2 September 1996

NO DOPE - HOWARD MARKS.
2 September 1996
The Guardian
At the height of his career Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and crossed customs with countless different passports. He owned 25 companies trading throughout the world - travel agencies, bars, boutiques, massage parlours, carpet shops, and an offshore banking consultancy. All were money-laundering outfits for his main concern: dope dealing.
It began while he was a student at Oxford. It ended in Terre Haute State Penitentiary, Indiana. Along the way, he was smuggling consignments of up to 50 tons of hashish from Pakistan and Thailand to America, Canada and Europe. He came into contact with MI6, the CIA, the IRA and the Mafia. He was the world's most wanted drug smuggler, with police forces of 14 countries out to nail him. What made him what he was? Was he as ruthless as he was charming? How did he get away with it for so long? Over the next three days, in exclusive extracts from his sensational new autobiography, you can read his story, the story of Mr Nice, and find out.

BY THE end of 1972, the Shannon scam had turned into an immense money provider. Admittedly, it was erratic and irregular. It was inescapably infested with McCann madness and the accompanying fears, whether real, contrived, or imaginary, of IRA participation. Nevertheless, many had made small and large fortunes as a result and were busily squandering them on fantasy fulfilment. Junior university lecturers could buy expensive cars that worked; those who'd always wanted to run a bar, cafe, or other small business could at least make a start; and I had boxes of money that I didn't know what to do with.

It was odd: I had more than enough money to retire for the rest of my life, but I wanted more, lots more. I wanted an inexhaustible supply. My lifestyle was becoming unacceptably flash, and Oxfordshire family country life lost its charm. London clubs took the place of Oxford pubs.

At this point I was recruited to work for the British Secret Service. Hamilton McMillan (Mac), whom I had not seen since my postgraduate days, appeared at AnnaBelinda one day. For a while we kept up the charade of two Oxford chums, a junior diplomat and a small businessman, nostalgically mulling over the good old days. Then he admitted he actually worked as a spy for MI6, the security department of the Foreign Office. I admitted that some of my money resulted from hashish smuggling. A general discussion of cannabis took place. Yes, of course it should be legalised. I pointed out that cannabis tended to be cultivated in countries particularly susceptible to political turmoil: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Colombia, and Morocco, to name but a few, and that those able to export it were invariably powerful individuals within their societies. He was fascinated ...

`Howard, I'll come straight to the point. I haven't just turned up on your doorstep without doing my research. Will you help us?' `You want me to be a spy, Mac?' I asked, clearly very surprised.

`It's not a word we use. But there are a number of areas where someone like you can be of immeasurable assistance to us. I still remember your extraordinary ability to pick up girls. Your legendary charm has not diminished.' I liked what I was hearing. Was he going to throw me into bed with beautiful spies? The idea of screwing some voluptuous Mata Hari behind the Iron Curtain had its attractions.

`Keep talking Mac.' `At first, we just want to use some of your business establishments.' `As what, Mac?' `Letter drops, safe houses, that kind of thing. We would encourage you to open businesses in Romania and Czechoslovakia. Then, more interesting work would be unavoidable. I know you, Howard. You'll love it.' `Sign me up, Mac. Just tell me what you want me to do.' `At the moment, just carry on expanding, and keep your eyes and ears wide open.' Mac left me with his home phone number, and with his office number, which I'll never forget - 928-5600. Mac's overtures had really got me going. What a front! A secret-service accent. James Bond. Not a licence to kill. I didn't want or need anything like that. But could it be a licence to smuggle hashish? Now, that I could definitely use. I'd better not tell McCann. The British Secret Service weren't too popular in Belfast. I'd better not tell anyone.

In early 1973, I decided to invest some of the cardboard boxes of money in dope deals that didn't involve McCann. An old Oxford acquaintance had a friend, Eric, who claimed he could smuggle suitcases from Beirut to Geneva through a personal connection in Middle East Airlines. Eric needed to be supplied with the hashish in Beirut. Furthermore, if given a boatload of hashish on a Lebanese beach, Eric was prepared to sail it to Italy. I discussed these possibilities with Graham [an associate], and we agreed to begin work on them. We gave Eric a couple of hundred grand and told him to get on with it.

Graham also mentioned an idea he had been presented with. A friend of his, James Morris, was responsible for manufacturing and arranging the transport of pop group equipment to and from the United States. In those days, British pop was at its peak of excellence, and groups such as Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer would frequently tour America with container trucks full of enormous speakers and amplifiers. The equipment, because it was only temporarily imported into America, underwent minimal examination by United States Customs. If the paperwork was in order, the equipment went straight through. Hashish was three times more expensive in America than in Europe. The scam was obvious. Fill the speakers with hash in a European country. Air-freight them across the Atlantic. Take the hashish out in America. Put bricks back in the speakers to avoid the possibility of weight discrepancies appearing on air waybills. Bring the speakers back across the Atlantic, and wait to get paid.

