IRANIAN PLOT TO BLOW UP U.S. SHIP REPORTED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605440006-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: August 8, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
/ Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605440006-0
ARTICLE APP
AGE
Iranian Plot
to Blow Up U.S
Ship Reported
By WILLIAM C. REMPEL
and GAYLORD SHAW,
. Times Staff Writers
LOS ANGELES TIMES
8 August 1985
dbti't, have the wherewithal to
.4apry then out. It's all a lot of gas."
"`'I'hus,,eitler the Customs Service
iigedlies abandoned a promising
uOercayer investigation or the
Pentagon took action that it would
1~disdose.
,:'he_episode in April of last year
occurred against a backdrop of
high-level fears that the Iran-Iraq
war and possible 'terrorist acts by
Khomeini's follg wcrs threatened to
squeeze off 'm icb of the Middle
BRIDGEPORT, Conn.-Federal serious election ~ ear fore al
ign agents n policy
posing as arms brokers crisis for President Reagan.
stumbled across wRat, = And, according to federal law
ev was an Iranian p o ow. enforcement officials, it illustrates
u~ a lam' n tthe how Iranian operatives may be
s'p'a X linked on one side of the world to
muz O2? tog ' radical Shia Muslims threatening
sources. American ships and on the other
'agents, who were conduct- ? side to efforts to penetrate U.S.
ing a major investigation of alleged arms stockpiles.
smuggling of U.S.. missiles to Iran,
aborted their investigation so the, CountedngAitni 'Embargo
Pentagon could be alerted to the
alleged plot, the sources. said.
Seeking U.& Missiles
In a hotel room overlooking the
steeples-and. smokestacks of this
aging factory town, the sources
said, an international arms mer-
chant seeking to buy 5,000 Ameri-
can TOW missiles for Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini's regime vol-
unteered precise details of a
planned attack to an undercover
U.S. Customs Service'agent-and
to cameras and microphones sur-
reptitiously recording the conver-
sation.
Federal officials watching and
listening from an adjacent room
were so concerned about what they
considered an imminent peril that
they quickly decided to blow their
The Times disclosed Sunday that
Iran is conducting a multibil-
lion-dollar clandestine campaign to
acquire U.S.-made weapons and
military supplies, using hundreds of
agents and collaborators in all parts
of the globe in an attempt to
circumvent an arms embargo im-
posed by the United States during
the 1979-81 hostage crisis.
From more than a half-dozen
sources in Connecticut, Washing-
ton and elsewhere, The Times
pieced together anaaccount of how
the Customs Sqrvice undercover
operation was-Sacrificed to alert the
U.S. military of the alleged plan for
a terrorist attack.
In the Connecticut case, one of
several secret investigations being
conducted by the Customs Service
and FBI in various parts of the
cover, arrest the operative and country, Customs agent Steve Cro-
rush the videotapes to Washington. gan, using the name of Mike Bala-
But current and former national tin, spread word in the circles of
security officials contact y e international arms brokers that he
Tones said that they could no had access to the U.S. weapons and
rec ac at the time on an spare parts sought desperately by
such specific threat relayed by the Khomeini to sustain his bitter war
Customs Service. The national se- with Iraq.
-de bed as
decrepit a pi-
geons frequently fly through holes
in the roof. There, the agent..dis-
played some of his wares,1x chiding
a pair of TOW missiles, fuel' tanks?
for F-4 jet fighters, mortars and'
transmissions for helicopters=all
among the hundreds of items on a
computer list distributed to Iranian
agents and arms merchants by
Khomeini's London-based pro-
1trement office.
From the warehouse, the agent
aa$ -the arms dealer went to the
Sheraton Hotel in Bridgeport,
overlooking the Connecticut Turn-
pike and Long Island Sound about
60 miles north of New York City
and 20 miles south of New Haven.
There, Crogan had reserved a room
that Customs Service technicians
had equipped with a hidden camera
and microphones linked to audip
and video recording equipment i'i
an adjacent room.
As Crogan and the Brazilian
arrived at the. Sheraton in Bridge-
port, the undercover agent spotted
a lawyer who had represented
defendants in Customs cases. Fear-
ing recognition, he bent down and
pretended to tie his shoe-a lace-
less, slip-on loafer.
Once inside the hotel room,. the
agent and De Mello spent several'
hours negotiating the price and
shipping arrangements for the
weapons and parts, including 1,100
TOW missiles that De Mello said he
wanted quickly as part of an order
for 5,000 of the surface-to-surface
weapons.
