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One Journalist’s Experience With the Media Elite: Gangsters, Cadavers and Misinformation

Ron Chepesiuk - 2/12/2008

Last December, the U.S.´s Federal Communications (FCC) pushed through new rules that will unleash a torrent of further media consolidation and wipe out independent voices in cities already woefully short on local news and investigative journalism. Six major companies own most of the media outlets in the U.S., and since 1995, the number of companies owning commercial TV stations has declined by 40 percent. This trend is reflected globally, as News Corp, Viacom and the other multinationals continue to gobble up media companies.

Few people see the effects of media consolidation and the accompanying decline in media reporting, but I did during the course of co-authoring and co-producing a book and documentary that takes a hard look at Frank Lucas, a former Harlem drug dealer from the 1970s, and the subject of a Hollywood blockbuster movie titled ¨American Gangster¨ and starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. True to Hollywood form, Universal Studios , the movie’s producer, claims that ”American Gangster” is “based on a true story.”

In this particular case, the true story was a profile written in 2000 by journalist Mark Jacobson for New York magazine. In the article, Lucas’s made some sensational claims to fame. Among others, he was first black drug lord to operate independently of the powerful La Cosa Nostra and he moved his heroin from Southeast Asia via the Cadaver Connection and under the cover of the Vietnam War.

A producer for Dateline NBC, called me last September and asked if I wanted to be interviewed for a Dateline segment that would examine the criminal career and life story of Frank Lucas. The segement would be aired a few days before “American Gangster” opened in North America. I suggested four other sources to the Dateline producer, two former federal prosectors and two DEA agents, all of whom, like myself, were well familiar with Lucas´s story and his claims to criminal fame
The producer sat us all down for two hour plus interviews in which Dateline got a close up look at Frank Lucas. But a few days before the program was to air, the producer called and informed me us that none of us would appear on the show and that it had been cut down to half an hour from the originally scheduled hour. The only people appearing on the show weould be the stars, Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe, along with Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts, the detective who helped put Lucas behind bars and reportedly helped arrange a million dollar deal with Universal for Lucas, himself and the author of the New York magazine article upon which the”American Gangster” movie is based. They were the ¨experts¨ who talked about Lucas´ story and reinforced the official movie story line. The producer assured us that Dateline would do another, more in-depth program about Lucas at a later date.

We are still waiting. Meanwhile Dateline´s segment turned out to be an infomercial for the film, in essence, ensuring that no one would make any negative comments that could hurt the opening box office. A fawning Matt Lauer tossed softball questions to Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, who became overnight experts on Frank Lucas’ life and criminal career. In the half hour program, I counted 20 to 25 errors, distortions and fabrications. General Electric owns both NBC and Universal. In the first weekend of its theatrical release, the film grossed $46 million, and subsequently, it has become a blockbuster. Not having a fine line between GE´s entertainment and news divisions had paid off.

The experience was a graphic example of the sorry state of the American media and how it no longer makes any effort to distinguish between news and entertainment.

But it was just the beginning. In the weeks ahead, the media jumped on the band wagon and showed itself to be cheerleaders for the film that Universal was claiming to be based on a true story. The History Channel did a program for its new “Gangland” series that did not examine any of Lucas´claims and esseantially parroted the official story line . Why not? Universal owns the History Channel. Black Entertanment followed suit with a puff profile for its popular “American Gangster” series and was awarded with access that led to special hour “Making of America Gangster” feature that followed the airing of its Lucas profile.
Indeed, since Universal announced that it was making the “American Gangster” movie, the press has all but collaborated in the falsification of Luca’s story and the distortion of gangster history. The most egregious example is the media’s laziness in investigatng Lucas’ link to the so called Cadaver Connection, certainly one of the most sensational clasims in the history of international drug trafficking. The Cadaver Connection refers to long-held contention that during the Vietnam War, drug traffickers smuggled heroin from Vietnam to the U.S. in caskets and perhaps body parts of dead American soldiers. Lucas has eagerly embraced the Cadaver Connection and in the 2000 New York magazine article boasted about how he had an associate “make up 28 copies of the government coffins . . . except we fixed them up with false bottoms, big enough to load up with six, maybe eight kilos . . . It had to be snug. You couldn't have shit sliding around....”

