Part 1
BORDER GUARD
_Also by Don Whitehead_:
THE FBI STORY JOURNEY INTO CRIME
Don Whitehead
BORDER GUARD
THE STORY OF THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS SERVICE
_McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc._ _New York_ _Toronto_ _London_
BORDER GUARD
Copyright © 1963 by Don Whitehead. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publishers.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-12134
First Edition
69947
_For Ruth and Gene Neilsen_
CONTENTS
1. A Slight Case of Conscience 1
2. A Time of Crisis 21
3. A President is Bamboozled 32
4. The Pirates of New Orleans 44
5. The Dark Years 55
6. Booze and Bribes 69
7. The Enforcers 86
8. Test Tube Detectives 96
9. The Informers 107
10. The Violent Border 120
11. A Dirty Business 131
12. The Case of the Crooked Diplomat 147
13. A Strange Little Room 157
14. The Diamond Smugglers 166
15. A Fool’s Dream 184
16. The Chiselers 196
17. The Innocents 213
18. The Stormy World of Art 223
19. Sex and the Censor 234
20. Of Toy Canaries and Pirates 241
21. The Middle Men 255
22. The Restless American 265
1
A SLIGHT CASE OF CONSCIENCE
One of the most serious problems confronting the Customs Service in this century is the control of the illegal importation of narcotics. Some of the difficulties involved in handling dope smuggling can be seen when it is realized that these drugs are being sent from all over the world, by every means of international transportation. The comparatively small number of Customs agents rely on patience, diligence and intelligence, and they are doing a remarkable job. Since this problem is so important, and so typical of the job the Service does, we will begin with the story of one successful case.
On the night of May 17, 1955, seventeen-year-old Truls Arild Halvorsen sat in an office in the Customs House in Boston, Massachusetts, blinking back the unmanly tears that threatened to spill down his face. He kept trying to swallow the dry lump of fear in his throat, but it wouldn’t go away. And he had to concentrate hard to remember the answers to all the questions being asked of him by the men sitting about the room.
He was a tall, handsome youth. His blond hair was cropped in a crew cut. His eyes were as blue as the waters in the fjords of his native Norway which he had left for the first time only a little more than a year before. That was when he had shipped out as a seaman aboard the MS _Fernhill_.
He remembered the day he left home his father had said, “We are very proud of you, son.” His mother had wept as she clung to him. His friends had gathered to shake his hand and wish him good luck on his first voyage. He had felt grown up and proud and excited--ready to cope with anything the future might bring.
But now ... now he sat, a virtual prisoner, answering questions about his role in the plot to smuggle narcotics into the United States. It was a nightmare he wished he could forget, but he knew he never could. The men around him were members of the U.S. Customs’ Special Racket Squad out of New York City, whose job it was to run down smugglers.
He heard the big, soft-voiced man sitting across the desk from him--the agent named Dave Cardoza--say, “Let’s go over the story again, Halvorsen. This time it’s for the official record. Tell it just as you did before--exactly what happened.”
Halvorsen swallowed once more and nodded. He didn’t need a translator to understand what Cardoza was saying because he spoke excellent English as well as German.
“Will you state your full name?”
The youth replied: “Truls Arild Halvorsen.” And the recording began.
Q--What is your position on the ship?
A--Ordinary seaman.
Q--What vessel are you on?
A--The name of the ship is the _Fernhill_.
Q--How long have you been employed aboard the _Fernhill_?
A--Three trips, about fifteen months.
Q--How old are you, Mr. Halvorsen?
A--I am seventeen and a half years old.
Was it possible this had begun only a few weeks ago? It had begun that day in Hong Kong when he met the Chinese stranger aboard the _Fernhill_ and, like a fool, he had listened to the man’s talk about making easy money. That was when he should have walked away.
But he hadn’t walked away. And that’s why he was now in this strange room in Boston with these men who asked so many questions....
Q--Mr. Halvorsen, on the 15th of March, 1955, where was your ship, the _Fernhill_?
A--It was in Hong Kong.
Q--And did you have any conversation with a visitor to the ship?
A--Yes, I was talking to him.
Q--Will you explain what conversation you had and with whom it was?
A--The man was a tailor and he said to me that he wanted to talk about some business down in my cabin.
Q--Had you ever met him before?
A--No.
Halvorsen recalled that he had talked to the Chinese tailor about the price of a suit. Several tailors had boarded the _Fernhill_ to solicit orders as soon as the ship dropped anchor. Most of the ship’s crew had placed orders for suits, but Halvorsen had decided the price was more than he could afford. It was after this that the tailor--a well-dressed man of medium height with a wart on the lobe of his left ear--whispered to Halvorsen that he would like to talk to him alone in his cabin.
