Outed by pubTV website, fleeing arms dealer is nabbed
Authorities arrested a South Florida arms dealer days after Frontline/World published a Web-exclusive story on international allegations against him.
Go to Frontline/World's website and click on the guy at left. You'll see a carefree Lasnaud before the website prompted his arrest. (Graphic: Frontline/World.)
Jean Bernard Lasnaud is one of five arms raffickers profiled on the website of the new PBS series, Frontline/World. The "rogues gallery," as series editor Steve Talbot likes to call it, complements the lead story in the broadcast series, which debuted May 23 [2002]. The Center for Investigative Reporting co-produced the television and online reporting.
In her article "Jean Bernard Lasnaud: South Florida's Elusive Arms Baron," investigative reporter Julia Reynolds questioned why U.S. authorities refused to act on a "red notice" Interpol issued for Lasnaud's arrest in 1999. He was arrested recently in Switzerland and now faces extradition to Argentina, where he is wanted for brokering an illegal arms deal involving former President Carlos Menem. Both Menem and members of his cabinet have been implicated in an Argentine investigation of arms smuggling and bribe money that has reached Watergate proportions, according to Reynolds.
Despite the red notice, which functions as an international arrest warrant, Lasnaud lived undisturbed in a gated community near Fort Lauderdale and sold Scud missiles, fighter planes and other weapons from a website until it was shut down recently. Lasnaud disappeared this spring, telling reporters he was traveling out of the country.
"The reporting and the report certainly contributed to his arrest," said Reynolds, a staff reporter for CIR. "He left the country not long after we were calling and basically bugging him for an interview. My impression is he felt outed for the first time."
Once the reporting team discovered that he had left the country, they asked Interpol for help locating him. "They looked into it, and a few days later he was arrested," Reynolds said. Reynolds, director of El Andar magazine, reported the story with correspondents from Buenos Aires and students from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. Reynolds teaches a class on investigative reporting at the school along with Lowell Bergman, a former 60 Minutes producer who now reports for Frontline and the New York Times.
The expose grew from the same roots as "Global Gunrunners," the lead documentary in the debut episode of Frontline/World, but it developed along its own line. William "Rocky" Kistner, an associate of CIR who produced the TV documentary with Rick Young, tipped Reynolds off last June that Lasnaud might be a good target for investigation.
The broadcast doc followed another story: how weapons smuggled from the Ukraine have fueled a decade of bloodshed and civil war in Sierra Leone.
"It's pretty exciting to have broken the story on the Web," Reynolds said. Bergman reported Lasnaud's arrest in the New York Times on June 9, and the International Herald Tribune, Agence France Presse and a Swiss magazine have since picked up the story.
"This whole story was an original piece of reporting for Frontline/World," said Talbot.
He wants to put more resources into the website, reasoning that a dynamic site will attract young viewers to the show.
The gunrunners site features foreboding silhouettes of five shady figures. Users can click on each image to read the lowdown on an international arms dealer. "It's like the Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? of gun dealers," Talbot said.
The television series doesn't air again until fall, but a new website report on designer water will launch later this week, according to Angela Morgenstern, online producer/content developer at co-producing station KQED in San Francisco. The feature was developed through the research of Victorian Mauleon, also an alum of the U.C.-Berkeley's j-school, and explores the safety of the bottled waters that Americans pay so much to drink. The site's launch will coincide with a report by William Finnegan on drinking water in Bolivia slated to air June 28 on Now with Bill Moyers.
World commissioned the Bolivian story, which Finnegan also reported on in the New Yorker this spring, and used it in an early promo reel. "We were unable to fit it in our debut episode, so we gave it to the Moyers show," said Talbot. It airs as a co-production of Now and Frontline/World. Web producers for the two series are coordinating online content, which will include a video stream of Finnegan's televised report.
Web page posted June 26, 2002
Copyright 2002 by Current Publishing Committee