-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 --[2]-- PART I BEAU SERGE ===== ONE THE PRISONER It must have been prisoner 77,343's worst dream come true when, on 1 October 1979, he was transferred to Hell's waiting room, the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. In Atlanta's nightmare of a maximum security prison, Dominique Orsini, prisoner 77,343's friend and partner in the branch of the French Mafia known as Grupo Frances, had been murdered in an isolation cell on 12 April 1978. In the same prison six months earlier their heroin customer, Vincent Papa, had been eliminated by contract killing.[1] And before that, Orsini's lawyer, Gino Gallina, had been shot down in New York.[2] Of nine murders committed within Atlanta's walls over a seventeen-month period in 1977-78, at least four were contracts on Mafia connected narcotics dealers, of whom Orsini and Papa were among the elite.[3] Since then the killings have continued, despite federal investigation of the obsolete seventy-eight year old prison.[4] To the "honorable men" who drive up in black cars and flash their CIA, FBI, and DEA IDs, prisoner 77,343 remains the subject of intense interrogation, and that is another reason for his constant fear all these years. He knows prison walls won't stop his enemies or, for that matter, his friends -in his business there's little difference. Thus each time a guard sends in food he sniffs it, pokes at it, tastes it cautiously. That is how it's been for seven years. Only now, in Atlanta, the odds are worse than ever. The prisoner who knows too much is Christian David, age fifty, French, known among friends as "le Beau Serge," and by more recent acquaintances in Latin America and the U.S. as "Eduardo" and "JeanPierre." Among French Connection notables he's a legend, a man whose mystique grows with each new tale of his exploits.[5] He's been a pimp, robber, hired assassin for French intelligence, hatchet man in Algiers torture chambers, arms trader, spy, narcotics trafficker and, true to form, lover of beautiful women. He's one of the few alive who knows the truth about the Ben Barka affair that shook France in 1965;[6] he knows details of the brutal power struggle within French intelligence agency SDECE; of SDECE collaboration with the Corsican Mafia; and of secret CIA operations in Latin America. Ample grounds for anyone's paranoia. But David is cunning and tough, and that is why he's still alive. He arrived in the U.S. on 17 November 1972 from Brazil, where he'd been arrested as the head of the huge narcotics smuggling ring, the Brazilian Connection. International law actually gave extradition priority to France, where he'd been sentenced to death in abstentia for murdering a police officer. But the Americans were not about to let the drug kingpin slip through their fingers. When fetched from his cell in Brazil, David was desperate. Unsure of his destination, fearing it was France and a guillotine, he smashed a light bulb and swallowed the fragments. Even so, as he later claimed, "the Americans ... filled me with drugs and carried me off to a military plane which flew me to the USA."[7] Following a short hospital stay, he was hauled to a Brooklyn courthouse where the judge set bail at $2.5 million. Fearing the amount was not beyond the means of David's connections, authorities rammed his case through the labyrinth of justice. Within two weeks of his arrival, federal judge Jacob Mishler sentenced Beau Serge to twenty years in prison for smuggling half a ton of heroin into the United States. During his trial, proof was obtained of David's activities on behalf of a very special branch of French intelligence known as Service d'Action Civique (SAC). His tri-colored SAC ID placed on display, David explained: "I was taken from prison in 1961 to work for an organization called SAC. It was arranged by someone with connections in the highest political circles."[8] Of his confinement in Brazil, he had this to add: "I was tortured by the Brazilians for thirty days and fed nothing for twenty-six days. They stole all my money. Today I can't afford a lawyer, I haven't a cent."[9] According to Armand, his compatriot and prison mate for the trial, "When I saw David in the West Street jail, I could hardly recognize him, so terribly had the Brazilians mauled him."