THE MAN WITH THE CROCODILE BRIEFCASE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000300080015-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 24, 1998
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: March 24, 1962
• Content Type: NSPR

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CPYRGHT
The ~,,::t-,,.
Saturday, ..;,,,.
Evening. ,
.~!4S'1,
CPYRGHT ,:, , ; _.
SE
am ummings,~ an _~lmcrican ?~~ho loops l~~.e 'a
. ~ ,.
scoutmaster, is the tip man in a chancy business:
buying anal scl,li.ng ~%~~r weapons around the world.
THE
1~~T_,~N
yZ'TTH
THE
ILE
 Sanitized -Approved For Release :CIA-RDP75-000018000300080015-1
CPYRGHI~
Cumrrrings with his agents
in Athens, where he bought
Greek surplus weapons. He
also does a lively business
selling arms to collectors.
Bargai~t.bRSement murei=
bons met~chant Cumming
owns more small arms than
the British and American
armies have in service.
~~ON ~ 1;EW ll.-1YS' N ~ ICE I SAN
~~~ ~,
EQUIP ~1 vY' I~1'l~'1~Y (;OII YWHE~~.
One morning last September I sat on a sun-
baked terrace,high above the Mediterranean,
talking to a resident of Monaco who for the last
ten years has been furnishing awns to foreign gov-
-ernrn~tTt~s In the popular mind such. a figure
_~ evokes irhages of the archetypal "merchants 3 of
death," distributing their noxious wares with deb-
onair cynicism among belligerents of every politi-
cal stripe. Men without acountry-so the classic
accounts run-exotic and sinister, their origins
veiled. in darkest mystery, they sneer at national
loyalties, manipulate prime ministers like puppets,
-and everywhere sow intrigue and corruption.
The man 1 talked to, ~ and later accom'pani`ed
halfway around the globe, is athirty-four-year-
old native American named Samuel Cummings.
He chose Monaco as his legal residence because
of its lenient tax laws,~but he retains his American
citizenship. As founder and sold'bwner of Inter-
- Armco (International Armambnt ~Corporatioii),
Cummings is the world's leading artris merchant.
Of the total American_and British export-import
gun trade, about 85 percent passes through his
warehouses. He has, in fact; had a hand in almost
-every important arms deal outside the East Bloc
during the last decade.
When West Germany began rearming, the first
weapons she acquired included several thousand
MG-42 light machine guns supplied by Cum-
mings. In 1957 the Kenya Frontier Police were
killing Mau Mau terrorists with British Enfield
~To. 4 rifles bought from Cummings. The same
year he equipped the Finnish $1r'~y>with 100;000
Sten submachine guns. ~+.ir~
Cummngs's warehouses-nine of them bor-
dering the Potomac River docks at Alexandria,
Virginia, one in: Los Angeles and. another near
London--presently contain 660,000 small. arms,
more than both the American and British armies
have in service.
Out of this inventory Cummins ~,eah`~fully
equip, at?a few days' notice, anyinfan~y,`corps
anywhere. Given slightly longe~~ notia~; he can
also supply artillery, tanks, submEa~itt~s, jutfight-
ers. The bulk of his mercharidis~~fur~i~n' gov-
ernment surplus, much of rt wary l~('!{(Lq"~=The
MG-42's he sold West Germany ~+are;'~rc~tlcally,
the same machine guns Hitler's Wehrma*cht aban-
doned when evacuating thh Netherlands
As foreign governments adopt new ordnance,
retiring the old, Cummings or one of his ubiqui-
tons agents is likely to turn up with agold-plated.
pistol as a gift to the head of state, anal a bid for
the surplus weapons. For $1,000,000 in 1959
Cummings bagged Spain's enti~'e arms surplus.
Another $1,000,000 bought him 600,000 Enfield.
rifles the British Government decided to sell after
reducing the levels of its infantry strength. By last
October he had unloaded all the Enfields. Fifty
thousand went to Pakstads border patrols.
There are many arms merchants, both Glandes-
: tine and legal., but none of the others commands
lnterarmco's resources. Its foreign branches, affil-
iates and agencies girdle the globe. Furthermore,
it 'holds rikclusive sales franchises throughout
most of the western world on the products of the
Finnish, Swedish and Dutch national arms facto-
ries. The corporation's annual volume of business
runs high up in eight figures. Its current net book
value exceeds $10,000,000.
The Geneva Tribune recently- awarded Cum-
mings the symbolic crown worn by Sir Basil
Zaha_roff, the inscrutable_.4ireek munitions mag-
nate of the early 1900's, who purportedly fo-
mented wars to create markets .for his products.
Moscow's Prarda denounced the CIA, which
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 Sanitized -Approved For Release :CIA-RDP75-000018000300080015-1
CPYRGHT
once employed Cummings, as a silent partner in
his "illegal transactions." Der Spiegel, a Munich
newsweekly, suggested links between Interarmco
and various German arms smugglers. Cummings's
Munich representative, Hans Joachim Seiden-
schnur, the magazine charged, was arming the
Portuguese planters in Angola against the native
black rebels.
