Sergeant Smack, page 27
On July 23, Chai arrived at the Siam Center carrying a brown paper bag. While the DEA videotaped and recorded them, Chai rendezvoused with Lionel and they walked to Chai’s vehicle where Chai opened the trunk of his vehicle to reveal a cardboard box containing four kilograms of pure heroin. The paper bag he carried to the meeting was a ruse. If the police were watching and they arrested him, they would only seize an empty paper bag.
THE PLAN HAD worked beautifully so far; now it was time to get Chai to travel to San Francisco and consummate the sting. The DEA devised an elaborate plan that, hopefully, would not only lead to Chai’s arrest but also identify some of the contacts in the U.S. They made reservations for Chai at the Holiday Inn, a busy, popular tourist destination in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Chai’s room was bugged to gather any incriminating conversations within the room. DEA Group Supervisor Peter Fong, Lionel Stewart’s real boss, would play “Mr. Big,” Stewart’s boss in his fictitious heroin trafficking organization.
On August 29th Chai arrived at the San Francisco International Airport and telephoned Stewart. He had arrived safely. Later that evening, they met at the Holiday Inn for dinner. On the way, Stewart informed Chai that he had not only sold Chai’s consignment of heroin and received the money for it, but he had also negotiated another $100,000 down payment for the heroin Chai was about to smuggle into the United States. Chai was ecstatic. Not only had he made a lot of money, but once the deal was completed, he could relax, enjoy himself and go to Las Vegas, as Johnny, his friend and associate, had planned. Later, during Chai’s trial, the press made a big deal about how Chai was entrapped into coming to America because he was intrigued by the prospect of getting together with a blonde Caucasian woman in La Vegas.
“That story was blown up in the press,” Lutz said. “Luchai’s main reason for being in the U.S. was to make money selling heroin.”
After the dinner, Chai informed Stewart that he had a courier named Chalermphol Phitakstrakul, who, on August 31, would leave Bangkok for the U.S. with the heroin. The following day, Chai met Chalermphol after he arrived at the San Francisco airport and had successfully cleared Customs (as the DEA prearranged), and they returned to the Holiday Inn, where they delivered a half-kilo of 93 percent pure heroin to Stewart. To Chai, it must have looked as if the streets of America were indeed paved with gold—paved, that is, with the huge profits he would surely be making from working with Johnny and selling his potent China White brand of heroin.
Johnny picked up Chai and Chalermphol at the airport and drove them to the nearby San Mateo Hotel where they delivered the heroin to “Mr. Big.” Chai, Stewart and Mr. Big, agent Peter Fong, were still talking in the room about future heroin shipments when the DEA agents in the adjoining room burst in and arrested Chai and Chalermphol. Chai stood frozen with a stunned look on his face as the DEA agents handcuffed him. “You could tell that Luchai Ruviwat had absolutely no clue that Lionel was playing him,” said Lowery Leong, a retired DEA special agent who was involved in Chai’s arrest at the hotel room. “He was caught by complete surprise.”
STEWART’S WORK WITH the DEA’s Bangkok’s office was not finished. Lutz recognized a talented undercover agent when he saw one. “While Lionel was working the “Chai” case and hanging out at the Thermae, another informant came to our attention who could introduce an undercover agent to Preecha Leeyaruk, a local travel agent with a long history of drug trafficking,” said Lutz. DEA intelligence indicated that Preecha had been active during the Vietnam War selling heroin to American GI’s on Rest and Recuperation (R & R) in Bangkok. U.S. Customs considered him to be one of the most important Thai drug traffickers directly affecting the U.S.
“With his affable, easy-going manner, Lionel ingratiated himself with Preecha at their first meeting, enabling us to cut out the informant after the initial introduction,” Lutz recalled. “Lionel even bought toys for Preecha’s children with his own money. And since Thailand was not extraditing Thai citizens at that time, as was the case with Luchai, we cooked up another scheme that would entice Preecha to deliver the heroin outside of Thailand to a country that would extradite him to the U.S.”
