The Strength of the Wolf (21 page)

In another instance Williams sent agents John Hanly (George White's best friend in the FBN) and Crofton Hayes to contact Meyer Lansky at New York's Plaza Hotel, to find out why the mob's chief financial officer was traveling to Italy. On 28 June 1949, Lansky, describing himself as a “common gambler,” told the agents that yes, he was planning to visit Lucky, but no, the visit had nothing to do with drug smuggling.
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But Hanly and Hayes didn't care what he said, and when Lansky arrived at his ship the next day, they were waiting with a reporter and photographer from the
New York Sun
. The following day the newspaper headlines blared, “Lansky Sails In Luxury To Italy Expected To Confer With Luciano.” The agents never expected Lansky to incriminate himself, but they had generated some very good publicity.

Siragusa's next task was to prove he could work effectively with foreign police forces, so Anslinger sent him to Puerto Rico to organize a police narcotic squad. He successfully performed that task, and next was sent to Greece to harass aging Elie Eliopoulos, who had applied for Marshall Plan funds to develop a gold mine in northern Greece, in an area where poppies were cultivated. Arriving in Athens in the summer of 1950, Siragusa visited CIA station chief Tom Karamessines, with whom he would form a lifelong friendship. Siragusa provided the history, Karamessines provided the contacts, and through their collaboration, details of Elie's scandalous past appeared in the Greek press. The Marshall Plan loan was blocked, at which point intrepid Elie turned to stock swindles and arms smuggling to Israel.

Siragusa's next stop was Trieste where, with undercover Agent Benny Pocoroba, he set a trap for Matteo Carpinetti, a major supplier of heroin to the California Mafia. Needing cash to make the buy, Siragusa called on his old friend Hank Manfredi, the Army's CID man in Trieste. Throughout his tenure as supervisor of District 17 in Rome, Siragusa would rely heavily on Manfredi; as in the Carpinetti case, the FBN's successes in Europe were based largely on Manfredi's long-standing contacts in the Italian police and security services.

To finance the Carpinetti case, Manfredi introduced Siragusa to the US Army's counterintelligence chief in Trieste, through whom a $10,000 flash
roll was given to Pocoroba, enabling him to make a buy from Carpinetti. Manfredi had arrest powers in occupied Trieste, and personally put the cuffs on Carpinetti. In an effort to obtain leniency, Carpinetti named his supplier, Dr. Ricardo Morganti of RAMSA, a wholesale drug company in Trieste. Morganti in turn revealed that he received mail-order heroin from the Schiaparelli pharmaceutical firm in Turin and opium that was diverted from the Yugoslavian government's supply. Morganti named the smugglers he worked with in Belgrade and the manufacturers in Italy who produced surplus heroin for sale on the black market.

In solving this groundbreaking case, which would lead to even bigger fish, Siragusa formed relations with the Yugoslavian police, from whom he acquired informants inside Yugoslavia's anti-Soviet faction, further endearing him to Tom Karamessines and the CIA. And by bringing Siragusa into contact with Army counterintelligence, the Morganti case led to an investigation of US Army personnel smuggling heroin to America. Siragusa exposed the sergeant at the center of the ring and identified the supplier, Greek black marketer Marinos Bouyoukas.

As soon as Siragusa stumbled upon the Bouyoukas operation, CIA officer Karamessines again offered his assistance, only this time there was a catch. Karamessines believed that Bouyoukas was using communist spies to smuggle heroin through Egypt to America, and Siragusa was sympathetic. But when Karamessines suggested that the CIA and FBN stage a controlled delivery into the US as a way of identifying everyone in the Bouyoukas organization, Siragusa objected. Allowing Kenny to steal a necklace was one thing, but as Siragusa emphatically stated in his autobiography, “The FBN could never knowingly allow two pounds of heroin to be delivered into the United States and be pushed to Mafia customers in the New York City area, even if in the long run we could seize a bigger haul.”
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Siragusa drew the line at facilitating drug trafficking, but he helped the CIA in other ways. For example, he reportedly helped black-bag CIA money to Italian politicians for James Angleton, the CIA's aggressive counterintelligence chief. Although he maintained many assets within the military, especially the Italian Navy, Angleton relied almost exclusively on Siragusa and Manfredi for access to their contacts within the underworld and the Italian police, whose files contained crucial background information about individuals that was essential for penetrating foreign intelligence services and conducting political espionage operations.
²⁵

