The escape | The Gas Man Ep 3

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Speaker 17 Tortoise.

Speaker 17 I mean, did you have an inkling that he knew?

Speaker 15 You know what?

Speaker 18 In the line of work I was in, you suspect everybody's going to do something like that. You don't trust any criminals.
I sure didn't trust him.

Speaker 18 He was a slimy sort of guy, you could tell from the minute I met him.

Speaker 17 The operation to get Peter Valiszek behind bars in the summer of 1988 was massive.

Speaker 17 It involved a global investigation, cooperation between enforcement agencies in the US, Pakistan and Germany, two separate sting operations and months of sifting through piles of documents.

Speaker 17 When the German finally pleaded guilty to selling chemicals that could be used to make mustard gas, he also agreed to help prosecutors nail his handlers in Iran.

Speaker 17 It was ambitious, but Special Agent Dennis Bass could almost smell the win. He just needed a few more months to tie up the investigation.

Speaker 17 By December, he was getting close.

Speaker 17 But then

Speaker 17 it was all over in a phone call.

Speaker 18 Yeah, the halfway house, you know, reported it. He's gone.

Speaker 17 Peter Valischek had disappeared from the halfway house he was living in while waiting to be sentenced. The authorities had lost him.

Speaker 18 I was more than pissed,

Speaker 18 if I can say it that way.

Speaker 18 I was beyond belief.

Speaker 17 It's been three decades, but clearly it still gets to Dennis Bass.

Speaker 18 And losing him like that, it hurt.

Speaker 17 And even now, he has no idea how Peter Valiscick escaped. There's only one person who can answer that question.

Speaker 17 When Special Agent Bass wanted answers from Peter Valisczek, he tricked him into coming to the US.

Speaker 17 And then a few nights in Baltimore jail helped persuade him to talk.

Speaker 17 I'm going to need a slightly different approach.

Speaker 17 First, I have to find him. So I dig around online.
He's not exactly been discreet. It's obvious he's still in Germany.

Speaker 17 Some more digging and a few calls later, and I'm pretty sure I have his mobile number.

Speaker 17 As far as I can tell, he's never answered any questions about his crimes or his escape, and so I have no idea how he'll react to a call from a journalist.

Speaker 17 I'm desperate to ask him how he found his way out of the US and onto Interpol's most wanted list, how he's evaded justice for so many years,

Speaker 17 and most importantly, whether he feels any remorse for his role in helping a brutal regime create chemical weapons.

Speaker 15 Alright, I hit call. Okay, here we go.

Speaker 17 Hello, Mr. Valasczek.

Speaker 17 On the phone, I suggest an interview. I say I think he's had a fascinating life and that I want to know more about it.

Speaker 17 He seems amused by the fact that I'm prepared to come all the way to Germany to meet him, but he tells me he has been thinking of writing a book about his life and agrees that he has a good story to tell.

Speaker 15 No, thanks for you.

Speaker 17 Is Siegberg bigger than Cologne?

Speaker 17 So that's how I end up in a taxi with Claudia, the producer who's making this series with me, on our way to the small German city of Siegberg.

Speaker 17 It's very picturesque, lots of traditional German houses, little castle up on a hill,

Speaker 17 a very quiet place.

Speaker 17 Most of what I've heard about Peter Valisczek so far has been what Special Agent Bass has told me. that when he arrested him in the 1980s he was cold and calculating.

Speaker 17 The only other information I have is from, of all places, a profile he created on a dating site called Russian Match.

Speaker 17 It's from a few decades ago. He was using a fake surname then.
But the photo of the man with the big warm smile, it's definitely him. He describes himself as

Speaker 17 An interesting and honest businessman and pharmacist with own company who likes nature, animals, theatre, travelling, dining outside, cozy home, and family life. And perhaps you.

Speaker 17 Driving through Siegberg, on the way to the interview, I'm struggling to reconcile these two quite different and admittedly outdated versions of him. Are either of them the real gas man?

Speaker 15 Great.

Speaker 15 Thank you.

Speaker 17 To be honest, Claudia and I aren't sure what kind of reception to expect.

Speaker 17 We've not forgotten what happened to my friend Mike and his cameraman when they tried to approach Peter Valasczek a decade ago.