Mohammed Durrani was still coming up with Pakistani and Afghani diplomats who were moving several hundred kilos of hashish with their personal effects as they took up their positions in various Middle Eastern embassies throughout Europe. Lebanese Sam was doing the same thing. One of Sam's contacts had just smuggled a few hundred kilos into Paris, and in March 1973 the first transatlantic rock-group scam took place. Four out-of-work musicians were hurriedly banded together to form a group called Laughing Grass and behave as if they had an engagement in California. Rock bands were continually splitting up and re-forming with slight personnel modifications: there should be no grounds for suspicion.

The speakers were loaded with hashish in the remote French countryside and air-freighted from Paris to Los Angeles, via New York. It worked like a dream. Graham's contact in America, Ernie Combs, sold the hashish in California. I occasionally talked to him over the telephone when Graham was unable to. Ernie was invariably happy, witty, and extremely sharp.

A few weeks later, Mohammed Durrani came up with some Pakistani hashish in Vienna. This time we didn't even take the precaution of finding or creating a suitable touring British rock group. A name was written in the appropriate place on the customs form; that was all. No problems.

Early September 1973, and Ernie had invited me to come over to California once a Dutch load to Las Vegas had been sent. I could pick up my own profit and maybe spend some of it. I was in Los Angeles before the speakers arrived at Las Vegas. `You'll like California,' said Ernie. I did, or what I saw of it, which was mainly the inside of a hotel room in Newport Beach. I wandered around the hotel complex, the bars, swimming pools, and other public areas, and realised that American movies weren't about fantasy: they were documentaries about Hollywood.

All the TV channels were showing sport, cop shoot-outs, sitcoms, game shows, or news. I watched the news. A reporter said, `Hey, one of you guys out there has just lost $5,000,000. Today, law enforcement officers seized Nevada's biggest ever haul of illegal drugs. Hashish, highly concentrated cannabis from the Middle East, almost half a ton of it, was discovered hidden in speaker cabinets. Over to Las Vegas ...' On the screen came pictures of the Lebanese hashish and the speakers [we] had stashed in Holland. In the movies, the crook, usually a fugitive, always immediately switches off the radio or television when the relevant news bulletin finishes. I didn't. I stared at it blankly for at least an hour. Was this really happening? I was very jet-lagged from my first-ever long flight, and Ernie had given me the most varied collection of hashish and marijuana imaginable. I was as stoned as I'd ever been. This was Hollywood. It probably wasn't happening.

There was a knock on the door. It was Ernie, and it was happening. `Well, we lost that one. The cops..' `I know, Ernie. I just saw it on TV.' `No kidding. That was quick. What you figure on doing next?' `I think I ought to leave.' `That's smart. Here's $10,000. I guessed you didn't bring a bunch of money over with you. It'd be kinda dumb if you were coming to pick some up. Here's my new phone number. Call me.' `Thanks, Ernie. How did the load get busted? Do you know?' `Sure I do. Didn't it say on TV? The load transited in John F Kennedy Airport, New York. When the airport loaders put it on the plane to Vegas, they fucked up and left one speaker behind, which they stuck in some shed in Kennedy overnight, and a dog sniffed it. The DEA took the dope out of the speakers once they were in Vegas and let my guy, Gary Lickert, the kid you met in Amsterdam, pick it up so they could see where he was taking it to. I had that covered. I was watching Gary from a distance. I saw him being followed, overtook him, gave him the signal, and haularsed outa there.' `What did Gary do?' `Drove in circles around the airport until the cops stopped him.' '`Will he tell the cops about you and me?' `No. He did a tough stint in Vietnam. He won't crack. But we should play it cool for a while, like a few days. I got friends in the FBI. I'll find out what they got on us. Take a limo from here to LA airport. When you get there, buy a ticket in some dumb English name like Smith for a flight to the East Coast, somewhere like Philadelphia, then fly in your own name to anywhere you want.' I flew to New York ... then to London. Mac wanted to see me. We met at Dillons' bookshop and took a cab ride to nowhere in particular.

`Howard, you know that recently we have had to suffer some embarrassment over the Littlejohn affair.' `Yes.' Kenneth and Keith Littlejohn were bank robbers who had claimed to be infiltrating the IRA at the behest of MI6. The claims had been substantiated, and the British public expressed outrage at their Secret Service's employing of notorious criminals for undercover work in the independent Republic of Ireland.

`For that reason, and that reason alone, you and I have to terminate our relationship. We can no longer liaise with criminals ... This end to our relationship is not my decision. I've been ordered to tell you this.' I felt curiously cheated. My career as a spy was over without my having derived any benefit from it.