Chapter X: Part 10

Cozzi shook hands with Guarna and then hastily excused himself, saying he had work to do before the ship docked. From that moment he remained close to Guarna, and when the merchant walked down the gangplank, Cozzi discreetly pointed him out to the waiting agents.

Guarna hurried to the collection point “G” and paid little attention to the man who was standing under the sign holding a visitor’s pass in his hand. He would have been intensely interested had he known the stranger was Agent Melvin Huffman.

Inspector Lev walked up and shook hands with Guarna. And then he turned to Huffman and said brusquely, “Do you have permission to be on the pier?”

Huffman handed over his pass and said amiably, “I’m waiting for a friend--Mr. Gardiner. He’s supposed to be on the _Colombo_ and he asked me to meet him here.”

Lev examined the pass and then handed it back, satisfied that Huffman was only a visitor. He said, “It’s all right. Mr. Gardiner should be along soon.”

Lev then called over another inspector and whispered in his ear. The inspector nodded and shook hands with Guarna. He quickly examined four small pieces of luggage and then he pasted clearance stickers on a half-dozen large trunks without opening them.

This operation was witnessed by Huffman and also by Agent Carl Esposito, who was watching from a nearby telephone booth. The examination was in violation of orders, because the inspectors had been instructed that morning to make a thorough examination of all baggage. None was to be cleared without inspection.

As Guarna’s baggage was being taken to a platform to be loaded onto a truck, Cardoza walked over to the telephone booth where Esposito sat.

“That’s a lot of baggage,” Cardoza said. “We’ll have to hire a truck to get it to the office.”

Esposito grinned maliciously. “Why don’t we wait,” he said, “and let Guarna hire his own truck. Then he’ll have to pay the bill.”

“Why not?” Cardoza said.

Porters were preparing to heave the trunks onto a truck at the loading station when Cardoza and Esposito approached Guarna. They identified themselves as Customs agents and asked to see the contents of the trunks.

Guarna said nothing. Perhaps he was too frightened to speak. He merely took several keys from his pocket and began unlocking the trunks. When the agents raised the lids, they saw that each was packed with expensive men’s haberdashery which had not been declared.

Guarna and Battaglia talked readily. They identified the inspectors who had helped them in their smuggling. When agents completed their examination of the partners’ books, they were able to prove that over a period of two and a half years, the two men and their accomplices had smuggled into the United States merchandise with a wholesale value of $147,613--and they had avoided payment of duties totalling some $56,600. They had paid out $6,000 to various inspectors, of which the lion’s share--about $5,000--went to Lev.

Battaglia and Guarna were convicted and fined $10,000 and $5,000 respectively, and placed on five years’ probation. Inspector Lev was fined $2,500 and sentenced to three years in prison, along with Inspector Danis. Six other inspectors were dishonorably discharged from the service.

17

THE INNOCENTS

Betty Warren and Harriet Davis--trim and attractive in their U.S. Army nurses’ uniforms--were wide-eyed with excitement as they looked from the window of the airliner and saw Hong Kong for the first time. The clouds hung low over the peaks of the island jutting from the sea at the edge of Red China. In the harbor they saw great luxury liners at anchor alongside battered old freighters from the four corners of the earth. The harbor was alive with Chinese junks and sampans.

Their excitement grew no less as the plane landed and a bus carried them into the bustle of Kowloon to the Grand Hotel. The hotel would be their headquarters for several days of sightseeing and shopping before they returned to their posts at Yokosuka Army Hospital, and the end of a vacation tour which had included Manila, Calcutta and Bangkok. It was one of the standard tours arranged by the military for personnel stationed in Japan and other Far Eastern bases. And Betty and Harriet, both lieutenants, were only two among the hundreds who made the circuit each year.

Before leaving Yokosuka, a fellow nurse had told them: “When you get to Hong Kong, be sure to look up Mr. Chu in the Miramar Hotel arcade. He’s terribly nice--and honest. He can tell you where to buy things at the cheapest prices and he’ll show you around Hong Kong. He gets a commission on anything you buy--but it’s worth it.”

The next morning after their arrival, blonde, blue-eyed Betty and dark-haired, brown-eyed Harriet headed toward the Miramar Hotel arcade to find Mr. Chu. They were window-shopping in the arcade when a voice said politely, “Excuse me, please. I am Mr. Chu. Are you Miss Warren and Miss Davis?”

The two women exclaimed in surprise. Betty said, “Yes. But how in the world did you know who we are?”

Chu, a smiling, dapper, middle-aged man, said, “Lieutenant Bess and Lieutenant Marge were here last week. They said you would be in Hong Kong soon. So I have been watching for you. I would be happy to show you around Hong Kong if you wish.”

The next morning, Chu called at the Grand Hotel with a chauffeur-driven car. Obviously to make the girls feel more at ease, he had with him his three-year-old son--a cute, button-eyed boy who stared at the two American women as though they were creatures from another planet.

Soon the four of them were touring Kowloon and the New Territories, the farm land stretching from Kowloon to the border of Red China. Chu entertained them as they went along with a history of the countryside and of the people. They even stood at one end of the bridge at the border, looking into Red China and watching the impassive Red soldier standing guard at the other end with a Russian-made machinegun slung from his shoulder.

