DC is more than monuments, politics and traffic and the fifth annual OUR CITY FILM FESTIVAL is out to prove it.

February 11th and 12th marks our fifth annual Yachad’s* Our City Film Festival and it may very well be the best one yet.  Come celebrate our city’s fascinating people, places and history.

The schedule is packed with fantastic parties, films, Q&As.  The list of partners and creative minds involved with us is overwhelming.

Please be sure to check out our VIP Ticket  which will give you access to all of the events throughout the weekend.  Also consider taking out a business or well-wish ad in our program book.

This program is sponsored in large part by The Humanities Council of Washington, DC.

*The Our City Film Festival is an outreach project of Yachad, the DC nonprofit for affordable housing and community development.

Use promo code iheartYachad for a 5% discount to all film tickets and VIP tickets!

ForeverDC.com supports the “5th Annual Our City Film Festival“ and is a promotional partner.

American Gangster, the Other Side of Things: A Look into the Real Kingpin

We’ve all seen Denzel Washington play the role of a glamorized kingpin, Frank Lucas who used his connections in South East Asia, to increase the sale of Blue Magic in the streets of Harlem during the time of war, but how much of this is true and how much of this is Hollywood?

We sit down with Author Ron Chepesiuk who uncovered the truth during his investigative reporting and research and discovered someone was missing from the story, the real kingpin behind it all; former U.S. Army Master Sergeant, Ike Atkinson.

After serving 32-years in prison for smuggling over 400 million dollars worth of heroin to the United States from South East Asia, Ike tells Foreverdc.com the real story.

Foreverdc.com: First and foremost, thank you both for taking the time out to interview  with me tonight

Ron: Well we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us

Ike: Thank you, I hope we have a good conversation

Foreverdc.com: We will.

Foreverdc.com: Ron I did some research and saw Sergeant Smack and Bangkok Connection, what’s the difference in the two books?

Ron: Their the same thing, the publisher, Maverick House in Ireland brought the Asian rights and their also publishing it in the United Kingdom and their calling it the Bangkok Connection as oppose to Sergeant Smack

Foreverdc.com: Why did you feel compelled to write The Bangkok Connection? Were you more so seeking truth?

Ron: The way this project started, I don’t know if you know the book has been an option for a movie and we’re hoping that it will develop into something next year. But the way it started essentially, was because I was doing a book called Gangsters of Harlem and I interviewed Frank Lucas for the book, and this was before Frank Lucas became real famous with the movie American Gangster, and in the interview he kept referring to his cousin, quote unquote Ike Atkinson. Saying Ike Atkinson was the guy who supplied him with drugs and stuff, he helped him with the cadaver connection and all those kinds of things and I was saying “Wow, this is amazing.” But deep down I didn’t really trust Lucas to be telling the complete truth. You know, he was talking to me and being an investigative journalist I was a little bit skeptical so I said “well you know it might be worth it to try locate Ike.” I knew he was in prison (referencing Ike) but I thought he was out. Then I found out that he had been in prison since 75’ this was 2006, so that was 31 years. I then found out that was only three hours from where I was in Buckner Penitentiary so I said yeah it’s worth a letter, it’s worth a letter to the board and I wrote the warden  and I said “Could you please give this letter to Ike?” and I explained to him that I was working on this book and that I had talked to Frank Lucas and Ike, of course I had dome many interviews during that course of time, and he was very curious about what Frank Lucas told me so he agreed to be interviewed so I went down to Buckner, about three times and he told me most of what Lucas said was a lie, we tried to verify it later in my book and from that, Ike was getting out the following year and we said it loosely, “maybe we could do a book on your life” and when Ike got out, he committed to it and the rest was history.

Foreverdc.com: That’s awesome, Ike, what is your intention as far as wanting or agreeing to putting this information out? You want the truth to be told of course but after so long why is it important to you to get the truth out now?

Ike: Well, from the get go, I was really concerned that Ron didn’t have all the facts to this. In the first place, what I saw on television was very short, and I knew he {Lucas} was telling a story being interviewed by someone but then again I saw that he was talking to an agent and I knew something wasn’t right, so I was hoping that one day, I would one day have the opportunity to meet Ron.

Ron: Right, the thing is what Ike is referring to is in the free publicity for American Gangster, there were several documentaries on the History channel, the Bio channel, and I was interviewed for several of those, Black Entertainment Television {BET} I was entertained for, also I was interviewed by History and Bio, and Discovery channel and that’s what Ike is referring to when he saw me on TV.

Foreverdc.com: In the research done, it’s been said Ike that you proclaim to be the REAL American Gangster, What’s Your definition of a “Real American Gangster”

Ike: Well, the real, um, that’s a good question (laughs)

Ron: The thing is, I don’t think Ike wants to be known as the Real American Gangster. All he wants to have is for this story to be real, and his problem, well for Ike was that Frank Lucas defined Ike. You know, he made up all this stuff and he included Ike in it and Ike had no say in this. That’s why he was interested in doing the book.

