Tribute to Teamwork : Catch of Year--IRA Arms Seized at Sea

The moon was just a sliver behind ominous low-lying clouds as the fishing trawler Marita Ann, running without lights, plowed through stormy seas toward the rugged Kerry coast of Ireland.

Suddenly, out of the blustery September night, two patrol boats of the Irish navy appeared and ordered the trawler to stop for boarding. When the Marita Ann made a run for it instead, gunners aboard the 792-ton cutter Emer fired tracer bullets across its bow as a warning, and the Emer and its sister ship, Aisling, gave chase.

Two miles from the Skellig Rocks--within Irish territorial waters off southwest County Kerry--the Marita Ann was halted, and heavily armed police scrambled on deck.

Catch Bigger Than Salmon “We haven’t got any salmon on board here,” a crewman shouted as the raiding party came over the side.

But the catch was far bigger than contraband salmon: seven tons of rifles, pistols, submachine guns, flak jackets, telescopic sights, rockets, hand grenades and other military supplies shipped from the United States--the largest seizure of arms destined for the outlawed Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army in more than a decade. Police who took part in the combined operation said the seizure last Sept. 29 was enough weaponry to outfit the IRA for at least a year.

British authorities charge that nickels, dimes and dollars, often collected at dances and dinners and from well-meaning bar patrons in the United States sometimes are laundered and siphoned to arms dealers to pay for weapons used by the IRA. These weapons, British and Irish police say, have been recovered in shooting incidents in which innocent civilians were killed or injured.

Question of Terrorist or Patriot “There are a lot of Irish-American societies around the country,” a U.S. intelligence official said. “They (IRA sympathizers) collect at dances and other functions. You have two or three beers, start dancing the Irish jig and put the money in. One man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot.”

Since 1969, when the latest round of violence between Catholics and Protestants flared in Northern Ireland, officials say 2,264 American-made weapons have been captured. The guns have been linked to 4,000 shooting incidents, including 407 killings, authorities in Belfast claim.

The arms seizure aboard the Marita Ann was a triumph for intelligence organizations on both sides of the Atlantic--and for space age technology--in the war of supply and subterfuge between Great Britain and Northern Irish nationalists at home and abroad.

It was no accident the cutters were lying in wait within Irish territorial waters.

Intelligence sources in Belfast and London say that the Marita Ann was being kept under surveillance by the 12-man British crew of a Nimrod Mach II reconnaissance aircraft as it sailed to a rendezvous with a vessel, alleged to be the U.S. trawler Valhalla, at Porcupine Bank, 140 miles off the Irish coast.

Intelligence sources also suggest that the Valhalla, which had left Gloucester, Mass., ostensibly on a swordfishing expedition, was tracked by space satellite--the high-altitude cameras of a 25,000-pound U.S. KH-11 broad-coverage satellite--during its journey across the Atlantic and during the alleged transfer of weapons from the 80-foot mother ship to the Irish-based vessel.

Battle on Many Fronts The continuing battle to halt the shipment of arms to the IRA is being waged on many fronts, including within the United States--which British and Irish authorities agree is the principal source of funds and weapons.

Computer networks chart transatlantic movements of suspected IRA couriers and sympathizers. Exchange visits of U.S. and British intelligence officials seek to bolster cooperation. The Irish police rely on British intelligence, INTERPOL, the FBI and the CIA for tips on arms shipments.

Aides to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher--who narrowly escaped an IRA bomb at the British seaside resort of Brighton in October--say she made a fresh appeal to President Reagan before they met at Camp David last month to crack down on leading IRA sympathizers in the United States.

Good Coordination Cited “Cooperation is much better among all of us,” said an intelligence official in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. “We now have pretty good coordination between Washington, London, Belfast and Dublin when it comes to security matters involving the IRA.”

Among those arrested by the boarding party on the Marita Ann were Martin Ferris, 34, believed to be the IRA commander in Southwest Ireland, and John Patrick Crawley, a 27-year-old former U.S. Marine who had been living in Ireland. Irish authorities contend that the IRA dispatched Crawley to the United States last December to arrange the $1.75-million arms deal with money raised in the United States by Noraid--the Irish Northern Aid Committee. It is a charge Noraid officials heatedly deny.

Noraid’s national headquarters consists of four cluttered rooms near a dentist’s office on the second floor of a building on Broadway in Upper Manhattan. A sign in the office proclaims: “The IRA is coming.” Noraid, founded in 1970, claims 90 affiliates throughout the nation.

Registered as Lobbyist After a long court battle, the Justice Department in 1981 compelled Noraid to register as the American lobbying and fund-raising arm of the IRA and to file financial statements to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but its financial statements carry a disclaimer of the court’s decision, and its leaders vehemently deny that the organization played any role in financing the weapons on the Marita Ann.

“That’s totally untrue that some of the money is used to buy weapons for the IRA,” said Martin Galvin, a top Noraid officer and one of the IRA’s most outspoken U.S. sympathizers. “I am confident enough the British and the State Department and the FBI have been watching our organization for quite a number of years. I am totally confident if we were using monies for the purchase of weapons, they certainly would be able to show that.”

Nevertheless, over the years a number of Noraid members have been convicted of seeking to export arms to the IRA. Those members, Galvin contends, were acting on their own. Noraid, itself, has never been charged in any court.

Noraid officials say some of the money they collect goes to two Irish organizations, Green Cross and An Cumann Cabrach, to help families of Irish nationalists incarcerated in British jails. The remainder, they say, is used for lobbying in America to promote the cause of expelling Britain from Northern Ireland.

But critics charge that since part of the group’s contributions are in cash--often raised in small amounts at dinners, dances, raffles and other events--there is ample opportunity to understate the books and launder money for arms purchases.

