[Jeff White]

The Nation
December 2, 2002

The Guns Of Opa-Locka

How US Dealers Arm the World

By Jake Bergman and Julia Reynolds

A few years ago, the government of Colombia asked the United States to trace nearly fifty MAK-90 rifles it had seized from the National Liberation
Army, or ELN. It turned out these rifles had been obtained by Colombian gun traffickers after being purchased at retail stores in the Miami area. The
ELN is on the State Department's foreign terror watch list. Yet, like many other underground armies around the world, it buys its weapons in one of the
world's freest arms markets. "The United States has for many years been a warehouse, a shopping center, if you will, for firearms," says retired Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (AFT) resident agent in charge Daniel McBride, "because of the ease of acquisition, not just in the state of Florida but
typically throughout the United States. We are a very easy place from which to obtain firearms for transshipment back home."

Law enforcement officials describe the United States as a one-stop shop for the guns sought by terrorists, mercenaries and international criminals of all
stripes. And September 11 has not changed that in any significant way. In fact, Attorney General John Ashcroft has refused to permit the use of gun
purchase records to track crimes, a practice that the FBI had previously used and that conceivably could help to identify terrorists. Nor did Ashcroft
propose closing gun loopholes as part of the USA Patriot Act. The result of the lax US system, says McBride, is "an ongoing cycle" in which weapons
bought here end up fueling violence abroad, and in which America is regarded as the firearms "shopping center for the world."

Lobster Air and Gun Land

The story of a ragtag South Florida outfit called Lobster Air International illustrates just how easy US gun purchases can be. In the summer of 1998
Stephen Jorgensen began buying the first of what were eventually more than 800 MAK-90 semiautomatic rifles at a store called Gun Land in Kissimmee,
Florida. He did not have a resale permit--known as a Federal Firearms License, or FFL--and he was not required to present one. But Jorgensen wasn't
stockpiling the guns for his personal use; he was taking them to Opa-Locka airport near Miami and loading them aboard a light airplane headed for
airstrips in Venezuela and Colombia, via Haiti.

Jorgensen's South American clients originally wanted AK-47s, but in the United States, the fully automatic AK-47 can be purchased from a dealer only
with a Class 3 permit, which is difficult to obtain. The AK was modified in 1990 to get around the California Assault Weapons Ban--hence MAK-90, or
"Modified AK 1990." It is virtually identical to the AK-47 but costs only $200 to $300, compared with $1,000 to $3,000 for a Russian-made AK-47. It
is exempt from the national Assault Weapons Ban, enacted after the California ban, because it has slight alterations that give it a hunting-rifle appearance.
Jorgensen, a hefty man with an easygoing manner, says the distinction is absurd. "These weapons happened to be a loophole because they didn't have a
pistol grip on the stock. They had a thumbhole. How ridiculous!" The MAK-90 can use the same caliber bullet as the AK-47, and it can be converted to
fully automatic with rudimentary mechanical skills; a number of websites offer kits and instructions.

The smuggling operation began when a lieutenant colonel of the Venezuelan Air Force asked Rafael Ceruelos if he knew anyone who could buy guns.
Ceruelos, of Cuban origin, is a self-described import-export businessman who had already been doing business with the colonel, selling him aircraft parts
through connections he had with an aircraft broker from Texas. Ceruelos speaks in a raspy voice, a more sophisticated version of Al Pacino's gruff Tony
Montana character from Scarface. He likes to use words like "friggin'" a lot. He says that he just wanted to keep his clients happy.

Ceruelos says the Texan hooked him up with Jorgensen, an old Vietnam War buddy in Tampa who could get weapons at a discount. In 1998 several
meetings took place in Dallas, Miami and Caracas to orchestrate a deal, which included setting up Lobster Air to import lobsters to the United States
from Haiti. According to Jorgensen, the Venezuelan colonel and the interests he represented put up the money to buy an Aero Commander aircraft.
Jorgensen contracted boat operators to circle Haiti and collect lobsters from remote villages, but that part of the plan never went forward. Lobster Air
was apparently not in the business of selling lobsters.

