Pubdate: Tue, 27 May 2003 Source: Washington Post (DC) Copyright: 2003 The Washington Post Company Contact: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491 Page: A10 Author: John Pomfret CHINA, U.S. COOPERATE IN LARGE HEROIN STING Distrust Had Hampered Previous Efforts BEIJING, May 26 -- Kin-cheung Wong had a good thing going. His four-story gambling den and brothel was a money-spinner, according to the case assembled by government investigators. And a joint Chinese-U.S. task force alleged that his narcotics operation had moved $100 million worth of heroin from China to the East Coast of the United States in just three years. Then on May 16, Chinese police nabbed Wong with 77 pounds of heroin in a sting operation, the first time they could document his dealing the drug on Chinese soil, officials said. Across the globe, drug agents in the United States, Canada and India made nearly simultaneous arrests of 30 other suspects, dismantling a complete heroin trafficking network, detaining suppliers, traffickers and distributors, authorities reported. Wong's arrest, law enforcement officers said, should mark the final chapter in the career of a major heroin trafficker. Possession of this much heroin in China with the intent to distribute is a crime punishable by death. But law enforcement officials also said they hoped Wong's capture could lead to something more -- a breakthrough in the sometimes troubled history of U.S.-China legal cooperation. China has become an increasingly important transit point for heroin from Burma to the United States, U.S. officials said. Interdiction has been hampered not only by China's porous borders and corruption but also by the slow pace of international cooperation. The 20-month operation to dismantle Wong's alleged trafficking network was the most ambitious joint effort ever by the law enforcement agencies of the United States and China, law enforcement officials of both countries said. Agents worked in numerous time zones, communicated in multiple languages and chased criminals with various nationalities and aliases, such as Cuttlefish, Four-eyes, Kitty, Lazy Man and 125 -- Wong's nickname, a reference to his 125-kilogram (275-pound) weight. At one point, a multinational group of officers huddled in a hotel room for 10 hours, speaking Cantonese, Mandarin, Fukienese and English as they plotted strategy, a U.S. official said. At another, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent was so depressed about the prospects for the case that he placed a Buddha on the windowsill of his office and began offering prayers. For the first time, the Chinese government allowed U.S. law enforcement agents to carry out an undercover operation on Chinese soil. And as the case reached its climax on May 16, Chinese and American agents were jointly running a command center when the controlled buy took place and Wong fell into a net that both sides had been weaving for almost two years. "We fought shoulder to shoulder," said Chen Cunyi, deputy director general of the Narcotics Control Bureau of China's Public Security Ministry. "The cooperation from China was on a mega-scale," said James Tse, the senior DEA agent in China. "This case constitutes the most significant example of U.S.-China cooperation [against drug smuggling] to date." Law enforcement collaboration between China and the United States has been rocky. Some U.S. law enforcement officials privately have accused China of cooperating selectively with American investigations. Police corruption is widespread in China. Police have been implicated in prostitution and gambling rings, drug dealing and massive smuggling. In 2001, the vice minister of police was sentenced for smuggling in Fujian province, which is reportedly Wong's base of operations. Chinese officials countered that the U.S. judicial system tends to politicize cooperation, derailing efforts to chase down crooks. The example they cite most frequently dates to 1988, when Chinese and U.S. law enforcement officers cooperated on a major trafficking investigation involving shipment of heroin to the United States in the bellies of goldfish. That case fell apart when a Chinese suspect, whom China had sent to the United States as a material witness, was granted political asylum shortly after China launched its Tiananmen Square crackdown. The "goldfish case," as it is known, reached a macabre conclusion this year when the witness, back on the streets and dealing drugs, was hacked to death by a rival gang member in New York City's Chinatown, a U.S. official said. The case cast a shadow over all subsequent law enforcement cooperation, including the Wong investigation. It was one of the main reasons, law enforcement agents said, that China agreed to allow U.S. agents to operate undercover on Chinese soil. For Chinese officials, who remain obsessed with notions of sovereignty, the step was so unprecedented that few would discuss it openly for this article. The rationale was simple. To avoid the need to request material witnesses from China, U.S. undercover investigators could collect the evidence themselves, masquerading as drug traffickers and negotiating buys that would occur in the United States. Then they would have enough evidence to charge people arrested in the United States with more serious crimes. DEA and FBI agents began picking up intelligence about Wong in early 2001, the U.S. official said. On June 22, 2001, one of Wong's distributors provided a confidential FBI source with three-quarters of a pound of heroin in New York, according to a federal indictment in New York's Southern District that was unsealed on May 17. It charges Wong and 16 of his alleged associates with a series of federal drug offenses. In September 2001, the DEA approached China's Public Security Ministry and asked for help. The Chinese agreed to a joint operation. A month later, a confidential DEA source met with Wong in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, to discuss another heroin deal. This one, again for three-quarters of a pound, occurred in December on 53rd Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan, the indictment said. By early 2002, drug agents from both countries decided "we had something big," a U.S. official said. What ensued, he said, was a "massive, extensive, time-consuming undercover operation that required tremendous resources and cooperation from the Chinese government." Wong allegedly started his career in crime smuggling people from Fujian to the streets of New York in the 1980s, according to published reports in China. Law enforcement agents from both countries described Wong, 56, as a wily operator who had learned the ropes of drug trafficking in the late 1980s when he controlled heroin distribution in New York's Chinatown. Wong was arrested in 1989 and spent four years in U.S. federal detention following the seizure in 1988 in Thailand of one ton of heroin that was on its way to a Queens warehouse. He was released in January 1994 and was deported to Hong Kong. Moving to Fujian following his return to Asia, Wong opened the Huamei Entertainment Co., a four-story bathhouse, according to sources in Fuzhou. Huamei was known in the early days for its prostitutes and mah-jongg tables, where the stakes routinely surpassed $100,000, the local sources said. Wong conducted most of his business meetings inside his personal steam bath, law enforcement officials said. That way, said Chen of the narcotics bureau, Wong could prevent having his conversations taped. "All the deals were hatched in China," the U.S. official said. "By doing this, Wong thought he could protect himself. He would tell anyone who listened that it didn't matter if he would be indicted in America. In China, he was beyond the reach of U.S. law." In all, U.S. undercover operatives and confidential sources arranged in China for four controlled purchases to occur in the United States. U.S. investigators were convinced that Wong was planning a major shipment to the United States. "He was working on it, sources reported it, he was talking about it," the U.S. official said. But even with widespread searches on containers arriving from China, nothing was found. "We never found the mother lode," said the official. "We probably missed it." Wong was famed for using sophisticated concealment methods. The 1988 load of heroin in Thailand had been secreted in bales of rubber and was discovered only when rain seeped in, causing a chemical reaction that revealed the contents. Without the mother lode, the Chinese needed to get Wong to commit a serious crime on Chinese soil to seal the case. He could not be extradited, because the United States and China have no extradition treaty. Officials could only speculate about why Wong became careless and agreed to sell the 77 pounds of heroin in China. He did not seem to need money. He had enough to invest in amphetamine plants in Calcutta and elsewhere. The U.S. official credited the Chinese with getting close enough to Wong to convince him that the deal would be safe. In the end, the official said, Wong's advisers persuaded him to do the deal. "Basically it was greed," said Chen. "He thought he'd make big money. He watched things, he checked things out. He determined that he'd be safe. He took a risk and made a deadly mistake." - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart