XPost: alt.drugs.busts, alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.usa.republican   
   XPost: misc.legal, soc.culture.iraq, soc.veterans   
   XPost: us.military.army, us.military.national-guard   
   From: typhoid@mary.va   
      
   2 Charged With Smuggling Ecstasy Pills on Military Jet   
   By JULIA PRESTON   
      
   Published: April 14, 2005   
      
      
   Acaptain and a master sergeant in the Air National Guard were arrested late   
   Monday on charges that they imported 290,000 Ecstasy pills to New York   
   hidden on a military cargo plane, federal narcotics authorities said   
   yesterday.   
      
   Capt. Franklin Rodriguez, 36, is a pilot of the Air Force C-5A Galaxy, a   
   giant cargo plane, and Master Sgt. John Fong, 35, served as a load handler   
   in his crew, according to the criminal complaint. Federal agents said that   
   their arrests broke up a smuggling ring that, using military aircraft, had   
   made at least three earlier flights and moved drugs worth $10 million or   
   more.   
      
      
      
   On April 8, they made a flight from Stewart Air National Guard base in   
   Newburgh, N.Y., through Germany to the Republic of Georgia to deliver   
   supplies for a training mission there.   
      
   On the way back, their plane stopped at a United States military base in   
   Germany. The two guardsmen went to a hotel room near the base and picked up   
   packages containing thousands of tablets of MDMA, the hallucinogenic   
   stimulant nicknamed Ecstasy, according to the authorities. Officials   
   declined to name the base, saying that the investigation by American and   
   German authorities was still under way.   
      
   When Captain Rodriguez and Sergeant Fong landed at Stewart on April 12,   
   federal agents from a joint New York narcotics task force were waiting for   
   them. They watched as Sergeant Fong drove a silver BMW up to the door of an   
   operations building at the base and loaded bags and boxes from the cargo   
   flight into the vehicle, the complaint says. The car was later determined to   
   be registered in Captain Rodriguez's name.   
      
   The agents moved in, and in a backpack and suitcase belonging to Sergeant   
   Fong, they found 15 bags filled with Ecstasy pills, according to the   
   complaint. Another suitcase and two cardboard liquor boxes belonging to   
   Captain Rodriguez held 13 bags of the tablets, the authorities said.   
      
   Sergeant Fong, who lives in Manhattan, confessed to the agents that he had   
   made three earlier shipments of Ecstasy pills from Germany on military   
   flights, and said he was paid $10,000 for each trip, according to the   
   complaint. Captain Rodriguez told the agents that he took the bags of pills   
   to his apartment in the Bronx for distribution, the authorities said.   
      
   The shipment was worth as much as $11.6 million on the street in New York,   
   where single tablets of high-quality Ecstasy sell for up to $40 each in   
   clubs, Drug Enforcement Administration agents said.   
      
   Christopher Giovino, a senior D.E.A. agent who is chief of the Organized   
   Crime Drug Enforcement Strike Force in New York, said the investigation and   
   arrests stemmed from "intelligence that came to our attention over the past   
   couple of months." He said that no further arrests were expected in the Air   
   National Guard and the arrests of the two guardsmen had shut down the   
   transportation operations of the smuggling ring. But he said that American   
   and European authorities were continuing to investigate the supply and   
   distribution operations.   
      
   The use of Ecstasy surged among young people in the late 1990's, according   
   to the D.E.A. But its popularity waned amid cases in which the drug caused   
   severe dehydration and even stroke.   
      
   Captain Rodriguez and Sergeant Fong appeared last night in Federal District   
   Court in Manhattan, where prosecutors asked that they be held without bail.   
   If convicted of all the charges they face, they could each get maximum   
   sentences of 40 years in prison and $2 million in fines.   
      
      
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