Chapter Chatter Todd Robinson, Associate Editor The French Connection Revisited duck behind a tree if they were alone on a desert island.” By Mike Violette Cars figure highly in the story as the drug-runners; pursued sur- Just for Fun reptitiously by the white hats, cruise all over Manhattan. The author is fond of describing them: the “battered white 1947 I grabbed an old copy of The French Connection1 from my moth- Dodge,” “second-hand 1960 Buick Invicta,” the cheap “Renault er’s bookshelf. The paperback, doggy and yellowed, is a chroni- Dauphane,” an “old dusty Chevrolet station wagon.” The Canadi- cle of “The World’s Most Crucial Narcotics Investigation.” It is an-tagged Buick turns out to be the main heroin vector as, also a peek back to a certain period narrative style (Joe Friday of apparently, there are many places in the body where 120 pounds Dragnet keeps ringing in my head), the art of surveillance in the of dope could be stashed, street value $32 million. day and the coordination of a highly choreographed stakeout at a large heroin bust that went down in New York City in the winter In the early 1960s, long before the FISA court and the NSA data of 1962. The book includes detailed descriptions of undercover vacuum started sucking, monitoring phone calls was not such an wiretapping methods and modes of police radio communications easy thing. Substantiation for getting a warrant to tap a line was at the time. tricky and federal law prohibited tapping phones; however, New York State had no such prohibition. The other trick was to get The “War on Drugs” really began post-prohibition when the physical access to the TIP_RING pair that fed the phone from the Mafia started exploring illicit and profitable money-making street without arousing suspicion to install automatic tape opportunities after the running of rum was no longer lucrative. recording equipment. “This sometimes required stringing tele- After WWII narcotic use shot up, particularly in New York and phone lines surreptitiously for many city blocks, over roof-tops heroin became the new cash cow. Smack was produced from and back alleys.” poppies grown in Turkey, processed into a sticky paste in Lebanon and refined in the South of France, hence the “French Connection.” Now, it’s all done with the click of a mouse. The heroes of the tale, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, are young The detectives tapped several lines at Patsy’s house and lun- undercover narcotics detectives working a Manhattan beat. cheonette business and the tapes started rolling on a pair of pay Eddie is described as a “burly Irish-handsome redhead” and phones in the luncheonette at Patsy’s house on 67th Street. The nicknamed “Popeye” because he loved “popeyeing around,” equipment would sense when the phone went off-hook and could admiring the dames. Sonny is contrasted with his ebullient part- record the pulse-dialing by punching holes in the tape when the ner, and is solemn a “worrier.” Although tall and wiry, he “had call was initiated, one hole per pulse. earned a black belt in karate, and, as a number of hoodlums had discovered”, could kick butt. The author Robin Moore, in this self-described “#1 thriller of them all” pored over more than five thousand feet of recording of The narrative opens with the pair having a few drinks at the wiretaps and radio communications to chronicle the pursuit. The Copacabana night club, “The Copa” (rye and ginger for Eddie book captures the actions and motivations of various characters and sweet vermouth, rocks, for Sonny). They notice a group of on both sides of the chase as well as some descriptions of track- 12 having a great time, who “might have been transplanted from ing, tailing and monitoring suspects in the pre-GPS, pre-mobile the set of a thirties’ gangster movie: swarthy, sleek, dark-suited communications world. men accompanied by overly made-up women.” The center of attention, prime suspect Pasquale (“Patsy”) is described as an Radios were FM-modulated and the telephones ate nickels. “He archetypical “rackets’ boss.” was on the phone for about ten minutes; Sonny saw him deposit at least one additional coin.” Sonny notes that the boss-man “spreads bread like there’s no tomorrow.” Although the radio system had no means of encrypting voice, the radio frequencies were a closely guarded secret. One mob boss Suspicion is raised and the detectives decide to give the guy the did manage to get a hold of a transceiver, but