bargain when it can pay an informer $1 and then have $3 left over for
the Treasury--money which would have been lost without the cooperation
of the informant.
There was one Customs informer working in Europe who received the top
reward of $50,000 three times by uncovering the smuggling of huge
shipments of diamonds into the United States. He refused to accept
payment in Europe--but waited until he had $150,000 in credits with the
U.S. Treasury. Then he came to the United States, received the money,
and settled down to live the life of a country gentleman in the West.
And the rewards were tax free--as are all payments made to informers.
10
THE VIOLENT BORDER
Customs agents in the Laredo Tenth Customs Agency District--which
includes the 2,000 miles of border and Gulf coastline from New Mexico
into part of Louisiana--spend much of their time battling the smuggling
of narcotics and marihuana from Mexico.
Federal officers estimate that the business of peddling narcotics
to addicts grosses at least a half billion dollars a year for the
underworld, and the total may be much more. No one actually knows the
amount of narcotics which is smuggled successfully into the United
States. Some Customs agents estimate that law enforcement officers
seize less than 10 per cent of the total. One agent said, “If I thought
that I was getting ten per cent of the total being smuggled, then I
could sleep well at night.”
Even though the size of the narcotics traffic is unknown, there is no
doubt about the tremendous profits to be made from the illegal sale
of drugs. Addicts will beg, borrow, steal and kill to obtain money
with which to satisfy the terrible craving for narcotics once they are
“hooked.”
Unofficial estimates place the number of narcotic addicts in the United
States at about 50,000. The average heroin addict requires something
like ten grains per day to satisfy his needs. This means that over a
period of a year the average heroin addict will use about 7.6 ounces
of the drug--or a total for all addicts of about 380,000 ounces of
heroin or a substitute drug. In their best years, Federal and state law
enforcement officers have been able to seize only a fraction of this
estimated total.
Several years ago the Mexican marihuana dealers took no responsibility
for delivery into the United States; all arrangements for smuggling
across the border had to be made by the purchasers who came from the
States. But in recent years there has been a change, and the Mexican
operators have been willing to make deliveries to New York, Chicago,
Detroit and other cities. Jack Givens, Supervising Agent for the Laredo
district, believes this change in delivery method is an indication that
the supply of marihuana in Mexico has outgrown the demand. This has put
the pressure on the Mexican operators to give their customers better
service, resulting in the delivery system.
In recent years some of the United States marihuana operators have
begun to bypass border operators. They have been driving to the
interior of Mexico, making their own deals with the growers and
bringing the stuff back into the United States themselves. Customs
inspectors are always on guard against marihuana being smuggled in
automobiles--hidden in upholstery, in luggage compartments, in door
panels, or in secret compartments built into the cars.
Customs agents believe that most of the heroin and other narcotics
smuggled into the United States come by way of Europe from the Middle
East and Far East. But Mexico still is one of the favorite routes for
the narcotics syndicates seeking to reach the American addicts. In
addition, Mexico remains the major exporter of marihuana. The Mexican
government has been cooperating with the United States in seeking to
suppress the traffic, and there is a close working relationship between
the American agents and the Mexican police. But the long and rugged
boundary between the two countries makes it impossible to cover every
smuggling point on the border.
Supervisor Givens has only thirty-nine agents and seventeen Customs
enforcement officers assigned to him for the entire territory. The
enforcement officers are a police force used primarily for guard duty
and surveillance work under the agents’ direction.
This small force, despite the geographic difficulties, has a high
esprit de corps. Each man works many hours overtime each month with
no expectation of compensation. The records show that the agents
average approximately 120 hours of overtime each month in excess of the
overtime required of them and for which they are paid. Often the men
find themselves working overtime knowing that their extra effort will
be rewarded with pay averaging 19 cents an hour.
Why do they do it? One agent explained it in this way: “There’s more
than money in this work once you become involved in it. Once you start
working on a case, you simply cannot walk away from it at the end of
eight hours. You have a feeling of achievement when you do break up a
marihuana ring or pick up someone who is dealing in heroin.”
