The sting | The Gas Man Ep 2

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Speaker 18 Tortoise

Speaker 12 I remember being a kid, sitting on my parents' comfortable sofa in London in the 80s, watching news reports about the Iran-Iraq war on TV.

Speaker 19 Oil facilities on both sides burned as the Iraqi invasion ground to a halt and hostilities entered a phase of sporadic war.

Speaker 12 At that age a lot of it went over my head but I do remember the brutality of it all.

Speaker 17 My entire life

Speaker 12 my worst nightmare was to see a scene like this.

Speaker 12 The unbearably young Iranian soldiers looking terrified.

Speaker 20 How old this guy? Must have 14, 14 or something. Because he's come here to fight.

Speaker 12 Dusty Iraqi tanks rolling across the desert, AK-40 gunshots ringing out in the background.

Speaker 12 More than a million people died during that war.

Speaker 21 For 45 minutes, Saddam Hussein's planes bombarded Halabja with some of the most toxic agents known to science. Nerve gases and old-fashioned mustard gas.

Speaker 12 Chemical weapons were responsible for tens of thousands of those deaths and 100,000 survivors.

Speaker 3 The United States government is convinced that Iraq has used chemical weapons.

Speaker 12 The TV screen was filled with them in their thousands. Children and babies littering the streets, frozen in their tracks, a white film covering their eyes and foam crusted round their mouths.

Speaker 21 The bodies which litter this town were those of people who ran out of their houses to try to escape the gas and then were killed out in the open.

Speaker 12 It filled the air around them and there was no escape. It had this nightmarish quality that conventional weapons didn't.

Speaker 12 And then there were the main players. Their faces were on the evening news almost every night.

Speaker 12 The belligerent Saddam Hussein in his military uniform and mirrored shades,

Speaker 12 and impeccably dressed in a long black robe and crisp white collarless shirts, the severe-looking Ayatollah Khomeini.

Speaker 12 Back then, I didn't really understand what they were both so angry about, but I did get that it was these men calling the shots, making military decisions which would end with those thousands of civilian bodies in the streets.

Speaker 12 What I never saw on TV was any reference to where all the weapons came from.

Speaker 16 You could have leaders who intend and want to gas innocent people. If they don't have the chemicals needed to make the gas, then they can't do it.

Speaker 12 To get the chemicals, those leaders needed someone like the gas man.

Speaker 16 Someone who had the ability to manipulate export controls in the United States to illegally export them.

Speaker 12 People like Peter Valicek are easy to overlook. They're not the ones on TV handing out orders.
They're not there on the battlefield or even in the country where the war's going on.

Speaker 12 They're never at the center of the action. And that's just fine as far as they're concerned.
It means they get to stay in the shadows.

Speaker 16 The fact that Peter Valicek may have worn a suit and may have spent his days sitting behind a desk and talking on the phone, it doesn't diminish the fact that his conduct was essential.

Speaker 16 I certainly thought of Mr. Volicek as an enabler.

Speaker 12 Nowadays, When I take myself back to my childhood sofa watching the war play out on TV, I'm willing the camera to swing round in a different direction.

Speaker 12 To show, for once, those quiet people who handed over the bullets and the chemicals with a smile and an invoice.

Speaker 12 So that's what I'm doing here. Pulling focus on the enablers.
On those who like to sit just outside the frame.

Speaker 12 People like the gas man, Peter Valaschek.

Speaker 12 How does someone like him go about his business?

Speaker 12 The only way to find out is to turn the lens from the leaders at the centre of the drama and point it at what's going on out of shot on the sidelines.

Speaker 12 I'm Chloe Hajimathayo from Tortoise. This is The Gas Man.

Speaker 12 Episode 2: The Sting.

Speaker 12 Around the same time as I'm watching the Iran-Iraq war unfold on my family TV, Special Agent Dennis Bass is at the customs office in Baltimore.

Speaker 12 He's been sifting through the files he lifted when he raided the offices of Alcalak, the company whose chemicals have ended up in Iran.

Speaker 12 He knows that a German man, Peter Valischek, placed the order and lied about the final destination. At the moment, that's all he knows.