Sir John Hermon, the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s chief constable, visited the United States recently with some of his top assistants. He said he was amazed to learn that some American police officers had contributed to Noraid and that it even had fund-raising boxes in some police stations.

“It is an undisputed fact that money is used for arms,” Hermon charged, “and we can identify some of those arms with specific murders.”

British officials say An Cumann Cabrach shares the Dublin address of Sinn Fein, the legal political arm of the Provisional wing of the IRA. They note that some of An Cumann Cabrach’s officers have been convicted of terrorism. They add that Green Cross does not advertise its correct address or telephone number, and does not publish audited statements. It is not recognized as a charity by tax authorities, partly because Green Cross has not been able to provide accounts and records.

‘We can identify some of those arms with specific murders,’ Ulster’s chief constable contends. Justice Department lawyers who spent a year sifting through Noraid’s books in connection with the government’s suit, charge the organization does not keep complete files and records. They estimate Noraid has raised perhaps $2 million since 1971. While some receipts from An Cumann Cabrach and some canceled checks were discovered, the lawyers also found Noraid checks made out to cash for thousands of dollars.

Galvin, a New York City Sanitation Department lawyer who is one of Noraid’s chief spokesman, estimates the group raised about $300,000 last year.

More than three months after the Marita Ann’s capture on Sept. 29, the Valhalla-which was seized by U.S. Customs--bobs quietly at anchor at a secure dock in Boston’s harbor.

The waterfront’s winter serenity belies intense activity elsewhere in Boston where a massive investigation of drug trafficking and the arms smuggling case is being conducted by federal and state agencies. “There will be lots of indictments,” one federal official predicted.

Law enforcement officials are reluctant to discuss the case because they do not wish to disclose the intelligence techniques that were used, but this much is clear: Authorities knew in advance there would be a shipment of arms from the Boston area, destined for the IRA. Sources in Dublin say an informer among IRA sympathizers in Boston furnished the first tip. But high-ranking intelligence experts in the United States say first knowledge came from surveillance of suspected drug dealers.

“They did it as a sideline to narcotics,” said a source in the intelligence community. “All of a sudden they were shipping guns. We thought it was a narcotics shipment, and it was guns.”

‘They Track Turtles . . . ‘ With advance warning, tracking the arms shipment across the Atlantic could be accomplished with relative ease. “There are devices that can follow a ship across the ocean. You get reports periodically,” said a federal intelligence official. “They track turtles with transponders by satellite.”

Just as miniature transmitters are secured to sea turtles to study migration, the agent added, a device could well have been planted aboard the mother ship before it sailed from the United States. Such a device sending back signals would facilitate tracking by the photo satellite and would save analysts hours of searching aerial photos of the sea for the ship.

Ferris and Crawley, who were captured aboard the Marita Ann, have been sentenced to 10 years in jail after their trial in an Irish court.

Intelligence officials estimate that only about 400 IRA terrorists now participate in violence in Northern Ireland, which still belongs to England. A second Republican terrorist group, the Irish National Liberation Army, is believed to number only dozens. Because they often discard weapons after firing to avoid being caught with them, the gunmen need far more firearms than their relatively small number would indicate, authorities say.

The aim of both groups is to eliminate the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic to the south. The North is two-thirds Protestant; the republic is overwhelmingly Catholic.

Authorities were particularly pleased when they captured a .50-caliber Browning heavy machine gun aboard the Marita Ann. The weapon, which fires armor-piercing bullets a mile and a half, is more than capable of downing helicopters.

Prosecutors and FBI agents say the pipeline to the IRA often starts with purchases by sympathizers in the United States from friendly gun dealers. Other weapons are collected at gun shows.

“They collect weapons and crate them in boxes. They mislabel them, set up a dummy company in a loft,” explained an FBI agent. “They use a legitimate shipping firm to pick up the guns. The day after, they draw the shades and are out of business.”

Weapons, with serial numbers filed off, often are smuggled in specially designed cargo containers with false panels. Coffins have been used. Sometimes longshoremen or airline attendants friendly to the IRA facilitate the shipments, authorities say.

The first U.S. arms began arriving in Ireland in 1970--mostly in air cargo packing crates. A year later, a British ocean liner stopped at Cobh, Ireland, to allow a group of New York City teachers to go ashore. Six big suitcases were left unclaimed in a customs shed on the dock. When the luggage was opened, customs agents found Armalite semiautomatic rifles, hand grenades, other rifles and ammunition. Some of the weapons were traced to a suburban arms dealer near New York City.

Officials in Dublin say the IRA sometimes will take whatever guns it can get. But the weapon most in favor is the American-designed Armalite, known in the U.S. Army as the M-16. The Armalite is sold over the counter in many U.S. gunshops and can easily be broken down into parts for shipping.

In another case, five IRA supporters were convicted of illegally buying 158 Armalite rifles and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The Maryland gun dealer who sold 70 of the rifles was convicted of falsifying records. The group had placed a standing order for 100 Armalites a month. Plans called for the guns to be shipped through New York City in cases labeled machine parts.

In an investigation resulting in convictions in 1983, agents found weapons hidden in a modern Trojan horse--a carefully constructed wooden model of an large industrial drill painted with metallic paint.

“It was a huge box kind of thing that 7 to 10 feet away looked real, but when you got closer, you could see it was made of wood,” said Marion Bachrach, the assistant U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the case in federal court in Brooklyn. “It was pretty clever. It was very simply done, but it required a good amount of woodworking ability.”

Pinching the pipeline shut has proven very difficult. Geography favors terrorism. Northern Ireland’s long border and even longer coastline along the Irish Sea and curving north provide ample isolated landing sites. Hundreds of fishing boats routinely operate from dozens of harbors, and only a limited number of British and Irish navy vessels are available for patrols.