Before their Hong Kong stay had ended, Betty and Harriet were as much impressed by Chu’s courtesy and helpfulness as other military personnel had been in years past. Chu had concentrated on building good will among the American military people, with the result that he knew scores of Army, Navy and Air Force men and women throughout the Far East. He carried on a lively correspondence with them, acting as their agent in buying gifts to be shipped to friends and relatives in all parts of the United States. His reputation for fair dealing was impeccable.

On the last day of their stay, Chu called at the Grand Hotel to bid the nurses goodbye. They thanked him profusely for his kindnesses and asked if there was anything that they could do for him.

“If you would be so kind,” Chu said, “I would like for you to deliver some gifts to a relative in Japan.”

He explained that he would have a seaman deliver two suitcases to them at Yokosuka. The cases, which they would be free to open if they wished, would contain a few shirts, some dolls for his relative’s children, and a few other inexpensive gifts. The nurses would not have to bother about delivering them, because his relative would call for them at their quarters. The nurses said they would be delighted to do him a favor. And they bid one another goodbye.

Betty and Harriet were not the only Americans who had sought the services of Mr. Chu that week of February, 1958. Air Force Captain Bob Hampton, a tall, slim young jet fighter pilot, also was one of his customers. Hampton had hitched a ride from Japan to Hong Kong aboard an Air Force transport. He had called on Chu to help him purchase several tailored suits and shirts, a camera, a watch and other gifts.

Before they parted Chu also asked Hampton if he would mind carrying a suitcase back to Japan for his relative, a Mr. Lee. The captain said he would be glad to do him a favor, whereupon Chu brought out a suitcase from the shop where he worked. He opened it to show his friend that it contained only a few dolls, several shirts, ties, and other inexpensive small gifts. Hampton bid Chu goodbye, carrying the suitcase with him as he hurried to catch his plane back to Tokyo.

Soon afterward, Chu once more ran into a friend, Seaman Leslie Brown, a broad-shouldered young native of Los Angeles who had come ashore from the SS _President Cleveland_ when the big liner docked with its load of ’round-the-world tourists. Chu had met Brown on a previous visit, introducing himself to the lonely sailor he had noticed wandering through the streets of Kowloon and inviting him on a tour of the colony. Brown had repaid Chu by introducing him to other crew members on shopping expeditions.

When they met once again, Chu invited Brown to lunch at a restaurant where waiters brought to the table the most bewildering variety of Chinese food Brown had ever eaten. “This is the best and cheapest food in all Hong Kong,” Chu said.

During the meal, Chu asked Brown if he would do him the favor of delivering a suitcase to a relative, Mr. Lee, in Los Angeles. He explained, as he had to the other Americans, that the suitcase contained only a few gifts.

“Sure,” Brown said, “if there is nothing in it to cause me any trouble.”

Chu assured Brown there would be no trouble. He took him to the home of a friend, Ting Ching-Tsoi, where Mrs. Ting brought out a suitcase. Chu opened it to show Brown that it contained nothing but the gifts he had described. And then he gave Brown $20 for his trouble in delivering the luggage.

That night, Chu also delivered two suitcases to a seaman aboard the USS _Kearsarge_, to be taken to Betty Warren and Harriet Davis in Yokosuka.

Unknowingly, these Americans were innocents in a plot to smuggle millions of dollars worth of narcotics into the United States, either directly or by way of Japan. Each of the suitcases contained a false bottom in which packets of heroin were concealed.

As American and British agents later pieced together the story, Chu himself was unaware that the luggage contained heroin, or that he was being used as a pawn merely because he had so many friends among the military people and seamen who visited Hong Kong.

The plot had its beginning when Chu’s friend, Ting Ching-Tsoi, conceived the idea of using Chu as an unwitting agent in a heroin-smuggling ring. Ting approached Chu with a proposition that they could make a big profit by sending watch parts to the United States, hidden in the false bottoms of suitcases carried by Chu’s American friends. Ting knew that Chu would have nothing to do with narcotics but that his code of ethics would not be violated if he thought he was having his friends smuggle a few watch parts.

Chu agreed to a deal. Ting sent a confederate, Kung Kee-Sun, to nearby Macao, where anything can be bought if one has the cash--and where heroin can be purchased by the pound as easily as a woman can be bought for the night.

Kung smuggled the heroin past the British customs patrol. Then Ting bought several good-quality leather suitcases. He took them to a friend in Kowloon, who inserted false bottoms, fashioned of thin plywood covered with leather. The packages of heroin literally were built into the luggage. The job was so well done that only a careful inspection by an expert would disclose anything wrong.

Then, quite by chance, the system broke down because an Air Force wife became suspicious. When Captain Hampton returned to his home near the Tachikawa air base outside Tokyo, he found that his wife was on a shopping trip into town. He put the suitcase Chu had given him in a closet and promptly forgot about it. He also forgot to inform his wife that a Chinese would be calling for the suitcase later. Then he was suddenly called away from home on a training mission.

While he was gone, a Chinese called at the Hampton home. When Mrs. Hampton opened the door, the Chinese introduced himself as Mr. Ling. He inquired about the gifts which Captain Hampton had brought from Hong Kong from his relative, Mr. Chu. He said he had come for them and would appreciate it if Mrs. Hampton would give him the suitcase.

