The Middleman

Asher Karni was “a genius” in South Africa’s military electronics trade. Now he's in jail in Brooklyn, accused of orchestrating a nuclear black market deal.

By Mark Schapiro

May/June 2005 Issue

This story, which will appear in the May/June issue of Mother Jones magazine, comes out of an investigation jointly sponsored by Mother Jones, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the PBS series FRONTLINE/World. View video clips of interviews with key players in the story at FRONTLINE/World's website.

ON NEW YEAR'S DAY 2004, conditions in the Rocky Mountains seemed ideal for the ski vacation that Asher Karni had long anticipated. Fresh snowfall had slowed Denver to a cool calm, and the mountain resorts were bursting with record-breaking crowds. Karni, a 50-year-old, Hungarian-born Israeli and South African businessman, planned on staying in the area for three weeks, according to the dates on his airline tickets, but he never made it to the slopes. As he stepped off the plane with his wife and a teenage daughter at Denver International Airport, U.S. Customs agents arrested him on charges of violating American export laws. Specifically, he was accused of exporting, without the proper license, quantities of a device known as a triggered spark gap.