The Strength of the Wolf (3 page)

The Strength of the Wolf
is the first non-fiction book to thoroughly document the history of the FBN, from its birth in 1930 to its wrenching termination in 1968. It is based largely on interviews with agents, but their
recollections are set within the context of the full extent of literary sources on the subject of federal drug law enforcement. There were never more than 350 agents in the FBN at any time, and I've refined the book by focusing on the most outstanding agents and their cases.

The moral to their story is simple: in the process of penetrating the Mafia and the French connection, the case-making agents uncovered the Establishment's ties to organized crime; and that was their great undoing. That's also where the CIA comes into the picture. This book shows that federal drug law enforcement is essentially a function of national security, as that term is applied in its broadest sense: that is, not just defending America from its foreign enemies, but preserving its traditional values of class, race, and gender at home, while expanding its economic and military influence abroad. This book documents the evolution of this unstated policy and analyzes its impact on drug law enforcement and American society.

The Strength of the Wolf
weaves together the FBN's most significant cases with its political, bureaucratic, and national security-related problems, while progressing through two major integrity investigations. The first integrity investigation began in 1960 and arose from a power struggle among senior FBN executives vying to replace Harry J. Anslinger, the FBN's prestigious Commissioner from 1930 until 1962. The second investigation, which Andy Tartaglino initiated in 1965, reflected a struggle at the highest levels of government for control over the direction of federal drug law enforcement.

Apart from the integrity issue, there are two main themes in the book. The first is the FBN's overseas expansion and subversion by the CIA. The second is its fatal clash with the FBI. Sadly, the CIA and FBI were often protecting the FBN's targets in the Mafia and the French connection. Likewise, the CIA and its Nationalist Chinese allies operated the world's largest drug-trafficking syndicate, but for political and national security reasons, the FBN was prevented from investigating this overarching conspiracy.

The Strength of the Wolf
integrates these and several lesser themes and culminates in 1968 when, in the wake of Andy Tartaglino's second corruption investigation, the FBN was merged with another federal agency and renamed the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

The tension that binds the book stems from three things: the tempting and often terrifying nature of undercover work; the provocative relationship agents have with their mercenary informants; and the subordination of FBN executives and case-making agents to spies, politicians, and influential drug traffickers. This is very heavy stuff, and the CIA did its best to prevent me from writing this book. It tried to prevent Andy Tartaglino from discussing the role it played in his integrity investigations, and told
several other agents not to discuss with me its infiltration and subtle behind-the-scenes control of the FBN.

Luckily, many federal narcotic agents aren't intimidated or even impressed by the CIA. For example, in 1994 I was granted permission to interview Steve Green, the acting administrator of the DEA. Green's public affairs officer met me in the lobby of the DEA building, brought me upstairs to the executive suite, sat me down on a sofa and got me a cup of coffee. There were a few things he wanted to ask me in the ten minutes we had before the interview. He wanted to know what my questions were going to be, and when I told him what they were, he thought they were fine. Next he asked me about the book I'd written about the CIA's Phoenix Program. I answered his questions forthrightly, and he was pleased. Then he sat down on the sofa beside me and said, “I'm going to tell you something, and if you tell anyone, I'll deny I ever said it. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said.

His eyes twinkled. “The CIA called yesterday. They knew you were coming and they asked us to cancel the interview. They said you're trying to get at them, through us. Is that true?”

“I'm writing a book about federal drug law enforcement,” I said. “But if I find out that the CIA was interfering in any way, you can be sure I'll write about that too.”

The public affairs officer stood up and smiled. “That's exactly the answer I wanted to hear,” he said, and escorted me into Steve Green's office.

Several other people deserve a tip of the hat. I'd like to thank John Warner for introducing me to Paul Knight and for providing me with a copy of
Project Pilot III
, the DEA's history of the French connection. Thanks also to Professors Alan Block and John C. McWilliams for unveiling the FBN's history as a cover for government intelligence operations. Alan provided me with portions of FBN agent George White's diaries, which record White's role in the CIA's MKULTRA “mind control” Program. And John gave the first few chapters of my book an early editing, which helped me on my way. I'd like to thank Tony “Grapes” Mangiaracina for giving me his copies of the National and International List books of major, mostly Mafia, drug smugglers; and George Gaffney for giving me his annotated copy of a 1964 Senate Report that had an incredible amount of valuable historical information about the FBN and its cases.

Special thanks also to all the FBN agents who openly told me about their hassles with one another, as well as with the CIA and the FBI. I'd like to think that everyone owes them a debt of gratitude. Much of our history is hidden behind a wall of national security, and that sad fact prevents
America from realizing its destiny. By contributing to this book, the FBN agents named in the following pages have given us back a portion of our rightful heritage – the substance of self-knowledge.

The best way to begin this book is with an account of the Treasury Department's investigation of Arnold Rothstein's worldwide drug-smuggling operation. There can be no better introduction to the kind of people, or the political, national security, and integrity issues that have always defined America's war on drugs.

The son of second generation Orthodox Jews, Arnold Rothstein was the archetypal criminal genius – a man so evil that he fixed the 1919 World Series and got away with it! Rothstein's commandeering of the national pastime, and his ability to avoid prosecution for it, brought him national prominence: sportswriter Damon Runyon nicknamed this devious villain “the Brain,” and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald found him such a fascinating character that he used him as a model for fashionable rumrunner-cum-social climber Jay Gatsby.
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Writers Runyon and Fitzgerald understood their era and for them, Rothstein, with his jet-black hair and piercing dark eyes, personified the freewheeling spirit of the American antihero; the desperate man with nothing to lose, relying solely on his wits to beat the system. In this respect Rothstein was not unlike the robber barons of his times. But unlike Morgan, Mellon, and Rockefeller, his stock in trade was human vice. Throughout the 1920s, Rothstein was America's premier labor racketeer, bookmaker, bootlegger, and drug trafficker. He knew that people would
drink despite Prohibition, hire prostitutes despite marriage, and gamble despite bad luck. Having been an opium smoker in his youth, he also understood the euphoric hook of narcotic drugs. So, when the federal government outlawed opiated patent medicines in 1915 with the adoption of the Harrison Narcotic Act, he knew that people with no other cure for their ailments, as well as the thrill-seeking sporting and theater crowds, would find a substitute on the black market.

