12 THE CASE OF THE CROOKED DIPLOMAT

The Case of the Crooked Diplomat had its beginning when an Arab informer whispered a warning to a U.S. Bureau of Narcotics agent in faraway Beirut, Lebanon. And before it was closed, agents of the Customs Bureau, the Bureau of Narcotics and the French Sûreté had teamed up in a cooperative drive to smash a ring of criminals attempting to smuggle $20 million worth of heroin into the United States.

They were an oddly assorted lot, the members of this ring. There were only four known members, but in early 1960 their operations had begun to stir alarm across the country among law enforcement agencies seeking the mysterious source of heroin which at intervals had begun to appear in large lots on the underworld market.

The quartet was composed of:

Mauricio Rosal, forty-seven, Guatemala’s ambassador to Belgium and the Netherlands, and the son of a respected Central American diplomat; a small, portly, balding man known favorably in many countries as a witty conversationalist and shrewd politician of seeming integrity; something of a dandy, he usually wore dark homburg hats, expensively tailored dark blue suits and maroon ties; he affected an air of aristocratic elegance both in dress and manners.

Etienne Tarditi, fifty-five, a short, heavy-jowled, paunchy, gross figure of the Parisian underworld with a cloudy background; addicted to trench coats, pork-pie hats and the notion that he resembled Alfred Hitchcock (which he did); a gambler who played for big stakes in narcotics, with connections in many countries; a manipulator who usually remained in the background.

Charles Bourbonnais, thirty-nine, a slender, dapper steward for Trans World Airways, who had an eye for a pretty girl when his wife was not looking; often seen in the company of Tarditi when in Paris, and a liberal spender for a salaried man; the messenger and fixer for the ring.

Nicholas Calamaris, forty-seven, a powerful man with a huge nose, jug ears, skull-like face and long arms which reached almost to his knees; employed as a New York longshoreman, but this job was merely the front for his nighttime operations as a big-time dealer in narcotics; a cautious, secretive man with few close friends.

In the winter and spring of 1960, Federal, state and city police agencies were at a loss to explain the source of heroin which was at times available in almost any quantity desired. Agents canvassed their underworld tipsters with little luck. The informers knew only that at intervals the word would spread that another large load of heroin had arrived in New York and was available. Where it came from and how it entered the country none could—or would—say.

It was not until June that Narcotics Agent Paul Knight picked up the first clue of substance in Beirut, which had become an important listening post for the Narcotics Bureau.

A tipster whispered to Knight that heroin processed in Beirut from a morphine base had been sent to a smuggling ring in Paris. The reputed leader of the ring was a man named Etienne Tarditi. He had, the tipster said, smuggled as much as 40 to 60 kilograms of heroin from Beirut to France, and, according to rumors, it had gone from France to the United States. The carrier was said to be a Spanish-speaking diplomat.

This was the first break. The information from Beirut was passed on to the French Sûreté Nationale with a request that the Narcotics Bureau be informed of Tarditi’s movements and his associates.

In August, the Sûreté informed the Bureau that Tarditi had returned to Paris from a trip to New York. His plane companion on the trip, and on several previous trips, had been the Spanish-speaking Guatemalan ambassador, Mauricio Rosal. The Sûreté added that Tarditi also had been seen in Paris in the company of a TWA steward named Charles Bourbonnais.

From this time forward, Tarditi, Rosal and Bourbonnais were under almost constant police surveillance on the Continent. When Bourbonnais returned to the United States on August 24 he was placed under surveillance by Narcotics and Customs agents.

Bourbonnais, the agents found, was married to a TWA hostess. He lived on Long Island and in recent months had sold a residence for $40,000. He always seemed to have plenty of money, and he was something of a playboy when his wife was away from home or when he was in Paris.

Agents trailed Bourbonnais when he drove from the airport. He drove a devious route to an apartment house in Queens. He stood at the entrance of the building looking furtively about before entering.

“That guy is really jumpy,” an agent remarked to another. “Do you think he knows we are on his tail?”

“I don’t know,” was the answer, “but we’d better drop the surveillance. He’s suspicious of something. He could have spotted us.”

The surveillance was called off temporarily. It wasn’t until later that the agents learned that Bourbonnais’ wariness had nothing to do with narcotics peddling. On this particular occasion he was on his way to a rendezvous with a girl friend—and he merely wanted to be certain that he wasn’t being followed by private detectives hired by his wife.

At the same time, Customs agents began checking into the background of Mauricio Rosal, who they found had been a frequent visitor to the United States. Leafing through old files one day, Agent Mario Cozzi found a report showing that almost twenty years earlier Rosal had been under investigation for alleged smuggling, although nothing had ever been proved against him.

