In the old days before reporters got holy—at least in their collective minds—freeloading was a perk of journalism. Tickets to sporting events, rock concerts, theme parks, free drinks and meals were accepted without a second thought given to the impropiety of sponging off politicians and other people we wrote about.

And I was as guilty, if not more so, than most news people. My freebie habit was particularly bad in the booze days when I hung out in bars frequented by an array of public officials and career scoundrels. Freeloading even overlapped my early years as a self-righteous investigative reporter. 

I still squirm recalling my acceptance of season football tickets from a Florida state representative who was an alumni of the University of Miami. In my defense, receipt of the gratuity was inadvertent. He invited me to sit in his block of 50 seats at one game. Two days after accepting the invitation, season tickets arrived in the mail. I called to return the tickets, however, he convinced me I was doing him a favor because none his friends attended games during the era that the Hurricanes were a second rate team. That was true. Only a half dozen fans occupied the seats around me. But that barely eased my conscience. Fortunately, except for the interview that prompted him to send me the tickets, he was not part of any future stories I wrote.

About the time I was sitting in Orange Bowl Stadium watching the Miami Hurricanes lose, reporters stumbled over the word “ethics” in the dictionary. And in a moment of inspiration, the word “journalism” was attached. Ever since, reporters have tried to refine the phrase to improve our craft. The phrase has made it easy to say, “no thank you,” and mean it. Most news organizations now prohibit reporters from accepting free lunches, let alone season football tickets or family passes to Disney World—a perk that I am familiar with. Twice.

If politicians abided by the same standards as journalists, it would certainly make the job more challenging for FBI agents and other lawmen. “Lead me not into temptation” is a Biblical prayer that has been forgotten by a lot of folks wearing bracelets connected to the wrists of both hands. Entrapment is the easy way of enforcing bribery statutes. 

FBI ”sting” operation in Louisiana has resulted in the recent indictments of three black Mayors in small towns along the west bank of the Mississippi River. They were offered proverbial “carrots on a stick” in the form of free tickets to football games, cash payments, expensive meals and offers of debauchery in New Orleans strip clubs.

Were the targets of the sting already predisposed to take bribes? Or were the favors orchestrated by the FBI so subtle and tempting that the officials unknowingly committed crimes? The entrapment issue is already being raised in a motion filed this week in federal court in Baton Rouge.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/100410409.html

Over the course of my muckraking career, I exposed law enforcement misconduct in at least eight “sting” operations. One of the most outrageous and far-reaching was the so-called Brilab case covering a half-dozen states and a waste of millions of dollars. The Brilab exposé was part of an ABC Close Up documentary I worked on in the late 1970’s.

Even more egregious than Brilab abuses was a 1990’s U.S. Customs sting operation called Exodus. It was the subject of a series of reports I did for CNN. I write about the investigation in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger.

A Congressional staffer suggested I investigate the flagrant entrapment of two men caught in a Custom’s “sting” of arms dealing—a legal but sinister business. Agents had lured two German buyers to the United States by misrepresenting the legality of the merchandise being offered for sale. The men were secretly videotaped buying today’s equivalent of B.B. guns.

The Exodus arrests were announced with great fanfare. Then Attorney General Richard Thornburg portrayed the two indicted men as “merchants of death.” In reality, it was the first arms venture for both buyers. Neither had been in trouble with the law before. And they would avoid prison in this case. Because of the unsavory tactics of investigators in assuring them that the deal was lawful, the charges were thrown out of court. The case led me to other Exodus abuses.

One target was a retired Egyptian Air Force General hailed as a hero in his country. He was considered a close friend of the U.S. military. But after responding to an ad in a weapons magazine, he became entrapped by agents, who repeatedly vouched for the legality of the sale.  By exploiting his lack of understanding of American slang, investigators elicited incriminating statements.

“There was a lot of talking, mostly by the government,” an irate federal judge said in dismissing the charges.

Exodus was not limited to arms sales. A California electronics salesman was secretly videotaped finalizing the sale of an obsolete supercomputer to a Belgium informant―a snitch being paid a bounty for ensnaring suspects. During negotiations, he assured the seller that the computer was Paris-bound. But at a final secretly-videotaped meeting in an Orlando, Florida hotel room, the informant said the computer was actually being shipped to an embargoed Eastern European country. On camera, the salesman backed out of the deal. It was too late.

Agents stormed his hotel room at the same time he was explaining the turn of events to his lawyer in a telephone call.  Again, the arrest was portrayed at a news conference as ensuring the safety of U.S. citizens. And again, the charges were eventually dismissed.

