Hakim, Secord Linked to ’85 Contra Arms Aid : North Associates Delivered Weapons to Rebels Through Honduran Port, Shipping Official Says

Two key associates of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North who were linked last week to the secret shipment of 358 tons of Communist-Bloc arms to the Defense Department, executed an almost identical arms delivery in 1985 to Nicaraguan rebels, according to European shipping sources and records.

The two men, Iranian-American businessman Albert A. Hakim and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord, delivered a three-month supply of Polish and Portuguese arms to the contras by way of a port in Honduras in June, 1985, Copenhagen shipping official Tom Parlow said Monday.

The 1985 delivery occurred at a time when Congress had banned direct U.S. military aid to the rebels battling Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime, and North had been secretly assigned by the Reagan Administration to develop a privately run arms pipeline to replace lost U.S. aid.

In an interview, Parlow said that he served as a front for Hakim and Secord both in the Honduras shipment and in the secret delivery last October of 358 tons of Polish, as well as Portuguese, weapons to a Defense Department warehouse near Wilmington, N. C.

Those arms, which were unloaded in Wilmington last Oct. 8 and 9, apparently were purchased at North’s order for delivery to the contras, who use Communist-Bloc arms. It is not known if those weapons ever reached the rebels.

Both the Honduras and Wilmington shipments were carried aboard a coastal freighter, the Erria, which Hakim secretly purchased last April at North’s direction to use in covert missions in Europe and the Mideast.

Parlow’s statements and Portuguese export records flesh out what appears to have been a lengthy relationship among North, Hakim and Secord that began with secret arms shipments to the Nicaraguan rebels in 1984 or 1985 and ended last fall with the collapse of the Iran arms deals.

Parlow’s disclosure of the role of Hakim and Secord in the 1985 arms shipment demonstrates that the two men were instrumental at both ends of the Iran-contras affair. Hakim previously has been identified as the financial wizard of the Iran dealings, moving money and weapons across three continents through a network of dummy firms and Swiss bank accounts.

Secord handled the logistics of arms shipments to Iran and helped bargain with Iranian intermediaries for the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.

Firm Tied to Arms

Export records in Lisbon examined by The Times show that Energy Resources International Inc., a Panamanian company owned by Hakim and linked to Secord, presented documents in 1985 to Portuguese officials requesting permission to buy and deliver arms to the Guatemalan military.

The requests, called “end-user certificates,” were typewritten on Guatemalan government letterheads and stated that the arms were “ordered for the exclusive use of the Army of Guatemala and will not be re-exported or sold to another country.”

The documents apparently were signed by Gen. Cesar Augusto Caceres Rojas, the acting chief of the armed forces of Guatemala. An official-looking blue-ink hand stamp appeared beneath a handwritten “Caceres.”

Guatemala has denied receiving the weapons, however, and Portuguese Gen. Luis Cravo DaSilva told The Times that it is uncertain where the arms went.

“Even now, we don’t know if it is false,” he said of the Energy Resources certificates. “At the time, we had no reason to suspect the certificates were false . . . . Portugal is not at fault. If something is wrong, it is not here.”

Unloaded in Honduras

One of those so-called “end-user certificates,” dated April 10, 1985, now appears to have sanctioned the loading of Portuguese arms aboard the Erria for a transatlantic trip to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. Contra officials say that the Erria did not dock in Guatemala but instead went to Puerto Cortes, Honduras, where the arms were unloaded and delivered to the rebels.

Parlow said Monday that Energy Resources contracted with one of his companies, S. A. Shipping Inc., to ferry that load of Portuguese and Polish arms to Puerto Cortes. Parlow sent the Erria to Gdynia, Poland, that April and to Setubal, Portugal, in May to pick up weapons before crossing the Atlantic to Honduras.

“That was the first time for me to do business with him,” Parlow said of Secord. “In April, 1985, I did a cargo for them. Maybe that’s why they came back to me” to buy the Erria a year later.

Using another dummy Panamanian firm, Hakim bought the Erria for $312,500 in April of last year and contracted with Parlow to operate the ship on his and North’s orders. Parlow won a court order seizing the vessel last Thursday, contending that Hakim still owes him more than $200,000 in operating expenses run up during the ship’s bizarre missions.

Hakim may be unable to pay the debt because Swiss officials have frozen the bank accounts used to finance the vessel’s missions, Parlow said.

Portuguese records show that the Erria voyage was among four instances in which Energy Resources submitted documents covering export of a total of $1.89 million in arms from Setubal, supposedly to Guatemala.

Three of 10 documents used in the transactions were dated Dec. 21, 1984; five were dated Feb. 14, 1985; one was dated April 10, 1985, and another July 29, 1985.

700 Tons of Supplies

The certificates requested more than 700 tons of materiel, including 60-millimeter and 81-millimeter mortar shells; hundreds of thousands of 7.62-millimeter cartridges fit for use in Soviet AK-47 rifles; grenades; mortars, dynamite and some other guns.

On two of the certificates, Energy Resources gave its address as 440 Maple Avenue East in Vienna, Va. That is the address of Stanford Technology Corp., a firm whose principals are Hakim and Secord. The last two certificates list Energy Resources’ address as that of Defex, a Lisbon arms-exporting firm that supplied the weapons, including those shipped on the Erria.

Defex executive Jose Garnel did not respond to several attempts by The Times to reach him. He has been quoted by a Portuguese reporter as saying that he is a friend of Thomas G. Clines, a former CIA official and longtime associate of Secord, North and Parlow.

William C. Rempel reported from London and Michael Wines reported from Washington. Staff writer Richard E. Meyer also reported from Setubal and Lisbon, Portugal.