Fifty years after U.S. officials brought down Leslie “Ike” Atkinson, the claim that heroin was smuggled into the United States inside the coffins—and even the bodies—of dead American soldiers still persists. The mistruth, repeated in court and amplified by figures such as drug kingpin Frank Lucas, was absorbed into criminal folklore, becoming one of the most enduring myths of the Vietnam War-era drug trade. Long before his 1975 arrest, Atkinson had already built the framework of a transnational operation. He and his partner, Herman Jackson, first crossed paths in the Army before going their separate ways. They reconnected in the late ...