The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Carlos Cardoen.md

category	tags	summary	born	location	updated	relations
Arms Dealers & Brokers	KeyFigure Person IranContra Israel	Chilean arms maker whose company supplied cluster bombs to Iraq in the 1980s, indicted in Miami in 1993 over zirconium exports, and named by Ari Ben-Menashe as a broker of CIA-backed arms channels.	1942-05-01	Santa Cruz, Chile	2026-10-08	type with fn owned Industrias Cardoen 3 type with role fn owned Swissco Management Group described by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as a subsidiary of Cardoen Industries 2 type with reverse start role fn prosecuted Department of Justice true 1993-05 twenty-one count indictment, Southern District of Florida, May 26, 1993 3

Carlos Cardoen is a Chilean businessman and arms producer, owner of Industrias Cardoen. He comes from an upper-class Chilean family of Italian descent. After attending university in the United States and receiving a degree as a mining engineer, he returned to Santiago, Chile, after Augusto Pinochet 1973 coup d'état to work for the government-owned Chilean Mining Corporation. His job involved procuring explosives for mining, which became a lucrative business for him personally due to kickbacks.¹

Cardoen later resigned and became a private contractor, securing a deal to supply all blasting equipment to the Chilean Mining Corporation. He then ventured into arms brokering, though initially without success. In 1979, he applied to SIBAT, the Foreign Defense Sales Office of the Israel Ministry of Defense, for a license to sell Israeli arms in South America. His request was denied due to his lack of experience and established political connections.¹

After being rejected by Israel, Cardoen obtained a brokering license from the Armscor (South Africa's government weapons manufacturer) with the help of the Chilean ambassador to South Africa. He then secured loans from Chilean banks and began operating as an arms producer and broker.¹

By 1985, Cardoen was selling arms to Iraq, with the help of ARMSCOR and support from individuals connected to the Central Intelligence Agency, such as Alan Sanders of ITICO. He received blueprints for cluster bombs from Sanders and, despite a United Nations arms embargo against Chile, produced these bombs with a covert U.S. license. Israel was interested in acquiring these bombs.¹

In 1985, Ari Ben-Menashe approached Alan Sanders to purchase cluster bombs for Israel, and was informed that Cardoen would sell to anyone who paid him. A few weeks later, Israel received cluster bombs from Santiago via diplomatic crate.¹

Robert Gates, then CIA deputy director for intelligence, was approached by Nachum Admoni (Mossad director) regarding U.S. support for Cardoen. Admoni expressed Israeli concerns about the support for Iraq, especially through Chile and South Africa. By this time, Cardoen owned two chemical weapons plants in Santiago, a cluster bomb factory in cooperation with Chile's military, and a third chemical weapons plant in Paraguay. He was also building a chemical weapons plant outside Baghdad.¹

Cardoen's Santiago-produced chemical weapons and those from Paraguay used artillery cups from West Germany, procured by Ihsan Barbouti. These materials were shipped to Baghdad by Iraqi Airways cargo planes. Cardoen used U.S. banks, such as the Valley National Bank of Arizona, to finance his sales and obtained raw materials for chemical manufacturing from a factory in Boca Raton, Florida. The Gamma Corporation, a CIA cut-out, sold fuses for the cluster bombs to Cardoen.¹

In late 1986, Israel expressed concern about arms shipments to Iraq, with Yitzhak Shamir threatening to go to Congress. Robert Gates called a meeting in Santiago to calm the Israelis. Attendees included Cardoen, Gates, Senator John Tower, Pieter Van Der Westhuizen (South African Military Intelligence), and Rodolfo Stange (Chilean Carabineros). At this meeting, U.S. officials made it clear they intended to maintain the arms channel to Iraq to bring Iraq into their sphere of influence, assuring Israel it would not be harmed. Cardoen continued to supply chemical weapons and cluster bombs to Iraq despite Israeli concerns.¹

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in its October 24, 1991 report on the Gates nomination, recorded that Gates denied specific allegations made by Ben-Menashe at his confirmation hearing, and that investigations by the FBI and the CIA inspector general, which included analysis of Gates's calendar and travel records, provided no credible evidence to confirm them. The same report records that Cardoen denied meeting Gates in a letter of July 16, 1991 to the U.S. ambassador in Chile.²

