Flaws in Postal Inquiry Into Cocaine Deals Raise Doubts on Some Arrests

A flawed investigation into cocaine trafficking at Los Angeles’ main post office that relied on uncorroborated evidence from a paid informant may have led to the arrest and prosecution of some innocent workers along with some who really were dealing drugs.

The uncertainty arose because the agency that conducted the probe, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, did not follow customary police procedures aimed at ensuring the veracity of an informant’s accounts, according to court records and experts from other law-enforcement agencies.

As a result, it is not clear who is telling the truth: the informant, who alleges that he bought contraband from a dozen postal workers and who passed a polygraph test, or some of the workers, who allege that they were framed.

‘What We Try in Court’

A senior official of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office acknowledged that in some of the cases inferences can be drawn to support both sides. “We’ve discussed those inferences” and concluded “these are what we try in court,” said the official, Don Eastman.

Eastman, a head deputy district attorney in his office’s central trials division, termed the postal inspectors’ investigation at the Terminal Annex garage “unusual” because of its lack of controls.

Asked if the investigation was shoddy, he said: “If we knew everything at the filing stage that we know now, it would have been highly problematical that we would have filed (many) of these cases. I’m sure . . . we’ll . . . take a fresh look at cases of this sort if we get any more.”

So far, two of the accused workers have been acquitted at trials; one has been convicted. Another has pleaded guilty, and still another has pleaded no contest to a reduced charge--although he denies wrongdoing and says he just wanted to get his case over with. Seven more are awaiting trial.

The cases are unusual because, as Deputy Public Defender Belinda Fischer put it, the authorities “created a lot of hardship with no corroborating evidence.”

Physical or electronic surveillance was not attempted in most of the cases, and in no case were investigators successful in observing or overhearing a complete drug deal, according to court records.

The cases are also unusual because, half of the time, the cocaine the informant said he bought turned out to be fake. Eastman said he believes that even these tough-to-prove cases can be won. He indicated that prosecutions would continue in the absence of conclusive evidence that the informant lied.

Court records show that over a six-month period last year the informant was given more than $5,000 in government funds, which he said he spent on 13 purchases of genuine cocaine.

$8,000 Spent on Look-Alike

He said he spent another $8,000 in government funds on 11 purchases of what turned out to be mannitol--a legal, commercially available cocaine look-alike--that was worth about $2.

And he said he spent another $4,000 on a purchase that turned out to be 97% mannitol and 3% cocaine.

Mannitol is used by scientists as a base for dietetic foods and by drug dealers to dilute cocaine, although, as one expert said, “Nobody snorts 3% cocaine.” It sells for about $8 a pound at chemical supply houses and is also available at some head shops and swap meets.

Selling mannitol, or any other substance, by falsely representing it to be cocaine is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. Sale of cocaine itself is punishable by up to five years.

Retired Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department narcotics detective Richard Sloan said that unless authorities closely monitor an informant who is turning over mannitol, “there are too many variables that would blow (a) case out of the water” in court. “How do you know he’s not (buying cocaine), taking the cocaine, using it himself, and substituting (mannitol)? How do you know he’s not prepackaging the (mannitol) and just handing it to the investigating officer?”

Sloan and other experts, including the head of narcotics field enforcement for the Los Angeles Police Department, a special agent of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and a retired narcotics detective from the San Diego Police Department, did not comment directly on the Postal Service investigation, of which they had no first-hand knowledge. Information about that investigation came principally from court files and from conversations with the informant, postal inspectors, defense attorneys, prosecutors and some of the accused.

Postal inspectors and the informant said they did not realize they had fake cocaine on their hands until their investigation was almost over.

That is because they mailed the contraband for testing to the Postal Inspection Service laboratory in Washington.

Experts said officers from other law-enforcement agencies routinely conduct preliminary tests of contraband in the field. They want to know right away if their informant has been duped. That way they can tell him and he can protect his own cover by reacting in character--with anger--to the person who sold him fake drugs.

Agency’s Testing Policy

But Los Angeles Postal Inspector-in-Charge Wilhelm J. Maisch explained that his agency’s policy is not to test contraband in the field. That way, he said, evidence is preserved in its true form, and possible objections by defense lawyers that it was tampered with are forestalled.

The informant claims that four of the workers sold him fake cocaine two or three times each.

Law enforcement narcotics specialists say, however, that a dealer would probably be too suspicious to continue selling to a customer who did not object to being cheated.

“If you keep buying bunk from somebody, at some point in time this guy is going to wonder, ‘Why is he buying bunk from me?’ ” said Capt. Michael Bagdonas, commanding officer of the field enforcement section of the Los Angeles Police Department’s narcotics division. “Unless the dealer got ripped off himself and he bought bunk and doesn’t know it. That happens.”

Administrative Law Judge Howard C. Horn reasoned similarly when he awarded unemployment benefits to one of the accused workers. Horn ruled that the post office failed to prove that it was more likely than not that tractor-trailer driver Van Williams had sold mannitol twice. He noted that if Williams had sold the informant mannitol once, “he would have been risking serious problems in trying the same stunt a week later.”

Williams was later acquitted in a court trial. “It’s been hard on the family,” he said. “If it wasn’t for her (his wife) and me having faith in God, I would have gone out there slinging drugs and I never done that before.”

Another of the workers who was accused of selling mannitol, Isaiah White, said he had never heard of the stuff until he was arrested.

“I ain’t sold him anything,” White said of the informant. “I tell you, that’s why I feel something should be done, because they are giving this man money--I don’t know if it’s taxpayers’ money or what--but they are giving this man money to go buy drugs and he’s using the money for his own benefit, and he’s supposed to be an informant. And he’s using innocent people in his little scheme of things.”

