Pakistanis and Nigerians Linked to Heroin Deals : Drug Is Easy to Buy Abroad and Easy to Sell in U.S., Crime Panel Is Told

Heroin, easy to buy abroad and easy to sell in the United States, is now the business of not only the Mafia but groups of Pakistanis, Nigerians, Mexicans and ever-more Americans, several witnesses told the President’s Commission on Organized Crime on Thursday.

Beyond those groups, “free-lancers” also have taken up the work, people like Cecily Lermusiaux, who as a teen-ager began making $1-million deals for heroin in Asia.

“I had a boyfriend who wanted to invest some money,” Lermusiaux, now 23 and a cooperating witness, said with a giggle.

Well-Heeled Junkies

She and that boyfriend quickly went from a $35,000 profit made on a cocaine deal in Peru to supplying heroin from Southeast Asia to well-heeled junkies in her hometown, Las Vegas.

Lermusiaux smuggled the heroin in her stomach, swallowing packets of it before boarding a plane home. She trained by eating goat’s milk and bread.

“Gets you used to carrying bulk,” she said.

In Thailand, nearly pure heroin was so easy to buy that no advance arrangements were needed, Lermusiaux said. A cab driver could lead the way.

Beside her sat Detective Michael McClary of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. He confirmed her story. He, too, had gone to Thailand on an undercover assignment and quickly found a connection.

Drug Anecdotes

“I want 800,” he told the heroin dealer, assuming he was negotiating for gram quantities.

The dealer fussed with a calculator and informed the detective that 800 kilos would cost him $26 million.

“He asked me where my ship was,” McClary recalled.

Such anecdotes filled the second and final day of heroin hearings in Miami. The commission, created by President Reagan in 1982, has been asked to analyze the operations of organized crime.

This week’s hearing was the fifth one open to the public. Only a dozen or so spectators, however, listened in the steamy federal courtroom, and only five of the 10 commissioners returned after the lunch break.

Smuggling Too Easy

The session’s message was that heroin is too profitable and smuggling too easy.

Iran, Afghanistan and the northwest frontier of Pakistan are now major producers of opium, Charles Gutensohn, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s attache to Pakistan, testified.

“With the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and the special political situation in Iran we’re left with little opportunity for influence,” he said.

Michael DeSanctis, another DEA special agent, said that, since 1982, Nigerians have been entering the United States aboard commercial flights, carrying large amounts of heroin purchased in Pakistan.

Still, the distribution of heroin remains a largely American business.

One-Time Kingpin

Thursday’s testimony began with Leroy Barnes, a one-time drug kingpin in Harlem now serving a life sentence on narcotics charges. Barnes, whose facial features have been surgically changed, wore a black hood to conceal his face.

In the late 1970s, he and other black heroin traffickers formed a “council” for more efficient business. They bought in volume to cut prices. They shared expenses. They invested in tax shelters. “It was the feeling that you could control the neighborhood not through violence but through a better product,” he said.

“I can’t give you the figure, ‘cause I really don’t know,” he said of the profits. “At least several millions.”