-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Great Heroin Coup - Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism
Henrik Kruger
Jerry Meldon, Translator
South End Press©1980
Box 68 Astor Station
Boston, MA 02123
ISBN 0-89608-0319-5
240pps - one edition - out-of-print
Orginally published in Danish
Smukke Serge og Heroien
Bogan 1976
--[3]--
TWO
THE DUBIOUS ALLIANCE
The love affair of French intelligence and the underworld, the catalyst for
Christian David's ascent in gangland, was a product of Franco-American
ingenuity. In 1942 Thomas Dewey was the governor of New York. In an earlier
role as district attorney he'd won fame battling organized crime. He'd put
his most infamous victim, top mafioso Lucky Luciano, away in 1936 for "white
slavery." However, Syndicate superstrategist Meyer Lansky had vowed to get
his partner out of jail; and Dewey did an about-face when he found himself
dependent on the Mob as election time approached.
Naval intelligence badly needed the assistance of Luciano, who held sway over
New York's longshoremen. One word from the capo and they would rid the harbor
of Axis powers' agents and saboteurs who threatened the war effort. The navy
approached Dewey, who in turn arranged a meeting with Lansky and Moses
Polakoff, Luciano's lawyer. They agreed that since only Lansky could prevail
upon Luciano, he would visit his boss in prison. When Lansky proposed a deal
guaranteeing him his freedom at war's end, Luciano agreed to cooperate.[1]
Thus began Operation Underworld. Luciano ordered his men to obey Lansky, who
became the liaison with naval intelligence. Moreover, Luciano's contacts
ensured the Allies a soft landing for their invasion of Sicily.
In early 1946 Luciano saw his reward. Dewey pardoned and deported him along
with some of his lieutenants, but not before he met with agents of the CIA's
forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). When Luciano's ship
embarked for Italy, the U.S. appeared to be taking leave of an honored guest.
Besides Lansky, Frank Costello, and other Mafia dons, a host of politicians
bade him farewell, as longshoremen kept reporters at bay.
Social unrest was then sweeping Europe, particularly France and Italy, where
Communists, respected for their anti-Fascist resistance during the war, were
fast gaining ground. The renowned Wild Bill Donovan, wartime head of the OSS,
conceived the idea of using the Mob to battle the "Reds." Though enormously
successful, the strategy also resulted, albeit inadvertently, in Mafia
inroads in intelligence and politics, both in Europe and the United States.
In 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established, just at the
peak of France's political crisis. The center of unrest was Marseilles, where
U.S. intelligence agents were already on the job. Jay Lovestone and Irving
-Brown, under cover of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union
(ILGWU), had infiltrated French trade unions and were handing out money left
and right.[2] In November 1947, the CIA's first director, Admiral
Hillenkoetter, sent a team of experienced anti-Communist agents to Paris and
Marseilles. It consisted of three OSS veterans and three "representatives" of
the American Federation of Labor (AFL). They were told to "do something,
anything."[3]
Pitched battles disrupted Paris the day the team arrived. The Communists had
called for a struggle against the "parti Americain" and the Ramadier
government had been toppled. When the agents hit Marseilles, the red flag
waved over the Palace of Justice, and the leftists appeared in control of the
city. The six agents wired home that the situation was desperate and that
drastic measures were needed.
Those measures required gangsters from the Italian and Corsican underworld,
hordes of whom were sent into battle. Their methods were brutal, the fight
short but bloody. Within weeks the hoods had the situation under control. The
CIA had been able to mobilize them so rapidly thanks to an important local
ally. In early 1947 General de Gaulle had formed a right wing anti-Communist
front, the Rassemblement du Peuple Francais (RPF), forerunner of the
present-day Gaullist, party (UDR). It soon established a security corps known
as the Service d'Ordre du RPF (SO du RPF).
The corps made extensive use of Corsican gangsters against its political
enemies. Dominique Ponchardier, its commander, later glorified the escapades
of his Gorilles in a series of novels; other ringleaders included Roger Frey,
Roger Barberot, Alexandre Sanguinetti, Paul Comiti and Jacques Foccart.[4]
The Socialist party also plunged in headlong against the Communists, and
worked especially closely with the CIA. Its security corps, the SO de la
SFIO, also numbered Corsican hoods in its ranks.
Among the criminals recruited in 1947 by the CIA and SO du RPF were the
Guerini brothers, the Francisci clan, Jo Renucci and Jo Attia, pillars of the
underworld about whom we'll say more in the chapters that follow.