Q--What did he say when he talked about this other business of smuggling?
A--He asked me if I wanted to make some money.
Q--What did you say?
A--Yes, I said.
Q--Then what did he say?
A--He said, “I can give you opium[A] if you will take the opium to San Francisco.” He said that if I would do this for him he would pay me $1,200 American.
Q--What did you say then?
A--I was not sure if I wanted to do it or not, but I did not say no.
[A] In the transcript of Halvorsen’s story, the young seaman referred to the narcotics sometimes as opium and at other times as cocaine and heroin. The narcotics in each case was heroin, a derivative of opium highly favored by drug addicts in the United States.
The tailor then wrote an address on a slip of paper--No. 54 Cameron Road--and pressed it into Halvorsen’s hand. “If you decide you want the money, come to this address at seven o’clock tonight.”
By six o’clock that evening, Halvorsen had reached a decision. The sum of $1,200 sounded like a small fortune to the boy who had never in his life had more than a few dollars at one time. It was more money than he could save in many months at sea--enough to buy an interest in a fishing boat back in Norway.
Halvorsen dressed in his best blue trousers and white shirt for the trip ashore. When he left the _Fernhill_ he carried a briefcase which the Chinese had suggested he bring along. He hailed a rickshaw at the ferry slip near the Peninsula Hotel, and gave the address on Cameron Road. Then he sat back to enjoy the gaudy, East-meets-West sights of Kowloon as the coolie trotted through streets swarming with Chinese, most of them refugees from Red China.
After he stepped from the rickshaw and paid the driver, he stood uncertainly at the curb looking about for the number 54. A Chinese came up to him and said, “You looking for Number Fifty-four?” Halvorsen said he was, and the man said, “You follow me.”...
Q--Where did he take you?
A--He took me inside the house and into a corridor. We turned right and there was a door. He knocked on the door.
Q--Was the house No. 54, Cameron Road, ground floor, Kowloon, Hong Kong?
A--Yes.
Q--Was there any number or anything written on the door of the corridor?
A--I don’t remember.
Q--Then what happened?
A--Somebody opened the door and said, “Please, come in.” He took my hand as in welcome. He said, “I am glad to see you,” or something like that and in the room was the Chinese tailor I saw on the ship and another man....
Halvorsen remembered sitting with the three Chinese at a small, round table. The room was dimly lit and dingy. One of the men offered him whiskey but he refused and instead asked for a glass of beer. A woman padded into the room and placed a bottle of beer on the table. And then he was aware that a Chinese girl was standing near him. But when he glanced at her, he was blinded momentarily by a flash of light and so startled that he started to rise from his chair.
The wart-eared tailor laughed and said, “Don’t worry. It was only a flash from a camera. We need a photograph to send to our man in San Francisco so he will be able to recognize you when you arrive with the packages.”
One of the Chinese, a short, fat man in shirt sleeves, took a slip of paper from his pocket and scrawled on it the words, “San Francisco.” He tore the paper in half, handing one part to Halvorsen. “You keep this half,” he said, “and we will send the other to our man in San Francisco. When you meet him, you give him your half of the paper and he can match the two halves to make sure you are the right man.”
“Where will I meet him?” Halvorsen asked.
The man wrote on another slip of paper “Lew Gar Kung Saw, 854 Clay Street, San Francisco.” He handed it to Halvorsen and said, “You deliver the packages of heroin to this man at this address. When you make the delivery, he will pay you twelve hundred dollars. Okay?”
Halvorsen nodded. “I guess it’s okay,” he said. Then he gave them the itinerary of the _Fernhill_. He told them the ship was scheduled to arrive in Boston on May 16. If possible, he would leave the ship there or in New York and travel by bus to San Francisco to make the delivery, after which he would return to Norway.
The fat Chinese left the room, and when he returned he was carrying ten cotton bags filled with heroin, each of them weighing about half a pound. He placed them in Halvorsen’s briefcase....
Q--What happened then?
A--Then he asked me if I saw the bags. I said, “Yes.” He said that was what I was going to take ashore and he said, “You have to keep it on your body.” And he showed me a white silk sash.
Q--Did he tell you how to use that white silk sash?
A--Yes. He said I was first to fold it double and put it around my waist and then I could put the white bags down in the folds of the sash. He said I should keep maybe two bags in front, two bags in the back and the others strapped to my legs.
After the Chinese put the heroin in the briefcase, Halvorsen left the house on Cameron Road. He returned to his ship and placed the briefcase in a ship’s locker. He explained to the officer in charge that it contained souvenirs.
From Hong Kong, the _Fernhill_ steamed to Djakarta, Indonesia, where Halvorsen hurried ashore with several crew members for a look at the city. After a time he wandered away from the others. He was alone, sipping a glass of beer in a bar near the Hotel Des Indes, when a Javanese approached and stood beside him.