Speaker 12 Peter Walisczek is still just a name on an order form, a silhouette against a blank wall.

Speaker 12 But Special Agent Bass is getting closer. He's going to bring him into the light to find out who he really is.
So he starts looking into the guy.

Speaker 6 He had been a pharmacist in Germany, but he did something wrong. I don't remember what it was.
And they revoked his pharmacist license.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 6 he sort of became a jack of all trades. I mean, whatever he could do to make money, but he seemed to be making money.
So

Speaker 6 that was all I knew of him at that point in time.

Speaker 12 What I can't get my head around is how Peter Valicek persuaded this pretty reputable company to sell him such a dangerous chemical.

Speaker 6 He's ordering these things, things and they're telling him this this is great you know tell us you know what you want.

Speaker 12 What Peter Valasczek wants from Alcalak is thiodiglycol used in ink but also to make mustard gas. It's cheap to manufacture so these large orders are bringing in a nice profit.

Speaker 12 The files also reveal that the shipment of this stuff that Denis Bass followed to Iran, it wasn't the only one.

Speaker 12 It turns out the the previous year, Peter Valaschek ordered at least two other shipments of the same restricted chemical, and those made it to Iran without a hitch.

Speaker 6 And they were done gradually and they were done different ways. And I can also see that they've gradually upped the quantities.

Speaker 12 So this isn't just a one-off. It's part of a pattern.

Speaker 6 It wasn't until we looked at the documents that we seized that we realized the magnitude of the violations that took place and the amount of chemical that was exported and where it went and how it went.

Speaker 12 What Special Agent Bass has stumbled on is a chemical trafficking network operating at a level way beyond his initial expectations.

Speaker 12 And at the heart of it, a nondescript second floor office full of chemists and salespeople on the outskirts of Baltimore.

Speaker 12 Really, the investigation's just getting going.

Speaker 12 The key to unraveling this case seems to be Peter Valaszek.

Speaker 12 If only there was a way to question him.

Speaker 12 But he's in Germany, and that's way out of Dennis Bass's jurisdiction. If he wants to speak to the gas man, he's going to have to get creative.

Speaker 12 And so, The investigator hatches a plan to lure Peter Valisek to the United States. To do that, he's going to need some help.
He knows exactly who to recruit.

Speaker 12 The woman in charge of international exports at Alcalac, Leslie Hinkelman.

Speaker 6 Extremely friendly and probably the worst record keeper. Not the brightest woman I ever met, but nice, cooperative, she seemed.

Speaker 12 She's a high school graduate who's somehow gone from typist to export manager in just a few years. And she's the one who filled out the shipping license for Peter Walisczek's order.

Speaker 12 She's scared she might be in trouble. So when Dennis Bass tells her his plan, she's tripping over herself to help.

Speaker 6 And I said, here's what I want you to do.

Speaker 6 I want you to contact Peter Walicek and I want you to offer him to represent Alkalak in all of Europe.

Speaker 6 So initially they offered that to him and he really wasn't that keen about it.

Speaker 12 No dice. Peter Walicek just doesn't seem bothered with this offer.
He's clearly got bigger fish to fry. He's not interested in being a salesman for a company like Alcalab.

Speaker 12 But Special Agent Bass and Leslie Hinkelman are not going to give up that easily.

Speaker 6 So then I said, Tell him you'll pay for his trip over here and all his expenses. So we sent him a plane ticket

Speaker 6 and he said,

Speaker 16 Okay, I'm on my way.

Speaker 12 So, one July morning in 1988, a plane takes off from Germany bound for Baltimore. On board is the gas man, Peter Valischek.

Speaker 12 I can't really get my head around why he went to the US. He didn't seem to need a job at Alcalac.
Who knows? Maybe he just couldn't resist an all-expenses paid holiday.

Speaker 12 Back at the customs office, Dennis Bass is chewing his nails.

Speaker 12 He's sent some of his guys down to the airport to wait at arrivals. And as soon as Peter Falaschek clears passport control, he's put in handcuffs.

Speaker 6 I think he was sort of in shock, to be honest with you.

Speaker 16 He was totally shocked.

