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Saudi Billionaire Arms Dealer Adnan Khashoggi Dies

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

In Saudi Arabia, the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi has died. His name was familiar to many people in the 1980s. That's when his arms business helped make him one of the richest men in the world.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The trade also brought him notoriety. He was a figure in the biggest political scandal of the 1980s. It was called the Iran-Contra affair - the Reagan administration's effort to trade weapons for hostages. Adnan Khashoggi was named as a middleman.

MARTIN: He was also famous for his lifestyle. This included lavish parties on a yacht that was 282 feet long. That's a boat nearly the size of a football field - really big. It was featured in a James Bond movie. And it was later owned, for a time, by one Donald J. Trump who renamed it the Princess Trump - rather, the Trump Princess.

INSKEEP: Khashoggi's yacht was even famous enough to get its own song by the band Queen.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KHASHOGGI'S SHIP")

QUEEN: (Singing) And then we took a holiday on Khashoggi's ship. Well, we really had a good, good time...

INSKEEP: Adnan Khashoggi has died at 81. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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