GEORGE THAYER ARMS DEALER SAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200770011-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 11
• Content Type: MAGAZINE (OPEN SOURCE)

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How surplus weapons, international suppliers, and an eager clientele
Naometime in the early 1950s, a sales brochure.., sold Austria all the ordnance it needed to equip
published by a little-known company called Inter- its border police. Ile bought 300,000 surplus arms
arms offered to the American public a handsome and seventy million rounds of ammunition from
and fascinating variety of its wares:: armaments. ' . Finland; this purchase was so large that it took
As if aware that such offerings might be of odd three years to ship to the United States. He almost
interest to the average outdoorsman or home bought from Chile the last surviving warship from
owner, the brochure-writer permitted himself a the Battle of Jutland, but a Japanese group outbid
certain degree of high spirits. "Why Be Under
gu,nnecl?" asks one advertisement, and announces-
the :ivailability of a number of Finnish Lallti".
20 nlm anti-tank cannon. A Soviet mortar is do
scribed as "the ultimate attraction for you smooth
bore fanatics," and a bazooka, as the perfect
Inter.
arms, whose proper name is the Interna-.`
tioil.
l Armament Corporation, at present main-
tains in Alexandria, Virginia, 'tell large ware-
houses which may at any one time hold from
600,000 to 600,000 surplus small-caliber weapons,`,~
to Samuel Cummings, Interarms' president, "for;
about forty infantry divisions." An additional
150,000 to 200,000 weapons of similar typo`'
'r I't7, 50.R0Q12b,01 Q.0 I-&,
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Germany by selling it MG-42 machine guns that
the Dutch had captured from the 1Vehrmacht. In. one transaction, he bought 600,000 Lec-Enfield,
rifles, some of them for as little as 28 cents apiece
and subsequently sold many of them in the United
In 1055 he supplied arms to the Costa Rican
government of Jose Figueres. lie also sold arms.
to Nicaragua, which was at the time supporting
Figueres regime. The following year he bought
2,000 small arms that had been captured by the
Israelis from the Egyptians in the Suez campaign.
The weapons were predominantly Russian in
origin, purchased b~ the. Egyptians from the
comprise the stock of another large warehouse`.:,.; Czechs, who previously had acquired them from
maintained by the company in Acton, a suburb the Soviets. Most of these arms, Cummings told
of London. Indeed, Cummings claims to have more', me, "now hang over the fireplaces in' American.
surplus weapons in stock than the military forces homes."
of either the United States or Britain currently,..' He sold Trujillo twenty-six Vampire jets that,
have in active service. had seen service in the Swedish Air Force, and a
Interarms of course is not exclusively or even few years later he sold Venezuela seventy-four
primarily involved in supplying intrepid private . F-86 Sabrejets that were Luftwaffe castoffs. For
individuals with recreational equipment. Since the' ' many years he was a major supplier of arms to
Can of World War II there have in fact been very', Batista. Later, he sold Castro-,a batch of rll;-10
few independent arms deals in the world in which ? rifles-as he did 76,000 Step guns to. Finland,
Samuel Cummings has not been involved. He has 500,000 FN rifles to Argentina, 2,000 Springllclci
managed in the last two decades, for instance, to"-.
rules with extra-long chrome-plate(] bayonets to
buy up approximately 00 per cent of all the British Liberia, 50,000 Lee-IEnficlds to Pakistan's border
surplus small arms for sale. patrol, and it quantity of the siunc malco of rifle
1.10 once paid one million dollars for Spain's, . to Kenya to fight the Mall Mau. Ile has even vllp-
enti re surplus small arms, And on anothor occasion ?' ? plied144 cavalry lances, complete with pennants,
Copyright ? 1909 by Goor/lo '1'hnyor :"' J WC D