Speaker 17 But in the end, all I can think about is that after more than 35 years, we might finally be about to find out how he got away with it.

Speaker 17 Are you happy to start the interview?

Speaker 15 John, happy girls. I can tell you a story.

Speaker 17 I'm Chloe Hajimathay. From Tortoise, this is The Gas Man.

Speaker 17 Episode 3: The Escape.

Speaker 1 Hey friends, it's Nikayla from the podcast Side Hustle Pro.

Speaker 4 I'm always looking for ways to keep my kids entertained without screens, and the Yoto Mini has been a total lifesaver.

Speaker 5 My kids are obsessed.

Speaker 6 Yoto is a screen-free audio player where kids just pop in a card and listen.

Speaker 8 Hours of stories, music, podcasts, and more, and no screens or ads.

Speaker 9 With hundreds of options for ages 0 to 12, it's the perfect gift they'll go back to again and again.

Speaker 12 Check it out at yotoplay.com.

Speaker 13 Y-O-T-O-P-L-A-Y dot com.

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Speaker 16 Momentous works with the best brains in human science to create every formula, and every batch is made of pure ingredients, tested for safety, and does not contain fillers.

Speaker 16 So you get the best long-term results possible. Creatine isn't just for muscle gains, it's essential daily fuel for your brain, body, and long-term performance.

Speaker 16 Momentous Creopure Creatine is backed by leading performance experts like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr.
Stacey Sims.

Speaker 16 Sourced exclusively in Germany, Creopure sets the gold standard for creatine, delivering the purest form creatine monohydrate that's rigorously washed and never cut with fillers.

Speaker 16 With over 2,5-star reviews, over 112,000 customers have seen the results firsthand. With Momentous, the fundamentals are done right.

Speaker 16 Right now, Momentous is offering our listeners up to 35% off your first subscription order with promo code ACAST.

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Speaker 15 This is Claudia. Ah.

Speaker 17 She's the producer.

Speaker 15 Producer. Company.
Thank you.

Speaker 17 For weeks I've been thinking about this mysterious figure and what I picture is that sharply dressed businessman in his late 40s, the one who stared into the camera for his mugshot with those unsettlingly vacant eyes.

Speaker 17 Now he's about to turn 81.

Speaker 17 What's left of his white hair is cut back very short and he's wearing a slightly grubby track suit.

Speaker 17 He still has the glasses, but the large, thick frames with the reddish tint have been replaced with a more discreet, wire-rimmed pair. There's no sign of the aggressive man who confronted Mike.

Speaker 17 He's actually pretty friendly.

Speaker 17 He whisks us through a side gate and up some stairs to a small office attached to his home.

Speaker 17 I don't know what I imagined it to look like, but definitely not this.

Speaker 15 Stalin! Come in.

Speaker 15 Pictures of Stalin.

Speaker 17 At the top of the stairs, hanging just above the entrance to Peter Valasczek's office, is a huge portrait of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin.

Speaker 17 When he opens the door, there are speakers blaring out meditation bells and chanting, and we realize Stalin's just the beginning.

Speaker 17 He goes off to get us some water, leaving us alone for a moment.

Speaker 15 Maybe just while we're here, just

Speaker 17 describe to me just what you can see while we're here.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 17 Half the walls are old, really quite beautiful golden orthodox icons of the Madonna and baby Jesus.

Speaker 17 And surrounding all of that, on top of all the cupboards and all along the windowsill, are these small busts of Lenin,

Speaker 17 Chairman Mao, Karl Marx, and Stalin and Trotsky?

Speaker 17 It's a kind of strange cross between a

Speaker 17 church and some kind of communist era museum.

Speaker 17 It's a nightmare of competing ideologies.

Speaker 17 The office is dusty, there's stuff everywhere. Statuettes of bulldogs.
And then there's a whole load of stuffed birds, a massive stuffed crow a puffin and on the other wall a duck and a pheasant

Speaker 15 this is from island not allowed to bring it in anymore in case

Speaker 17 okay but when you brought it it was okay

Speaker 15 they didn't see it

Speaker 15 sometimes

Speaker 15 custom is not looking in the airport and sometimes it was looking

Speaker 17 taking advantage when customs inspectors aren't looking ah yes that sounds familiar. It's the gas man, all right.