Patrolling the Mexican border has been a major problem for Customs
since the frontier days. In 1853 the Customs Mounted Patrol was
organized, and horsemen rode across the deserts and through the
mountains on lonely patrols to intercept cattle rustlers, smugglers
and aliens trying to slip across the border. The mounted guard
inevitably gave way to the automobile. But the horsemen rarely had
more hair-raising experiences than those of the modern agents mounted
on wheels. Such an incident occurred on August 7, 1960, in one of the
wildest chases in the memory of Customs agents along the Texas-Mexico
border.
It began when Agent Fred Rody, Jr., received a tip that an American was
in the red-light district of Nuevo Laredo, trying to arrange for the
purchase of 20 pounds of marihuana--obviously to be smuggled into the
United States.
Further checking disclosed that the man was John Vaccaro, a known
narcotics dealer working out of New Orleans. Vaccaro had been convicted
of a marihuana violation in New Orleans and been placed under
surveillance earlier in the year when he had visited Laredo. At that
time agents had tried to intercept Vaccaro, suspected of smuggling
marihuana, but in a wild chase on the highway Vaccaro pulled away from
their car, even though their speedometer was registering 120 miles an
hour. He also succeeded in eluding the police roadblocks which had been
thrown up in front of him.
Agents kept a close watch on Vaccaro’s car after Rody received his
report. Finally they saw someone approach his automobile and place a
suitcase in the front seat of his car. Then they saw Vaccaro, his wife,
and their fourteen-year-old daughter enter the car.
When Vaccaro drove down San Bernardo Avenue and then onto U.S. Highway
59, he was followed by agents in three automobiles. When the Vaccaro
car slowed in heavy traffic, the agents bracketed his car with one car
in front, one behind, and the other alongside. Agent T. S. Simpson
leaned out of his car and shouted, “Stop! We are Customs agents.”
Vaccaro pulled his car to the side of the road and slowed down as
though to stop. Suddenly he slammed his foot on the accelerator. His
car leaped forward between two of the agents’ vehicles and roared off
on the left side of the highway, forcing terrified drivers to swerve
into the ditch to avoid a collision. The agents gunned their cars in
pursuit.
Simpson and Rody watched the speed indicator on their automobile reach
110 miles an hour, but Vaccaro’s car still pulled away from them.
Agent Grady Grazner in a 1957 police interceptor-model Chevrolet moved
past the Rody-Simpson car and slowly began gaining on the Vaccaro
vehicle. His speedometer was reading 130 miles an hour when he moved up
behind Vaccaro’s automobile with his siren screaming. Grazner nudged
Vaccaro’s automobile with his bumper and signalled for Vaccaro to pull
over and stop. The woman and girl in the car were looking out the rear
window, screaming and motioning Grazner to pull away from their car.
For several miles the cars raced along at well over 100 miles an hour.
Grazner fired four warning shots into the air trying to force Vaccaro
to stop. He was afraid to fire directly into the vehicle because of the
women inside.
Gradually Grazner’s car moved up on the fleeing automobile. As the
front wheels of Grazner’s car reached the left rear wheels of Vaccaro’s
car, the marihuana dealer suddenly swerved. The blow of his car knocked
Grazner’s vehicle to the side of the road. The car rolled over six
times and bounced a distance of 471 feet. The only thing that saved
Grazner’s life was the fact that he was strapped into the seat by a
safety belt.
Police had been alerted ahead by radio. In the little town of Ferret,
Texas, Vaccaro saw the roadblock ahead. He tried to bypass it by
darting down a dirt road, but he was overtaken and brought to a halt.
Police found only fragments of marihuana in the Vaccaro car. When a
search of the highway was later made by a helicopter, the pilot spotted
a suitcase lying beside the road. Vaccaro had left his fingerprints on
the suitcase when he tossed it out of his speeding automobile. It was
stuffed with marihuana.
When Customs agents took Vaccaro into custody, Grazner said, “Why did
you try to kill me? You might have killed your wife and little girl
too.”
Vaccaro spat on the agent and said insolently, “What in the hell are
you talking about?”
Vaccaro was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for this venture
into violence.