Speaker 12 Four months after he first started looking into this case, Special Agent Dennis Bass has the gas man in custody.

Speaker 6 And, you know, he's handcuffed, he was brought down to the custom house where we process him, we fingerprint him and photograph him.

Speaker 12 He's pulled it off again.

Speaker 12 He swapped out chemicals for water, followed a shipment halfway across the world, and now he's got this wanted man to come to him, all without ever leaving Baltimore.

Speaker 12 It's pretty audacious.

Speaker 12 And really, this could have so easily been the end of the story.

Speaker 6 Except, it doesn't quite work out that way.

Speaker 12 So, when did you first lay eyes on him?

Speaker 6 Do you remember?

Speaker 6 Hour or so after he was arrested. Yeah, we had like a little lock-up kind of room, and he was sitting in there.
I, you know, told him who I was, and I, you know, explained to him why he was there.

Speaker 12 Peter Valischek's furious he's been arrested.

Speaker 6 He really didn't want to talk

Speaker 6 very much.

Speaker 12 But the wall of silence Dennis Bass meets in that interview room, it gives him the chance to size the German up, to fill in that mysterious silhouette.

Speaker 12 Peter Valiscick's starting to come into focus.

Speaker 12 He's middle-aged, in his mid-40s.

Speaker 6 He was really well-dressed, you know, expensive suit and like reddish-tinted reddish-tinted glasses. He was very chic and stylish, you know, and nice, you know, hair cut and all that.

Speaker 6 But he wasn't happy,

Speaker 6 I can tell you that.

Speaker 12 Martin Himalus is a lawyer based in Baltimore. Back then, he was prosecuting attorney on the case.
And Peter Valisek made an impression on him, too.

Speaker 16 I remember him having sort of a

Speaker 16 general appearance that looked like he was presenting himself as a cool, high-flying businessman.

Speaker 12 I've seen his mug shot from that time. Peter Valaschek stares grim-faced into the camera lens.
He has these large glasses that take up most of his face.

Speaker 12 They must have been pretty on trend back in the 80s.

Speaker 12 But the thing that really gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up is what's behind those glasses.

Speaker 12 His eyes. They look totally empty, void of emotion.

Speaker 12 It could just be a bad photo, but I can't help feeling I'm seeing something sinister.

Speaker 16 Well, first of all, there is no other person who is like Dennis Bass.

Speaker 12 As the prosecuting attorney, Martin Himmelis worked closely with Dennis Bass from the start of the investigation.

Speaker 16 He asked me if I was interested in working on this case with him, this investigation, and I didn't need to hear much more than that it was Dennis.

Speaker 16 He was one of a kind.

Speaker 16 He was just a terrific investigator.

Speaker 12 Good enough to trick Peter Valisek into coming to the U.S.

Speaker 12 But Special Agent Bass can't make him talk. He just just denies knowing his shipment would be used to make mustard gas.

Speaker 6 He said, well, I didn't know that they were going to use it to make chemical weapons, because if I did, I would have charged them more money. You know, that was, I mean, that wasn't his attitude.

Speaker 6 That's what he said. I mean, and he wasn't joking.
At first, I thought maybe he was kidding, but he was serious.

Speaker 6 It was like, I don't care that that's what they're doing, but it would have been worth more money to me had I known that.

Speaker 12 This is the first time I feel like I get a real flavour of who Peter Valaschek is, how he thinks, how he feels.

Speaker 12 Maybe that mugshot wasn't such a bad photo after all.

Speaker 12 The revelation that his business deals could potentially have led to chemical attacks and to those desperate twisted bodies in the streets, it seems to mean nothing to him.

Speaker 12 He's focused on the cold, calculated bottom line. It's a sign of the type of operator Dennis Bass is dealing with.

Speaker 12 But how to get him to spill the beans on the people buying the stuff in Iran?

Speaker 12 It turns out, a few nights in the Baltimore jail will do that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, I would say the city jail was closer to a zoo than, I mean, because it is rough. It's a rough institution.
It's really bad.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I guarantee you he was scared. When we picked him up to bring him to the U.S.
Attorney's Office and to the U.S. Marshals,

Speaker 6 yeah, he was disheveled. And I mean, he just looked beaten down, you know.

