 From Sub-Saharan Africa, to the Balkans, to the Middle East, honorary consuls have been accused of aiding terrorist groups and threatening the rule of law. If they're removing any product, including cocaine, weapons, precursors for chemical weapons, on private jets, those jets cannot be searched. We knew that this was a vulnerability. The honorary consul system has existed for centuries. It was started to give smaller countries unable to support foreign embassies the chance to have representation around the world. It has since expanded into a mainstay of international diplomacy. Unlike career ambassadors, volunteer consuls work from their home countries to promote the interests of the foreign governments that appoint them. It's a sort of additional honor for business leaders and the like, sort of a perk without having to do real diplomatic work. The ideal honorary consul candidate, if it's being done right, is somebody who does have an ancestral tie to country acts, who has enough financial resources, and who has the time and the interest, as well as the contacts, to get good press for country acts. Honorary consuls receive little to no pay, but gain entry into the lofty world of diplomacy. The position comes with some of the same perks and legal protections provided to career diplomats. Their correspondence can't be seized. Their consular bags, no matter the size, are protected from searches. In shadow diplomats, of first of its kind investigation, pro-publica and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in partnership with 160 reporters in 46 countries, have identified hundreds of current and former honorary consuls who've been publicly accused of wrongdoing or embroiled in controversy. That includes consuls who've been accused or convicted of fraud, bribery, corruption or money laundering, drugs or weapons offenses, or violent crimes. Some were tied to environmental abuses. Thirty honorary consuls have been sanctioned by the U.S. and other governments. Nine current or former consuls have been linked by law enforcement or governments to terrorist groups. Most of those consuls were tied to Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and militant group. Hezbollah attacked and killed 241 U.S. service members in Beirut in 1983. The United States designated Hezbollah a terror organization in 1997. Jack Kelly, a retired drug enforcement agent, spent a decade investigating Hezbollah's financial worldwide network. What we noticed was that these high-level operatives and members of the Lebanese diaspora that were significant members of Hezbollah's growing drug cartel also happen to be honorary consuls to West African nations. So we knew right off, of course, that implies a limited diplomatic community. At the time, Kelly was helping lead a federal operation called Project Cassandra. Its mission was to dismantle Hezbollah's sprawling criminal empire. We were working with a lot of people in the intelligence community and then our intelligence and investigative counterparts around the world all realized, oh, well, this is a six-continent, concerted effort going against one thing, this Hezbollah drug cartel. One honorary consul was a Lebanese businessman named Mohamed Bazi. In 2008, Bazi became a person of interest for Kelly and other agents. They believed he was a top Hezbollah financier, closely affiliated with the Iranian regime and laundering illicit money through his companies in Lebanon and Africa. They soon discovered Bazi was an honorary consul appointed by the Gambian government in Lebanon in 2005. One of the things we learned is that he's very close to President Jama in Gambia. We're also receiving information of his direct ties to Iran. And that could be money laundering that we could suspect that Mohamed Bazi is involved in. Bazi was never criminally prosecuted. In 2018, the U.S. sanctioned him, designating him a Hezbollah financier, while noting his close association with former Gambian president Yaya Jama, who was accused by a Gambian government panel of kidnappings, rape, murder, and torture. It's got to be the height of irony to have someone like Mohamed Bazi be honored anywhere in any form, let alone as honorary consul. Obviously, Mr. Bazi was very instrumental in helping the president of the Gambia pillage his country. Bazi sued the U.S. government in 2019, saying that it failed to provide evidence that he financed Hezbollah. The lawsuit was settled, and Bazi remains under sanction. He's no longer an honorary consul. An attorney for Bazi declined to comment. In court records, Bazi said the government exaggerated transactions and events that had occurred years earlier and failed to provide evidence that he financed Hezbollah. Bazi also said he ended his relationship with Jama in 2016 after a series of threats. Jama has denied wrongdoing. As Kelly and Project Cassandra pushed forward, New Jersey attorney Gary Osson was busy analyzing the organization's deadly campaign