“We had been successful in another undercover operation earlier in the year with me posing undercover as a Pan Am cargo supervisor, and my partner, Matty Maher, posing as a Pan Am mechanic. I had asked my friend, the Bangkok Pan Am station manager, to document us with Pan Am employee ID cards and give us the schematic drawings of a Boeing 747. We told the Chinese-Thai crook, Sukree Sukreepirom aka Chao Pei Sui, who was believed to be the first Asian trafficker to convert opium to heroin, that we had a way of concealing large quantities of heroin behind false panels in the bathrooms of 747’s and a way to secretly remove the heroin from the planes when they went in for a routine maintenance in the States. Sukree and a top-level Malaysian trafficker, Hoi Se Wan, ended up delivering twenty-five kilos of pure heroin.
“I had asked Lionel to use a similar scenario in the Luchai Ruviwat investigation and again in the Preecha investigation. If it works, why not? So Lionel told Preecha he ran a clothing business in San Francisco that purchased suits from Hong Kong and over time had developed a relationship with some Hong Kong-based Pan Am employees who said they could conceal almost anything in a 747. Lionel told Preecha he wanted to test the system with a trial run of one kilogram of heroin, but that Lionel had no secure way of getting the heroin to Hong Kong. Preecha agreed to have the heroin delivered to Hong Kong by courier.
“Lionel said he would eventually cut Preecha in on his business in the States once it developed, giving Preecha 25 percent of the profits and helping Preecha expand his tourist business into Hong Kong. Preecha took the bait and agreed to deliver the one kilo of heroin to Hong Kong for $18,000, which included transportation costs, and that after the trial run he would deliver 20 kilograms of heroin to Lionel in Hong Kong for $400,000. The DEA office in Bangkok and Hong Kong, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco reached agreement with Hong Kong authorities that, after their arrest, Preecha and his courier would be extradited to San Francisco to stand charges there.
Lutz continued: “Lionel and Preecha flew to Hong Kong together. I flew on surveillance on the same flight to help identify them to the police when they arrived. We stayed at the Lee Gardens Hotel. The Royal Hong Kong Police had arranged adjoining rooms for Preecha and Lionel—with adjoining rooms for themselves.
“While Preecha had assured Lionel that he had a secure way of getting the heroin to Hong Kong through a ‘big cheese,’ we had no idea then that the couriers would be two former members of the Thai Parliament traveling on diplomatic passports. After the diplomats delivered a suitcase with the one-kilogram of heroin hidden in a false bottom to Preecha and Lionel. “The Royal Hong Kong Police arrested Preecha in his room, and then arrested the Thai politician smugglers while they were eating lunch in the hotel’s coffee shop,” he explained. Due to the high profile of the couriers, and the publicity surrounding their arrests, the Hong Kong authorities reneged on their agreement and decided not to extradite them to the States but to prosecute the defendants in Hong Kong.
At the trial, Preecha told the panel of three judges that he never dreamed the smooth-talking Stewart was actually trying to “frame” him. It was to no avail, however. Preecha and the corrupt former members of the Thai parliament were each sentenced to ten years in prison.
Mike Nerney had flown to Hong Kong for the trial and, in the interest of the economy, had been asked by the DEA to take with him the kilogram that had been purchased from Preecha in Bangkok and placed into evidence in San Francisco. “The ever-playful Lionel Stewart arranged with his Royal Hong Kong Police counterparts not to have them meet me upon my arrival in Hong Kong but to let me sweat it out a bit at the Airport’s Customs and Immigration stations with a kilogram of pure heroin locked in my briefcase,” Mike Nerney recalled.
IN THE AFTERMATH of that sting and the highly publicized trial, Lionel Stewart’s exploits became legendary in the Far East. In fact, the main character in a Hong Kong action movie made in the late 1970s was reportedly based on Lionel Stewart’s exploits in the Preecha case. “The movie was in Chinese, but they had a Black guy playing Lionel, the ‘super narc,’” Nerney recalled. “The Hong Kong film industry knew Lionel from his undercover work on the case of the corrupt Thai parliamentarians. Lionel stood out at their trial. When he was not in court, Lionel had four bodyguards with him wherever he went.”
