SAMUEL CUMMINGS DATES HUMAN AFFAIRS B.G. AND A.G. ARMS MERCHANT TO THE WORLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000300080001-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 10, 2003
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 24, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Relea929Y/1 8i :~F~ ~ 3b 1 N
September , - .-Aft I
0
~(.JL lrl N w
Samuel Cam . r ies
Human . , Iaf s 2i G ? and A.G.
12,
1VO ths
Cummings, who makes the most of liv-
ing After Gunpowder, in the Alexan
dria, Va., warehouse of his firm, Inter-
armco (brochure below); .its offers
include- "equipping an entire army."
By SANCHE de GRAMONT
AMUEL. CUMMINGS is the. larg-
est private arms- dealer in the
.
world. He concedes that sell- ?'Millions died that he mi
ht thrive"
g
ing guns is different from selling ( is one popular summary of his life.
encyclopedias or Fuller brushes. The
primary function of a gun is to kill.' SIDE from the fact that both
When the. National Rifle Association. men chose Monte Carlo as their place
tells us that there are proportionately of residence, there is not much re
far more traffic deaths than gunshot semblance between ' the bearded,
deaths per year in the United States,
so that if you are going to outlaw
the free sale of guns you might as
well outlaw the free sale of cars, the
obvious reply is that, unless the
people in Detroit are more malevolent
than anyone thought, homicide is not.
the primary function of the automo-
bile. But does a salesman have moral
control over his product? Is it the
pharmacist's fault if . the little old
lady with the flowered hat spikes her
husband's breakfast cereal with sul-
furic acid? Are distillers responsible
for drunks? Are gun dealers to blame
for wars, murders and hunting acci-
dents? -
And yet guns are different because
they are by definition lethal and be -
I cause the armaments business has a
tarnished past. Thus, according to
.publications like Der Spiegel, Pravda
and the Journal de Geneve, Sam
Cummings has inherited the mantle
of the sinister Sir Basil Zaharoff
(1850-1936), the arms dealer for,
whom the terms "peddler of. death"
and "devil's smithy" were coined.
Sir Basil sold arms to both sides in
the Boer War, and used bribery and
graft to play : Turkey off against
Greece so that they built up their
respective armies until, there was.
SANCHE de GRAMONT, a Paris-based
is author of "The'Seeret War,"
lance
f
,
ree
about espionage, and a forthcoming
study of the French ancien regime,
"Epitaph for Kings."
nothing left to do but make war. He
not only supplied the arms race, he
was instrumental in creating it
Svengali-like Zaharoff and Cummings,
the prototype of the jolly fat man,
who is about as sinister as Santa
Claus and likes nothing better than
to make sardonic jokes about the
peculiarities of his profession. To-
day, Cummings points out, since 9
per ' cent of the world's armame is
are sold by governments, priv to
merchants are no longer the manipu-
lators of policy, but merely its agents.
The sordid mercantilism and political
intrigues of Zaharoff, Krupp, Vicke s
and the other pre-World War I mu i-
tions giants no longer are charac
istic of the private-arms field.
Cummings seems rather to h
inherited what might 'be called
Rhett Butler mentality. As the da
ing but pragmatic Civil War block
runner put it: "What most pen
just as much money to be made
of the wreckage of a civilization
Butler sold Confederate cotton
England and brought back guns
the rebels, disclaiming patriotic
volvement. His philosophy was fr
enterprise, right or wrong, and
insisted that "blockading is a bu
ness with me and I'm making mon y
out of it. When I stop making mon y
out of it, I'll quit."
