pentagon deal gone bad. tributes desk gave rise to a scandal that was supposed to change how the american government buys weapons to arm its allies overseas but the question is has it we set out to investigate just how all these weapons find their way into some of the most fragile states on. this is david peck who's he used to be did rowley's business partner the story of how the two young amateurs from miami beach turned into international honest brokers was so incredible that it became a hollywood blockbuster. they supplied the pentagon with forty year old chinese ammunition that was stored in albania aboard really any business with us for what works with the chinese weapons when the u.s. sanctions so they repackaged the ammo to hide its origin. in

twenty eleven after new york times expose a different oh you went to jail but whose got away with house arrest. so you guys didn't really have a background in that you were just two young guys in their twenty's why did you get contracts to supply arms and you mean why did they give us the contracts. well they gave us the contracts probably because we were very very competitive we were what they called the best value to the government. who says the wood oaks movie failed to tell the whole story he insists the pentagon knew all along that he and his partner was supplying centron chinese ammunition. his claim supported by documents that surfaced in court. they kept on taking deliveries i think like three deliveries a week of four aircraft loads of ammunition for like four or five months after they found out it was chinese. the crew says the pentagon was happy with the

arrangements until the media got hold of the story how important was it for the u.s. army to get quick supplies operational necessity is a term that the military used when they wanted to say that they got to get this done one way or another and that meant that they were willing to overlook certain procedures and rules and safeguards that the administration had put in place. says it's this operational necessity that drives the u.s. government to employ private companies it allows them to be one step removed because a lot of these suppliers in central europe and the eastern bloc may not have great reputations they may have supplied other people you know that have committed atrocities if they only deal with u.s. companies who go out and then do their own deals and then the u.s. government could wash their hands and say well we didn't know where it was coming

from. twenty fifteen. americans supporting another when the middle east but in syria it's supplying arms to rebels not two state forces. again the weapons us soviet style easy to use and so common in the region they're hard to trace if something goes wrong. when i still controlled territory expands u.s. supply stepped up. i'm pleased that congress has now voted to support a key element of our strategy a plan to train and equip the opposition in syria so they can help push back these terrorists this is exclusive footage of what one of the pentagon secretive projects looked like. again the u.s. government uses private companies to train its allies we're going to examine the outside of. these men a highly experienced movie. has mike doesn't he and frances know we you know they

were in bulgaria to train on subjects so weapons that would be supplied to syrian rebels it seemed like a straightforward mission. but it would cost nobody you his life. friends is no we you is survived by his wife and two young children. yes i'm giuliana she has agreed to meet us. we're joined by mike does her t. know we use training. he was present when no we you was killed. i was about five or six feet away and as he approached the launcher he literally raised the round and as soon as he started to slide it in and it detonated. and that's when everything just went white for me it's died instantly so i read all the shots

paraguay i was thrown into a concrete wall and you know the blast effect threw me back down against the ground and my hand was split down here and hanging and the other hand was had a big chunk of metal and then i just remember looking up and i saw our other colleague and his hand was hanging and as our mostly just shattered are just tore up i started to kind of flip myself over to crawl and i start crawling towards him and i passed. the multimillion dollar pentagon contract to train and equip it was received by a company called purplish shuttle but it seemed to be insufficiently prepared for the task. and mike say there were problems right from the start the awarding of a contract happened very quick and there were

a lot of things that we we questioned why are we not doing medical why are we not doing threat briefs and things like that it felt very rushed i remember francis saying that it just crashed and it wasn't we really didn't understand the scope of what we were getting into. my tells us the official investigation into what exactly happened in bulgaria seems to have stalled. it's still not clear what caused the missile launcher to malfunction. did the u.s. government's urgency to supply weapons i mean safety procedures were ignored once more there wasn't until i would say over a year later that we learned that the ammunition was over thirty years old and over the last thirty to forty years where was a stored what were the conditions during that storage and were they doing the right things to ensure that it was properly taken care of and that we don't know my can as suing the company i was requested to travel to an interview was declined the company continues to receive u.s.

government contracts it seems like the government just wants to put layers over this contract before so you cannot really know much about it so we can do things outside of the military that are maybe a little bit more shady and. meanwhile the convert supply of weapons from south eastern europe continues. observers have noticed that a small airport in reoccur croatia has become a major hub for the flow of arms to the moves of the middle east. we have come here to find out what type of weapons are sourced by the us government and how they are transported. because for. launchers you can spot a bulgarian rug missiles you can spot a serbian mortar shell. yelena is a member of the balkan investigative reporting network together with the organized

crime and corruption reporting project they have spent two years tracking the pentagon's secret weapon shipments into syria we have set up a joint investigation this one was produced in serbia it's ok our team a shingle up in the syrian battleground the u.s. government publishes information about federal contracts online. yelena and her colleagues have used this database to calculate the u.s. government's expenditure on soviet style weapons. since two thousand and fifteen until two thousand and twenty two pending the will spend or two point two billion us dollars what do you know about the roots of how weapons from balkan countries go to the middle east they go through turkey jordan. qatar and saudi arabia because so that's all u.s. allies u.s. allies exactly exactly yell and i had been investigating

