Let's Make a Drug Deal

In the week before Christmas of 1987, I got an unexpected phone call from a young Englishman named John Bevan, whom I'd first met 11 years earlier, when I was running a charter yacht in the West Indies. John, who was then 16, was living in the Caribbean with his parents aboard an old wooden schooner that the family had recently sailed across the Atlantic.

The boy eventually became a professional yacht captain, and I'd seen little of him since 1976, except for an occasional meeting at one port or another in the U.S. and the West Indies. The last I'd heard of John before his telephone call, he was skippering a 90-foot steel yacht, the schooner Christina, which was owned by a man named Justin Adams.

Now he was calling from a jail in Brownsville, Texas, to say he was in deep trouble. If Federal prosecutors had their way, there would be no open water for this sailor for many years, if ever. Bevan's story, as he related it that day against the background clamor of the Texas jail, went as follows:

Early in 1987, he'd sailed Christina to a Korean shipyard for a major refit. The boat was hauled out of the water and cut in half, so that a 20-foot section could be added midships to lengthen the hull. Such a complicated and expensive procedure usually would mean frequent consultations between skipper and owner, but Justin Adams was not the typical owner. In Bevan's six years aboard Christina, Adams had spent less than two weeks on the vessel, leaving his captain to run it as he saw fit.

By the late spring of 1987, however, the refit was running out of money and Bevan's salary was six months in arrears. That in itself was nothing unusual: A couple of years earlier, he'd gone without pay for more than a year and had lived off the boat's American Express card. He'd threatened to quit, but Adams gave him a raise--from $1500 to $2000 a month, still a miserly wage--and Bevan stayed. He felt much obliged to Adams: In Venezuela three years earlier, when he had almost died from serum hepatitis, his boss had flown him to the U.S. for treatment and kept his job open while he recovered.

The unpaid bills at the Korean shipyard could not be ignored, however, and in June of 1987, Bevan used the boat's credit card to book a flight to Florida for an urgent meeting with his elusive boss. He'd hoped that Adams would pay up promptly, so that he could fly on to Europe to pick up new rigging. But Adams brushed aside any talk about the boat or the money, promising that everything would be taken care of in a few days. He had urgent business on the Caribbean island of Aruba and he wanted Bevan to go with him; they could discuss the refit on the plane. "Think of it as a vacation," he told his captain; "I'll do my business and you can lie around on the beach."

Just before the plane landed, Adams told him that Victor Mason, one of the men he was meeting on Aruba, was a member of the Carlos Marcello Mafia family of New Orleans and that Bevan should be respectful and careful not to antagonize Mason, as he was notoriously short-tempered. An older and wiser man might have caught the first plane out, but Bevan, eager to get back to Korea to put the boat back together, made the fateful decision to stay on.

Two months after their trip to the Caribbean, Adams was still making excuses about the promised refit money and Bevan's back pay. Then he called with the news that the cash was finally ready. But on the day after he counted out the money, which totaled $200,000, he announced a change of plans: The boat money would have to wait. Counting out an additional $55,000, he instructed Bevan to take the full amount to Mason, the purported mafioso, who was waiting for it in Harlingen, Texas. "Just do this," he told his frustrated skipper, "and I swear you'll get the boat money as soon as you come back."

"Dumbest move of my life," Bevan said when he phoned from Brownsville. "All I could think of was getting back to work. I told Adams to let someone else take the money, but he said I was the only person he could trust with it, so I took it."

Mason, it turned out, was an undercover agent from the Mc Allen, Texas, office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. When Bevan arrived with the money, the hand-over was recorded on video tape. The cash was part payment for a shipload of marijuana purchased by Adams, who was in the midst of his biggest deal ever as a drug trafficker.

I told Bevan I was sorry for what had happened to him, but other than send him books or magazines, or call his family in England, there was little I could do to help. But he wasn't looking for sympathy: He didn't deny taking the cash to Mason. (He couldn't deny it; the two-hour video tape of that transaction--which I later saw--is plain evidence, even if it fails to prove conclusively that he knew what the money was for. When Mason tried to steer their conversation into more incriminating channels, Bevan put up his hands and said, "You don't have to tell me anything--it's your business, whatever's between you two.") But there was something very strange about this case, he told me when he phoned that day. "I don't know what's happened here, but something isn't right. I just can't put my finger on it. Can you do me a favor? See if you can find out anything about a man named Mike Harris--or Mike Palmer. It's the same guy--he uses different names. I can tell you this: He's not what he seems to be."

