Sergeant Smack, page 19
IT’S A GOOD story, one that, as we have seen, a suppliant unblinking media has fueled. Since the American Gangster movie was released on November 2, 2007, anybody surfing the Internet will find hundreds of articles about the cadaver-heroin connection. As of July 9, 2008, when one entered “cadaver connection Frank Lucas” into either the Yahoo and Google search engine, you got 12,700 and 30,500 hits respectively on the topic, even though, as we have read, the connection never happened. Similarly, when you plugged in “cadaver connection Ike Atkinson” in the Google and Yahoo search engines, one got 605 and 502 hits respectively.
That a large part of Lucas’s story is suspect is not something the corporate media in America wanted to hear, once they realized the money they could make from American Gangster. Media outlets like NBC Dateline, Black Entertainment Television and the History Channel bought and promoted Frank Lucas’s story hook, line and sinker. Brad Davis, a producer for Dateline NBC, called me in September 2007 and asked if I wanted to be interviewed for a segment that would examine the criminal career and life story of Frank Lucas. The segment was to air a few days before November 2, 2007, the date American Gangster opened in movie theaters across North America. I suggested four other sources to the Dateline producer, two former federal prosecutors and two former DEA agents, all of whom, like myself, were well-familiar with Lucas´s story and his claims to criminal fame. I informed Davis that all my recommended sources had questions about various Lucas claims. But he assured me: “That’s all right. We want to get the true story of Frank Lucas.”
Davis sat us all down for two-hour plus interviews in which Dateline NBC got a close up look at Frank Lucas from our perspective and had the opportunity to examine some of his claims. But a few days before the program was to air, the producer called and informed me that none of us would appear on the show because the segment had been cut down to half an hour from the originally scheduled hour. The only people who appeared on the Dateline episode were the stars, Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe, with the real Frank Lucas, Richie Roberts and Mark Jacobson. They were the ¨experts¨ who talked about Lucas´s story and reinforced the official movie story line. The producer assured us that Dateline would do another, more in-depth program about Lucas at a later date. That never happened.
One must conclude that my Dateline experience was a classic example of the sorry state of the American media and how it no longer makes any effort to distinguish between news and entertainment. But that was just the beginning. In the following weeks, other media jumped on the bandwagon and showed itself to be cheerleaders for the film that Universal was claiming to be based on a true story. The History Channel did a program for its new Gangland series that did not seriously examine any of Lucas´claims and essentially parroted the official story line . That is understandable. After all, Universal owns the History Channel. Black Entertainment Television (BET) followed suit with a puff profile for its popular American Gangster series and was awarded with access that led to a special hour-long “Making of America Gangster” feature that followed the airing of its Lucas profile.
BET and the History Channel interviewed me for segments about Lucas that was to appear in their American Gangster and “Gangland” series respectively. During the two, two-hour interviews, I spent some time debunking the cadaver-heroin connection. I explained that Ike, who, by the way, was not Lucas’s cousin, had nothing to do with it and how he, not Lucas, was the American drug trafficker who pioneered the Asian heroin connection. None of the information I provided in the interviews made it out of the cutting room.
Indeed, since Universal announced that it was making the American Gangster movie, the media had all but collaborated in the falsification of Lucas’s story and the distortion of gangster history. The most egregious example is the media’s laziness in investigating Lucas’s link to the so-called cadaver-heroin connection. Unbelievably, no journalist checked out the authenticity of the conspiracy by asking Lucas tough, probing questions like: Who was involved in the drug smuggling scheme? How did the cadaver-heroin connection work? How were you able to implement such a complex scheme when you did not have any military experience?
Today, DEA agents who investigated Lucas and the Asian drug connection and whom I have interviewed dismiss the notion that Frank Lucas could engineer such an elaborate drug distribution network as defying common sense. For the cadaver-heroin connection to function, Lucas, who was never in the U.S. military and did not live in Asia, needed a reliable heroin connection in Thailand and then had to find a way to smuggle the heroin to Vietnam and the mortuary office at Tan Son Nhut where the bodies were sent home to the U.S. There, Lucas would have had to recruit and bribe members of the military to place the heroin inside the coffins or actual corpses. Next, he would have needed to corrupt the entire transportation system from the mortuary to the U.S. Once the bodies arrived in the U.S., more corrupt military personnel would be needed to remove the heroin from the bodies.
