Kingpin
ALSO BY RICHARD STRATTON:
Smack Goddess
Slam: The Book (editor, with Kim Wozencraft)
Altered States of America: Outlaws and Icons, Hitmakers and Hitmen
Smuggler’s Blues: A True Story of the Hippie Mafia
Copyright © 2017 by Richard Stratton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stratton, Richard (Richard H.), author.
Title: Kingpin : prisoner of the war on drugs / Richard Stratton.
Description: New York : Arcade Publishing, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016053991 (print) | LCCN 2017006981 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628727265 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781628727289 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Stratton, Richard (Richard H.) | Prisoners—United States—Biography. | Drug traffic—United States—Biography.
Classification: LCC HV9468 .S77 2017 (print) | LCC HV9468 (ebook) | DDC 365/.6092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016053991
Cover design by Erin Seward-Hiatt
Front cover prison photo: iStockphoto
Printed in the United States of America
As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate,
try hard to be reconciled on the way,
or your adversary may drag you off to the judge,
and the judge turn you over to the officer,
and the officer throw you into prison.
I tell you, you will not get out
until you have paid the last penny.
Luke 12:58-59
You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic policy chief
CONTENTS
Author’s Note: Prisoner of the War on Plants
Prologue: A Grand Unified Theory of Loneliness
1 • The Glass House
2 • Diesel Therapy
3 • Good Jail
4 • The Best Defense
5 • The Criminal Hilton
6 • Kingpin: A Continuing Criminal Enterprise
7 • A Skyline Turkey
8 • The Great Escape
9 • Cop Killer
10 • Jailhouse Lawyer
11 • Confessions of a Reluctant Onanist—or, Sex in Jail
12 • The Old Don
13 • Banished
14 • The Tao of Punishment
15 • Uncertainty Principle
16 • Of Time and Space
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PRISONER OF THE WAR ON PLANTS
THIS BOOK IS based on my eight-year stretch as a prisoner of the US government’s war on plants—specifically, in my case, the ancient and mysterious cannabis plant. At the end of June 1982, I was arrested by DEA agents, agents with the US marshals’ fugitive task force, and LA city cops in the lobby of the Sheraton Senator Hotel at Los Angeles International Airport. I had jumped bail on a federal indictment in the District of Maine, where I was charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana. The Feds were also after me for any number of other successful hashish and pot smuggling escapades that our group had pulled off over a fifteen-year run as one of the major dope smuggling families of the so-called hippie mafia.
That story, the story of my years as an international marijuana and hashish smuggler, is recounted in my previous book, Smuggler’s Blues. This book picks up where that one left off—with me in custody in the Los Angeles City Jail, also known as the Glass House, possibly the worst jail in America. It quickly became apparent to me and to lawyers involved in my various federal prosecutions that the government had a hidden agenda. Yes, they were anxious to punish me for my long, illicit love affair with the green, splayed, and spiky-leafed cannabis plant. But their ultimate aim was to get me to roll over and inform on friends and enemies they believed were involved in the marijuana underground. Chief among those targets the government wished to prosecute was my friend and mentor, the world-renowned author Norman Mailer.
Mailer, who once dubbed himself General Marijuana, was one of the first American writers of any stature to write about his personal use of pot. He had been on the government’s enemies list since back in the fifties, when the Civil Service Commission accused him of being a “concealed communist” for his left-leaning politics. Always an outspoken critic of the government, with his efforts to end the war in Vietnam, he became a high priority on the Feds’ hit list. Making a drug conspiracy case against Norman Mailer would diminish his voice as a leading author and undercut his credibility by branding him as a dope-smoking pinko outlaw while also enhancing the careers of government agents and prosecutors.
This book tells the story of my journey through the courts and Federal Bureau of Prisons, which I have renamed the Bureau of Punishment (BOP) for reasons that should become apparent as I relate how the government sought to turn me into one of their unhappy stool pigeons. Some names have been changed to protect those outlaws who have yet to be captured and to disguise the identities of the snitches who testified against me. They did what they felt they had to do; I did what I felt I could live with and chose not to cooperate with the government.
Looking back on it all, with those wild and perilous years smuggling weed behind me, I am gratified to see that cannabis is now grown abundantly in all fifty states. It is legal in an ever-increasing number for medicinal use and was recently made legal for recreational enjoyment in six states. The war on plants seems to be winding down. When I walk free in the world and into a marijuana dispensary and see the various cannabis strains displayed in all their legal glory, it appears that the alleged bad guys have actually won, albeit at great cost in money, broken families, prison time, and even untimely death. And yet it seems incomprehensible to me the lengths to which our federal government was and still is willing to go to punish me and others for trafficking in this God-given plant. As I write, the troglodytes of the Drug Enforcement Administration, more concerned with job security than with the truth and justice, refuse to accept that marijuana has proven medicinal value and must be rescheduled to reflect the scientific proof.
