Read The Strength of the Wolf Online
Authors: Douglas Valentine
The Strength of the Wolf (83 page)
But as BNDD agents soon found out, the CIA was doing the same thing as its enemies. As part of its covert war against terrorism, the CIA hired arms traffickers to smuggle guns to counterinsurgents in dozens of foreign nations, and in exchange the gun smugglers were allowed to move drugs out. One CIA officer insists that the drug traffic was unintentional, the result of unscrupulous assets who exploited their free passage. “Just because they're dealing,” he says, “it doesn't necessarily mean they're dealing for their respective secret services. Right?”
In response, another CIA officer notes that, “It is nice to have plausible deniability.”
The problems of free passage and its stepsister, the controlled delivery, were the fatal flaws of the systems approach, as it was cast worldwide under the guidance and with the expertise of the CIA. To map out an entire system, BNDD agents had to stand back and watch the dope flow from one end to the other. They might have to repeat the process several times, and they might even have to provide security to keep the system intact. In other words, Ingersoll's foolproof systems approach was merely an extrapolation of Lenny Schrier's modest dictum that in order to make cases, an agent's informer has to deal narcotics. The systems approach was that practice, on a grand scale, and for that reason it undermined the BNDD's integrity and fueled America's drug epidemic of the 1970s and 1980s.
As Bowman Taylor caustically observes, “I used to think we were fighting the drug business. But after they formed the BNDD, I realized we were feeding it.”
By November 1968, the Nixon administration was rattling the White House doors, and in an attempt to preempt the Republican invaders, Attorney General Ramsey Clark held a farewell news conference to proclaim the Johnson administration's success in killing off the Wolf Pack. “32 Narcotics Agents Resign in Corruption Investigation Here,” read the headline in the 14 December 1968
New York Times
. Clark noted that five of them â Russ Dower, Jack Gohde, Frank Dolce, Charlie McDonnell, and Cleophus Robinson â had been indicted, and that additional prosecutions and resignations would soon be forthcoming.
“After Clark made his announcement,” Andy Tartaglino says dejectedly, “our informers were no good anymore. The integrity investigation was called off, but the job was only half-done.”
However, with the help of the CIA, Tartaglino's corruption probe would soon be revived, only this time it would target some of the BNDD's highest executives, and in 1974 it would nearly kill the BNDD's successor organization, the Drug Enforcement Administration, in its cradle. But that calamity was yet to come. With the corruption purge swept under the carpet for the time being, the fledgling BNDD turned its attention to Richard Nixon's escalating and, as ever, deeply political war on drugs.
PAGES FROM THE FBN INTERNATIONAL LIST BOOK
1 THE BIRTH OF A BUREAU
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1
  Leo Katcher,
The Big Bankroll: The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein
(New York: Harper, 1959).
 Â
2
 Â
New York Times
, 27 November 1928, 1. The Society of St. Tammany was organized in 1778 in New York City by enlisted men of the Revolutionary War to offset the Society of the Cincinnati formed by Alexander Hamilton and the Army's officers. The Democrats stem from the former, the Republicans from the latter.
 Â
3
 Â
New York Times
, 11 December 1928, 26:2.
 Â
4
  William O. Walker III,
Opium and Foreign Policy: The Anglo-American Search for Order in Asia, 1912â1954
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 233. The League of Nations created the Opium Advisory Committee in 1921. It was dominated by colonial nations with opium monopolies in the Far East.
 Â
5
 Â
New York Times
, 27 November 1928, 1.
 Â
6
  Terry Parssinen, unpublished manuscript, chapter 10: “America and the World Narcotics Market, 1920â1954,” 36.
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7
  Ibid., chapter 10, 2.
 Â
8
  Jonathan Marshall, “Opium and the Politics of Gangsterism in Nationalist China, 1927â1945,”
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
, JulyâSeptember 1976, 29.
 Â
9
  Parssinen, chapter 10, 30.
10
 Â
The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review,
Dope
,
Inc.: The Book That Drove Kissinger Crazy
(Washington, DC: Executive Intelligence Review, 1992), 431.
11
 Â
New York Times
, 8 August 1921, 1:4.
12
  Ibid., 5 May 1927, 6:2.
13
  Ibid., 8 May 1927, 20:1.