Speaker 17 Sitting in his claustrophobic office, I'm trying to work out what all this says about him. Communist?

Speaker 15 What is this?

Speaker 15 I see Mao, I see. I was before

Speaker 15 a very hard communist.

Speaker 15 You can see this, you can see the flags. The flags are

Speaker 15 from

Speaker 15 1945

Speaker 15 from Russia, yeah.

Speaker 15 My wife is also a communist.

Speaker 17 Is she Russian?

Speaker 15 Yes, she's Russian.

Speaker 17 We start setting up for the interview, working out how the three of us are going to sit in the office.

Speaker 22 Yeah, could you move slightly forwards? Is that okay?

Speaker 17 And that means Claudia is getting out microphones and asking Peter Valiszczek to move around a bit.

Speaker 15 I shouldn't touch a lady.

Speaker 17 Not too close.

Speaker 17 He keeps suggesting it might be better if I sit on his knee.

Speaker 15 But you will not sit here, no? No.

Speaker 17 It's not the first time I've been faced with a sleazy man during an interview, but given the gravity of the conversation, I thought he might take it all a bit more seriously.

Speaker 17 After all, I'm here to try and understand his role in an international chemical trafficking network.

Speaker 17 So I ask him to start at the beginning. How did he get into the chemical trade?

Speaker 15 My beginning of my life was in a small village in Germany when we were kids.

Speaker 17 Growing up, the young Peter wants to study physics or astronomy, but his father won't let him. Instead, his only options are pharmacy or law.
And he goes for pharmacy.

Speaker 15 I don't like pharmacy.

Speaker 17 Why? Is it boring?

Speaker 15 Shit.

Speaker 15 Pharmacy is nothing.

Speaker 17 Given where he ends up years later, perhaps law might have been the better option.

Speaker 17 I'm surprised to find out that after his studies, he works as a researcher at a university and even as a part-time high school teacher.

Speaker 17 But his main career is as a pharmacist,

Speaker 17 a pharmacist who can't stand sick people.

Speaker 15 All the old ladies, I could not see them anymore.

Speaker 15 I hate it. I hate it.

Speaker 17 At some point, he struck off and has his license revoked. I haven't been able to find out why.

Speaker 17 But he closes up the shop and starts a wholesale pharmaceutical business.

Speaker 15 Then there was coming this Iranian from the embassy and said, can you make an export? I said, okay, I'm doing it.

Speaker 17 At this point, I haven't asked Peter Valicek anything about his dealings with Tehran.

Speaker 17 And so, sitting there in his office, less than half an hour after meeting him, I'm surprised by his openness.

Speaker 17 He tells me that one day, a man approaches him.

Speaker 17 He's from the Iranian embassy in Germany, and he asks him whether he'd be interested in exporting medicines to Iran.

Speaker 17 It's 1987. Germany is still split between the capitalist West and Communist East.

Speaker 17 While lots of the world's been cutting ties, pulling diplomatic staff and citizens out of the new Islamic Republic, West Germany's become Iran's biggest trading partner.

Speaker 17 It sees the new theocracy as an antidote to the growing socialist threat in the East.

Speaker 17 Perhaps Peter Valicek's communist sympathies don't run that deep, because he agrees to export pharmaceuticals to Iran. But before long, his contact at the embassy is asking him for other things too.

Speaker 15 This is one

Speaker 15 very funny story. Iran was asking me, because I'm a pharmacist and chemist also, for some

Speaker 15 chemicals.

Speaker 17 He jumps at the new business opportunity. What they really want, they tell him, is thiodiglycol.
It's a key ingredient in mustard gas.

Speaker 17 Peter Valisek's happy to oblige.

Speaker 17 His first two orders from the chemical company Alcalac in Baltimore go ahead. Hundreds of barrels of thiodiglycol leave the harbour and end up in Iran.

Speaker 17 Peter Valaschek has no idea that Special Agent Dennis Bass from the Baltimore Customs Office has spotted his third shipment. No idea that the chemicals in the barrels have been switched for water.

Speaker 17 And he still hasn't worked it out when he gets a call from the nice export manager at Alcalac.