Foreverdc.com: Ike, you were pretty successful in the military, why did you decide to get into peddling drugs?

Ike: Well, I would like for Ron to explain this. Actually, I have an up and down situation in the service. I did 20 years, Ron you want to tell her what I’m referring to?

Ron: Yeah, you’re right with that, Ike graduated with a distinguished career, he was Master Sergeant, and he was one of the youngest Master Sergeants in the military when there was a lot of racism in the military during World War II, but what Ike is referring to was that he got into trouble with his gambling. He was almost thrown out of the military and fortunately for him, he wasn’t but he was demoted but in Ike’s credit, he worked hard and kept his nose clean in regards to everything he lost due to his gambling. He was gambling in places he shouldn’t have gambled. That was Ike’s passion. He was a professional gambler if you read some of those articles, you will see that he was a professional gambler; he didn’t have to be a drug trafficker. Like a lot of these big time drug traffickers come from real poor backgrounds and they feel compelled to get into drug trafficking. Ike didn’t need that. He was making enough money; he had his pension from the military and he was making all kinds of money. Gambling, he was traveling seeing the world, it was legal he wasn’t going to get thrown in jail for doing that but one day his friend Jack Jackson, Herman Jackson was in Bangkok and he called Ike and told him to come down and there were all kinds of hustling opportunities and that’s what Ike was an adventurer and hustler and so Ike gravitated to Thailand and Bangkok and of course you remember, this was the war you know the Vietnam war was at full throttle. This was 1966 it was all kinds of action there. It was contraband, it was drug trafficking and Ike got into the MPC, the military payment certificates where he was able to manipulate the American currency and make all kinds of money and he would travel between Vietnam and Bangkok back and forth and he was making all kinds of money. But one day Jackson told him about the big drug situation and his wife, must have been a girlfriend at the time, had a contact to the Golden Triangle which is one of the major opium producing areas in the world and it borders Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and China. He had his contacts and it was the purest heroin in the world and this is when, Lucas talks about Blue Magic that’s what he’s referring to, China White that’s what it was but Lucas didn’t have any monopoly on Blue Magic the way the movie depicted it. Ike was selling it all down the East Coast to all kinds of dealers; all of them were Black by the way. Ike was the first Black drug trafficker to break free of the Italians and Lucas made that claim and that was another false claim that he made. He worked closely with the Italians. When he went to Asia (in the movie), he didn’t go to Asia, he got his drugs from Ike through the Asian connection but that’s how he {Ike Atkinson} gravitated, from gambling to the MPC certificate scam that was being operated in Vietnam and then drug trafficking.

Foreverdc.com: Ike, what would you say to a child who wants to be like you, in the drug business?

Ike: It’s funny that you mention that. This happened to me about three months ago. One day after church service, we stopped off in a place to have lunch and one of the persons I know there came over and asked me if I wanted to meet his wife and boy. I said “sure” and so he introduced his boy to me (laughs) and he says “Dad is this guy?” and he said that I was the guy his teacher was telling him about, about the drug trafficking and bringing drugs to the states. And so I told him “Please don’t ever do anything like I did.” I told him I was doing alright in life making an honest living, well I may have cheated a little in cards, but not much but as far as being an example to children, I certainly told the boy that what I was charged with I asked for it and it was wrong and I hope that he would never pick up drugs because it wasn’t a good thing to do.

Ron: Right, and Ike and I, we travel around and Ike always emphasizes that message. He spoke at his church about that because it’s very easy for someone like Ike, who lead this incredible life to be glamorized, and people have the tendency to do that and Ike is very conscience of that. And when were there, Ike talks about that and I do too from my own research because I write a lot of books on drug traffickers and they always end up in jail or dead and are poor later in life or dirt poor in their sixties because they only live for the moment.

Foreverdc.com: Ron and Ike, if you saw Lucas today, what would you say to him?

Ike: I just want him to know, or would say rather, I’ve never seen anyone write a book, and everything in it is a lie. (Laughs) and that’s what he did with this gangster, this American gangster

Ron: Ike is referring to an autobiography; American Gangster that Lucas wrote which was published in June 2010.

Ike: Yeah, I mean everything in it is a lie (laughs from Ron) He lied about all the drug smuggling he did. One day, I caught the end of a TV gig he did, he said “I don’t know what’s wrong with Ike.” There’s nothing wrong with me, you know that the guy had confronted him about what I said what was right and what was wrong. I wouldn’t change anything in the book that Ron has about me and Lucas’ drug smuggling. Not only do I have that, I have friends that we have and we are linked to him, that I didn’t want to put into the put or anything, but they all have told me “Ike if you ever need anything we will do it for you.” So I haven’t made up anything. Any time, and I hope Ron can agree to this, anytime Frank wants to talk to us, we’re available. We’re not hiding from nobody and I’m standing behind what Ron wrote.

