Drug smuggling

Your chance to own ex-CIA plane that smuggled drugs into Australia

The Swearingen Merlin 3 turbo prop has been at the centre of several court cases involving importation of drugs and weapons to Australia — and it could be yours.

“The plane is stored at the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society at Albion Park Rail,’’ a NSW Trustee & Guardian Board spokesman said. “The sale will occur in the first quarter of 2018.”

It was seized soon after it landed at Albion Park aerodrome on June 27, 2014, the culmination of a two-year operation involving the former Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad and the US Department of Homeland Security.

Police believe the plane was used to transport $9 million of drugs across the Pacific Ocean into Australia, leading to the arrest of three people. As news of the plane’s interception broke, some long-time CIA watchers theorised it had been used by the spy agency during its 1970s escapades in Central and South America.

Veteran journalist and intelligence specialist Damien Comerford pointed to its first listed owner, the US Forest Service, as an occasional front for the CIA.