SUNDAY POST HERALD
STEPT O
73
Undercover das
task
fanso
in Wanchai drug blitz
SPECIAL REPORT BY KEVIN SINCLAIR
AN UNDERCOVER task force of Hongkong and American narcotics agents has ended a week- long operation aimed at smashing the dope rings that provide heroin to U.S. sailors.
The secret operation began last Monday when a flotilla of five warships from the U.S. Seventh Fleet steamed into Hongkong.
It ended yesterday when the ships and their 2,000 sailors left the Colony.
Last night. weary
Narcotics Bureau detectives and American security men were adding up the score of arrests, searches and dope hauls they made in the operation.
The large-scale sweep was the first co- operative venture of its kind – but it certainly will not be the last.
"We aim to make it as hard as possible for souts and bargirls to sell drugs to visiting American sailors,” one of the detectives in the operation said last night.
A quick check of bars in Wanchai and Tsimshatsui last night showed the effects of the raids, arrests and stake outs were already be.ng felt. Bargirls quickly walked away when reporters asked them about drugs.
They had good reason to be uneasy. In the six days and nights of the joint undercover sweep. Narcotics Bureau detectives delved deep
into the seamier side of Hongkong beneath the bright lights of the zeon dit tourist areas.
They were aided by sophisticated teams of American intelligence experts advised by agents stationed in Hongkong from the U.S. Drugs Enforcement Agency.
In the front line of the operation were four young American safors. all of them known drug users themselves, who were given a choice when their ships came to Hongkong operate or face the music from U.S. authorities.
They chose to co-operate.
P
CO-
The drive to dig out the drug suppliers was split into four groups, each fronted by one of the young American sailors.
one of the
Each sailor had a "control" navy drug experts specially flown here from American narcotics teams overseas.
Each American was backed up by a team
of tough Narcotics Bureau detectives.
At the top of the operational plan was the chief of the Narcotics Bureau, Chief Superintendent John Rumbeiow, and Mr Keith Shostrum of the Hongkong office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
On Friday night, I went with one of the teams to see how the operation worked.
Going from bar to bar in Wanchai, chatting- up bargirls and seeing if they offered him drugs, was a 19-year-old sailor named Bert.
He was tailed from a distance by two experienced Chinese detectives from Narcotics Bureau.
the
Bert is a quietly-spoken, slim, bespectacled teenager who was recently found unconscious in a U.S. naval shore base with a drug overdose. When he came to, he was given a choice of facing charges, and probably going to a military prison and then being dishonourably discharged, or of co-operating with the authorities to track down drug peddlars when his ship came to Hongkong.
Bert's "control" was a Narcotics agent named John. a balding, burly ex-cop from Nebraska who is now a U.S. overseas drug expert.
Organising the trapping and arrests of the heroin peddlars was a team from Narcotics Bureau headed by Detective Inspectors Ron Whitley, Mike Dunn and Millie Stradmoor. They had with them 10 skilled Chinese detectives.
The other teams were set up in a similar
manner.
On Friday afternoon. Bert picked-up a bargirl in a Wanchai disco.
Evidently, ashore in Hongkong, a visiting young sailor's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love and heroin. In the dim bar, Bert bought the girl a $15 "Wanchai whisky" - diluted cold
tea.
She looked deeply into his eyes - and asked if he wanted to buy some "packets."
"Yes." he said.
The girl took him to a second floor flat on Gloucester Road.
She produced two small packets of number three hercia and gor $130 in exchange. Bert said his shipmates might also want some heroin, and arranged to return to the flat at li
pm.
He and the girl returned to a Kowloon hotel where Bert was staying while his ship was in port. Before they left Hongkong Island, he told the girl he had to telephone a tailor. Instead, he telephoned Inspector Whitley.
"They're coming," Whitley said. In a small hotel room in Kowloon detectives and American agents waited, sweating quietly. It was 5:30 pm. The air-conditioner had broken down, but they hardly noticed this as they tensed for the sound of a walkie-talkie radio- "bieep, bleep" signal.
The signal, when it finally came was triggered off from an electronic surveillance gadget in Bert's pocket.
woman
Chinese Millie Stradmoor, a detective, and Whitley went to the next room, “Ayah,” the girl said, and immediately broke
into tears.
She admitted helping the sailor by the drugs.
Late that night, Bert kept his 11 pm appointment at the flat in Wanchai where he had promised to buy heroin for his shipmates.
But before he went there, careful staff work went on at a lonely spot on the waterfront.
V
HEK 19/3
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