Last July a Zurich arms merchant named Patel
Stauffer fell dead in front of his garage, riddled by
five bullets It was the eighth murder in Switzer-
Cow of
`off nowadays,"
ected a note of
a'f af`1ns control
could pay you.
ay ~o?me big
y~ 4'Bttj:;-,what
tan road. "Do
land or Germany since 1958 of men. believed to East Bloc dealers try to sell you stuff?" l asked.
have been plying the same trade. The Zurich po- "Of course. i wouldn't topcb?~, though, even if
lice theorized that the "Red Hand," aright-wmg I could get away with it; th price is always
French terrorist society, killed Stauffer for run- out of line." ~'
ning guns to the Algerian FLN. His fifes con- As for selling arms to Soviet satellites, he pointed
twined letters from InterarmcQ. The newspapers out that they don'.t nee. them. `mWhy.would they?
failed to report, however, that the letters declined Russia gives them the latest models. But we~Amer-
offers of arms from Stauffer. To Cummings's fur- icans, with our overempphasis on nuclear weap-
therembarrassment, he learned that ~ei~lenschnuf , -ons, ,can't equi~_ :tzv~l c~ivisi~sl with ,up Ito-date
dealer, Georg Puchert, who shipped guns to the
FLN. Puchert was blown up by a bomb concealed
in his `car. Cummings fired Seidenschnur.
The stories depicting Cummings as Zaharoff
redivivus amuse more than they irk him. In reality
he dare not buy or sell as much as a blunderbuss
without a license from the U. S. State Depart-
ment's Office of Munitions Control, the British
War Office, or both, depending on the sphere. of
influence involved. To evade this jurisdiction
would be to jeopardize a business compared to
which the operations of gun runners are small
potatoes. Thus, the record of Cummings's trans-
actions, whether with: Caribbean dictators or,
libertarian .~outh American presidents,. Asian
leftist or African conservative leaders, reflects the
labyrinthine paths of American and/or British Cummings's study bears few signs of the frantic
foreign policy.., ,. ,~: activity one might expect to find at the nerve
I had slim hope, when I phoned Cummings be- ~ center of a munitions empire. A German assist
fore leaving for;Monaco, that anybody inhis line . ant and apart-time French stenographer com-
of business would prove very communicative, but ; plete Otis Monaco staff. He himself types a good
he readily agreed to tell me anything I wan#,ed tct.: deal of his business correspondence: Facing his
His voice was jovial. "Good show! I'll desk- stands a regimental .two-pounder mortar,
know
.
,> ~
He was the last man I would have picked out of _ tury German armor. Battle scenes, old sa ers an
the crowd at Nice airport as a titan of the inters :~ Epistols fektoon the walls throughout the apart-
national arms trade.: He seemed even younger:; ;_;ment.. Cummings is an insatiable collector ~f
than thirty-four, big, bearlike, boyishly voluble ~ rare weapons and a student of military history;
He wore Bermuda shorts, sandals and a-vivid All ten rooms open onto. a terrace overlooking
Guatemalan sports shirt embroidered with quet- the principality. To distract himself Cummings
zals. He carried my bags to a white Ferrari 250 sometimes trams a pair of binoculars on the
Gran Turismo. palace and observes the prince and princess
As we slid into Monte Carlo, he chuckled. splashing in the royal swimming pool He h~S
"Zaharoff lived here ti;oo. The idea sort of embar- never met Rainier, but an English sporting-g~~a
rases me. Did you read the Spiegel article? firm he controls is fashioning a? hunting rifle Lo
Rubbish!" the Prince's specifications and Cummings w3x1
No expletives stranger than "rubbish" and present it to him. }~
"good show," I found, pass his lips. His speech, The fleshpots of the Riviera hold scant a11urQ
like his manner, has the hearty but decorous tone for .Cummings. He never sets foot in the Monlie
of a scoutmaster. He fregtaently ]apses into angle- Carlo casino except to humor visiting friend;
cisms, the effect of years spent among the English, and then he risks no more than. a few francs im
He keeps a flat in Mayfair, belongs to the fash- the slot machines. He frequents none of the
ionable Devonshire Club, and is the only foreigner sumptuous restaurants; preferring simple .fare,:
Gunmakers.
"Nobody can operate like
he was saying, and I thought
regret. "There was iro 'intern
then. You sold to anybody vv
Smugglers? Sure, there
We began spiraling up a~
"Look, the best heavy machine gun in the world
is the Russian 1.4.5 min.:, I :found: some 'of the
cartridges they were designed to fire in a load of
Russo-Finnish V1ax. surplus ~ I tested ,them on a
sample of the steel~we use fsor our armored per-
sonnel carriers, which were designed to withstand
fifty-calibex c~xtridges. 'they t~rentlhxough it like
a knife thrcittghbutter.:~Ve. ha~e;#W]