Matt Lauer has done a Dateline report on ‘American Gangster’, the much-hyped movie just released by Universal. The movie is based on the story of Frank Lucas who was basically a thug in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. He’s been released from prison and now he and the detective that put him in prison are being immortalized in this film.

Like any good sociopath, Lucas is called charming and a vivid storyteller. He still want talk about the murders he committed because there is no statute of limitations on murder. He will talk about his other crimes and seems to be enjoying the attention this movie is bringing him. Lucas created a drug empire based on shipping heroin from Vietnam in the caskets of dead Soldiers.
Macsmind reports on Lauer’s interview. He says Lauer just gushed over the convicted felon Frank Lucas. He snickers when he speaks fo Lucas’ method of shipping heroin to the States from Vietnam. I guess Lauer thinks that’s humorous or clever somehow.

I just think its disgusting.

“Frank Lucas exudes a distinctive charisma even though he’s been physically weakened by time on the street and behind bars. I talked with him about the film, “American Gangster,” which he had only just seen days before our interview. He was gushing about the movie and Denzel Washington’s performance, saying he was “amazed at the way he had (him) down.” Although Lucas was well known in the criminal underworld of New York and among law enforcement in the ’70s, the new film is bringing him a tidal wave of press attention. He appears to be relishing it, although it wasn’t enough to get him to come to the movie’s premiere at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He reportedly circled the block in his car that night before deciding not to make an appearance. Was he afraid of retaliation by any of the criminals he testified against? Or was he afraid of the crowd and the spotlights?

A vivid storyteller, he has quite a riveting one to tell — a criminal twist on Horatio Alger. This semiliterate African-American man grew up in the south, came to New York and built a drug empire unlike any other in the late ’60s and ’70s, beginning his life of crime in the ’50s as the protegee of Harlem gangster Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson. When Johnson died in 1968, Lucas took over his drug operation and expanded it. The key came when he was able to corner his own supply of heroin in the so-called “Golden Triangle” of Southeast Asia, where numerous American soldiers had become addicted to heroin during the Vietnam War.

Utilizing a military connection, he and his crew designed a disturbing scheme to get the heroin in the United States–smuggling bags of dope in the coffins of dead U.S. soldiers being flown back from Vietnam. The infamous operation became known as the “Cadaver Connection” (a nod to the Italian mafia’s well-known French Connection that came to light in the 1960’s)”

So is this what Hollywood wants us to view as heroes these days?