a plane the departed from riyadh airport five days earlier which she believes carried weapons to the middle east. to fight for there are the words that this plane took several times and you can see places such as our. our ion got exactly and also has flights number mark which is very specific for the planes that are actually transporting military goods. this is footage of the plane yelena tracked it has been loaded with crates at least twenty u.s. military flights have left this airport in the past six months. and when we arrive at the airport we to see a plane cool greg. this is one of the busiest airports when it comes to players such as this one. is from the same airline yelena had been investigating

various really is pretty nuts it's just in the middle of a traffic junction. there are. there are weapons there they're probably. there is this huge fights that are happening it's running it all they need is there the. flight data proves that the majority of these companies planes from reac are going to keep u.s. bases in the middle east. from their weapons can be funneled to syria. this in the largest pentagon supply of weapons for syrian rebels is bulgaria for the e use poorest country that's a change in fortune. gary is arms factories fell quiet after the end of the cold war but the wars in iraq afghanistan and syria brought new demand.

factories were reopened and new production lines added to supply weapons to the world's most fragile regions. we have come to bulgaria to find out more about the weapons the us government buys for it syrian allies. what is home to state arms manufacturers vs that. it is also where france is know we was killed in june twenty fifteen. v.m.s. that has been struggling to modernize and not fatal accident wasn't its first incident. a series of explosions rocked one of the company's plans in the time before the contract as a rival there were no casualties but production shut down for over two months. when

we contacted v.m.s. that to find out more its management declined to speak to us. two leading trade unionists did agree to meet but did not want to go on camera not just the workers are refusing to talk to us but even the local t.v. station what we do know is that the workers a. huge amount of pressure if v.m.s. that fails to complete an order their bonuses are cut was growing international demand for weapons the pressure is on to supply as false as the company can produce . we follow him no we use footsteps his training partner might doherty had told us the fatal ammunition was thirty years old and we want to see if we can find out more. vs average where the training took place is just over there it's where no real died but we can stop because it's a militarized zone. instead we have to the warehouse where the ems that stores its

ammunition. it's where the big explosions took place. we're told to leave immediately this. is really for you to shoot with in case if you insist. we stopped to film in a nearby village instead to its. local residents here where fact it by the explosions was so big that some houses in this village had to be evacuated. the local police arrived within minutes. they order us to follow them to the station where we are question and threatened with prosecution. it is clear that the authorities don't like any questions about bulgaria's arms exports. but one person did manage to proof that weapons syria areon journalist

illyana gate tansey ever. arrived in aleppo as fighting intensified in twenty sixteen. syrian government forces had almost cleared the rebels out of the city in a desperate bid to defend their positions opposition forces responded with a barrage of artillery and rocket propelled grenades. and the syrian regime retaliated with air strikes. hundreds of civilians were killed in the crossfire. the suffering biljana witnessed was unforgettable. it was caused on firing. day and day night. one of the rockets cellphone next to us over a mother that shouts there were big heads in front of me. a local journalist

two billion or two a house that had just been vacated by the owners for a friend. this is truck is from a given this is the basement which was used by jihadists to thaw huge quantities of weapons this weapon manufactured. for the country of origin. when local people realise that i came from bulgaria the first question i got the was this why are sending quote balls to queue us here in the. after publishing his story an anonymous source directed illyana to a large online stash of hacked documents. taken together they proved that hundreds of flights had transported weapons from balkan states such as well gary and serbia two conflict zones. many were paid for by the pentagon. at

least you have any idea of who the perpetrators are among the papers where and uses certificates a kind of contract between buyer and seller the buyers must confirm they will not transfer the weapons without informing the seller they are vital tool to stop the global spread of weapons according to the documents the and. special operations command but the weapons and that up are in the hands of jihadists in syria. but she says the seller bulgaria bears responsibility to know when gary as a country is. in fault that our weapons and up in warsaw and in countries which are on that embargo we should stop immediately exports. since their discovery the documents have been verified by international experts.

so what is bulgaria's position on these exports. the government declined to come and so we turn to the only bulgarian official prepared to speak to us it is possible to say that is the best lippert mice in the world stefan bought a new chair of the co president of the association of bulgaria and defense industries. of this one is possible to destroy tank on the later my vehicles most of its members export arms to the middle east and he shows us some of the nice defense products they have developed for private and government clients. we want to know if bulgaria is at fault when the u.s. special operations command or so-called passes the weapons on. as a member of the e.u. bulgaria is required to stick to the arms control treaties many of the contracts are fulfilled with the americans putting so as end user but it

is known that the weapons are going to syria if you receive and use it for their country who is with a good reputation. it is impossible to say i don't like to see you so it is it is not responsible for a boy in a country that is possible for the country who make this and use it you make the do you or the state who is good reputation after that say. much but i have a job on. the hill is growing evidence that this flow of weapons is having unintended consequences. analyst have found heavy machine guns rockets and even missile systems from bulgaria and romania in the hands of ice. it is now estimated that over

a third of all weapons used by the group in syria and iraq women a fact chip in eastern europe. so are u.s. arms exports inadvertently empowering the terrorists. in london a group called conflict armament research carried out detailed analysis into how isel has obtained its weapons. allowed i'm james bevan is the executive director. the vast majority of weapons a marked kalashnikov almost always on the left hand side of the receiver and they have a serial number. seven spends much of his time.