Angels wheel and deal Call it “speed,” “crank” or “poor man's coke,” the powder produces a
cocaine-like high at half the price. Methamphetamine, at $60 a gram,
is the discount drug of choice on the West Coast and a
multimillion-dollar-a-year business for a new form of organized crime,
a California-style Cosa Nostra on wheels. “We've got contract murders,
interstate narcotics transactions, shipments of stolen property, cars
and weapons,” asserts U.S. Marshal Budd Johnson, member of a San Diego
drug task force, the Organized Special Investigation Team .
“The Hell's Angels today are the new Mafia.” The legendary Hell's Angels spent the past decade in limbo. According to
the O.S.I.T., the grungy motorcycle gang cleaned house, kicking out
heroin-addicted deadweights, streamlining its chapters and sprucing up
its psycho-fascist image. The tattoos, beards and beer bellies are
still there, but the bikers have softened their death's-head emblem and
dropped kinky regalia like decorative wings denoting various sexual
feats. Says Johnson: “The Angels are 25 years ahead of other gangs.
They went from a loose-knit bunch of guys to an organized crime
family.” Today's Hell's Angels number more than 500 members in 32 chapters, and,
according to the O.S.I.T., they control 75% of California's
methamphetamine market. They have built up a highly sophisticated crime
network, amassing tax shelters, high-priced lawyers and an arsenal of
antitank rockets, Claymore mines and M-60 machine guns. A special report to be released this week by the California attorney
general's office details the growth of clandestine labs. Though the
report does not specifically link Hell's Angels to methamphetamine
stashes, FBI officials suspect the club is behind the bulk of them.
“They have their own operation and distribution network,” says Floyd
Clarke, deputy assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative
division. “The entire organization is involved in the
operation.” The scope of the gang's drug operation began to be revealed only last
fall. The O.S.I.T., investigating two 1977 mobster-style murders,
persuaded four Angels to “roll over” and inform on the club
in court.
According to one informant, former Angel Hitman James
Eaton, now a protected federal witness living under
a new identity, the Angels cornered the methamphetamine market by
cornering the chemists. In taped interviews with the O.S.I.T., made
available to TIME, Eaton stated, “They find someone already making
speed and say, 'O.K., now you make it for us.' ” Typically, a
Hell's Angel would pay a drug maker $25,000 for five pounds and advance
him another $25,000 for the next five. “Now the guy owes the
club,” Eaton explained. The profits are handled illicitly.
Said Eaton: “You try to sidestep the IRS, you get yourself money
managers. Money is power. It buys policemen, judges.”
