HOW ROGUE US MARINES HELPED SMUGGLE UKP200M OF DRUGS INTO HIGHLANDS

ONE of the world's most notorious drug traffickers has revealed how
US Marines were recruited to smuggle a s200 million shipment of
cannabis into the Highlands.

Patrick Lane told how the tough troops were enlisted by his
international trafficking gang to help bring 20 tons of cannabis
ashore after the haul arrived in a sea loch.

The 12-strong squad - who did not understand the Scottish accent and
were told they were in Norway - used hard-rib inflatables to courier
the bales of dope from yachts to waiting lorries.

Lane, the former brother-in-law of infamous smuggler Howard "Mr Nice"
Marks, has broken his silence 30 years after the massive drugs coup.

He revealed how he and Marks used salvage vessel the Karob to carry
the drugs and identifed Loch Linnhe near Fort William as the perfect
drop-off point.

They even set up a bogus film production as a decoy.

Lane, 62, said: "We used a hippy contact in California to help
finance the deal. It cost us several million to buy the hash then,
which was quite a sum.

"We also had a fleet of yachts anchored on Mull. They were normally
used for ferrying tourists about so would not attract attention. As a
cover, Howard and I wrote a film script based on a short story set in
Austria about an unhappy countess living on a castle near a lake.

"But we turned that around so it became a loch in the Highlands."

Lane told how the pair hired top director Peter Whitehead - who had
worked on a number of documentaries with stars including the Rolling
Stones - and five actors using an offshore firm based in Liberia. The
director and cast had no idea what was going on.

Lane said: "We also rented a castle, Conaglen House on Loch Linnhe,
for s1000 a week for the filming.

"We had the yachts lying off Mull to pick up the shipment.

"While we waited for it to arrive from Colombia on New Year's Eve we
began to prepare for the movie so as not to make locals or the police
suspicious.

"At one stage as we waited on the drugs shipment a local police chief
even came to our door to ask how we were getting on.

"Once the Karob arrived in Scotland our fleet of yachts sailed up
Loch Linnhe to collect the pot.

"Only after the cannabis had been collected did Peter arrive to start
filming. As I remember the movie had a bit of success and even won an
award in Belgium."

The boats used to ship in the drug cache from Colombia were official
props in the movie and Lane and Marks even had the permission of the
police in Fort William to do the filming. Had the drug haul been
found it would have been the biggest ever seizure in the UK.

On Hogmanay 1979 the cannabis - worth s50million then and around
s200million now - was transported on the tourist yachts to the sea
loch at the southern end of the Caledonian Canal near Fort William
where it was loaded on to lorries and ferried on to England for sale
and distribution.

The operation was a success but three months later a ton of the drug
was found washed up at Craignure, Mull, after it had fallen overboard
in the transfer between the Karob and the yachts.

By then Lane and his team were sunning themselves abroad on the
proceeds. The audacious Highland drugs operation is described in a
new book called Recollections Of A Racketeer published this month.

It tells the story of Lane's life in the 1960s and 1970s as a major
international cannabis smuggler.

He said: "In March 1980 it was reported that a few bales of our haul
had been found on a beach near Mull but this was quite common then
and it was never traced back to us.

"I do not have any regrets about my past life but it is not something
I would do now. We never touched hard drugs and saw ourselves as
hippies trying to change the world rather than dealers."

The former chartered accountant, from North London, was eventually
caught by drugs officers and spent several years in prison in Miami,
Florida, before returning to Britain where he became a successful
company director. He has now retired to France.

His brother-in-law Marks is the subject of movie Mr Nice, which will
be released this year starring Rhys Ifans.

Marks was married to Lane's sister Judy but they are now divorced.

Yesterday movie director Whitehead, who lives near Northampton, could
not be contacted for comment.

However Eric Liknaitzky, who runs the company which distributes his
films, said: "He's not interested."

SUNDAY EMAIL

n.silvester@sundaymail.co.uk

FROM CANNABIS KING TO WRITER

Howard Marks was one of the world's biggest dope dealers.

He was said to run a tenth of all smuggled cannabis in the 1980s.

The world's most wanted man had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, 25
registered companies and links with the Mafia, CIA and the IRA.

He married Judy Lane after meeting her in 1974.

He was extradited from Majorca to Florida for trial after being
busted. He got 25 years but served seven before his parole in 1995.

The Welshman became a best-selling writer with Mr Nice. He still
writes about drugs and battles to legalise cannabis.

_

THE smugglers - including Patrick Lane and Howard Marks - arrived at
Loch Linnhe to wait for news of the cannabis consignment.

Here, in an extract from his book Recollections Of A Racketeer, Lane
reveals the operation's climax..

The word finally arrived in late December 1979.

The Karob was in the Azores, off the coast of Portugal and expected
to meet our fleet a few days after Christmas near Mull.

It was time to call in the Marines.

They were flown from New York to Oslo, where they spent several hours
in the airport bar listening to drunken businessmen talking loudly in
Norwegian.

Before flying to Glasgow, they were encouraged to buy souvenir
bottles of aquavit for their wives and hairy troll dolls or model
Vikings for their kids.

They were flown to Glasgow, told they were still in Norway and put on
the train for the Highlands.

I collected the platoon at Fort William station on January 30, all
beefy-looking (though vegetarian) soldiers in civvies.

The combination of a transatlantic flight, jet lag, their first time
out of the USA and a considerable amount of alcohol had made them
mellow and we were able to guide them to the bus with no disturbances.

"Do they think they're still in Norway?" I asked their escort as we
drove along the side of the loch from Fort William towards our castle.

"The bright ones do," he grinned. "The rest of them think they're in
Canada." The Marines slept till late morning. As soon as they woke
they became restless.

We explained they had to remain hidden till nightfall because Norway
was a Communist country and we would all be shot if they were seen.

Despite the fact a salvage vessel had to transfer 20 tons of
marijuana to two yachts crewed by stoned Californian hippies on the
high seas, and that the yachts subsequently had to unload it in the
middle of a loch in the dark to drunken soldiers in Zodiacs, who had
to carry the heavy bales up a beach and across a main highway to a
castle before loading them on lorries without anyone noticing, it all
went like clockwork.

By 11pm, it was all over. At one point, two soldiers emerged carrying
large bales of pot. One shone his flashlight at my face and the
night-vision goggles magnified the light to the power of 10 suns.

It was as though a sword had been plunged into the side of my head. I
ripped the goggles off my head and threw them into bushes.

"Hey!" one Marine protested, "them's government property.

Suppose the Commies get their hands on them." "F* the Commies!" I
said. He nodded approvingly, "F* the Commies." In the morning, we
shipped the soldiers south to Glasgow, where they flew to Norway then New York.

Howard and I did some forensic cleaning after they left then drove to Glasgow.

But our precautions were all for nothing. One team had accidentally
dropped several bales of pot into the sea during the transfer and
they started washing up.

By pure coincidence, Paul McCartney owned a Scottish estate nearby
and had recently been busted for pot in Japan. The press drew its own
conclusions and the story followed a different direction.

Since then, I have been unable to listen to Norwegian Wood without
thinking about that Scottish adventure.

Patrick Lane's book Recollections of a Racketeer tells how the London
schoolboy turned into one of the busiest drugs smugglers in the world
shipping hashish from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Lebanon into Europe.
It is in bookshops now, priced UKP9.99..