U.S. Efforts to Buy Soviet Tank Told : North’s Attempt to Obtain Weapon Wasn’t First to Fail

NEW YORK —  Former White House aide Oliver L. North’s failed attempt to trade machine guns to Iran for a captured Soviet-made T-72 tank, disclosed earlier this week by The Times, was not the first time American efforts to acquire the advanced battle vehicle have led to failure--or embarrassment.

In fact, when a rusty, North-dispatched freighter sailed from the Persian Gulf without its highly prized tank cargo last November, the then-National Security Council official joined a growing list of frustrated, would-be tank customers that includes the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense and assorted international arms merchants scattered from the Pacific Northwest to the Cote d’Azur.

While it’s not surprising that an advanced Soviet tank would have military intelligence value, some of the clandestine T-72 acquisition plots--predating the secret White House machine-gun barter offer--have revealed surprising elements.

Contact With Poles

In early 1984, for example, a New York businessman reputed to have close relations with key Polish government officials in Warsaw was working secretly with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to get two of the tanks from the Poles when he was arrested in New York for attempting to ship a planeload of firearms and ammunition to Poland.

According to Solomon Schwartz, the indicted arms merchant, the illicit arms shipment was to help curry favor with his Polish contacts. He further claimed in federal court that DIA agents had told him “in a semi-serious manner that he should not kill anyone and that he should not try to trade high-tech items for the tanks but that, other than these restrictions, he should do what he had to” to obtain the equipment.

DIA agents, making unusual public disclosures in that case, acknowledged that they had expressed interest in the tanks to Solomon but they flatly denied authorizing any illegal arms shipments.

Demand Widely Known

The high demand for advanced models of Soviet tanks is widely known on the world arms market, and international arms merchants have previously tried to win official U.S. approval for lucrative sales of restricted weapons to Iran by offering in return to get at least one of the captured Soviet tanks for the Pentagon.

Such an inducement was part of a proposal submitted to Vice President George Bush in January, 1986, for example, by a Portland, Ore., businessman, Richard Brenneke, who said his contacts in Iran were looking for ways to reopen diplomatic channels with the United States and to reestablish trade channels for badly needed “defensive weapons.”

Brenneke told Bush in a memorandum that he and his associates--among them two French businessmen, Bernard Veillot and John DeLarocque--could arrange for a secret meeting between U.S. officials and Iran’s “highest government officials” at which Iran would offer the “immediate transfer” to a North Atlantic Treaty country of a Soviet tank. Brenneke said the tank was last reported on a truck near the Turkish border.

Offer Dismissed

A Bush aide dismissed the offer in a letter--ironically, dated three weeks after President Reagan had signed a formal intelligence finding clearing arms shipments to Iran--telling Brenneke that the United States would “not permit or participate in the provision of war materiel to Iran.”

Throughout January and February, 1986, however, Veillot and DeLarocque continued to negotiate with an Iranian arms merchant--Cyrus Hashemi, based in London--repeatedly asking Hashemi to provide the serial numbers of the captured Soviet tanks, which they said were sought by unnamed U.S. intelligence sources.

Those conversations were tape recorded because, unknown to the French arms dealers, Hashemi was acting as a U.S. government informant in a “sting” investigation. Subsequently, Veillot and DeLarocque were indicted in New York along with a dozen others on arms conspiracy charges. DeLarocque, interviewed in St. Tropez last fall, refused to identify his intelligence contacts.

CIA Efforts Frustrated

Knowledgeable sources have since told The Times about frustrated attempts by CIA agents to purchase a tank from Iran. The captured equipment has an estimated value on the open market of about $4.5 million, according to one European arms merchant. Other experts say that the value cannot be measured in dollars.

The advanced model Soviet T-72 tanks--sometimes called T-80s--have been high on the shopping lists of Western intelligence agencies because of interest in the tank’s new armor alloy and its laser weapons guidance systems. The weapons have been in production since 1980.

Iraq, one of the few countries outside the Eastern Bloc to receive the tanks, has put them to extensive battlefield use but lost a number in the process.

Israeli sources say that Iranian troops destroyed several of the captured T-72s before they realized their potential value. Recent estimates of the number of captured Soviet tanks held by Iran ranged from one to six. For a time the vehicles were reported stored in a Renault automobile manufacturing plant in Tehran.

Inspection by British

An inspection report, ostensibly drafted by British tank experts hired early last year by U.S. Army Intelligence to examine one of those tanks, was obtained by The Times. Private arms dealers who provided the copy said the inspection was made in Iran by two retired British military officers. Pentagon sources would not confirm authorization of any tank inspections.

According to the report--dated March 28, 1986--the T-72 was an older model B46. However, the inspectors noted that a laser guidance system had been adapted to its gunsights. They also noted the general composition of the tank’s armor plate, a “mixture of steel, ceramics, space steel, space ceramics and finally backed with steel.”

The tank experts reported that they conducted the inspection at night, accompanied by a regimental commandant, and that their technical questions were answered after references to both Russian and Arabic operating manuals.

“Although inspection was conducted after 2100 hours, 20 minutes drive east from hotel, we were treated as VIPs and all questions were answered in a courteous manner,” the report said. “There were some minor problems with exact translations, but one of the inspectors spoke fluent Arabic and did not make this known to the hosts. He did not detect any deliberate attempts to misinform.”

Serial Numbers Obtained

Various serial numbers also were passed on to the U.S. Army, the report concluded.

It is not known whether the inspected tank was, in fact, the same tank sought by the freighter Erria when, reportedly at North’s direction, it waited about a month for clearance to enter the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

Nor is it clear whether there was any relationship to the North mission and discussions about the tanks between Pentagon officials and Oregon arms merchant Brenneke last May and June.

In an interview in Oregon last November, while the Erria was still waiting to complete its secret trade for the tank, Brenneke told The Times that the summer before he had discussed with Lt. Col. Larry Caylor of Army Intelligence whether there was any U.S. interest in negotiating with Iran for a T-72 tank. However, those conversations ended June 20, Brenneke said, when Caylor advised him that “another agency of the government is negotiating with the Iranians for that tank.”

Caylor could not be reached for comment and Pentagon officials could not confirm his meetings with Brenneke.

Factors in Prosecution

Secret U.S. efforts to obtain T-72 tanks still figure to be factors in the pending prosecution of Schwartz, who says he was acting as an agent of the U.S. government when he attempted to ship small arms to Poland as part of an effort to get two of the tanks.

A federal judge earlier ridiculed that claim as “a misguided concoction of some defense attorneys who have read one spy novel too many.”

“It is difficult to believe that there exists in . . . our country an agent who is so well trained, so proficient in the skills of espionage and so highly regarded that his superiors trust him to the extent of giving him blanket authority to do whatever that agent thinks is necessary to achieve a vital goal of the United States,” wrote Judge D. J. Platt in an opinion signed six weeks before disclosures about the Iran arms affair.

Times staff writer Gaylord Shaw contributed to this article from Washington.