On January 3, 1999, US Customs agents, acting on what they thought was a drug tip, stopped the Aero Commander, bound for South America, on a
runway at Opa-Locka. But there were no drugs; instead, the plane was loaded with seventy-eight disassembled MAK-90s inside blue gym bags, along
with 9,000 rounds of ammunition. Customs and ATF sources now say that Lobster Air's weapons were headed to Colombia's FARC rebels, another
group on the State Department's terror list. But McBride, the retired ATF agent, says that "when guns are going into Colombia, there are a number of
potential sources they could be going to, including the drug cartels, the various insurgency groups, paramilitary forces over there.... [It's] very difficult to
tell exactly where those guns were going to go, unless you were fortunate enough to get some confiscated and then have the traces run back."

Jorgensen was detained and interrogated. Facing indictment on weapons and conspiracy charges, he quickly agreed to cooperate with what was now a
US Customs-ATF investigation. Meanwhile, Ceruelos proceeded to concoct more business. Jorgensen, however, was recording their conversations for
federal prosecutors. The Venezuelan customers needed 200,000 rounds of ammunition, so Ceruelos agreed that Jorgensen would buy the ammo at a
local gun shop in 10,000-round increments, so as not to arouse suspicion. Jorgensen assured Ceruelos, "They don't monitor buying the ammunition; you
don't sign, nobody knows you bought it. So that's a fairly low risk."

With the secret recordings in prosecutors' hands, Jorgensen and Ceruelos were soon indicted--not for buying the guns, but for violating the Arms Export
Control Act. Ceruelos served fifteen months and Jorgensen received only probation, thanks to his cooperation and what he describes as a "sterling military
record." It may be surprising to learn that buying hundreds of MAK-90s and thousands of rounds of ammunition that could supply US-designated terrorist
organizations doesn't raise any eyebrows. But there is simply no requirement for gun stores to report suspicious activity. If a customer buys more than one
handgun in five days, the store must report the sales to ATF, but the MAK-90 comes with no such restriction. Nor does ammunition. Some gun-store
owners say they voluntarily tip off ATF to suspicious buyers, usually after the sale is made and the money collected.

'Bubba Did It'

When Gun Land's owner, William Ben Woodall, answers the phone, he doesn't use his real name. "Tell 'em Bubba did it," he laughs. "Bubba" says there's
no limit to the number of guns that someone can buy in Florida. He says he'd probably call ATF if someone came in to buy hundreds of semiautomatic
rifles, but that if the person "looked right and acted right" and passed the NICS test--the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which
requires gun-shop owners to call ATF and check whether a client is a felon or is otherwise prohibited from buying guns--he'd have no problem. Such a
purchase, he says, is ultimately a customer's right. "Cars kill more people than guns," he says.

Weapons sold over the counter can quickly find themselves bound by air for distant countries. Since September 11, 2001, Customs has stepped up its
monitoring of outbound small aircraft, but such inspections are aimed more at stopping the delivery of components used in weapons of mass destruction,
like triggering devices or plutonium, than at halting gun shipments. McBride says we should also be concerned about guns. Recalling a 1985 rampage by
one guerrilla group, he says, "The M-19 raided and assaulted the Palace of Justice in Colombia, killing 115 people, eleven Supreme Court justices, and
wiped out the Supreme Court of the country of Colombia. And these were guns that were subsequently traced back to the United States."

McBride says South Florida investigators came to see a connection between purchases here and violence abroad. "We would see, all of a sudden, a rash
of large gun purchases, a large quantity of gun purchases throughout South Florida. We would find that then, a month or two months later, we would see a
coup take place in Haiti." McBride adds that Florida is especially attractive to South and Central America, "because of our geographic location [and] the
ease with which firearms can be secured here."