French Connection

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For other uses, see The French Connection.

The French Connection was an infamous scheme through which the drug heroin was smuggled from Turkey to France and then to the United States, culminating in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it provided the vast majority of the heroin consumed in the United States.

[edit] From the 1930s to the 1950s

Illegal heroin labs were first discovered near Marseille, France, in 1937. These labs were run by the legendary Corsican gang leader Paul Carbone. For years, the Corsican underworld had been involved in the manufacturing and trafficking of illegal heroin abroad, primarily in the United States. It was this heroin network that eventually became known as the "French Connection".

The Corsican Mafia was closely allied with the CIA and the SDECE after World War II in order to prevent the French communists from bringing the port of Marseille under their control.

Historically, the raw material for most of the heroin consumed in the United States came from Turkey. Turkish farmers were licensed to grow opium poppy for sale to legal drug companies, but many sold their excess to the underworld market, where it was manufactured into heroin and transported to the United States. It was refined in Corsican laboratories in Marseille, one of the busiest ports in the western Mediterranean. Marseille served as a perfect shipping point for all types of illegal goods, including the excess opium that Turkish farmers cultivated for profit.

The convenience of the port at Marseille and the frequent arrival of ships from opium-producing countries made it easy to smuggle the morphine base to Marseille from the Far East or the Near East. The French underground would then ship large quantities of heroin from Marseille to New York City.

The first significant post-World War II seizure was made in New York on February 5, 1947, when seven pounds of heroin were seized from a Corsican sailor disembarking from a vessel that had just arrived from France.

It soon became clear that the French underground was increasing not only its participation in the illegal trade of opium, but also its expertise and efficiency in heroin trafficking. On March 17, 1947, 28 pounds of heroin were found on the French liner, St. Tropez. On January 7, 1949, more than 50 pounds of opium and heroin were seized on the French ship, Batista.

[edit] The 1960s

The first major French Connection case occurred in 1960. In June, an informant told a drug agent in Lebanon that Mauricio Rosal, the Guatemalan Ambassador to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, was smuggling morphine base from Beirut, Lebanon, to Marseille. Narcotics agents had been seizing about 200 pounds of heroin in a typical year, but intelligence showed that the Corsican traffickers were smuggling in 200 pounds every other week. Rosal alone, in one year, had used his diplomatic status to bring in about 440 pounds.

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics's 1960 annual report estimated that from 2,600 to 5,000 pounds of heroin were coming into the United States annually from France. The French traffickers continued to exploit the demand for their illegal product, and by 1969, they were supplying the United States with 80 to 90 percent of its heroin. The heroin they supplied was approximately 85 percent pure.

Because of this increasing volume, heroin became readily available throughout the United States. In an effort to limit the source, U.S. officials went to Turkey to negotiate the phasing out of opium production. Initially, the Turkish Government agreed to limit their opium production starting with the 1968 crop.

[edit] The 1970s and the dismantling of the French Connection

Following five subsequent years of concessions, combined with international cooperation, the Turkish government finally agreed in 1971 to a complete ban on the growing of Turkish opium, effective June 30, 1972. During these protracted negotiations, law enforcement personnel went into action. One of the major roundups began on January 4, 1972, when agents from the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and French authorities seized 110 pounds of heroin at the Paris airport. Subsequently, traffickers Jean-Baptiste Croce and Joseph Mari were arrested in Marseille. From a 1973 French Connection seizure in France, are 210 pounds of heroin worth $38 million .

In February 1972, French traffickers offered a US Army sergeant $96,000 to smuggle 240 pounds of heroin into the United States. He informed his superior who in turn notified the BNDD. As a result of this investigation, five men in New York and two in Paris were arrested with 264 pounds of heroin, which had a street value of $50 million. In a 14-month period, starting in February 1972, six major illicit heroin laboratories were seized and dismantled in the suburbs of Marseille by French national narcotics police in collaboration with U.S. drug agents. On February 29, 1972, French authorities seized the shrimp boat, Caprice des Temps, as it put to sea near Marseille heading towards Miami. It was carrying 415 kilos of heroin. Drug arrests in France skyrocketed from 57 in 1970 to 3,016 in 1972. Also broken up as part of this investigation was the crew of Luchese Family soldier Vincent Papa, whose members included Anthony Loria Sr., and Virgil Alessi. The well-organized gang was responsible for distributing millions of dollars in heroin up and down the East Coast during the early seventies, which in turn led to a major NYPD corruption scheme. The scope and depth of this scheme is still not known, but officials suspect it involved a corrupt NYPD officer/officers who allowed access to the NYPD property/evidence storage room, where hundreds of kilos of heroin lay seized from the now-infamous French Connection bust, and then replaced the missing heroin with white baking flour. The substitution was only discovered when officers noticed insects eating all the bags of "heroin". By that point an estimated street value of approximately $70 million worth of "smack" had already been taken. The racket was brought to light and arrests were made. Certain plotters received jail sentences, including Papa. (Papa was later assassinated in federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia; several conflicting reasons why have been suggested). The French Connection investigation demonstrated that international trafficking networks were best disabled by the combined efforts of drug enforcement agencies from multiple countries. In this case, agents from the United States, Canada, Italy, and France had worked together to achieve success.