All considered, even given the years I had to spend in prison, I am glad that I decided to take the heat and do the time. The government is simply wrong when it comes to criminalizing this plant. As Americans, we have a right to alter our consciousness as we see fit so long as we are not hurtin
g anyone else. And as citizens living in a participatory democracy, we have a right to be heard and listened to by our civil servants. End the war on plants.
Here then is the story of those long eight years spent in the American prison system, where still to this day too many prisoners of this absurd and destructive war are locked up, serving criminal sentences for possessing or dealing in vegetable matter that long ago should have been made legal.
Prologue
A GRAND UNIFIED THEORY OF LONELINESS
Segregation Unit, Federal Correctional Institution (FCI)
Ashland, Kentucky, June 1990
SO THIS IS the Hole. Solitary confinement, a prison within a prison. There is a low steel shelf welded to the wall with a thin mattress, no pillow or sheets, and a single coarse wool blanket. A stainless-steel combination sink and seatless shitter squats in the corner. Nothing else. No mirror—I can’t see my face. It’s Spartan. Clean. No roaches or rats. Not bad as jail cells go. I’ve seen worse in the eight years I’ve been down.
This is actually a step up in accommodations from the unit where I was housed before the fight. I’m on the second floor of the old cell house, above the tumult. It’s quiet. There is fresh air and sunlight during the day. At night I can see stars in the black sky and feel the soft evening breeze wash in through the high windows and across the tier. The unit I was in is like a big damp barn with bunk beds stacked side-by-side in two-man cubicles the size of animal stalls. Even at night it’s noisy. Convicts snoring, farting, crying out, or moaning in their sleep. In the morning: a cacophony of toilets flushing, men snorting and hacking and spitting. Yelling. Cursing. Representing.
Getting locked up in the Hole is like going on vacation from the racket and tension of general population: I am gifted with another irony of prison life.
This joint is old, built back in the twenties to house moonshiners and bootleggers, violators of that other failed Prohibition enforced under the Volstead Act. Now it’s filled with prisoners of the war on drugs—pot smugglers and growers, coke dealers, junk merchants, addicts—with a smattering of bank robbers and a few white-collar crooks, many of whom robbed or defrauded to support drug habits. The ghost of Dashiell Hammett whispers that he did a skid bid here back in the fifties for refusing to testify before a government committee investigating suspected communist activity during the Red Scare. No rat Hammett. And screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, another man of conscience, did eleven months in this joint for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the unseen world, I keep good company.
I need these spirits to comfort me. Prison is the loneliest place in the world. Surrounded by other men, one is never alone, yet one is always lonely. It’s like being forced to live in the men’s room at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. Thick, fetid air smelling of sweat and piss and shit, crowded with men you might otherwise avoid—still, the loneliness is palpable. You feel empty, like a hole has been gouged in the center of your chest where your heart once was.
Here, in the Hole, separated from the rest of the prisoner population, I am alone with my loneliness.
I’M A SHORT-TIMER, with weeks, possibly only days to go before I am to be released. So what do I do? I succumb to the short-timer syndrome and fuck it all up. I was in the TV room, a place I normally avoid. The Berlin Wall fell a few months ago, and the Soviet Union is in its death throes. Child of the Cold War, I was glued to the TV watching the Evil Empire implode on CNN. But the etiquette of prison TV rooms is as strict as a straitjacket. You don’t mess with the schedule, hand-printed and stuck to the wall with a dab of toothpaste. Episodes of All My Children or Days of Our Lives take precedence over life-changing world events.
So there I am in the TV room watching the news with a few other white convicts. This black guy, Rector, comes in and abruptly changes the channel. There are three things I can do is this situation: one, get up and walk out, go about my business—the smart thing to do; two, stay and watch the soap and pretend I don’t object—the weak thing to do; three, get up and confront this guy for changing the channel without showing proper respect—the convict thing to do. I don’t really know Rector. We’ve spoken no more than five words to each other in the five months I’ve been here since being transferred from the federal joint in America’s Siberia, FCI Ray Brook, New York, up near the Canadian border. He’s a quiet guy, Rector, keeps to himself, normally respectful. He is muscular, my height, maybe a little taller, ten years younger, and very strong—I’ve watched him on the weight pile bench-press over three hundred pounds. He works in the prison factory, UNICOR, making whatever it is they make there as he winds down a ten-year bid for armed bank robbery. I, however, am in this crazy intense time limbo with no set release date, waiting day-to-day for a decision from the Regional Office of the Bureau of Punishment to determine exactly when I will walk through the gates and back into the free world.
