HIGH
TIMES MAGAZINE (FEBRUARY 2005)
BLACK TUNA: STILL IN THE CAN
More than two decades after making the cover of HIGH TIMES,
and seven years after his release date, Robert Platshorn remains
America’s longest serving marijuana prisoner.
BY DAVID BIENENSTOCK
The federal government has given Robert Platshorn three watermelons,
along with a very special assignment. He's to carve the watermelons
into replicas of the Nino, the Pinta and the Santa Maria for
an upcoming Columbus Day celebration at the Maxwell Air Force
Base Federal Prison Camp in Alabama, where he is better known
as prisoner #00603-004—the resident garnish chef.
Platshorn is even better known to longtime HIGH TIMES readers
as leader of the Black Tuna Gang, convicted in 1980 of heading
the "biggest and slickest" drug ring in U.S. history.
The case against the Tunas represented the first joint effort
between the DEA and FBI to investigate profits from the marijuana
trade, a campaign that showcased many tactics the Drug Warriors
would hone and expand over the next twenty-five years: sleazy
paid informants, so-called expert witnesses, selective prosecution,
inflated statistics (see: amount of drugs, street values,
size of profit...). overt propaganda, naked self-promotion
and, most of all, a policy of heartless ass-covering that
would make War on Drugs founder, Richard Nixon, proud.
Platshorn, for his part, has closely followed the War on Drugs
from behind bars—at once a first-time, non-violent offender,
America's longest serving marijuana prisoner, and a man who
hasn't taken his son fishing since he was four years old.
Matthew Platshorn, now 29, is a special education teacher
in Nevada. He contacted HIGH TIMES to raise awareness about
a lawsuit his father has filed against the U.S. Parole Commission,
claiming that prisoner #00603—004 has been incarnated
seven years past his parole eligibility date. If the suit
can prove that the Bureau of Prisons mistakenly (if not maliciously)
calculated his release date, he may be a free man as you read
this. If not, the Tuna stays in the can until 2008.
“I believe they made a mistake, and like any government
agency they’re not real happy to admit it. They're treating
me like anyone else they screwed up with, and then tried to
bury,” Platshorn tells HIGH TIMES during a phone interview
from his home, a conversation interrupted occasionally by
a pre-recorded reminder that the call originated from a federal
prison. He softens when asked about the campaign spearheaded
by his son. “I've been very lucky with my him. He's
a terrific kid. We've stayed close. I know he was really torn
up for years about me being in jail, but he's always kind
of kept that in.”
Platshorn’s dream for life after prison is to publish
and sell a book with photos of his most garish garnishes,
along with detailed instructions on how to recreate them.
He’s had plenty of time to work on it, along with a
marketing plan that includes infomercials, the Internet and
other outlets not yet invented when he was first locked up.
As a career path, it would mark a full-circle for the subject
of HIGH TIMES’ September 1981 cover story, who got his
start in vegetable art long before moving on to vegetable
sales—working his way through college as a pitchman
and demonstrator for newfangled products like the Chop-a-Matic,
Dial-a-Matic, and the frozen food knife. Platshorn was hired
to draw a crowd with his fancy slicing, and then hawk the
products to dazzled consumers. A natural salesman, he thrived
in this and elsewhere, making money in various legitimate
industries after dropping out of the University of Miami in
1963. So then why jump the fence into the black market?
"I think it was the atmosphere of the ’70s. I owned
a chain of speed-reading schools in Europe, and the attitude
there was very casual towards pot. And in the States, it seemed
it was almost legal, with a market that was available. The
first time someone came to me and said 'I have 500 pounds,
do you know anybody who wants it?'—that was a very attractive
proposition," Platshorn explains. "At that time,
the average first offender would get 3-5 years, and usually
that would be a suspended sentence. I never thought anyone
was serious about putting people away for a long time for
marijuana. I honestly thought pot was going to be legalized.
That we were only a few years away."
