Sergeant Smack chronicles the story of North Carolina\'s Leslie Ike Atkinson, an adventurer, gambler and one of U.
S.
The author delivers an eminently readable book about a genuine Mr.
Drug Kingpin Ike Atkinson, is the real deal, and not the stuff of Hollywood legend.
Sergeant Smack exposes the lies about the Ike Atkinson-Frank Lucas relationship and documents how Ike, not Lucas, pioneered the Asian heroin connection.
The recent movie, American Gangster, which depicted the criminal career of Frank Lucas, distorted Atkinson\'s historical role in the international drug trade.
As this book shows, the accusation is completely false. in the coffins and/or cadavers of dead American GIs.
Atkinson\'s story is controversial because his ring has been accused of smuggling heroin to the U.
S.
Ike was released from prison in 2006 after serving a 31-year jail sentence.
Atkinson was convicted again and nine years added to his sentence.
The events that follow seem like the narrative for a Robert Ludlum novel.
In 1987, Ike tried to revive his drug ring from Otisville Federal Penitentiary, but the Feds discovered the plot and set up a sting.
Sergeant Smack was elusive, but the discovery of his palm print on a kilo of heroin finally took him down.
Sergeant Smack\'s criminal activities sparked the creation of a special DEA unit code named CENTAC 9, which conducted an intensive three-year investigation across three continents.
He was never known to carry a gun, and today many retired law enforcement officials who had put him in jail refer to him as a gentleman.
Army Master Sergeant, career drug smuggler, scam artist, card shark and doting family man whom law enforcement nick-named Sergeant Smack.
Born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, Ike Atkinson is a charismatic former U.
S.
That amount translates to about $400 million worth of illegal drug sales during that period. during its period of operation from 1968 to 1975. military bases, into the U.
S.
According to law enforcement sources, 1,000 pounds is a conservative estimate of the amount of heroin the ring transported annually from Bangkok, Thailand, through U.
S.
Ike\'s organization moved heroin from Thailand to North Carolina and beyond. military infrastructure, Atkinson masterminded an enterprising group of family members and former African American GIs that the DEA identified as one of history\'s ten top drug trafficking rings.
Under the cover of the Vietnam War and through the use of the U.
S. history\'s most original gangsters.
Sergeant Smack chronicles the story of North Carolina\'s Leslie Ike Atkinson, an adventurer, gambler and one of U.
S