* * * * *
The city of Laredo, Texas, dozed in the blazing noonday sun on an
August day in 1957. Not many people were on the sun-baked streets at
this hour, and even the Rio Grande had slowed to a lazy trickle. The
only visible activity was at the Customs stations at the International
Bridge spanning the river between Laredo and its twin city, Nuevo
Laredo, on the Mexican bank of the river. The bridge was one of the
major communications links between the United States and Mexico, but
with the sun high in the heavens even the traffic across the bridge was
moving at a listless pace.
At this hour, Dave Ellis, agent in charge, walked from his office in
the old courthouse and sauntered to a battered automobile parked on a
side street. He slipped behind the wheel and drove at a leisurely pace
to the eastern edge of the city, where he turned off the street and
parked beside the loading platform of a vacant warehouse. He switched
off the engine, lit a cigarette and sat waiting.
When Ellis arrived at the office that morning he had found a cryptic
note on his desk which said: “Meet me at the usual place.” It was
signed with the code name of one of the most reliable informers in all
of northern Mexico.
Ellis hardly looked the part of an experienced Customs agent. He
was nearing forty, but he looked ten years younger. The horn-rimmed
spectacles he wore gave him an appearance of grave studiousness.
What few people knew was that Ellis’ boyish face was deceiving. He had
been toughened in a hard school of experience. He had survived a bullet
through his chest leading a platoon into battle on Okinawa in World War
II, and he had been with the first contingent going into Korea at the
end of the war when no one was quite certain whether the Japanese were
going to surrender or make a fight for it. He had returned home in 1946
to pick up his interrupted career as a Customs agent and had earned a
reputation as one of the hardest-driving men in the field.
One lesson he had learned well was that no agent could operate
successfully without reliable sources of information. That was why he
waited patiently on this hot day to hear what it was that his tipster
had on his mind. He had been at the rendezvous point only a few minutes
when a car drove up beside his own and a Mexican got out, entered his
car and began talking rapidly.
The Mexican was one of the key figures in a network of informers which
the Customs agents had organized south of the border to help combat the
smuggling of heroin and marihuana. The informers were a part, or on the
fringe, of the Mexican underworld. They cooperated with the American
agents for one reason only--U.S. dollars. If the information they
provided resulted in the arrest and conviction of a smuggler, along
with the seizure of the contraband, they were paid for the information
from a special Customs contingency fund. In the case of marihuana, the
payment was $5 for each pound of the weed, _cannabis sativa_, which was
seized.
Ellis talked with his informant for perhaps thirty minutes. After
the man returned to his car and drove away, Ellis headed back to the
courthouse.
As he entered his office, an agent asked, “What was it all about?”
Ellis said, “My man tells me Muno Pena has a big marihuana deal
going--one of the biggest. He’s getting ready to send a million
dollars’ worth of the weed across the border--and we’ve got to stop it.”
The agent gave a low whistle. “So Muno Pena’s at it again. I thought he
had had enough.”
“His kind never give up,” Ellis said.
At the end of World War II, Pancho Trevino had been the kingpin in the
Mexican marihuana and narcotics traffic, operating out of Nuevo Laredo.
Muno Pena was a competitor but on a fairly small scale until, in 1952,
the Mexican government got on Trevino’s trail and threw him in jail.
With Trevino behind bars, Muno Pena moved to the top. Pena remained on
his home grounds in Mexico and never ventured north of the border. He
had a highly organized syndicate and lieutenants who carried out his
orders in the United States.
Ellis first ran into the Pena syndicate’s operations in 1955 when
he was transferred to Houston, Texas, and went to work to break up
a marihuana smuggling ring which included a former Houston police
officer. After weeks of collecting evidence during days and nights of
tailing suspects and checking records of tourist courts, hotels and
telephone calls, Ellis and his colleagues had pieced together a case
against the smuggling ring. In a Christmas-night raid they seized 75
grams of heroin, and in two other raids seized 250 pounds of marihuana.
Eleven men and women were arrested and convicted in this operation,
which was one of the biggest roundups ever made by Customs officers in
the Southwest.
The Houston raids had hurt Pena badly, but now he was back on the scene
with a scheme to make a quick fortune--if the tipster who had called
Ellis knew what he was talking about. Ellis was reasonably certain the
information was correct.