In September 1988, Ari Ben-Menashe was sent to Chile to confront Cardoen. Ben-Menashe offered Cardoen a deal: Israel would license him to produce Uzis, Galil assault rifles, artillery shells, and mortars, and exclusively sell these materials throughout South America, in exchange for stopping his chemical trade with Iraq. Cardoen was given two weeks to consider the offer. During this visit, Cardoen introduced Ben-Menashe to Mark Thatcher, implying Thatcher was involved in his business.¹

Cardoen was furious about Ben-Menashe's visit to his plant in Paraguay and his attempts to stop the trade. He claimed to have the backing of the Americans and the Chilean government, and threatened Israel if they interfered. He also revealed that Gates's office provided technology directly from the CIA, and that Ihsan Barbouti was a key link in his operations. He mentioned Alan Bond and British investors as backers.¹

In February 1989, Cardoen's plant in Paraguay was not closed down, thanks to Andres Rodriguez, who continued to rule the country with U.S. blessing. On May 26, 1993, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida in Miami returned a twenty-one count indictment against Cardoen, Industrias Cardoen Limitada (INCAR), Swissco Management Group, Inc., Franco Saffa, Jorge Burr, Edward A. Johnson, Ronald W. Griffin and Teledyne Industries, Inc. d/b/a Teledyne Wah Chang Albany.³ Ben-Menashe's account gives April 1992 and the U.S. Customs Service as the charging agency.¹

Iquique and Baghdad

Cardoen's plant at Iquique turned out about a thousand cluster bombs a month with labor paid the equivalent of ninety dollars a month, and he priced them at about 7,000 dollars each, some 19,000 dollars below his European competitors. "I'll have to build Jimmy Carter a statue," he said. "If it hadn't been for the U.S. embargo we would never have invested in arms production here." His agent for Iraq, Nasser Beydoun, who later sued him for 30 million dollars in commissions, carried his offer to Baghdad: "We can provide you with our cluster bombs at the lowest possible price." The first shipment, worth 21 million dollars, reached Iraq early in 1984, and Iraq came to supply about three quarters of his arms exports of 100 million dollars a year. Two American munitions plants were classified by American officials as scrap metal so that they could be exported to Chile. His Washington representative, Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Rickertson, said: "It should have been quite evident to them that this was U.S. equipment because the placards on the bomb-making presses identified them."⁴

A former contractor for the CIA described Cardoen as "an all-purpose asset, designed to be one of those offshore stockpilers of military equipment who could be used by the CIA to ship arms to the Afghan rebels, to the boys in Angola, or anywhere the U.S. needed some help." Howard Teicher of the National Security Council staff said of Robert Gates: "He was tight with Casey and with the White House. He was one of those who helped get things done." An associate of Cardoen, Robert Johnson, said he saw Gates arrive at Cardoen's house near Miami in the summer of 1986: "He and Cardoen had a series of meetings in 1986 and 1987. We needed an offshore supplier, and the Chileans were very cooperative." The White House said in July 1991: "The whole story is unfounded. There never were any sales, overt or covert, to Iraq or Iran through a third country. Mr. Gates never met with Carlos Cardoen." A subcontractor of his bought 330,000 power supplies from International Signal and Control and sent them on to a proximity fuse factory near Baghdad. The British journalist Jonathan Moyle, who was inquiring into Cardoen's helicopter project, was found dead in a Santiago hotel on March 31, 1990.⁴

Miami arrest, Swissco and the Senate report

Kenneth R. Timmerman wrote that on August 2, 1983, U.S. Customs officers arrested Cardoen in Miami over night-vision goggles bound for Chile and that the case ended in a plea bargain with a 100,000 dollar fine on his company; a declaration by Howard Teicher dates the arrest to 1983 in a Miami sting concerning night-vision goggles bound for Cuba and Libya.⁵⁶ Teicher's corrective declaration of October 3, 1996 states that, although he understood Cardoen had been arrested, "the other information in this paragraph is incorrect."⁷