We were not. The modern war on marijuana was just getting
started and, in fact, still had something to prove. Operation
Banco, the DEA/FBI joint effort, had burned through a lot
of time and taxpayer money delving into the dirty dealings
going down in Miami in the late ’70s, only to see the
big fish somehow slip through their nets. Along the way, these
strange bureaucratic bedfellows had jilted some fellow feds,
namely the I.R.S. and Customs, who were reportedly undertaking
investigations of their own—into the failures of Operation
Banco.
The rest is obvious to anyone who knows how the Drug War is
fought in America: Somebody had to go down, hard.
Nobody doubts that the Tunas were moving serious weight. Platshorn
fondly recalls flying down to Santa Marta, Colombia to score
the good stuff from well-connected local Raul Davila-Jimeno,
a.k.a. the elusive Black Tuna, who, for the record, was nowhere
to be found when heat came down on the Tunas who took his
name. But those dark days were all yet to come. In the beginning,
the pot was great, the profits were great, and so were the
people. And so Platshorn figured: Why not?
"It was fun when it was a business that had acceptance,
when it looked like pot was going to be legalized, and when
we dealt with hippie types—nice people who were fun
to be around, and did not have guns. All of that collapsed
when they made it very clear that pot was going to be a serious
crime."
After a string of failed schemes (including a crashed plane
and a sunken boat), shady connections and lost profits, Platshorn
pulled the plug on the Tunas, returning to life at the auto
dealership he’d bought with partner Robert Meinster.
The two childhood friends had moved south together to pursue
the marijuana millions to be made in Miami, after achieving
early success together up North.
Meinster (who also remains in prison) and Platshorn were indicted
May 1, 1979, along with Platshorn’s wife and eleven
other members of the extended Tuna family. Both men’s
homes were raided at gunpoint that morning, and both would
leave young children behind when they left for prison. U.S.
Attorney General Griffin Bell announced the indictments at
a national press conference, turning on the heat for a media
campaign aimed at searing the Tunas in the fire of public
opinion. Prosecutors also trotted out the Racketeering Influenced
Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, and charges of a “continuing
criminal enterprise”—two heavy-duty measures intended
to take down organized crime, which were turned against the
decidedly disorganized crime of the Tunas (see HIGH TIMES
Sept.1981: “The Gang That Couldn’t Deal Straight”).
Throughout the trial, the government would issue purple-prose
press releases, designed to create the palpable perception
of major wrongdoing—accusing the Tunas of hoarding hundreds
of millions of dollars, commanding a private army and plotting
to kill the judge. Naturally, the newspapers all went along
for the ride.
“We made a modest amount of money” Platshorn admits,
“but not even one percent of what was alleged. [The
government claimed] anywhere from one million to three million
pounds were brought in, but at trial the reality was less
than 100,000 pounds. In total, we made three flights, plus
a boat trip. And all of a sudden we’re the biggest thing
that ever hit marijuana.”
When the sentence came down—64 years—you can bet
those boys on the joint task force were laughing all the way
to the Banco. The DEA/FBI juggernaut credited their original
failed operation with taking down the nation’s largest
drug ring, and promptly returned triumphantly to Washington
D.C. with their hands out for more Drug War money. Both Platshorn
and his wife went to prison, and although her sentence was
only a few years, Platshorn says she’s never really
recovered. Then his daughter died at age twelve of an epileptic
coma. Then both his parents passed on. And now, most recently,
his younger sister has died as well. All the while he has
kept working on his garnish book, the rare writer without
a day job, who can count on the government for three hots
and a cot—going on twenty-five years.
So sure, Platshorn has learned his lesson. But what if way
back when he’d received a big fine, a slap on the wrist
and a suspended sentence?
“If we had gotten a reasonable sentence, I can't imagine
that we'd have gotten back into the business. We had stopped
before we were indicted, and didn't bring in so much as a
seed for two years,” Bobby Tuna says, claiming he’d
already seen the writing on the wall—the feds were dead
serious about pot, bigger fish were moving in, and the glory
days of multi-ton shipments were over. “I read all the
articles in HIGH TIMES about homegrown, and all the ads for
grow lights, and that definitely seemed to be where it was
going. There was no reason to smuggle that kind of bulk into
the United States anymore.”
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