#FrankSinatra, #PabloEscobar… and #MeyerLansky

by Daniel Hopsicker

"Two kilos of heroin for a little walking around money" 

A  'friend' on Facebook found a link I posted there to a DailyMail story about Frank Sinatra's purported ties to Pablo Escobar, (Frank Sinatra was ‘a better cocaine dealer than singer), based on interviews with dead Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's son where he claims singer Frank Sinatra was among his dad's business partners, to be "absurd." 

It was, he claimed, anti-GOP propaganda, based apparently (its unclear) on Sinatra's close friendship with Ronald Reagan, and (reportedly) very close relationship with First Lady Nancy Reagan. 

For his (and your) edification, here's a snippet from an interview with MYLES AMBROSE, the DEA's first Administrator (under Richard Nixon), from Barry & the boys."

 

 

 

 

FROM BARRY & THE BOYS:

Richmond Harper , a gentleman rancher in Texas and an associate of Carlos Marcello front man Herman Beebe, also had "very deep ties right into the (Nixon) White House," according to CIA pilot/drug smuggler Barry Seal, in a letter to a U.S. Judge. 

It was through Richmond Harper's’ Eagle Pass Texas ranch that Oswald’s friend in Dallas, oilman and CIA asset George DeMohrenschilt had entered Mexico en route on “a walking tour” of Central America that led him to be in Guatemala for the launch of “The Bay of Pigs invasion.

After DeMohrenschildt's sudden death by shotgun on the eve of his testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations—which his wife strenuously said was not a suicide—his personal address book was located, containing an entry reading: "Bush, George H.W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio see also Zapata Petroleum Midland."

Harper was especially close to Myles Ambrose, the head of US Customs. Ambrose became the Special Consultant to the President on Narcotics, and who was there at the birth and became the first head of what's been called "Nixon’s demon spawn," the DEA, in 1973.   

 

First head of the 'demon spawn'

Myles Ambrose, according to former Customs officials who were disgusted at having had to work under him, would visit Harper and go hunting with him on his ranch on the border.

He was a guest at what must have been the wedding of the year down in Eagle Pass, the nuptials of Richmond Harper’s daughter, an event her proud Daddy commemorated with the slaughtering of 600 steers.

"We tried to warn him [Ambrose],” stated one Customs official at the time. “Tell him that this guy [Harper] is bad. He wouldn't listen."

 

"Just a tad defensive, Myles was"

When we finally reached Myles Ambrose for his version of events, and his recollections of Barry Seal, he was perhaps understandably defensive.

"During my interview with him, I felt Myles Ambrose’s displeasure at some of my questions, which, in fairness, may have sounded slightly more suspicious than someone who had been a Special Consultant on Narcotics to President Nixon is used to fielding.

"Whatever the reason, Ambrose became a bit over-eager to share his thoughts on the involvement in the drug trade by folks on the other side of the aisle.

 

"Two kilos of heroin for a little walking around money"

“I was with Treasury back in the late Fifties, when Bobby Kennedy was running the Kefauver Committee Hearings on Organized Crime,” Ambrose said.

“I know for a fact that there was a yellow sheet (investigative report) on a meeting in Havana where Meyer Lansky gave two kilos of heroin to Frank Sinatra to bring back to the States so he (Sinatra) would have a little ‘walking-around’ money.”

“But because Sinatra was helping Kennedy get elected, his brother removed all reference to this from the Committee’s report.”

After he was discovered hobnobbing with indicted dope-and-gunrunner Richmond Harper at Harper’s Texas ranch, Myles Ambrose resigned in disgrace in 1973.

Years later, Nixon aide Chuck Colson told Senator Lowell Weicker two pieces of information about Ambrose, the first head of the DEA, that has characterized that Agency ever since:   

1. "Ambrose set up the CIA in the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

2. Ambrose had cordial relations with certain Mafia figures.”