held passports from three countries. In return, he wanted the gov- ernment to keep the syndicate from exacting vengeance on him.

Supnad published his story about Jones on August 26, 2009, under the headline "British Captain of Arms Ship Seeks Gov't Pro- tection." Two weeks later, Jones surrendered to the Bureau of Cus- toms. According to a report from the Philippine Office of the Special Envoy on Transnational Crime, "Jones told investigators that he was hired by La Plata Trading Inc. through the help of Smith last August, to buy the vessel worth $800,000 in Turkey and the Indonesia-made assault rifles and pistols for $86,000."

The Philippine government charged thirty-seven people with il- legally importing guns—Burne and the entire Georgian crew, plus Jones and a dozen names associated with Le Roux's organization, some of them aliases. The indictment covered the supposed own- ers of La Plata Trading and Red White & Blue Arms, including "David Smith a.k.a. Dave Smith," "Michael T. Archangel," and one "Johan a.k.a. John Paul Leraux."

Mar Supnad's account of his meeting with Jones was a scoop, but soon Supnad himself began receiving threats. The first one was "friendly," he said: A journalist colleague invited him to meet for coffee in Subic Bay and offered him 500,000 pesos (around $10,000) to stop writing about the Ufuk. He turned down the bribe and pub- lished an article about it instead. "The emissary," he wrote, "told this writer that top PNP and DOJ officials will handle the gun smuggling case provided there will be no more exposé in the news- papers."

Not long after came a second veiled threat: Someone from the syndicate approached Supnad's editor and suggested Supnad take a three-month trip to Hong Kong or Macau, fully paid for, rather than write any more stories about the Ufuk. Again Supnad said no, and his editor agreed. "Just continue writing what you know about the smuggling," the editor told him.

Supnad started varying his route to work and avoiding the Subic area entirely. He changed the plates on his car regularly and some- times wore a wig. He heard rumors that he was on a hit list, that