But Mrs. Hampton knew nothing about gifts in a suitcase. She knew nothing about a Mr. Ling and nothing about a Mr. Chu. “I’m very sorry,” she said, “but you will have to return when my husband is home. He has said nothing to me about it.”

Mr. Ling was visibly upset and seemed not to understand why Mrs. Hampton would not give him the suitcase. But he left, promising to return.

When Hampton returned home, his wife told him of the strange Chinese who had called and how upset he had been when she had refused to turn over a suitcase to him.

“I’m sorry,” Hampton laughed. “I put the suitcase in the closet and forgot all about it.” He explained he had brought it home and was to deliver it to Ling as a favor to Chu. “There’s nothing in it except a few cheap gifts,” he said.

But Mrs. Hampton remembered the sudden distress she had seen in Ling’s eyes when she disclaimed any knowledge of a suitcase. “I don’t like the looks of this at all,” she said. “That man Ling was actually frightened when I wouldn’t give him the suitcase. The loss of a few cheap gifts shouldn’t upset him like that.”

Captain Hampton began to worry that perhaps something was wrong. He checked the contents of the case but saw nothing to get alarmed about. Nevertheless he decided to report the matter to Air Force intelligence officers. When the agents examined the suitcase carefully, they found the hidden narcotics.

The Air Force investigators turned the case over to Japanese police. Ling was arrested and finally broke down. He confessed the smuggling plot. He also told investigators about the shipment of narcotics in the suitcases destined for the two Army nurses. These bags were intercepted, and when the bottoms were pried loose, the investigators found that each contained heroin valued at $50,000 on the retail market.

The news of Ling’s arrest reached Chu in Hong Kong. He was appalled that he was being used as a tool in the smuggling of narcotics. He wrote a frantic note to Lieutenants Warren and Davis, urging them to destroy the two suitcases as soon as they arrived, in order to avoid trouble. He apologized to them for causing them any embarrassment or trouble.

And then he wrote a letter to Seaman Leslie Brown. He mailed one copy to Honolulu and another copy to Brown’s home in Los Angeles. He said:

Dear Leslie:

I hope this letter will catch you up in Honolulu or Los Angeles. If
in San Francisco too late. I want to tell you about the story of
the suitcase. It is a very dangerous thing. Please do not take it
back to your house. Please keep it board ship and return it to me
in Hong Kong, otherwise you will have big troubles. If you already
took them home, and have no trouble, please keep it. If some
Chinese people try to get it, please do not let any people have it.
The best thing is to return to Hong Kong. It is a very dangerous
suitcase. Be careful of yourself. You have family and I also have
family. I don’t want you and me to have troubles.

I am very sorry for everything. Please take my word. Please return
me a mail. I am looking forward to hearing from you in the very
very soonest.

Sincerely yours,
_Chu_

The letter was waiting for Brown when the _President Cleveland_ arrived at Honolulu. Again he examined the suitcase closely, and everything that was in it. But he could find nothing that was suspicious. He decided that the best thing to do was to keep the case in his cabin and to take it back to Hong Kong on his next trip.

Brown wrote to Chu, saying:

Dear Chu:

Received your letter in Honolulu. Was quite surprised and hurt
to know you put me in such a spot after I asked you if there was
anything in the suitcase. We arrive in San Francisco today. I have
the suitcase on the ship and will return it to you next trip when
I come. That is if nothing happens to me. I have spent every night
since then worrying about the spot you put me on.

Well, I will close for now. Hope you write and that your children
are well.

Sincerely yours,
_Leslie Brown_

When the _President Cleveland_ reached Los Angeles, Brown left the suitcase in his cabin and hurried ashore to his apartment. He was told that a Mr. Lee, a Chinese, had made several calls inquiring about his return. And within a few minutes after his arrival, there was a knock on his door. Brown opened the door and found that his caller was a Chinese about fifty-five or sixty years of age. He had thin, sharp features and a dark complexion. His hair was turning gray. He was wearing a brown suit and a topcoat.

“I am Mr. Chu’s relative, Mr. Lee,” the visitor said. He asked if Brown had brought the suitcase from Mr. Chu.

“I can’t give it to you,” Brown said. “I got a letter from Chu and he told me to hang on to that suitcase or I’d get in trouble.”

Lee angrily accused Brown of trying to keep the suitcase in order to sell it. He demanded to know where it was.

To prove he still had it as he claimed, Brown took Lee with him aboard the _Cleveland_ and showed him the suitcase in his cabin. But he refused to give it to him. Brown had the bag in his cabin when the _President Cleveland_ sailed from Los Angeles on the return trip to Hong Kong.

The U.S. Customs agents in San Francisco and Los Angeles were informed by the Customs representative in Tokyo of the developments at that end of the line. By this time they had learned that Brown was involved in the smuggling operation and that he was to make delivery to a Chinese known only as Mr. Lee. But the message from Tokyo arrived after the _Cleveland_ had put to sea.

When the _Cleveland_ arrived in Yokohama, Treasury agents in Japan boarded the vessel and asked Brown if he still had the suitcase which had been given to him by the Chinese in Hong Kong. Brown said, “Yes. I know which one you are talking about.” He took them to his cabin and showed them the case. “I have looked it over,” he said, “and I can’t find anything wrong.”

