He was definitely not your typical East Caribbean solicitor. Mr. Hendrix was the constitutional advisor to her Majesty's government in the British Dependent Territory where he moved illicit cash for clients, a prominent role in a country which perhaps had a dozen lawyers. But next door, in newly independent St. Kitts, he held infinitely more impressive titles :

• Foreign Minister
  

• UN Ambassador
  

• US Ambassador
  

• OAS Ambassador
  

• Minister Plenipotentiary
  

He was also the heir apparent to be the next Prime Minister. In short, it was like having the Caribbean version of Henry Kissinger as your lawyer. He would never be indicted for his laundering activities, notwithstanding being named in federal criminal cases in New York and Boston. The worst the US government was able to do to him was to force his resignation as US Ambassador.

Had he help draft and enact their new Companies Act, which improved upon the Swiss bank secrecy laws by adding the additional lawyer of corporation secrecy ? I do not know, but he certainly knew each and every provision, and had a close relationship with the local financial institution across the street from his law office. I heard later that he owned 10% of the bank, but was never able to confirm it.

The adjacent bank we used, which was entirely locally owned, had no US branch, agency or representative office, meaning that  US courts or regulators had little chance at that time of legally penetrating its bank secrecy policies and procedures. Of course, it did have that all-important correspondent banking relationship with a major US bank in Manhatten.

Its president, who had spent a dozen years at a Caribbean branch of a major US bank, was extremely happy to take multi-million dollar deposits with nary a question asked as to source of funds. After all, financial institutions in remote backwaters of the remnants of the British Empire didn't exactly have huge deposits to brag about.

I soon found myself in his spacious island chambers, attended by his inordinately large staff of secretarial help, forming offshore companies, one or more for each smuggling client. The secretaries would hold one share of stock in the new companies; the clients' interest as beneficial owners did not appear officially.

Unofficially, like any good lawyer, I had Hendrix enter the client's names somewhere in his files, because if anything happened to me, the clients' identities had to be known to the corporate services staff inside the law firm. This being accomplished, I returned to Miami, to plan the next phase of my operation, the employment of money laundering's most primitive but most effective method, bulk cash smuggling. It was time for placement of the clients' proceeds of crime.

Perhaps it might be good at this point to digress, and analyse exactly why I was prepared to tempt the fates, and run the risk of a long prison sentence. Looking at it objectively now, it was certainly not only foolish, but downright dangerous. What professional willingly puts hinself in the line of fire ?

When I moved into Ed's spare bedroom, the far Right was in power in the US, interest rates were in double digits, America had just endured a major petrol shortage, and we were only a couple of years removed from a brutal war in Southeast Asia that may of us had personally participated in.

Added to that was the general perception, mine included, that the government's war on drugs was misplaced, that it was a moral issue, and that decriminalisation deserved study. The blase attitude towards recreational drugs pervaded American culture at that time, as the youth of the 1960s, who had by now become professionals and educators, became decision makers in our society, but did not subscribe to its conservative beliefs. My personal views were my reason to break the law.

So there I was, mentally outside the mainstream. Anyone who visited my room in those days was usually taken aback by my powerful decor; A South Vietnamese flag hung on the wall, a camouflage comforter covered the bed, and the closet contained, among other things, a .45 pistol. a vintage Chinese-made rifle with the same bayonet as appears on the AK-47, plenty of ammunition and, oh yes, Ed's scale that he used to weigh those kilograms of cocaine being shipped out, after being cut with inositol. With the ceiling fan slowly turning inside the mosquito netting, it was a bigger dose of reality than any war movie of the period.

I am told that the malaise which the French suffered during the 1950s was partially as a result of losing both their own Indochina War and the Algerian conflict. Clearly, most Americans were not in a positive mood after the loss of 58,000 of their youth in Southeast Asia.

 Many of those who took to drug smuggling in the early years of the "cocaine cowboys" had served in Vietnam, or in the Central Intelligence Agency's secret war against Castro. Nearly all has suffered a loss of innocence as a result, and a deep distrust of the same authority they had served so obediantly in the past.

Ironically, arrayed against them in America's war on drugs were many others with the same life experiences. Soldiers who has become cops and agents. The difference was that this group had chosen to stay within the system. It made for interesting encounters, both in the field and in the courtroom.

The offshore companies were formed, the groundwork in place. It's time to activate the operation.

NEXT WEEK: Learjets with cash cargo, outbound, headed south.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ * Obviously,not his real name, as a courtesy to his next of kin.