Guy Lawson Arms And The Dudes

Pot heads turning into the world's most famous gun runners. From the iHeart Radio Studio I'm Unplugged and Totally Uncut with the man that investigated the true story. Guy Lawson The tale journalist Guy Lawson tells in ARMS AND THE DUDES: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History (June 9, 2015/$27.95 hardcover) is so strange it can only be true. The story became front page news at the time it occurred, but a full account has never been accurately reported until now. The book’s subtitle might sound like a high concept premise for a movie; in fact, ARMS AND THE DUDES is currently being filmed for Warner Brothers by Todd Phillips, director of The Hangover films, with stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller. In 2007, three twenty-something kids from Florida—Efraim Diveroli, David Packouz, and Alex Podrizk—ended up in charge of a $300 million Department of Defense contract to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. Their essential infrastructure in navigating the arcane world of defense contracting consisted of a dive apartment, an Internet connection, a few cell phones, and a steady supply of high-grade marijuana. As part of the deal, the dudes bought cheap surplus Communist bloc ammunition—100 million rounds of AK-47 cartridges originally manufactured in China in the ‘50s and ‘60s. They tried to circumvent a ban on selling Chinese-made arms to the U.S. government by secretly repackaging the rounds in unmarked cardboard boxes and shipping it to Kabul—until they were caught by Pentagon investigators and the scandal turned up on the front page of the New York Times. Or so goes the “official” version of the story The truth behind this official story is far more dark, absurd, and disturbing. As Lawson shows in ARMS AND THE DUDES, as the American government tried to stand up armies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon covertly established itself as the world’s largest gunrunning organization. Using private contractors like the dudes from Florida as middlemen, the American military knowingly purchased weapons from illegal arms dealers—the same men who sell arms to dictators, warlords, and drug traffickers. The United States government hoped to hide this reality in documents sealed in federal court, until Lawson uncovered the whole story. ARMS AND THE DUDES takes readers on an unprecedented voyage into the mysterious and murky world of global arms dealing. The improbable tale of Diveroli, Packouz, and Podrizki includes Russian geopolitical intrigue, a shady Swiss arms dealer, corruption and murder in Albania, and a Pentagon investigation that caused ammunition shortages for the Afghanistan military—all leading to federal indictments for fraud, a Congressional investigation, and a fiasco that shows the American government acting with no respect for international law. It is a tale that the government distorted, manipulated, and tried to bury—until now. ABOUT GUY LAWSON Guy Lawson is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning investigative journalist whose articles on war, crime, culture, and law have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Harper’s, and many other publications. His Rolling Stone article on this story was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He lives in New York with his wife and two daughters. Visit www.GuyLawson.com