Warlords of Crime

by Gerald Posner

Discusses the growing menace of Chinese youth gangs and their usurpation of power from traditional crime organizations

Genres: Crime, True Crime, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Gerald Posner is an award winning journalist, bestselling author and attorney. The Los Angeles Times dubs him "a classic-style investigative journalist." "His work is painstakingly honest journalism" concluded The Washington Post. The New York Times lauded his "exhaustive research techniques" and The Boston Globe talked of Posner's "thorough and hard-edge investigation." "A meticulous and serious researcher," said the New York Daily News.

Posner's first book, Mengele, a 1986 biography of the Nazi "Angel of Death” Josef Mengele, was the result of a pro-bono lawsuit Posner brought on behalf of surviving twins from Auschwitz. Since then he has written ten other books from the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Case Closed, to bestsellers on political assassinations, organized crime, national politics, and 9/11 and terrorism. His upcoming God’s Bankers has spanned nine years of research and received early critical praise.

ohn Martin of ABC News says "Gerald Posner is one of the most resourceful investigators I have encountered in thirty years of journalism." Garry Wills calls Posner "a superb investigative reporter. "Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer, demolishes myths through a meticulous re-examination of the facts," reported the Chicago Tribune. "Meticulous research," Newsday.

Anthony Lewis in The New York Times: "With 'Killing the Dream, he has written a superb book: a model of investigation, meticulous in its discovery and presentation of evidence, unbiased in its exploration of every claim. And it is a wonderfully readable book, as gripping as a first-class detective story."

"What we need is a work of painstakingly honest journalism, a la Case Closed, Gerald Posner's landmark re-examination of the assassination of John F. Kennedy," concluded Joe Sharkey in The New York Times.

Gene Lyons, in Entertainment Weekly: "As thorough and incisive a job of reporting and critical thinking as you will ever read, Case Closed does more than buttress the much beleaguered Warren Commission's conclusion ….More than that, Posner's book is written in a penetrating, lucid style that makes it a joy to read. Even the footnotes, often briskly debunking one or another fanciful or imaginary scenario put forth by the conspiracy theorists, rarely fail to enthrall...Case Closed is a work of genuine patriotism and a monument to the astringent power of reason. 'A'"

Jeffrey Toobin in the Chicago Tribune: "Unlike many of the 2,000 other books that have been written about the Kennedy assassination, Posner's Case Closed is a resolutely sane piece of work. More importantly, 'Case Closed' is utterly convincing in its thesis, which seems, in light of all that has transpired over the past 30 years, almost revolutionary....I started Case Closed as a skeptic - and slightly put off by the presumptuous title. To my mind historical truth is always a slippery thing. The chances of knowing for sure what happened in any event - much less one as murky as the Kennedy assassination - seem remote. But this fascinating and important book won me over. Case closed, indeed."

Based in the mixed realms of politics, history, and true crime, his articles - from The New York Times to The New Yorker to Newsweek, Time and The Daily Beast - have prompted Argentina to open its hidden Nazi files to researchers; raised disturbing questions about clues the FBI missed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; sparked a reinvestigation of the Boston Strangler; and exposed Pete Rose's gambling addiction, which led to his ban from baseball.

Posner was one of the youngest attorneys (23) ever hired by Cravath, Swaine & Moore. A Political Science major, Posner was a Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (1975), where he was also a national debating champion, winner of the Meiklejohn Award. At Hastings Law School (1978), he was an Honors Graduate and served as the Associate Executive Editor for the Law Review. Of Counsel to Posner & Ferrar

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gerald L. Posner published the edition I read of this book in the late eighties. For me, reading it was a pleasure. It is hard to believe, but there is something attractive about an era when the drug gangs mostly killed each other, as news arrives today that the Zetas have for the fourth time killed a blogger and/or Twitter-user. Not that the Triads are blameless; Posner tracks the whole modern heroin manufacturing and transportation system from its origins in the Golden Triangle of Nothern Burma (among the traders were remnants of Chiang Kai-Shek's army) through the money networks of Hong Kong (then under British control) to Holland or the U.S. He wrote at a time when the Afghans were still busy fighting the Russians, and the Colombians, not the Mexicans, were hemispheric enemy number one, so the Golden Triangle has been basically underbid by concerns closer to the big markets. Still, Posner has a lot to talk about. He pinpoints the origin of the Triads as patriotic resistance groups against the foreign Qing dynasty that lost their purpose when that dynasty fell. He also pinpoints the origins of the opium trade among the British in India and the French in Southeast Asia--he argues that Dien Bien Phu, the French Waterloo in Viet Nam, was the result of hill tribes dissatisfied what they earned from French intelligence. (He notes the protection and support that the U.S. ally Taiwan gave to heroin traders. He teases out the role that American GIs had not only in making addicts out of fellow soldiers but in flooding the market at home (some of the drugs came home in military coffins). He visits the Walled City of Hong Kong, probably the densest place on earth, where 50,000 poor people lived in largely subterranean conditions. (Originally the fort of a long-vanshed dynasty, it finally fell victim to Hong Kong's real estate boom and was razed). He teases out the relations with the U.S. Tongs, and the flow of money everywhere, along with the ancillary vices, more devoted to gambling that prostitution, although Posner doesn't dwell much on human trafficking.

[Oscar Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably a bit dated now and a little inflammatory in it’s use of language in the current context.

However, Warlords of Crime perfectly balances a gripping narrative with cold hard facts from a wide range of sources.

The topic of Triads, Tongs and South East Asian Heroin Warlords is rarely covered. At least, not in as much detail as it is here. You really begin to understand the narcocosm and how the tangled relationships between colonialism, politics, and poverty have created the perfect climate for the illicit opium trade to thrive.

I also enjoyed some of the subtle crossovers in characters mentioned in this and Radden Keefe’s Snakehead.

[Walt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Posner is an excellent writer who seems to prefer political and social topics rather than organized crime and narcotics trafficking. Consequently, this book focuses on the organizations and their impact within the Golden Triangle. He does not shy away from their criminal ways; but he stresses the formation of the organizations and how they have evolved.

[Scott Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

The “Warlords of Crime” describes the golden triangle of the Asian drug trade – Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. The book details the trade routes established between the Asia, South and North America, and European continents. San Francisco native Posner's main thesis is that the mafia pales in comparison to the Asian crime organizations. Scary!

[Pablo Fandango · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read on Chinese Secret Societys.
Very exciting and informative.