In the same manner, although h's
business is strictly legal, weapo
have. made the 40-year-old Cummin
Approved For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
 Approved For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
Z y3
C' ;0 (D g cQ M --A Q 3 -i. --
o' x= ro n ro a 0
Q tt ro n rn 'r c rn rn `~ ? ,, o
n n -!+ Q U cn O N . Q n C (^ 0 tt m c- i9
o _.0
w (a m (D
41 n 't _ - CD 0 n :^ ', cn 9 -' - -rs
C
ro
a 0
-0 -
- 0 to
Li W U 0 ~ . -++ - n C,
C
CL :rA -0
0a Q trot/ i7 --1 C10.r 3 3
(D m
tp4?rd For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001R000300080001-6
o t flued'
 Approved For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
.
ro cn a
? 0 3 e~ 7 Q ~' O ~'1
Q 0
Z (a = w s c~`D. a C (D Z
Z-4 m 0-
m ;0
t1? (m. Q rte.
A o (p . -h 0 (D rt >
~'
0 CL D
3
3coEo -cs3
x ro o
Q CD
ro
0 -0
.fl CD Q -.r 0
0
> CD
-i Q C
C2 m ;0 C 0
-0-a 0 3 "00 fl- m p [J'
^
-
O ro
. Q 6
^ 3
3 n a .0 _ 0 <
~7jed For Release 2003/12/02 CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
 a millionaire, and he is ready to sell
4 to.
anything from a huntir patter Release 200
jet fighter to any nati
afford it. Half of his worldwide busi-
ness consists of selling light arms
(up to 20 millimeters) on the Amer-
O ican and Commonwealth- markets.
The other half involves acting as
broker for international arms deals..
He benefits from conflagrations, for
either the belligerents are fighting
with his weapons, or one side will
eventually have surplus armament to
dispose of.
He is currently negotiating with
the Israeli Government to purchase
Soviet light arms captured in the six-
day war. Cummings sees no- harm
in profiting from what he calls "our '
era's treadmill to oblivion." He be-
lieves that "arms are the symbol of
man's folly throughout the ages.
That's what civilization. was, is, and
0
66cuminings benefits from military
conflagrations, for.either the
belligerents are fighting with his'
weapons, or one side will even-
tually hceve surplus -arms to se11.99
always will be: 'Open Up! Let 'em .
have it!' That's why this is the only
business that should last forever."
"I should laugh diabolically and
put on my Dr. Faustus mask," Cum-
mings said when I asked him about
the merchant-of-death image. "But
I simply point to our license file-=we
do less than 1 per cent of the United
and we
States Government's business of every
have Government approval
deal."
SINCE 1957, the Pentagon has
been conducting arms sales through
an innocuous-sounding agency known
as International Logistics Negotia-
tions, which supplies its NATO part-
ners and 24 other countries with a
complete range of weapons. The
for
Government's three main reasons
taking a ,major share of the arma-
ments market' seem to be: To offset
the balance o ayments deficit cre
ated by United. ,,States military expen-
ditures abroad"'lo boost employment
0 at home and profits for American
industries; and the belief .that it is
healthier for allies who can afford it
to pay for their own defense.
Henry J. Kuss Jr., the Deputy
of arms sales proudly ex-
f i2f; ,ilAaP,Q rOQP0flR@OD300080001-6
r--
arms field by saying that "no other
nation can touch us in over-all..tech-
nological know-how, quality, price,
delivery time, follow-up logistical
support and credit terms." From
$600-million in fiscal 1961, Mr. Kuss
and his 21-man sales force increased
weapons sales to $1.93-billion in
fiscal I9&3.
Cummings declines to qualify his
annual sales figure in more specific
terms than "in eight figures" and
"under $100-million." He is able to
so that he has to
Bond-like security.
gs
Every foreign sale Cummi
~
makes depends on licensing from the
nt o
o
m
, --
e
Stara Depa. ~
wealth countries are involved, the
"In a strict legal
h War Office
iti
B
.
s
r
sense there's nothing they could do
ent ahead without their O "
f i I
w
he says, "but practically it would' be
extremely unwise. I have $10-million
compete with the United States Gov- States and I depend on the good
ernment because he cuts prices and,' 'of the Government. Any mane
give quick, efficient service." For his chums after hours, but woul
ing World War 11 Browning .50-cali-
ber machine guns at $750 each, the
cost of manufacture. Cummings, who
buys Brownings as surplus from gov-
ernments stocking more modern
equipment, reconditions them and
sells them at $265. 'We can give
these savings right' through the
weapons. spectrum," he says. "For
instance, we are offering United
States tanks at a far lower cost than
the Government."