Speaker 17 A free trip to America? Well, that doesn't sound so bad.

Speaker 15 They invited me, and I, idiot, was going there. I said, okay, I don't like US, but

Speaker 15 one, two days in New York or so, I want to see it.

Speaker 17 He's still annoyed, he fell for Special Agent Bass's sting operation.

Speaker 15 And I said normally my

Speaker 15 thing was

Speaker 15 a good American is a dead American. And normally not, but okay, I'm doing it, but it was wrong.

Speaker 15 And now I go there in airport.

Speaker 15 You are Peter Walczyk, yes. Come in prison.

Speaker 17 That's the Baltimore jailhouse Dennis Bass was pretty sure helped break him.

Speaker 17 Now, decades later, Peter Valiszek insists his time in jail didn't bother him.

Speaker 15 And who was in a double bet with me? A double murder. Is that why you have killed him?

Speaker 15 Why not?

Speaker 17 Was it scary for you?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 15 He was nice.

Speaker 17 He's watching me gleefully to see if he'll get a rise.

Speaker 15 I'm not so scared.

Speaker 17 I begin to notice something of a pattern. He revels in anything he thinks might seem shocking or sinister to me.
And I just can't tell yet whether it's an attempt to provoke me or just the truth.

Speaker 17 In any case, Peter Valicek says he's surprised to end up in jail because, he insists, he didn't know anything about the export restrictions in the US.

Speaker 17 And you didn't know that it was illegal to export the chemical from...

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 15 Because I told them, I don't know your law

Speaker 15 and know my law. And I was asking, is it

Speaker 15 allowed or not? And here, the customs said, no problem.

Speaker 17 But you didn't know that there's different customs in different countries?

Speaker 15 I was asking an American company and they said no problem.

Speaker 17 It's the same line he stuck to when he was questioned by Special Agent Bass and the prosecutor Martin Himalus.

Speaker 17 He clearly knew enough about what was and wasn't allowed to hide the final destination. You said can I send this to Iran? And they said no problem.

Speaker 15 I told them not to Iran. I said we going first to Greece

Speaker 15 from Greece Greece to Iran. But

Speaker 15 I didn't tell them Iran because when they're hearing Iran,

Speaker 17 so you didn't tell them it was Iran's? No.

Speaker 15 First to me, the chemical.

Speaker 17 I realize if I was expecting some kind of confession or expression of regret, I'm not going to get it from Peter Valisek.

Speaker 17 And now, here we are, back where we left him in Special Agent Bass's story. He's living in a hotel under armed guard.
He's pleaded guilty.

Speaker 17 Some of the charges against him have been dropped in exchange for cooperating with the authorities.

Speaker 17 Still, he's likely to be looking at a couple of years' jail time.

Speaker 17 but not until the rest of the investigation is wrapped up. So his lawyer petitions the court to let him out on full bail.
He's been a model prisoner, and so the judge agrees.

Speaker 17 But there are restrictions. He has to live in a halfway house where there are curfews.

Speaker 17 All the Baltimore halfway houses are full, so the court sends him to neighboring Washington, D.C.

Speaker 18 I was never happy about the arrangement that the judge made to let him be in a halfway house in Washington, D.C., which was even out of my jurisdiction, basically.

Speaker 18 And we certainly didn't have the manpower to keep watch on him.

Speaker 17 A bureaucratic twist of fate removes Peter Valisek out from under the watchful eye of Dennis Bass and his team.

Speaker 17 He's not quite on his own, he has to stick to the halfway house rules, but there's not the same level of security.

Speaker 17 And as though that's not enough, he's given the opportunity to work as a volunteer.

Speaker 15 You can go in a zoo, you can make something with old people, I said, no, old people not

Speaker 15 no.

Speaker 17 And how long did you work in the zoo?

Speaker 15 For four months.

Speaker 17 Actually, Peter Volaseczek's English is a bit misleading here. It wasn't a zoo.

Speaker 15 Yeah,

Speaker 18 he worked in the basement of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the agency whose laws he violated in the aquarium.
He was like a volunteer there.

Speaker 15 Why do they have an aquarium?

Speaker 18 It's the U.S. government.
They do a lot of strange things.