He had arrived in New York City aboard the SS Nyassa on August 9, 1941, carrying papers which identified him as a Guatemalan chargé d’affaires. He had claimed—and been granted—diplomatic courtesies when passing through Customs with his wife. His declaration showed that he was enroute from Lisbon to Mexico City on his way to Honduras.

The Rosals had remained in New York only a few days and then had departed with their seventeen pieces of luggage, none of which was subjected to Customs examination.

A few days after their departure, Customs agents were informed by a tipster that Rosal had carried essential oils worth $40,000 and diamonds worth $37,000 into the city. A diamond dealer was found who admitted that Rosal had brought the diamonds to him and offered to sell them.

“I refused to buy unless Rosal could produce receipts showing he had paid the customs duty,” the dealer said. “When he could not show me a proper clearance from Customs, I turned down his offer.”

Customs, however, had reason to believe that Rosal had disposed of the essential oils and the diamonds before he left the city. Months later, Customs Agent Salvador Pena had interviewed Rosal in Mexico City, inquiring about his reported failure to list the dutiable imports on his declaration.

Rosal blandly admitted he had carried the oils with him in a wooden box. “I brought them over from Vichy for a friend,” he said, “and delivered them to his brother at the Waldorf-Astoria. I was assured the duty had been paid and I never dreamed, of course, there was anything irregular.”

As for the diamonds, Rosal admitted he had approached a dealer and offered to sell him several diamonds. But he insisted that when no agreement was reached, he had taken the gems on to Venezuela, where he had disposed of them. Had he made the sale in New York, he added with a shrug, he would naturally have paid the required customs duty.

There was nothing further that Customs could do about the matter and the case was closed. The report was filed away to gather dust until Rosal’s name was linked with that of Tarditi.

On September 30, six weeks after Cozzi had found the old report, the Sûreté advised the Narcotics Bureau that Rosal and Tarditi had purchased tickets for a flight to New York and it was suspected they would be carrying narcotics. Tarditi was booked to arrive at Idlewild International Airport on October 1, and Rosal was due to arrive a day later. Bourbonnais was scheduled to leave Paris a short time after Tarditi as the steward aboard TWA’s Flight 801.

As the original tip on the case had come to the Narcotics Bureau, the investigation was in the hands of District Director George H. Gaffney, a veteran agent, with Customs playing a supporting role.

Thus began one of the most remarkable cases of Federal agency cooperation in the war against smuggling. Gaffney laid his plans well, and when TWA’s Flight 801 touched down at Idlewild at 5 P.M. on October 1, a squad of Narcotics and Customs agents was waiting to place Tarditi under surveillance. Customs inspectors had been alerted to signal an identification when Tarditi handed over his baggage declaration, and to make only a cursory examination of a single piece of his luggage.

Tarditi stepped from the plane wearing a trench coat and a pork-pie hat set jauntily at an angle. He seemed unconcerned when the inspector asked him to open the single bag he carried to the inspection station. The inspector noted on his declaration that his destination was the Sherry Netherlands Hotel.

And so it was that Tarditi passed through Customs with no hint given that several pairs of eyes were watching every move he made. A porter carried Tarditi’s luggage to a waiting taxi while a radio message was flashed from Idlewild to a squad of agents in midtown Manhattan that the suspect was enroute to the Sherry Netherlands. Agents were instructed to keep him under surveillance when he reached the hotel.

The taxi driver stowed Tarditi’s bag into the trunk of his cab and slid behind the wheel. He said, “Where to, sir?”

Tarditi replied, “To the Savoy Hilton.”

The driver noted the destination on his trip sheet. He also scribbled the words “Savoy Hilton” on a piece of paper which he wadded into the palm of his left hand. The driver was Narcotics Agent Francis Waters.

As Waters drove from the loading platform, he placed his left hand carelessly on the doorframe and dropped the piece of paper from the car window. He noted with satisfaction in the rear-view mirror that the car behind him stopped suddenly and a man jumped out to pick up the note.

At the Savoy Hilton, Tarditi was given Room 1337. The guest in 1339 was a Narcotics Bureau agent.

Bourbonnais arrived on schedule about an hour after Tarditi.

The next afternoon, Sunday, agents were stationed at strategic points when Rosal walked from the Pan American jet and made his way to the Customs barrier where Inspector Pasquale Cammello had been assigned to weigh and clear his luggage.

Discreet inquiries at the State Department in Washington had disclosed that Rosal was not accredited in any way as a diplomat to the United States, and, further, that the Guatemalan embassy knew nothing of his trip to this country.

