Loosely based on the true story of two young men, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who won a three hundred million dollar contract from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan. “It’s going to be war,” Packouz said. “Here I was dealing with matters of international security, and I was half-baked. War Dogs covers that impossible-to-invent narrative in Hollywood style. As AEY grew, it defaulted on at least seven contracts, in one case failing to deliver a shipment of 10,000 Beretta pistols for the Iraqi army. All he had to do was win even a minuscule fraction of the billions the Pentagon spends on arms every year and he would be a millionaire. One of the illegal shipments of ammo they supplied to the Afghan army (bottom). It was like Efraim had put me into the movie he was starring in.” To look the part of an international arms dealer, Packouz carried a silver aluminum briefcase and wore wraparound shades. “I didn’t plan on being an arms dealer forever — I was going to use the money to start a music career. “ANY age ammunition is acceptable.”. Everyone has got to lie sometimes.” Fearing that Diveroli might decide it was cheaper to have him killed than to pay him, Packouz also bought a .357 revolver as insurance. Like Diveroli, Thomet had been in the business since he was a teenager, and he recognized that the two young upstarts could be useful to him. Although Hill and Teller now seem like they were destined to nab these parts, they weren’t the first choices. He picked up a phone book and found a cardboard-box manufacturer named Kosta Trebicka. I thought we actually had a chance. Diveroli refused, but he couldn’t resist bragging about his exploits; as agents recorded his every word, he talked about hunting alligators and hogs in the Everglades with a .50-caliber rifle. "War Dogs" is a film about two twenty-somethings who become international arms dealers. Reading the source material may indicate why: In this story, Packouz comes off as the more sympathetic of the two, which isn’t saying that much considering that they both engage in all kinds of shady business. “You’ve got the bitch’s panties off,” Diveroli said, adopting his best movie-star swagger. State Department has blacklist us. But this time, when Diveroli wrote the State Department’s legal advisory desk to ask if he could use Chinese rounds made prior to the embargo, he received a curt and unequivocal reply: not without a presidential decree. As an apprentice arms dealer, he proved to be a quick study. But Diveroli insisted on using the Swiss arms dealer Heinrich Thomet’s high-level contacts in Albania. The two friends, still in their early twenties, were now responsible for one of the central elements of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. For decades, weapons had been stockpiled in warehouses throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe for the threat of war against the West, but now arms dealers were selling them off to the highest bidder. “Sometimes you have to fake it until you make it,” Packouz says. “If the Russians made life difficult for us, they would get taken off the American blacklist, so they could get our business for themselves.”, Packouz managed to obtain the overflight permission through a Ukrainian airline — but the episode was an ominous reminder of how little he understood about the business he was in. His competition was mostly big corporations like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed and BAE Systems. Evdin would then resell the rounds to AEY. Not because I’m bragging.” Diveroli paused, as if he were about to disclose his most precious secret. “Money was all he talked about, literally — no sports or politics. Thomet was singled out by Amnesty International for smuggling arms out of Zimbabwe in violation of U.S. sanctions. Packouz’s heart sank. “What are you talking about?” Packouz said. “The e-mails were incredibly incriminating — they spelled out everything,” Packouz says. He regaled Packouz with the tale of how he had won the contract, how much money he was making and how much more there was to be made. “So we won the contract?” Packouz asked in disbelief. A new children’s book tells the story of a Nebraska-based World War II dog training program. “But dude, you know this is Chinese ammo, right?”. “The Flamingo was a constant party,” Packouz says. The real kids traveled the world, but usually to check out foreign arms stockpiles and international gun shows. There was even a term of art for it: circumvention. 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