Speaker 18 It was just something they had in the basement or the first floor at their building. And that's where he worked,

Speaker 18 which was across the street from U.S. Customs Headquarters at the time.

Speaker 18 Yeah, bizarre.

Speaker 17 In any case, that's where Peter Valisek went every day when he left the halfway house.

Speaker 15 I like it because I I like to work with the animals.

Speaker 15 This was good.

Speaker 15 And meanwhile I have time to look how I can escape.

Speaker 17 It turns out that it's not just Special Agent Bass who's into hatching clever plans. It's at this point that Peter Valaschek decides he's not going to stick around and do his time.

Speaker 17 And why would he? He's out on the streets free to do as he pleases.

Speaker 17 It's a risk because if he's caught, he'll be sent straight to prison. He's already facing a couple of years' jail time, and if his escape plan fails, they'll increase his sentence.

Speaker 17 But he's confident he can pull it off because, with Dennis Bass so far away in another state, he's been able to get some help from his friends.

Speaker 15 I was going to a normal telephone cell with coins and

Speaker 15 that they are not

Speaker 15 checking.

Speaker 15 It was funny.

Speaker 17 The Iranians.

Speaker 17 He's been talking to them using a nearby phone box. They sort out everything.

Speaker 15 Very simple. With another passport.

Speaker 17 Well, how did you get the other passport? It's not easy to find.

Speaker 15 From Iran.

Speaker 17 Iran gave you a second passport.

Speaker 17 Different name.

Speaker 17 Right.

Speaker 17 And you just took the aeroplane from America to Germany?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 17 Before we started this investigation, Special Agent Bass and US law enforcement had no idea how Peter Valischek escaped from the US.

Speaker 17 All they knew was that one day he didn't come back to the halfway house. But in the end, it was simple.
He bought a ticket in the same fake name that was on his new passport and boarded a plane.

Speaker 17 And just like that, he was gone.

Speaker 15 FBI and the Americans are stupid.

Speaker 15 They are stupid.

Speaker 18 Listen, he got caught. He got lured over here.
He spent time in jail. He spent time under house arrest.
He spent time in a halfway house. So I wasn't totally stupid.

Speaker 18 I wasn't the dumbest guy in the world. But I didn't get the end result that I wanted.

Speaker 19 And so, yeah.

Speaker 17 From the moment the court granted Peter Valisek full bail, Special Agent Bass has been dreading something like this. But when the court comes, it's still devastating.

Speaker 18 I can't say I was shocked, but I was pretty upset. We all were.
I mean, you know, just getting him over here was a big accomplishment and

Speaker 18 losing him like that, it hurt. It was really,

Speaker 18 you know, you hate to do a really successful investigation and then one of the most most culpable people in the whole case is in your hands and then he's not.

Speaker 17 Under normal circumstances, if a convicted felon escaped to another country, the US government would apply for them to be picked up and extradited to face justice.

Speaker 17 But Germany doesn't extradite its own nationals. And so, even though he knows where Peter Valisek is, there's absolutely nothing Denis Bass can do.

Speaker 17 So for now, at least, Peter Valiszek goes back to business as usual.

Speaker 17 Of course, he's still a fugitive from justice as far as the American system is concerned.

Speaker 17 So you might think that Peter Valischek would want to keep a low profile, to fade into the background for a bit.

Speaker 17 But he just can't help himself. He picks up the phone.

Speaker 17 You called him from Germany?

Speaker 15 Yes, I said.

Speaker 15 Where are you?

Speaker 17 I said I'm sitting on my chair in my office.

Speaker 15 You escaped, you disappear?

Speaker 15 Please tell me how you could do it.

Speaker 23 I said, you know what? Listen, you'll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.

Speaker 23 And if that's what you want, then so be it.

Speaker 18 I mean, I had no respect for him. He wasn't even man enough to face the music for what he did.

Speaker 17 Peter Valischek also called Martin Himalus. He says he had a bone to pick with him.
When he was being questioned back in the States, the prosecutor had called him by his first name.

Speaker 17 Not respectful enough, apparently.

Speaker 15 And he was always saying, Hi, Peter, how are you doing? I said,

Speaker 15 my God, I'm not Peter. I'm Mr.
Valaszek.