Lionel Stewart eventually retired as a DEA senior executive in the DEA’s Miami Field Division, and after two unsuccessful bids to be elected Broward Country, Florida, sheriff, died of a heart ailment. He never did go back to Bangkok to work undercover; someone in Thailand had put out a contract on his life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Takedown
THE ARREST OF Luchai “Chai” Ruviwat was a major blow to the Ike Atkinson drug ring. Chai was “The Main Man,” the supplier who knew where to buy the heroin, the confidant who could keep an eye on the local Bangkok scene and be counted on to fix any problems that arose. Ike trusted Chai as a partner and was perplexed about why and how he got busted in San Francisco. “That thing about blonde girls in Las Vegas makes absolutely no sense,” Ike explained. “It sounds as if Chai was obsessed with blonde girls. But that wasn’t like him. He never showed any interest in any blonde girls while I knew him in Bangkok.”
It looked as if Chai was running a rogue operation that nobody in Ike’s drug ring knew anything about and nobody could give Ike answers. Locked up in prison several thousand miles away from Thailand, Ike could not do his own investigation. He just hoped that nothing would go wrong with the William Brown and Jasper Myrick shipments, which would provide his biggest paydays in his seven years of drug trafficking.
By the time Chai left for San Francisco on August 29, 1975, for his fateful meeting with Lionel Stewart aka “Johnny.” Freddie Thornton had his suspicions about Johnny. Thornton realized he knew nothing about this smooth-talking stranger who had appeared out of nowhere. He wondered about the incident at Hickham Air Force Base in Honolulu where U.S. Customs strip-searched him and rifled through his papers. That had never happened before. Was that search somehow connected to Johnny? Thornton sensed something was not right.
THE AUTHORITIES DIDN’T know that Freddie Thornton was Ike’s right-hand man, but they knew he was deeply involved with Atkinson. With Ike in prison and Chai out of the picture, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) next objective was to go after Thornton, and, ideally, get him to the U.S. where they could pressure him to cooperate. On the morning of September 3, 1975, Freddie Thornton was on his way to the NCO club at the Windsor Hotel in Bangkok. He was about to get into his car when the gate to the front entrance of his house flew open and a swarm of Thai police, followed by DEA agents, swept in. The Thai authorities shoved Thornton against his car and handcuffed him. Meanwhile, some of the raiding party fanned out through Thornton’s house. Thornton waited for an hour and a half while the Thai authorities turned his house upside down.
One of the policemen approached Thornton and asked him if he had a gun. “Yes, there is a .22 inside,” Thornton revealed. “It’s my wife’s gun.” Thornton was confident nothing would happen because his wife was Thai and the .22 was registered in her name. Freddie had married her the previous May, and his wife had the weapon when he met her.
Then one of the officers showed Thornton a cigarette. It was not just any kind of cigarette. It was a marijuana cigarette. The Thai authorities told Thornton that they had found the joint in the latrine in the area where the Thornton’s maid lived. Thornton protested his innocence. “I don’t know where that came from. I don’t fool with that stuff.” The Thai authorities had heard that story many times before from foreigners they caught with illegal drugs. The police arrested Thornton and took him across town to the Crime Suppression Unit where he was booked for drug possession. The penalty for marijuana possession was a fine of 100 baht, or $5 American, but under the law, the authorities could keep Thornton in jail for 84 days while they conducted their investigation before bringing him before a judge.
Thornton did not have a resident visa for Thailand, but he did have a valid 30-day tourist visa, which had been stamped in his American passport when he arrived at the airport on August 14. Thornton had plans to fly to the U.S. on September 4th, so he was well within the time frame in which he could stay legally in Thailand.
Incarceration in a Thai jail was not a pleasant prospect. Thornton would have to sleep on the cell floor with other prisoners with only a blanket and a bucket with which to relieve himself. Food would have consisted of rice twice a day with some soya-like sauce spread over it, and that is all he would have to eat unless his wife brought additional rations. Ghilo, Thornton’s wife, paid the police U.S. $500 to get him out of his bind. The police brought Thornton before a judge, and he was given a 30-day suspended sentence. Later, Thornton attempted to explain the $500 he had given the police. “The police didn’t ask for the money. She (my wife) didn’t ask them if they wanted it. So I guess you wouldn’t call it a bribe. She just handed it to them.”
