Sergeant Smack, page 3
What about his AWOL bag?” Ike asked anxiously.
“His bags are at a local police station, stored in the property room. You can go down to the station and try to get them released to you.”
Ike was relieved about the heroin but concerned about Sonny. He would not talk, no matter what charges he faced, but Ike was certain the charges would be serious. How serious, Atkinson learned later at the bond hearing. Southerland was being held on a $50,000 bond in a Baltimore jail, and magistrate Clarence E. Goetz had denied a bail reduction after military and Customs agents told him at the hearing that Southerland was involved in a “large international conspiratorial organization.” Furthermore, he had flown aboard a plane headed for Dover Air Force Base in Delaware that carried the corpses of two dead GIs, which, an informant had told authorities, might be packed with heroin.
Having to explain why the authorities did not find any heroin, Marr told the court—and later the press—that during the stopover in Honolulu, the bodies had been left in a hangar, unguarded for 16 hours. Marr further told the court that one of the bodies exhibited a recent incision and stitching.
THE PRESS JUMPED on the sensational “Cadaver Connection” and the headlines screamed: “Top people part of ghoulish heroin ring,” “Body heroin smuggling a puzzler” and “Feds trace route of GI bodies.” The press speculated in numerous articles, based largely on anonymous sources, theorizing that Southerland was accompanying bodies as a dry run to test the efficiency of Federal law enforcement. After all, the press concluded erroneously, he could have taken a commercial plane and not have to take the risk of wearing a military uniform and carrying bogus documents.
Since that flight, the story of the “Cadaver Connection” has persisted. More than three-and-half decades later, the speculation was rekindled with the release of the blockbuster movie, American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. The movie depicted the life of former Harlem gangster Frank Lucas, an Atkinson associate. In interviews hyping the movie, Lucas embraced the “Cadaver Connection.” In its open and shut conclusion about things cadaver, the Associated Press, which did absolutely no investigative reporting on the subject, reported in November 2007 that Lucas “bought his dope in the jungles of Vietnam, and to get his drugs back into the U.S., Lucas established the infamous “Cadaver Connection.”
Meanwhile, the press reports made Ike Atkinson guilty by association. In response, Atkinson described the cadaver connection as “the big lie…the biggest hoax ever perpetuated,” and he asked, “Will we ever know who is responsible for the hoax?”
It is a question that Ike Atkinson has asked himself often since that fateful trans-Pacific flight in December 1972.
MY SEARCH FOR the answer to that intriguing question helped spawn this tale of the international drug trade. The story of Ike Atkinson and his band of brothers spans three continents and is largely set in the 1960s and ‘70s, but it began on a bright warm day in June 2006 when I visited the sprawling Federal penitentiary in Butner, a small rural town in the heart of North Carolina tobacco country. Several notorious Americans have spent time in Butner, including John Hinckley, Jr., the would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan, and Jonathan Pollard, the unrepentant Jewish-American spy for Israel.
Ike Atkinson, the inmate who agreed to see me, is not as well known as some of the high profile prisoners at Butner, but in his own right he has made an indelible mark on criminal history. The man, whom the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) nick-named “Sergeant Smack” when he shipped thousands of kilos of heroin from Bangkok, Thailand, to military bases in the U.S. at the height of the Vietnam War, happens to be the biggest American drug lord ever to operate out of Asia. When I visited Atkinson, he had already spent nearly 31 years in prison.
I came to see Atkinson to verify information I had gleaned through interviews I had conducted with Frank Lucas. Lucas was the subject of a profile I was writing for a book about organized crime in Harlem, New York City (Gangsters of Harlem). I knew and worked with Atkinson, Lucas told me; in fact, he is my cousin. Ike helped me to develop my Southeast Asia heroin connection. At the time of my visit to Butner, Lucas was about to become a household name among filmgoers.