Siragusa was especially helpful to the CIA in regard to investigating diversions of Marshall Plan aid. In one case he learned through an informer that the commercial Attaché at the Romanian Embassy in Berne was
diverting American-made ball-bearings to the Soviet Union, which the Soviets used to build tanks for North Korea. According to Siragusa, the Attaché traded the ball-bearings for heroin as part of a sinister scheme to steal strategic materials with the one hand from the West, while the other poisoned it with addictive drugs.
²⁶

As a result of the Berne case, a CIA team was sent to Rome under military cover to stop diversions, and with Siragusa's help, it intercepted all manner of strategic items, including uranium for the Soviet atomic energy program. Numerous foreign officials were involved in a variety of schemes, including a Middle Eastern king, a Swiss millionaire, a high-ranking cleric, a Polish spy, and a Turkish drug and arms merchant in Geneva. Siragusa exposed them all by leaking stories of their misdeeds to the press, thus proving that FBN drug investigations complemented US national security interests and the interests of American businessmen abroad.

In October 1950, Siragusa returned to New York to peruse the Mafia Squad's files and to report to Anslinger in Washington. Three months later he returned to Europe with Mafia Squad leader Joe Amato and Martin Pera, and established the FBN's first permanent overseas office in Rome. He also carried a promise from Anslinger that he would succeed him as Commissioner if all went well. With his right-hand man, Hank Manfredi, Siragusa settled down among the urbane Italians, developed informers and cases, and dreamed of expanding his empire.

In April 1951, the FBN initiated a significant case on Joseph Orsini, a Corsican and former Nazi collaborator illegally residing and trafficking narcotics in the US since 1946. Orsini used French seamen to smuggle heroin to Lucchese family member Sal Shillitani and his Mafia associates. The ring included Giovanni Mauceri in Italy, Nazi collaborator Antoine D'Agostino in Canada, Angel Abadelejo (believed to be Nazi collaborator Auguste Ricord) in Buenos Aires, Free French hero Marcel Francisci in Marseilles, chemist Dominique Reissent in Marseilles, Lucien Ignaro in Tunisia, middleman Jean “Laget” David, and former Gestapo agent François Spirito. A protégé of Paul Carbone, Spirito delivered Yugoslavian opium to Marseilles, where it was processed into heroin in clandestine labs belonging to wine broker Marius Ansaldi.
²⁷

Alas, the arrest of drug smugglers Orsini and Shillitani came at the climax of the Kefauver Hearings, and the case lacked any connection to Luciano,
so it failed to generate any spectacular publicity. But it was the first post-war crack in the French connection, and its importance cannot be overstated. Agent Anthony Zirilli, posing as a West Coast buyer, did the undercover work with the help of special employee Pierre Lafitte, a former narcotic trafficker who had become a successful restaurateur in New Orleans. While awaiting deportation on Ellis Island, Lafitte had contacted FBN Agent Irwin Greenfeld, and had offered to set up his cellmate, Joe Orsini. Lafitte and Orsini had known one another for twenty-five years, but Lafitte wanted to remain in America with his wife and children, and after his release from Ellis Island in May 1951, he began systematically setting up his former drug-smuggling associates, most of who were arrested in July. Orsini was sentenced to ten years in the Atlanta Penitentiary in December.
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The Orsini case was the FBN's first look at the new dimensions of the French connection as it had been re-established in 1949 and 1950. It paved the way for closer relations with the French police and led to the arrest of wine broker Ansaldi in France in 1952. But it also hinted at espionage intrigues. Spirito was extradited to France to face charges of being a Nazi collaborator, but was never tried, and like other former Gestapo agents, returned to drug smuggling with apparent impunity. And while the case revealed that Marcel Francisci was Lansky's connection in Beirut, no information was revealed about Francisci's source in Indochina, and the French took no action against him either.

While case-making agents in Irwin Greenfeld's enforcement group were exposing the French connection, Siragusa and a squad of Italian police were arresting deported mobster Frank Callace in Naples with six kilos of heroin. The ensuing investigation led to a licensed narcotics distributor in Milan, and through him to the Schiaparelli firm's top chemist, Carlo Migliardi, who was charged with diverting over 300 kilograms of heroin and morphine between 1948 and 1951! The case was the brightest jewel in Siragusa's crown and eventually led to the revelation that an estimated 800 kilograms of heroin had been diverted to Mafiosi between 1946 and 1953. As a result, US Ambassador Clare Booth Luce threatened to cut off all foreign aid to the Italian government unless it prohibited the manufacturing of heroin, which it did.

