Doyle vs. Mulderig
The book and film of THE FRENCH CONNECTION are so ingrained in our conscience that we assume what we read and saw is at least 80-90% true. That Jean Jehan, known in the French underworld as "Giant," traveled with and supervised a very large shipment of heroin from Marseilles to New York City in January, 1962, and escaped a police dragnet, is something that is undeniable. But the treatment on paper and film of most of the rest of the story is wholly up for debate.
There is a lot of stuff on line for those interested in the background and police pursuit - and the role international politics played - of what was known by law enforcement at the time as the "Angelo Tuminaro case." Tuminaro, the Mafia narcotics organizer for the Lucchese family, was converted in the film to a Jewish gangster named Joel Weinstock.
The part of the controversial tale I will probe here is the role of Federal Bureau of Narcotics Agent Francis E. Waters. You will know Waters in the film as Agent Bill Mulderig (played by Bill Hickman). In the movie, Mulderig is a hard-on agent bent on ruining Popeye Doyle's case because of earlier grievances with the NY narcotics detective. In the end, Doyle gets his revenge - albeit accidentally - by killing his tormentor.
The real life Waters was nothing of the kind. He was more a "Popeye Doyle" type than Eddie Egan himself. To review the basic outline of the story: Detectives Eddie "Popeye" Egan and Sonny "Cloudy" Grosso, out on the town, stumbled across a high-living gangster wanna-be, Patsy Fuca, throwing money around in the Copacabana. On a hunch, the detectives followed Patsy home and discovered him to be a luncheonette jockey with ties to mob boss "Little Ange" Tuminaro. When the detectives later learned that a shipment from France was due any day, they asked for clearance from their supervisors to pursue the case. And on and on...
Unlike in the film, Egan and Grosso had no resistance from their supervisors, and were, in fact, encouraged to pursue their hunch, hoping it would lead to the arrest of Tuminaro who was on the lam. Also of note, there was a third partner on their team. His name was Detective Richard Pardo; who for some reason declined to be involved in either the book or film. Once it was determined the drugs were coming from abroad, the case came under the jurisdiction of the Federal Narcotics Bureau whose director was George Gaffney. According to surviving agents, the case was given to Frank Waters, one of the agency's toughest and most astute narcotics specialists. An uneasy collaboration of NYPD Narcotics Squad and Federal Bureau of Narcotics was formed, with Waters in charge; and indeed, there were more than a hundred law enforcement agents assigned to the case (today this type of operation would be called a "joint task force"). The friction between the two agencies was not uncommon, but Frank Waters was a New York City field officer and not a pencil-pusher out of Washington who was respected on the street by cops and criminals.
When the time came to arrest Patsy, there was no doubt that Waters was the man to do it. Patsy was a killer ("a guy named DeMarco"), and was known to carry a pistol. This type of collar, according to other agents, was a Frank Waters specialty, he made his arrests with a blackjack at the ready, and was as rough as he had to be. As it turned out, Patsy and his pregnant wife, Barbara, submitted to the cops without incident. Surviving agents also claim it was Waters, not Egan, who got out-slicked by Jean Jehan on the Grand Central Shuttle.
(Ironically, on the day the arrests were made, the deported capo de capo, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who had millions of dollars riding on the safe transporting of the 60 kilos to New York, dropped dead of a heart attack in Naples Italy.)
Waters, to his dying day, always gave credit to Egan and Grosso for unearthing the plot, but was so angry when he first saw the movie, jumped out of his chair in a crowded theater when the film ended and yelled, "bulls--t!" That the author Robin Moore used Egan and Grosso as his sole law enforcement sources when he wrote the book "The French Connection" made the account so dubious and slanted in favor of the NYPD's, as well as their own involvement, that Waters sued the author, film producers and publisher and won $10,000. His leading role in the case is backed up by a book about international drug smuggling and the CIA's complicity called "The Strength of the Wolf."
Waters post-law enforcement life was a mixed bag. He, himself, was arrested in 1973 for pushing drugs from his Long Island home. At the time of his death, he was a recovering alcoholic. He was a long-time bartender at Elaine's Restaurant in Manhattan. While not buddies, he and Eddie Egan were at least polite to each other in their post-police careers. Egan might have like to say, "I wish I had shot the son of a bitch," something William Friedkin played out in the movie, but as they say, "that's showbiz."
Here's a link to Frank Waters' actual defamation of character lawsuit against author Robin Moore, film producer Philip D'Antoni and 20th Century Fox.
http://www.leagle.com/decision/197244270Misc2d372_1342/WATERS%20v.%20MOORE
Also 1959 newspaper article about narcotics detectives arresting dope pushers as Santa Claus and helpers during holiday season. Eddie Egan, Sonny Grosso and Richard Pardo worked as an undercover team until the mid-1960's.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19591207&id=GsIxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=RuQFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5660,1697473&hl=en
Frank Waters arrest in 1973.
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1973/02/06/page/22/article/display-ad-19-no-title