Unfortunately for the six-man CIA team, word of their underworld partnership
arrived before them in Washington, where they were fired on the Spot.[5] But
that did not stop the CIA from maintaining contact with gangsters at home and
abroad. On the contrary, the partnership expanded with time.
pps. 33-35
--[Notes]--
1. H. Messick: Lansky (Berkeley, 1971).
2. A. Jaubert: Dossier D comme Drogue (Alain Moreau, 1974).
3. M. Copeland: Beyond Cloak and Dagger (Pinnacle Books, 1975).
4. P. Chairoff: Dossier B . . . comme Barbouzes (Alain Moreau, 1975).
5. Copeland, op. cit.
=====
THREE
THE FRENCH UNDERWORLD
The French underworld is divided into two main groups: the Corsican Mafia and
the independent, non-Corsican gangs. The latter are undisciplined and lack
political influence. The Corsican Mafia, on the other hand, is as
well-organized as the Sicilian and probably wields even greater political
clout.
The story of the Corsican Mafia recalls that of the Sicilian. It was started
by immigrants who left an island of hunger, underdevelopment, and
desperation. At the turn of the century the Corsicans poured into France,
particularly Marseilles. At first it was everyone for themselves. Then
blood-bound clans emerged to control prostitution and the smuggling of
alcohol and cigarettes. The take was initially divided equitably, but
dissension soon broke out and the years since have been marked by a
succession of bloody interfamily feuds.
Narcotics, heroin above all, brought the Corsicans their wealth and power.
Marseilles became the heroin stronghold, as local underworld chemists learned
to turn out the drug with pure, chalk-white quality. Most of it was sold on
the U.S. market, where Italian and Cuban wholesalers entered the scene. In
1971 the Corsican Mafia delivered 80 percent of the heroin on the U.S.
market. They deposited their millions in Bahamian, Swiss, and Lebanese banks,
reinvesting some of it later in legal enterprise.[1]
Drug trader Richard Berdin, a non-Corsican gangster, described his Corsican
colleagues as follows: "Most of them began as or still were pimps ... they
generally regarded anyone who did not have a Marseilles accent, didn't drink
pastis or swoon over bouillabaisse, as suspect... We in Paris, especially we
young hoods who came of age in the sixties, in our own way felt just as
superior; we dressed mod, they dressed hood; we spoke decent French, they
spoke broken Midi; we knew how to order good food and wine, they reeked of
garlic and pastis; we knew how to escort and talk to women, they considered
them all as hookers ... Our 'profession' often brought us into contact... But
it was a shaky marriage at best. . . "[2]
Not all Corsicans fit Berdin's description. Corsican capos live lives of
fabulous luxury, with vast palaces outside Marseilles, and similar abodes in
Paris and Corsica. They throw lavish parties teeming with politicians, or
invite them for cruises aboard their yachts.
The Guerini clan was the first to truly dominate the Corsican Mafia. It
centered around the brothers Antoine, Barthelemy ("Meme"), Lucien, Francois,
Pascal, and Pierre Guerini, who had been shepherd boys on Corsica before
coming to Marseilles in 1912. By the close of the twenties, after prolonged
and bloody vendettas, the Guerinis and their allies had risen to the top.
There they remained for over thirty years. Throughout their reign Antoine,
the oldest, headed the clan, and the Corsican Mafia as a whole.
The Guerinis were among the first to systematically organize the smuggling of
opium and morphine base from Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries. They
also started the production and marketing of heroin. Heroin laboratories
sprouted all over Marseilles, where there was ample room for other gangs to
operate either independently or in collaboration with the Guerinis.
The legendary Jo Cesari ensured the famous and coveted quality of Marseilles
heroin. A self-taught chemist, he was a true master in the lab. No one in the
world could teach him about the art of making heroin. He built and ran the
great majority of Marseilles heroin labs until 1972.
Wisely, the Guerini brothers cultivated allies among politicians. Because of
Marseilles' traditional socialist allegiance, they supported Gaston Deferre,
mayor of Marseilles since 1953 and, in 1969, the Socialist party's
presidential candidate. Beyond France's borders the Guerinis were in contact
with the CIA, with whom they battled Communists in 1947. Even master heroin
chemist Cesari allegedly had CIA connections.[3]
World War II brought a number of changes in the Marseilles underworld. The
Carbone-Spirito gang, number two in the hierarchy, was decimated during the
postwar purge for its collaboration with the Gestapo.[4] Joe Orsini and
Auguste Ricord, two of its lieutenants, fled respectively to Canada and South
America, there to become important international narcotics figures. This
allowed Jo Renucci's gang to assume the no. 2 spot. Renucci, Lucky Luciano's
French contact, was politically active for the right wing SO du RPF.[5] His
lieutenants included Marcel Francisci and the brothers Dominique and Jean
Venturi.