“Have you got anything you would like to sell?” the Javanese said. “Any clothes or shoes? I can get you a good price.”
Halvorsen looked at the man, a middle-aged Javanese with a jagged scar running from his left eyebrow to his chin. He said stiffly, “I’m not interested in small stuff.”
The Javanese slid into a chair beside the youth. “You mean you’ve got something else you would like to sell?” he asked.
Halvorsen nodded, trying to appear casual and matter-of-fact.
“Maybe we can do business,” Scar Face said. “What have you got to sell?”
Halvorsen said, “What would you pay for a pound of heroin?”
The Javanese was impressed. “You can get heroin? You are not fooling me?”
“I’m not telling a lie,” Halvorsen said. “How much for a pound?”
Scar Face said, “If it’s pure stuff, I’ll take two pounds and pay you ten thousand dollars American money.”
$10,000 for two pounds of heroin! Halvorsen was so startled that he blurted: “That’s too much. Five thousand would be enough. I’ll have to get the stuff from the ship.”
Scar Face said, “You wait here. I’ll be back.” And he hurried from the bar.
In less than five minutes he was back with two other men, one of them dressed in a police uniform. They took Halvorsen to the dock, where they boarded a police launch which carried them to the _Fernhill_. Halvorsen took Scar Face to his cabin and told him to wait there.
Then he went to the ship’s locker and removed two bags of heroin and brought them back to his quarters. The Javanese opened one of them. He took a pinch of the white powder and tasted it. “It looks and tastes like it’s pure stuff, but I don’t know. I’ll have to get a doctor to make a test.”
This precaution seemed reasonable enough to Halvorsen. He handed the two bags to the Javanese, who concealed them under his coat. They returned to the police boat which carried them back to the pier. And then he and Scar Face got into a car and drove to the outskirts of the city, where the car swung into a driveway beside a white frame house.
“This is the doctor’s house,” Scar Face said. “You wait in the car.” He carried the two bags into the house.
In a few minutes Scar Face came back to the car. “The doctor says it will take time to test the heroin. I can’t get the money until he makes the test. I’ll bring it to you tomorrow.”
With appalling innocence, Halvorsen said, “I guess that’s okay.” And as Scar Face drove him back to the waterfront, they agreed to meet on the pier the following morning.
The next day Halvorsen went ashore to meet Scar Face. He waited at the agreed meeting place for more than two hours. Slowly it dawned on him that he would never see Scar Face again. He had been duped. It was then that young Halvorsen felt more than chagrin. He felt enormously ashamed. He wondered why he had ever permitted himself to become involved in something so dishonorable as smuggling narcotics.
He felt, too, a growing, bitter anger toward the wart-eared tailor and his friends in Hong Kong and the scar-faced Javanese. He wondered how he could atone for this sin. And after a while he decided the best thing to do was to seek advice from someone older.
When the _Fernhill_ reached Singapore, Halvorsen hurried to the home of a Norwegian minister whom he had once met in Baltimore. The youth poured out his story to the churchman. “What shall I do?” he asked.
“It is a bad business, my son,” the minister said. “Let me go to the American Consulate and ask their advice. Perhaps they can help us.” When the minister returned from the Consulate, he shook his head. “They can do nothing,” he said, “because the matter is out of their jurisdiction. They said it would be best if you would take your story to the police agency called the FBI when you reach the United States.”
But when Halvorsen reached his ship, he thought of his friend in New York City, the Rev. Leif Aagaard, pastor of the Norwegian Seamen’s Church, 33 First Place, Brooklyn, in whose home he had spent the previous Christmas. On April 11, 1955, he wrote the Reverend Aagaard a long letter:
Dear Aagaard:
Let me get right to the matter. When we were in port in Hong Kong (March 15) I chanced to get in conversation with a tailor who came aboard to take orders. After the usual talk about everyday things he asked if he could get a word with me in private in my cabin. It proved he wanted me to smuggle four pounds of cocaine from Hong Kong to Frisco. I was to get $1,200 from the man I was to deliver the goods to in Frisco. I said Yes!
