Wafai Dajani

Wafai Dajani is a businessman of Amman, owner of Amman Resources, Wafai Dajani and Sons, Arab Holdings, and Aqaba Packing. His brother was Jordan's minister of the interior, his family had been the Jordanian agent of Mobil Oil since 1921, he had formerly worked for Ghaith Pharaon, and he had a joint venture with Comet Rice of Houston. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez described him as central to the smooth running of the Commodity Credit Corporation's guarantees for Iraq, which the Atlanta branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro financed.¹

The Atlanta prosecutors' draft of the indictment in the BNL case named him as a defendant. On February 28, 1991, the day the indictment was returned, a State Department memorandum said the department had "no objections" to the indictment of anyone on the list and recorded "reservations about proceeding against him in light of his connections." He and Hussein Kamel, the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, appeared in the indictment as unindicted co-conspirators. Gonzalez told the House on March 30, 1992, that the Justice Department had discouraged the indictment of the Central Bank of Iraq and of "a prominent Jordanian with close ties to the King of Jordan" on grounds of foreign policy. The branch manager, Christopher Drogoul, testified that a "Mr. Dejani" had told him of Henry Kissinger: "Kissinger, of course, he said, is the architect of foreign policy in the United States. You know that."¹²

The Grain Trade and the Agency

During the 1980s Dajani's companies "unloaded, stored, often packaged or repackaged, and then trucked nearly 80 percent of all the U.S. agricultural commodities that were destined for Iraq and financed with U.S. government loan guarantees," about four billion dollars' worth. His Amman Resources kept a 60,000-ton ship, the Tanga, at Aqaba as a floating Iraqi silo. With the Iraqi official Sadik Taha he advised Drogoul "and sometimes steered him." Of the commissions he said: "If you wanted the business, you had to provide after-sales services. Otherwise you would get no business." Accused of dealing in arms, he answered: "I couldn't be involved in arms. I am too big and easy to watch."³

An American intelligence officer described him as "the intermediary for German, Italian, and French companies that were selling into Iraq's nuclear and missile programs. He was everywhere, he dealt with everybody." Paul Von Wedel of the Atlanta branch said: "We knew that Dajani was doing work for the CIA, for The Company. He told us in Washington during one of his visits." Howard Teicher, formerly of the National Security Council staff, said: "Dajani was involved in our dirty policy. He performed services for the CIA and was involved in the CCC program." Dajani said: "I don't work for anybody. I work for myself."³

The State Department under James Baker advised the prosecutors that "Wafai Dajani is a Jordanian businessman, not a government official. His brother is a former Minister of the Interior, and Wafai himself is considered well connected to the King and to U.S. grain exporters. His indictment would be seen as a further U.S. attempt to punish Jordan." Drogoul's lawyers later complained that "the Government failed to interview Wafai Dajani, despite evidence of his substantial involvement with the scheme, when he was in Atlanta and had agreed to meet with the prosecution." Within weeks of the end of the Gulf War, according to one account, he and others close to King Hussein were again shipping goods into Iraq.³