Francisci was born in Corsica in 1919 and demonstrated great organizational
talent from an early age. He spun a web of connections on his native island.
He fought with the Free French forces in Italy during the war and won medals
for valor. After the armistice he joined Renucci's Marseilles gang and began
smuggling cigarettes and silk stockings. He also made good narcotics contacts
in the Arab lands.[6]
Starting in 1947 Renucci lent Francisci and other underlings to the SO du RPF
as campaign guards and anti-Communist strongmen. Seizing the opportunity,
Francisci befriended members of the coterie surrounding Charles de
Gaulle-future secretary general Sanguinetti, future interior minister Frey,
future police chief Jean Bozzi, future Parliament chairman Achilles Peretti,
future minister for African Affairs and intelligence chief Jacques Foccart,
and future chief bodyguard for de Gaulle, Paul Comiti, to name a few.[7]
Francisci himself was to become a leader of the Gaullist party on Corsica and
sit prominently on the island's administration, his residency in Paris
notwithstanding.
Renucci's death in November 1958 spawned the Francisci-Venturi clan. The
nation-hopping Joe Orsini returned to join the organization in 1964, while
Jean Venturi left for Canada to assume control of the U.S.-bound narcotics
traffic. Though Francisci was in charge, he returned to Paris and left the
dirty work in Marseilles to the others. That work consisted almost
exclusively of the production and smuggling of heroin. In Paris, Francisci
spent much of his time playing politics and investing his wealth in
restaurants, casinos, and real estate. His influence in the Gaullist party
grew with his bank account.
To play it safe the Francisci-Venturi clan took out two political insurance
policies. Dominique Venturi stuck with Marseilles' Socialist mayor Deferre,
as had the Guerinis before him.[8] Though his men served in the Socialist
security force, Venturi himself worked for the Gaullist SAC.
At some point in the mid-sixties the Francisci-Venturi clan decided to push
the Guerini brothers out of the picture. Two masked motorcyclists shot down
Antoine Guerini on 23 June 1967. Weeks later Marcel Francisci was shot at
during a political meeting in Ajaccio, Corsica, but managed to reach cover.
Four Guerini lieutenants were killed in the next three months.
On 14 December 1967 two men were blown to bits planting a bomb in Francisci's
home near Paris. No one else was hurt. Francisci's comment: "I forgive them."
On 21 June 1968 Francisci again escaped with his life, this time from a
restaurant in Corsica as five men sprayed machine gun bullets in his wake.
Passersby weren't as fortunate. One was killed, five others were wounded. The
machine gunners were taken care of four months later in a Montmartre bar, by
police-clad gangsters.
Meme Guerini's efforts to avenge his brother's death ended with his
twenty-year murder sentence on 16 January 1970. With brother Francois' death
in prison one year earlier, the Guerinis no longer stood in the way of the
Francisci-Venturi mob.
U.S. narcotics police have long eyed Marcel Francisci, the man they refer to
as "Mr. Heroin." Whenever they try nailing him, however, they run into a
roadblock. According to Francisci's supporters in French politics, he's a
respected businessman, not a gangster.[9] At Fouquet, the flagship of his
restaurant chain on Paris' Champs Elysees, politicians and businessmen make
important deals over dinner.
Francisci's direct underworld contacts are people he can trust completely:
his brothers Jean, Francois, and Roland, with whom he meets almost daily.
Under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing (who is not a Gaullist), Francisci
has become even more careful. Furthermore, since 1972 the police have closed
down many of his heroin operations. But Francisci has the wherewithall to
survive hard times.[10]
Of the non-Corsican gangsters, the greatest was Jo Attia, France's most
colorful criminal until his death in 1972. Though mentioned primarily because
he was responsible for Christian David's recruitment as a barbouze
(specialist in undercover political violence, spook), he was also the first
gangster to become an international espionage agent.