[10] This doesn't quite jibe with David's later writing a Parisian friend of his desire to be transferred back to Brazil. But the ways of Christian David are often inexplicable. And for some the thought of torture is more bearable than that of death. After his arrival in the U.S., David's attitude often shifted, depending on where he saw the greatest dangers. After his sentence was pronounced, he told FBI detectives: "If I had been extradited to France instead of abducted from Brazil, I would only have gotten three years. They would have forgotten about Galibert" (the police lieutenant he'd murdered in Paris). But he later wrote the writer Daniel Guerin: "If you get me a guarantee I won't be extradited to France, I'll tell you the truth about the Ben Barka affair." The French government's two official attempts to have David extradited failed. And the French press has been surprisingly indifferent. One year after David was jailed in the U.S. (at first in the Marion, Illinois pen), France Soir reported he had shaved his beard, lost weight, complained of heart trouble, and sought admission to Springfield military hospital. On examination, however, the prison doctor found him in excellent health. Another year passed and the following item appeared: "David acts deranged ... darts about his cell, knocks his head against the wall, gesticulates weirdly, tears at his hair and screams he's being devoured by rats. . . "[11] Then, in the summer of 1975, the beautiful Simone Delamare, his mistress in Brazil, came to Paris to plead David's cause with the press. In a letter to her dated 29 January 1975, he had written: "I'm doing all I can to avoid extradition to France. All I ask is to be treated like any other inmate. I'm locked in a windowless 2x2 meter cell, never see a ray of sunshine, have no idea of day or night. I hardly sleep anymore because of the evil atmosphere around me. I'm afraid they'll poison my food... The doctor examines me in two minutes. I speak no English and he knows no French. So he can't understand I have heart pains."[12] After a long silence it was finally reported that on 6 December 1979 Ms. Delamare had visited Beau Serge in Atlanta. In a photo she had taken of their reunion, he no longer seemed particularly handsome. The loss of nearly all his hair had been compensated by a full beard. He reportedly wore strong glasses and was in bad health. A cancer specialist was said to visit him regularly.[13] Despite appearances, few believe that David is truly incapacitated. He will stop at nothing, the authorities suspect. After all, he escaped from prison earlier in his career by playing mad. But would it really be so strange if he were disturbed? Few can take the constant fear of a sudden death, fed by memories of a life such as his. Christian David fears both his friends from the Mafia and SAC and his enemies from the SDECE and CIA. But some of them are equally afraid of him. Why? This book does not provide the ultimate answer, but it will lift a corner or two of the veil placed over his record. pps.27-32 --[Notes]-- 1. New York Times, 6 May 1979. 2. France Soir, 13 April 1978. 3. Boston Globe, 10 August 1978; New York Times, op. cit. 4. In a report issued 12 January 1980 the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee concluded that the Atlanta prison "serves to stimulate criminal activity rather than diminish it" and should be closed down no later than 1984. The Marion, Illinois pen, to which David was first sent, is regarded as the U.S.'s toughest prison and known among inmates as "the end of the line." The successor to Alcatraz, it was built to confine the most hardened and escapeminded prisoners, 100 of whom are housed in an ultrasecurity unit within the maximum security prison. After the bloody February 1980 riot in a New Mexico state prison, 21 inmates there were transferred to Marion, where they joined 400 other convicts in a three-week strike, beginning on St. Patrick's Day 1980, mostly to protest living conditions. 5. There was even a persistent rumor in 1979 that David had been smuggled back to France as an undercover agent for the DEA, and had opened up a restaurant in Marseilles. 6. The "Ben Barka affair" refers to the mysterious October 1965 kidnaping of the exiled Moroccan political leader Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris. Ben Barka had led the preparations for the Third World's first Tricontinental Congress in Cuba, which took place in early 1966. His disappearance, which involved more than one Western intelligence agency, is one of the great scandals of the century; see chapter six. 7. France Soir, 9 July 1975. 8. The Newsday Staff. The Heroin Rail (Souvenir Press, 1974). 9. L'Aurore, 20 November 1972. 10. R. Berdin: Code Name Richard (Dutton, 1974). 11. France Soir, 7 February 1974. 12. France Soir, 9 July 1975. 13. VSD (Vendredi-Samedi-Dimanche), 28 December 1979. --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