The TOW-or tube-launched
optically tracked wire command-
link guided missile-is a mainstay
of the U.S. Army. The four-foot-
long missile, which weighs 60
pounds, costs the U.S. government
between $8,069 and $9,800, de-
pending on the model, and is sold
for several times that price in the
world's illicit arms bazaar. But,
even at the government's list price,
De Mello was talkirfg of a $40-mil-
lion deal.
currt officials, of em ar Before long, the bait lured Carlos Told of Plot Against Ship
wrt intelligence data, were Work - Vieira de Mello, a Brazil-based After strolling downstairs for
in at the Whits House on the arms dealer, into contact with the brunch, Crogan-who was
National ecurit ounce staff. a undercover agent. De Mello agreed equipped with a hidden microphone
the Penta on an within the-State- to inspect the offerings and negoti- and portable transmitter-and De
Rartment w en the incident - ate terms in the United States. He Mello returned to the room to
occurre . flew to John.F. Kennedy Airport in continue their negotiations. It was
the Customs Service did pass New York and took a limousine to then that the Brazilian began talk-
on such a threat, one Pentagon Connecticut, where Crogan met mg in an off-hand manner-but in
official said: . him. detail-about Iranian plans to blow
'--It was obviously an empty They proceeded to a warehouse
threat. There have been threats for in central Connecticut, a buildiny,,..~
three years and they (the Iranians) gi
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605440006-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605440006-0
up the U.S. ship in the Strait of
Hormuz, the Persian Gulfs narrow
mouth, through which passes 20%
of the non-Communist world's oil.
The threat to shipping in the gulf
and the strait leading to the Arabi-
an Sea was much on the minds, of
high-level Washington poli-
cy-makers. On April- 11-the day
before the Connecticut hotel room
meeting-the Wall Street Journal-
had published a lengthy account
describing how President Reagan.
had secretly ordered aides to draft
new plans to protect Persian Gulf
states and their critical oil supplies
from any spillover from the Iran-
Iraq war. And, for weeks, newspa-
per articles and network television
newscasts had included assess-
ments of Iran's threat to oil supply
routes.
So De Mello's disclosures aston-
ished Eugene Weinschenk, the
special agent in charge of Customs,
Connecticut operation, who, along
with 'five other federal agents and
officials, was watching the, video
monitor and listening on earphones
in the adjacent room.
Weinschenk and other Customs
officials now refuse to divulge
precisely, what they heard De Mello
say. But Weinschenk said it was
"something we felt was important.
enough to act on immediately."
Like 'a B Movie'
"We had this guy on camera
talking about a current plan to
blow up a U.S. ship in the Straits of
Hormuz," another witness told The
Times"I felt like I was in the midst
of a B movie."
The officials in the adjacent room
conferred briefly and decided to act
with dispatch. They called Cro-
gan's room and told the undercover
agent that "it was time to go
down." Crogan was surprised, wit-
nesses said, but kept up the con-
versation while moving casually to
the door connecting the two rooms.
He unbolted it, and the other
agents burst into the room to arrest
De. Mello, who was unarmed and
offered no resistance.
;Within 15 minutes, the gist of
what the Brazilian had said during
0 secretly recorded conversation
was relayed by telephone to Wash -
initon. And, within 90 minutes, the
video tapes-plus notes on De
Mello's answers to questions after
arrest-were , turned over to a?.
Defense Department investigator
to'~e flown to the Pentagon. '
be Mello spent about 10 days m a
Connecticut jail before charges
nst him were dropped and all
records in, the case were
Sled. He reportedly has returned
in Connectiautt 810 t4ha .
they were told later that military
authorities had taken steps to avert
any terrorist attack. "We never
heard exactly what happened," one
official said. "Nobody ever called'to
pat us on the back. But nothing
happened to any ship out there."
In:, Washington, ?a-, Customs
spokesman said: "We have no com-
ment Y at this point." And it is
unclear. ltow the Pentagon reacted
at the ti=ne.
Ships Given Missiles
Two months earlier-in Febru-,
ary, I04-The avy ace on m-%
e ence reports
security on s ps in a region AM,
in the Mediterranean Sea (n-r--- -me
he. anese MINE 1
lacking sufficient weapons ' to
counter aer a attacks were
ui e w t
an - e eye
h If
heea -see roman
shoot clown, aircraft by. omin in
on ene exhaust outlets. in actol.
Iron, comme-`-"erTlships were
warn ee at least away rom Navy ships In We reg n
because the wars ps were con-
ta ous opera i~ ons."
The Navy actions were based on
fears that Iranian suicide pilots
being trained in Lebanon would fly
explosive-laden light airplanes into
U.S. ships or that terrorists on
suicide missions would drive simi-
larly loaded small boats into the
Navy vessels.. The Navy ships off
Lebanon, were supporting U.S.
peacekeeping troops in Beirut.
"There was an overall threat and
a hig eve awareness some-
thing might appen," said one
official, a : " ere are m gym=
Be~nce reports on a weekly sis
aTou ' lw. .
One Navy official said that a
search on Wednesday turned up no
record of any threat relayed by
"They get volumes of reports of
this kind and they're all considered
viable and, where considered nec-
essary, the fleet is alerted. Those
found to be credible are maintained
ozf-file., The others arenot."
8tt,: he cautioned, the fait that
no record could be found of the
threat 16. months later did not
rieceaeerlly mean. that it was not
credible.
As % arly as April, 1982, Iranian
officials had threatened to close the
strait; and in 1983 they mov
several F-4 fluters, wbAch tl*
United States had supple&'to pre-
revolutionary- Iran-to airfields
near the waterway, a?Senior Penta-
gon official said.
Wien C. Rempsl rspsrted trans
Bridgeport and Gaylord Show re-
portsd.rom Washington. Also con-
tribumestingStafffrom Washington was
Ti Wrker Jomes Gersten-
zoraa. - `' .
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605440006-0