New evidence suggests the blown cover of a DEA Clandestine Operations Network (DEACON) agent, Grayston Lynch triggered the arrests of Bum Farto and Manny James in Operation Conch. The DEACON scandal had CIA agents, Cuban exiles, the Tampa Mafia, and President Nixon waging a secret war against Fidel Castro funded by narcotics trafficking. Pictured are Tampa Mafia boss Santo Trafficante Jr., DEACON agent Grayston Lynch, fire chief Joseph Farto, city attorney Manny James and President Richard Nixon.

August 14, 2020

Key West Fire Chief Joseph “Bum” Farto disappeared on Feb. 16, 1976, while awaiting sentencing for a drug trafficking conviction stemming from Operation Conch – a sting operation that found Farto allegedly selling cocaine from the city’s fire station. Bum became the Jimmy Hoffa of Key West, and the island has swirled with rumors of his fate since he disappeared. David Sloan and Quincy Perkins have launched an unparalleled investigation into Chief Farto’s life, legends, and disappearance in an attempt to find the truth. Each week, they will share elements of their research here in the Key West Weekly while working to solve one of the greatest mysteries in Key West’s history.

Twenty-eight undercover agents from the Florida Department of Criminal Law Enforcement, Dade County Organized Crime Bureau, and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration descended upon Key West on September 9, 1975. They posed as karate enthusiasts but were really in town to arrest the island’s biggest alleged drug dealers. Jose Roque, a local DEA agent, dubbed the bust “Operation Conch,” but this was far from the attempt to break up small-town corruption as reported in the news. A Cuban dictator, a Mafia boss, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the United States president played an international clandestine game of cat and mouse. Key West was just a battlefield where part of their war unfolded.

Key West’s strategic proximity to Cuba cannot be understated. The rise of Fidel Castro and the threat of communism 90 miles from the United States created networks of Cuban exiles teamed with CIA paramilitary commanders. These networks operated secret training bases throughout the Florida Keys. Grayston Lynch was one of those CIA commanders. He trained the exiles in covert operations to avoid detection while crossing the Florida Straights to launch attacks on Cuba from the Florida Keys. Lynch fired the first shot at the Bay of Pigs invasion and personally led over 100 raids against Castro in the following six years. He quit his CIA job and moved to Key West in 1971, but Lynch was far from retired. Declassified intelligence reports show that the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network (BUNCIN), then later, the DEA Clandestine Operations Network (DEACON), enlisted Lynch as an undercover operative. He ran a string of informants through DEACON in the Florida Keys.

Journalist Douglas Valentine conducted an extensive investigation into BUNCIN and DEACON for his book, The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA. It reveals claims that CIA-trained anti-Castro exiles infiltrated the DEA on behalf of the Tampa Mafia through DEACON to protect narco-trafficking routes that funded their operations. DEACON agents eliminated competition and facilitated drug shipments benefiting Tampa Mafia boss Santo Trafficante and the CIA’s war against Fidel Castro. Those actions created friction between regular DEA agents and those of DEACON. I believe this set the stage for Operation Conch.

Grayston Lynch left Key West suddenly around August of 1975. The CIA noted in a secret document that was declassified in 2004, “Because of internal DEA politics, he was blown and left dangling on a string in Key West. He had to leave town within 24 hours and left his informants there without calling or warning them. As a result, he lost friends, prestige with his informants, many of them Cuban exiles, and his business in Key West.”

Bum Farto was set up in an Operation Conch drug sting shortly after Lynch’s cover was blown. Farto left his house on the morning of September 9, 1975, and spotted Larry Dollar and another agent dressed in suits. The chief realized he had been set up and threw the ring, which Dollar traded him for cocaine, to the ground. Bum rushed to his car and started to drive away but didn’t get far. He was the first arrest of Operation Conch.

Twenty-eight more alleged dealers went down that week, but the headlines focused on Fire Chief Farto, City Attorney Manny James, and the break-up of a crooked system of small-town corruption. The papers failed to report that most of those arrested had Cuban blood flowing through their veins. Many of them had ties to anti-Castro organizations. Some of them were linked to the Tampa Mafia. An attorney was immediately dispatched from Tampa to represent Farto, James, and some of the other accused.