Frank Lucas became legendary in the drug trade by purporting to be the first African American drug lord truly to break with La Cosa Nostra at that time the U.S. drug trade’s major source of heroin supply, and to develop the Southeast Asia heroin pipeline. The former Harlem gangster has promoted himself —and is promoted in the media—as a swashbuckling drug lord who had the foresight and nerve to transform the drug trade by going to Bangkok on his own and connecting with a shadowy English speaking Chinese character he had colorfully code named “007.” Lucas’s story is filled with tales of unsolved gangland killings, coffins—and perhaps corpses—carrying heroin from the killing fields of Vietnam to the streets of America, a drug empire run at times from behind prison bars, a controversial career as an informant and an ambiguous relationship between drug lords—in short, the stuff of Hollywood manufactured legends.
Yet, what about the claims Lucas made in our interviews? Did he establish a heroin distribution route that allowed him to bypass his La Cosa Nostra connection and to buy his supply directly from Southeast Asia’s famed drug production center, the Golden Triangle, an area encompassing rugged parts of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar (formerly Burma). Such smack was sold in the U.S. for as much as $316,000 per kilo, “Superfly” had also told me.
Some law enforcement officials who investigated Lucas believe he indeed did have a strong, direct connection to Thailand and the Asian heroin supply. “If you can bypass the middle man, you have power, and Lucas was a big time drug dealer,” one source explained to me. Lucas’s connection to Thailand and Asian heroin, initially at least, was said to be Ike Atkinson. Lucas has also played up the Atkinson connection in the past. In a 2000 New York magazine article, Lucas told the author, Mark Jacobson: “Ike knew everyone over there, every black guy in the Army, from the cooks on up.” Jacobson concluded: “It was this ‘army inside an Army’ that would serve the Country Boys’ (Lucas’s organization) international distribution system, moving heroin shipments almost exclusively on military planes routed to the military bases along the eastern seaboard.”
Other law enforcement officials had a different take on Lucas’s source of supply. Retired DEA Special Agent Joe Sullivan recalled what he knew about who controlled the heroin supply at the time. “All the big drug traffickers, including Lucas, were getting their heroin from the Italians,” he said. “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.”
Law enforcement’s conflicting opinion of Lucas’s source of heroin supply, as well as some of the intriguing but unsubstantiated claims the former drug kingpin made in our interviews, made me want to dig deeper into his story. Fortunately, Ike agreed to see me and share what he knew about Frank Lucas.
At 81 years of age and near release from prison, Atkinson was confined in the low-risk section of the Butner Federal Penitentiary. He looked eager to see me, as we sat down for our interview in a cubicle under the watchful eye of the deputy warden. Retired DEA agents who investigated Atkinson in the 1970s had cautioned me that Ike was a “real smooth charmer,” who excelled at manipulating a situation and was cool under pressure. Don Ashton, a retired DEA agent who headed the agent’s Wilmington, North Carolina office and investigated Atkinson’s drug ring, recalled the night he and some other DEA agents had Atkinson’s house in Goldsboro under surveillance. “Ike spotted us and came out to see us. He said to us: ‘It’s a cold winter night, so why don’t you guys come in and have bowl of soup?’ He was almost likable.”
Later, when interviewing sources, friends and investigators for the Ike Atkinson story, one word would invariably pop up to describe Atkinson: gentleman. Christine Whitcover Dean, a retired federal prosecutor for North Carolina, recalled the time in 1976 when she was prosecuting Atkinson and several of his associates in what is perhaps the biggest drug trafficking trial in the State’s history. “At the courthouse there was a side door the marshals used to bring the prisoners in,” Dean recalled. “We would use that side door ourselves because we could avoid the crowds and it was an easier way to get in. Ike was ahead of us a couple of times, accompanied by marshals. He always opened the door for us with a smile. He was a real gentleman. We were trying to put him away for life, but he never took it personally.”
DRESSED IN A light brown prison jumpsuit for our interview, Atkinson retained much of his military bearing, although he walked with a slight shuffle, the result of many years living in confined quarters. Ignore the age spots and Atkinson looks to be at least ten years younger than his actual age. He greets me like I am a long-lost friend. He is indeed charming, and I listened as he caressed our conversation with a smooth engaging tone until the subject of Frank Lucas popped up. I told Atkinson the gist of what Lucas remembered about their relationship. Atkinson listened intently and then got agitated as he challenged Lucas’s story. At times, Atkinson rolled his eyes and looked at me with the stare of one who believes the messenger must be high on something.
