Posted on 03/23/2005 4:01:40 AM PST by Jane_N
(CBS) Fifteen years ago, Osama bin Laden sent one of his operatives to the United States to buy and bring back two-dozen .50-caliber rifles, a gun that can kill someone from over a mile away and even bring down an airplane.
In spite of all the recent efforts to curb terrorism, bin Laden could do the same thing today, because buying and shipping the world’s most powerful sniper rifle is not as difficult as you might think.
Two months ago, Correspondent Ed Bradley reported on just how powerful the gun is. New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had a sharpshooter fire the department’s own .30-caliber sniper rifle and the bullets bounced off a half-inch-thick plate of steel. Then, the marksman fired the .50-caliber sniper rifle, and the bullets blew right through the steel plate.
Now, you’ll hear from a gunrunner who, just a few years ago, was able to outfit a guerrilla army in Kosovo with those powerful weapons. He was willing to talk to 60 Minutes, because now he thinks what he did was much too easy.
The gunrunner's name is Florin Krasniqi, and he is seen providing a new shipment of weapons to Albanian rebels, who are about to smuggle them over the mountains into Kosovo. After a few days' journey on horseback, the guns will end up in the hands of a guerrilla force known as the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has been fighting for independence from Serbia for nearly a decade.
Krasniqi took these guns to his family's home in Kosovo. Most of them were easy to get in Albania, but not the .50-caliber rifles. "This is, we get from the home of the brave and the land of the free, as we would like to say," says Krasniqi, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Krasniqi came to America in 1989. He was smuggled across the Mexican border in the trunk of a car with just $50 in his pocket. Today, he’s an American citizen, and the owner of a highly successful roofing business.
"This is what I do for a living," says Krasniqi. "This is how we earn the money in New York. There’s a large Albanian-American community in the New York City area."
When the war broke out in Kosovo in 1998, many of the young men volunteered to fight. Krasniqi realized he’d be more valuable raising money for the guerrilla army. Then, he started buying standard equipment at a Brooklyn Army-Navy store.
"Anything you need to run a small guerrilla army, you can buy here in America," says Krasniqi. "You have all the guns you need here to fight a war. M-16s. That's what the U.S. soldiers carry in Iraq. All the rifles which U.S. soldiers use in every war, you can buy them in a gun store or a gun show."
What gun became the weapon of choice for Krasniqi? "By far, the weapon of choice was a .50-caliber rifle," says Krasniqi. "You could kill a man from over a mile away. You can dismantle a vehicle from a mile away."
He says it can also be "very easily" used against helicopters and planes.
If the power of the .50-caliber rifle amazed Krasniqi, what amazed him even more was how easy it was to buy. Krasniqi allowed a Dutch documentary film crew to accompany him to a gun store in Pennsylvania.
"You just have to have a credit card and clear record, and you can go buy as many as you want. No questions asked," says Krasniqi.
Was he surprised at how easy it was to get it? "Not just me. Most of non-Americans were surprised at how easy it is to get a gun in heartland America," says Krasniqi. "Most of the dealers in Montana and Wyoming don’t even ask you a question. It’s just like a grocery store."
And, he says there are a variety of choices for ammunition, which is easy to get as well. "Armor-piercing bullets, tracing bullets," says Krasniqi. "[Ammunition] is easier than the rifles themselves. For the ammunition, you don't have to show a driver’s license or anything."
"You can just go into a gun show or a gun store in this country and buy a shell that will pierce armor? A civilian," asks Bradley.
"You never did that? You’re an American. You can go to the shows and see for yourself," says Krasniqi. "Ask the experts. They’ll be happy to help you."
60 Minutes asked expert Joe Vince, a former top official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, if anyone, even a terrorist, could easily buy 50-caliber rifles.
"We are the candy store for guns in the world. And it's easy for people to acquire them here," says Vince, who adds that America is "absolutely" the best place for a terrorist to equip himself with guns.
"There’s a lot of concern about terrorists bringing weapons of mass destruction into the United States," says Bradley. "Why should we care about small arms, guns like the .50-caliber, leaving the United States?"