He owns more than 100,000 square
feet of warehouses on the banks of
the Potomac in Alexandria, Va.,
which are stocked with 50,000 pistols,
10,000 machine guns, 600,000 rifles
and 100 million cartridges. There are
300,000 more assorted weapons neat-
ly stacked in his London warehouses.
He has 200 employes, 17 affiliates
and subsidiaries, and agents around
the world who keep him informed
about possible arms deals. Many of
these are retired generals or high
civil servants with entrees to their
governments; until recently his agent
. in Indonesia was President Sukarno's
cousin.
room apartment in Monaco, 10 rooms
of which serve as the residence for
himself, his blonde, Swiss-born wife
Irma, and his 5-year-old tow-headed
twin daughters. His office is ?deco-
rated with an 18th-century English
two-pounder, a 16th-century German
suit of armor, a large map of the
world (courtesy of the United States
Army map service) and photographs
of artillery being unloaded from boat'
decks in a Latin American harbor
onto rail cars, with smiling generals
in the background.
Cummings prohibits the use of
Telex between his many branches,
for he says he would "just be broad-
casting my moves to the competi-
tion." He . discourages interoffice
telephone calls, and uses a number
code in his business correspondence
se I
Assistant Secre r8 iee'8r
Release 2003/12' mQS4- -'
FkbPqQ4
UMMINGS works out of a 14-
"Our biggest headache is get~ing
--
_~
American country for the deliver of
50 light American M-41 tanks. These
ood
-
are g
+. ------
ers obsolescent, so that NATO 'na-
tions want to unload them. I made
a detailed proposition to the Mini$ter
of Defense of that country, sub~ect
to United States approval. I have
the NATO power's approval for the
sale. But at State they've been stall-
in
g
"Meanwhile, the same country has
received a proposal from France,
which offers facilities to assemble
their new light tank, the AMX-30, in
the country itself, and offers long-
term, low-interest financing. If I
don't close' the deal by the end of' the
month I'll lose by default. The chance
to supply a standard United States
item to a Latin-American country
which receives United States aid will
be lost to France-the United States
aid will be helping, the French econ-
omy."
TO sell his staple-light arms-
Cummings is on the road eight
months a year. As a result, Spanish
carabinieri, Yugoslav border police,
Finnish army patrols and many other
armed forces are carrying rifles sold
by his company, Interarmco, or one
of its affiliates.
Cummings is the sole private agent
for the products of the Dutch,
Swedish and Finnish national arms
factories, and has an open-end agree-
ment with Colt to sell its lightweight,
rapid-fire Armalite rifle, the latest
Con- n xez]
A?PftP0080001-6
 model of which thA@d
are using in Vietnam. Colt,
of course, favors its own re-
tailers, but Cummings is able
to find many markets for the
Armalite thanks to his re-
sourceful. salesmanship.
He travels with an Armalite
_ M-14 or M-16 neatly disas-
sembled in a flat Fiberglas
case lined with foam rubber,
and thus far has had no
trouble at customs. He also
carries a magnet to test the
Force 10113>" 9-ti
was in the Dominican ' Re-
public demonstrating the Ar-
malite to Trujillo. A group of
Cuban-based guerrillas had
just landed at Puerto Plata.
General Kovacs, Trujillo's
Hungarian-born military ad-
viser, was examining a cap-
tured Cuban. rifle on his desk
when Cummings came in with
Trujillo.
One word led to another,
and Cummings finally had to
admit that it was he who had
sold the captured rifle to
Castro. "You know I wouldn't
tell him to use it against you."
Cummings blandly told Tru-
jillo.
