Army Officer’s Wife Gets 5-Year Sentence

The wife of a U.S. Army officer who headed American anti-drug efforts in Colombia was sentenced in Brooklyn, N.Y., to five years in prison for conspiring to smuggle cocaine and heroin to the United States. Laurie Hiett, 36, wept as she told U.S. District Judge Edward Korman how she had hurt her family. “I am ashamed. I am devastated. . . . I don’t have an excuse for my behavior,” she said. Hiett pleaded guilty at Brooklyn Federal Court in January to conspiring to smuggle $700,000 worth of heroin into the United States by mailing it to New York. She said she hid the scheme from her husband, Col. James Hiett, but last month he pleaded guilty to concealing knowledge that she was laundering drug money while they lived in Bogota.