Could a drug trafficking system like this have functioned at the height of the Vietnam War? It would have been relatively easy for them to check it out. Instead, since Frank Lucas and the American Gangster movie revived interest in the cadaver-heroin connection, the media has been content with publishing hundreds of articles that have treated its existence as fact.
The Associated Press (AP) was one media source that initially followed in lock step with the conspiracy—that is, until it decided to investigate some of Lucas’s claims more closely. The investigation was prompted by John McBeth, a veteran Asia-based journalist who reported from Thailand in the 1970s and was familiar with the conspiracy rumors. McBeth complained to the AP about the inaccuracy of a story published in November, 2007. To AP’s credit, it did take a second look.
In its initial story, the AP concluded: “To get the drugs back to the States, Lucas established the infamous ‘cadaver connection,’ hiding the heroin in the caskets of dead soldiers.” In the follow-up article that appeared in January 2008, Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment writer, wrote; “The Harlem kingpin’s infamous ‘Cadaver Connection’—a pipeline of top-grade Southeast Asia heroin smuggled in GI caskets—has always been at the center of his considerable and enduring mythology. But it turns out that the casket story is just that—a myth.” In this follow up article, Lucas back-tracked big time, conceding in an interview with Coyle that he may have used the cadaver-heroin connection only once.
Coyle explained to me why the media has gotten it so wrong on the American Gangster story: “This mess happened partially because journalists have been relying on secondary sources removed from the actual events.” McBeth concluded that “the cadaver heroin connection was basically an urban legend that developed a life of its own because the journalists who wrote that stuff did not give it the common sense test, possibly because they had no idea of the geography of Southeast Asia. It’s quite simple: the bodies of dead servicemen came out of Saigon; the heroin supplied to Lucas came out of Thailand. So how could the heroin have gotten into the coffins?”
WHILE INCARCERATED IN Butner Federal Penitentiary, Ike got a copy of the New York magazine profile of Lucas and could not believe what he read about the coffins. “The article was nothing but a pack of lies, and I don’t know how any magazine could print such an article,” Ike recalled. He wrote lengthy letters to the editor of the New York magazine and to Mark Jacobson, the author, explaining his true relationship with Superfly and questioning Lucas’s claims. The recipients never answered the letters, but the letters do provide keen insight into Lucas’s story and his relationship with Ike. Later, when we began collaborating on this book, Ike expanded on that relationship.
His letter to the New York Magazine editor began with an all-out blast at the content of the article. “Not so fast my friends,” Ike wrote. “Your column or story given to you by Lucas doesn’t come close to the truth, and I feel the true story must be told.” Ike went on to explain: “It never happened. In fact, Lucas spread disinformation about the Southeast Asia connection. Frank never brought any drugs into the U.S.”
In the letter, Ike went on to debunk a lot of myths regarding his relationship with Lucas. For instance, regarding Lucas’s claim of a family relationship, Ike wrote: “I am not now, nor have I ever been married to any of Frank Lucas’s relatives.” His categorical denial is backed up by Ike’s family members who, when interviewed by this author, said Lucas has no connection to their family.
AS WE HAVE seen, Ike Atkinson did not even meet Frank Lucas until about 1972 or 1973, even though he was born in La Grange, North Carolina, about 13 miles from Goldsboro. Born in 1931, Lucas, by all accounts, had as tough a time growing up in the segregated South as did Ike, who is six years older. Whereas Ike entered the military as a teenager after forging his mother’s signature on a consent form, Lucas spent his teenage years pursuing a life of petty crime before migrating to Harlem, ragged and penniless. Ike entered the highly competitive world of drug trafficking but never carried a gun and took care of business using his charisma and business skills. On the other hand, Lucas’s bully tactics and violent approach to criminal business made him feared, not liked. Lucas was one of thirteen people indicted as part of a drug conspiracy case in June 1974. However, within the next several months, at least six witnesses turned up dead. The prosecutor in the trial complained to the judge that the murder spree was making it hard for him to prosecute the case.