A customs agent went over the suitcase carefully, discovered the false bottom, pried out the piece of plywood, and uncovered the cache of heroin. It was estimated to be worth $500,000 at retail prices.

Brown agreed to work with Customs agents when he returned to the United States and to help trap the Chinese who had called on him for the narcotics. The narcotics were turned over to the ship’s captain and Brown was confined to the ship. When the vessel docked in San Francisco the heroin was turned over to Customs agents. Brown was taken in tow by Customs Agent Paul Samaduroff, a blond-haired, broad-shouldered man who had specialized in tracking down West Coast narcotics smugglers.

Samaduroff and other agents in San Francisco suspected that the “Mr. Lee” who had called on Brown in Los Angeles was actually Li Sheung, also known as Shin Lee. He fitted the description which Brown had given the agents when he was questioned in Japan. Li had been on the agents’ wanted list for months--but they had never been able to trap him while he was buying or selling narcotics. Now the chance had come.

The agents placed fake packages of heroin in the false bottom of the suitcase and went with Brown to the bus depot, where the bag was checked in a locker. Then Brown was taken to a telephone, where he placed a call to Li Sheung’s hangout at a shirt shop on Grand Avenue in Chinatown. The shop owner answered the phone and Brown asked if he could talk to Li Sheung. The shop owner said, “You call later, and I’ll see if I can contact him.”

Several times Brown called the shirt shop only to be told to call again. Late that evening the contact was made. A man who identified himself as Li Sheung got on the phone and talked to Brown. Brown identified himself as a seaman aboard the _President Cleveland_ and said he had something which he was supposed to deliver to Li Sheung.

“Yes,” Li said, “I remember you in Los Angeles. Why didn’t you give me the suitcase when I was in Los Angeles?”

Brown said that he would explain the whole thing to him when they met. He added, “I have the suitcase here now and I’m supposed to give it to you.”

They agreed to meet in a restaurant in Chinatown. Li Sheung was waiting for Brown when he arrived at the restaurant. Customs agents had placed themselves at strategic points outside the restaurant, and one was seated at a table in the rear of the room when the two men sat down together.

Li Sheung kept referring to the fact that Brown would not give him the suitcase in Los Angeles. He said he could not understand why the delivery had not been made.

Brown said, “That time you came to my house, I thought there was something hidden in the suitcase but I didn’t know what it was. Now I know, and I want some money for my trouble.”

Li Sheung agreed to go with Brown to the bus station to pick up the heroin and to pay him $100. They left the restaurant and got into a cab.

Customs agents, keeping contact with each other by radio, trailed the cab from the restaurant to the bus station, where other agents waited, lounging about the place as though they were travellers. They were watching as Brown went to a baggage locker, took out the bag, and handed it to Li Sheung. The Chinese then counted out $100 and handed it to the seaman. At this point Samaduroff and the other agents moved in and arrested Li Sheung. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

And Mr. Chu--the amiable, friendly little man in Hong Kong? The British were lenient with him because he was, after all, only the dupe, and he had cooperated in rounding up the smuggling gang. By now, he may have returned to his old job of being helpful to touring Americans.

The Customs files are fat with such cases, in which smuggling rings and individual smugglers have used innocent victims to help them bring jewels, heroin, watch parts, and other small but valuable items into the United States.

One of the innocents in such a plot was dark-eyed, attractive Countess Kyra Kapnist, who arrived in the United States aboard the SS _Champlain_ on September 2, 1937, to join the exclusive fashion house of Marcel Rochas, Inc., of New York City as a model and saleswoman.

Before she left Paris, an official of the firm had informed her that two trunks and a hat box would be added to her baggage when it was delivered to the liner. It was nothing she was to worry about. She would be met on the pier in New York by Mr. Guy Fonte-Joyeuse, vice president of the firm and manager of its New York branch. He would take care of her customs declaration and the baggage inspection. All the countess had to do was to be her charming self and not worry her pretty head about such small details.

And so the countess arrived in New York. On the pier, she was met by Fonte-Joyeuse, a distinguished-looking man accompanied by a fashionably dressed woman. Everything seemed to go as she had been told it would in Paris. Fonte-Joyeuse was extremely solicitous about his new employee. “Give me your customs declaration,” he said, “and I’ll take care of everything.”

He hurried away to find an inspector to examine her baggage. Within a matter of minutes an inspector appeared and peeked into one piece of the countess’ luggage. Then he stamped all the baggage for clearance and the countess was whisked from the pier with her friends. Fonte-Joyeuse seemed unduly elated over her arrival.

Fonte-Joyeuse would not have been so happy had he known that a member of his own firm was an informer for the U.S. Customs Service--and that a letter was even then on its way to the Service advising them that Countess Kapnist’s luggage included two trunks and a hat box containing seventy original gowns and hats valued at approximately $40,000.

Agents opened an investigation and found that Countess Kapnist’s declaration made no mention of dutiable imports. They questioned the inspector who had handled the examination and found that--for a price--he had agreed to feign an examination of trunks and luggage brought into the country by the models and employees designated by Fonte-Joyeuse.

When agents confronted the countess, she willingly told them the whole story. She told them of the instructions given her in Paris, of being met by Fonte-Joyeuse on the pier in New York, and of her surprise when an inspector took the trouble to look at only one small suitcase among all the luggage which she carried with her.