With the dismantling of Italy's heroin industry, the Mafia lost a major source of supply. But the traffic continued to expand and, despite evidence
to the contrary, Anslinger continued to blame Communist China. He named “Po I-po” as the supervisor of the PRC's heroin factory in Tientsin, and charged that Po managed 4,000 secret agents (the same number Reinhardt credited to Frau Bidder), whose job was to get American GIs in Korea hooked on heroin.
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And yet, at the same time, FBN counsel Baxter Mitchell was describing Frank Coppola, the deported Mafioso who allegedly served as Donovan's contact in Sicily, as the “top man.”
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Siragusa knew that Mitchell was right, and while Anslinger publicly bashed the People's Republic, Siragusa secretly concentrated on Coppola. The investigation began in San Diego with the September 1951 arrest of Sal Vitale, who flipped and gave information that led to the arrest of a dozen big league Detroit drug traffickers in February 1952. More leads followed and in April 1952, Siragusa and the Italian police raided Coppola's house outside Palermo, Sicily, and arrested deported drug trafficker Serafino Mancuso and several accomplices with six kilograms of heroin. The famous Green Trunk of Alcamo case even led to the arrest of Frank Coppola's receivers, John Priziola and Ralph Quasarano, in Detroit. But Luciano and his lieutenants, Joe Pici and Nick Gentile, eluded the authorities, and Coppola, who had brokered the deal, would not be arrested until December 1953 – and was eventually acquitted.

Siragusa had finally smashed the Mafia's venerable Detroit connection, but he had failed to make a case against his nemesis, Lucky Luciano. Siragusa did get some satisfaction when Luciano was banished from Rome to Naples as a result of the case, but that did little to reduce the heroin trade. As author Peter Dale Scott notes, the busts in Detroit and Alcamo “happened after Priziola and Quasarano had already become marginalized to the main Operation X [by which he means French connection in Southeast Asia] drug connection.”
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Other outlets had opened as well and by 1952, Turkish, Iranian, and Asian narcotics were flowing through Beirut to Marseilles and being converted into heroin by the Francisci and Guérini Gangs, with protection from the CIA and French intelligence services. French author Alain Jaubert notes that in Bordeaux, in 1952, Corsican gangster Antoine Guérini took part in a “mysterious meeting” with Irving Brown (the American Federation of Labor's representative in Europe), Guérini's chemist Jo Cesari, and two other traffickers.
³²
Jaubert reported that Corsican crime lord Guérini next brought CIA Agent Brown into contact with the Mafia in Italy.

The insinuation is that the CIA was managing a facet of the international drug conspiracy, and in the pages that follow a considerable amount of evidence will be presented in support of that contention. In the meantime,
while CIA Agent Irving Brown was meeting with Corsican and Mafia drug traffickers, Meyer Lansky was purchasing a share in the Cabaret Montmartre gambling casino in Havana and entering into a partnership with Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Lansky's gambling clubs in Florida had been closed in the wake of the Kefauver hearings, and the deal with Batista allowed the mob to control Cuba's hotel and tourist unions and convert Havana into the acknowledged whorehouse of the western hemisphere. The deal also enabled Santo Trafficante to move narcotics from the Middle and Far East through Cuba to Miami, where wholesalers from around the nation bid on the product. Lansky's partner John Pullman formed the Exchange and Investment Bank of Geneva specifically to launder money for the senior managers of this most powerful drug syndicate.

For national security-related reasons, drug-dealing anti-communist allies like Batista in Cuba and anti-communist factions within the Mafia and the French connection existed beyond Charlie Siragusa's grasp. It was a hard pill for Siragusa to swallow, but his
bête noire
, Lucky Luciano, having personally signed-off on the deal during the war, also benefited from the espionage establishment's
modus vivendi
with the underworld. The dance with the devil lasted for a decade. During that period, Siragusa and Manfredi, through the Italian police, routinely monitored Luciano's telephone calls and photographed his visitors. Luciano in turn publicly complained that Siragusa's harassments kept him from going legit and privately he cautioned his family to open his casket and check his pockets for the heroin he was sure Siragusa would plant on his corpse when he died. But it was all an act. Luciano kept his freedom and, in return, his case officer, Hank Manfredi, working for both the CIA and FBN, was able to monitor his underworld and official contacts. The CIA was then able to blackmail or bribe these people into performing illicit acts in its covert war against communism. As ever, national security trumped drug law enforcement, and Charlie Siragusa had no choice but to protect Lucky Luciano, despite their epic animosity.