Speaker 15 This is not nice, what you are saying. And then I was here

Speaker 15 escaping and then

Speaker 15 I phoned with him and said, hi Marty, how you doing?

Speaker 19 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 24 It's unbelievable to me that that was his thinking and that he recalls that.

Speaker 17 Martin Himmelis remembers the call quite differently.

Speaker 17 He says the German hadn't called to brag, but to beg for his help.

Speaker 24 He told me that he wanted me to represent him, that he was in Germany, but he was willing to come back because all of this had just been a terrible misunderstanding. There was no misunderstanding.

Speaker 24 He had committed a very serious crime.

Speaker 24 So it was not a long conversation.

Speaker 17 Peter Walaschek has got away scot-free. So why should he care about the charges back in the US?

Speaker 17 Well, because although he's safe in his hometown, the moment he sets foot outside Germany, he's a wanted fugitive with a profile on Interpol's red list.

Speaker 17 An alert to police around the world that this is an internationally wanted criminal. Dennis Bass is right.
Anytime he wants to travel, he will be looking over his shoulder.

Speaker 17 Because most countries around the world do have an extradition agreement with America.

Speaker 17 Special Agent Bass is confident all he has to do is sit back and wait, because it's only a matter of time before Peter Valaschek slips up.

Speaker 17 The cat hasn't given up on this mouse just yet.

Speaker 1 Hey friends, it's Nikayla from the podcast Side Hustle Pro.

Speaker 4 I'm always looking for ways to keep my kids entertained without screens, and the Yoto Mini has been a total lifesaver.

Speaker 5 My kids are obsessed.

Speaker 6 Yoto is a screen-free audio player where kids just pop in a card and listen.

Speaker 8 Hours of stories, music, podcasts, and more, and no screens or ads.

Speaker 9 With hundreds of options for ages 0 to 12, it's the perfect gift they'll go back to again and again.

Speaker 12 Check it out at yotoplay.com, Y-O-T-O-P-L-A-Y dot com.

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Speaker 17 Back in Siegberg, sitting in his strange office under the watchful eye of all those Soviet ghosts, Peter Valischek's been happy to tell me how he sent these dangerous chemicals to Iran and to laugh about his escape.

Speaker 17 But until now, we haven't really touched on how he justifies all this to himself.

Speaker 17 Did you have any worry if the Iranians would make chemical weapons from the chemical that you sent them?

Speaker 15 I didn't know that this chemical was a dual-use chemical.

Speaker 17 But you knew it was possible?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 17 But you are a chemist. You must have known that it has many uses.

Speaker 15 I'm not

Speaker 15 in touch with chemical weapons.

Speaker 17 If he genuinely didn't know how the chemicals could be used, does he feel bad about it now that he does?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 17 You have no regrets.

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 17 So your conscience is clear.

Speaker 17 Conscience?

Speaker 15 Shall I look it up?

Speaker 22 Yeah, let me see if I can see it.

Speaker 17 We pause to find the German word for conscience to make sure he understands.

Speaker 17 And he's not happy when he realizes what it is.

Speaker 15 Have the Americans

Speaker 15 a Givissen

Speaker 15 what they are delivering to Iraq?

Speaker 15 I was on the border where they are fighting. I saw it.
I saw this with

Speaker 17 the chemical weapons.

Speaker 15 Yes, I saw it.

Speaker 15 The Iranians were dead. Hundreds.

Speaker 17 At some point, Peter Valaschek says, his friends in Iran took him to the battlefield and showed him the devastation caused by the chemical weapons the Iraqis were using.

Speaker 15 They invited me. They said, look, look where the dead people are.

Speaker 17 So during the war, you went to Iran and you went to the.

Speaker 15 To the border where they were fighting. Yeah.

Speaker 25 They were very blunt about it, about the kind of the process of what happens after you ingest chemical weapons. And then the pictures were prominently featured in the news media.

Speaker 25 I still, it's etched in my memory.

Speaker 25 I'm Husbenai. I'm an associate professor of international studies at Indiana University, and I am a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies at MIT.

Speaker 17 Husbandai's childhood in Tehran was defined by memories of the war with Iraq.

Speaker 25 I remember bomb shelters, having half days at school, water rations, electricity rations.

