
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 22: has been very successful at its mission to try to
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 22: terrorize the Middle East. It is a corrupt religious mafia
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 22: that has really impoverished its own people in order to
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 22: fund an ideology that they export around the world. What
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 22: is different about this administration's approach is that we are
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 22: putting in place a pressure campaign that doesn't have any
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 22: historic precedent.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: But strangely, Brian Hook remained tight lipped over the man
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: who was probably the most crucial foreign supplier to the
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Iranian missile program.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 22: I don't have anything any comment on Carl Lee. Don't
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 22: have anything. I don't have any new information to share
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 22: with you on that.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: It was mid twenty nineteen when all of a sudden
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: silence fell over Washington.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 10: Well we haven't heard anything since, said, so what's going on?
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ford also suddenly stopped commenting
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: on Carl Lee.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 11: We decided to stop tweeting. That's about all I can say.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 5: Okay, okay, that's not helpful.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 10: I understand the silence was deafening.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 5: As they say it was.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 10: It's a mystery to me.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: And then I, you know, tracked these same officials a
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: couple of years later.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 10: Everyone's a while would call say, yeah, what's going on. Well,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 10: they're not talking about it.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: Officials are reticent to talk about him at all, or
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: they have memory loss, they suddenly can't remember.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 10: I have to remind them, you know car Lee, the Chinese,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 10: Oh that guy, you know.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: So they're not talking about car Carle may not even
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: be on their mind at all. And if he is
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: on their mind, they're not making a public what they're doing, and.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: Then the website who is Lee Fong Wai went offline?
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: What's happened to Carl Lee? On the investigative trail in China,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: the team travels northwards from Dallian. It's thought that Carl
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: Lee's graphite factory is located one hundred kilometers from the
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: port town. This according to information unearthed by researchers at
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: King's College in London. The factory that distinguishes Carl Lee
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: from many others in his particular line of work, the
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: one that makes him both a trader and a manufacturer. Welcome,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: reads the word on the chimney and the name of
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: the company, Sinotech Carbon. The company has existed since two
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: thousand and six. A quarter of the shares belonged to
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Carl Lee and the rest belonged to his younger brother,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: Lee Fangdong.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 9: Tfnaturally, the question was, of course, is it an industrial
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 9: ruin down of us? Is there anything left of it
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 9: art or are graphite products still being actively produced there?
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 5: Ti Understudd.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: A question that can only be answered in close quarters.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 5: The maziestimkoboid in niets.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 9: When you approach the building It almost feels like an
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 9: industrial ruin a complex where you get the sense that
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 9: nothing's happening there anymore. But then you spot areas with
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 9: the latest surveillance technology, loads of cameras watching anyone approaching
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 9: the site of the factories fabrikt.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: The investigation could be brought to an abrupt end at
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: any moment, but instead the opposite happens.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 5: Kandas Fabriklendo Problemos.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 9: Bughin you can easily enter the plant grounds. The gates
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 9: are open. Interestingly that there was no one there to
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 9: speak to at the.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 5: Time dom Di Monhete Schwechhenkun.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: On the site of a factory owned by one of
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: the world's most wanted men. And indeed there are tons
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: of graphite here, the materials so urgently needed by Iranian
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: missile engineers and supplied to them in huge volumes by
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: Carl Lee.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 5: Komos.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 9: And it seems dilapidated. But it's not the case that
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 9: there's no longer anything there. Production and is clearly going
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 9: on in one section of the industrial site.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 5: Zanzid does that. Let's take a fairly.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 9: Considering this is supposed to be the most dangerous arms
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 9: dealer in the world. The FBI has put a five
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 9: million dollar bounty on this man. And suddenly you arrive
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 9: at what's supposed to be the hub of his entire empire,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 9: and you think, wow, so this is the most dangerous guy,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 9: and here it looks like we're out in the middle
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 9: of nowhere. Then you do start to wonder, does all
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 9: this really out of pasta sam.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: The two men still have two cards up their sleeve,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: two telephone numbers from Carl Lee's closest circle. So as
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: not to jeopardize the filming, they make the calls after
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: the factory visit.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 9: Van Dong is the fun Le fung Weifang Dong is
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 9: the younger brother of Lee Fung Wei. That was really
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 9: quite a remarkable telephone call because he just confirmed many
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 9: details for us. He said, yes, they did business with
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 9: Iran in the past, but that they no longer do.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 9: A second thing he said was that the factory is
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 9: still active and their products are still being manufactured there.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 9: So he confirmed what we saw on the site and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 9: said that unfortunately we wouldn't be able to meet his brother.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 9: Then we called another numbers he had. There had been speculation,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 9: primarily in the King's College research report, that this could
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 9: lead us to the older brother of the.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 5: Family, Familia sim Kun. When we asked him about.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 9: Lefang Wei as alias Carl Lee, he said he couldn't
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 9: reach him himself at the moment.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Where is Carl Lee and why is no one in
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: Washington talking about him anymore?
