SHIP USED TO SEND ARMS TO CONTRAS SAID TO AID DELIVERY OF EAST-BLOC ARMS TO U.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605530021-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 20, 2013
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: February 13, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605530021-3
ARTICLE APPEARED WALL STREET JOURNAL
ON PAGE ?a122.? 13 February 1987
Ship Used to Send Arms to Contras Said
To Aid Delivery of East-Bloc Arms to U.S.
By J.OHN WALCOTT
?Aind-.DAytD?RERS
Staff Reporters Of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON?East is east and west
is west. But in the shadowy world of the in-
ternational arms trade, sometimes the
twain. meet.
According to Reagan administration
sources and records on file with the U.S.
Customs Service, a small freighter which
was used to deliver arms to anti-commu-
nist Nicaraguan rebels also helped carry
Soviet-bloc weapons from Poland to. the
U.S. for the Defense Department or the
Central Intelligence Agency.
According to sources and shipping rec-
ords, the freighter Erria delivered a load
of Soviet AK-47 automatic rifles that had
been purchased in Poland to the French
port of Cherbourg last Sept. 13. The
weapons then were transferred to another
freighter, the Iceland Saga, which deliv-
ered them on Oct. 8 to Wilmington, N.C.,
where records list the Defense Department
as the recipient of the cargo.
A Pentagon spokesman declined to
comment on the shipment, but U.S. mili-
tary and. intelligence sources said Soviet
bloc weapons purchased in Eastern urope
by front companies and other middlemen
routinely are shipped ?through the North
Carolina port.
The CIA often supplies insurgent groups
it supports with Soviet-bloc weapons, often
with their serial numbers removed, so_the
arms don't appear to have come from the
U.S. "Legitimate buys of Soviet-bloc
weapons Often come in there," said one of-
ficial.
Intelligence sources said the CIA main-
pains a warehouse of such weapons. The
Defense Department keeps its own stock-
pile of East bloc arms, Pentagon officials
said.
U.S. officials said Poland and other
East European nations routinely sell
weapons to the West through intermediar-
ies, even though the weapons may be des-
tined for anti-communist forces, U.S. intel-
ligence officials said. .
The Poles pretty well know where the
weapons are going, or they suspect it,"
said one U.S. official. But usually they
don't care; they're not in it for political
reasons, they're in it to earn hard cur-
rency."
Arming anti-communist guerrillas witn
Polish weapons can be risky, however. On
one occasion, intelligence sources said, the
Poles sold defective SA-7 anti-aircraft mis-
siles to a buyer who shipped the weapons
to rebels fighting the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan. Because some ceramic parts
had been substituted for metal. ones, the
sources said, the weapons proved worth-
less.
The Erria's involvement in Contra arms
shipments began in the summer, of 1985,
according to intelligence sources. Thomas
Parlow, a shipping agent in Denmark, has
confirmed that the Erria picked up cargo
from Portugal for Honduras that summer.
Mr. Parlow subsequently purchased the
ship from its previous Danish owners last
spring and the vessel is currently regis-
tered under the name of a Panamanian
corporation that he says he controls. ?
Mr. Parlow is a longtime friend of
Thomas Clines, an ex-CIA agent and close
associate of retired Air Force Maj. Gen.
Richard Secord, a major figure in the Iran-
Contra affair. Mr. Clines assisted Gen. Se-
cord in shipping arms to the Contras, but
lie is widely considered unwelcome by his
former CIA colleagues because of his in-
volvement with renegade CIA agent Edwin
Wilson. who has been jailed for selling ex;,.
plosives to Libyan leader Col. Moammat
padhafi.
/Intelligence sources have said Mr.
Clines and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North,
the fired National Security Council aide,
used the Erria last spring in an unsuc-
cessful attempt to free U.S. hostages in
Lebanon with a ransom put up by Texas
billionaire H. Ross Perot. Mr. Parlow has
confirmed that the Erria was off Cyprus at
about the time of the planned exchange.
past May. less than five months before
the arms shipment from Poland to North
Carolina, the CIA rejected a proposal from
Lt. Col. North that it use the hrria to
broadcast anti-Gadhafi j2ropaganda ?in-
cluding clairrisTrrfre?Libyan reader had
lost control and that opposition groups
were moving to oust him?to Libyans liv-
ing on the country's coast.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605530021-3