"Small arms are the No. 1 weapon for terrorists," says Vince. "On the newsreels about Iraq and Afghanistan, you always see the insurgents standing there with their shoulder-held rocket launchers. But in fact, that is one round, where an assault weapon can be repeatedly fired – as many rounds as you have. It’s a much better tactical weapon."
Are these small caliber weapons used more often to kill people than large weapons? "Absolutely," says Vince.
60 Minutes asked Krasniqi how he shipped .50-caliber rifles out of the United States.
"You just put in the airplane, declare them and go anywhere you want," says Krasniqi. "It's completely legal. It's a hunting rifle."
Krasniqi says he shipped the rifles to Albania, and then the soldiers carried them onto the battlefields. He wouldn’t say how many .50-caliber rifles he sent to Kosovo, so 60 Minutes asked Stacy Sullivan, a former Newsweek correspondent, who wrote a book about Krasniqi called, “Be Not Afraid For You Have Sons in America.”
How many guns did Krasniqi ship over there? "Probably a couple of hundred," says Sullivan. "It's easy. You're allowed to take two or three at a time. He had a group of guys that were dispersed in the U.S., some in Alaska, some in Nevada, some in California, some in Michigan, some in Illinois. And they would each buy a few at a time, and they would take them over in twos and threes on commercial airlines."
Krasniqi’s team of gunrunners never had a problem getting the guns out of the United States. But they often had to switch flights in Switzerland, and authorities there wanted to know what they were doing with such powerful weapons.
"We told them ‘We’re going to hunt elephants.’ And they said, ‘There’s no elephants in Albania,’" says Krasniqi. "And we told them we were going to Tanzania, so we had set up a hunting club here and a hunting club in Albania."
"You had to set up a phony hunting club in Albania, tell the Swiss authorities that men from this hunting club were going to go to Tanzania to shoot elephants," asks Bradley.
"Yes," says Krasniqi. "I never saw an elephant in my life, never mind shot one."
Even so, Krasniqi’s team needed evidence to support the African hunting story, so he says, "We had bought an elephant in Tanzania and set up the whole documentation, so it proved to them we are just elephant hunters."
He says he paid approximately $10,000 for the elephant. But he never got the elephant. "We were not interested in elephants," says Krasniqi. "We were interested to fight a desperate war."
Krasniqi’s shipments of .50-caliber rifles gave the guerrillas a confidence and firepower they’d never had before. But they weren’t getting enough of them. So Krasniqi broke the law by shipping the rifles out in larger quantities than customs allowed.
What was Krasniqi's largest shipment of .50-caliber rifles to Kosovo? "One was on an airplane that he filled up with weapons," says Sullivan. "And I think there were about a hundred guns in there,… 100 .50-caliber rifles."
According to Sullivan, the gunrunners transported the guns on a truck to New York’s Kennedy airport and hid them inside shipments of food and clothing destined for refugees.
"They put the palettes into a plane. Nothing gets X-rayed," says Sullivan. "It's wrapped up as humanitarian aid."
The fact that Krasniqi could smuggle a large shipment of guns out of Kennedy airport came as no surprise to the man who oversaw U.S. Customs at the time, now New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
"With the volume of shipments that leave our country and come in, I wouldn’t doubt that it’s possible to ship these guns overseas," says Kelly. "There are regulations that permit rifles to be shipped overseas. They limit the number, but there are probably ways of getting around the regulations."
"I would assume it’s safe to say we don’t have the number of customs agents who could check in that kind of detail every flight that leaves the country," says Bradley.
"No, that's true," says Kelly.
Tracking weapons as they leave the country is like finding a needle in a haystack, unless federal agents are already tracking the smugglers and their activities. Vince, a former ATF official, says Congress should pass a law that would enable law enforcement officials to maintain computerized records of gun sales, something the gun lobby strenuously opposes.
Right now, Vince says there isn't a central database for gun purchases. "There is no national registration whatsoever," says Vince. "If we had computerized all the sales of firearms, we could be looking at patterns of activity."
And Vince says this includes all those .50-calibers purchased by Krasniqi and his team of gunrunners: "People normally buy firearms for hunting, for sporting purposes and self-defense. But you don’t buy 50 of the same type of weapon – or more in this case. It would obviously, through any type of analysis, ring buzzers with customs or anybody else investigating this."