Speaker 25 I remember a lot of revolutionary propaganda, a deep enmity towards Saddam and Iraqi army at the time, and the backers of

Speaker 25 his regime, especially the United States.

Speaker 17 It's hard to believe now, but in those days, Saddam Hussein and Iraq were seen by the West as the the good guys.

Speaker 17 Despite the fact that it was Saddam Hussein who'd invaded Iran, America and Europe continued to sell him weapons for years after the war started.

Speaker 17 That's why Peter Valaschek asks whether the Americans have a govissin, a conscience.

Speaker 17 The Iranian regime couldn't compete in terms of weaponry, so it used what it saw as its biggest strength, its much larger population, enlisting ever-younger boys to go to the battlefront.

Speaker 17 Children as young as 12 made to cross minefields to clear the way for more experienced soldiers.

Speaker 25 There was always murmurs of it when I was growing up in Iran that the Revolutionary Guards used drugs to inject the kids right before they went to clear the minefields, so that they were in a kind of a state of euphoria.

Speaker 25 They didn't know exactly what was happening.

Speaker 17 It was a brutal war, and both sides were committing hideous human rights violations.

Speaker 17 But it's not until a couple of years into the war that the first images of chemical attacks start appearing in Iranian government media.

Speaker 25 The Iranian government was making every effort possible to register these chemical attacks at the United Nations, and it wanted resolutions passed against Saddam to show that he was really

Speaker 25 not just capturing territory, was hell-bent

Speaker 25 kind of annihilating the local populations.

Speaker 17 All the attacks were coming from the Iraqi side, but the West was reluctant to criticise its ally, and Iran was becoming increasingly exasperated by the lack of acknowledgement.

Speaker 17 In a desperate bid to bring attention to the issue, the regime began flying out survivors to European countries for treatment.

Speaker 26 The Princess Grace Hospital in London is one of half a dozen European centers where doctors have been trying to determine exactly what has caused the damage to their Iranian patients.

Speaker 17 It was hugely embarrassing for the governments who'd been supporting Saddam Hussein when newspapers began publishing photographs of victims in local hospitals.

Speaker 17 In response to all the awful images of dead civilians, many countries, including the US and Germany, imposed restrictions on selling the chemicals that could be used to create these types of weapons, including thiodiglycol.

Speaker 17 It's possible Iran didn't even have a serious chemical weapons program before it approached Peter Valaschek.

Speaker 17 So the orders they purchased from him marked a potential escalation in a war that had already killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Speaker 17 And the chemicals were delivered after the restrictions. So his explanation that he didn't realize he was breaking US laws because it was okay in Germany, It doesn't hold water.

Speaker 15 Is it allowed to?

Speaker 17 If you're selling these types of potentially dangerous products, you should know how contentious they are and whether or not they've been restricted.

Speaker 15 Here they said no problem, but I didn't know.

Speaker 17 But it's when we turn back to talking about that trip he took to the front lines on the Iran-Iraq border that it feels like I'm finally inching closer to understanding how he justifies all this to himself.

Speaker 17 When the Iranians took you to the battlefront, you saw

Speaker 15 only an Iranian state.

Speaker 17 But you saw soldiers, but you also saw women, children, old people.

Speaker 17 If the Iranians make chemical weapons, they will also kill women, children, old people.

Speaker 17 And you don't feel bad about that.

Speaker 15 Who started it? It was the Iraqians who were starting it.

Speaker 17 He seems to justify it to himself by saying he was helping the right side, the underdogs.

Speaker 17 Even if that's true, more chemical weapons would only increase indiscriminate human suffering, on whichever side.

Speaker 17 He still denies knowing how the product he was shipping would be used, but Peter Valiszczek says even if he had known how his chemicals would be used, he wouldn't have done anything different.

Speaker 15 I can tell you if I would know now,

Speaker 15 it is for Iran

Speaker 15 and they make chemical weapons. I would say make it.

Speaker 15 I would say these are my friends, I would help them.

Speaker 17 If he's trying to paint himself as some kind of activist on behalf of Iranian survivors, it doesn't wash with me.

Speaker 17 I've not forgotten his response to Denis Bass when he was first questioned in the 1980s. He said, if he'd known his chemicals would be used in weapons, he'd have charged the Iranians more.