Cummings is also fully con-
scious that he, sells arms to un-
derdeveloped countries which
are diverting hard currency
from social reforms to buy
them, and whose leaders are
exponents of Goering's adage
that "guns will make us pow-
erful; butter will only make
us fat."
quality of cartridge cases and
a micrometer to measure the
wear on gun bores of surplus
weapons he might consider as
trade-ins for new guns.
Arriving in a foreign capi-
tat, he calls up the Minister
of Defense and says: "I'm here
to demonstrate the best rifle
in the world." If an important
sale is involved, he may pre-
sent the chief of state with a
gold-plated pistol or some
other memento. The prospec-
tive customers "are always in-
terested," he says, "because
everybody likes fireworks. I
use tracer bullets. If you can
see it, you believe it. I as-
semble the rifle to show how
easy it is. I fire at normal.
targets at-different ranges. I'm
a pretty good shot, I get
plenty of practice. Then for
the grand finale I fill a few
bean cans full of petrol-did
you ever see a tracer bullet
hit a bean can full of petrol?
It's better than a John Wayne
movie. This little demonstra-
tion never fails to elicit de-
lightful Oh's and Ah's. I sad.
die up and ride into the sun-
set, leaving the firing range
a smoldering .ruin."
CUMMINGS has no qualms
about supplying both sides in
a conflict. "Any supplier of
basic commodities sells to both
sides," he says. "Coca-Cola
sells to both Arabs and Israe-
lis." When you are selling
guns, however, the results
can be embarrassing. Cuba's -
Fulgencio Batista had been
one of Cummings's regular
customers. When Fidel Castro
overthrew him in 1959, Cum-
mings kept supplying the new
regime with Armalite rifles
until the. State Department
stopped licensing weapons
sales to Cuba.
0p 2 4 1967
-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6,
r&6'I should laugh diabolically
and put on my Dr. Faustus masks,'
Cummings said when I Basked him
about the nnercheant-of-deaath
image. 'But we have Government
i approval of every decal.' 39
the other side of the hill into
the Stone Age.' This isn't con-
sidered polite any more. You
need a defensive pitch: 'Un-
less you obtain this type of
weapon you won't have fire
superiority in case of aggres-
sion. You won't even make
it out of your foxhole!"' Cum-
mings eschews the expression
"A bigger bang for a buck."
Even with the defensive ap-;
proach, Cummings is a con-,!
vincing enough salesman to
have, on one occasion, badly
frightened a Central-American
the -weapons to parade down dictator (name withheld be-
the main boulevard on inde- cause he is still a Cummings
pendence day," Cummings client). "I'm well protected,"
says, "and make the people
think they are safer than they
are as they shout, 'viva la
libertad,' when what they
should be shouting is, -Adios
libertad.' It's the same wheth- morning you sit in front of the same
er it's a people's democracy or picture window in your national pal-
" ' lied Cummings ominously.
times. Emerging from what?
. The only word I know in Rus-
I is `skoro'-soon. How
many times I have seen the,
obedient masses marching on-
ward toward the promise of
shoro.
"In the final analysis, the:
i morality of armaments boils
down to who makes the sale.
I have to make them buy my
model. The East bloc sales-
man comes to Egypt, slaps the
admiral on the back, and pre-
sents him with a battleship
he can't sail on a sea . he
doesn't own near a coast he
can't approach."
the dictator had told ? Cummings, "I
have all I need."
that each
ace, rep
"All I need is a piston-engine plane
armed with eight 50-mm. machine
guns. I'd come in low and blast you
through the window.
"Another thing-I wasn't even
frisked when I came in here. How
do you know I can't send you to
kingdom come with what I've got in
this attache case?" Cummings
reached for the case, but a nervous
bodyguard intercepted him at gun-?
point. "You know what the sea cap-
tain in 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey'
said," comments Cummings, "'all so,
fake, Esteban."'
