CHINA, U.S. COOPERATE IN LARGE HEROIN STING

Distrust Had Hampered Previous Efforts

BEIJING, May 26 -- Kin-cheung Wong had a good thing going. His four-story
gambling den and brothel was a money-spinner, according to the case
assembled by government investigators. And a joint Chinese-U.S. task force
alleged that his narcotics operation had moved $100 million worth of heroin
from China to the East Coast of the United States in just three years.

Then on May 16, Chinese police nabbed Wong with 77 pounds of heroin in a
sting operation, the first time they could document his dealing the drug on
Chinese soil, officials said. Across the globe, drug agents in the United
States, Canada and India made nearly simultaneous arrests of 30 other
suspects, dismantling a complete heroin trafficking network, detaining
suppliers, traffickers and distributors, authorities reported.

Wong's arrest, law enforcement officers said, should mark the final chapter
in the career of a major heroin trafficker. Possession of this much heroin
in China with the intent to distribute is a crime punishable by death.

But law enforcement officials also said they hoped Wong's capture could
lead to something more -- a breakthrough in the sometimes troubled history
of U.S.-China legal cooperation. China has become an increasingly important
transit point for heroin from Burma to the United States, U.S. officials
said. Interdiction has been hampered not only by China's porous borders and
corruption but also by the slow pace of international cooperation.

The 20-month operation to dismantle Wong's alleged trafficking network was
the most ambitious joint effort ever by the law enforcement agencies of the
United States and China, law enforcement officials of both countries said.
Agents worked in numerous time zones, communicated in multiple languages
and chased criminals with various nationalities and aliases, such as
Cuttlefish, Four-eyes, Kitty, Lazy Man and 125 -- Wong's nickname, a
reference to his 125-kilogram (275-pound) weight.

At one point, a multinational group of officers huddled in a hotel room for
10 hours, speaking Cantonese, Mandarin, Fukienese and English as they
plotted strategy, a U.S. official said. At another, a U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agent was so depressed about the prospects for the case that
he placed a Buddha on the windowsill of his office and began offering prayers.

For the first time, the Chinese government allowed U.S. law enforcement
agents to carry out an undercover operation on Chinese soil. And as the
case reached its climax on May 16, Chinese and American agents were jointly
running a command center when the controlled buy took place and Wong fell
into a net that both sides had been weaving for almost two years.

"We fought shoulder to shoulder," said Chen Cunyi, deputy director general
of the Narcotics Control Bureau of China's Public Security Ministry.

"The cooperation from China was on a mega-scale," said James Tse, the
senior DEA agent in China. "This case constitutes the most significant
example of U.S.-China cooperation [against drug smuggling] to date."

Law enforcement collaboration between China and the United States has been
rocky. Some U.S. law enforcement officials privately have accused China of
cooperating selectively with American investigations. Police corruption is
widespread in China. Police have been implicated in prostitution and
gambling rings, drug dealing and massive smuggling. In 2001, the vice
minister of police was sentenced for smuggling in Fujian province, which is
reportedly Wong's base of operations.

Chinese officials countered that the U.S. judicial system tends to
politicize cooperation, derailing efforts to chase down crooks. The example
they cite most frequently dates to 1988, when Chinese and U.S. law
enforcement officers cooperated on a major trafficking investigation
involving shipment of heroin to the United States in the bellies of
goldfish. That case fell apart when a Chinese suspect, whom China had sent
to the United States as a material witness, was granted political asylum
shortly after China launched its Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The "goldfish case," as it is known, reached a macabre conclusion this year
when the witness, back on the streets and dealing drugs, was hacked to
death by a rival gang member in New York City's Chinatown, a U.S. official
said.

The case cast a shadow over all subsequent law enforcement cooperation,
including the Wong investigation. It was one of the main reasons, law
enforcement agents said, that China agreed to allow U.S. agents to operate
undercover on Chinese soil. For Chinese officials, who remain obsessed with
notions of sovereignty, the step was so unprecedented that few would
discuss it openly for this article.

The rationale was simple. To avoid the need to request material witnesses
from China, U.S. undercover investigators could collect the evidence
themselves, masquerading as drug traffickers and negotiating buys that
would occur in the United States. Then they would have enough evidence to
charge people arrested in the United States with more serious crimes.

DEA and FBI agents began picking up intelligence about Wong in early 2001,
the U.S. official said. On June 22, 2001, one of Wong's distributors
provided a confidential FBI source with three-quarters of a pound of heroin
in New York, according to a federal indictment in New York's Southern
District that was unsealed on May 17. It charges Wong and 16 of his alleged
associates with a series of federal drug offenses.

In September 2001, the DEA approached China's Public Security Ministry and
asked for help. The Chinese agreed to a joint operation. A month later, a
confidential DEA source met with Wong in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian
province, to discuss another heroin deal. This one, again for
three-quarters of a pound, occurred in December on 53rd Street and 7th
Avenue in Manhattan, the indictment said. By early 2002, drug agents from
both countries decided "we had something big," a U.S. official said.

What ensued, he said, was a "massive, extensive, time-consuming undercover
operation that required tremendous resources and cooperation from the
Chinese government."

Wong allegedly started his career in crime smuggling people from Fujian to
the streets of New York in the 1980s, according to published reports in China.

Law enforcement agents from both countries described Wong, 56, as a wily
operator who had learned the ropes of drug trafficking in the late 1980s
when he controlled heroin distribution in New York's Chinatown. Wong was
arrested in 1989 and spent four years in U.S. federal detention following
the seizure in 1988 in Thailand of one ton of heroin that was on its way to
a Queens warehouse. He was released in January 1994 and was deported to
Hong Kong.

Moving to Fujian following his return to Asia, Wong opened the Huamei
Entertainment Co., a four-story bathhouse, according to sources in Fuzhou.
Huamei was known in the early days for its prostitutes and mah-jongg
tables, where the stakes routinely surpassed $100,000, the local sources said.

Wong conducted most of his business meetings inside his personal steam
bath, law enforcement officials said.

That way, said Chen of the narcotics bureau, Wong could prevent having his
conversations taped. "All the deals were hatched in China," the U.S.
official said. "By doing this, Wong thought he could protect himself. He
would tell anyone who listened that it didn't matter if he would be
indicted in America. In China, he was beyond the reach of U.S. law."

In all, U.S. undercover operatives and confidential sources arranged in
China for four controlled purchases to occur in the United States.

U.S. investigators were convinced that Wong was planning a major shipment
to the United States. "He was working on it, sources reported it, he was
talking about it," the U.S. official said. But even with widespread
searches on containers arriving from China, nothing was found.

"We never found the mother lode," said the official. "We probably missed it."

Wong was famed for using sophisticated concealment methods. The 1988 load
of heroin in Thailand had been secreted in bales of rubber and was
discovered only when rain seeped in, causing a chemical reaction that
revealed the contents.

Without the mother lode, the Chinese needed to get Wong to commit a serious
crime on Chinese soil to seal the case. He could not be extradited, because
the United States and China have no extradition treaty. Officials could
only speculate about why Wong became careless and agreed to sell the 77
pounds of heroin in China. He did not seem to need money. He had enough to
invest in amphetamine plants in Calcutta and elsewhere.

The U.S. official credited the Chinese with getting close enough to Wong to
convince him that the deal would be safe. In the end, the official said,
Wong's advisers persuaded him to do the deal.

"Basically it was greed," said Chen. "He thought he'd make big money. He
watched things, he checked things out. He determined that he'd be safe. He
took a risk and made a deadly mistake."