14
  Marshall, “Gangsterism,” 32.
15
  Ibid., 33.
16
  Melvin L. Hanks,
NARC: The Adventures of a Federal Agent
(New York: Hastings House, 1973), 162â6.
17
 Â
New York Times
, 9 July 1929, 18:2; 12 July, 2:14; 13 July, 32:2; 14 July, 16:5; 23 July, 17:3; 24 July, 23:3; and 7 September, 17:2.
18
  Ibid., 29 December 1929, 1; 30 December 10:5; 31 December, 2:5.
19
  Ibid., 15 January 1930, 1.
20
  Ibid., 21 February 1930, 1.
21
  Douglas Kinder, “Bureaucratic Cold Warrior: Harry J. Anslinger and Illicit Narcotics Traffic,” Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association,
Pacific Historical Review
, 1981, 172â3.
22
  On 15 January 1930, the same night Roland Nutt declared his innocence, Treasury Secretary Mellon threw a dinner party in honor of President Hoover. Among the honored guests were Mrs. and Mr. David K. E. Bruce, daughter and son-in-law of the host; the Chinese minister, Mr. Wu and his wife; and Mr. and Mrs. William Jardine. In
The Traffic in Narcotics
, with William F. Tompkins (New York: Funk & Wagnall Co., 1953) 97, Anslinger referred to Mr. Jardine's namesake forebear as “the greatest and most influential of the opium smugglers.”
 Â
1
 Â
The American Heritage Dictionary
, New College Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969).
 Â
2
  Harry J. Anslinger,
The Protectors: The Heroic Story of The Narcotics Agents, Citizens, and Officials in Their Unending, Unsung Battles Against Organized Crime in America and Abroad
(New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1964), 39â50.
 Â
3
  Charles B. Dyar, Official Personnel Folders, US Office of Personnel Management, St. Louis, Missouri. Anslinger,
The Protectors
, 6â24.
 Â
4
 Â
Garland Roarke,
The Coin of Contraband: The True Story of United States Customs Investigator Al Scharff
(Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964), 330â8.
 Â
5
  Ibid., 336â7.
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6
  Ibid., 338, 347.
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7
  Parssinen, chapter 10, 34.
 Â
8
  Harry J. Anslinger, with Will Oursler,
The Murderers: The Story of the Narcotic Gangs
(New York: Strauss and Cudahy, 1961), 70.
 Â
9
  Dyar, Official Personnel Folders, 27 July 1940, letter from Scharff to Mr. H. S. Creighton.
10
  Ralph H. Oyler, Official Personnel Folders, US Office of Personnel Management, St. Louis, Missouri, provided by John C. McWilliams.
11
  Ralph H. Oyler, “America's Lone War Against Dope,” draft article submitted to Colonel L. G. Nutt, Internal Revenue Bureau, US Treasury Department, New York, 30 March 1926, provided by Paul D. Newey.
12
 Â
New York Times
, 10 September 1921, 1.
13
  Benedict Pocoroba report, “The Mafia,” 21 April 1947, provided by Paul D. Newey.
14
  Al Ostrow, “Violent Action for Dope Sleuth,”
Saint Louis Post Dispatch
, 25 December 1949, provided by Paul D. Newey.
15
  Garland Williams, Official Personnel Folders, US Office of Personnel Management, St. Louis, Missouri, provided by John C. McWilliams. Anslinger,
The Protectors
, 15.
16
  Jill Jonnes,
Hep Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams
(New York: Scribner, 1996), 105.
17
  Fred J. Cook,
The Secret Rulers; The Criminal Syndicates and How They Control the US Underworld
(New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1966), 122â5.
18
  Cook,
The Secret Rulers
, 122.
19
  Ibid., 148.
20
  George Wolf, with Joseph DiMona,
Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld
(New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1974), 123.
21
  Robert Lacey,
Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life
(New York: Little Brown & Company, 1991), 59.
22
  Sid Feder and Joachim Joesten,
The Luciano Story
(New York: David McKay Company, 1954), 58, 70â1. Leonard Katz,
Uncle Frank: The Biography of Frank Costello
(New York: Drake Publishers, Inc., 1973), 89.
23
  Anslinger,
The Murderers
, 88.