With some reluctance, I said I'd make a few inquiries and find out what I could about Harris/Palmer. I didn't know then that it would take the best part of a year to piece together the story nor that Bevan himself would fade into relative insignificance as the facts emerged. Least of all did I suspect that the pursuit of Michael Bernard Palmer, which is his legal name, would expose a scandal that touched on Government policy in Nicaragua and implicated the Central Intelligence Agency, the State and Justice departments and the Drug Enforcement Administration in one of the most cynical and surreal deceptions in recent U.S. history.

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Mike Palmer was no ordinary drug dealer. Between 1977 and 1985, he made millions of dollars by flying planeloads of marijuana into the U.S. from Colombia. He was a partner in a Michigan-based organization that rewarded its most successful members with gold medals encrusted with diamond chips. In his first four years with the organization, he made enough money to buy an apartment building and a half-dozen houses in Miami and condos in Colorado and the Cayman Islands. Throughout his smuggling career, he held down a full-time job flying passenger jets for Delta Air Lines.

In May of 1985, Palmer and a copilot flew down to Colombia to deliver a $1,000,000 payment for a previous load and collect a new cargo of marijuana that was waiting near the airstrip. It was supposed to be a routine run, but shortly after they landed, a police helicopter appeared and shot up the Americans' plane. Nobody was wounded, but the plane was disabled, the money and drugs vanished and Palmer and his copilot were taken into custody. They spent the next three months in jail.

This was awkward for Palmer. He was still working for Delta when he was busted in Colombia, and the airline sent a senior pilot to interview him while he was in jail. Palmer told him he'd been delivering the plane to Aruba and had lost his way in bad weather.

Delta suspended Palmer, pending a full investigation, and he began working for Vortex, a Miami aircraft-leasing company. Vortex was then prospering from its connections with the Washington intelligence community and the Nicaraguan Contra movement. Through the closing months of 1985 and the spring of 1986, the company received upwards of $300,000 in contracts to deliver supposedly humanitarian, nonlethal goods to the Contras. Palmer, who had sold Vortex a DC-6 from his drug-running days, was made vice-president of the company. In Miami flying circles, he was known as "the CIA pilot."

His past began catching up with him in March of 1986, when Delta convened its executive board to hear his plea for reinstatement. Palmer, under oath, stuck to his original story: that he'd lost his way in bad weather and was innocent of any involvement in the drug business. The board didn't believe him, though it would be two years before he was dropped from the active list of Delta pilots.

Three months later, he faced a far more serious threat when he learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was about to expose his smuggling organization in Michigan. Palmer was named in five drug counts in the same indictment that would lead to a 25-year sentence for his partner. As the FBI dragnet tightened, he threw himself on the market as an informer. A Customs Service memo that later surfaced describes this chapter in Palmer's career.

He first started working for the FBI office in Miami, [but] Palmer began lying and this caused the Miami FBI case to be closed. Next, Palmer began working for the FBI office in New Orleans. This operation once again ended when the FBI caught Palmer lying to them. Palmer then went to work for the San Francisco FBI office. He was supposed to work an undercover operation in which he was to fly a load of hashish to the U.S. Once again, this operation ended when the FBI caught Palmer lying to them.

Customs itself rejected Palmer's services and, in another memo, dismissed the (continued on page 148) Drug Deal (continued from page 72) would-be informer as "a real snake."

Palmer's last chance was Joe Haas, a longtime friend and professional informer for the DEA, who introduced his old flying buddy (they'd worked together for an airline that flew Central and South American routes) to friends at the McAllen, Texas, office of the DEA. Palmer made the grade, as a documented confidential informant who would work with Haas under the supervision of special agents Luis Saldana and Vic Mason.

What Palmer proposed was this: He'd go to Colombia, alone and unsupervised, reactivate his old suppliers in the dope business, make a deal with them to supply a large quantity of drugs and then find buyers in the United States. Once the drugs were delivered, everyone would be arrested. Palmer's reward would be freedom from the charges in Michigan.

