One reason, informed sources said, 
							was that prosecutors, in an unusual step, removed 
							references to Pakistan from public filings because 
							of diplomatic concerns. 
							The alleged weapons buyers 
							repeatedly said in conversations taped by 
							authorities that they represented the Pakistani 
							government and were arranging the purchases for 
							Pakistani intelligence, the then-Taliban government 
							of Afghanistan or terrorists. 
							Many details of the case 
							have not been made public previously. The 
							investigation was brought to light by "Dateline 
							NBC," which shared some material, including 
							undercover audiotapes, with The Washington Post and 
							is scheduled to air its report tonight. 
							
							Lawyers for the two men 
							arrested in the sting said their clients have no 
							connections to terrorists or arms dealers, and 
							became involved only when approached by a U.S. 
							government informant. 
							"None of those people who 
							came over from Pakistan were government officials 
							who could get an arms deal done," said Jim 
							Eisenberg, attorney for Mohammed "Mike" Malik, one 
							of the potential buyers, who remains free and whose 
							case is sealed. 
							Val Rodriguez, lawyer for 
							Diaa Mohsen, the only man in the case currently 
							imprisoned, said his client also lacked the ties 
							necessary to arrange a secret arms deal. He 
							acknowledged, however, that Mohsen "kept trying to 
							get the connections [the undercover agent] wanted." 
							However, both Mohsen and Malik, he added, "had 
							contact with people who knew terrorists." 
							
							Asad Hayauddin, spokesman 
							for the Pakistani Embassy here, said his government 
							does not "buy weapons on the black market. . . . The 
							government of Pakistan had nothing to do with this, 
							so maybe it was rogues." 
							But the U.S. government is 
							convinced that the alleged buyers were, in some 
							fashion, connected to militant groups affiliated 
							with the Pakistani government. U.S. intelligence 
							confirmed key parts of the buyers' statements 
							concerning their affiliations, and a federal 
							prosecutor attested to that in court hearings. 
							
							Teamed up in the sting were 
							two men who had spent a lifetime deceiving people -- 
							but on opposite sides of the law. 
							One is Randy Glass, 50, 
							an admitted lifelong fraud artist from Baltimore. 
							Once he found himself charged with bilking jewelers 
							out of $6 million, Glass volunteered to track down 
							arms merchants for the federal government. 
							
							The other is Dick Stoltz, 
							56, an easygoing, 31-year veteran of the ATF who has 
							a legendary reputation for working undercover as a 
							gun smuggler or Mafia hit man for years at a time. 
							
							For 2-1/2 years, this pair 
							posed as illegal dealers hawking arms purportedly 
							diverted from U.S. military armories, and made 500 
							audio- and videotapes of their eager customers. 
							Fourteen months ago, ATF and FBI agents in Florida 
							arrested two men from Jersey City, N.J. -- Mohsen, 
							originally from Egypt, and Malik, an immigrant from 
							Pakistan -- moments after showing them a new 
							shipment of arms. 
							Some federal officials were 
							frustrated that the FBI, while allowing a Florida 
							agent to work on the probe, did not declare the case 
							a counterterrorism matter. That would have given ATF 
							officials better access to FBI information and U.S. 
							intelligence from around the world, and would have 
							drawn bureaucratic backing from people all the way 
							to the White House, officials said. 
							
							"Had more attention been 
							paid to this inside the government, the case agents 
							in the trenches would have had more information on 
							who these Pakistani people on U.S. soil were," said 
							Stoltz, who is now retired. "It would have steered 
							us in other directions, and possibly justified 
							continuing the investigation. . . . We couldn't 
							understand why this wasn't treated as a national 
							security matter." 
							An FBI official said the 
							case "was handled appropriately," but acknowledged 
							that some FBI agents believed that officials in FBI 
							headquarters "could have been more aggressive." 
							
							After the Sept. 11 terror 
							attacks, the FBI and the ATF decided to take another 
							look at the Pakistani figures who tried to acquire 
							the weapons, in the hope of making additional 
							arrests and learning more about their possible links 
							to terror. 
							The story began with Glass, 
							a former jeweler in Boca Raton, Fla., who had been 
							arrested at least 10 times since his teenage years, 
							mostly for small thefts and frauds. His only stretch 
							in jail was one year in the 1980s, for misdemeanor 
							possession of cocaine. 
							In 1996, after his fourth 
							wife turned state's evidence, Glass was indicted in 
							Florida on federal charges of cheating jewelry 
							wholesalers from Antwerp to Toronto out of $6 
							million. 
							It seemed a good time to 
							shift gears, and in the fall of 1998 he called 
							federal agents and asked whether they were 
							interested in listening in as he chatted up an old 
							friend who had spoken to him of an arms deal. The 
							agents were interested, and on their instructions 
							Glass called his friend, diamond broker Diaa Mohsen, 
							to say he had a lucrative business proposition. 
							
							Mohsen, a member of 
							Egypt's national soccer team in the 1960s and a U.S. 
							citizen for 30 years, flew to Fort Lauderdale 
							the next day. Wired for sound by agents, Glass 
							listened as Mohsen said he knew people eager to buy 
							U.S. weapons, including officials of a government 
							and "terrorists" who would pay in heroin. 
							
