I'm in the midst of fact-checking for a nonfiction book that I'm doing for my academic publisher. The book is about gangster movies -- or, rather, nine gangster movies and The Sopranos. The most fascinating task -- and the most grueling -- is trying to distinguish fact from fiction about multiple mobsters.
This week I've been looking at a dispute between two drug traffickers about who came up with a system for importing heroin from Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Ike Atkinson was getting out of prison after spending over three decades behind bars when he learned that Frank Lucas was taking credit for being the mastermind for a system that he claimed eliminated the Mafia middlemen. He had made that claim in his interview for an article, and the article had caught the attention of Hollywood, and now there was a movie -- American Gangster -- starring Denzel Washington. Atkinson was not happy. He said he knew Lucas and had worked with him. But he was the guy -- the former U.S. Army master sergeant -- who had served in Southeast Asia and come up with the system for getting the heroin into the United States. He had controlled that system. He was not the minor character who had appeared in the movie as Lucas's cousin.
The author of a book about Atkinson -- who did not believe Lucas -- makes a persuasive case that the media failed in their obligation to fact-check the assertions that Lucas made. The author of the article about Lucas pointed out that he had been writing about what Lucas "claimed" or "said" rather than what was necessarily true. But the article and the movie had revived the legend about Frank Lucas's "Cadaver Connection" -- a gruesome myth about heroin having been smuggled into the United States in the corpses of fallen soldiers. Even after both Lucas and Atkinson said it didn't happen, the question is who originally said it did. And if that wasn't true, then how had the heroin been smuggled in? Was it false bottoms in caskets or furniture with hollow interiors? However, it had been done, why would the media and everyone else who believed Lucas was a criminal mastermind has accepted the premise that a man who had never served in the military could have made a trek to Southeast Asia and established an elaborate system that would have required corruption at multiple levels to make it work.
Any debate about historical truth is fascinating because of the "paper trail" that researchers attempt to follow. In this case, it involves DEA, FBI, lawyers. judges, reporters. social scientists, historians, and film critics. I have gone deeper than I needed to for my chapter on Anerican Gangster. But I can use this example next semester in my class on Crime and American Popular Culture.
As it turns out, I can also use this research for my 1939 historical thriler. I think my protagonist is going to have an encounter with a gangster who can help him with his problem -- or, maybe, make it worse.
