kg) of heroin were found on the French liner St. Tropez. On January 7, 1949, more than 50 pounds (22.75 kg) of opium and heroin were seized on the French ship Batista. After Paul Carbone's death, the Guérini clan was the ruling dynasty of the Unione Corse and had systematically organized the smuggling of opium from Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries. The Guérini clan was led by Marseille mob boss Antoine Guérini and his brothers, Barthelemy, Francois and Pascal. In October 1957, a meeting between Sicilian Mafia and American Mafia members was held at the Grand Hotel et des Palmes in Palermo to discuss the international illegal heroin trade in the French Connection. The 1960s The first major French Connection seizure in the 1960s began that June, when an informant told a drug agent in Lebanon that Mauricio Rosal, the Guatemalan Ambassador to Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, was smuggling morphine base from Beirut to Marseille. Narcotics agents had been seizing about 200 pounds (90 kg) of heroin in a typical year, but intelligence showed that the Corsican traffickers were smuggling in 200 pounds (90 kg) every other week. Rosal alone, in one year, had used his diplomatic status to bring in about 440 pounds (200 kg). The Federal Bureau of Narcotics's 1960 annual report estimated that from 2,600 to 5,000 pounds (1,200 to 2,300 kg) of heroin were coming into the United States annually from France. The French traffickers continued to exploit the demand for their illegal product, and by 1969, they were supplying the United States with 80 percent of its heroin. On April 26, 1968, a record setting seizure was made, of heroin smuggled to New York concealed in a Citroën DS on the SS France (1960) ocean liner. The total amount smuggled during the many transatlantic voyages of just this one car was according to arrested smuggler Jacques Bousquet. In an effort to limit the most proximate source of supply to the Corsican cartel, US officials went to Turkey to negotiate the phasing out of opium production. Initially, the Turkish government agreed to limit their opium production starting with the 1968 crop. At the end of the 1960s, after Robert Blemant's assassination by Antoine Guérini, a gang war sparked in Marseille, caused by competition over casino revenues. Blemant's associate Marcel Francisci continued the war over the next years. Jean Jehan Former New York City Police