Agents found in the house of Marcel Rochas 104 gowns of French origin, valued at about $60,000, which had been smuggled into the United States by models and others employed by the firm.

Fonte-Joyeuse was indicted on two charges of smuggling and conspiracy. He was sentenced to one year and a day in prison and fined $1,000. He served six months of his sentence and then was released on parole and deported to France. The Parisian fashions seized from the house of Marcel Rochas were sold at auction. They brought about $9,000 into the U.S. Treasury--of which $2,250 was paid to the Paris informer.

18

THE STORMY WORLD OF ART

The Korean War was still raging in April, 1951, when Sgt. Elverne Giltner left the American Army’s Tenth Corps Headquarters for a stroll about the war-battered streets of Seoul. Four times in less than one year fighting had washed through the city as the United Nations forces battled the North Korean and Chinese Communist troops across the mountains and through the valleys of this unhappy land. Sergeant Giltner was only one of thousands of American soldiers in Seoul at this time.

Like most Americans overseas, the sergeant was a collector of souvenirs. Whenever he had the chance to get away from headquarters, he enjoyed poking about in the little shops in Seoul, searching for interesting knickknacks to send back to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh V. Giltner, in Pueblo, Colorado.

Not far from the parliament building--a gaunt structure bearing the scars of war--Sergeant Giltner halted to examine the wares of a street peddler. “I have nice rug you will like,” the peddler said. He pulled back the edge of a bundle, revealing part of a leopard skin. “This rug was made from leopard skins. It is very valuable,” the peddler said.

“How big is the rug?” the sergeant asked.

The peddler replied, “Very big.” He indicated by stepping off several paces that the rug was probably 18 feet long by 8 feet wide. “In your country,” the peddler said, “this rug would be worth several hundred dollars.”

The peddler unrolled the bundle to give the sergeant a better look at this bargain he was offering. Giltner saw that it was, indeed, a large rug of leopard skins. It appeared to him as though it were not in the best of condition, but he liked the idea of surprising his folks in Pueblo with a genuine leopard-skin rug. “How much do you want?”

The peddler said he would sell the rug for 150,000 won, the equivalent at that time of about $25 in U.S. money. Then the peddler tugged at Giltner’s sleeve and whispered, “This rug is from the old queen’s palace. She was the last queen of Korea. It is worth $2,000 in United States.”

Sergeant Giltner was impressed. He agreed to pay 150,000 won. He picked up his new souvenir and lugged it back to the barracks, where he tossed it into a corner. He would send it home later by mail, as he had such gifts as a black lacquer chest, a lamp fashioned from a beer can, and other souvenirs of his stay in Korea.

But Giltner’s plans for shipping the rug were postponed. A lieutenant took a fancy to the rug and, pulling rank, persuaded the reluctant sergeant to part with his souvenir for the purchase price. That same evening, the lieutenant lost the rug in a poker game to Lieutenant No. 2, who sold it to Lieutenant No. 3 for $50. Lieutenant No. 3 was going to send the rug to his parents, but then he decided it was too much trouble. He sold it to Sergeant Giltner for $25.

The sergeant stuffed the rug into a carton and mailed it home. He wrote a note to his mother: “... I figure you won’t have much use for this rug even after it gets there. But you can always sell it.... The rug like I said before is made of leopard skin--the real thing, and is mounted on red felt or something.... Just where you would put it beats me....”

The rug was a sensation in Pueblo. Neighbors dropped by to see it. It was so large that it could not be used in any of the rooms in the Giltner home. For the best viewing, Mrs. Giltner had the rug hauled out into the back yard and strung over a clothes line. The exact measurements of the rug were 18 feet 11 inches by 8 feet. It was embroidered at the four corners and had a red felt backing.

Mrs. Giltner told neighbors, “It’s too pretty to walk on and too big for my living room. I don’t know what in the world we’ll do with it.”

The Giltners sent the rug to a local firm for cleaning and storage. They valued the rug at $25,000 and had it insured for $16,000. The Pueblo _Star-Journal_ carried a picture of the rug with a pretty girl seated on it. The accompanying story said: “Owners of the rug are contacting museums and big-game hunters, with a view to selling it, since they feel it is too valuable for their use, and their home will not accommodate it.”

Denver’s Collector of Customs Harry A. Zinn saw the news story in the Pueblo paper. He thought it odd that an American sergeant should be sending back a $25,000 rug to the United States. He forwarded a copy of the clipping to the Supervising Customs Agent in Chicago, saying, “Enclosed is a newspaper clipping, the subject of which you may consider warrants some investigation.” The Customs agency certainly was interested in investigating the importation of a rug of such value.

At the same time, the Korean Consul General in New York, David Namkoong, was displaying interest in the report of the rug shipped from Seoul. Namkoong realized that the rug was one of the national treasures which had been stolen from the palace in Seoul at the outbreak of the Korean War. The rug had hung in the Chang Duk palace, the home of Queen Min. The palace had been made into a national museum where the Koreans displayed historical treasures of the ancient kingdom. Many of these treasures had been among the loot taken by Communists and civilians during the first invasion of Seoul. Mr. Namkoong told a reporter for _The New York Times_, “The rug is worth about $100,000, if such a priceless national treasure can have a price tag.”