I have no idea about the guilt or innocence of the three Mayors and other officials indicted in the recent Louisiana case. Coincidentally, one of the three Mayors was the subject of an exposé I did more than 20 years ago. Because of the time that has elapsed, he will remain nameless. Besides, I don’t recall the outcome of the mini-scandal, although I collected an Investigative Reporters and Editors citation for the story.

Maybe the guy was an easy target given his background. I don’t know. What I do know is that everytime the word “sting” creeps into a story, my skeptics antenna goes up.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

After more than six months of posting four a week missives about a variety of people, places and issues, I will occasionally repeat a few of the Derelict Gunslinger’s greatest hits—at least in terms of google. The number of blog visitors has increased significantly. However, most viewers don’t have the time, nor inclination, to search through my archives.

This post first appeared February 19, 2010  

In 1986, notorious international drug smuggler/turned informant Barry Seal was assassinated in Baton Rouge by a Colombian hit team outside a Salvation Army halfway house. The Drug Enforcement Administration described Seal as the most important informant in the agency’s history. Yet, he had been stripped of armed bodyguards by an irate Louisiana federal judge, who was outraged that the smuggler avoided prison in a south Florida case because of his value as a witness against Colombia’s Medellin cocaine cartel. Seal had also plea bargained his way out of a prison sentence in an unrelated Baton Rouge case, prompting a revenge-tainted sentence by the angry judge—in effect, a death sentence. 

As part of Seal’s  probation, he was ordered to spend nights at the halfway house. Despite testimony by lawmen and prosecutors that Barry’s life was in danger, the judge put him on a predictable schedule. And three weeks later, Barry was dead.  

I was well-acquainted with the flamboyant smuggler—to close, according to many law enforcement officials. He contacted me in 1984, claiming to be caught in the midst of a turf battle between drug agents in Baton Rouge and and a DEA task force in Miami. Although skeptical at first, I soon established that he was, in fact, an informant whose undercover exploits in Central America were on the verge of disrupting the world’s biggest cocaine operation—the main source of 90% of the cocaine shipped into the United States.

While traveling with Seal to Miami and Mena, Arkansas, I secretly videotaped his meetings with drug agents. I also put together a paper trail that re-enforced his bona fides. Barry’s motives for working with the DEA were not altruistic. He had been caught smuggling drugs into south Florida and faced the prospect of a long prison term. So he cut a deal.

But rather than admit to me that he was a common drug smuggler, Seal tried to foist himself off to me as a spy working undercover for the CIA. However, I soon discovered that the extent of his spy activity was a single mission in which he secretly snapped pictures of cocaine being loaded onto his C-123 in Nicaragua during a DEA sting operation. The CIA’s only involving was the installationof a camera on the plane to gather evidence that Nicaragua had become a trans-shipment point for cocaine processed in Colombia.

Seal’s photographs were later be used by President Reagan in a nationally broadcast speech seeking funds for Nicaragun Contra rebels. By then, Barry was buried in Green Oaks Cemetery in Baton Rouge. But metaphorically, he was not dead. Instead, he became the star of the Mena myth—a conspiracy tale of a CIA guns-for-drugs plot centered at the Mena airport. I write about the origins of Seal fable in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger.

The Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in the west Arkansas foothills of the Ouachita Mountains seems an unlikely locale for spy stories and conspiracy tales. Before the arrival of Barry Seal, Mena was best known for its proximity to the Jot ‘em Down Store in nearby Pine Ridge. The rural relic was made famous by Lum and Abner, popular 1940’s radio characters. The Jot ‘em Down Store was a fictional backdrop for dispensing homespun mountain observations about Washington politics and national affairs. It’s too bad that Lum and Abner were not around when Mena gained mythical notoriety. The zany stories would have provided them months of material for comical commentary. 

The yarn began in June, 1984, when a camouflage-painted C-123K transport plane piloted by Barry Seal landed at the airport with a full cargo of rumors and conjecture. Dubbed “The Fat Lady” in its Vietnam days, the retired military aircraft sat on a tarmac outside the hangar of an airport fabrication shop for six months. Before being sold, it left the ground twice—each time to circle the airport. But the simple presence of the mysterious plane triggered years of speculation that has never gone away. The dimwitted stories continue even today. What made the Mena fable so astonishing was the willingness of supposedly intelligent people to believe the myth. 

I feel partly responsible for giving early momentum to conspiracy theories. A few months after my introduction to Barry, I reported a one-hour investigative documentary giving details of his Nicaraguan undercover mission. Titled, Uncle Sam Wants You, the report criticized lawmen and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baton Rouge for jeopardizing a major south Florida investigation. In the wake of my exposé, I was accused of “taking up the banner of a drug smuggler.”

