NARCOTICS: Search and Destroy--The War on Drugs

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Carriers bring in heroin (or cocaine) in innumerable ingenious ways—including, on one occasion, stuffing it inside a live boa constrictor. A more common method, however, is for women airline passengers to travel to Miami with cocaine or heroin hidden in their girdles or in false-bottomed suitcases. Near Santiago there is a factory specializing in making suitcases with hidden compartments. The agents are catching more and more such carriers, in part through use of a secret "smuggler's profile"—a telltale behavior pattern apparently common to amateur smugglers.

One courier who fell afoul of customs was Carole Dale Robinson, a 19-year-old model from San Francisco. She arrived at Mexico City airport last March clutching a stuffed toy llama from Peru. Customs officers split it open—and found 8 Ibs. of pure cocaine inside. She protested that she was merely carrying the toy as a favor for someone else, but in fact U.S. agents had been watching her since she left California. She is now awaiting sentence, which may run as high as seven years.

The amateur who shows up in Montreal or some other point with heroin in the hollowed-out heels of his shoes may not be able to find a buyer at any price. The professionals deal only with other professionals; they almost never move drugs on speculation, and they prefer to deal in lots of 50 or 100 kilos. The biggest operators are shadowy figures, little-known and rarely seen. Much of the international trade is still dominated by the fabled, Marseille-based French Corsican families who developed the deadly business back in the 1930s (see box, page 24).

In Southeast Asia, the U.S. State Department has long been following the operations of one Lo Hsing-han, a Chinese of mysterious background who is said to enjoy absolute rule over drugs in the mountainous region of Burma, Thailand and Laos known as the Golden Triangle, the richest poppy-growing area in the world and the source of the Asian heroin now reaching the U.S. in growing quantities.

Opium production is outlawed in Burma, but Lo has what the State Department describes as "a contract" with the Burmese government: he keeps his turf clear of Communist insurgents, and the government allows him to deal in opium as he pleases. Lo has had no trouble in keeping up his end of the deal. He maintains a private army of some 5,000 local tribesmen and deserters from Chiang Kai-shek's old Kuomintang 93rd Independent Division.

Typically, the big-time operators deal in more than just drugs. After they deliver their opium to smugglers on the Thai border, Lo's huge caravans—often 200 mules and 200 porters, guarded by 600 troops—frequently return to Burma with contraband ranging from trucks and airplane parts to bolts of cloth and auto engines. Lo, says one U.S. official, "doesn't go empty-handed either way."

Similarly, drug traffickers in Uruguay, Argentina, Peru and Brazil dabble on the side in cigarettes, TV sets, whisky, radios and watches. By some accounts, French smugglers are into something far more complex. It is said that the SDECE, France's CIA, has quietly engaged Paris-and Marseille-based smugglers to move arms to a number of Middle East countries. These secret arms shipments are said to enable France to bolster its export arms industry and its influence in the Middle East, while it continues to