Release Arms Shipment Plotter, U.S. Judge Urges Parole Panel

A federal judge, taking note of the Reagan Administration’s Iran arms scandal, urged a parole commission to free a defendant he sentenced to prison for conspiring to ship arms to Iran and Chile.

U.S. District Judge Robert L. Vining sent a letter Dec. 10 to the U.S. Parole Commission in Dallas, recommending that Lemuel M. Stevens III be released immediately, a spokesman in Vining’s office disclosed today.

Vining made the recommendation in light of recent revelations of the Reagan Administration’s arms shipments to Iran and the funneling of arms profits to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, the spokesman said.

Stevens, who is serving a three-year sentence at a minimum-security prison camp in Big Spring, Tex., has a preliminary hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Vining’s letter “should carry a lot of weight,” said his attorney, Robert Stubbs.

“If I was a parole commission member . . . , it would impress me that he felt that way,” Stubbs said. “He is considered a rather conservative judge. This may very well cause them to totally redo their recommendation or not to make one at all and start all over again.”

Stevens is a former arms broker and president of Marietta, Ga.-based International Services & Logistics Ltd. He pleaded guilty before Vining in September, 1985, to two counts of export law violations.

Stevens and two Hong Kong businessmen, John J. McTavish and J. C. Smith, were charged with conspiring to export military aircraft parts.

Most of the parts were eventually sent to Chile, but the government said the men tried to ship 21 gyroscopes to Iran for use on F-4 Phantom jets.