Actually, the main thrust of the documentary was not Seal’s innocence or guilt, but rather the ongoing turf battle between jurisdictions in Louisiana and Florida. Nonetheless, I have regrets about the documentary because I allowed Barry to strongly hint that he was spy. And for the benefit of cameras, he maximized his minor CIA role and minimized his activities as a drug smuggler. My skewed judgment in editing interviews was geared toward dramatic narrative. I should have stated explicitly that he was simply a spy wannabe. 

The previous paragraphs are the basic building blocks on which the Mena myth was built. A mysterious military transport plane  lands in Mena, Arkansas and remains there for several months. The pilot alludes to being a CIA operative on a television show, as well as in conversations with nearly everyone he comes in contact with. He is mowed down in a contract killing and the President of the United States soon after displays CIA photographs of the Nicaraguan sting operation. Lo and behold, Barry Seal’s C-123 is later shot down in Nicaragua during an honest-to-goodness CIA operation to assist Contra rebels.

Enter onto the scene the Christic Institute.  In the 1980’s, the  left-wing organization was obsessed with CIA operations in Central America. In fact, Christic propagated dozens of drugs-for-guns stories and other yarns about U.S. intelligence abuses. Some had a ring of truth. Most were vastly  exaggerated or downright wrong.

The Christic Institute was ultimately discredited in lawsuits and forced to declare bankruptcy. Even so, its version of the Barry Seal saga convinced an array of left-wing journalists to run the story. At the same time, the Iran-Contra scandal was unfolding  during the  Reagan  Admininistration. As a result of Seal’s undercover DEA work and one-time CIA activity, he was tied to the scandal—more by speculation than any hard facts.

In the beginning, Seal was linkedto President’s Reagan and George Herbert Bush. Following the election of Bill Clinton, right-wingers took possession of the saga. Without a shred of evidence, Clinton was accused of protecting Seal’s Mena drug operation as a favor for cocaine-snorting “Friends of Bill.” And so it went. No rumor was too ridiculous to be discounted. And it hasn’t stopped. I still receive calls from intrepid reporters, who have never bothered to review information contradicting the myth—including my book.

More than any reporter, I know the truth about Seal and his Mena activities. We remained in contact until a few days before his murder. Our last encounter occured when he came to my office to meet a Miami private investigator. I setr up the meeting for Wayne Black, a longtime friend.  The detective was hired by an attorney representing drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. He wanted Seal to identify Escobar photographs taken during the Nicaraguan sting operation. DEA agents in Miami gave Barry the green light to meet with Black. Nevertheless, U.S. prosecutors in Louisiana questioned me to determine if there was a connection between the meeting and Seal’s murder less than two weeks later. There wasn’t.

By then, the assassins had been arrested. They were subsequently  convicted and remain in prison. For me, there was disturbing trial testimony that my 1984 documentary had ended up in the hands of Pablo Escobar. He only knew Seal by an alias he used in dealing with the cartel. After watching my program, Escobar reportedly put out the contract on the Barry’s life.

I don’t know if I could have dissauded Seal to conceal his identity, even if I tried. He was a self-promoter from the get-go and wanted his face shown. He got the publicity he wanted—then and and ever since. I have a hunch that if I walk close enough to Barry’s Baton Rouge gravesite, the ground will quake from his laughter at the conspiracy legacy he left behind. I know I laugh loudly when reading crazy stories about his adventures.

In recent months, I’m reminded of Seal when reading and hearing the conspiracy tales propagated by “birthers” and other wing-nuts. At least I can feel secure that these people are keeping an eye out for black helicopters, flying saucers and and all the phantom enemies who are coming to take us away.

Ha, Ha! Ho, Ho! Hee, Hee!

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

I am neither anti-mobile home, nor anti-law enforcement. I need to make these points before writing this post, which deals with the arrests of a bunch of yahoo “militia” members in Michigan. ”Trailer trash” kind of characters can be found in places that I best defined in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger while describing future prospects after my first marriage vows in front of a Mississippi Justice of the Peace.

As an under-educated seventeen-year-old newlywed with a child on the way, I seemed destined for one of those pockets of ugliness called “trailer parks.” Trailer parks have no resemblance to neat, tree-lined mobile home communities where silver-haired AARP members exchange memories and discount coupons. Nor do they look like Mother Nature’s tornado targeted, “it sounded like a freight train” working class neighborhoods, similar to the one where my daddy died in the only home he ever claimed pride of ownership.

