Empty: The story of a boat, an abandoned town and $17 million worth of pot, pt. 2
…Continued from: Empty: The story of a boat, an abandoned town and $17 million worth of pot, pt. 1
Night is falling. The tugboat towing the Saja is slowing down. They’re 22 miles up the Columbia River, and in the dim light the crew can see a forest of pilings sticking out of the water on the south shore. This is a ghost town. This is Bradwood Landing.
Bradwood Landing, 1954. Photo via Clatsop County Board of Commissioners.
For over 100 years, Bradwood Landing was a teeming, isolated knot of timber industrialism. Stacks of cut wood lines the docks. New ships arrive every two days. The millpond is choked with logs. The town is filled with hundreds of men. In 1962 a plan to expand the mill fails and the town is abandoned. By 1985 all that remains are rotting pilings sticking out of the river — that, and on a few of those pilings, a brand new dock. The Saja ties up. The tugboat leaves. Silence descends.
Almost 20 years later, an Texas company called NorthernStar Natural Gas will propose tearing out those pilings and building a plant that will turn liquefied natural gas into normal gas, which the company will then pipe to the rest of Oregon. A massive project. A genuine need for natural gas. But there are some in the state who say there are environmental concerns and safety concerns and the company will spend countless dollars fighting a public relations battle that stretches from the empty banks of Bradwood Landing to the desk of a state governor intent on fighting the project.
NorthernStar Natural Gas' artist rendition of the plant. Photo via NorthernStar Natural Gas.
I’ve driven the old road from the highway down to Bradwood Landing several times. It twists and turns, and aside from the road, a locked gate and a rusted line of railroad tracks, the land shows very little signs of human contact. The paved road stops at the gate. On the other side it turns to gravel and leads to an empty beach. And to a half-buried metal warehouse the smuggling crew built in the days before the Saja arrived. When the ship ties up at the dock, a crew of eight men, several pickup trucks and two rented moving vans are waiting for them. Night has fallen. In one of the trucks is a generator and lights. But they don’t take them out.
I know why. I’ve stood in the middle of the old pilings at dusk on a low tide. On the far shore, lights twinkle and reflect off the river. It’s a home, one with a broad view of what’s happening on the river. Back then there is only one home, one twinkling light. But the men aren’t taking chances. Instead of the generator and the lights, they line the dock with flashlights and go to work. They transfer burlap coffee sacks filled with bales of marijuana into the pickup trucks. The trucks drive down the dock to the moving vans in the warehouse. Pound after pound; ton after ton; the same weight as about 12 full-size pickup trucks. And when they’re finished, the trucks sit in the warehouse, waiting for daylight to drive away.
Bradwood Landing, 2008. Photo by Abraham Hyatt.
It takes the feds 2 1/2 years and many almost-misses to build a case against the men behind the Saja. Investigators are able tie together three different smuggling operations in Boston, Miami and Bradwood Landing. Ten men from five countries are indicted; most are caught. Acquilino gets 10 years; his bother gets six. The South Korean captain disappears as does the Spaniard who bought the Saja in the Canary Islands. Ownership of the Saja is never determined and no one comes forward to claim it. One of Arnold’s clients becomes a government witness and is in the Federal Witness Protection Program. One man shoots himself in the chest and dies. Goldman gets 15 years and then sleeps with a member of the prosecution in hopes of getting a reduction in sentence. He goes to jail just the same.
But that’s long after the Saja ties up at Bradwood Landing. As the sun rises on May 29, the trucks drive off to a 40-acre plot of land the crew has purchased in the hills west of Hillsboro, Ore. In the days leading up to May 28, the men had monitored the local highways, talking back and forth on hand-held radios, analyzing traffic. It was a needless precaution. The trucks arrive at the property without problem and the buying and selling begins.
Buyers around the country phone in an order to a motel room near Tigard, about 15 miles southeast of Hillsboro. Price: $345 a pound. A representative of the buyer shows up at the hotel and pays half the money up front. Then they drive to Hillsboro and pay the rest of the money. The property has been outfitted with a loading bay so that buyers can use semi trucks if needed. In a single day, somewhere around $17.2 million changes hands. And within a few days, everyone is gone. The feds are years too late in stopping the biggest drug deal in Oregon history. The marijuana disappears into thousands, maybe tens of thousands of hands across America. The smugglers make millions and then have years to spend it. The Saja operation is, in many ways, a massive success.
On May 31, three days after she landed in Astoria, the Saja is spotted at Bradwood Landing. By the time the Customs Service, Coast Guard, National Marine Fisheries and all their dogs and guns board the boat, the Saja sits empty and listing, gently rocking against pilings set by long-dead loggers and mill men.
Bradwood Landing today. The warehouse the smugglers built -- visible in the center of the photo -- is nearly covered in sand from a dredging operation that took place a few years later in the Columbia River. Photo via the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners.
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Sources:
United States of America v. David Carlton Arnold and Armando Coto, 117 F.3d 1308 (11th Cir. 1997).
Interviews with Paul Benoit, City of Astoria, city manager; Charles Deister, NorthernStar Natural Gas, spokesman.
“Phase I Environmental Site Assessment – Revised.” Prepared by AMEC Earth & Environmental, Inc. for NorthernStar Natural Gas, August, 2005
“Summary of Bradwood Industrial Site,” presentation to Clatsop County Board of Commissioners by NorthernStar Natural Gas, Oct 19, 2007.
The Oregonian, August 4, 1988, “10 Face Federal Charges In ‘85 Smuggling Scheme”
The Oregonian, August 17, 1988, “Investigators Detail Big Marijuana-Smuggling Operation”
The Oregonian, February 19, 1989, “Drug Case Figure Gets Protection”
The Oregonian, September 12, 1989, “Drug Smuggler Admits To Charges”
The Oregonian, March 20, 1990, “New Yorker Draws 15-Year Term In Record Oregon Narcotics Case”
