When independent regulatory agencies make rules

T he black Cadillac pulls into the diner’s parking lot in Queens. Built in the 1950s, the building looks like it only exists on a rainy day, the rock-lined exterior out of another time. I step out of the Uber and look up at the restaurant where, in 1983, my father was arrested after escaping federal prison. He had spent two years on the lam, and was brought down by the U.S. Marshals after eating breakfast with his longtime mistress. He had just come from organizing a new shipment from Colombia. I imagine the day was also rainy. Almost 40 years later, I am there to meet with the Drug Enforcement Agency officer who tracked him for nearly a decade, trying to bring down one of the biggest mari juana kingpins of the 1970s, the man I once called “Daddy,” and one of the architects of the modern drug trade: Dan McGuiness. When the Cadillac arrived at my hotel, I had to laugh. The last time I saw my father, he, too, was driving a black Cadillac. He had just arrived in Los Angeles … [Read more...] about Learjets, Mistresses, and Bales of Weed: My Dad’s Life as a Drug Kingpin

It was the first hour of November 3rd, 1980, as the Learjet left behind Miami’s city lights and headed west over the dark of the Everglades. Aboard were two principals, each flanked by their respective henchmen . Until this hour, they had never met. The one who had leased the plane was a thirty-six-year-old drug-smuggling kingpin named Dan McGuiness. He had a penchant for ordering up Learjets on short notice. Once, after striking up a conversa­tion with a young woman in a Boston bar, he went, on impulse, ​​ over to a pay phone and called up a Learjet from Miami to take the two of them to Jamaica for the weekend. McGuiness had pulled off enough successful smuggling deals to be able to afford little luxuries like that. The other man, forty-two-years old, was well known in smuggling circles as Theo Poulos, a specialist in providing highly specialized off-loading services to “mother ships” coming up from Co l ombia laden with marijuana . The aircraft was now headed for a … [Read more...] about Inside Operation Grouper: the DEA’s War on Marijuana Smuggling

It ends the only way it can end, with two of the toughest men in Los Angeles holding hands as one of them bleeds out on the periphery of LAX’s tarmac. For the greater part of two and a half hours, we’ve watched Neil McCauley — mastermind of heists and bank robberies — and Vincent Hanna — lieutenant in the LAPD’s Major Crimes Unit — circle one another, chase each other, and calmly converse over a cup of coffee. Now, however, these apex predators of the urban jungle have reached their endgame, and this cop and this criminal share one final moment together before McCauley shuffles off this mortal coil. The fact that they are played by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino only sweetens the deal. This is where we leave the twin anti-heroes of Heat , Michael Mann ’s epic 1995 crime thriller, right before the final credits roll. It’s the perfect fade-out of a film devoted to the sort of game-recognizes-game professionalism and Zen machismo that the writer-director traffics in, taken from a true … [Read more...] about ‘Heat 2’: Why Michael Mann’s Sequel to His Classic Crime-Movie Had to Be a Novel

Since quitting the 2020 U.S. Olympic team and stepping away from competitive skateboarding , Leo Baker has had no regrets. “I am happier than I’ve ever been in my life, beyond what I could have ever even imagined,” he says, speaking on a hot August day by Zoom from his Brooklyn apartment. He’s wearing a black tank top, exposing tattoos on his chest and arms, and his side-parted blonde hair has just the right amount of bounce to call to mind another Leo’s beloved Nineties style. “Purging all the stuff that was not working for me, like quitting the Olympics and getting rid of all this stuff that was not ‘it,’ created a clearing for things that are it or could be it.” After rising to fame as a child skater on the competition scene, Baker was considered a sure thing for the sport’s debut at the 2020 Tokyo games. But he felt deep ambivalence. A new documentary , Stay On Board: The Leo Baker Story , which premiered at the Outfest film festival last month and begins streaming Aug. … [Read more...] about A Skateboarder Quit the Olympics to Come Out As Trans. A New Doc Shows His Journey