Still, Platshorn was hardly innocent. He expected to get a three-to-seven-year sentence, and be paroled even sooner—a reasonable expectation for even multiton marijuana crimes at the time. What he didn’t realize was how surely times had changed since his first trip to Colombia. In December 1977, Jimmy Carter’s head of drug policy, Peter Bourne, reportedly snorted coke at a Christmas Party thrown by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law. When the story broke the following summer, Carter stopped talking about marijuana reform and sent a first-of-its-kind FBI/DEA task force to Miami to stop marijuana smugglers. “We were going to start the war on drugs,” remembers Harold Copus, another of the FBI agents assigned to the case. Platshorn and his crew was the first bust by Operation Banco, as the joint task force was known. They were dubbed the “Black Tuna Gang,” after the alleged code name of the group’s Colombian supplier, and the trial was a five-month circus of strange happenstance and eye-catching allegations. Several months in, Platshorn was accused of plotting to obstruct justice by bribing a juror and assassinating the judge, forcing a mistrial. (He was later cleared of both charges.) “This is the most bizarre, gigantic operation I have ever seen,” said one FBI agent at the time. And indeed Platshorn was hammered from the bench. “The price for participation in this traffic should be prohibitive,” said Judge James Lawrence King at sentencing. “It should be made too dangerous to be attractive.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Platshorn tells a larkier version of events. The government said the gang had operated an intelligence unit using high-tech mobile scanners; Platshorn says it was just two buddies in a van full of Radio Shack gadgets. The government said the gang had acquired their own airstrip, a dozen yachts, a private army to defend their loads from theft by rival gangs, and had planned to hijack a 737 jet for the ultimate smuggle. Not so, says Platshorn: the airstrip, armada, and private army are sensationalized descriptions of mundane partnerships, and the 737 plan was nothing more than a “campfire chat.” Dennis Cogan, who defended Platshorn’s childhood friend and closest partner in the gang, says the allegations in the case were “so totally crazy.” “It made for good theater,” adds Arthur Tifford, who represented Platshorn against the obstruction charges. “With all due respect, persons in the executive branch needed headlines.” Judge King declined to comment on the case, but Dana Biehl, one of the government’s prosecutors at trial, was willing to revisit it for the first time. In a recent interview with the Daily Beast, he also remembered it as a highly political case. “It’s hard to think about now, but what terrorism was after 9/11 drugs were at that time.” At first, the evidence suggested Platshorn and his partner Robert Meinster were “midlevel” players, Biehl says, and he offered them 10 years in jail. Before the plea deal could be accepted, however, it was rescinded by Washington, according to the defendant’s lawyers, and the case turned into a tentpole event for promoting government’s anti-drug efforts. Biehl argued for a life sentence at trial. Today, he says he can certainly see why that might seem harsh. “These guys didn’t ruin the number of lives that [heroin and cocaine traffickers] Frank Matthews and Nicky Barnes did, and they were not shooting all around.” John F. Brown Jr., the youngest lawyer on the government’s side, offers a similar view. “I don’t recall any proof that [codefendant Robert] Meinster and Platshorn ran a hard-nosed organization whose modus operandi included the use of the types of violence one would associate with, say, the Colombian gangs.” Rather, “they seemed more like the Keystone Cops than slick masterminds.” While he was behind bars, Platshorn’s parents, sisters, and daughter died, and he and his wife divorced. “I don’t have the words,” he says about the losses he has suffered. He would rather talk about his causes. For the first time in Florida, there are medical-marijuana resolutions in both the Senate and the House, and at least one poll shows majority public support—thanks in no small part to Platshorn. “We have a lot of seniors in our community and people with terminal illnesses that truly believe they derive relief from medical marijuana,” state representative Jeff Clemens told the Sun-Sentinel recently. Last January, after Platshorn pitched him on the idea, Clemens introduced a medical marijuana bill in the House. This year Clemens has joined Platshorn on the Silver Tour. With Republican majorities in elected office, it’s still a long shot for marijuana legalization, medical or otherwise. But Platshorn is optimistic. Ever the salesman, he raises extra capital by selling Black Tuna Gang medallions on his website. The gold ones have sold out. Act now, however, and the silver could still be yours. “Everybody who said Florida is impossible,” says Platshorn, “doesn’t know what a pitchman can do.” Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long. Tony Dokoupil is a staff writer at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com. NEXT 1 2 View As Single Page Print Email Comments (0) Tags: Crime Click here to find out more! 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