The White Goddess

The lead in the case turned up during a police raid on a Havana den. Among the evidence was a coded letter which indicated that a Cuban government official was mixed up in the big-time drug traffic. Last week after he stepped off the plane from Lima, waiting detectives nabbed Rafael Menacho Vicente, 55, Cuban consul to Peru. In his diplomatic pouch was a package containing two pounds of cocaine, worth around $10,000 in the underworld.

Cuba was not alone in the scandal. In Washington, Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger reported that the...