The Senate report records that the CIA employed James D. Theberge on its Senior Review Panel from January 1986 to January 1988, and that during much of that period he was a consultant to Swissco Management Group, "a subsidiary of Cardoen Industries of Chile." Theberge had been U.S. ambassador to Chile from 1982 to 1985. The report states that Theberge disclosed the Swissco work and its Cardoen parentage in the personal history statement he gave the CIA in December 1985, that William J. Casey, John McMahon and James Taylor were involved in his recruitment, and that there was no evidence Gates took part. It states that "Between 1984 and 1988, Cardoen Industries was of significant intelligence interest to CIA, which believed Cardoen was the primary supplier of cluster bombs to the Iraqi government, and an important supplier of other categories of ordnance to Iraq and other Middle Eastern states."² Swissco Management Group, Inc. is among the eight defendants in the 1993 indictment.³ The Commerce Department order of September 11, 1995 states that Swissco Management Group, Inc., of Miami Lakes, was convicted on August 7, 1995 of exporting zirconium from the United States to Chile in violation of the terms of a Commerce export license.⁸

Miami property and the Graham fund-raiser

Justin Hibbard wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine in 2003 that Cardoen's Miami company Swissco invested Iraqi payments in Florida real estate; that the Commerce Department and the Customs Service announced a civil suit against Swissco in Miami on April 6, 1992, seeking to seize 30 million dollars in real estate; and that in August 1986 Cardoen helped organize a fund-raiser for U.S. Senator Bob Graham at the Miami home of the Swissco executive Anthony Mijares Jr., which raised about 50,000 dollars.⁹

In September 2022 the Chilean investigative outlet CIPER Chile reported that Cardoen's Miami investments grew into a real estate holding that it described, citing United States government estimates, as worth about 30 million dollars. CIPER reported that Graham and his wife sold Cardoen their house in Miami Lakes for 575,000 dollars, which is how Cardoen came to know Graham, then Florida's governor. CIPER also reported that the Federal Reserve Board seized Cardoen's checking accounts and real estate investments, including land, office complexes and subdivisions for a housing project, in Miami and Orlando, on suspicion of money laundering, and that the investigation was later dismissed after a settlement, with part of the assets returned to him.¹⁰

Indictment, trial and extradition

The zirconium counts concern ordnance-grade zirconium sponge and compacts exported to Chile. The Eleventh Circuit wrote that Cardoen supplied the exporter with false end-use statements describing the zirconium as a booster material for industrial explosives, and that "The zirconium was used as an incendiary agent in cluster bombs that Cardoen was selling to Iraq for use in the Iran-Iraq war."¹¹ The district court's order of 1994, reissued in 1995, noted Cardoen's "present fugitive status."³ On March 22, 1994 the court dismissed Counts II through VI against Teledyne on statute-of-limitations grounds.³

Edward A. Johnson, a sales manager at Teledyne Wah Chang Albany, was convicted by a jury on four counts, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed in 1998.¹¹ A State Department notice records that Teledyne Industries pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Florida on January 26, 1995.¹²

A witness identified as "Linda C." of the CIA Directorate of Operations, who reviewed the agency file on Cardoen covering 1984 to 1993, testified at the classified-information hearing that Cardoen "was not an agent or source of intelligence for the United States government; on the contrary, Cardoen was a target; that is, an individual of intelligence interest to the government." The court adopted that conclusion for purposes of the hearing, and wrote that the Senate report "corroborates" it.³

On January 31, 1995, Teicher signed a declaration in the case stating that "the CIA authorized, approved and assisted Cardoen in the manufacture and sale of cluster bombs." Robert Parry reported that the government sealed it as a state secret while attacking Teicher's credibility, and that Teicher was blocked from testifying.⁶¹³

The United States served a corrective declaration signed by Teicher on October 3, 1996, with a notice of filing served November 8, 1996. In it Teicher wrote that attorneys for Teledyne had prepared the January declaration and faxed it to him, that he had not reviewed his National Security Council files since 1987, and that his statements in paragraphs 15 through 18 were his best memory and belief and not "categorical statements of fact." He wrote that he is "not aware of any specific evidence that the United States government or any government official or agency took steps to help Cardoen obtain any U.S.-origin components for use in cluster bombs." The corrective declaration does not address paragraphs 1 through 14 of the January declaration; as to paragraph 17 he wrote that, although he understood Cardoen had been arrested, "the other information in this paragraph is incorrect."⁷