The Korean government and the United States government took the view that young Giltner was an innocent purchaser of the rug and that he had knowingly violated no law in sending the rug home. A Customs agent hurried to Pueblo from Chicago to impound the rug. It was placed in storage for safekeeping in Denver pending its return to Korea. The Korean government reimbursed the Giltners for all the expenses involved in the shipment, cleaning, storage, and insuring of the rug. And thus the case of the souvenir-hunting sergeant and the leopard-skin rug ended on a note of international good will.

The case of the leopard-skin rug presented no difficulty for Customs in establishing the historic and artistic authenticity of the rug. But classification in the field of fine art is not always so simple. Customs has become embroiled in some hilarious and notable cases of this sort.

Early in this century, Congress decided in the interest of promoting culture to permit, free of duty, the importation of paintings, sculptures, and other art objects which could be classified as “fine arts.” It was when Congress began defining fine arts in legal language that the trouble began. For example, a sculpture was defined as something which is representative of an animate object in nature that is in its true proportion of length, breadth, and thickness. When this definition was written, members of Congress did not take into account the abstractionists and the modernists, who hardly view their subjects in their “true proportion of length, breadth, and thickness.”

With the passage of this law, Congress automatically converted every Customs appraiser in the United States into an active critic and judge of the arts. This was so because--whether the appraisers liked it or not--they had to decide whether an import was a work of fine art and thus free of duty. No shilly-shallying about it. It was or it was not subject to duty. Juries of eminent art critics might enjoy the luxury of disagreement; the Customs appraiser had to say yes or no.

This was the situation in 1927 when the distinguished sculptor Constantin Brancusi sent from Europe a highly polished bronze figure called “Bird in Flight.” The bronze was about 4 feet 6 inches high and stood on a cylindrical base about 6 inches in diameter and 6 inches in height.

In his effort to describe the sculpture, Justice Waite of the Customs Appeals Court would write: “The importation ... terminates at the top in a point which might be caused by the cutting of the piece diagonally across and upward until it terminates in an edge. It increases in size as it descends with a slight curve to the middle, from which point it decreases and terminates about ten inches from the pedestal, where it is cylindrical, and from that point it increases in size on a conical shaped base which rests upon a pedestal....

“The piece is characterized ... as a bird. Without the exercise of rather a vivid imagination, it bears no resemblance to a bird except, perchance, with such imagination it may be likened to the shape of the body of a bird. It has neither head nor feet nor feathers portrayed in the piece.... It is extremely smooth on its exterior which is a polished and burnished surface....”

When a Customs examiner first saw this objet d’art, he decided that it could not, from his viewpoint, be called even a reasonable facsimile of a bird. As he studied it further, he was unable to detect the “true proportions” which were necessary to meet the requirements of the law laid down by Congress for duty-free statuary.

His ruling that the famed “Bird in Flight” was not a work of fine art touched off a storm in the art world, with much derisive comment aimed at Customs. Edward Steichen, the importer of the Brancusi work, appealed the examiner’s ruling, and when the case came to trial in 1928, he was flanked by an imposing list of witnesses ready to testify that Brancusi had indeed produced a work of fine art in “Bird in Flight.”

The witnesses who came to the defense of Brancusi were Sculptor Jacob Epstein, Forbes Watson, editor of the _Arts_ magazine, Frank Crowninshield, editor of _Vanity Fair_ magazine, and William Henry Fox, director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

After hearing all the evidence, the court conceded that “under the earlier (court) decisions, this importation would have been rejected as a work of art, or, to be more accurate, as a work within the classification of high art.” However, it noted that opinions of what constituted high art had undergone changes under the influence of modern schools of art.

Finally the court said of the statue: “It is beautiful and symmetrical in outline, and while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental, and as we hold under the evidence that it is the original production of a professional sculptor and is in fact a piece of sculpture and a work of art according to the authorities above referred to, we sustain the protest and find that it is entitled to free entry....”

The storm kicked up over the Brancusi bird created little more uproar than the arrival in New York in May, 1955, of an abstract painting by the European artist Dr. Alberto Burri. It was a most unusual work of art, as it consisted of several pieces of burlap sewn together and affixed to a board, stencilled with letters, and decorated with birds painted in oils. The artist said the effect of the whole was to convey a spiritual sense of the order in life. He valued his work at $450.

However the Customs examiner, failing to perceive the artist’s message, ruled that the importation was not a work of art. He held that it was a manufactured object whose chief value was in the vegetable fiber, or burlap sacking. Under this ruling, the import was dutiable at 20 per cent of the value placed upon it by the artist.

The examiner’s ruling posed an unusual problem. Art experts agreed that Dr. Burri’s work was not a painting--but a collage. And Congress had failed to mention collages in the categories of art held to be duty free, an oversight thought by some to reflect no credit on the Congressional artistic sense.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., director of museum collections of the Museum of Modern Art, and Leo Castelli, owner of a New York art gallery, were among those who came to Dr. Burri’s defense in court. They agreed his collage was an original work of free fine art and they described Dr. Burri as one of the first half-dozen artists to emerge in postwar Italy with a world-wide reputation. His works had been exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Allbright Gallery in Buffalo and other well-known museums.