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Palmer wasted no time in cranking up his one-man mission to Colombia, which by then was code-named Operation Intruder. By early August of 1986, he had contacted a group that told the pilot he could count on them for 250 tons of marijuana. A second trafficker said he could provide five tons of premium-quality cocaine. The combined shipment would travel by sea from Colombia to Texas. A smaller load of ten tons of marijuana could be made ready for shipment immediately, if Palmer could arrange transportation. That was no problem. Palmer and Haas would fly the load themselves, using the DC-6 that Palmer had sold to Vortex.

On September 19, 1986, Palmer and Haas did just that, flying ten tons of marijuana from Colombia to a Mexican airstrip 30 miles south of the U.S. border, then delivering the load to the buyers: Justin Adams and his associate Alejandro Cerna.

Some of the load was stolen in Mexico, some was flown to California and about one and a half tons was seized by a sharpeyed park ranger who stopped an overloaded Winnebago when it crossed the border into Big Bend National Park. But more than half was safely smuggled across by boat and truck.

Palmer and Haas told the DEA of the DC-6 shipment the same day they delivered it; it was information that the drug agents kept to themselves. Thus, the Mexican authorities, with whom the U.S. Government had recently signed yet another mutual agreement for the suppression of drug traffic, never knew about the plane or the drugs. Neither did any other branch of U.S.law enforcement.

In short, the DEA allowed two of its informants to fly drugs into a friendly nation, then failed to do anything about it, with the result that some six tons of marijuana got lost in the America of "Just say no."

•

Adams was so pleased with the results of the DC-6 load (he told Palmer he'd cleared a profit of $1,500,000 on his share) that he made a down payment of more than $500,000--duly paid to DEA agents--against the bigger shipment in the works.

Adams, who liked people to call him Doc, found it hard to maintain his professional cool in his dealings with an undercover team that visited him at his base near Atlanta. Convinced that he was among buddies, he told the agents he'd been in the dope business for 12 years and took them on a tour of his Atlanta operation, showing them his safe full of $100 bills and his climate-controlled underground vault--with space for ten tons of marijuana--buried beneath a horse barn. The money was a problem, he confessed--so much to hide. Years of experience had taught him that the best method was to pack the cash in Ziploc bags, squeeze out the air with a vise and bury them. Personally, he used a backhoe for both burial and retrieval.

Palmer, meanwhile, reported to the DEA that his big deal with the Colombians--the one for 250 tons of marijuana and five tons of cocaine--had fallen apart. But through the closing months of 1986 and into 1987, the DEA's star informer continued to dangle ever more spectacular deals, none of which materialized. Which is not to say that Palmer was inactive.

Indeed, in March of 1987, The Miami Herald ran a story about his involvement in State Department assistance to Nicaraguan Contras and mentioned his indictment on Federal drug charges in Michigan. The Herald story was not the kind of publicity an undercover man wanted, and it threatened to expose Operation Intruder.

Haas was the man who inadvertently blew the whistle. On March 21, he had landed a Vortex DC-6 at Miami International Airport after a flight to Central America. Suspecting that he was carrying drugs, Customs agents threatened to search the plane, but Haas resisted. His aircraft was on U.S. Government business, he told them, and if Customs didn't believe him, it could call Mike Palmer of Vortex.

Palmer arrived while the search was in progress. (The search uncovered a list of weapons and supplies written in Spanish and a note specifying a geographic coordinate in the highlands of Nicaragua.) According to one of the reports that later passed between Miami and Washington, Palmer "regrettably confronted the Customs inspectors in an arrogant manner" and ordered them to let the plane pass without inspection. Tempers cooled after an unidentified "agency" in Washington sent an apologetic message (classified secret) promising that nothing of the kind would occur in the future and that Customs would be informed well in advance of the arrival of similar flights. The message ended with a burst of bureaucratic good fellowship: "Thank you for your continued support."

It was testament to Palmer's cunning and charm that he persuaded his Colombia connections to disregard the airport incident and the Miami Herald story. At the same time, he managed to conceal just about everything he was doing from the DEA. Nobody really knew whom he was seeing or what deals he was making, because much of the time, especially in Colombia, he'd be alone or traveling with Adams or Cerna. Blind to everything except the potential rewards of Operation Intruder, the DEA never questioned its informer's optimistic reports.