Speaker 12 Peter Valischek suddenly has a change of heart.

Speaker 6 He cooperated and told us about all his Iranian friends and how he was ready to give up his mother if he had to keep him out of jail as long as he could or to have the least amount of jail time.

Speaker 12 He commits to helping Dennis Bass in his investigation into the traffic chemicals and even agrees to go undercover to wear a wire if he needs to.

Speaker 12 In return, the state attorney's office dropped some of the charges against him.

Speaker 6 There was no way to charge him with the chemical weapons themselves. The crime is the export violation, and there were additional crimes for falsifying documents and things like that.

Speaker 12 To me, an export violation doesn't seem very satisfying, especially after all that effort. But Martin Himmelis says these kinds of laws are important.

Speaker 16 The regulations were designed to ensure that this chemical, which in the wrong hands could be used to gas civilians and violate international law, commit war crimes.

Speaker 16 These regulations were designed to prevent that. And they had been violated in a way that was intended to accomplish exactly that, to obtain the supplies needed to make mustard gas.

Speaker 12 Peter Valiszek agrees to plead guilty to the lesser charges, and he's giving them lots of information.

Speaker 12 So the idea was that he would help you get other people who were connected to this case, that the investigation could throw its net wider.

Speaker 16 I don't want to get into the specific details of this investigation, but of course

Speaker 16 there were ongoing investigative activities

Speaker 16 and there was.

Speaker 12 Even after so many years, he's still cagey about the details. They have Peter Valischek, but they don't want to stop there.
They want to go higher.

Speaker 12 to go after the handlers who are putting in the orders from Iran.

Speaker 12 And in return, the German is pushing for more concessions.

Speaker 6 His attorney said, if we pay for the hotel and a guard, can we keep him in the hotel across the street from the courthouse? And so we wanted his cooperation and we said, yeah.

Speaker 6 And then he brought his girlfriend over. He had a girlfriend at the time.

Speaker 12 When I first hear this, I'm pretty shocked.

Speaker 12 It's taken so much work to catch him. And now this guy's suddenly out of jail and living it up in a hotel and flying his girlfriend over from Germany.

Speaker 12 Dennis Bass is at pains to explain that Peter Walaschek paid for the ticket himself and he tells me these kinds of deals are pretty common when someone's cooperating and giving investigators good intelligence.

Speaker 6 I mean there have been cases, particularly that I work with DEA, drug cases, where we got large drug smugglers.

Speaker 6 And so DEA might pay to bring their girlfriends over or their wives over just to keep them happy, to keep them cooperate.

Speaker 12 Still, to me, it all seemed like a bit of a risk. In going after those higher up the ladder, are they taking their eyes off the prize they've worked so hard to get?

Speaker 12 Peter Valischek's obviously pleased with his situation.

Speaker 16 He conveyed this sense of being happy that he was who he was, being happy with himself. He had a self-assured air in the way he carried himself, even in the midst of this criminal proceeding.

Speaker 12 Special Agent Bass knows it's dangerous to loosen their grip on Peter Valischek, especially with his girlfriend on the scene.

Speaker 12 So he takes precautions.

Speaker 6 She came over and stayed with him, and we watched her because we were afraid that they still might try to, he might try to flee. And she took a train to Niagara Falls.
On her own.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and we had agents follow her because, you know, Canada is easy to get into. It would be a good place to flee through.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we watched to see if she went to a travel agent or she didn't.

Speaker 12 Peter Valisek's girlfriend isn't planning some great escape. She actually just goes to the bar and gets pretty drunk.

Speaker 12 And Special Agent Bass can breathe a little easier knowing his guys are watching.

Speaker 12 But now the German's got one concession, he's going to want more, and that will prove tricky.

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Speaker 12 The investigation into Peter Valisek's Iranian handlers is coming together nicely. But Dennis Bass hasn't stopped there.
He's looking into the company that sold the chemicals, Alcalac.

Speaker 12 It's a part of the investigation that's intrigued me too.

Speaker 12 When I first started looking into what happened at Alcalac, I was doubtful I'd find anyone to talk to me after all this time.