He was born on 10 June 1918. His mother was a worker in Rennes, his father a
Tunisian passing through. He was raised in a convent until age twelve, when
he was sent to earn his keep on a farm. Out of the hard grind came the
magnificent physique that would become his underworld trademark. But by age
sixteen he'd had it with farm life. He headed to Marseilles and joined a gang
of youths. Within a year police caught him red-handed in a break-in. He was
sent to North Africa with a penal batallion. There he learned to box and to
kill, and became a close friend of Marseilles gangster Pierre Loutrel. Upon
their release, Attia plunged back into the Marseilles underworld and Loutrel
headed to Paris.
During the war Attia worked with the French resistance force, the Maquis. His
main contribution was to confine his thievery to Germans and their French
collaborators. But he allegedly also helped hundreds of Jews to cross the
border to Spain.
In July 1942 the Gestapo arrested him and sentenced him, first to death,
later to the concentration camp at Mathausen. Within days of his arrival
there, Attia glanced through his barracks window to discover an SS agent
beating a defenseless prisoner. Infuriated, he sprang through the door and
knocked the SS man down with a booming right. Had it not been for
high-ranking German officers impressed with his valor, Attia would have been
executed on the spot.
Fear did not stop Jo Attia. From the German supply depot he stole food for
fellow inmates and medicine for the ill among them. Indebted to Attia for
their survival of Mathausen were future justice minister Edmond Michelet and
Mirage jet manufacturer Marcel Dassault. The Hero of Mathausen, Attia became
the prisoners' spokesman.
Following the war Charles de Gaulle himself appointed Jo Attia to the Legion
of Honor. Still, a hero's glory buys no bread. Jo thought of entering the
boxing ring, but the first manager he approached broke up at the sight of
Attia's tattoed body. "We're looking for a boxer," he said, "not a roadmap."
By chance Jo ran into his old friend from the penal batallion, Pierre
Loutrel. In the meantime Loutrel had become one of Paris's leading crooks,
"Pierrot le Fou" (the crazy). During the war Loutrel and his right-hand man
Georges Boucheseiche had collaborated with the Gestapo. But Jo let bygones be
bygones and joined the Auto Gang which was then laying France to waste with a
string of murders and bank robberies.
On 25 September 1946 police finally caught up with the Auto Gang in the town
of Champigny, southwest of Paris. Three hundred policemen were dispatched in
armored cars to the hotel where the gang was holed up. There followed an
exchange of fire in the classic Chicago tradition. Other than a few
underlings, the only gangsters present were Attia and Boucheseiche. Pierrot
le Fou was dining at a nearby restaurant.
When the sound of gunfire reached him, Loutrel sprang into his brand new
armored Delahay, not to flee, but to rescue his pals. At top speed he swung
through the bullet shower at the hotel entrance and jammed on the breaks long
enough for Attia to jump in. He then floored the gas pedal and disappeared.
The gendarmes were left gaping. Boucheseiche, by hiding in a water barrel and
breathing through a hose, also managed to escape. When the police left the
scene, he emerged.
Their luck ran out a few months later. They assaulted and shot a jeweler.
Carrying the take to the car, Pierrot le Fou stuffed his pistol under his
belt. It fired, stopping him in his tracks. His partners buried him on an
island in the Seine.[11] Attia took over, but some of the wildness had left
him. He opened a chain of bordellos and nightclubs. He also began to push
drugs, while maintaining relations with the Corsican Mafia, especially the
Guerinis.
In 1949 Attia was sent to prison for four years for concealing a body (that
of Pierrot le Fou) and illegal possession of weapons. The prosecutor,
charging Attia with murder, had asked for a life sentence. But Attia got off
lightly thanks to the intervention of one Colonel Beaumont, alias Bertrand,
of the SDECE, whose life Attia had saved during the war. Behind bars in
Fresnes in 1952, Jo married the mother of his daughter, Nicole.[12]
When released, Attia was tracked down by his friend Beaumont, who had become
the head of an SDECE division. The colonel offered Jo a large fee to locate a
Moroccan terrorist hideout in French North Africa. Attia agreed. He took a
whirlwind course in secret agentry, and left that year on several missions,
mostly in Africa. Sometimes he parachuted, other times he came by land. At
times he worked for Beaumont, at others he was in the employ of Colonel
Fourcaud, another top man in the SDECE. Always, however, the mobster roamed
free under the wings of the intelligence establishment.
