Testimony of Martin Pera, Bureau of Narcotics, and Exhibit 2A on the French heroin traffic, 30 July 1964 (Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Part 4)

Martin Pera of the Bureau of Narcotics was the principal witness in the afternoon session of July 30, 1964, printed in Part 4 from page 865. He had sat with the subcommittee staff, listed as “Martin Pera, Bureau of Narcotics,” at the October 9, 1963 session. The passages below were read from the scan’s text layer at printed pages 873, 877 and 885 (NCJRS PDF pages 972, 988 and 996).

Asked who makes up the French underworld, Pera said that for the most part it “originates from the island of Corsica. They have a strong affinity with the Mafia element in Sicily. As a matter of fact, these two people call themselves cousins in their correspondence.” He described heroin moving from Sicily, by way of Palermo, to Montreal or directly to New York, and said that the buyers in the New York area were mostly “Mafia-type violators.” Of the route through Canada he said: “Up to the very early 1950’s the bulk of the flow went directly to New York,” and that afterwards more of it went to Montreal.

Exhibit 2A, “History of narcotic traffic originating in France,” introduced at page 881 and printed at page 885, states: “Since the early 1950’s France has been the center for the laboratory operations which produce heroin from morphine base smuggled into that country from illicit sources in the Near East.” It describes “the closely knit underworld organization composed of criminals of Corsican origin.” Larger backup exhibits, with photographs of laboratory operations, follow later in the volume and have not been read.

The 1964 record does not use the phrase “French Connection,” and the passages read name no individual defendant of the later French Connection cases. This is the Bureau’s description of the traffic as given to the subcommittee, not a finding.