The court reluctantly held, however, that since Congress had failed to include collages in the free fine arts, an import duty of 20 per cent would have to be paid--a ruling which later led to Congress amending the law to permit collages to be imported free of duty.

These cases and others moved leaders in the world of art to petition Congress to change the tariff laws governing the entry of works of art, and to remove the absurdly restrictive language which had caused so much embarrassment not only to the artists and to museums, but also to Customs and the government itself. As a result of these petitions, Senators Jacob Javits of New York and Paul Douglas of Illinois introduced in 1959 a bill to amend the tariff laws to permit free duty for all fine art and to eliminate the old definitions which had bemused Customs examiners. The bill was passed by Congress.

Actually, the slings and arrows hurled at the Bureau in the disputes over abstract art obscured the fact that over the years the Bureau had developed a good many experts whose opinions were valued highly by museums and leaders in the world of art. The Bureau also has some of the country’s leading experts on appraisals of a wide range of imports. It even boasts that it has a man who can look at a hog’s bristle and tell whether the hog was raised on the China slope of the Himalayas or the Indian side of the mountain, a bit of esoteric knowledge which is not as useless as it might seem. Little is heard of the fact that almost daily these men protect American dealers, collectors, and the buying public from forgeries, fraud, and unfair trade practices.

Thirty years ago the country was being flooded with fake antique silverware from England. In many cases an old hallmark--authentic in itself and perhaps 200 years old--would appear on a beautiful teapot. To all outward appearances the teapot was an authentic antique 200 years old. But what had happened was that an expert silversmith had lifted the hallmark from an inexpensive spoon and then soldered it into the teapot so smoothly that only an expert could detect the fakery.

There is little chance for such fraud today, even though dealers and collectors import each year more than $2 million worth of antique silver and old Sheffield, largely from England. Much of the credit for this protection is due to a dapper little man named Nathan Nathanson, who is one of the world’s leading experts on silverware. Nathanson is a small, bouncing man with a bristling black moustache and an infectious enthusiasm for his work. He was reared in Brooklyn and as a boy served as a jeweler’s apprentice. He became fascinated with metals and gems. The youth haunted museums, art galleries, antique dealers’ showrooms, and libraries, studying everything he could find on the subject of silver and old jewelry. He pursued his interests with study at Columbia University and then joined the Customs Bureau, where he quickly became recognized as an authority in his field. As a result of these years of study, Nathanson usually can tell within five years when an antique piece of silverware was made, the name of the artisan who made it, the city in which it was made, and the original owner of the piece. This he is able to do through his knowledge of the hallmarks on the silver--the symbols which were first stamped into silver pieces by the ancient guilds of England during the reign of King Edward I in the year 1300.

During the last 200 years, hallmarks have been an important guide to those versed in the lore of old silver. But of equal importance is a knowledge of the patina of old silver--that mellow coloration which is given to silver only by time and which no one yet has been able to duplicate. The expert must also know the distinctive designs from each period.

Unscrupulous silversmiths have several methods of faking antique silver. The most commonly used fraud is the transfer of a famous hallmark from a small piece of silver to a large tray, coffee pot or teapot, a process known as “sweating.”

One simple method to detect such a graft is to breathe on the hallmark. The warm breath in most cases will make the graft lines show up. The infallible method is to heat the silver--and this can only be done safely by an expert. Under strong heat the graft lines come into view.

Another method of forgery is to take a valuable and authentically old piece of silver, make a cast of it, and from the casting create a duplicate. The new silver piece is “aged” with an artificial patina. But no matter how good this job might be, the forgers always leave after casting tiny marks and other imperfections which the expert is able to spot by close study. Nathanson insists that even if the job were so well done that an expert missed the telltale marks, he could not be fooled by a phony patina.

Nathanson and his colleagues have their own quiet moments of triumph when they pit their knowledge against that of well-known importers. In one case a New York importer objected to paying duty on a loving cup which obviously was much more than a century old and qualified in his opinion for free entry. He argued that this loving cup was absolutely authentic and that all Nathanson had to do was look at the patina of the silver and also at the hallmarks. “Anyone can recognize those hallmarks and see that they are legitimate,” the importer said.

But Nathanson was quite sure there was something wrong with this piece of silver. The design was not quite right for its period. The hallmarks were genuine. There was no evidence that they had been tampered with. The patina, without doubt, was that of a very old piece of silver, and the sheen could not have been imparted by any chicanery.

Finally he suggested to the importer that they take the loving cup to the workshop of the importer, where his own silversmith could heat it to a near-melting point without doing damage. As they watched the silversmith carefully heat the silver, Nathanson saw that his suspicion was justified. The heat showed up definite lines where a spout had been removed from the “loving cup” and the hole patched over very expertly with silver to change the shape of a teapot and convert it to a loving cup.

Under the law, this piece of silver--even though it was far more than a century old--could not meet the requirements for free importation because it had been changed from its original form.

Many antique dealers are upset by the fact that they import what appears to be a legitimate antique only to find that it does not qualify for free entry because it has been tampered with at some time in the past. For example, one importer brought into the country a very old Oriental panel which had been made into a modern coffee table. He declared the table was entitled to free entry because the panel was an antique. Customs did not agree with the dealer’s viewpoint. While the panel alone would have been permitted to enter free of duty, once it became a part of a modern piece of furniture then it no longer met the legal requirements. This meant that the importer not only had to pay the regular rate of duty but also a penalty of 25 per cent--a penalty which is used by the government to discourage the practice of mislabelling imports.