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In June of 1987, the Colombian suppliers passed word that the big load was finally ready for shipment. Palmer went to Panama and bought the ship that would be used to carry the drugs from Colombia to Port Isabel, Texas. She was the Madrid, a 2000-ton freighter equipped with three cranes for loading cargo. With everything now seemingly in place, the payments made, the marijuana gathering at the loading beaches and the Madrid crewed and fueled, Palmer flew to Aruba in late June to meet Adams and nail down last-minute details with skipper Gus de la Vega. This time, he traveled with DEA agent Mason, a natural actor, who, in his pose as a member of the Marcello crime family, also played the part of principal fixer at the dockside warehouse in Port Isabel.

The Madrid had been anchored off Aruba for three weeks and some of the crew members were getting jumpy. The ship was running out of water, the diet was reduced to fishheads and banana soup. The men wanted to call their families. They wanted showers. Mostly, they wanted to go ashore and stretch their legs. De la Vega was going home; he let it be known that he distrusted Palmer and, to Mason's horror, accused Mason of being a cop.

A witness to the events in Aruba was sitting at a waterfront bar when Palmer and Mason returned from their meeting with De la Vega. "Mason was furious when they came ashore," he said, "raging mad, cursing at Gus. 'I'm gonna snuff that motherfucker,' he said. 'He's history.' Palmer was trying to calm him down. He said, 'Vic, there's more than one way to skin this cat. We can take care of him later. He can always fall over the side.' I was scared shitless. You have to picture this Mason character. He was all neck and shoulders. Heavy tan, smothered in gold. Barely in control of himself. He's going, 'Fuck, this, fuck that snuff him, he's dead,' and he's punching his fists in the air and raving on about how his people take care of punks like Gus. 'If they don't do it the way I want it done, they're gonna fuckin' pay,' and I thought, Jesus, this is creepy."

The Madrid's crew was taken ashore and given spending money for a night on the town. Palmer and Adams hosted a dinner at which Palmer made light of the captain's defection by joking with Mason. "Imagine old Gus, accusing you of being a cop," he said. Adams led the laughter.

For the crew, the rest of the time in Aruba passed in a blur of booze, drugs, gambling and hookers. "I stayed drunk for a week," one of them recalled. "We had showers of hot and cold running women. The perfect vacation." Palmer played craps and won $30,000. One of Adams' people helped him carry his chips to the cash window in the casino. The same man said Palmer would often light up a joint and share it with Adams while they drove around the island.

Three weeks after the Aruba party, the ship arrived at the Colombian rendezvous to collect the waiting load, which was supposed to he around 500,000 pounds, or 250 tons. This is what a crewman later said:

"We stopped about a mile offshore on the evening of July twenty-seventh. Everyone on board was drunk--I mean completely smashed--including the guy who'd been made skipper. I don't think he knew we'd stopped. There were guys running around on deck, waving guns and swigging aguardiente; they didn't know what was going on. The first boat came out about eight P.M. One of those bongos, big tree-trunk dugouts with one-hundred-forty-horsepower Yamaha outboards. Gus de la Vega was in it! Told me some bullshit story about being forced back into the deal. But we had no time to talk about that. He was with some Indian guy, a midget as black as the ace of spades. He and Gus were the traffic directors; they both had two-way radios to communicate with the ship and the beach. So they started loading. About five in the morning, they said, 'That's it.' And I thought, That doesn't look like no five hundred thousand pounds to me, so I called down to one of the guys and asked him what happened to the rest. He tells me it went out the night before on the other ship we sent. And I'm thinking, What other ship? This is the only ship. But the guy swore it had gone and there was no more. So we left."

(Witnesses to the events in Aruba and aboard the Madrid asked for anonymity, saying they feared recriminations in their continuing challenges to the Government's role in Operation Intruder.)

From Colombia, the Madrid sailed northwest to Belize, where the original crew disembarked and was replaced by a crew comprised entirely of U.S. Government personnel, mostly DEA agents. The rest of the voyage was completed under escort by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter all the way to Port Isabel, where the cargo was unloaded under the supervision of Mason and other agents and delivered to a warehouse not far from the DEA's McAllen office. The shipment amounted to about 64 tons of marijuana--a quarter of what Palmer had originally promised. There was no cocaine.