In 1956 Attia was sent to Morocco to kill the Moroccan rebel leader Alal
el-Fassai.[13] But he was arrested by Spanish authorities for blowing up the
hotel in Spanish Morocco where Alal was holed up.[14] To ensure extradition
to France he confessed to murdering two Frenchmen who had sold weapons to the
Algerian revolutionaries of the FLN. The trial in France was a mockery of
justice. Before long he was released.
In 1957, while Jo was on an SDECE mission in Tunisia, a member of Defense
Minister Chaban Delmas' staff "accidentally" set eyes upon the SDECE gangster
roll, and demanded to be told why Attia was working for the agency. Colonel
Fourcaud. defended him as a "marvelous personality, an admirable man and one
of our best agents."
After 1958 Attia worked primarily for the secret intelligence network of
Jacques Foccart, the Minister of African Affairs. In 1959 Jo surfaced first
in Katanga, then in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast, where he
purchased a nightclub, the Refuge. It became the headquarters of Foccart's
African spy ring. Several attempted assassinations of black political leaders
were planned in its back rooms. Attia also established an espionage center in
his Gavroche restaurant in Paris's Montmartre quarter. It became the haunt of
gangsters and agents, and those who were both.[15]
There are those who believe Attia also worked for the CIA in the same period.
The Church committee report on assassinations of foreign leaders reveals the
agency's recruitment of a European gangster for the murder of Patrice Lumumba
of the Congo. The hit man, code named QJ/WIN, was described as a convicted
criminal who could be dispatched on high-risk missions. Although Attia was
probably not the killer in question, both QJ/WIN and a second potential
assassin, referred to as WI/ROGUE, are likely to be found in a census of the
French underworld.[16]
Around 1960 Jo Attia met Christian David, who was Chen just a smalltime hood.
Together they worked as barbouzes in Algeria and were involved in a long
series of shady intelligence capers including the infamous kidnapings of
Colonel Antoine Argoud and Mehdi Ben Barka. (See chapters five and six.)
After 1962 Attia was in and out of prison, but that was probably more for his
own protection than anything else. He had all the freedom necessary to carry
out his intelligence missions, though eventually he was officially banned
from France. He then roamed through the Congo, Morocco, and the Ivory Coast,
but returned to Paris when so inclined. Police knew of his presence but did
nothing.
On 22 June 1972 Jo Attia died of throat cancer. But before he did he settled
a score with a rival gang led by Georges Segard and Christian Jubin. Jubin
had raped Nicole, the daughter of Jo the Terrible. Segard and Jubin were
handed over to the police.
Within hours of his death there were break-ins at Jo's apartment and at his
restaurant, Gavroche. Someone wanted to be satisfied that no compromising
material would end up in the wrong hands. Was it the SDECE?
pps. 37-44
--[Notes]--
1. Some sources estimate the amount of Marseilles heroin smuggled in 1971 at
three tons, others at over six. The second figure is more likely, given the
official 1972 figure of 7300 kilos; see The Newsday Staff: The Heroin Pail
(Souvenir Press, 1974).
2. R. Berdin: Code Named Richard (Dutton, 1974).
3. A. Jaubert: Dossier D ... comme Drogue (Alain Moreau, 1974).
4. The exploits of the Carbone-Spirito gang are romanticized in the film
"Borsalino" with Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo.
5. Jaubert, op. cit.
6. The Newsday Staff, op. cit.
7. Jaubert, op. cit.; P. Chairoff : DossierB ... comme Barbouzes (Alain
Moreau, 1975).
8. The Newsday Staff, op. cit.
9. Francisci has sued Time magazine and a number of French journalists for
trying to connect him to the drug trade, but each time he has retreated in
the eleventh hour.
10. According to journalist Nicholas Gage (New York Times, 12 January 1980),
there is increasing evidence, including the uncovering of several heroin labs
in Marseilles, Nice, and Milan, of a revived French (' onnection. Francisci
himself has apparently not been active in French politics since 1974, but
remains a man of considerable influence. The last heard of him was when his
restaurant, Fouquet, denied access to unaccompanied women in 1979.
11. S. Vincentanne: Ea bande a Pierrot-le-Fou (Champ Libre, 1970).
12. N. Attia: Jo Attia (Gallimard, 1974).
13. P.T. de Vosjoli: Le Comite (Editions de l'Homme, 1975); The Newsday
Staff, op. cit.
14. Jaubert, op. cit.
15. Attia also owned the nightclub "Number Ten" in Leopoldville, which was
often frequented by Lumumba.
16. Les Complots de la CIA (Stock, 1976); Le Meilleur, 10 June 1976
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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