Rothstein, however, always played the odds, and the profit margin in trading illicit narcotics wasn't wide enough until 1921, when the Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal for doctors to prescribe narcotic drugs to addicts. It was at this point, when the legitimate outlets vanished, that Rothstein cornered the wholesale black market. Using a procedure he had developed for smuggling liquor, he sent buyers to Europe and organized front companies for importation and distribution. By the mid-1920s he was in sole control of the lucrative black market in heroin, morphine, opium, and cocaine, and had set up a sophisticated system of political payoffs, extortion, and collusion with the same gangsters who would eventually kill him and divvy up the spoils of his vast underworld empire.

Yes, Rothstein was fatally flawed. Discretion was the cardinal rule of any criminal enterprise, yet in July 1926 he posted bond for two employees who had been arrested for smuggling a substantial quantity of narcotics from Germany. Rothstein likewise posted bail for drug runners arrested in 1927 and 1928. Alas, posting bond for his employees brought the attention of the press upon his business associates, and that indiscretion – plus the fact that his protégés felt it was unfair that one man should control all the rackets – cost him his life.

In the end the evil genius, who preyed upon human weakness, was destroyed by the folly of pride. On the evening of 4 November 1928, Rothstein was shot in the groin while in his room at New York's swank Park Central Hotel. It was a terrible wound, intended to inflict maximum pain, and Rothstein died several days later amid much controversy and mystery. To this day his murder remains officially unsolved. However, many of his secrets were revealed as a result of his bookkeeper's penchant for keeping accurate records.

Arnold Rothstein was a legend in his lifetime, worthy of the attention of literary giants – but the impact of his legacy transcended the lofty standards
he set as the paragon of criminal etiquette. Indeed, the US Treasury Department's investigation into his drug trafficking and distribution empire triggered a series of developments that in turn fostered national security and law enforcement policies and practices that endure into the twenty-first century.

At the law enforcement level, the Rothstein investigation revealed the staggering extent of illegal drug trafficking in the US. This revelation would lead to the reorganization of the Narcotics Division of the Internal Revenue Service's incredibly corrupt Prohibition Unit (fondly referred to as “the Old PU”) and result in the creation of the Bureau of Narcotics in June 1930.

These bureaucratic developments began when certain documents were found at a realty company Rothstein used as a front for his illegal enterprises. The documents confirmed that Rothstein was financing an international drug cartel based in Holland. They also revealed that the cartel had been supplying (primarily through trans-shipment points in Canada) millions of dollars' worth of illicit drugs to American gangsters since 1925, when Rothstein's emissaries first contacted a Chinese gang in Shanghai. Treasury Department narcotic agents, having confiscated the incriminating papers from reluctant police detectives, were certain that his murder was related to an ongoing struggle for control of the burgeoning underworld drug trade. They also felt that his papers would provide additional leads in several major narcotics investigations.

The Treasury agents were right. Although the police would never solve the murder case, Rothstein's financial records did enable Treasury agents – operating independently of the police – to seize several million dollars' worth of narcotics in early December 1928 and to establish a link between Rothstein and the narcotics, which had been legally manufactured in Europe, then diverted onto the black market and smuggled from France.

While the law enforcement developments of the Rothstein investigation were significant, they were eclipsed by the resulting political fallout. The biggest impact was felt in New York, where newspapers printed rumors that Rothstein had financial ties with the city's most prominent public figures, including New York's celebrated mayor, James John “Jimmy” Walker. More importantly, the
New York Times
reported that Rothstein had used a portion of his drug profits to finance communist-sponsored strikes in the city's garment district. This was the first time in American history that politicians and policemen were linked with Bolsheviks and drug traffickers. In conjunction with charges that Democratic Party officials were on Rothstein's payroll, the specter of sedition enabled Republican US
Attorney Charles H. Tuttle to demand the immediate dismissal of all officials associated with Tammany Hall (the Democratic Party's infamous headquarters in New York), including a number of judges.
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Two weeks after Tuttle's explosive charges, Representative Stephen G. Porter (R-PA), Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, arrived in New York. Porter was the nation's leading anti-narcotics crusader, and accompanying him was Colonel Levi G. Nutt, head of the Treasury Department's Narcotics Division. In the 11 December
New York Times
, Porter was quoted as saying that he and Nutt had been tracking the Rothstein narcotics investigation since its inception several years before. Porter then escalated America's war on drugs to international proportions by declaring that Rothstein's records proved that “some” European companies that legally manufactured narcotic drugs were not abiding by agreements made at the Hague Opium Convention of 1912, “with the result that dope rings existed throughout the world.”
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Porter was a Prohibitionist and an Isolationist, and believed that America's drug problem was caused by supply, not demand. For years he had wrangled with the colonial powers that ruled the League of Nations' Opium Advisory Committee, and in 1925 he and the American delegation had stormed out of a meeting in protest over the Opium Bloc's refusal to curb overproduction. But Porter was a crass opportunist too, and his interest in narcotic law enforcement, as we are told by historian William O. Walker III, “was not only on the humanitarian side, but also because it was a good subject for publicity in the newspapers.”
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