In my mind’s eye, “trailer parks” are sinister-looking roadside ghettos with dilapidated mobile homes pockmarked by peeling aluminum siding, air conditioners tilting precariously from window sills, and battered old cars and trucks mounted on concrete blocks as monuments to the procrastination of no-accounts who drink whiskey, smoke dope, and force their families to live in such odious conditions. That seemed my destination. And if life were truly fair and I got my just desserts, I would have ended up there―borrowing jumper cables from our next door neighbor, Jimmy Swaggart.

Television news reports showing the homes of the little militia band under indictment in Detroit fit my mind’s eye image of places occupied by ”trailer trash.” Calling their group “The Hutaree”—nobody seems to know for certain what the hell that means—the eight men and one woman remain in jail without bail. But that may soon change.

A U.S. District Judge in Detroit has told prosecutors to show proof the defendants were anything more than a bunch of loudmouths, who posed no immediate danger of committing violence. They are accused of hatching a bizarre scheme that involved murdering a lawman, then bombing his funeral to kill other law enforcement folks. The purpose of the alleged plot was to kindle a nationwide revolution.

Strange but true, according to an indictment based on the testimony of an undercover agent and secretly taped conversations that so far fail to corroborate “a clear and present danger,” to use a cliche. Maybe these people are guilty as charged and the government is simply playing its cards close to the vest (two cliches in a row. I’m on a roll).

Anyway, I have an inherent distrust of “sting” operations involving undercover agents—mainly because I’ve seen, first hand, too many abuses in such cases. Once an informant gets inside an alleged criminal conspiracy, it becomes an absolute necessity to obtain indictments in order to justify the time and expense of an investigation.

Indeed, many undercover sting operations seem to follow trends that are designed to generate publicity. In the 1950’s, outing commies was the big deal. Then along came the mafia in the sixties, followed by a public and media fixation on Watergate in the 1970’s. Investigations of illegal drugs and arms dealing were big in the eighties (remember Iran-Contra?), Whitewater and political corruption a decade later, and since the turn of the century, the highest profile cases have involved terrorism. All important issues and each deserves its moment in the sun (trite phrase number three).

But in every instance, there were frequent law enforcement abuses, including a few that helped keep me in the investigative reporting business for thirty years. In a series of CNN reports during the mid-nineties, for example, I exposed a U.S. Custom Service sting operation know as Exodus. And  by darn, I will shamelessly plug my book with another short excerpt. 

Agents lured two German buyers to the United States by misrepresenting the legality of the merchandise being offered for sale. The men were secretly videotaped buying today’s equivalent of B.B. guns. The arrests were announced with great fanfare. Then Attorney General Richard Thornburg portrayed them as “merchants of death.”

In reality, it was the first arms venture for both buyers. Neither man had been in trouble with the law before. Because of the unsavory tactics of investigators in assuring the victims that the deal was lawful, the charges were thrown out of court. My CNN investigation of the case led me to other Exodus abuses.

One target was a retired Egyptian Air Force General hailed as a hero in his country. He was considered a close friend of the U.S. military. But after responding to an ad in a weapons magazine, he was entrapped by agents who repeatedly vouched for the legality of a sale.  By exploiting his lack of understanding of American slang, investigators elicited incriminating statements. “There was a lot of talking, mostly by the government,” an irate federal judge said in dismissing the charges.

Exodus was not limited to arms sales. A California electronics salesman was secretly videotaped finalizing the sale of an obsolete supercomputer to a Belgium informant―a snitch being paid a bounty by customs agents to ensnare suspects. During negotiations, the snitch told the computer salesmen that the computer was Paris-bound. But at a final secretly-videotaped meeting in an Orlando, Florida hotel room, the informant said the computer was actually being shipped to an embargoed Eastern European country. On camera, the target of the sting backed out of the deal. It was too late.

Agents stormed his hotel room as he explained the turn of events to his lawyer in a telephone call.  Again, the arrest was portrayed at a news conference as ensuring the safety of U.S. citizens. And again, the charges were ultimately dismissed.

During news conferences following Exodus arrests, Attorney General Thornburg, U.S. Attorneys and Customs officials regularly overstated the importance of spurious arrests. Journalists dutifully wrote down the names and allegations, but rarely questioned the propaganda. Bloated cases made front page headlines. After being tossed out of court, however, verdicts were relegated to the back sections of newspapers alongside obituaries. Television reporters completely ignored the outcomes.

There are a variety of purposes for overzealous sting investigations, but two stand out. First, there is the human need to be recognized for hard work. However, a more pragmatic reason is money. At all levels—local, state and federal—budgets are allocated on the perception that agencies are doing a good job. Favorable headlines never hurt. 

I won’t venture a guess about the outcome of the Michigan “trailer trash” indictments. By the same token, I will not be surprised if it is less there than meets the eyes (have I scored another cliche?).

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. It is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.