CA man who tried to sell F-5 fighter to Iran sentenced to almost 4 years
Personally, I think that he was very lucky.
I originally wrote about this guy in December of 2010, and the jet was identified as an F-5B.
Marc Knapp, aged 36, of Simi Valley, California, penitently explained his conduct to U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark as the result of being unable to find work after losing his $81,000-a-year job at a biotechnology company in 2007. Some of us who lost FAR MORE money in 2007 after layoffs from the technology sector WOULD NEVER CONSIDER selling arms to countries hostile to the United States as an alternative source of employment. Knapp told the judge that he believed the sale of the items posed no threat to national security.
Sorry, buddy, but YOU don’t get to make that determination! 
Knapp was sentenced today, in Wilmington, DE, to almost 4 years in prison for trying to sell an F-5 fighter jet and other items to Iran. The other items that Knapp tried to either sell or ship overseas, in violation of U.S. laws, included an F-14 ejection seat, five flight suits that mitigate G-forces, four survival radios and an F-14 emergency operations manual.
Knapp’s prosecution began when his friend, Paul Taylor (also from California) agreed to cooperate with authorities in return for a 3-month sentence after pleading guilty to trying to ship an F-14 ejection seat overseas. Taylor pointed to Knapp as the source of that ejection seat.
In another case of “what goes around, comes around,” the F-5 jet in question, which was originally built in 1968, was initially shipped to Iran by the U.S. government during the days of the Shah. Iran later transferred the plane to Jorden, and it would up back in the U.S. (I’ll bet THAT is an interesting story, too!)
Samuel Gardiner, who testified for the defense, is a retired Air Force Colonel and an instructor at the National War College. Gardiner said that the only F-5s used by Iran as front-line fighter planes are the more advanced F-5Es.
It is very clear that international arms trading is not a profession for amateurs.
-Bill at
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