The timing of this series of events begs several questions. Did Grayson Lynch facilitate drug shipments to finance a CIA war against Castro? Was Bum Farto a CIA operative? Informant? Did a DEA-CIA turf war turn the tables on Operation Conch? Could it be that Bum Farto was not a despicable drug dealer, but rather a soldier on the front lines doing whatever he could to defeat the communist threat that lurked just 90 miles from his home?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the 29 people arrested in Operation Conch were just pawns in the shady politics of people like Nixon, Trafficante, and Castro. All these men cared about was winning at any cost, even if that cost was a human life. Bum was assigned a trial date, but would it be a trial by jury or a trial by fire?

This ongoing investigative journalism at Keys Weekly is fascinating.

June 11, 2020

A popular bumper sticker calls Key West a drinking town with a fishing problem. It’s good for a laugh today, but the fishermen weren’t laughing in 1969, when conservation agents from the Department of Natural Resources boarded their boats with machine guns and seized the shrimpers’ bounties of “pink gold.” The Tortuga Shrimp Grounds that fueled Key West’s economy were permanently closed. It was the beginning of a perfect storm.

Drugs were not an issue in Key West before the Tortuga Shrimp Wars erupted. A local newspaper reported kids sniffing glue in 1968, but in 1969 there was “furor over marijuana,” with over 100 possession arrests by April 8 of that year. The Island City’s first heroin arrest occurred on Apr. 20, 1970, and cocaine wasn’t far behind. Key West was changing, and the drug trade helped usher in a new era for the island.

Hard drugs became a major industry in Key West. In 1972, the sale of heroin alone brought in an estimated $4.2 million ($26.3 million value in 2020 dollars). Santo Trafficante Jr. and the Tampa Mafia already controlled the local bolita rackets, and it was suspected they had a hand in heroin distribution routes as well. On Oct. 11, 1972, a Miami Herald article by Stan Windhorn reported, “A man highly placed in law enforcement concedes there is strong evidence that bolita money finances hard drug operations here. ‘Proving it,’ he says wryly, ‘is another matter.’“

In October 1973, the U.S. Navy decommissioned the submarine USS Amberjack, thus leaving the Key West Naval Station without a single ship. The station was formally disestablished the following year and the local economy took another hit. Many fishermen still made a living harvesting lobster, but once the Bahamians gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1973, Bahamians implemented strict and far-reaching regulations on the crawfish. The fishermen were again devastated. For a second time, these men who made a living on the ocean were held hostage by new rules as their boats were seized with force by low-caliber officials carrying high-caliber guns.

So what are fishermen to do in a profession that regulators have turned into a crime when their boats sit empty and their families are hungry? In Key West, they survive.

A fleet of shrimp boats designed to handle large cargos on long journeys sat idle at local docks. A new drug culture swept the country at the same time, and Americans developed an insatiable appetite for Colombian products such as marijuana, methaqualone and cocaine. Key West was America’s closest entry port to Colombia, and the U.S. Naval Base closure left shipping channels between the two locations largely unpatrolled.

The Miami Herald reported, “Major dealers bear the names of some of the oldest Key West families. The only outsiders are street corner and restroom pushers who sell drugs to finance their own habits and occupy the lowest rung of the dope-dealing ladder.” The purity of local cocaine neared 100%, and some high-profile residents became part of the island’s new trafficking industry as the Florida Keys became a pipeline fueling America’s appetite for drugs.

It was a perfect storm, and it helped define a decade. But it wasn’t the only one. Another storm was brewing on the horizon, and this one was going to sting.

http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1001593#Post1001593

In my Trafficante family murders list I put the Bum Farto murder as the last konw family murder.

Interesting.

WHERE IS BUM FARTO? KEY WEST’S NOTORIOUS DRUG-DEALING FIRE CHIEF IS NOW A MUSICAL

November 3, 2021

Based on a true and crazy story from the 1970s era in Key West’s fascinating history, about the charismatic local fire chief who disappeared in 1976 after being arrested on drug charges, this musical features a cast of 18 singers, dancers and actors performing 14 song-and-dance numbers in styles ranging from salsa to Carolina shag and even includes a tap-dancing “square fish,” the nickname ascribed to the floating bales of drugs that often washed ashore in the Florida Keys.

KEYS WEEKLY