							"They use rocket grenades," 
							Mohsen said. "They have like 120-millimeter 
							howitzer." 
							In the hope that Mohsen 
							could lead them to big-time arms dealers, ATF 
							officials arranged for Stoltz to join the team, 
							posing as rogue arms trader "Ray Spears." The 
							agency set him up in a Florida warehouse crammed 
							with supposedly stolen U.S. weapons. 
							
							Soon Mohsen was bringing 
							them his contacts. An Egyptian father-son team 
							wanted to buy mortars and Stinger missiles -- the 
							kind used to shoot down aircraft -- for the 
							Congolese military and later for rebels in the 
							breakaway Russian province of Chechnya. Both deals 
							died. 
							Agents were amazed at the 
							ease with which they reeled in brokers seeking 
							Stingers, famed for helping Afghan guerrillas defeat 
							the Soviet army in the 1980s. "All we had to do was 
							say 'Stinger,' and they came running," Stoltz said. 
							
							Their other secret weapon 
							was Glass, agents said. While at first Glass wanted 
							simply to reduce a potentially lengthy sentence, he 
							threw himself into the case out of patriotic 
							motives, they said. 
							"Randy went way beyond what 
							was required to get a sentence reduction," Stoltz 
							said. "Most undercover operations take place in a 
							hotel room or a bar, but I drove these [arms dealer] 
							subjects to his home in a gated community, with two 
							maids and yapping dogs and kids. It gave them a 
							level of comfort," Stoltz added. 
							As it progressed, the sting 
							snared a New York investment banker, Kevin Ingram, 
							who ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to 
							launder $350,000 that Glass told him was the 
							proceeds of other arms deals. 
							Mohsen, meanwhile, 
							introduced the undercover agents to a friend, 
							Mohammed "Mike" Malik, a Jersey City deli owner 
							originally from Pakistan. Mohsen said Malik, in 
							turn, could connect them to the ultimate buyers, who 
							Mohsen identified as "the intelligence of Pakistan" 
							and as people close to Afghanistan's Taliban regime 
							and al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. 
							
							Malik met many times with 
							Stoltz over the next two years, saying that his 
							clients in Pakistan wanted to buy hundreds of 
							Stingers, TOW antitank missiles, many varieties of 
							rockets and artillery, night-vision goggles and even 
							"heavy water," which can be used to produce 
							plutonium for nuclear weapons. 
							Pakistanis who said they 
							represented the buyers in Islamabad flew to Florida 
							several times to negotiate with Stoltz. At various 
							points, Malik and these middlemen said that they 
							represented Pakistan's spy agency, the 
							Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI, they 
							said, was seeking weapons for the Pakistani military 
							and for terrorist groups Islamabad has sponsored in 
							the disputed Kashmir region along the Indian border. 
							
							U.S. officials say that at 
							least before Sept. 11, elements of ISI and 
							Pakistan's military worked closely with bin Laden, 
							the Taliban and Kashmiri terrorists. 
							
							At one point, one of Malik's 
							middlemen arranged for Stoltz to speak by telephone 
							with a man in Pakistan who he described as a top 
							Pakistani military procurement officer. U.S. 
							officials say they are convinced the man holds that 
							job. 
							Stoltz said in an interview 
							that U.S. investigators concluded Malik and the 
							middleman were "associates of Middle Eastern 
							terrorists," and had "associations with militants 
							and arms trafficking groups." 
							In a closed hearing in May 
							2000, Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Karadbil told a 
							Florida judge reviewing Glass's case that Glass was 
							helping uncover "an actual deal" involving Pakistani 
							officials, and that "the individuals that Mr. Glass 
							has dealt with are essentially terrorists." 
							
							In January 2001 Malik and 
							the middlemen began arranging for $32 million to be 
							sent to Florida from a bank in Dubai for a series of 
							arms deals, arrangements U.S. agents confirmed by 
							electronic eavesdropping. The weapons' destination 
							"was going to be for Kashmir, or in defense of the 
							Taliban," one U.S. official said. 
							The buyers insisted on using 
							convoluted fund transfer methods that they hoped 
							would allow them to secure the return of the money 
							if the deal soured. Weeks of delay resulted -- and 
							eventually, the frustrated Pakistanis went home. 
							
							Suspecting the deal was 
							dead, agents arrested Mohsen and Malik in June 2001 
							on charges of trying to export weapons without a 
							license. But the Pakistani figures had left the 
							country and were not arrested. 
							Mohsen pleaded guilty to 
							trying to export Stinger missiles and night-vision 
							goggles without a license, and is serving a 30-month 
							sentence. But Malik remains free, and the resolution 
							of his case is unclear because documents have been 
							sealed. 
							Mohsen is cooperating with 
							U.S. officials in a continuing investigation of the 
							Pakistani connection, said Rodriguez, his attorney. 
							
							Glass, meanwhile, pleaded 
							guilty to two counts in connection with his jewelry 
							fraud case, and served seven months. 
							
							"I was a scoundrel for a 
							long time," he said, "but I got a chance to use my 
							talents for my country."