Speaker 12 We contacted anyone we could find that used to work there. And finally, someone replied.

Speaker 12 David Gleason.

Speaker 6 Alkalac had a good reputation. Basically, you would consider them in the special chemical sector.

Speaker 6 Back in the 80s, he was a manager at alcoholic uh in flocculants for water treatment uh

Speaker 12 he's retired now but as you can hear he's still really into chemicals

Speaker 6 coatings for radiation curing

Speaker 12 not only does david gleason remember the incident he was actually one of a group of senior staff who gave the green light for the deal with peter valisek's company i'd been contacted by them by telephone and agreed to meet with them.

Speaker 12 I immediately wonder if one of them could have been Peter Valischek.

Speaker 6 But as I recall, there were three of them.

Speaker 12 Were the individuals Americans or were they from abroad, do you remember?

Speaker 6 No, they were German.

Speaker 12 It's frustrating, but David Gleason can't say for certain whether Peter Valisczyk was in the room. Perhaps he sent some people to set up the account with Alcalac on his behalf.

Speaker 12 If it was him, he didn't stand out. But the former Alcalac manager does remember the order.
They were interested in buying a lot of thiodiglycol.

Speaker 6 We spent a lot of time quizzing and discussing that exact issue that we had not seen any

Speaker 6 usage of that size.

Speaker 12 An order that size was rare. Usually factories making ink might buy five or six barrels at a time.
Peter Valaschek's final order was for 430 barrels.

Speaker 12 So it stood out to the team.

Speaker 12 And that makes me wonder why they didn't realize that something was so clearly wrong and put a stop to it.

Speaker 12 Sitting in that meeting, David Gleason and his colleagues know that the chemical could be used to make mustard gas.

Speaker 12 They see all these red flags, but the Germans insist there's nothing to be concerned about.

Speaker 12 Did it raise any further alarms or was that enough? Just somebody saying that seemed to be enough for the order to go ahead?

Speaker 6 I guess you would say that we took them at their faith and worked out a business arrangement.

Speaker 12 The company would later issue a statement saying that no one at Alkalak knew the chemical was to be diverted to Iran.

Speaker 12 But someone at Alkalak had to have known it wasn't going to Europe because the only way to get a mustard gas precursor to a sanctioned country is by fudging the details on the shipping forms.

Speaker 12 And Dennis Bass thinks he knows who at Alcalac had a hand in that. He just needs some help to prove it.

Speaker 12 So he contacts Telex, a wire service used a lot at that time. He wants to see the original messages between Peter Valicek and Alcalac.

Speaker 12 He has a hunch that one of the wires he picked up in his raid at the company has been altered.

Speaker 12 When he gets the originals, it's there in black and white, a direct message between Peter Valischek and Leslie Hinkelman, the ever-so-helpful export manager who helped him carry out the sting operation to get the German to the US.

Speaker 12 In the original wire, Leslie Hinkelman discusses trying to obscure where the order was really heading.

Speaker 12 She'd edited her copy of the telex to hide the truth before handing it over with her other files to Dennis Bass.

Speaker 12 Leslie Hinkelman admits she did try to help the order get past customs, but she says she only did it because the customer, Peter Valisek, asked her to. She just wanted to be helpful.

Speaker 12 And she's adamant she never knew the order was going to end up in Iran.

Speaker 12 Why do you think she did that?

Speaker 6 I can't answer what her motivations were.

Speaker 6 All I can tell you was that she

Speaker 6 was very,

Speaker 6 I guess, I don't know,

Speaker 6 very thoughtful in trying to see the customers were taken care of.

Speaker 12 We wanted to talk to Leslie Hinkelman, but she says she doesn't want to rake up a difficult time in her life. Eventually, she's sentenced to 18 months' probation.

Speaker 12 Years later, she'll say she wasn't the only person at Alcalak who knew what was going on, that she tried to flag the dodgy shipments to her superiors, and as far as she understood, they deliberately looked the other way.

Speaker 12 But Martin Himmelis, the prosecutor, never has enough evidence to bring any other Alcalac employees to court.

