Word: sjeklocha
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...small band of smugglers last March, when Undercover Agent Richard Witkowski, posing as an arms dealer, held a meeting in Orlando with Charles St. Clair, a Californian who claimed he wanted to aid Iran in its war with Iraq. Witkowski later met with St. Clair's partner, Paul Sjeklocha, a California-based science writer. Sjeklocha allegedly told the agent he had netted up to $8 million in arms deals over the past two years and presented Witkowski with a "shopping list" of weapons that included Sidewinder, Sparrow, Harpoon, Phoenix and French-made Exocet missiles. In June, Witkowski signed a contract...
Enter Colonel Gillespie. Sjeklocha had the soldier fly to Orlando to inspect the weapons. According to an FBI affidavit, Sjeklocha told Witkowski that he had "used Gillespie before in France and Germany to check items for him." The colonel examined one of the missiles and took down the serial and lot numbers, explaining that he would match the codes with those listed in an Army manual to see if the missiles were legitimate. A 29-year Army veteran, Gillespie was planning to retire this year and go into full-time business with Sjeklocha...
Last week Agent Witkowski learned that Sjeklocha and two of his accomplices were returning to Orlando. They apparently planned to load the missiles on a 747 they had leased in Miami and take them to Iran. The FBI arrested Sjeklocha and one associate in an Orlando hotel room and nabbed four other alleged conspirators in California. Colonel Gillespie was arrested at his home. At week's end St. Clair was still at large. This bust, in the eighth smuggling case in the past year, came on the heels of the unrelated arrests last month of seven other smugglers for attempting...
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