LIFETIME of studying and sell-
ing weapons has made Cummings
skeptical about human progress,
which he tends to see in terms of
the era B.G. and A.G.-before and
has been
INCE Cummings after gunpowder. He was raised on
in the arms business, he has Philadelphia's Main Line. His stock-
noticed some progress, not broker father was wiped out on Black
in international morality, but Friday and became. the manager of
in reducing international by- an electrical supply store. ? He died
pocrisy. "The sales pitch of
arms dealers," he says, "used
to stress offensives:. 'If you
buy these new machine guns
~?'a-Y1~
e u s on
you can blow os g y
Approved For Release 2003112/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
 when Sam was 8, and his wi- ?'bu i ss.
dow went into real estP.tpPt5ove CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001 .6
that she could send her son to purchase of. large quantities of- 66W.11heal Cummings was trying to sell
the exclusive Episcopal Acad-
c,irnliiq light arms in Europe
emy there. Cummings later l
adopted tschool , to sell an the erican.mar-
0 "Lsse d the h Video ("motto Be ket. Cummings knew that the he had sold Castro a rifle that
basis for every fine bolt-
Rather Than Seem"), for his action sporting rifle is the the Dominican Republic had just
company. German Mauser. He also knew seized from Cuban raiders. 'You
"a gun nut" at the age of
when an American Legion pos5t
gave him: a lusted World War
I: Maxim machine grin, which'
.lie learned to assemle. 1?Ie
started a gun collection, and
by the time he was in his late
teens he knew as much about
light arms as a master
armorer.
He was drafted in 1945, and
at close-order drill on the first
day of basic training he han-
dled his rifle with such pro-
fessional ease that the ser-
geant, his face one inch from
Cummings's, roared: "You've
beezi in the. Army before!"
Cummings missed the shoot-
ing war, but in 1948, with
the fervor of a Renaissance
art scholar on his first visit
to Tuscan museums, he toured
Europe to see the battle sites.
In Normandy's Falaise Gap, in
the Ardennes and in Western
know I.wouldn't tell him to
use it against you,'
Cummings told Trujillo
that several European countries were
overstocked with Mausers. They were
the wrong- caliber for NATO stand-
ardization, and cost money to main-
tain and store. They even cost money
to throw away. Finally, Cummings
had 'faith in the United States gun
market. He estimates that there are
50 million armed American civilians,
including 24 million registered hunt-
ers, many millions of unregistered
hunters, collectors, veterans and
other types of "gun-nuts."
"Let's face it," he says, "the gun
made this country. It's the frontier
tradition, the musket over the fire-
Germany, Cummings saw
fields that looked as though
they had been planted with
tanks and heavy artillery. It
was like finding pirate treas-
ure. "The cartridge belts. were
still on the machine guns," he
recalls. "The tanks had that
new-car smell. All they, needed
was a battery recharge to
start 'em up and reconquer
France."
'He was distraught at the
sight of this fine material go-
ing to waste. "In Scandinavia,
it was a tragedy," he says.
"They took all the German
arms and dumped them into
the sea."
0
place, the man at the end of the
Concord bridge. The gun's part of
the' language-'Keep your powder
dry,' 'Lock, stock and barrel,' 'Flash
in the pan.' I used to visit local
gunshops at the start of the hunting
season on Saturday morning. and
watch one of these guys come in.
He'd pick a Mauser out of the rack,
nut down a $20 bill, and his eyes
lslandly.99
frdrie called The Worshipful
Company of Gunmakers,
which confers' obscure priv}
leges, such as the right to ride
in the Thames barge proces-
sion on coronation day.
In Finland, Cummings
bought all-the leftover weap-
ons from the Russo-Finnish
winter war, ranging from
captured Cossack sabers to
20-millimeter Finnish antitank
guns, too light to pierce Rus-
sian armor. The Finns had
fired them at the vision slits
of Russian bunkers in Karelia.
Cummings is amused at the
uses customers have found
for the antitank guns. Some
were sold to laboratories test-
ing armor plate. Others went
to a whale cooperative in
Alaska, located near- a spot
where the whales come too
close to shore for their own
good. Cummings throws back
his head and roars with
laughter at the thought: -
"When the whale yawns, he
swallows that red-hot slug-
Gulp!"
would- sort of glaze over, and you
could see him thinking: - 'Let 'em
come, I'm ready!