In the eighteenth century in England it was common practice to use a pole screen while sitting in front of an open fire. The pole screen, sometimes made of painted wood and sometimes of fabric, stood on a tripod base and was placed in front of a person to shield his face from the fire. The top part was adjustable and could be raised or lowered as the person wished while toasting his legs.

Dealers in later years got the idea of converting the pole screens to other uses. They cut the screen from the pole and used the tripod as a base so that the old pole screen became a coffee table. While all the parts actually were antiques in themselves, Customs held that it did not qualify for free entry because the character of the article had been changed over the years. It was not being imported in the same form in which it originated and for which it was primarily intended. The fact that the parts were antique did not qualify it for free entry any more than the table fashioned from an Oriental panel.

Even the best and most reputable of dealers sometimes make mistakes in judging the age of art objects. There was one case in which such a misjudgment cost the dealer $6,300 in duties. A New York art gallery in 1953 paid $4,300 for porcelain vases which it believed to be early eighteenth-century Chinese. They were purchased from importers, who had bought them from a corporation which was disposing of several art objects for an estate. The vases originally had been owned by the royal family of Russia and had been brought to this country after the Russian revolution.

The gallery sold the vases for $9,000 to a woman who maintained her residence in Paris. One evening she boasted to her dinner guests that the vases were early eighteenth-century discoveries which once had reposed in the palace of the late Czar of Russia. One of her guests, an antiquarian, suggested discreetly to her later that possibly her purchases were not eighteenth-century Chinese but were from the nineteenth century.

The woman indignantly demanded an explanation from the gallery, which replied that they would gladly refund her money if she were dissatisfied, but they could not admit that a mistake had been made in dating the vases. The woman shipped the vases back to the United States labelled as antiques, free of duty, and valued at $9,000. When the vases arrived at Customs in New York, one of the Bureau’s experts studied them and declared that the vases were not Chinese eighteenth-century vases, but in fact had been made in France in the nineteenth century.

The Customs examiner’s judgment was upheld by other authorities in this field. The gallery was required to pay duty of $6,300. The tariff law states “if any article ... is detected as unauthentic in ... the antiquity claimed as a basis for free entry, there shall be imposed, collected, and paid ... a duty of 25 per cent of the value ... in addition to any other duty.” And in this case the “other duty” amounted to 45 per cent of the value.

Cultural growth can hardly be reduced to statistics, but Customs’ statistics are at least persuasive in support of the argument that the United States is now enjoying a cultural boom. Ten years ago American collectors were purchasing original paintings at the rate of $8.5 million a year. The purchases have increased to $33 million a year, with indications that the country is on a prolonged art-buying binge. It has been a profitable investment for many, as the values of the modernists’ paintings--particularly popular in this country--have spiralled.

The increase of interest in art has created a problem for Customs because--with the huge sums of money involved--there have emerged in Europe several “factories” producing bogus paintings in Paris, Amsterdam and Rome.

The appearance of the forgeries moved the Customs Bureau to issue this warning in its monthly bulletin:

Dealers and experts must approach all shipments with extreme
caution and employ modern scientific testing methods because of the
skill that has developed in the forging of scenes and signatures.

A recent purchase of a Modigliani, described merely as a “Portrait
of a Woman,” as so many of his works are, demanded much time and
research. A well-known American collector obtained the picture for
$25,000--a bargain, considering the quality of the painting. Our
appraisers and examiners set to work. They delved into the very
elaborate history of the painting and discovered that the canvas
actually was 2 inches smaller than the original--also there were
color differences. To the dismay of the importer, this import was
appraised at $150 and returned for duty as a copy.

Many of the fakes are discovered through the use of X-ray and infrared and ultraviolet lights, which reveal overpainting, restorations, and flaws not visible to the naked eye. Chemical analysis of the paints and varnishes used by the artists often give a clue to the period in which the work was done.

Over the years, the Customs examiners have learned that any decision they make on a work of art is potentially explosive. They have learned, too, that on some days they can expect to appear very dumb--and on other days very smart. And that very few people seem to hear of the smart days.

19

SEX AND THE CENSOR

Censors are unloved creatures. They are damned by writers, artists, and liberal thinkers wherever men cherish free expression. They are regarded generally as crude conformists who wear their righteousness as proudly as a Boy Scout wears his merit badge.

Every rule is likely to have its exception. The exceptional censor in the United States is a tall, good-natured, erudite lawyer named Huntington Cairns, who might justifiably be called the nation’s watchdog against the importation of obscene books, pictures, and other items of a questionable moral character. It would be too much to call Cairns “the beloved censor.” But if a department of the government were capable of affection, then the Treasury Department (and the Customs Bureau) at least should feel this warm emotion for the man who has kept them remarkably free from foot-in-mouth embarrassment for more than a quarter of a century.

Since 1934, Cairns has advised the Treasury and the Customs Bureau in their decisions as to what constitutes obscenity in foreign imports. Since his arrival on the scene there has been no significant public controversy over his decisions, even though the dividing line between genuine art and pornography is often no more than one man’s prejudice.