Reason would dictate that I let this lack of respect on Rector’s part pass and get on with my life, such as it is. But prison is an unreasonable place, for we live in a world of damaged men where all that matters is how one carries oneself. Respect is currency here. How broken you are is a determination that lives in the crux of each moment, each encounter. To fail to rise to even the slightest challenge or offense could be the fissure in one’s character that allows the stony facade to fall, like the Berlin Wall, exposing the scared weakling within. In that moment, I can’t admit even to the possibility that I am driven by a self-destructive urge to blow my release date for fear of going free. No, no, fuck no, that’s not me.
“We were watching that,” I say and stand. Rector turns and sizes me up.
I don’t believe I’m doing this. Everything in me tells me: Stratton, don’t be an asshole. Just let it go. And yet I can’t stop myself, I keep moving toward Rector, to the front of the TV room. It’s like watching a guy I don’t really know but secretly admire. I see myself reach for the knob and switch the channel back to the news.
Rector swats my hand aside. “Schedule calls for—”
Now he’s touched me; a line has been crossed.
“Man,” I say, “the fucking Soviet Union is collapsing, and you want to watch soaps? What the fuck’s the matter with you?”
Now I’m insulting his intelligence.
“Don’t matter what I want,” he says, back in my face. “Or you. The schedule—”
“Fuck that schedule. I didn’t come to prison for following no schedule.” I represent in full convict mode now, surprised at how much of this dog-eat-dog world has settled into my character.
One of the men sitting with me says, “Let it go. You’re too short, man.”
Rector changes the channel back to the soap. I reach for the knob; he shoves his chest up against me. I push him back and he cocks his arm. The man behind me wraps his arms around me in a bear hug. Rector hauls off and socks me in the side of my head. I might have fallen to the floor if I wasn’t being propped up. It’s like my friend is restraining me so Rector can beat me down. I struggle free and lunge for Rector. One of the other men in the room runs out to get the guard. I know everything they are doing is to protect me, but it feels like the opposite.
The unit guard races in and hits the panic button on his body alarm. What seems like moments later, as Rector and I roll around on the floor struggling to get a clean shot at one another, the goon squad invades the unit. They descend on us with body shields and truncheons. Rector and I are wrestled onto our bellies and restrained. Marched out in handcuffs. Delivered here to disciplinary segregation. The Hole. He’s locked in a cell along the tier. I can hear him cough and pace and do his push-ups. Pace some more.
I hold no beef with Rector. It had nothing to do with him, or with the news or the TV. It was all about me. I know this now in the solitary anguish of this thwarted existence. Some deviant strain in my character wants me to fail. But not right away, not until I am just about to snatch the gold ring. The closer I get to realizing my dreams, my hopes, my desires,
the more that stunted nasty twin rears his ugly face and goads me: You don’t deserve this, Stratton. You’re a bad seed. Nothing but trouble. All your life you have been wrong. You deserve to suffer. Go ahead and fuck it up, shithead, that’s what everyone expects of you anyway. This is exactly where you belong—in a prison.
Just weeks, maybe even days to go before I am to be released after eight straight years in the custody of the attorney general’s designated keeper—the Federal Bureau of Prisons—and I fuck it up. Now, while Bureau of Punishment number crunchers come up with a new release date, I must appear before a disciplinary committee to determine my fate. In a worst-case scenario, I could be charged with assault and pick up a new case and ultimately more time. At a minimum, I expect to get a shot (an internal prison disciplinary charge) for fighting and be stripped of any good-time I have accumulated. Since the negotiation with my Punishment Bureau masters is over good-time, years are in the balance. I could be looking at as much as a two-year hit. This senseless fight with Rector could mean I don’t get released for years instead of weeks or days. What a stupid asshole …
So, I do my push-ups. I pace. I think. I chastise myself and I wait. And I try to dispel the scariest thought of all: Who gives a fuck? Not me. I could spend the rest of my life behind these bars, and it wouldn’t mean shit. Because it doesn’t matter. In this equation, one plus nothing still equals nothing. My life has no meaning or merit. My alter ego is gratified when I live up to everyone’s worst expectations—including my own—because my higher self enjoys engaging the dark side. I will not run from it. When I have no one else to fuck with, I fuck with myself. The worse it gets, the stronger I get—or so I like to think … and think … and obsess. So much of prison life is lived in the mind.
One thing I have come to appreciate during the eight years I’ve been locked up is that I alone am to blame for my mistakes. I alone must answer for the mess I made of my life. I have no excuses, no apologies, and no regrets—only repentance. I had all the advantages: white skin and blue eyes; a WASP kid from an old New England Yankee family; a star athlete, high school state wrestling champion. College boy who on a lark started to smuggle pot. And a fatal flaw: hubris, and an addiction to danger. Only in peril did I feel truly alive. So I became an international drug kingpin bringing in multiton loads of the finest cannabis from around the world, because I was addicted to the adrenaline rush I got from risking my life getting over on the Man. And because I saw how stupid and unrealistic their laws were in the first place.