Cummings bought out the entire
stock of surplus light arms from sev-
eral European countries, including
hundreds of thousands of what he
calls "arsenal-fresh Mausers, with
Hitler's fingerprints still on them."
1'Ie 'sometimes got them for as low -
as 10 per cent of cost, which allowed
him to offer substantial bargains on
the American market. He also did
the- rounds of Washington's military
attaches to ferret out unwanted sur-
plus.
An Arizona dentist who
bought an antitank gun to
shoot rabbits reported: "I
don't hit many, but when I
do-Oh, man!"
Anti-Castro raiders used the
Finnish 20-millimeter to shoot
up fuel dumps near Havana.
Ignoring the fact that the
weapon does not fire explo-
sive shells, they only man-
aged to spring a few leaks in
the storage tanks.
+.._OLLOWING his grand tour,
Cummings was graduated
from George Washington Uni-
versity and served briefly as
a clerk in the C.I.A., during
the Korean war. He was put
to work -identifying North
Korean weapons from photo-
graphs. Not unexpectedly,
they were Russian. But the
vision of arms-strewn Euro-
pean fields still haunted him,
and he joined a small West
Coast arms firm on a salary-
plus-commission basis. Within
two years, he had saved
$25,000 to start his own
Retailers who carry the
RADUALLY Cummings built up antitank guns (Cummings
his domestic market to the point neither manufactures nor re-
where he now sells 250,000 firearms - tails weapons-except for his
a year in the United States and
80,000 more in the Commonwealth.
He bought out two famous English
gunmakers, Grant and Lang and E. J.
Churchill, and has'increased produc-
tion while maintaining their line of
handmade shotguns that sell for
$2,000 each. He is the only non-
English member of a tight-knit con-
line of fine hunting rifles in
Great Britain) ran humorous
ads in the National Rifle As-
sociation magazine, -"The
Rifleman": "Always try for an
eye - shot at the charging
-
rhinoceros."
SEP 2hp ved For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
 BOUT this time Cummings
also began to go afte
orders In 1956 he s~(dd'' rAtjlg peed For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
Swedish vampire jets to Tru-
jillo for $3.5-million. His big-
gest single deal, $20-million
worth of arms, involved three
countries and took a year and
a half to negotiate.
Always wary of the com-
petition, Cummings does not
like to go into the details of
his important brokerage deals.
However, he does puncture
the notion that arms dealers
make huge profits. His own
average profit margin, he
says, ranges from 9 per cent
to 12 per' cent. On one recent
deal he obtained a supply of
new Belgian rifles from West
Germany. They cost $125
apiece at the factory, but he
bought them as surplus for $35 each.
It costs $7 per rifle for overhauling,
and he sells them at $50, for a gross
profit of nearly 20 per cent.
Cummings is disdainful of the U.S.
Government arms salesmen who are
able to conclude much more import-
ant deals with a single telephone call.
' "Kuss doesn't know what a com-
mercial operation is," he says. "He
0
has the whole department of Defense
behind him. ' All he has to do is an-
swer the phone."
The arms race between the two
great power blocs helps Cummings
thrive, for it makes perfectly good
NATO weapons obsolete the moment
Russian materiel improves. In 1970,
Cummings is expecting 4,000 M-47
U.S. tanks to come up for sale in
NATO countries. "It's first-class
goods," he says, "never used except
on short maneuvers. It's just what
the rest of the world doesn't need
but must have for -their own useless
maneuvers."
T a hearing last April 13, Cum-
mings tried to convey some of the
absurdities of the arms business to
Senators on the Subcommittee on
Near Eastern and South Asian Af-
fairs, chaired by Senator Stuart Sy-
mington. The mere fact that the
United States tries to match Soviet
arms deliveries, Cummings said, "will
encourage the Soviet Union to put
its thumb on the scales and throw it
out of kilter. Look at Afghanistan.