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: At the beginning of the Biden administration, I have made
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: some sort of gentle inquiries about Carl Lee and zero
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: zip not silence. You know, I'm a former intelligence case officer.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: I've been covering the CIA and other intelligences for years.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 10: So I wondered, well, maybe we doubled Lee fung Way.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 10: Maybe he's our guy.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: Now, Carl Lee a double agent betraying his own business
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: partners to the enemy. It's a bold theory, but there
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: certainly have been such cases in the past.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 10: I mean, I have no evidence of that whatsoever, but
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 10: that's the way my mind works.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, I couldn't find any other logical explanation of
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: why the US would suddenly go silent about Leifong Wi.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 10: But he wouldn't have a very long life in China.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, CIA's operations in China, from public reporting we know,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: have been a disaster. There's security lapses allowed dozens of
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: CIA sources in China to be rolled up and thrown
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: in jail or executed.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: So and then a new lead appears online for thirty
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: one minutes in the Chinese edition of Wikipedia. In the
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: article on Lefangwei. The version history reads on the eighth
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: of January at twenty twenty one, at six fifty eight am,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: an anonymous user added the following passage. In April twenty nineteen,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: Lee fang Wei was detained by the police on suspicion
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: of smuggling goods and articles banned from import and export
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: by the state. In late twenty twenty, Lee was held
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: in pre trialed attention in the city of Dallian. At
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: seven twenty nine am, the passage was removed by the
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: same user. The reason provided that the information had not
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: come from a reliable source, is that the answer that
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: he's in prison, But then why is the FBI still
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: trying to track him down with a five million dollar bounty.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: There's still one address to check out. The last on
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: the list the headquarters of a company sixty percent of
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: which is still owned by Carl Lee personally.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 5: In Dezeon.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 9: In this garbage field compound, there's a company that's still
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 9: active Filmady Hoktefist.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: It's called Dallian Trust Industry and has made millions in sales.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Official customs data show that components for nuclear reactors have
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: been exported from here.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 5: I'd sad on clean tab.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 9: When we first rang the bell, no one came to
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 9: the door, so we checked with the house next door
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 9: to make sure we got the right address, and they said, yes, yes,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 9: that's correct, but we should go around the back, as
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 9: the neighbor might be in the garden.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 5: But EVENTU gotten sign.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: Could it be right here? The answer to everyone's questions.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 5: Viacomdom.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 9: We went around the back and asked about Carl Khali.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 9: We're looking for a man named leifang Wi.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 10: Do you know him?
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 8: I may have heard of leifang Wai. Isn't he in prison?
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 16: Where?
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 9: What do you mean he's in prison? Is he in trouble?
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 19: Yes?
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 9: He was jelled for a few things.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 5: You know what I mean?
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 8: I think he's in prison.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 9: And suddenly he asked why we wanted to know, And
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 9: a short time later our conversation with him.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 5: Was overdem for buye mde Gansen for mind Breau address and.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 9: Visiting the supposed office addresses of Cara Lei's companies in Dallian.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 9: Do you get a sense that everything's totally.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 5: Off yes, absolute needs Yeah, as it does.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 9: Yes, these are private addresses. These people are private individuals, pensioners.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 9: None of them are running any businesses.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 5: In Vina, the Ala Khanda films.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 9: They probably have no idea exactly what's being done.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 5: In their names. Baska now in yamnam Dot understate food.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: It sounds like the perfect cover, a defensive shield of
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: the unsuspecting, a labyrinth that swallows up anyone trying to
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: get near to Lee Fang Wei, to Carl Lee, to
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: Patrick David or Charles, to Sonny Bye or song Da Hi,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: whatever he calls himself. But could the neighbors still be
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: right that the fifty year old is now in jail
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: because after two decades the Chinese government took him out
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: of commission. If anyone would know that it's Christopher Ford,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: the senior official who suddenly stopped condemning Carl Lee and
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: the Chinese government on Twitter, was one of.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 10: The reasons that.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 5: He might have been arrested at that point in time
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 5: that you stopped tweeting.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 11: As I say, I'm not a positioned to talk about
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 11: any specifics with respector Carlee.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: Christopher Ford doesn't give a specific answer because recent developments
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: in the Carl Lee saga are classified, but his words
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: do hint at something.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 11: I always sort of suspected as we do attention to
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 11: Carl Lee. They if we were lucky, they would actually
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 11: stop some of the network. If we were less lucky,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 11: they might still do something to him in a way
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 11: that would undercut our criticism and allow them to say
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 11: that this is not a problem and have US be
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 11: unable to contradict them.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: In the past, the US government would often secure concessions
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: from Beijing whenever the two nations discussed trade, and indeed,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: during the period in question, Chinese Head of State Xi
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: Jinping called on Donald Trump to avert the imposition of
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: new heavy goods tariffs. Beijing did make some concessions at
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: the time, with indications that the arrest of Li fang
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: Wei might have been one of them. But even if
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: that's true, has the problem been solved? Is the world
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: a slightly safer place?
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 11: For a long long time, lefung Wei was sort of,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 11: as we say, the poster child for the proliferation problem.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 11: But I should say if Lifung Wei were hit by
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 11: a meteorite tomorrow, the proliferation problem would not evaporate. These
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 11: are fairly well established institutions that appear to have some
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 11: degree of official at least protection and perhaps permission to
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 11: do this.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: It's thought his network continues to be active with or
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: without him.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 15: This is a very kind of murky area, and it's
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 15: it's something that we may hear about laser or you
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 15: may never hear about it, you know, even when the
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 15: archives are opened in thirty forty years time.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 10: This is kind of just the typical.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: Carlee story, right, It's just kind of more strange weirdness.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 5: Day after day, a.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: Last ditch attempt, another call to the younger brother's number.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: Where is Carl Lee? In one out of the.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 5: Eating Tea, the number you have dialed is not in service.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: In one out of the line eating the number you
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: have dialed is not in service.