Palmer then notified Adams and the two of them flew to Texas in mid-August to inspect the merchandise. Adams stopped at a taco stand near the airport, unaware that he was being trailed on the ground and in the air by a surveillance force of 26 men and women from the DEA (Texas, Colorado and Georgia offices), the U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs Service and the Texas Department of Public Safety. At the warehouse, one of them obligingly took snapshots of the stash. Adams and Palmer stood near the bales, toasting their success.

•

Although the Government now had enough to convict Adams, it wasn't ready to spring the final trap in Operation Intruder. The DEA's next target was Adams' pal Alejandro Cerna, who in many ways was regarded as a far greater menace than Adams because of his career in the cocaine trade. The DEA control for the operation moved from Texas to Detroit, where the Government set up the last sting in Operation Intruder.

The agents in charge were Ken Magee of the DEA and Ned Timmons of the FBI. Palmer, who has a droll sense of humor, had recommended Timmons for the Detroit stage of the operation; he had led the investigation that produced the indictment against Palmer in 1986. Now they would be working on the same side, gunning for Cerna.

In late July, Palmer and Cerna had flown to the Grosse He airport 25 miles south of Detroit, which would serve as the off-loading site for a second drug run using the same Vortex DC-6 that Palmer and Haas had flown to Mexico. The cargo would be marijuana and cocaine, and Cerna was in for the majority share.

Much of the most incriminating evidence against Cerna was supplied to the agents by Cerna himself, who was unaware that the van in which they drove him around Detroit carried a broadcast-quality tape recorder. And he had much to say about his success in smuggling drugs into the U.S. from Mexico, Haiti, Jamaica and the Bahamas. To him, the upcoming DC-6 flight was just another job.

But the Detroit agents were taking no chances with the operation. Unlike the abortive flight to Mexico by Haas and Palmer, this one would be shadowed every foot of the way by law-enforcement aircraft, including two ocean-ranging P-3s, a Customs jet and three other stand-by planes. Palmer was at the controls when the DC-6 took off, shortly after noon on September 2, 1987.

The Colombian airstrip was on the tip of the Guajira peninsula, near a place called Puerto Estrella. As Palmer began his final approach over the Caribbean, with a radioman guiding him from the ground, he was astounded by his instructions: Stay clear and go into a holding pattern. There was too much traffic on the ground, the radioman said; other planes were still loading their drugs; the DC-6 would have to take its turn. It was almost an hour before Palmer got his clearance to land on the runway, which had about a half-dozen aircraft with teams of workers busily heaving drugs aboard at the far end. He was met by a well-dressed Colombian wearing a hat, a polo shirt and expensive boots. Introducing himself as el jefe of the airstrip, the man greeted Palmer with a big smile and said in English, "Welcome to Cocaine International Airport!"

A crew of Colombians carrying shotguns and machine guns drove up and demanded that Palmer fly a 600-kilo load back to the U.S. with them and their weapons. Palmer told them they could forget it, he was already committed, and they roared off along the runway to see if they could make a deal with another pilot.

While a gang of about 50 laborers manhandled the marijuana bales through the cargo doors of the DC-6, a regulation-size airport tanker refueled the plane for the return flight. The cocaine was stowed in the rear of the fuselage. There was no time for an accurate count, but Palmer knew from experience that he was close to maximum load and gave the signal to leave.

It took almost 11 hours to make the return journey to Detroit. An engine blew a cylinder half an hour after take-off, cutting down severely on flying speed and altitude. Palmer later reported that to avoid mountains at the southern end of Haiti, he had had to fly deep into Cuban airspace. There he had some anxious moments wondering what would happen if, as an indicted American drug smuggler flying a known Contra resupply plane loaded with narcotics, he were forced to make a landing.

His fears came to nothing, however, and at dawn on September third, the big silver DC-6 was on the ground at the Grosse He airport, with a cargo that weighed in at 17,381 pounds of marijuana and 1262 pounds of cocaine.

Agent Magee and his fake security gang, watched by an FBI SWAT team and a group of Customs agents in a boat on the Detroit River, and filmed by another agent in the airport control tower, quickly unloaded the DC-6.

Cerna was in his hotel, where he'd checked in that morning. He'd told the agents he preferred not to be on the scene when the plane landed, because he thought the area might be too "hot." He also said he was eager to get home for his daughter's ninth birthday that weekend. He complained that he was always missing his children's birthdays "because I'm working, working, working."