We give the Afghans some air-
fields and a beautiful highway, and
the Russians rush in with an armored
division, and then we give them, I
think, some aircraft, and it goes on
and on. A case of 'Can you top this.
There is no end to it."
66'The sales pitch of arms
dealers,' says Cummings, 'used
to be: If you buy these new
guns you can blow those guy's
on the other side of the hill
into the Stone Age. But this
isn't considered polite any more.' 99
The Senators were particularly
concerned about 90 U.S. F-86 jet
fighters West Germany had sold to
Iran, which was acting as a clearing-
house for Pakistan. A NATO embargo
on weapons sales to either India or
Pakistan had been circumvented,
.thanks to the device of using Iran
as a cover. The planes had been sold
through a private German broker, but
had been flown to Iran by Luftwaffe
pilots in civilian clothes. The so-
called end-use agreement, by which
the United States exercises a veto on
the .resale of its military equipment,
had been disregarded.
The Senators, who had just heard
details of this questionable transac-
tion for the first time, were dismayed
to learn from Cummings that it was
common knowledge in European gov-
ernment and military" circles. "There
are wonderful regulations and pro-
nouncements of policy," said Cum
mings, "but the plainest print cannot
be read through a gold eagle."
"Well," said Senator Symington,
"that is quite an observation:"
Asa man whose business depends on
such anomalies, Cummings is fond of
commenting on the futility of life,
and adds: "Fortunately, as the old
sea captain said, 'It's not for long,
Esteban."'
On the subject of disarmament,
Cummings believes with Plato that
'only the dead have known the end
of war."
"Disarmament," Cummings says,
"will never happen." One of the few
disarmament goals ever achieved-
the banning of the dum dum bullet
-came about, he argues, because of
a development in weaponry: New
high-velocity rifles could not take a
soft-nosed bullet.
He is less sanguine about proposed
laws to curtail the sale and distri-?
bution of firearms in the United-
States,' which would, cut into his do-.
mestic market, and he echoes the
CUMMINGS sees the arms busi-
ness as a series of hopeless contradic-
tions. The West Germans are glutted
and Chan-
with arms they don't need
,
66Cummutgs became what he cals 'a
cellor Kiesinger is urged to buy more
l
weapons each time he comes to gun nut' at age 5. As a draftee in 1945,
Washington. And the Senators are ;
surprised because the Germans try to ; he handled his rifle with such
unload some of their excess hard-
ware on the Pakistanis. The Soviet professional ease on the first day of basic(
Union, to take another example, is the training that the sergeant roared
champion of emerging nations but
sells arms to South Africa: The 'You've been in the Army before!' !p9
United States, probably the most vo-
cal nation in the world when it comes
to disarmament, is also the world's
biggest salesman of modern weapons.
l:ioa"
Approved For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6 ,; lxG '
 0
standard arguments of
Viis re i
kt ~` or F ~ so `26'65/ t'2!lI2 Ur rfJP75-00001 R000300080001-6
il , w sc i urnmings s private opinion
t;"if I was a Marine in Vietnam
was given one of those new
Armalites, I'd throw it away and
say I'd lost it and try to get one
of the Russian rifles off a dead
V.C. They're the best."-S. de G.
controversy is a proposal for com-
pulsory gun ownership in the United
States, because "armed civilians are
the measure of a democracy's
strength.` He admires Switzerland,
-where every man up to the age of 50
must keep either a loaded rifle or
pistol in his home and attend annual
target practice.
"You don't- have much armed rob-
bery with every home armed to the
teeth," says Cummings. He argues
that if guns were illegal, the honest
man would be disarmed but the crim-
would prohibit the mail-order pur-
chase of light arms, "penalizes the
honest sportsman and the law-abiding
collector. The misuse of weapons
should be penalized, rather than have
a law which prevents John Jones,
deer hunter in upper Nebraska, from
carrying cartridges in his car across
the state line,"
At the drop of a grain of powder,
Cummings will quote Article Two of
the Bill of Rights, which states that,
"a well-regulated militia being neces-
sary to the security of a free state,
the right of the people to keep and
bear arms shall. not be infringed."
