group of investors, this one headed by Wayne Daniel, the son of a Georgia minister.
Under Wayne Daniel, RPB had more success selling the Ingram line and by mid-1979 had made sales of varying amounts to some twenty countries, including seven Latin American nations, the United Kingdom, Saudia Arabia, and Israel.An operating manual for the RPB version of the Ingram M10 came in a camouflage cover and, on its first page, noted how “the compact size of the M10 makes it especially suitable for tank crews, gun and mortar crews, etc.” The manual also displayed a range of available accessories, including the RPB “Operational Briefcase,” an attaché case packed with a silenced M10 that could be fired with the gun still in the case. A business card inserted in a card holder on the side of the case obscured the muzzle.
“Looks like an ordinary briefcase with your calling card in front,” the manual reads. “However, this case contains the world’s deadliest submachine gun, ready for action.” The blurb noted that anyone who bought the briefcase would have to register it with ATF, which had classed it as an “assassination device.”
Under Wayne Daniel and his partners, the new RPB faced an array of business obstacles not typically included in the syllabi at Harvard Business School.One partner was convicted of bribing a prosecutor to drop a client’s drug charge.Two others, Robert Morgan and John “Jack” Leibolt, got involved in the narcotics smugglingoperations of Pablo Escobar-Gaviria and the Medellín Cartel.Morgan was convicted in 1979 for smuggling two tons of marijuana into Florida and was sentenced to thirty years in prison.Leibolt, according to a sweeping 1989 indictment of the Medellín Cartel, once piloted a plane for the cartel and, in September 1979, supplied the group with six silencer-equipped machine guns. (He pleaded guilty in August of 1990 to conspiracy to import cocaine.)
Despite all this, RPB succeeded in at last transforming the Ingram from a limited-circulation military weapon into a semiautomatic handgun for general use. Previously, the company had been restricted to selling its full-auto Ingram variations only through dealers specially licensed to sell machine guns, who in turn—if they followed the law—sold them only to buyers who had undergone an ATF background investigation and paid $200 for the necessary tax stamp. Now, however, any adult with a clean record could buy an Ingram look-alike, even a mock silencer to go with it. “It became available everywhere,” said Earl Taylor, a twenty-one-year ATF veteran who retired to become a vice president with Norred & Associates, an Atlanta security concern that as of 1992 counted among its varied assignments the protection of Kroger supermarkets and ex-colonel Oliver North. “All gun shops everywhere were selling it. Everywhere. The distribution of it became widespread.”
Taylor is a tall, lean man whose courtly manner and slow, easy way of speaking suggest quiet authority. Over the years he came to know RPB and its successor, S.W. Daniel, intimately, first as resident agent-in-charge of ATF’s Rome, Georgia, office, later as supervisor of criminal investigation in the agency’s Atlanta office. He deployed undercover agents to order the guns from illegal suppliers. Demand was so high, they had to wait for delivery, Taylor recalled. “It was a hot item.”
What made the gun particularly popular was its internal design, a delight to anyone interested in skirting federal restrictions on ownership of machine guns. “ATF was concerned because those damn weapons were so easily converted to full-automatic fire,” Taylor said.“An individual could convert one in a minute or two, or maybe even less time than that.” (“In seconds,” said another retired ATF agent familiar with the guns.)
All a buyer had to do was file down a small metal catch—the “trip”—that caught the bolt after each shot, thereby leaving the bolt free to spring
Under Wayne Daniel, RPB had more success selling the Ingram line and by mid-1979 had made sales of varying amounts to some twenty countries, including seven Latin American nations, the United Kingdom, Saudia Arabia, and Israel.An operating manual for the RPB version of the Ingram M10 came in a camouflage cover and, on its first page, noted how “the compact size of the M10 makes it especially suitable for tank crews, gun and mortar crews, etc.” The manual also displayed a range of available accessories, including the RPB “Operational Briefcase,” an attaché case packed with a silenced M10 that could be fired with the gun still in the case. A business card inserted in a card holder on the side of the case obscured the muzzle.
“Looks like an ordinary briefcase with your calling card in front,” the manual reads. “However, this case contains the world’s deadliest submachine gun, ready for action.” The blurb noted that anyone who bought the briefcase would have to register it with ATF, which had classed it as an “assassination device.”
Under Wayne Daniel and his partners, the new RPB faced an array of business obstacles not typically included in the syllabi at Harvard Business School.One partner was convicted of bribing a prosecutor to drop a client’s drug charge.Two others, Robert Morgan and John “Jack” Leibolt, got involved in the narcotics smugglingoperations of Pablo Escobar-Gaviria and the Medellín Cartel.Morgan was convicted in 1979 for smuggling two tons of marijuana into Florida and was sentenced to thirty years in prison.Leibolt, according to a sweeping 1989 indictment of the Medellín Cartel, once piloted a plane for the cartel and, in September 1979, supplied the group with six silencer-equipped machine guns. (He pleaded guilty in August of 1990 to conspiracy to import cocaine.)
Despite all this, RPB succeeded in at last transforming the Ingram from a limited-circulation military weapon into a semiautomatic handgun for general use. Previously, the company had been restricted to selling its full-auto Ingram variations only through dealers specially licensed to sell machine guns, who in turn—if they followed the law—sold them only to buyers who had undergone an ATF background investigation and paid $200 for the necessary tax stamp. Now, however, any adult with a clean record could buy an Ingram look-alike, even a mock silencer to go with it. “It became available everywhere,” said Earl Taylor, a twenty-one-year ATF veteran who retired to become a vice president with Norred & Associates, an Atlanta security concern that as of 1992 counted among its varied assignments the protection of Kroger supermarkets and ex-colonel Oliver North. “All gun shops everywhere were selling it. Everywhere. The distribution of it became widespread.”
Taylor is a tall, lean man whose courtly manner and slow, easy way of speaking suggest quiet authority. Over the years he came to know RPB and its successor, S.W. Daniel, intimately, first as resident agent-in-charge of ATF’s Rome, Georgia, office, later as supervisor of criminal investigation in the agency’s Atlanta office. He deployed undercover agents to order the guns from illegal suppliers. Demand was so high, they had to wait for delivery, Taylor recalled. “It was a hot item.”
What made the gun particularly popular was its internal design, a delight to anyone interested in skirting federal restrictions on ownership of machine guns. “ATF was concerned because those damn weapons were so easily converted to full-automatic fire,” Taylor said.“An individual could convert one in a minute or two, or maybe even less time than that.” (“In seconds,” said another retired ATF agent familiar with the guns.)
All a buyer had to do was file down a small metal catch—the “trip”—that caught the bolt after each shot, thereby leaving the bolt free to spring
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