Speaker 16 It was difficult to put your finger on any single person

Speaker 16 who had all of the knowledge that would have been needed to be guilty of a crime. In law enforcement, the goal is always to charge individuals whenever possible rather than just corporations.

Speaker 16 But in this case, we reluctantly concluded that the conduct was fundamentally corporate at Alcollac and not individual.

Speaker 12 Instead, the company pleads guilty to an export violation and agrees to pay a fine of almost a million dollars.

Speaker 12 After so many decades, I wonder whether David Gleason has any regrets. You felt like you'd done your job properly.

Speaker 6 At that point in time, I would say yes, we did.

Speaker 12 And now?

Speaker 6 Hindsight's 2020.

Speaker 6 I suppose if you look at it from

Speaker 6 a hindsight position, we probably should have done a better job in

Speaker 6 investigating the actual usage.

Speaker 12 Whether inadvertently or through naivety, David Gleason and Leslie Hinkelman and all the others at Alcalac who gave the green light for the shipment were enablers.

Speaker 12 You find them everywhere. People who defer to others even when they have a feeling something's not right.
Because they want to please their bosses or the customer or they're hoping for that promotion.

Speaker 12 They might not have bad intentions, but the harm's done just the same.

Speaker 12 Peter Valicek, he is not in this category. The gas man is a very different type of enabler.

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Speaker 12 At this point, he's still in custody under the watchful eye of a police guard. But he's pretty comfortable.
He's sitting in his hotel room in Baltimore, his girlfriend's there.

Speaker 12 All things considered, his luck has turned.

Speaker 6 You know, he just thought he was better than everybody else. He was a real cold guy.
I mean, you know, there's some defendants I've had in cases that, you know, I've gotten to know and I like them.

Speaker 6 I mean, heroin smugglers,

Speaker 6 they're bad people criminally, but personality wise. I can remember a guy, they put him in a witness protection program.
And so they gave him a new identity.

Speaker 6 And now he's smuggling heroin again under the new identity. But he cooperated.
So we put him in a hotel. He was the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.
And so we take turns watching him in the hotel.

Speaker 6 And Rich, my partner, was watching him on a Sunday. And he liked him so much.
He said, Booney, have you ever eaten turkey? And he said, no. He said, it's Father's Day.
My wife's making a turkey.

Speaker 6 Go in, shower up. I'll take you to my house and you'll have turkey.
Unheard of.

Speaker 16 So he says, okay, thanks, Rich.

Speaker 6 Goes in. And Rich is waiting, waiting.
He doesn't come out.

Speaker 6 He says to the maid, give me the passkey. Opens the door.
He sees a knot behind the bathroom door. And Boone had hung himself and he was dead.

Speaker 6 And we were sad about this guy. He was a nice guy.
We were eating, you know, watching him and staying with him. And we just got to like the guy.

Speaker 6 I mean, you know, Peter Wildczek was not that kind of guy. If he had hung himself up, I wouldn't have lost a wink of sleep, believe me.

Speaker 12 The feeling, it turns out, is mutual.

Speaker 6 I hate Americans. A good American is a dead American.

Speaker 12 In all his hours of interviews, Dennis Bass never really got to understand Peter Valischek. He was more concerned with how his orders happened.

Speaker 12 I want to go one step further to understand not just how he did it, but why he did it and how he feels about it now. And for that, there's only one person who can help.

Speaker 12 After more than 35 years, I've persuaded that enabler to step out of the shadows, to tell his side of the story.

Speaker 12 Coming up in episode three,

Speaker 12 we meet the gas man.

Speaker 6 And then I was waiting for that. The judges are saying what we will do with it.

Speaker 12 Trial, you were waiting for the trial.

Speaker 6 I was not waiting

Speaker 6 because FBI and the Americans are stupid.

Speaker 6 I was escaping.

Speaker 27 Thanks for listening to The Gas Man. It's reported by Chloe Hajimethayu and produced by me, Claudia Williams.
It's written by both of us.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 With thanks to 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 27 You can listen to our previous investigations right here on Tortoise Investigates while you wait for the next episode.

Speaker 27 And to hear more from our award-winning newsroom, search for Tortoise wherever you get your podcasts.

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