Navy Man Given 5 Years in Iranian Smuggling Case

With recent disclosures of secret U.S. arms shipments to Iran as the backdrop, a federal judge Wednesday dealt a stiff sentence to one of the low-level participants in a San Diego-based smuggling ring that shipped stolen military parts to the Iranian government.

U.S. District Judge Leland Nielsen ordered a five-year prison term for Antonio G. Rodriguez, 39, of San Diego, a 17-year Navy veteran who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and theft charges in the smuggling case.

Rodriguez was the first defendant sentenced among the eight members of the San Diego ring convicted on charges of penetrating U.S. military supply systems to steal more than $2 million in sophisticated fighter aircraft equipment for shipment to Iran.

The case took an unexpected turn last week when press reports revealed that U.S. authorities had clandestinely sent arms and spare parts to Iran while maintaining a public policy of embargoing such arms deals and aggressively prosecuting private traders suspected of violating the embargo. According to government sources, President Reagan approved the secret deals to win Iranian help in securing the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.

Defense attorneys for members of the San Diego ring, and for other accused smugglers facing prosecution around the country, have demanded that the charges against their clients be reappraised, contending that the revelations meant the Administration had adopted a double standard on arms trade with Iran. The Justice Department said last week that the cases were under review.

But Rodriguez’s attorney made only a minor point Wednesday of arguing for leniency on the basis of the newly disclosed confusion in government policy.

The lawyer, Warren Williamson, told Nielsen that if the government itself was supplying military equipment to Iran, it was inconsistent for prosecutors to contend that the charges against Rodriguez were aggravated by the fact the stolen goods were sold to a hostile power.

But Williamson conceded that the charges nonetheless had national security implications. The U.S. military’s fighting capacity, he acknowledged, could have been hampered by the ring’s attempts to divert needed armaments from the military supply system.

“This was a theft case,” Williamson explained. The Iranian connection “should not have been and was not made a bigger issue than it was by me simply because this case was not founded upon the premise that the national interest was being violated by interfering with foreign policy through surreptitious shipment of arms to a hostile government,” he said.

Attorneys for other members of the San Diego-based ring have scheduled a hearing before Nielsen to challenge prosecutors’ contention that there were any national security implications in the case. But Williamson said the sentence imposed on Rodriguez made it clear Nielsen was inclined to be harsh in punishing the smugglers.

“It reflects that the court takes this case very seriously, even as a theft, as opposed to a national security case,” he said. “Insofar as the more major figures in the case are concerned, you can expect the sentences to be substantially greater than that imposed on my client.”

Williamson argued for a 40-month prison term for the Philippines-born Rodriguez, while Assistant U.S. Attys. Philip L. B. Halpern and Charles S. Crandall proposed a 15-year term. A probation report recommended a seven-year sentence for Rodriguez, an aviation storekeeper on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and the amphibious assault ship Belleau Wood when he participated in the ring’s activities.

In pronouncing sentence, Nielsen said he thought it was important to send a message to other military personnel that similar misconduct would not be tolerated. But Nielsen said he tempered Rodriguez’s punishment in light of the fact that the veteran petty officer would be mustered out of the Navy and would lose as much as $300,000 in wages and retirement benefits.

The San Diego investigation uncovered a four-year scheme masterminded by two brothers, Franklin P. and Edgardo P. Agustin, to steal weaponry and equipment for F-14 Tomcat jet fighters.