Speaker 17 And his story keeps changing.

Speaker 15 He was saying we need it for this company. I know this company.
I was there and I've seen what they were doing for this

Speaker 15 ink for this.

Speaker 15 What they are doing besides, I didn't know.

Speaker 15 And I was not interested.

Speaker 17 Sometimes he says he didn't even know his chemicals could be used for weapons. Other times he tells me he knew the Iranians were making weapons, but he was told his chemicals weren't involved.

Speaker 17 When I press him, he says it was a long time ago and he can't remember.

Speaker 15 This is so.

Speaker 15 This is

Speaker 15 not an old story, it's an ancient story.

Speaker 17 And I have to be fair to him, it was.

Speaker 17 But he was the one who brought it up. And anyway, these aren't small business details.
This is a moment that changed his life.

Speaker 17 I feel like he's justifying his involvement in whatever way makes the most sense, depending on the question, trying to wriggle his way out of responsibility.

Speaker 17 Ultimately, I think this was all about money for him.

Speaker 15 When you make business,

Speaker 15 you make it with

Speaker 15 government, and then you know that

Speaker 15 money is coming.

Speaker 17 It was good business. And here's the thing.
His handlers are still his friends. Particularly the man who first made contact with him from the Iranian embassy in Germany.
What's his name?

Speaker 17 And is he a friend, now, old friend?

Speaker 15 Old friend.

Speaker 17 He confirms they've stayed in touch. Peter Valischek and Saeed Harim Ali Sabani, the man Special Agent Bass was hoping to catch.

Speaker 17 Peter Valischek had been offered a plea deal and bail release for information about this guy. When the Iranian diplomat realised US law enforcement was onto him, he jumped on a flight back to Tehran.

Speaker 17 Dennis Bass had wanted both of them, and he ended up with neither.

Speaker 17 But I'm intrigued to find out that Peter Valischek's still in regular contact with Ali Sabani.

Speaker 17 Given that friendship and all the trouble the Iranians went to to get him a fake passport, it makes me wonder whether Peter Valischek's business dealings with Iran ended with his arrest.

Speaker 17 I was very often in Iran, I was in North Korea, and so the countries you did business with are North Korea, Iran, China, China,

Speaker 15 then

Speaker 17 Cuba, Cuba,

Speaker 15 Countries, what the Americans say

Speaker 15 they are the bad countries.

Speaker 17 I came to meet Peter Valischek hoping for some kind of clarity about who he is and why he did what he did.

Speaker 17 But sitting in front of him, I feel like I've just opened a whole new door in this investigation. Now I have even more questions than when I first got here.

Speaker 17 What's he been doing all these years since he fled the US?

Speaker 18 He wasn't laughing when he used to call me when he just got out of jail in Zagreb and when he was getting out of jail in Austria. I don't think he was laughing so hard then.

Speaker 17 Is he still exporting chemicals to Iran or to other pariah states? Was he the only person doing deals like this?

Speaker 17 That's next time on The Gas Man.

Speaker 18 It's bad enough what he did, but now he's making it public everywhere that, you know, he was working for the government, and so they charged him with crimes against humanity and some other charges.

Speaker 27 I looked at Ramia. Ramia doesn't cry.

Speaker 27 No noise, no nothing.

Speaker 27 Pale and just had little bit white white stuff coming out of the mouth.

Speaker 27 It was a chemical bomb.

Speaker 22 Thanks for listening to The Gas Man. It's reported by Chloe Hajimathayu and produced by me, Claudia Williams.
It's written by both of us.

Speaker 22 Gary Marshall is the narrative editor and Jasper Corbett is the editor. The sound design is by Hannah Varrell.
Original theme music by Tom Kinsella. This episode was fact-checked by Patricia Clark.

Speaker 22 With thanks to Husbandai, Martin Hahn, Kavita Puri, Matt Russell, and Katie Gunning. You can listen to more episodes today by subscribing to Tortoise Plus or by downloading the Tortoise app.

Speaker 22 You can listen to our previous investigations right here on Tortoise Investigates while you wait for the next episode.

Speaker 22 And to hear more from our award-winning newsroom, search for Tortoise wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 17 Tortoise.

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