According to the Mexican informant, Pena had gone to the farmers in the
Monterey district south of Nuevo Laredo and purchased their entire crop
of marihuana, a ton of the stuff. He had brought it to his ranch near
Nuevo Laredo and processed it in one of the adobe sheds on the place.
Trusted workers had placed armfuls of the dry weed on fine-mesh screens
and rubbed it by hand. The fragments of leaves filtered through the
screens onto sheets, leaving on the screens only the rough stems
which later were burned. The fragmented leaves, as fine as cigarette
tobacco, were carefully weighed into one-pound lots. Each lot was
placed in a paper bag, which in turn was placed inside a plastic
container and sealed with strips of adhesive tape. Then the plastic
bags, in lots of thirty, were placed in cotton sugar sacks and stacked
in a shed to await shipment. Now Pena was working on a deal to ship the
entire lot to a distributor somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago. He
had decided not to parcel out the processed marihuana in small amounts
to buyers from the United States. Instead, he was going to bypass the
middlemen and take the lion’s share of the profits himself.
Ellis knew that a ton of “wheat” (the underworld term for marihuana)
would produce about 1,000 pounds of the narcotic weed suitable for
rolling into cigarettes. A pound of marihuana would make approximately
1,000 cigarettes. This meant that the retail value of Pena’s shipment
would run somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars. Never
before had so bold a scheme been attempted in marihuana smuggling.
The important element missing in the informant’s information was how
and when Pena planned to move the marihuana. Ellis had sent his man
back to Nuevo Laredo to get this information if possible. Without these
facts, Pena held the upper hand. Ellis had only fifteen agents to cover
the 400 miles of border in his district--and there were thousands of
places where marihuana might be smuggled across the river.
This time the tipster ran into a blank wall. He learned that the sacks
of marihuana were still stacked in the shed on Pena’s ranch. But that
was all he could learn, except that in the past Pena had smuggled
shipments of marihuana across the Rio Grande at a bend in the river
about five miles upstream from the little West Texas town of San
Ygnacio. When the water was low, the carriers were able to walk across
the stream. If the river rose from sudden rainfalls, the marihuana was
floated across the river on inflated inner tubes or on inflated rubber
boats. In each case, an automobile was waiting at a designated spot to
receive the contraband.
Ellis ordered a continuous surveillance of the river bend. For more
than three months agents kept watch in relays, hiding in the mesquite
near a small roadside park on top of a hill overlooking the sweep of
the river. But the watches were fruitless. Each time Ellis inquired
about the sacks of marihuana at Pena’s ranch, he was told they were
still there.
In December, Ellis was reading the routine reports from New York of
marihuana seizures that had been made in the city. These reports were
circulated periodically to all agents-in-charge throughout the United
States. There seemed to be nothing unusual in this particular batch
of reports until Ellis came across an account of the arrest of one
Wilfredo Fernandez, who had been caught with 16 pounds of marihuana
in his possession. The line which drew his attention said that the
marihuana was packed in one-pound lots in paper sacks which had been
enclosed in plastic and sealed with adhesive tape. Ellis sensed that,
somehow, Muno Pena had outwitted him, and the very thought enraged him.
He sent a message to New York for more information on the arrest of
Fernandez and where he had obtained the marihuana.
Fernandez, it developed, had been arrested in November for possession
of cocaine. When his apartment was searched, agents came across the
packaged marihuana. Fernandez sullenly admitted that he had bought it
in Chicago from a dealer he knew only as “The Lawyer.” The Lawyer had
taken him out on Lawrence Avenue, where they had met a man who appeared
to be a Mexican, driving a stake truck with a green body. The Mexican
had taken the marihuana from a large cotton sack--and then driven away.
He had never seen the Mexican before and didn’t know where he lived.
“He was a skinny fellow about five feet eight tall, and he had black
hair and a pale complexion,” Fernandez said. “That’s all I know.”
