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THE MALTESE DOUBLE CROSS -- ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY & SCREENCAP GALLERY |
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[Lester Coleman, U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency] They could not eradicate the drugs in Lebanon, so they only could do two things. That is, to monitor what was being produced and how it was being shipped out, and (2) use DEA informants from Lebanon in drug sting operations back in the United States to set up drug buys and catch drug buyers in the U.S. And that was a big part of what they were doing. The DEA informants would fly into Los Angeles, for example, or Detroit, and they would be loaned out to the local DEA office and used in a drug sting operation. Many times they would haul in heroin with them in a controlled delivery. Sometimes they would take in cash and act as a buyer.
[Steve Donahue, DEA undercover agent] This scheme involved infiltrating DEA agents from all of Western Europe into a Lebanese network.
[Lester Coleman, U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency] The DEA office in Cyprus was responsible for monitoring drug activities in Lebanon. They had to do it from a distance because the agents themselves were not allowed to step foot in Lebanon. So they were relying on anything and everything their informers were telling them.
[Steve Donahue, DEA undercover agent] And by that time, which was in the mid-80's, the people that were in the heroin business were also involved in financing Syrian terrorism.
[Oliver "Buck Revell," FBI Head of Lockerbie Investigation] Lebanon is a conduit for a great deal of drugs and the organizations that are moving it through or at least supporting the movement through are the violent political organizations such as the Hizbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and now Hamas. They are directly connected with much of the drug trafficking through that area.
[Steve Donahue, DEA undercover agent] The heroin laboratories themselves were located in the Bekaa Valley. The major one was run by Jamil Hamieh who was a target of our investigation, and he was in the process of producing over 100 kilos in a single batch for part of a thousand kilo shipment. And they would obtain the opium from Diyarbekir in Turkey, transport it with the Syrians into Lebanon, and then process it, but it was a method for financing, at the first level, internal military action in Lebanon and at the second level, as it turns out, to finance terrorist activities in Europe and abroad.
[Lester Coleman, U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency] It was arranged by the DIA for me to go over and work for the DEA in this narcotics operations group headed by Micheal T. Hurley who was the country attache in those days. And my main responsibility was to gather intelligence in Lebanon related to opium production and trafficking and illegal ports and that kind of thing.
[Steve Donahue, DEA undercover agent] I only knew of Hurley's involvement as a name at that time, because he was the station chief in Cyprus. But all the station chiefs in Frankfurt and Bonn and Amsterdam and in Paris all knew about the operation.
[Lester Coleman, U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency] A controlled delivery is a delivery where a courier carriers a predetermined amount of heroin through security checkpoints with the knowledge and consent of the local law enforcement people, for example the Germans in Frankfurt, the British Customs and Excise Service in London to pass the heroin through on the way to New York and then on to Detroit or Houston or Los Angeles.
[Juval Aviv, Investigator] The drug trafficking occurred, as we understood at the time, at least once or twice a week a courier would carry a suitcase, some brown Samsonite suitcase, full of drugs from Cyprus to Frankfurt with an arrangement in Frankfurt with a baggage handler that the suitcase would be switched. He would come in and check in with a suitcase that is similar suitcase full of clothing, it would go through the security system, it would go down the chute, down to the basement, and then one of the employees, Pan Am employees, the baggage handler would switch a similar case full of drugs, it would go on board, it will arrive in Kennedy or Detroit and then it would be sold in the local market.
[Lester Coleman, U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency] Well, one of the routes I was familiar with and told firsthand about was the route that went from Beirut via Cyprus to Frankfurt to London to Detroit or Houston or Los Angeles.
[Juval Aviv, Investigator] It was supervised and surveilled by the German authorities. They knew that it occurred. I assume that the British Government was aware that it occurred. So there was a cooperation between three governments to monitor this activity: the Germans, the British and the American government.
[Narrator] This 1986 Drug Enforcement Agency document, a meeting between Marty McGuire, Frankfurt resident DEA agent, and Mike Hurley, Cyprus resident agent, already all the key words, the Bekaa, heroin, Syria, Cyprus, Frankfurt.
[Juval Aviv, Investigator] While this was going on, one has to remember that there were several hostages that were kept in Lebanon of many nationalities. And there was a long effort to release them by negotiations which hasn't worked out. At one point, the U.S. government entertained, the military entertained the possibility of releasing those hostages by force.
[Lester Coleman, U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency] And after the CIA station was blown in Lebanon, there was a mutual effort on the part of several agencies to sort of pick up the pieces and at that particular time, DEA informants were also, the information they were coming out with was being passed on to the CIA station in Cyprus.
So progressively, DEA informants were being used as assets for the CIA. So in essence, DEA informant was a cover for a CIA operation.
[Narrator] The old American embassy in Cyprus in the process of demolition.
The great eagle seal torn from the wall.
Its miles of communication cables ripped out. Debris falling fast, Mike Hurley's ground floor office, as if even here a trail had to be destroyed.
DEA chief Mike Hurley would receive intelligence about the terrorist drug networks.
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