Remarkasbly, no journalist checked out the authencity of the Cadaver Connection by asking Lucas tough, probing questions like: who was involved in the drug smuggling scheme? How did the Cadaver Connection worked? How were you able to implement the scheme when you did not have any military experience?

I have investigated the Cadaver Connection for several months and have not found one instance where any person based in Southeast Asia was arrested or sent to jail for operating a heroin smuggling ring via a cadaver connection or where heroin was found in the coffins of dead American soldiers being transported from Southeast Asia.

Today, DEA agents, whom I ‘ve interviewed, dismiss the idea that Frank Lucas could engineer such a drug distribution network as defying common sense. In order for the “Cadaver Connection” to function, Lucas, who was never in the U.S. military and did not live in Asia, would have needed a main heroin connection in Thailand and then would have had to find a way to smuggle the heroin to Vietnam and the mortuary office at Tan Son Nhut from which the bodies were sent home to the U.S. There, Lucas would have had to recruit and bribe people to place the heroin inside the coffins or actual bodies. Next he would have needed to corrupt the entire transportation system from the mortuary to the U.S. Once the bodies arrived in the U.S., there would have to be more corrupt personnel to remove the heroin from the bodies.

Could a drug trafficking system like this have functioned at the height of the Vietnam War? It would be relatively easy to check out. Yet, hundreds of articles have been written that have treated the existence of the Cadaver Connection as fact.

The Associated Press was one media source that initially followed in lock step on the Cadaver Connection story—that is, until it decided to investigate some of Lucas’s claims more closely. The investigation was prompted by John McBeth, a veteran Asia-based journalist who reported from Thailand in the 1970s and was familiar with Cadaver Connection rumors, complained to the AP about the accuracy of a story in ran in November, 2007. To AP’s credit, it did to take a second look.

In that initial story the AP concluded: “To get the drugs back to the States, Lucas established the infamous "cadaver connection," hiding the heroin in the caskets of dead soldiers.”

In the follow up article that appeared in January 2008, Jake Coyle, AP. The entertainment writer, wrote; “The Harlem kingpin's infamous "Cadaver Connection" -- a pipeline of top-grade Southeast Asia heroin smuggled in GI caskets--has always been at the center of his considerable and enduring mythology. But it turns out that the casket story is just that--a myth.” In this follow up article, Lucas conceded that he may have used the Cadaver Connection just once.

Coyle explained to this author why the media has gotten it so wrong on the "American Gangster” story: “this mess happened partially because journalists have been relying on secondary sources removed from the actual events.”

McBeth’s conclusion: “ The Cadaver Connection was basically an urban legend that developed a life of its own because the journalists who wrote that stuff did not give it the common sense test possibly because they had no idea of the geography of Southeast Asia," McBeth explained. “Its quite simple: the bodies of dead servicemen came out of Saigon; the heroin supplied to Lucas came out of Thailand. So how could the heroin have got into the coffins?”

Universal’s claim that “American Gangster” is based on a true story continues to fuel controversy. The studio is now in hot water with some irate DEA agents, who have sued it for $50 million because of this false tag line appearing at the end of the movie: Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts “ collaboration led to the conviction of ¾’s of the New York City Drug Enforcement Agency.”
No such thing ever happened. In fact, not one DEA agent was ever convicted of corruption because of Luca’s testimony.

Inserting the tag line was nothing more than an attempt to sanitize Luca’s story for public consumption. After all, nobody really likes a snitch, especially a gangster who claims to be the biggest, baddest drug dealer of 1970s New York City. Lucas did become an informant after his conviction in 1976, but he snitched on scores of his fellow gangsters, not cops or feds.
This month (February 2008) a federal judge is scheduled to rule if the lawsuit should go forward. Stay tuned.