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One of the men responsible for the War on (Some) Drugs. [EMAIL PROTECTED] /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com. http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015 \----------------------------------------------------------/ Henry Giordano, 89, Head of Narcotics Bureau in 60's, Dies October 10, 2003 By WOLFGANG SAXON Henry L. Giordano, a pharmacist who went undercover as a federal drug agent and eventually surfaced to take charge of the Treasury Department's narcotics bureau in the 1960's, died on Sept. 19 in Olney, Md. He was 89 and lived in Silver Spring, Md. President John F. Kennedy chose Mr. Giordano as his commissioner of narcotics after he made his mark in one of law enforcement's most hazardous fields. He served as commissioner from 1962 to 1969, a period when drug addiction was starting to be perceived as a threatening national disease. Confronting it has now become a matter for the Justice Department rather than the Treasury Department, whose narcotics bureau dated to the 1930's. Mr. Giordano retired in 1969 as an associate director of what has since grown into the Drug Enforcement Administration in the Justice Department. After that, he worked as a consultant for the pharmaceutical industry. He spent 28 years in government service, most of it in the Treasury Department. When he took over the narcotics bureau, it had already had nine agents killed in action and many others wounded. He succeeded Harry J. Anslinger, who had headed the bureau for 32 years, since its inception, and who insisted on stiff prison terms for drug offenses of any kind. Mr. Giordano, who had served as Mr. Anslinger's deputy for four years, favored a more nuanced approach, leavening stern punishment with treatment for imprisoned addicts. Henry Luke Giordano was born in San Francisco. He received a pharmacist's degree in 1934 at the University of California and worked as a pharmacist in San Francisco until he joined the narcotics bureau as a junior agent in 1941. Except for three years with the Coast Guard in World War II, he remained undercover, working in Seattle, Kansas City and Minneapolis. A man of compact build, he went about his work appearing relaxed, forthright and amiable, according to contemporary accounts. He could pose as a down-at-the-heels narcotics peddler, a flashily prosperous racketeer, a small-time gambler, an escaped convict or a sailor and get away with it. He won the confidence of some notoriously ruthless criminal gangs and helped win convictions of ring leaders and henchmen. His work sent scores to prison. In one legendary exploit in 1949, he posed as a tough-talking, free-spending Seattle gangster and traveled to western Canada in pursuit of a heroin kingpin. His superiors were glad to "lend" him to the Royal Northwest Mounted Police because the Mounties' prey had tentacles that then reached into Oregon and California. Mr. Giordano drove an expensive car to Vancouver, checked into the fanciest hotel and made himself casually conspicuous as somebody who just might arrange for a lucrative heroin outlet in Seattle. He got some samples to take back home and reported that they were just fine and that his contact in Seattle wanted a regular supply, in large wholesale quantities. Returning to Vancouver, Mr. Giordano insisted on dealing with the top rather than with underlings. Weeks of waiting paid off. He was taken to a modest suburban house to meet George Mallock, boss of what then was one of the biggest drug syndicates in North America, and his brother John. Wads of money changed hands for the heroin, which Mr. Giordano then stashed in his car. Driving home, he was followed for some miles to make sure he was really headed for Seattle, Mr. Giordano recalled later. "When they turned back, I stopped at the first telephone I could reach and called the Mounties," he said. "They moved in right away, picking up George and John Mallock and a number of their confederates." Years later, when he was commissioner of the Narcotics Bureau in 1965, Mr. Giordano commanded another operation that captured 209 pound of heroin with a street value that was even then given as $100 million. At the time, it was the largest single seizure of heroin ever made in the United States. For this job he marshaled the forces of the Bureau of Customs, the Army Criminal Investigations Division, the Columbus, Ga., police, the French judiciary police and the Marseille and Paris narcotics squads. The operation captured an Army warrant officer, the heroin cache in a shack behind his trailer home in Columbus, and five members of a Corsican smuggling ring. It was Mr. Giordano who, along with Italian counterparts in Naples, announced the death of Charles (Lucky) Luciano at a Naples airport in 1962. He died, Mr. Giordano announced, under surveillance just as American and Italian agents were about to pounce on him. Mr. Giordano is survived by his wife of 64 years, Elaine Watson Giordano; two daughters, Marjorie Vincent and Anne Brehm; three grandsons, and two great-grandchildren. When President Kennedy named him narcotics commissioner, Mr. Giordano explained the need for dangerous undercover work as the only way to break the chain between "a satisfied seller on the one hand and a happy user on the other." Asked what, if any, addictions he might have himself, he replied: "Just to cigarettes - and a little weekend gardening and grass-cutting. " http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/obituaries/10GIOR.html?ex=1066786688&ei=1&en=a55cf80010b2cd62 --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. 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