against U.S. service members in Iraq. The search turned up references to honorary consuls linked to Hezbollah's finance networks. In 2019, Osson filed a lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of Americans, including members of the military, who were killed or wounded in Iraq. The complaint alleges that Lebanese banks provided extensive and sustained financial support to the terrorist group as it supported attacks in Iraq by roadside bombs and other weapons that the lawsuit links to Iran and Hezbollah. Quds Force, along with Hisbollah instructors, trained approximately 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time, sending them back to Iraq, organized into these special groups. During the Iraq War, they were responsible for the deaths of over 600 U.S. service men and women in IED attacks using what is called EFPs. This unit of Hezbollah that we were going after, they were responsible for showing the Shia paramilitaries in Iraq how to use these IEDs against American forces. EFPs or explosively formed penetrators are a weapons system really perfected by Hezbollah in their operations against Israel and Israeli armor in southern Lebanon in the 1990s. In 2004, when Iran decided to escalate its attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, they tasked Hezbollah with introducing EFPs and to help develop the capabilities of the Iraqi proxy groups to begin to attack U.S. armor. Army Sergeant Robert Bartlett was serving in Iraq in 2005 when his vehicle was hit by an EFP. So we'd already cleared two sectors that day and we're headed through the barriers on the off-ramp and the EFP was on the backside of the barrier. And so when my vehicle pulled forward, one vehicle had already gone through, they waited until my vehicle got through and they set it off. Now the bomb when it came through came through right through next to my head, next to my door, next to the roof and it basically cut me in half and left corner of my temple down through my jaw, took my gunner's legs off and then took the top of my truck commander's head off and then went out through the other side of the vehicle. When I kind of get my wits about me, I turn to my right and I saw my truck commander was instantly killed and I began to die. With every breath I was taking, I was losing a breath. I had internal bleeding and collapse along as well. During Bartlett's rescue and evacuation, his heart stopped twice before being resuscitated. He was eventually flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland where his heart stopped a third time. I ended up drowning on my own stomach acid. So yeah, that was scary. That part was probably the scariest part. Bartlett has since had 12 surgeries and has managed to regain some function in his face and body. Now I have a titanium jaw from here to here. I lost my lower lip so they had to build me a lip here, taking skin grass from my arms. I had internal bleeding and collapsed lungs so I have a zipper cut here for exploratory. They had to take bone out of both hips and combine it with cadaver bone and things like that just to rebuild here so they could actually put implants in so I'd had teeth again. So I spent four and a half, four years of surgeries really and then the last six months was just really recovery and getting out of the military. Robert is an extraordinary person who has endured more suffering and hardship than I think any other human being can imagine. If you've met with Robert, you realize that you don't have to die on the battlefield to give everything and more of your life. Come on, Lulu. Lulu, no, no. Bartlett was all in when Osin contacted him about filing a suit against banks and financial institutions with alleged ties to his bulla. I was just happy to do it. I mean, my buddy was killed. He's got two daughters and they grew up without a dad. We didn't attack our aunts so why were they involved in attacking us? That's kind of how I, that's exactly how I see it. So I just want to, any money we can take away from their actions on killing the more Americans in the future or anybody else in the future whether they deem enemies, that's okay with me. The lawsuit is still ongoing in federal court. While investigating the banks, Osin found that Muhammad Bazi, the sanctioned former honorary consul for Gambia, held an account at two of the banks. The banks have denied wrongdoing, saying in court documents that they categorically abhorred terrorism and all unjustified acts of violence. The banks also said the complaint did not identify transactions for anyone connected to Hezbollah. Hezbollah's use of honorary consuls remains a threat to global safety, say Osin, Kelly and other experts. In March, the Treasury Department sanctioned a prominent businessman and honorary consul in Guinea. He's accused of funneling money to Hezbollah alongside another businessman, also sanctioned, who allegedly used his honorary consul status to move in and out of the country with