While the facts of Ike’s early life can be documented, we must depend on Lucas’s “recollections” for his, a problematic consideration given that Lucas’s road to “Superfly” status is pock-marked with questions. Take his relationship with Bumpy Johnson, Harlem’s legendary Black godfather, one aspect of his life that has been challenged and compels one to question other aspects of it. As Lucas tells it, he was on the streets of Harlem, stealing to survive when a pool hustler named “Ice Pick Red” challenged him to a game of pool for $1,000 at a pool hall on 134th Street in Harlem. Lucas did not have any money, but Bumpy Johnson arrived on the scene and backed him financially, becoming his guardian angel. “Bumpy didn’t like me; he loved me,” Lucas boasted.
Bumpy died in 1968, so he cannot verify “his love” for Superfly. But Mayme, Bumpy’s widow, who was 94 years old and doing well, can do it. In Harlem Godfather, her book about Bumpy, co-authored with Karen Quinones Miller, Mayme called Lucas a liar and devoted space shooting down Lucas’s claims about his relationship with Bumpy. ”Frank wasn’t anything more than a flunky and one that Bumpy never did really trust,’ she told one web site. “Bumpy would let Frank drive him around, but you better believe he was never in important meetings or anything.”
Mayme’s assessment of Lucas’s relationship with her husband is confirmed in the conversations I had with old time law enforcement officials who worked in Harlem and knew Bumpy. They do not remember Lucas being around Bumpy, let alone serving as his right hand man.
IKE SCOFFS AT Lucas’s boast that he became so big the La Cosa Nostra had to come to Lucas to get their heroin supply. Ike recalled visiting Lucas once in New Jersey to collect some money owed to him. “Before I went to see Frank, some people told me: ‘Be careful when you get around Frank, he owes the Italians money and they might be looking for him.’” When Ike arrived at Lucas’s place, a couple of his men stood guard outside, ostensibly to protect their boss against any trouble from the Mob.
DEA sources reveal that for most of his criminal career Lucas was constantly in deep financial trouble with La Cosa Nostra. He even owed two well-connected Mafioso $300,000 and only managed to avoid ending up in a dumpster or buried in concrete because the two mobsters were arrested and carted off to jail. Ike also recalled the time two members of La Cosa Nostra visited him in jail in Atlanta. “At the time, Frank was dead broke and he expected me to help him out. I was in the Atlanta penitentiary when these two Italian mobsters came to see me. He said: ‘Frank owes us $80,000, and one of them said you would take care of it.’” Both Ike and the mobsters broke out laughing at the absurdity of Superfly’s claim.
Lucas and the La Cosa Nostra did not trust each other. In fact, Lucas had a tempestuous relationship with La Cosa Nostra, which helps explain his fervent campaign to forge a reputation as “The Man” who was the first to break with the Mob and to establish the Asian drug pipeline to the U.S. In an interview with Lucas for my book Gangsters of Harlem, I asked him if he got his heroin from the Italians. “Superfly” got testy and barked: “I was not going to have no motherfucking fat guy leaning back in the chair, smoking a $20 cigar and bragging about how he had another nigger in Harlem working for him. I don’t play that game. The Italians were charging $60,000 to $65,000 a kilo, and I was getting it at $4,000 a kilo. My junk (heroin) traveled from the Mekong Delta and the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the U.S.”
But DEA sources confirmed that Lucas had dealt with the Italian mobsters for most of his criminal career. Joe Sullivan, a retired DEA agent who worked drug cases in East Harlem in the 1970s, recalled: “All the big drug traffickers, including Lucas, were getting their heroin from the Italians. The French Connection was in the process of being dismantled and the supply was tight and expensive. Lucas was getting it for about $200,000 a kilo.”
LUCAS, THOUGH, STILL made his money by getting down and dirty on the streets of Harlem. “The Italians were very risk-adverse,” Sullivan revealed. “They trusted their foreign-contacts and were satisfied with bringing the heroin into the country. But the Italians thought it beneath them to whack the heroin, mix it, put it in glassine envelopes, and hawk it on the street. They preferred to sell the heroin (wholesale) to the Black dealers. A few Black dealers, such as Barnes and Lucas, became successful at controlling the drug business on the street while still being able to insulate themselves from the actual distribution.” Lew Rice, a retired DEA agent who interviewed Frank Lucas when he agreed to cooperate with the authorities after he was busted, said Superfly readily acknowledged to the DEA after he was busted that he was getting his heroin from the Mafia. “Ralph Tutino (aka ‘The General”) was his major source of supply,” Rice revealed. Press reports indicate that Tutino was one of few members of the La Cosa Nostra who was able to buy and deal in heroin brought from Southeast Asia.
