Possible lend lease

[Bob Seijas]

I'd bet that it was a mixed up story. The first sale by the Brits was the LL guns, most of which were in warehouses. The government stipulated that only UK dealers could bid on them, so Cummings bought the defunct Brit firm of Cogswell & Harrison to buy them. There has always been an undocumented assertion that some M1s were issued to guard air bases, but I've never seen that in writing. It's possible that these were bought separately from the warehouse guns, most of which were minty when they came back. It's also possible that "some" of the Brit guns were sold to Haiti et al, but IMO the bulk came into the US. They were EVERYWHERE at the time, even Sears Roebuck.
Cummings did have CIA connections and fronted for them in supplying arms to people we couldn't openly associate with.