The World's Most Dangerous Man

From Baltimore to Baghdad

Dennis Bass was feeling good. The special agent for the U.S. Customs Service had put his reputation on the line to track 120 tons of poison-gas chemicals sent illegally from Baltimore through ports halfway around the world to Iran. Now, he could laugh, for his men had filled the chemical drums with water instead. "Can you imagine how the Iranians felt when they opened them up and all they had was water," Bass mused. "Maybe even the Ayatollah found out."

When Bass searched the offices of the chemical manufacturer, however, he got a nasty surprise. Documents buried in the files of Alcolac International, located in Baltimore, showed that Bass and his colleagues had missed a second shipment of chemicals used in the production of mustard gas. Nearly 300 barrels of the stuff, 520 tons, had gone not to Iran, but to Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq. "Here's a company in Baltimore," Bass said in disgust, "that's supplying both sides of a war effort."

Even with search warrants and a trip to Switzerland, it took Bass nearly a year to unravel Alcolac's web of dealings with Iraq. When he did, he found a network that stretched from Switzerland to Japan to the U.S. to Singapore, with a number of stops in between. It all began with Frans Van Anraat, a mysterious European businessman who ran a Singapore company that bought and sold chemicals. In 1984, Bass says, Van Anraat was introduced to Charles Tanaka, an export-import agent in Japan. Van Anraat was looking for a chemical called thiodiglycol, a key ingredient in mustard gas. Tanaka found some in Japan, and shipped it to Europe for Van Anraat, who sent it on to Iraq.

But in early 1987, as Iran and Iraq bombarded each other with chemical weapons, thiodiglycol became scarce. Tanaka couldn't get enough from Japan to satisfy Van Anraat and Iraq, and Iran wanted it, too. Tanaka turned to America, a riskier proposition because by then the U.S. had banned such shipments. Tanaka quietly called Harold Greenberg, a friend who ran a Brooklyn sheet-metal export business, and Greenberg sent his partner Nick Defino out in search of thiodiglycol. Defino got off to a bad start, Bass says, when he mistakenly called Morton Thiokol, a giant chemical producer. Defino started by asking to buy "thiokol." "You want to buy our company?" came the response. Eventually, Defino got things straightened out and hooked up with Alcolac. Up until then, says Bass, Alcolac sold only small amounts of thiodiglycol, which is also used in making ballpoint pens. The Defino-Greenberg offer was very attractive. They wanted to broker hundreds of tons, a million dollars' worth. Their cut would be 1 cent a pound.

Government documents show that Alcolac export manager Leslie Hinkleman and the brokers considered shipping it to Monrovia, Liberia, or to a nonexistent company in Antwerp. They finally settled on "Western Europe," labeling the chemical "textile additive." Where it really went, Bass says, Hinkleman didn't ask. Then, an Alcolac accountant heard that U.S. companies were illegally sending thiodiglycol to Iraq. He voiced concern, and top company officials stopped the shipments when they could not determine precisely where the chemical was going. The shipments to Iran continued, Bass believes, because the brokers' papers showed a legal destination—Singapore. In the end, federal charges were brought for export violations. Greenberg, Defino and Hinkleman pleaded guilty to one count each, and Alcolac could be fined up to $1 million.

But how to catch Tanaka and Van Anraat? Tanaka, it turned out, was easy. Customs had Greenberg tell Tanaka the coast was clear to return to America to sell Japanese fingerprint technology, of all things, to police here. When Tanaka stepped off the plane, he was nabbed. He later pleaded guilty. Van Anraat remains at large in Europe.