little scrutiny. Both men have denied wrongdoing. Setting aside all the terrible things that Hezbollah did in Iraq and the killing and maiming of American soldiers, you know, that's only one cost. The trail of misery that this organization and its facilitators create is really incalculable. After going decades without using them, experts say the Russian government now uses honorary consuls as part of a strategy to move public opinion in the Kremlin's favor and weaken the influence of pro-Western governments, particularly in countries like Montenegro. In 2015, Russia named its first honorary consul to Montenegro, a tiny Balkan nation on the Adriatic coast. The consul, Borod Zhukic, was a Montenegren with Russian connections. He set up a consulate office in a popular district in Budva, a coastal city teaming with Russian tourists and investors. At the time, Montenegro was seeking NATO membership, making the country a high-stakes battleground between Russia and the West. In 2016, Montenegren authorities disrupted an election day coup attempt by Russian military intelligence operatives and others who had plotted to overthrow the government and kill its pro-Western prime minister. We have gathered here today to mark a historic occasion. Montenegro joined NATO the following year. Welcome to the Alliance Montenegro. Thank you. Months later, according to records obtained by pro-publica and ICIJ, as well as reporting by local media, Borod Zhukic, the honorary consul, signed founding documents to create a Kremlin-backed right-wing political party led by Marco Milicic, a well-known anti-NATO populist leader. Borod supports this political party, the true Montenegro, a small party led by a pro-Russian local politician. And their headquarters are in his house in Goritsa neighborhood in Podgoritsa. And you can see him from there taking place in all these church events. He's with the Russian Patriarch. He's meeting with the highest-ranking members of the Kremlin elites. Borod Zhukic served as honorary consul for about four years. In 2018, the Montenegro government stripped him of the title. It was reportedly done in response to the poisoning of a former Russian military intelligence officer who had become a British spy, and it was unrelated to Zhukic. Shortly after, Zhukic appeared at a press conference to endorse the true Montenegro party and defended his own involvement in politics. He told reporters that if he had several million euros or dollars, he would legally offer them to Mr. Milicic. That's when Borod became interesting for me because I saw he was very present there with all these kinds of different organizations that remind so much of, you know, old keepers and proud boys in the US. Since his dismissal, Zhukic has been active on social media, posting pro-Kremlin content, including a photo of himself with Alexander Zoltostanov, the leader of a pro-Kremlin motorcycle gang called the Nightwolves. The US Treasury Department previously sanctions Zoltostanov for leading an organization that recruited fighters and committed crimes during the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea. He could not be reached for comment. In another photo, Zhukic posed with a machine gun in front of a wall of military weapons. Zhukic was part of a faithful network of honorary consuls embedded by the Russian government around the world. Putin, who is obviously a master of soft power, has reinstated the honorary consuls to Russia. And Russia now has a lot of honorary consuls. And he has done that because he understands that honorary consuls, if they are doing what they're supposed to be doing, can be very useful in trying to present Russia in a more favorable light to other countries. Zhukic did not respond to requests for comment, but has publicly denied acting improperly as consul. Four years later, the true Montenegro party remains active in politics, as do pro-Russian interests. In September, authorities expelled six Russian diplomats who were suspected of espionage. Filipovic blames Zhukic, among others, for the political unrest in a country that has struggled to establish an identity since becoming a sovereign nation in 2006. He meddled directly into the country's politics. He was supporting all these extremist radicalized groups of people. He went far beyond what an honorary consul should do. In the weeks since the Shadow Diplomats investigation, governments around the world have called for reform. Experts in international diplomacy and national security say the world's governments need to do far more. That includes examining honorary consul nominees before they're approved and tracking their activities once they become consuls. The countries that are the worst defenders, they will never agree to real reform of the system because it's not in their interest. But one has to ask, why has this system endured? Why do we need it going forward? And I'm not sure there's a good answer for why we need it going forward.