Ron: Ike is willing to have a discussion with him but Lucas thinks the best policy is to ignore Ike and maybe it will go away. But I would ask him, “You know, you write an autobiography, you talked about Ike being so important in your life,” and you know all of is bs, but why didn’t you mention him in your autobiography?” He’s not mentioned, at all. It’s like the Communist Regime, you know they get rid of somebody and you never hear from them again. That’s what he did, he wrote an autobiography and he doesn’t even mention Ike, like he never existed. I would just say “Why did you keep lying about Ike’s life? Ike didn’t do anything that you claimed he did.” And he’s really lucky; he came a long way on very little. He was a big drug trafficker in that era. I’ll say that but there were several drug traffickers. He wasn’t the biggest drug trafficker of that period and he didn’t have that relationship with Ike like he claims to have had. And the third thing we haven’t talked about is the cadaver connection, the heroin connection and if you read those book reviews, they say that we emphatically prove that it never existed and Ike had nothing to do with it and why Lucas keeps lying about the cadavers is beyond me. And that’s what gets Ike excited, right Ike?

Ike: Absolutely! (Laughs)

Ron: Look at it this way, Ike is a military guy right and he’s proud of his service why would he want to be associated with shipping heroin in the bodies of dead military Servicemen, and why would he have to do it? If you look at his career, he had so many good ways to do that. He used the military, pretty effectively, why would he do anything as stupid as that. A second thing, is my research shows that I he never did that, no one ever did that. There’s not one example of anyone using cadavers of servicemen in Vietnam to ship heroin. There are 12,000 articles on the internet and their all bs, all from the same article. They all came from Lucas and American Gangster, the famous ending, where they were shipping, you know Richie Roberts, who was played by Russell Crowe opens the casket and there was heroin, you know that was totally Hollywood, it had nothing to do with reality and drug trafficking.

Foreverdc.com: Never carried a gun, why?

Ike: I carried an army gun for 20-years and when I retired, after 20 years, I laid the gun down. And I never picked one up since.

Ron: We have a DVD too, and I will send you a copy when we get off the phone, it’s an interview that goes with the book, but essentially, the interview Ike said, it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth carrying a gun; it wasn’t worth killing anyone over drugs. You know if someone pulled a gun on him, he would give them everything he had. If a situation arose where guns were involved, Ike would just leave the scene, he wouldn’t want to do that. Fortunately, Ike has a charismatic personality and he could have been a diplomat for the U.S. government but he could have used his charisma and his personal to facilitate his drug business.

Foreverdc.com: Ike wouldn’t you say that’s a contradiction? You didn’t carry a gun because you didn’t want to kill anyone, but drugs kill people

Ike: Well, let me just say this; I never had anyone to be in my presence to have a gun. After I served in the military, I never seen another gun in my life carry a gun,  some carried 12-guages but no one ever pulled one on me, unless it was drug agents and unless they had a warrant on me and came and got me and they didn’t do things like unless they know something about your reputation.

Ron: Let me add something to that. I know what you’re saying. You’re saying drugs kill people but I think Ike is like a lot of drug traffickers. They never see the end result of what they’re doing and Ike didn’t. He was in Thailand and it’s very easy to get caught up in all the money being made. Ike, according to the D.E.A., grew some 400 million dollars in 1960, 1975, that’s what the D.E.A. said although Ike said it wasn’t that much. But I mean you don’t see the effects of what you’re doing, especially with something like drug trafficking drugs and Ike never really spent a lot of time in the inner cities you know he was from Goldsboro but he never really saw the effects of it but we talked about it, but if he knew then what he knew now, he wouldn’t have ever done it because look at it, he spend 32-years in prison and his son was 10-years old when he went into prison and he never saw him again until he was 42. You know, I mean it’s not worth it, all the money and everything, Right Ike?

Ike: That’s for sure (laughs)

Foreverdc.com: Ike, do you feel responsible for the misery and destruction that was brought to our people, or do you feel as though you were simply the middle man since he was not the person on the streets?

Ike: Well, to be honest and tell you the truth, I think about the few times that I went to New York, I was selling Frank the best stuff and I know he was getting results and I was getting reports back from his brother that he had been on the streets selling it but I never did anything that I actually, I should say this when I made my mind up and go into business with Herman Jackson, I tried to do the best job that I could—(Ron interjects)

Ron: Right, Ike was a perfectionist whether he was in the military, right Ike?