During our first meeting Dean told me he had no experience in the print industry but did have applicable electronics and chemistry knowledge. Toluene is a key chemical used in both rotogravure printing and the manufacture of TNT explosives. In August 1996 the US embassy Yemen and State Department Washington helped source industrial quantities of toluene for KSM’s Yemeni hosts, the Hayel Saeed Anam Group. Dean Printing Systems is listed as offering equipment, chemistry, electronics and supplies for the rotogravure industry. Dean was thirty-eight years old in 1988 but already had white hair, as seen in his 2019 photo (below). He explained it had turned white overnight, alluding to but not disclosing an extremely traumatic event in his life. I asked what foreign languages he spoke; he said just Spanish. I next saw Dean at an exhibition in April 1991 Dusseldorf, then at the CMM exhibition in his hometown of Chicago later that year. I don’t recall anything of note other than Dean appeared to be liked by all, an integral part of my parent’s business and key to its success. Then about a year later, over dinner at home in Manchester, my parents said Dean had been fired. It felt like a very touchy subject and I didn’t inquire further. Then Dean was quietly reengaged as their sales agent a few months later and again I sensed not to ask why. I now know that Dean had caught my father in an Italian honey trap after recommending a young and attractive Italian sales agent to my father*. My father financed the affair from the company’s accounts that my mother managed and by getting me to drop off £3000 cash to a fashion boutique in 1990 London. He told us it was a bribe he had to pay to a customer in Italy. He’d even spent days and shared a hotel with her when he and I were working together at an exhibition in 1991 Brussels, so he did have a lot to hide. But when the trap was sprung rather than be blackmailed my father confessed all to my mother. She forgave him on the condition Dean was fired for introducing them. She remained a company director but never went to the office again and did accept Dean being quietly reemployed a few months later. Dean went through a second fire / rehire cycle with my family’s business about a decade later; I don’t know the reason why. It does indicate that whoever was benefiting most from Dean’s employment as sales agent for a British engineering export company had a lot of power and influence over my parents’ business decisions.
*This is not salubrious gossip; it shows the true nature of Dean and my father’s relationship, and it is significant to 1997 Yemen too. I met an Italian engineer onsite in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s front company, measuring up for a $1,000,000 Bielloni flexographic printing press whose sale I think Dean setup in April 1997 Chicago.
After backpacking in 1994/95 I was contracting for Air BP at Manchester airport, on the administration side of British Petroleum’s aircraft refuelling division. Then my parents asked if I’d rejoin the family company as an international field service technician. Air BP offered me a coveted permanent contract if I stayed with them; my parents said that being family they’d offer me better job security than BP. I started back at the family firm in October 1996 and was made redundant in April 1998, but not before I’d seen Dean again. We spent a few days together in April 1997 Chicago, at the CMM exhibition being held in McCormick Place. It was the last time we met and was when I saw him at the height of his powers, on top form and as smooth as James Bond.