How would Krasniqi describe the gun laws in this country? "More liberal than the wildest European imagination," says Krasniqi. "You can imagine them being liberal, and they are more liberal than that."
"But you wouldn’t have been able to buy guns for the Kosovo Liberation Army if the gun laws in this country were stricter," says Bradley. "And I’m hearing you say you’re anti-gun. How can you be anti-gun when you’re buying guns to free your people?"
"I took advantage of a liberal law here in this country to help my old country," says Krasniqi. "And I believe in my heart I did it for the good. But some people can do it for the bad."
Gun laws good; gun lobbies bad.
CBS News and 60 Minutes are not credible news sources.
Dupe thread..
The main thing is to get as many citizens disarmed as possibile before the enemy gets here. ( Famous quote from Dec. 8, 1941!!)
Good to know we can arm ourselves quickly if needs be.
Who said that?
This story is full of deception, lies, half-truths, and emotional crap designed to get people like Chuck Shumer all het up to pass legislation against any honest citizen who wishes to own a fifty caliber rifle, or purchase any type of ammunition for it. Example: fifty caliber is weapon of choice. OK, all youse guys that want the weapon of choice are doomed to carry it, and the ammunition all by yourselves.
There is a recurring theme in the article that disturbs me deeply. If I am not mistaken, those purchasing said weapons might be related by the "religion of peace", a far more significant statistic than the number of fifty caliber weapons taken to Kosovo.
Wasn't the whole battle in Kosovo about Muslim terrorists attempting to take land by squatters rights so to speak, and thus gain themselves another country just because they could. I'm thinking if all that be true, then sixty minutes is off in left field where they have pretty much been from the beginning, focusing the narrow attention of the American people away from the real problem and helping to fix it so honest Americans will have a great deal of difficulty matching "government in firepower".
A situation brought on by more and more gun control and less and less government control of what government by the Constitution is supposed to be in control of. Since I cannot research my premise without sitting on this post for a half hour, I'll just throw caution to the wind, like 60 minutes, and throw my stuff out on the street and see if it floats.
Now let me see if I can make any sense of this thread.
Problem: An Albanian (read Muslim) illegally enters our country, somehow gains American citizenship, uses his Second Amendment rights as an American citizen to purchase firearms and then illegally exports them. Now, this criminal openly boasts of his criminal activity, and CBS uses his criminal export of firearms as an excuse to attack the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.
Recommended Solution: This self confessed felon should be arrested, prosecuted and appropriately sentenced for his illegal entry into this country, violation of our firearms export laws, his ill-gotten American citizenship revoked, and after he serves time for his crimes he should be deported.
"New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had a sharpshooter fire the department’s own .30-caliber sniper rifle and the bullets bounced off a half-inch-thick plate of steel."
.30-06 AP ammo will blow through 1/2 inch steel plate with ease and will penetrate 7/8 inch steel.
As far as the .50 BMG goes, if they ban it somebody will come up with a .49 BMG or similar. In fact J. D. Jones already has. 14.5 mm JDJ
http://www.sskindustries.com/14.htm
I thought you had to be a citizen to purchase guns in all 50 States?
I think it far more likely that they are simply going to black market sources that are rampant in places like the Middle East and former Soviet states and getting whatever they need no questions asked. I'm expecting that 60 Minutes will probably gin up some photos and phony documents showing Bin Laden personally buying guns at a local Wal Mart.
One, Barrett Firearms sold rifles to the US Government. They were picked up in US Government trucks and shipped to US Government bases. How any may have ended up in the hands of Afghan "freedom fighters" or in Kosovo is anybody's guess. But to claim that terrorists are shopping US gun shows and stores is pure lunacy.
Any terrorists or drug dealers who want a handy, 30-pound "pocket rocket" that is pretty beat up and used hard for a cool 20 large, email me and I'll tell you where it is.
I think 60 minutes misses the point. We need to secure the borders and keep the terrorists out, not disarm the potential victims.