Palmer commiserated. "You need to retire for a while," he said.

Cerna's assistant, a young man with the promising name of Peter Piper, arrived in Detroit to weigh Cerna's share. Piper came from the Doc Adams school of unrestrained confession. He had much to tell the agents as they drove him around in their mobile tape recorder. He showed them his custom-made moneybag in which he'd once carried $800,000 and told them this was an especially busy time because of the demands of the drug business, which, he said, was his only occupation. He invited them to his $4,000,000 ranch in Colorado and his new house in Aspen, boasted of his nine trips to Colombia and the 20,000-pound marijuana deal he'd recently pulled off. He owned a gold Rolex, a BMW and an Audi, belonged to the Miami Polo Club and raised Labradors. "What a life," sighed agent Magee.

Magee and his men kept up their front for the next three days, to allow the Texas DEA office time to ship the incriminating load from the Madrid to Adams in Georgia, and to enable other Federal agencies to line up their suspects for arrest. In all, the final arrangements called for a synchronized operation in five states.

On September sixth, a convoy of agents and drug suspects drove to a warehouse in Dearborn, Michigan, to divide the cocaine load, most of which was to be driven to New York. Cerna had flown back to Florida with Palmer, leaving Piper and five other suspects to take care of business. Piper wasn't impressed by them. "These guys have a lot of work to do to become professionals," he told one of the agents. Minutes later, just as he had finished counting out 25 kilos of cocaine, he was busted, along with the rest of the group.

Cerna was at a Fort Lauderdale restaurant that evening, talking with Palmer and another doper connection about the mystery of the incomplete Madrid load, when the doper excused himself to make a phone call. When he came back, he was a DEA agent. He arrested Cerna and, for effect, Mike Palmer.

Adams was picked up in Georgia supervising the off-load of a trailer truck carrying 50,000 pounds of marijuana, which had finally arrived from Texas. Videos taken at the arrest scene showed him and four of his employees. Doc had a slight, knowing smirk on his face. He was heard to comfort one of his people with the words "This is no worse than getting busted for shoplifting."

In Washington, Attorney General Edwin Meese hailed Operation Intruder as "one of the most significant" drug cases ever. Indeed it was: Every last ounce of the drugs seized in the 15-month operation--80 tons of marijuana and the two thirds of a ton of cocaine--was carried into the country by U.S. Government personnel and by paid informants.

Altogether, 29 people were arrested, among them John Bevan, who was at home in Fort Lauderdale, still waiting for word to go back to the shipyard in Korea.

More arrests followed in the new year as suspects made their deals for reduced sentences and gave new names to the Government. Without exception, the Colombian suppliers escaped prosecution. There were no trials, because all the defendants pleaded guilty. Bevan's public defender recommended that his client accept a sentence of five years, because he would surely get at least 15 years if he went to trial. Bevan took the five, knowing that he still had to face a second indictment in Atlanta.

For Cerna, it was 20 years. Doc Adams got 12, of which he will probably serve no more than eight. In jail, he became a prolific source of information to the DEA, resulting in a torrent of new charges against old pals in the dope business. The Justice Department rewarded him by restoring half of his foreign assets, though these amounted to zero after the IRS and Doc's lawyer took their shares. His attorney, Steven H. Sadow of Atlanta, said that Adams made the "difficult choice to cooperate" when it became clear that he had an indefensible case and could go to prison for life without parole if convicted at trial.

Mike Palmer, of course, was not charged with anything. He did appear before a Federal grand jury in Michigan in late September to explain his role in Operation Intruder. A tall, boyish figure of considerable charm and undoubted intelligence, he made the right impression on the jury and said his old career in the dope business was behind him. A month later, U.S. Attorney Roy Hayes signed a motion to dismiss Palmer's 1986 indictment. He was free, after a fashion. "The decision was made in the interest of justice," Hayes wrote.

A few months later, Palmer submitted his Operation Intruder expense account for the period from July 1986 to September 1987. It covered costs in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Panama, Aruba and Colombia and amounted to $24,079.86. In April of 1988, he was called to Washington to testify before Senator John F. Kerry and the subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that was investigating links among Contras, drugs, weapons and the CIA. Palmer had disguised himself with hair dye and cheek pouches. He told the Senators that he'd decided to quit the smuggling trade in 1985 because he realized he'd "trashed" his life. Nobody asked him why it had been almost a decade before remorse seized his conscience.

