Word: kingpins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...tough approach scored a victory of sorts last week. A Florida jury convicted Carlos Lehder Rivas, a kingpin of Colombia's Medellin cartel drug empire, of conspiring to smuggle 3.3 tons of cocaine into the U.S. He could be sentenced to life plus 150 years in prison. But no one was so naive as to believe jailing Lehder would make a dent in drug smuggling. In Congress, a desperate search was under way to find something that might work. The Senate has followed the House's lead by voting 83 to 6 to force the military to participate in antismuggling...
...drug kingpin? No, the fugitive was Oliver North, whose disdain for congressional investigators is legendary. This time a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee is demanding to see North's diaries, which may mention drug dealers who were mixed up with the Nicaraguan contras. In spite of the subpoena, North refused to surrender: he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination...
Police have attempted to bring the gangs under control, using almostrepressive measures including mass arrests to scare the youngsters. But the gang members outnumber and outgun law enforcement officers. Last march, a rookie New York cop was assassinated by a cocaine kingpin's hitman...
...same might be said of U.S. policy in Honduras. Cleanup crews in Tegucigalpa continue to wash soot off the U.S. embassy annex, attacked two weeks ago by gringophobic students protesting the seizure and extradition to the U.S. of accused Drug Kingpin Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros. At least two Hondurans died in the riots; damage estimates ranged up to $6 million, and the U.S. indicated that it expects reparations. The Reagan Administration insisted that the attack was orchestrated by drug traffickers, including a military faction sympathetic to Matta...
...integrity of vital institutions. The Bahamas, known among drug runners as "our aircraft carrier," serve as a transshipment point. Senate hearings last May and again last week pointed accusingly at the government of Prime Minister Lynden Pindling. Similar charges are now surfacing in the Jacksonville trial of Cocaine Kingpin Lehder, who in the late 1970s acquired parts of Norman's Cay, using its 3,000-ft. runway as a refueling point for drug loads. Former Lehder associates have testified that Pindling and other officials were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure smooth transit. Pindling denies the charges...