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Game of Crimes

117: Part 2: Charles Lutz Takes on Unpopular Causes from Vietnam to DEA to TSA

Game of Crimes

Game of Crimes

True Crime

4.81.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Charles Lutz started his professional career in Vietnam as a newly commissioned lieutenant who begged to get into the action. His wish was granted, resulting in the Bronze Star for bravery. From there, he worked across the globe for the DEA and took on some of the toughest assignments in difficult places, including the loss of five agents assigned to Operation Snowcap in a tragic plane crash in Peru. His service wasn’t over after retiring from DEA. After 9/11, he took on the enormous task of leading the conversion at Orlando airport to the newly-created TSA.

Get his book here: Unpopular Causes

Transcript

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0:00.0

Do you ever get any chatter that he was still alive, you know, anywhere?

0:15.7

Well, we looked for him.

0:18.2

I had information he was actually a fled to Rania Perthett, which is a town on the Cambodian

0:24.3

border in Thailand.

0:28.0

So I actually want to investigate assistance and I went up there and spent a couple of days

0:32.3

at a picture or a sugary and checked out all the bars and massage powers and whatever

0:38.1

you see if we can find him and we never did.

0:42.8

But the other case I was going to mention, I think you might find interesting, is

0:48.0

while I was doing this undercover thing with sugary,

0:51.6

the agent who was handling the Herman Jackson, like Ackinson case in Bangkok,

1:01.7

which was a group of retired military NCA, NCOs that had been smuggling heroin back to the

1:10.4

States. That agent was transferred back to the States and in those days, every case had to

1:17.0

have an agent assigned to it if only to write status reports. So my boss Paul Brown dumped

1:25.6

this Ackinson case along me and I thought, man, I got enough to do, but it actually turned out

1:33.6

to be a blessing because I guess after a few days got a call from San Francisco from an agent

1:45.3

Lionel Stewart and there had been a couple of guys in the rest of Japan, military,

1:56.2

US Army guys and they wanted them flipped and identified his sources apply as the bar tender

2:06.8

at a bar owned in Bangkok by disharming Jackson. So I thought, wow, you know, maybe we can make

2:14.0

something in this case, case after all, Long Story Short Lionel came over and he actually made

2:22.1

an undercover purchase of heroin from the source of supply. We got him to San Francisco where he

2:28.4

was arrested and he ended up, I mean, it's a long story, but we ended up being able to process

2:39.2

with somebody evidence we got through that case, we were able to prosecute Ackinson in North

...

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