* This book will deal primarily with the trade in conventional weapons, large and small, which, unlike weapons of mass destruction, are legitimate tools of government. This includes military vehicles, aircraft, ships, submarines, helicopters, missiles and bombs as well as small arms and ammunition. I will only refer to nuclear weapons as they intersect with the functioning of the arms industry and the trade in the goods it produces, which I refer to as ‘the arms trade’.

† This figure varies considerably from year to year. The trade in small arms is worth about $4bn a year and has an impact far beyond this monetary value because small and light weapons are easy to use and maintain and are abundantly available. (R. Stohl and S. Grillot, ‘The International Arms Trade’ (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).)

* ‘Matériel’ refers to the equipment, apparatus and supplies of a military force.

† Dealers are generally defined as middlemen who buy the weapons and sell them on for profit, while brokers do not own the weapons but broker their sale either for cash or for commodities such as diamonds, oil or timber.

‡ It should be noted that clearly not all arms sales are illegal and that illegality is often determined by particular national and international legal standards applicable at the time of specific transactions. On occasion, the legal framework governing a particular deal might be unclear due to issues of jurisdiction or changing legal standards during the course of the deal. Hence, the use of terms such as ‘bribery’, ‘corruption’, ‘commissions’, etc. must be understood in their context and are not necessarily allegations of law breaking in all cases. Similarly and quite obviously, not everyone involved, directly or indirectly, in the arms trade is engaging in criminal activity, or protecting or condoning such activity.

* This ‘sanitized’ combat is criticized because it hasn’t significantly reduced the killing of innocents. It also raises the moral issue of whether a controller sitting sometimes hundreds of miles from a conflict zone might not kill more readily and uncontrollably at such a physical and psychological remove. Against this is set the contention, heard most loudly in the wake of the atomic explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that targeted killing can minimize later violence and death.

* Until 1999, the company was known as British Aerospace, and thereafter as BAE Systems. Throughout I refer to the company in its various manifestations as BAE.

† The latter two countries are predominantly supplied by China.

* The deal signalled the end of the Bausch–Mertins relationship, as Bausch felt Mertins did not give him a fair share of the commission on the sale, a common complaint throughout Mertins’s career.

* The deal was a government-to-government agreement between the UK and Saudi Arabia, but it was BAE, along with its subcontractors Rolls-Royce, Plessey, Ferranti, GEC and Dowty, who would supply the arms and BP and Shell were the recipients of the oil.

* British civil servants from the Defence Export Services Organisation (Deso), paid out of the Saudi funds, were to administer the deal. Even up to 2008, over 100 civil servants and a similar number of military personnel were paid £41.8m in that financial year by this foreign government. (CAAT, information from Freedom of Information request dated 15 July 2009, quoted at http://www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/controlBAE/.)

* Of course, schmoozing aside, the US–Saudi relationship was fundamentally founded on the Saudis’ access to one third of the Middle East’s oil reserves.

* Interestingly three of Bandar’s sons have been sent to Eton.

* A red notice is an Interpol declaration to seek the provisional arrest of a wanted person with a view to extradition based on an arrest warrant or court decision. It can be compared against other colour codes, such as a green notice, which provides warning or criminal intelligence about a potential criminal who may repeat the crime, or a black notice, which seeks information about unidentified bodies.

* At the time of writing, Bredenkamp was residing in Zimbabwe, facing no apparent legal or political difficulties. In addition, as stated in Chapter 19 below, Bredenkamp is on the United States’ Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list and was on the EU’s financial sanctions list and is described on both as a Mugabe crony. You can see Bredenkamp’s detailed defence of himself at www.johnbredenkamp.co.za.

* During Soviet times Hungary was described as ‘the happiest barrack’ for its ‘Goulash Communism’, a form of socialism that allowed some free market activity and displayed a far better human rights record than the other Soviet satellite states.

* The Department of Defense’s Congressional liaison office, a body only providing information, drafted a ‘Dear colleague’ letter which is meant to be a communication from one or more members of Congress to their legislative colleagues.

* As Hartung points out, the cumulative projected costs of missile-defence-related programmes have now reached over $100bn. As of 2008 there was still at least $63bn left to be spent, including over $23bn for Lockheed Martin’s SBIRS satellite programme. Despite deploying prototype interceptors it is still not clear whether the initiative is viable or practical, one of the reasons why President Obama was recently prepared to abandon the idea of a missile defence shield in Europe.

* ‘Weatherization’ involves improving the energy efficiency of homes by making upgrades to the electrical system, heating and cooling (insulation and weatherproofing), and consumer appliances.

* I was unable to verify this claim as the CIA will not divulge details of agents or associates. Helmut Mertins did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

* The arms trade in China, Latin America, and India and Pakistan all warrant books of their own. For more detail and reading on the arms trade in these countries see www.theshadowworld.com.