But Cumming's most novel con-
tribution to the "right-to-bear-arms"
At a Senate hearing a few
months ago, gun-dealer Samuel
Cummings gave his candid opinion
of the Arrhelite rifle, which he has
successfully sold from Cuba to
Kenya,. and which, as the M-16,
has been the) subject of . intense
controversy concerning its per-
formance in Vietnam.. The, ? testi-
mony went this way:
Cummings: "I am not personally
an enthusiast of it."
Symington: "In South Vietnam
they are enthusiastic because of
the weight."
Cummings: "The World War II_
carbine was a useless weapon. It
was light. Everybody loved it be-
cause it was light, but it was a
dog.
Symington: "Why was it a
dog?"
Cummings: "Ballistically, you
can have a hatful of cartridges in
your stomach and still live long
enough to blast the man who fired
at you. It is as simple as that."
At this point, the anonymous
recorder of the hearings, bent in
concentration over his Stenotype
machine, -jumped up and said:
"He's right; he's right. I was in the
Cettle of the Bulge and I shot a
German six times with a carbine
and he was still able to shoot me."
SEP 2 4 1967
inals and the lunatic fringe would
continue to find contraband arms. He
believes that. the deranged student in
the Texas tower would have done far
less damage if swift answering fire
had made him take cover, and that
Lee Harvey Oswald, had he been un-
able to buy a cheap Italian carbine,
would have tried to kill President
Kennedy "with a Cossack saber."
UMMINGS is as abstemious as
a seminarian-he neither smokes nor
drinks, and the strongest word that
passes his lips is "Gosh." He is also
frugal, confessing to a Puritan streak.
The apartments he keeps up in Wash-
ington, London and Monaco are main-
ly for business purposes. His Swiss
chalet is comfortable but unpreten-
tious.
He 'drives an old Opel station
wagon, whereas the head of his Lon-
don office owns a fleet of six sports
cars. Mentioning a friend who came
to see him in Monaco aboard his
private yacht with a crew of 14,
Cummings says with a grimace, "You
become a slave to that." His only
self-indulgences are good food and a
collection of 1,000 antique weapons,
including early flintlocks and wheel
locks that would fetch up to $30,000
apiece in today's gun market.
Early last August, Cummings was
sipping ginger ale on the flagstone
terrace of his Swiss chalet, perched
in the clean Alpine air near the lake
of Geneva 3,600 feet above sea
level. Above, a plane towed a red
glider across a cloudless sky. Cum-
mings was reading over his July sales
figures, and expressed' surprise that,
despite the Negro riots, there had
been no increase in his U.S. sales.
"You'd think our business would be
a barometer for that kind of thing,"
he said. "But it's the quiet time of
year, before the hunting season
opens."
After 15 highly successful years in
the gun business, Cummings is quiet-
ing down himself. Since the Kennedy
tax reform affecting Americans who
live abroad, Monaco is no longer a
tax haven, but "just another nice
place to live." Cummings is in the 80
per cent bracket, and swears he'd be
"better off staring at the mountains
than working."
Perhaps for that reason, or perhaps
because he is mellowing into a moral-
ist, Cummings has dropped the hard
sell in favor of a philosophical, even
fatherly attitude toward his clients.
On occasion, he does his best to lose
a sale. As he recently explained to a
Southeast Asian strongman: "Now
look, you don't really need 1,000
tanks. You have no aggressive plans.
Your name isn't Erwin Rommel. Keep
your rice crop. to feed your starving
peasants." 12 r
Approved For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
 Approved For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6
0
ARMS AND THE MAN-Cummings in his Alexandria; Va.,
office. Half of his worldwide. business consists of selling light
arms (up to 20-mm.) on the American and Commonwealth
markets. The other half involves acting as broker for inter-
national arms deals. Annual sales:. "Under $100-million."
Sap 2 4 1 V
Approved For Release 2003/12/02 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300080001-6