office diary for 9 June 1982 strengthens this hypothesis. A secretary noted that Diotallevi had called and left a message for Pellicani: ‘He asked if a blond youth (Sergio) had arrived.’ Later the same day Diotallevi called again: ‘Sergio has arrived.’ It would be enormously significant if Vaccari had not only been in contact with Calvi during his last days in London but had also participated in the preparations for his journey abroad, accompanying an underworld boss to deliver his forged passport. It would set him at the very heart of the alleged murder plot.
There are other reasons as well for taking a keen interest in Vaccari. One concerns his arrest for drug smuggling in the United States and what appears to be his anomalous treatment by the US authorities on that occasion. Vaccari was arrested by customs officials at Los Angeles airport on 10 June 1978 after arriving on a Varig flight from Lima. He was initially found to be carrying a small quantity of cocaine in his wallet, shrugging off the incident by telling the customs officers: ‘I brought it for the girls. They always ask me for it.’ Less easy to explain was the 2.4 kilos of cocaine found concealed in thefalse bottom of his suitcase. He was arrested in the company of a Latin American woman called Patricia Noriega.
Vaccari was found guilty of importation of a controlled substance and sentenced by the US District Court of Los Angeles to two years’ probation and a $500 fine and ordered to be deported within three months. The sentence appears exceptionally light in view of the amount of cocaine found in his possession. Heavily edited documents provided to me by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) show Vaccari described himself as a self-employed salesman in the industrial security sector and gave a California address: 1403 Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills. The locations of his criminal activity are listed as Los Angeles, Tijuana in Mexico, the Venezuelan capital Caracas and Lima, Peru. His drug smuggling activities evidently continued and a warrant for his arrest was issued in October 1980 by judicial authorities in San Diego. A further warrant was issued by the Southern District of California a year later, alleging that Vaccari had been travelling between the US and South America arranging for the delivery of multikilogram quantities of cocaine in the Los Angeles area. On that occasion he was said to be living in Caracas, where he ‘reportedly owns a Security Agency’. A personal history report dated 19 January 1983 gives Vaccari’s address as West London, England, and his occupation as ‘movie industry’. It lists two aliases: John Max Lloyd and Sergio Ajelli.
Ten pages of the heavily blacked-out DEA material on Vaccari were only released to me after consultation with ‘another government agency’, which had furnished some of the information. Among the reasons cited for the deletions was section (b) (1) of the American Freedom of Information Act: ‘Information which is currently and properly classified pursuant to Executive Order in the interest of the national defense or foreign policy.’ The DEA’s consultation and deletions raise the question as to whether Vaccari may have been recruited as a CIA informant in exchange for his lenient treatment by the Los Angeles courtin 1978. Known to frequent senior
mafiosi
and right-wing extremists in London and Italy, he could have been a valuable intelligence asset.
One of the constant themes in Paoli’s reports for the finance police is the fate of the sensitive documents contained in Calvi’s briefcase. The papers were being held in a safety deposit box in an Austrian bank, he told his handlers, at one point even accompanying them on a trip to Austria to try and identify the bank. But the interest of Paoli and his associates in the documents predates Calvi’s final journey. In an undated note written by Paoli himself, the finance police source said one of his Trieste associates had been angling
There are other reasons as well for taking a keen interest in Vaccari. One concerns his arrest for drug smuggling in the United States and what appears to be his anomalous treatment by the US authorities on that occasion. Vaccari was arrested by customs officials at Los Angeles airport on 10 June 1978 after arriving on a Varig flight from Lima. He was initially found to be carrying a small quantity of cocaine in his wallet, shrugging off the incident by telling the customs officers: ‘I brought it for the girls. They always ask me for it.’ Less easy to explain was the 2.4 kilos of cocaine found concealed in thefalse bottom of his suitcase. He was arrested in the company of a Latin American woman called Patricia Noriega.
Vaccari was found guilty of importation of a controlled substance and sentenced by the US District Court of Los Angeles to two years’ probation and a $500 fine and ordered to be deported within three months. The sentence appears exceptionally light in view of the amount of cocaine found in his possession. Heavily edited documents provided to me by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) show Vaccari described himself as a self-employed salesman in the industrial security sector and gave a California address: 1403 Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills. The locations of his criminal activity are listed as Los Angeles, Tijuana in Mexico, the Venezuelan capital Caracas and Lima, Peru. His drug smuggling activities evidently continued and a warrant for his arrest was issued in October 1980 by judicial authorities in San Diego. A further warrant was issued by the Southern District of California a year later, alleging that Vaccari had been travelling between the US and South America arranging for the delivery of multikilogram quantities of cocaine in the Los Angeles area. On that occasion he was said to be living in Caracas, where he ‘reportedly owns a Security Agency’. A personal history report dated 19 January 1983 gives Vaccari’s address as West London, England, and his occupation as ‘movie industry’. It lists two aliases: John Max Lloyd and Sergio Ajelli.
Ten pages of the heavily blacked-out DEA material on Vaccari were only released to me after consultation with ‘another government agency’, which had furnished some of the information. Among the reasons cited for the deletions was section (b) (1) of the American Freedom of Information Act: ‘Information which is currently and properly classified pursuant to Executive Order in the interest of the national defense or foreign policy.’ The DEA’s consultation and deletions raise the question as to whether Vaccari may have been recruited as a CIA informant in exchange for his lenient treatment by the Los Angeles courtin 1978. Known to frequent senior
mafiosi
and right-wing extremists in London and Italy, he could have been a valuable intelligence asset.
One of the constant themes in Paoli’s reports for the finance police is the fate of the sensitive documents contained in Calvi’s briefcase. The papers were being held in a safety deposit box in an Austrian bank, he told his handlers, at one point even accompanying them on a trip to Austria to try and identify the bank. But the interest of Paoli and his associates in the documents predates Calvi’s final journey. In an undated note written by Paoli himself, the finance police source said one of his Trieste associates had been angling
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