Coffins and Corruptions

The following Time Magazine article from 1973 highlights the sophisticated nature of government drug smuggling practices, both within the US military and Police.

In the case of the US military, the CIA was able to smuggle relatively large quantities of heroin by way of dead US servicemen.

The literature of the illicit narcotics trade bristles with tales of perniciously ingenious capers and official corruption. It will probably be a long time, however, before any new chapters can top the two now unfolding. In one case, it is believed that traffickers used the bodies and caskets of American servicemen to smuggle drugs into the U.S. from Southeast Asia. In the second, huge quantities of heroin confiscated by the New York police department were systematically stolen, put back into the street trade, and may now be a source of horse for the holidays. Herewith reports on the two cases:

Grisly Smuggling

It looked like a routine flight home from Southeast Asia with a stop at Hickam Field, Hawaii, before the final leg to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Aboard the KC-135 were 64 passengers, many of them G.I.s, and two military coffins. Suddenly, the plane was ordered to reroute slightly and land at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. There federal authorities, acting on a tip that 20 kilos of heroin were aboard, virtually took the transport apart. They did not find any drugs, but they did discover that one of the two bodies, which had undergone autopsy earlier, had recently been restitched.

The agents arrested Thomas Edward Southerland, 31, of Castle Hayne, N.C., who was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. Army sergeant. Southerland, who falsely claimed he had served a twelve-year hitch in the Army, was arrested on charges of impersonation and using fake documents. →