Under these circumstances, Rosal was travelling as a private citizen with no legitimate right to the courtesies usually accorded visiting diplomats. Nevertheless, he boldly claimed the privilege of immunity for the four suitcases which accompanied him and Inspector Cammello gave no hint that the claim was anything but routine.

Cammello noted that the bags weighed 19, 25, 50 and 52 pounds when he placed them on the scales. He chatted pleasantly with the diplomat and then waved Rosal on his way. A Pan American passenger representative was waiting to drive the Ambassador to the Plaza Hotel near the Savoy Hilton.

Rosal registered into Room 1205 at the Plaza, where agents had arranged to occupy an adjoining room. He had a leisurely dinner in the hotel dining room and then he strolled to the nearby Savoy, where he met Tarditi in the lobby. The men kissed each other on the cheek and then sat in a secluded corner in animated conversation. It was almost midnight when they parted and went to their rooms.

The following morning, Tarditi left his hotel and took a cab to an apartment building on East 79th Street. He remained in the building only a few minutes, and when he emerged he was carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper. He went directly back to his hotel.

About 11 A.M., Tarditi left the Savoy Hilton, carrying in his hand the brown parcel, and he walked to the Plaza Hotel.

Customs Agent Mario Cozzi was one of those watching Tarditi. Cozzi never knew what it was that drew his attention to a battered 1957 Ford station wagon parked at the northeast corner of Central Park South. Perhaps it was the driver. He was a huge man with a skull-like face and large ears who seemed to be interested in Tarditi, too. From long habit, Cozzi made a mental note of the license number, New York LK8935.

Tarditi went directly to Rosal’s room, and left the brown parcel with the diplomat. Then he returned to his own hotel.

Narcotics Supervisor George Gaffney and Customs Agent-in-Charge Carl Esposita sat in a parked radio car near the Plaza Hotel entrance. They were reasonably certain that if heroin were being smuggled, then the contraband would be in Rosal’s luggage, for which he had claimed diplomatic immunity. If their suspicions were correct, the question was: Where would the delivery take place and to whom?

A dozen agents were dispersed throughout the area in radio cars, receiving their orders by radio from Gaffney. At noon an alert was flashed when Rosal called for a bellman to take his bags from his room to a taxi. He checked out of the hotel and the bellman placed his four suitcases in the trunk of a taxi.

Only a few minutes earlier, Tarditi had left his hotel. Agents reported by radio that he had gone to the corner of 72nd Street and Lexington Avenue, where he was met by Charles Bourbonnais, the TWA steward, and by a tall, gangling man with a skull-like face. The three men were still standing on the corner talking when Rosal’s taxi pulled away from the Plaza Hotel.

“This must be it,” Gaffney said to Esposita. The command car followed a discreet distance behind Rosal’s cab, which went directly across town to the corner of 72nd Street and Lexington Avenue. There the diplomat stepped from the taxi to be joined by Tarditi and Bourbonnais. Gaffney’s radio car continued on down the street to a vacant parking space.

From the shadow of a doorway across the street, Mario Cozzi snapped a picture of Rosal, Tarditi and Bourbonnais as they stood talking beside the taxi. Then he noticed a familiar-looking Ford station wagon parked nearby. The man at the wheel was the jug-eared driver he had seen parked earlier in the day near the Plaza Hotel, watching Tarditi. The driver was Nicholas Calamaris.

Rosal spoke to the taxi driver, who opened the trunk of the car. The three men looked into the trunk and for a moment it appeared they were going to transfer the luggage from the cab to the station wagon. But Bourbonnais suddenly strode toward the station wagon, while Tarditi and Rosal entered the taxi after the driver had closed the lid of the trunk.

In that interval of a few seconds, a dozen agents were prepared to rush the men if the luggage had been transferred to the station wagon. When nothing happened, Gaffney withheld his order.

Bourbonnais slid into the seat beside Calamaris, who drove toward Third Avenue with Rosal and Tarditi following closely behind in the taxi. At Third Avenue the two cars swung north and still the occupants were totally unaware that their cars were bracketed by the automobiles carrying Narcotics and Customs agents.

At 75th Street, the taxi was halted by a stop light while the station wagon continued on. Gaffney made a sudden decision. “Let’s not tail them any farther,” he snapped into the microphone. “Let’s get them now.” The control car quickly shot forward and swerved in front of the cab. Other cars closed in to block the station wagon.

Mike Cozzi leaped from his car to the taxi, jerked open the door and flashed his agent’s badge. “We’re Treasury agents,” he said. “Don’t make a move.”