Ellis knew in his heart that this marihuana had come from Pena. And
later he was to learn how cleverly Pena had outwitted him. Pena had
stacked the sacks of processed marihuana in the shed on his ranch where
any of the workers could see them as they passed by. But what the
workers didn’t know was that one night Pena had removed the marihuana
to a hiding place known only to himself and substituted other sugar
sacks which looked identical.
One night Pena had taken the sacks to the river, where he met a
confederate. They had carried the sacks across the river to the highway
where the confederate had hidden his automobile, to which was attached
a U-Drive-It trailer. The marihuana was stacked in the trailer and
then covered with a mattress, a set of bed springs and a few household
articles. These were lashed down with a tarpaulin over them--and then
the driver headed north. To all outward appearances, he was a worker
moving with his household goods from one job to another.
Ellis asked Chicago Customs agents to check on long distance telephone
calls made in November by The Lawyer. And within a few days he received
a list of names ranging from barkeeps to uncles, aunts, and cousins,
horse track bookies, and pool parlor operators.
Meanwhile, agents in Laredo had been checking on Pena’s associates
and on his family. They made a list of everyone known to have any
connection, even casually, with Muno Pena.
It was when Ellis checked these two lists of names that he found
there was one name which appeared on both lists. The name was Isuaro
Garza. The agents’ information was that Garza was married to Muno
Pena’s sister. Mrs. Garza and her three children lived in Laredo and
maintained a home there. But Garza, for some months, had been living on
the outskirts of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Occasionally Mrs. Garza and the
children would drive north to spend a few days with Garza. They never
stayed for long and always returned to their Laredo home. No one seemed
to know what Garza was doing in Kenosha.
Ellis thought he knew what Garza was doing there. He was certain that
Garza was the man from whom The Lawyer had obtained the marihuana--and
that Garza was Pena’s man, making deliveries in Chicago from the 1,000
pounds of marihuana smuggled across the Rio Grande.
Ellis was so positive of this connection that he appealed to Washington
for permission to take six agents from the Laredo office--men long
accustomed to working on this type of case--for an investigation of
Garza. But headquarters was in the midst of an economy wave. Ellis was
told that funds were tight and that it would be impossible for him to
take six men from Laredo on an uncertain mission. However, he was given
authority to go to Kenosha himself and to take along one aide. If he
could make a case against Garza within ten days, well and good. But at
the end of ten days he must return at once to his post in Laredo.
Ellis chose Agent G. L. Latimer to accompany him. The two set out for
Kenosha, driving day and night, through a snow storm which was sweeping
the Middle West. They located Garza’s home. He was living in a small
white frame house just outside the northern edge of the town.
“There were two or three feet of snow on the ground,” Ellis recalls,
“and it looked like we were going to have to stake out the place by
living in sleeping bags. But there was a motel nearby which was closed
for the winter. We got permission from the owner to slip into the court
from which we could see Garza’s house. We were sure he was our man--but
we wanted to know who was calling for the marihuana and where it was
hidden. We wanted to catch the whole apparatus if possible. So day and
night we watched Garza’s house.”
Occasionally Garza would leave the house for a trip to the grocery
store, to go to a movie, or to visit in the city. The agents were
unable to detect him making any deliveries. But on the tenth day--the
last day of grace for Ellis and Latimer to be away from their Laredo
posts--a car drove up to the white frame house. A man entered and
shortly came out carrying a package which he stowed in his automobile.
When he had driven a short distance from Garza’s home, he was halted.
Ellis found the package filled with marihuana. It was in a paper sack
enclosed in plastic and taped with adhesive.
With this evidence, a search warrant was obtained and the agents
advanced on Garza’s house. It was nearing midnight when Ellis knocked
at the door. A light came on and then the door was opened and a voice
said, “Who is it? What do you want?”
Ellis shoved the door open, revealing a skinny Mexican standing in his
long-handled underwear, shivering from the cold.
“We are U.S. Customs agents,” Ellis said. “We have a warrant to search
this place.”
Isauro Garza submitted meekly. A loaded pistol lay on a table near his
bed, but he gave no resistance. The agents found 720 one-pound sacks
of marihuana hidden in closets and in the attic--the largest haul of
marihuana ever to be made in the United States. Its retail value was
$720,000.