He gave me an address in Hong Kong where I should come the same evening. There I was to get the necessary information as well as the cocaine. I arrived at the specified time. There a flash photo was taken of me in order that the contact in Frisco could identify me. I also received one half of a letter that was torn in two parts. The photo and the other half was to be sent to Frisco. The half which I retained was to serve as my pass in order to get in contact with these men. I also was given the name and address of the man I was to deliver the cocaine to in Frisco. Afterwards I received eight[B] small sack-like bags made of cotton, each containing one-half pound. They were placed in a brief case which I should bring them aboard in. I did everything they instructed me to do and locked it in my cabin, later to hide it in a safe place. I had, at that time, all intention of doing this rotten job. Later, however, when I had had the time to think more clearly about these things I cursed myself for having wanted to take part in such dirty things. I came to the conclusion that I would throw it all overboard, but at the same time a thought struck me that perhaps I could be of help to the American authorities by getting these people jailed in Frisco. When we arrived in Singapore I contacted Rossebo whom I knew from the time I was ashore in Baltimore. I told him the whole story and he promised to get in contact with the American Consulate there, and in a discreet manner try to find out about same. Now it was found, however, that they could not give any direct answer as to what the American authorities might do to me as a smuggler. They were very much interested, but said that that type of smuggling was something that came under FBI.
Will you now be so kind as to do me the favor of presenting the entire matter before the FBI in New York and say that I am placing myself entirely at their disposal in the case. Let as few as possible in on this. I am afraid that the persons I am dealing with on this are no small fry. I will now seal the goods and declare it on the manifest as four pounds of camphor. This I am doing so as not to have the ship and the captain mixed up in this affair, if it should get that bad. Now I ask that you or the authorities who will handle this matter send me a discreet telegram before May 10, which will assure me that I can safely count on avoiding any trouble from the authorities as a result of my smuggling. If I do not receive the telegram within the specified date, I will throw everything overboard and remove every trace of everything that might implicate me. In case you do not want to have anything to do with the matter, please advise me as soon as possible. _Fernhill_ is scheduled to arrive in Boston May 16th.
Well, now I hope that you will not judge me too harshly and that all will be well again.
Warmest regards to you and your family. _Truls Arild Halvorsen_
[B] Actually, Halvorsen received ten sacks--but he could not bring himself to admit to Aagaard that he had been swindled of two of the bags in Djakarta.
When the Reverend Aagaard received the letter, he was shocked and dismayed. He remembered young Halvorsen well because the youth had come to his church in Brooklyn when his ship made port there. Aagaard had become so fond of the boy that he had invited him to his home the past Christmas for dinner with his family. He knew he was an intelligent youth and had never before been involved in wrongdoing.
The pastor got in touch with the Norwegian Consul General, Thor Brodtkorb, and the two men arranged a meeting with Supervising Customs Agent Lawrence Fleishman at his office at 21 Varick Street. At this meeting Aagaard and Brodtkorb reviewed the entire case as it had been told to them in the letter by Halvorsen.
After a further discussion with the U.S. District Attorney, it was agreed that if Halvorsen would turn over the narcotics to the master of the _Fernhill_ while the vessel was still on the high seas, then young Halvorsen would avoid prosecution for possession of narcotics--simply because the narcotics would not be in his possession. It was agreed also that if Halvorsen were cooperative there would be no prosecution for conspiracy to smuggle narcotics into the country. The master of the vessel was to be held blameless in this case, since he had known nothing whatever of the smuggling plot, and there were to be no penalties assessed against either him or his vessel once the narcotics were turned over to the Customs officers.
As soon as it was learned that the _Fernhill_ had cleared from Suez on its way through the Canal to the Mediterranean, a cable was dispatched to Halvorsen: ALL IN ORDER HERE. GIVE IT TO THE CAPTAIN.
A representative of the steamship company dispatched a message in international code to the captain of the _Fernhill_ saying:
International signal book code only for the Captain. Confidential. Halvorsen will hand over packages. Keep them safe until arrival Boston. Cooperating with authorities here. Everything in order. Immunity on condition that you handle in accordance herewith. You must not discuss this with anybody else. Wire us following message in code to me: Have acted as per your instructions.
On May 5 the _Fernhill’s_ skipper radioed:
The packages have been placed for safekeeping in the safe until arrival Boston according your instructions. Receiver has photograph of Halvorsen and first half of papers of introduction. Receiver’s address Lew Gar Kung Saw, 854 Clay Street, San Francisco. Consignor Shing Kee and Co., 54 Cameron Road, ground floor, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Signed, Captain Carlson.
Eleven days later Customs Agents Dave Cardoza, Oscar Polcuch and Edward Finnegan boarded a launch on the Boston waterfront and were carried into the harbor to meet the _Fernhill_. They were greeted by Captain Carlson, who took them to his cabin and handed over to them the sacks of heroin. Then he summoned Halvorsen to his cabin and introduced him to the agents.
Cardoza said, “I understand, Halvorsen, that you are willing to cooperate with us in breaking up this smuggling ring.”
“I’ll do anything I can to help, sir,” Halvorsen said. “I’m sorry I ever got mixed up in this.”
“We need your help,” Cardoza said, “and you have nothing to worry about if you do as we say.” He warned Halvorsen that a member of the smuggling ring might approach him when he went ashore in Boston--and he must do nothing to create any suspicion.