“What is this?” Rosal exclaimed.

Tarditi protested, “Do you know who this man is? He is a diplomat! He is entitled to diplomatic immunity!”

The agents began firing questions at the two men.

“A diplomat to what country?”

“I am the Guatemalan ambassador to Brussels.”

“Are you on a diplomatic mission to the United States?”

“No.”

“Does your government know you are in the United States?”

“Well, no....”

At the station wagon, Calamaris was protesting, too. “Why are you stopping us? What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry,” an agent said, “just get moving. Drive off the Avenue onto 76th Street. Over there!”

“I don’t know nothing....”

“Get the car moving. You’re blocking traffic.”

Passersby gawked curiously as the four men were taken from the automobiles with a swarm of agents around them.

“What’s in the trunk of the cab?” Rosal was asked.

“Four suitcases,” he said. “One is mine but the other three don’t belong to me.”

“You brought them into the country, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but they are not mine....”

The cab driver, unable to comprehend what was taking place, was ordered to open the trunk of the taxi. An agent broke open one of the suitcases. It was packed with plastic bags containing a white powder which laboratory tests would later prove to be almost pure heroin.

Rosal himself opened the small case which he insisted was the only bag which belonged to him. Inside was a package wrapped in brown paper—the parcel which the agents had seen Tarditi carry into his room at the Plaza Hotel that morning. It contained $26,000 in U.S. currency.

The men were placed in the agents’ cars along with the heroin-filled suitcases, and taken to the Narcotics Bureau headquarters for questioning.

Agent Frederick Cornetta said to Mike Cozzi, “I’ve got to drive the station wagon to headquarters. Why don’t you ride with me?”

Mike climbed into the front seat of the station wagon beside Cornetta, who took the wheel.

As they moved down Third Avenue, Cozzi looked into the glove compartment and examined its contents. Then he ran his hand into the space beneath the seat and pulled out a paper sack.

“Hey!” he said to Cornetta, “I think I’ve got two more kilos of the stuff.”

He looked inside and exclaimed, “Money! It’s full of money.”

The sack contained $41,949, which Calamaris and Bourbonnais intended to hand over to Tarditi.

At headquarters, Rosal talked freely. He claimed that he first met Tarditi in Paris in the summer of 1959 through a mutual friend. During one conversation, he had told Tarditi that his mother owed $35,000 on some property in Central America and was in danger of losing it if he could not raise the money.

A short time later, he continued, Tarditi had contacted him in Brussels and asked him to carry narcotics into the United States under a cloak of diplomatic immunity. Twice he had made deliveries successfully. The $26,000 found in his suitcase was his commission for the three trips.

Bourbonnais claimed he was only an errand boy for the syndicate. He rambled on vaguely about a mysterious Madame Simone, the wife of a doctor or dentist, whom he had met in Paris in the winter of 1960. Simone had asked him to collect $250,000 from a debtor in New York and to bring the money to her in Paris. He had made the delivery and she had paid him a commission of 1 per cent. Then Simone had asked him to meet a man in New York who would be standing on Fifth Avenue across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 3 P.M. on October 2. This man would be wearing a gray suit and brown hat. He would hand Bourbonnais a package which he was to deliver to Tarditi, who would be in New York at this time.

Bourbonnais said he had met the stranger, received the package, and had arranged to have the package delivered to Tarditi, who passed it on to Rosal. Even if the story were fiction, at least it was one explanation of where the money came from to pay Rosal for the use of his diplomatic immunity.

The heroin in Rosal’s luggage weighed 49.25 kilos. And four days later, agents located another 51.89 kilos of heroin which Tarditi had cached in a trunk on Long Island. It was the largest seizure of heroin ever made in the United States, and Narcotics officials estimated it was worth $20 million on the underworld market.

The Guatemalan ambassador to the United States announced that his government had disavowed Rosal. His trip to the United States had not been authorized, nor had it been sanctioned in any official manner—therefore he was not entitled to the diplomatic immunity which he had claimed.

Rosal was indicted along with Tarditi, Bourbonnais and Calamaris on charges of violating the narcotics laws of the United States. The four pleaded guilty. Rosal and Calamaris were sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Bourbonnais and Tarditi were given nine years each. And in passing sentence, the Federal judge said:

“... I think the death sentence would not be an inappropriate sentence. Under the statute, I can imprison them for up to twenty years. If it had not been for pleas of guilty, I think I would have done so....”

It was only then that the Customs Bureau closed its files on The Case of the Crooked Diplomat.