More info, including Krasniqi - Holbrooke - Clark footing, can be found in the Dutch-produced video documentary 'The Brooklyn Connection'. (Click on one of the "video" links. Except for the first minute or so, the documentary is in English)
Stacy Sullivan, who covered the Balkans for Newsweek, has pulled off an improbable feat. She has written an irresistibly readable book about the grim war in Kosovo, a conflict obscure to many Americans, even during the 78 days in 1999 when the United States was pounding the place with bombs. Sullivan has found an original way to cut through the Balkan fog—the murk of Ottoman history, the unfamiliar names and places, the unsympathetic viciousness of all ethnic groups in the many wars that ripped Yugoslavia apart. Her narrative knife is a guy from Brooklyn.
His name is Florin Krasniqi. He's an immigrant from Kosovo and an American success story. Arriving in Brooklyn with nine words of English, he became a roofing contractor and before long was taking home $100,000 a year. In the way of many smart guys from Brooklyn, he was persuasive, creative and, if need be, ruthless. In the way of many ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, he believed that forcing Serbs out of his homeland was an end that justified any means.
From Brooklyn, Krasniqi tapped fellow Albanian immigrants for $30 million to fund the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). He shopped American to outfit the insurgents with everything from satellite telephones to .50 caliber sniper rifles. These weapons, with a range of two miles and enough power to punch through armored vehicles, were available to anyone with $7,000, no questions asked. Krasniqi told Sullivan he couldn't believe how lax American gun laws are. He found much of what he needed for guerrilla war right around the corner in Brooklyn. He bought walkie-talkies from a Radio Shack in Kings Plaza mall off Flatbush Avenue.
With this guy from Brooklyn grounding her readers in a known American place, Sullivan is able to tell a war story that never seems remote, even though most Americans would be hard pressed to find Kosovo on a map. The narrative is so strong that you hardly notice that Sullivan's book is deeply serious, historically sophisticated and morally complex. Her protagonist is not a good guy. She suggests—without saying so outright—that Krasniqi murdered an Albanian hoodlum who had killed a key leader of the KLA. She shows again and again how Krasniqi sacrificed his business, his family, his village and thousands of innocent civilians across Kosovo for the sake of defeating Serbs.
A hero framed in black is a good choice, and not just because Krasniqi is such an irresistible character. For as Sullivan well knows, there were few good guys in the Kosovo war, the fourth of four Yugoslav wars that Slobodan Milosevic fomented and lost in his decade of bloody misrule. Milosevic had risen to power in Serbia—and escaped the fate of other communist hacks in Eastern Europe—by fanning ethnic hatred. There was no greater such hatred than that between Serbs and Albanians. History had yoked them together in the Yugoslav federation, with Kosovo a province inside the republic of Serbia. Serbs regarded Kosovo as their historical homeland, but on the ground in the province, Albanians outnumbered them nine to one. Albanians had long taken pride in harassing Serbs, forcing them to sell out and flee next door to Serbia.
Milosevic figured out that avenging Serb resentment over this harassment would cement his power. So he assured Serbs that Albanians would never beat them again. To that end, he created a brutal police state inside Kosovo that bullied and murdered Albanians. That, in turn, set off bullying and murderous retaliation by Albanians who slowly coalesced into the KLA. Sullivan tells this messy story as clearly and succinctly as it can be told. She also explains—in a fresh and fascinating way—how Krasniqi and the KLA sucked the United States and NATO into their nasty war. It was the most cynical and savage of public relations tricks. As Sullivan explains it, the KLA attacked and killed Serbian military and police, knowing full well that Milosevic would retaliate in a way that would nauseate the West. And sure enough, it worked. Serb forces cut throats, gutted pregnant women, mashed the skulls of old men. The United States and Europe, guilty about their sluggish response to Milosevic's war crimes in Bosnia, could not stomach it and quickly threatened to bomb, just as the KLA had hoped. Milosevic refused to back down, bombs fell, and Serbia lost the war. Before being forced out, Serb forces managed to destroy much of Kosovo and kill an estimated 10,000 people. Albanians then committed numerous revenge killings. Milosevic is gone, but the status of Kosovo is unresolved. Impoverished ill-governed and restive, it is still part of Serbia. And it has been all but forgotten by a world obsessed with terrorism and Iraq. The Balkans, though, have an enduringly toxic way of causing trouble that cannot be ignored. With the help of the guy from Brooklyn, Sullivan's engaging book explains why.
Was there any mention of Krasniqi by the locals at all? You said you were in Kosovo and just wondering if his name was uttered among the KLA command.
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