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Narcotics experts say that big drug dealers share something approaching a community spirit. On one occasion a trafficker loaned a competitor 20 "keys" (kilos of narcotics) in order to make up a shipment. The real common denominator in the business is an addiction to immense profits. At the labs in Marseille, a dealer must shell out anywhere from $120,000 to $350,000 for 100 kilos of heroin refined from Turkish opium. On delivery to a U.S. wholesaler, however, the 100-kilo package is worth about $1 million. After expenses, the net profit can be as high as $750,000.
Those profits attract investment funds from a variety of sources. Switzerland is so fretful about an influx of tainted narcotics money that the government has announced a special drive to screen numbered bank accounts for illegal uses. While there is no financial "octopus" for drug money in Switzerland, there are ways in which capital flows into narcotics. Money invested in clandestine companies registered in the name of a "manufacturer's representative" or "legal representative" often finds its way into the drug underworld.
A big operator may never even see the drugs he deals in. They are handled by a small platoon of hirelings: "plant men" who package the stuff, "chemists" who turn morphine base into pure heroin for $400 a kilo, and "mules" who will carry it to its destination for $1,000 plus plane fare. The narcotics trade has been a boon to Paraguay's so-called "Mau Mau" pilots. The pilots fly contraband drugs north to the U.S. from Buenos Aires or from any of 500 tiny airstrips that dot Paraguay. The pilots joke that they have a "Cessna 500" (which can carry 500 Ibs. of cocaine) or a "Cessna 130" (130 kilos of heroin).
Panama has become the Grand Central Station of Latin American smuggling, partly because it has nearly 100 remote World War II landing strips, partly because it is the closest place to the U.S. with anonymous, Swiss-style numbered bank accounts. The fact that Panama has 33 major international banks, up from only six in 1963, indicates that those accounts are in heavy demand. Until recently, as many as 20 aircraft a month would arrive in the U.S. from various South American countries via Panama's Tocumen International Airport, where they had been cleared through without any inspection. One of the cleared planes, tracked by U.S. agents to one of the 83 small airstrips that dot southern Florida, was found to have 94 Ibs. of heroin aboard.
What could the U.S. narcs do about it? Plenty, as it turned out. One evening in February 1971, the acting Tocumen transit chief, Joaquin Him Gonzales, a baseball addict, drove into the U.S.-controlled Canal Zone to see a local game, and the feds pounced. Flown to the U.S. and tried in Dallas, Him is serving a five-year rap for narcotics conspiracy in a Texas jail. Washington has ignored the protests of Panamanian Strongman Omar Torrijos and his brother Moisés, who