The United States formally requested Cardoen's extradition in March 2019. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reports that the Chilean Supreme Court rejected the request in March 2020; Emol reports that the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court unanimously rejected it on August 24, 2020, confirming a first rejection in March 2020 by the instructing minister Carlos Aranguiz, on grounds of dual criminality and prescription.¹⁴¹⁵

Footnotes

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1. Ben-Menashe, Ari. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. TrineDay, 1992. ↩︎

2. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Nomination of Robert M. Gates to be Director of Central Intelligence, S. Exec. Rept. 102-19, 102d Cong., 1st sess. (October 24, 1991), section 5, https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/sites-default-filesations-10219.pdf (PDF pages 186 to 188). ↩︎

3. United States v. Cardoen, 898 F. Supp. 1563 (S.D. Fla. 1995) (Highsmith, J.), No. 93-241-CR, reissued order on hearing under section 6 of the Classified Information Procedures Act (original order December 28, 1994), https://static.case.law/f-supp/898/cases/1563-01.json. ↩︎

4. Friedman, Alan. Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq. Bantam, 1993, pp. 46-54, 64. ↩︎

5. Kenneth R. Timmerman, The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), p. 169. Sole source for the passage so cited. ↩︎

6. Declaration of Howard Teicher, January 31, 1995, United States v. Cardoen, No. 93-241-CR-HIGHSMITH, as transcribed at http://spikethenews.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-teicher-affidavit.html. Sole source for the wording (paragraph 17 for the 1983 arrest). ↩︎

7. Declaration of Howard R. Teicher (corrective), United States v. Carlos Cardoen et al., No. 93-241-CR-Highsmith (S.D. Fla.), dated October 3, 1996, with the United States' notice of filing served November 8, 1996, paragraphs 2 to 7, https://archive.org/details/utf-893cr-241-de-679. ↩︎

8. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Export Administration, "Action Affecting Export Privileges; Swissco Management Group, Inc.; Order Denying Permission To Apply for or Use Export Licenses," dated September 11, 1995, 60 Federal Register 48964-48965 (September 21, 1995), FR Doc. 95-23363, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1995-09-21/pdf/95-23363.pdf. ↩︎

9. Justin Hibbard, "The Chilean Connection," San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, March 2, 2003, https://www.sfgate.com/magazine/article/THE-CHILEAN-CONNECTION-Carlos-Cardoen-arms-2667085.php. ↩︎

10. CIPER Chile, Alberto Arellano and Francisca Skoknic, "Los secretos de Carlos Cardoen en Panamá y la alerta por una de sus sociedades que fue vinculada a la venta de armas," September 14, 2022, https://www.ciperchile.cl/2022/09/14/los-secretos-de-carlos-cardoen-en-panama-y-la-alerta-por-una-de-sus-sociedades-que-fue-vinculada-a-la-venta-de-armas/. Sole source for the CIPER passage. ↩︎

11. United States v. Edward A. Johnson, No. 95-5021 (11th Cir. Apr. 28, 1998), https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/19955021.OPN.pdf. ↩︎

12. Department of State, Public Notice 2206, 60 Fed. Reg. 30151 (June 7, 1995), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1995-06-07/pdf/95-13834.pdf. ↩︎

13. Robert Parry, "Iraqgate: Confession and Cover-up," Extra! (FAIR), 1995, as reposted at https://scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0212/S00074.htm. ↩︎

14. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, "Most wanted Chilean arms dealer concealed ties to companies with help from Panama's offshore industry," September 2022, https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2022/09/most-wanted-chilean-arms-dealer-concealed-ties-to-companies-with-help-from-panamas-offshore-industry/. ↩︎

15. "Suprema rechaza extradición Cardoen," Emol, August 24, 2020, https://www.emol.com/noticias/Nacional/2020/08/24/995884/Suprema-rechaza-extradicion-Cardoen.html. ↩︎