Crash of a Shooting Star

A promising career is derailed by a heroin bust

From the police's standpoint, it was a routine undercover procedure, a smalltime heroin sting. The "dealer" in the Washington motel room last Monday night was a District of Columbia policeman. The buyers were two unwise young men: the acquaintance who set them up with the dealer was a police informer. In short order, five parcels, half a gram of heroin in each "nickel bag," were exchanged for $150. The dupes headed outside, into a circle of four waiting police officers. Winston Prude, 32, a lawyer, panicked and stuffed one of the nickel bags into his mouth; it was pried out by police. His companion, dressed in a suit, did nothing and said nothing. Both were charged with possession of heroin, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $10,000 fine, and promptly released on bail. According to Captain James Nestor, commander of Washington's narcotics squad, both men had needle marks on their arms, suggesting that last week's drug buy was not their first.

As it turned out, the rather unremarkable bust had Brideshead Revisited overtones: the silent co-defendant was Eric Breindel, 27, an aide with the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence for New York Democrat Daniel P. Moynihan. Says an older friend: "He is a golden youth, this kid. He is loyal, honorable, fine, delicate, conscientious and loving."

Even before Moynihan hired him last November, Breindel's resume was impeccably top drawer: Exeter prep school education, editorial chairman of the daily Crimson as an undergraduate at Harvard, graduate of Harvard Law School, sometime student at the London School of Economics. He has a book in progress about Zionist history and has written an impressive sheaf of neoconservative pieces on politics and foreign affairs for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Republic and Commentary. "He's very much a real intellectual," says one of his editors. "His passion is the world of ideas. He is very, very brilliant, the most impressive young man I've ever come across." He is charming and attractive to boot; a few years ago, he was the escort of Caroline Kennedy. Adds the incredulous editor: "He was no square, but he believes in the values of straightness."

Yet some who know Breindel suggest that he has been ambivalent about these values and regularly swerved into the fast lane. At Harvard he roomed with Robert Kennedy's son David, who has had his much publicized drug problems. Other friends, groping for an explanation, speculate that Breindel's chronic physical pain--he had undergone several operations in recent years for wrist and kidney ailments--led him to seek an illicit painkiller. Yet it is hard to understand why he would not stick to prescription relief: both his father and sister are physicians. Still, the friends who say they were unaware of a heroin problem are not alone. The FBI, Pentagon and CIA investigated Breindel after Moynihan tapped him for the intelligence committee and, finding nothing untoward, gave him a security clearance in March. Breindel resigned his sensitive post the day after his arrest.

Nik Cohn's arrest last week, for conspiracy to import heroin and cocaine and for distributing both drugs, did not quite shock his friends. Cohn, 37, who wrote the magazine article on which the film Saturday Night Fever was based, led a night-crawling, drug-charged life in Manhattan. Said his lawyer, Andrew Maloney: "Mr. Cohn is no more than what too many other people are these days, an abuser of controlled substances. But he's not a trafficker." The Drug Enforcement Administration, after a five-month investigation that included hundreds of wiretapped telephone conversations, claims otherwise. Accused along with Cohn as co-conspirators were 15 people, mainly New York residents. They included a flamboyantly rich British earl, John Jermyn, 28. Cohn, if convicted, could be sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was released on $500,000 bail, secured by a Manhattan town house he owns.

Cohn, a British emigre, has written mostly about rock music. He made the trip from Grub Street toward Easy Street by way of Hollywood: the film version of his 1976 New York magazine story about Brooklyn disco culture was a box office smash. Cohn's subsequent New York cover was "24 Hours on 42nd Street," a lurid first-person account of a day and night spent swallowing street drugs amid the sexual sleaze of Times Square. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.