The police told Thornton they would hold on to his passport because they wanted to make sure the visa stamp for Thailand was valid and that he was in the country legally. Pick it up in two days, Thornton was told by the police commander. He did as instructed and sent Ghilo to the Crime Suppression Unit two days later, but she was told that her husband would have to pick up the passport in person. When Thornton showed up at the Unit, several DEA agents were waiting for him. They had some bad news for Thornton. Not only had his Thai visa been cancelled, but U.S. Immigration had cancelled his passport.
What’s going on? Thornton protested. One of the agents read Thornton a warrant for his arrest for “aiding and abetting heroin trafficking to the U.S.” “It’s only the 8th of September today,” Thornton, said “My visa is good until the 13th of September.” But the DEA had asked the U.S. Consulate to cancel his passport. With Thornton’s passport cancelled, there was no doubt now that he was illegally in Thailand, and he was locked up in the Thai immigration prison. Eight hours later, the Thai police came to his cell and handcuffed Thornton and took him to the airport where seven or eight DEA agents, by Thornton’s count, were waiting to put him on the plane bound for San Francisco via Tokyo (in reality, there were only two agent escorts).
Although Mike Nerney had obtained an arrest warrant for Thornton in San Francisco, a formal extradition could have taken months. No warrant, however, was needed for Thornton’s expulsion. The Thai police considered him an undesirable based on the gun and the marijuana cigarette found in his house. He was deported in what DEA agents referred to as “an informal extradition.”
A first-class seat was the only one available on the flight. If this was his last plane trip as a free man, Thornton planned to enjoy himself, so he ate steak and got drunk on free booze. One of the two agents accompanying him on the flight wanted to talk to Thornton about cooperating, but Thornton fell fast asleep. On September 9th at about 8 p.m., the plane landed in San Francisco; Thornton was still half drunk.
Mike Nerney and Lionel Stewart were waiting in Nerney’s office when the DEA agents brought Thornton from the airport. Thornton was not as surprised as Chai was to learn that Johnny was actually an undercover DEA agent. He wondered, though, if the authorities had enough evidence to put him in jail. “I have a warrant for your arrest,” said Nerney. But instead of threatening Thornton, Nerney offered him a deal. “You’re guilty as sin,” Nerney said. “But cooperate with us and I’ll not press charges. We want you to go before a grand jury so you can tell them what you know. We want you to do it tomorrow.”
The street-wise Thornton saw an opportunity and agreed to cooperate and appear before a grand jury. Thornton gave his interrogators a carrot. “I know of a big heroin shipment of at least 100 pounds and it’s coming to the U.S. soon,” Thornton revealed. “If you can give me some time, I can find out the details.” It was a good reason for the U.S. government to make Thornton an unofficial Cooperating Individual (CI). But Nerney still had the “stick.” If Thornton double-crossed them—an arrest warrant for violation of code 21USC 959.
Thornton was under oath while testifying the next day, but later admitted that he told the Federal Grand Jury “just enough, lied a little bit, missed quite a bit and gave them just enough information so they wouldn’t lock me up. They thought I was cooperating fully.” Later, Thornton claimed he lied to protect his friends, not to save his own skin.
With the hope of a big bust soon in the offing, and an arrest warrant that could be executed against him at anytime, the authorities let Thornton go. “He told us enough that we didn’t lock his ass up,” Nerney recalled. The prosecutor, though, ordered Thornton to phone his office twice a week to let him know how he was doing and what he was finding out. Thornton traveled to Detroit to visit family. He was free but broke. He called Charles Gillis in Goldsboro and told him he needed some money. Gillis came to Detroit with $ 5,000.
When Thornton called Nerney’s office the first time, he was referred to Lionel Stewart who told him that Don Ashton, the DEA Special Agent-in-Charge of the Wilmington, North Carolina Office, wanted to talk to him. Thornton flew to Wilmington where he met Ashton in a hotel. As the two men talked, Thornton decided that no way was he going to cooperate. There was no reason why he should, Thornton figured. He was going to go to jail sooner or later anyway. Just like that, Thornton decided to double cross Uncle Sam.