"I've done some terrible things for a number of years," he said. His decision to quit the drug business had been reinforced, he added, when one of his partners in the Michigan group had talked about hiring a Teamster goon to kill someone who had become a nuisance. "What it signified to me," Palmer said earnestly, "was that we were no longer a bunch of fun-loving Jimmy Buffett types."

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Last summer, I met Palmer at the office of Axel Kleiboemer, his attorney in Washington. He was courteous, thoughtful, deliberate, a man who gave every appearance of telling the truth, a good guy to be with. He has a pleasant speaking voice, laughs easily but not too easily and appears mildly puzzled by the charges made against him by the people he sent to jail. (Allegations against the informer said he had stolen millions of dollars in cash and drugs, worked free-lance dope deals with Government agents and with Haas, ferried weapons to Colombian Communists, delivered a case of guns with the Mexican DC-6 shipment and acted as personal pilot for war-crazed U.S. politicians on Contra missions over Nicaragua.)

Palmer could not explain why the FBI in Miami, San Francisco and New Orleans thought of him as a liar, nor why the Customs Service had described him as a snake. Nor did he seem particularly worried.

He said he was thinking of going into real estate. He thought he might do well in it.

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Echoes from the operation continued throughout the summer of 1988. Palmer's old buddy Joe Haas died of an aneurism in early July and the Vortex DC-6 that had served so well in Mexico and Detroit dived into a Louisiana swamp, killing all three crew members. Palmer later insisted that it was sabotage, but Federal investigators found no evidence of that. Palmer flew to the scene to lend a hand; he traveled under an assumed name.

And there was a final echo in September, when the House Judiciary Committee called Palmer and key DEA officials, including the McAllen chief, to yet another Washington hearing. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, New Jersey Democrat William J. Hughes, began with a statement that singled out John Bevan. He noted that Bevan's mother had traveled from England to do what she could for her son.

"Mrs. Bevan told us she knew her son had done wrong and deserved to be punished," Hughes said, "but that she was baffled by the American system of justice. She could not understand why her son had been threatened with a fifteen-year sentence and forced to agree to a five-year sentence ... while a large-scale, longtime trafficker had his case dismissed entirely because he cooperated after being caught. We had no satisfactory answer for her."

There were many inconclusive exchanges about money received from the traffickers by Haas and Palmer and about the abortive flight to Mexico, but in the clutch, the answers from Palmer and the DEA invariably adopted what might be called the William Casey defense: They skewered Joe Haas, who was dead. "We told them not to go, but they went anyway," said special agent John Wagner, formerly of the McAllen DEA office and now based in Washington. Wagner said he'd been "extremely upset" when he learned of the DC-6 flight to Mexico.

Palmer, wearing a luxuriant gray wig for this appearance, stunned the room when he said that the committee's own investigator was "on the payroll of the Colombian cocaine cartel." Hughes said he found Palmer "absolutely reprehensible" and ordered him to produce his financial records for the years from 1976 to 1986. The Congressman said he didn't believe much of anything that Mike Palmer said and gave the impression he wasn't crazy about the DEA's explanations either, and there the hearing wound down. Palmer left with his wig, his attorney and bodyguards, the DEA went home with their maps and charts proclaiming the success of Operation Intruder, and Chairman Hughes called an early adjournment to rush off for another crucial House vote.

•

I remembered a remark made to Lisa Baker, a reporter on The Brownsville Herald, by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Wolfe, who'd been a zealous prosecutor in the Texas case against Bevan. Wolfe's the man who once asked Baker to go down the hall and help him out in the men's room because his doctor had advised him not to lift anything over ten pounds. That wasn't his most profound contribution to American jurisprudence, however. What I remembered about Wolfe was his comment when one of the defense lawyers threatened to go for a jury trial and call Palmer as a witness. Wolfe told Baker he'd love to see Palmer take the stand, "because whether he's telling the truth or telling a lie, that jury's going to believe him, because he's that kind of guy."

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In early November, there was another call from John Bevan. He was about to be transferred to Atlanta to face trial on his second indictment. If convicted, he could receive two life sentences.

"Money was a problem--so much to hide. The best method was to pack the cash in bags and bury them."