Attorney General Smith Calls for Crime Crackdown

Attorney General William French Smith brought the Reagan Administration's latest assessment of organized crime to Harvard last night.

Appearing before a Kennedy School Forum crowd of 200. Smith said that a new form of organized crime is afflicting the country--international cartels heavily involved in drug trafficking.

Smith contrasted these new groups with older crime groups historically organized in cities, and which concentrated more on such crimes as gambling, prostitution, and extortion.

"Employing the law enforcement weapons developed to fight traditional organized crime, we are making an assault on these [new] organizations even as they are developing," Smith said.

The attorney general's comments mirrored his testimony earlier this week at the first public hearing of the President's Commission on Organized Crime, which will submit a report to the President in 1986. Smith at that hearing first outlined his position that the focus of organized crime had changed from the national to the international.

New Approaches

Last night, Smith said that this change necessitated a different approach to cracking down on organized crime, an approach he said the Administration was beginning to implement.

He cited, for example, the Administration's efforts to draw in the military and the FBI for the first time into the country's drug enforcement effort.

The Administration recently obtained an amendment to an old U.S. law preventing the armed forces from engaging in law enforcement activities, clearing the way for the government to use the military's revenues and the intelligence gathering capabilities. Smith said.

In addition, he noted, the Administration has consolidated the Drug Enforcement Administration with the FBI This has allowed the FBI to use its special skills--like its ability to follow the flow of money--in the fight against drug trafficking. which he called "our number one crime problem."

The attorney general went on to stress President Reagan's efforts to strengthen the federal criminal laws affecting organized crime, as well as the Administration's efforts to negotiate extradition treaties and other agreements with countries that are the source of illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine.

Smith concluded, "With greater public awareness of organized crime, and greater public support of the federal law enforcement effort, was can achieve a future different from our past - future in which the cancer of organized crime is finally brought under our control"

Tour of Beantown

Smith was in Boston for the entire day, during which he appeared at a press conference on the Administration's drug crackdown, as well as Tatts University, he received an award as "Conservative of the Year" from the school's conservative newspaper. The Primary Source.

At Harvard, prior to his speech, Smith paid a courtesy call on President Bok, as well as attending a dinner hosted by K-School Dean Graham T Allison '62.

Smith, who graduated from the Law School in 1942, also visited his old dormitory, which at that time was shared by Law and Divinity School students.

The attorney general expressed surprise that the hall--also known as Divinity Hall--has been wholly taken over by Div School students. "I would have bet on the law students," he equipped