Atkinson, however, acknowledged meeting with Lucas and even being his friend, and dealing drugs with him. At one point, the former big-time drug trafficker, whose demeanor was once described as “Buddha like,” leaned forward, and in a measured tone, told me, “Frank never brought any drugs into this country. He only spent three or four days in Bangkok, and he slept most of the time. I told Frank 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.” Atkinson roared with laughter; at that moment he did indeed look like a laughing Buddha.
At one point, Atkinson summed up his feelings about his former criminal colleague. “Frank,” he says, his voice rising, “is the dumbest guy I ever met in the drug business.” Atkinson could not insist spinning a yarn at Lucas’s expense. According to Atkinson, he took Lucas to a Buddhist temple on his second or third day in Bangkok. When Lucas saw people bringing food and gifts for Buddha and leaving it at the temple, he said that he had to go and buy some apples and leave them for the Buddha. Then he commenced crying and asked Atkinson: “Does Thailand border the Holy Land?”
While startled by Atkinson’s candor, I am fascinated by his revelations about the man whom the movie American Gangster would soon make famous. I saw the Deputy Warden glancing at his watch, and I knew that, in a few minutes, I would have to end the interview. Yet, I had many more questions that begged answers. Then Atkinson dropped a bombshell. “I woke up one morning about twenty years after I went to jail and it hit me,” Atkinson recalled, his voice rising. “I realized why Frank had come to Bangkok: to get information that would help put me behind bars.”
I was stunned by the revelation. The interview ended with a bang, but it turned out to be a mere prologue to the beginning of what became an informative relationship when Ike Atkinson finally decided he needed to tell his story. But as my adrenalin pumped that day, I was already plotting how to dig up, what I knew would be, this journalist’s “story of a lifetime.”
CHAPTER ONE
The Formative Years
GOLDSBORO IS A small, eastern North Carolina city located halfway between Raleigh, the state capital, and the coast, in an agricultural region marked by gentle rolling uplands and tobacco; historically, tobacco has been its principal cash crop. The town is conservative, rural and proud of the role it has played in southern history. Read the local tourism and travel literature, and one would have to agree that Goldsboro has had its fling with history. Among other claims to small town fame, the world’s longest railroad once ran through the Goldsboro area. The city played its part for the southern cause in the Civil War, or the “War between the States,” as many White southerners still refer to the seminal historical event. The city was an important railroad junction and the scene of the Battle of Goldsborough Bridge, and today 800 confederate soldiers are buried in a mass grave at Willow Dale Cemetery. Not publicized in the literature is the fact that Goldsboro was the headquarters for Union General William Tecumseh Sherman who once referred to the South as “the hell hole of secession.”
Locals will explain that the construction of the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base (AFB) on June 12, 1942, was one of the best things that ever happened to the city economically. The base is named in honor of the U.S. Navy Lieutenant Seymour A. Johnson, a Goldsboro native and test pilot, who was killed in a March 1941 crash near Norbeck, Maryland. During World War II, the air base’s prime mission was to train pilots for the P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft. Today, Seymour Johnson AFB is home of the 4th Wing and the 916th Air Refueling Wing. A gigantic set of air force pilot wings in the form of adorned columns overlook the downtown area near city hall, signifying the tight Goldsboro-Seymour Johnson relationship.
Goldsboro is described as an “old river town,” given its proximity of the Neuse River; more than 1.5 million people live in the river’s watershed that extends from the sprawling suburbs of the Raleigh-Durham area to the upscale communities of New Bern near the Carolina coast. The entire state of North Carolina is situated in so called the “Hurricane Alley” and such powerful hurricanes as Floyd, Emily and Diana have swept through the state. Yet, remarkably, for more than 150 years, Goldsboro managed to survive extensive flooding. Then in 1996 Hurricane Fran struck Goldsboro and wiped out parts of the city near the Neuse River, including Neuse Heights, a predominantly African American neighborhood of 60 homes.