apparently he tail, hopping into Eddie’s 1961 maroon Corvair in pursuit of a late- didn’t have the technical know-how on his ‘staff’ to change the model blue Oldsmobile compact. At one point during the chase channels when the cops switched channels. Eddie, wearing a “porkpie hat low on his forehead,” notes that some suspects might know they’re being tailed: “Guys like these At the climax of the stakeout and bust, three hundred police bums, they’re so used to looking over their shoulders that they’d were deployed in cars and on-foot, coordinating by radio and 10 ©2015 IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine – Volume 4 – Quarter 2 payphones as they chased Patsy and three French suspects, bust would be the undoing of a major Mafia narcotics operation. “Frog One,” “Frog Two” and “Frog Three” trying to nail down the moment when the transaction was made and bust could After the trial, Eddie and Sonny “walked out of the courtroom occur. Updates were coordinated through a central command. and into the sunshine.” Even with the blanket of coverage, sometimes the prey slipped “What do you we do now?” Sonny asked. away and at one point Eddie wonders, “How could so many supposedly professional police officers blow one old bastard “Maybe we ought to celebrate, go popeyeing around some- who stands out like a giraffe in a field of cows?” where. What say we go over to the Copa tonight? There’s a new hat-check gal there.” Ultimately, after a convoluted cat and mouse game, the detec- tives nab Patsy and find the heroin in the ceiling of Patsy’s Sonny replies: “The Copa? Are you kidding?” father’s house, who protests when confronted “Why you maka this business? I gotta nut-ting here!” The story was adapted for film in 1971 and was the first R-rated movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture. It also won a bevy of other The dope is discovered hidden under a coat of fresh, still wet awards for Best Actor Gene Hackman, Best Director William Fried- plaster. It tests out to be “the purest stuff anybody’s ever seen kin, as well as Best Film Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay. around here.” The haul included 11 kilos of heroin and “enough guns and ammunition to wipe out another ‘family’.” Ultimately, the 1 © 1969 R. & J. Moore Inc. Austria an exhibition was organized where the exhib- ed immunity test methods and test levels for itors presented their brand new measure- equipment connected to AC power supply On April 16 and 17, 2015, the IEEE EMC Chap- ment instruments. networks. ter Austria, the Institute for Electronics (TU- Graz) and the Seibersdorf EMC Test Labora- The technical program included 16 presenta- After the lunch break, Carsten Stange from tories organized a well-attended event enti- tions covering a wide variety of EMC related Langer EMV-Technik, Bannewitz, Germany tled: “13th EMC Symposium 2015”. The two- topics. The first day started with Jens explained basics for measurements using day workshop was held at the Graz Universi- Medler from Rohde & Schwarz, Munich, Ger- near-field probes. Stéphane C. Attal from ty of Technology-Austria. More than 140 many talking about new requirements in EMSCAN, Calgary, Canada presented very- attendees, including representatives from CISPR 16-1 followed by Alexander Kriz from near-field solutions for far-field EMC prob- universities, research institutes, tests labora- Seibersdorf Laboratories, Austria presenting lems and Philipp Schneider from Infineon, tories and the industry took the time to get the influence of different calibration adapters Munich, Germany talked about how to cre- updated on EMC. for artificial mains networks. Rüdiger Späth ate a power integrity model for a microcon- from EM TEST, Kamen, Germany talked about troller. The last presentation of the first day The aim of this conference is to promote the the specific car manufacturer standards was made by Johann Wilhelm from Fronius, exchange of knowledge within the EMC LV124 & LV148. Peter Mock from Spitzen- Wels/Austria explaining the directive Society. In addition to the technical program berger & Spies, Viechtach, Germany present- 2013/35/EU on the minimum health and safe- Over 140 people participated in the two-day EMC event organized by the The accompanying exhibition and coffee break was a great networking Austria EMC Chapter. opportunity for Austria EMC Chapter members. ©2015 IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine – Volume 4 – Quarter 2 11.