the Ulster Conflict 1968-1995 wrote that: The most effective measures taken by US law enforcement agencies, however, were against IRA gunrunning . . . The convictions secured by US law enforcement agencies against the gunrunning network in the mid-1980s caused serious problems for the IRA. After the seizure of the Marita Ann, the Provos began to concentrate their arms procurement ventures in Europe and the Middle East. Although the IRA continued to ship some weapons from America, US authorities successfully undermined the transatlantic arms network. By the end of the decade, the IRA successfully smuggled a number of Barrett sniper rifles from the US. Libyan arms The other source of IRA arms in the 1970s was the leader of the Libyan Arab Republic, Muammar Gaddafi, who was engaging in a strategy at this time of opposing United States interests in the Middle East by sponsoring paramilitary activity against it and its allies in Western Europe. The first Libyan arms shipment to the IRA took place in 1972–1973, following visits by Joe Cahill to Libya. In early 1973, the Irish Government received intelligence that the vessel Claudia was carrying a consignment of weapons, and placed the ship under surveillance on 27 March. On 28 March, three Irish Navy patrol vessels intercepted the Claudia in Irish territorial waters near Helvick Head, County Waterford, seizing five tonnes of Libyan small arms and ammunition found on board. The weaponry seized included 250 Soviet-made small arms, 240 rifles, anti-tank mines and other explosives. Cahill himself was also found and arrested on board the vessel. It is estimated that three other shipments of weaponry of a similar size and nature succeeded in getting through to the IRA in the same time period. Journalist Ed Moloney reports that the early Libyan arms shipments provided the IRA with its first RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and that Gaddafi also gave three to five million US dollars at this time to the organisation to finance its activities. However contact with the Libyan government was broken off in 1976. Contact with Libya was opened again in the aftermath of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, which was said to have impressed Gaddafi, just as the FBI successfully disrupted the IRA gunrunning operation in America that same year. In the 1980s, the IRA received further larger quantities of weaponry and explosives from the Libyan Government, reportedly enough to equip least two professional infantry