SO WHAT ABOUT Lucas’s claim that he pioneered the Asian drug connection? The way Lucas has told it, he traveled alone to Bangkok where he did not know anybody but still managed to establish the Asian connection. In his account, he checked into the Dusit Thani Hotel in Bangkok where he hailed a motorcycle to take him to Jack’s American Star Bar.
In his New York Magazine letter to the editor, Atkinson offered a different account of how “Superfly” first came to Bangkok, revealing that it was through his efforts the arrangement was made. “Frank wanted to go to Bangkok with his wife, Julie, and his brother Shorty but did not even know how to get a visa,” Atkinson explained. “I helped by taking them to the Thai Embassy in Washington, D.C.”
A DEA intelligence report confirms that Lucas got a visa for Thailand from the Thai Embassy in Washington, DC, in October 1974. But in an interview for this author’s Gangsters of Harlem book, Lucas claimed that he went to Bangkok as early as 1969 or 1970 to begin establishing the Asian connection. It is likely that Lucas did indeed travel to Bangkok earlier than 1974, perhaps entering on a 30-day tourist visa routinely issued at Don Muang Airport, because Atkinson recalls taking Lucas to Jack’s American Star Bar in his first visit to Bangkok. Jack’s American Star Bar was closed in 1973.
However, as late as October 1974, Frank Lucas had not appeared on the DEA’s “radar screen” in Bangkok. Peter Davis is a retired DEA agent who worked on special assignment in the agency’s Bangkok office in the early 1970s. “We didn’t know who Lucas was, nor did we have information that he was operating in Southeast Asia,” Davis recalled, adding: “Of course, there is a possibility that he could have slipped under the radar screen, although that would be tough to do if he was a big drug trafficker in the region as he has claimed to be.”
Chuck Lutz transferred to the DEA’s Bangkok office nine months before Lucas was issued his Thai visa in 1974, but he could not recall his office having any reports about Lucas or members of his drug trafficking organization operating in Thailand. “We believe the Jackson-Atkinson drug ring was the only Black syndicate moving Asian heroin to the United States and that Lucas was probably getting his heroin supply from Ike Atkinson,” Lutz said.
As for that mysterious drug supplier, 007, he was, in reality, Luchai “Chai” Ruviwat, Ike’s Chinese-Thai partner. By 1974, Luchai was acting as the middleman between Ike’s drug ring and the source of supply in the Golden Triangle of Laos, Burma and Thailand. According to Lucas, however, “When I began to do business with 007, I didn’t see Atkinson. He wasn’t important to me at all.” Assuming Lucas was dealing with Luchai, how could Lucas have used his sources without having to deal with Ike?
“When we (Frank, Julie and Shorty) arrived in Bangkok, I checked them into the Dusit Thani Hotel,” Ike explained in his letter to the New York Magazine. “Frank won’t admit it, but during the time he was there, we put him to bed, woke him up and took him where he wanted to go. The snake farm was his favorite attraction. After that, we would go back to my bar and restaurant (Jack’s American Star Bar), and Frank would talk with the Green Berets (who) frequented my bar.” Ike believes that this is where Superfly heard about the fighting in Vietnam and got the material for some of his colorful accounts of how he started the Asian connection.
Ike was uncertain about the length of time Lucas spent in Bangkok, but it was not long—from three to five days. “He slept most of the time,” Ike recalled. “I told him I would take him anywhere he wanted to go in the city. The only thing he wanted to do was go to the zoo and look at the snakes.”
On the third day, according to Atkinson, Superfly came to his house and said he wanted to buy some heroin. Atkinson recalled the meeting: “Frank said: ‘I heard there are two types of ‘rice’ (heroin) over here, and I want you to sell me the best one.’ In fact, the ‘rice’ I was selling Frank was the best, but he said he wanted to try it himself. I told Luchai to bring two samples of ‘rice.’ Luchai went and got two samples and brought them back. Frank held his hands out. Luchai poured the contents of one bag in each of Frank’s palms. Frank licked one hand and took a drink of water. He then licked the other hand and took another drink of water. He then raved about how much better the ‘rice’ in his left hand was and stated that he wanted that ‘rice.’” Not surprisingly, both samples were taken from the same batch of “rice,” and there was absolutely no difference between the two samples.