NEUSE HEIGHTS IS now history, nothing more than a forest, the houses demolished and the residents long gone, bought out by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), the U.S. government agency responsible for dealing with hurricanes and other natural disasters reliefs. But in the 1970s, this quiet middle class neighborhood was home to Leslie “Ike” Atkinson and his family at the time Ike’s actions became the object of U.S. drug law enforcement’s attention. Ike lived at 127 Neuse Circle in a split-level, seven-bedroom home that had a color TV-set in every room, a game room and master bar. Walnut paneling lined the master bedroom and a large swimming pool rested in the back yard. Ike Atkinson, however, kept a low profile and no local could have gauged his wealth, especially after seeing his battered 1964 Chevy station wagon parked in the driveway. Atkinson liked to shroud himself in anonymity. In the town of about 6,000 residents at the time, many of the locals would later recognize his name but few ever saw him. “I was gone so much that I understand some people thought I was federal employee working overseas,” Ike Atkinson explained. “When they did see me, I was doing what they were doing—cutting the grass, fixing the house, driving my wife to buy groceries. I was being a good family man and neighbor.”
Milton Best, who today is a jeweler in Atlanta, Georgia, lived in Ike’s neighborhood and grew up with Ike’s children in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “I dated Ike’s daughter, Ann, and she was one of the smartest kids in high school,” Best recalled. “His kids dressed well and some of them had cars in high school. Ike would work in his garden and give a friendly wave when he saw me. I would see him driving an old station wagon, but I knew he could drive something better. There were rumors that Ike was dealing drugs, but at the time I didn’t know how big (a drug trafficker) he was.”
In the mid 1970s, Michael Hooks was a kid, not yet into teens, who lived across the street from the Atkinsons. Michael’s father was a retired serviceman like Ike, and the two vets were the best of friends. Ike became Michael’s godfather, and Ike’s wife, Atha, became almost like a second mother to the boy. Michael went to school with some of Ike’s eight children and enjoyed going to the movies and playing softball in the streets with them. Once a week Michael would go over to the Atkinson home and watch the Tom Jones variety show on the tube.
“I was accustomed to Ike being gone for extended periods of time,” Hooks recalled. “When I did see Ike, he reminded me of a farmer. He wore overalls and a T-shirt or a short sleeve sports shirt…totally unpretentious. He loved his garden and would always be working on his home. I remember seeing his new swimming pool. It was really something special for the neighborhood. One day, he bought a pool table, and I would go over to the Atkinsons nearly every day to play. I’m an only child and Ike’s children became like brothers and sisters to me. We would eat often at each other’s house. Ike was one of the most personal guys I’ve ever met. A gentleman’s gentleman.”
Hooks also recalled the day the Atkinson family fortunes changed dramatically. “I was in my house and walking down the hallway to the door that led to the carport. The door was open and I could see Ike talking to my mother. I walked toward him and into the carport. I looked across the street and could see a bunch of cops and suited White men in the street and in his yard. Ike said good-bye to my mother, smiled at me and walked slowly towards the cops. I think he wanted to prevent the scene from becoming a spectacle. The children were moved down the street to the duplex where Ike’s mother lived that Ike had bought for her. My parents and I were shocked; the neighborhood, disheartened. The Atkinsons were good neighbors and nobody wanted to see Ike go away.”
THE COMFORTABLE LIFESTYLE that Ike Atkinson enjoyed in the 1970s was much different than the one he experienced growing up. He was born on November 19, 1925, in Johnston County, the son of Preston and Rosetta Jones Atkinson and the youngest of a large family of three brothers (Dallas, Edward and Essell) and two sisters (Pearl and Nelly Mae). Today, anybody who grew up with Ike or knew him well in Goldsboro during his formative days, calls him “Stimp,” not Ike.