The informant testified at White’s preliminary hearing that White sold him mannitol twice, for $1,100 each time.

The first time, the informant said, White gave him the contraband and told him he could pay later. The second time, the informant said, White told him he could pay in installments.

At White’s trial, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gordon Ringer had a hard time believing the informant’s account.

‘Exceptionally Implausible’

“If I’m . . . somebody who is trying to commit . . . theft . . . by selling $1,100 worth of crap that isn’t cocaine,” Ringer reasoned, “the last thing I would do as a prudent criminal would be to . . . front the dope and wait for somebody to give me the money. It could happen. But it’s exceptionally implausible.

“(You’ll) be found not guilty,” he told White.

Despite his acquittal, White has been unable to get his job back as a tractor-trailer driver. He said he has also been unable to get unemployment insurance. “It seems to me that winning in court don’t mean nothing,” he said disgustedly. “They took my job. That’s what’s so hurting about it. They took my job. I’ve been in that job 15 years.”

Postal authorities stand by the informant. The veteran inspector who supervised him, Robert L. Chavez, portrayed him as courageous and honest in brief remarks made while declining to be interviewed.

The informant, then an unemployed construction worker, came to the attention of postal inspectors in 1985 when he turned in a letter carrier who was selling drugs to his nephew, he testified. The informant said he was motivated by a desire “to get drugs off the streets.”

The Times is not publishing his name at the request of postal inspectors who said they feared for his safety. The informant has said he is involved in another investigation.

Chavez got the informant his first undercover job at the main post office in Santa Ana so that he could investigate complaints of drug trafficking among employees there.

All went well. The informant’s accounts of buying drugs were corroborated by an undercover postal inspector, according to Maisch.

No fake drugs were encountered there or in a similar probe at the Van Nuys Post Office in which Assistant U.S. Atty. Maurice Leiter said there was surveillance of the informant in every case.

The Van Nuys inquiry followed the flawed Los Angeles investigation, which federal prosecutors would normally handle. They referred it to their local counterparts but refused to explain why.

Asked why no undercover postal inspectors were used in the Los Angeles cases, Maisch said it would have been costly to send an inspector to work alongside the informant in investigating complaints of drug sales. Besides, he said, it might have aroused suspicions if two new workers were introduced on the same shift at the 190-employee vehicle maintenance facility.

The informant, who has no police record and has testified that he has never used drugs, denies framing White or anyone else. He passed a polygraph test given by a postal inspector about three months after the Los Angeles investigation ended.

The test indicated that the informant was telling the truth when he said he spent the entire $17,000 on drug purchases, gave all the contraband he bought to his supervising agent, and did not substitute fake for real cocaine, according to Chavez.

Not Admissible in Court

The polygraph test does the Postal Inspection Service no good in court, however. It is inadmissible as evidence because of judicial concerns about the reliability of polygraph tests.

Chavez explained the unusually large number of mannitol purchases by saying that White and other postal workers conspired to trick the informant by selling the mannitol at a large profit.

If there was a conspiracy, it apparently extended to overcharging the informant for genuine cocaine.

Deputy Public Defender Dennis Plourd, who represented a worker convicted by a jury of selling the informant cocaine twice, said of the informant: “Either he’s incredibly stupid and everybody at the Terminal Annex just picked up on that and decided to rip him off, or it’s something else. . . . In my case, he gets .55 grams of rock (cocaine) for $200. Chavez testifies that’s a $50 rock. The second time he gets .14 grams--for $200. Chavez’s explanation was, ‘I told him not to look at it. Just put it in his pocket and give it to me.’ ”

Even in the one case where postal inspectors elicited a confession, there is a question of money not being accounted for. Sheldon King, a worker who now insists he is innocent, told postal inspectors immediately after his arrest that he had sold a rock to the informant for $50, according to the Postal Inspection Service. But the informant said he told Chavez that he had given King $100 for the same rock.

Most police agencies have a rule: “You never trust the informant 100%,” said Edward J. Sanchez, a retired Los Angeles Police narcotics detective who was retained as an expert witness by one acquitted worker. “You can’t take the chance that he is going to set somebody up and you’re going to be a tool in it.”

Officers typically seek to corroborate an informant’s story through physical or electronic surveillances. When those techniques are impractical, they try other means, including searches of the informant before and after he makes purchases.

Searches are aimed at making sure that the informant does not already have drugs before he goes to buy some and that he has no police funds left after he has made his buy.

Informant Not Searched

Postal inspectors did not search their informant. Nor did they use another popular technique--recording serial numbers of the money they used in hopes of recovering some of it later from the drug sellers.

Chavez said the investigation was too long--25 buys were made over a six-month period--to make that tactic useful.

Postal inspectors faced what for them was a special obstacle in conducting surveillance at the postal garage. Most postal buildings are constructed with hidden catwalks and one-way mirrors that make observations easy, Chavez testified. But the block-long, high-ceilinged garage has no catwalks.

Chavez testified that because the building has a lot of metal, there were transmission problems “when we attempted to place wires to monitor the purchase of narcotics.”

Court records, however, do not mention any specific attempts to place wires inside the building. Maisch said he could not cite examples and would not give Chavez permission to speak about the cases--even those that had already been adjudicated--until all are settled in court.

Asked why a tape-recorder was not used instead of a transmitter, Maisch replied that the garage was a noisy place.

The informant has testified that he never approached anyone to ask to buy drugs. He testified that they always approached him.

When they did, he said, he would meet Chavez and obtain money. Then he would buy the drugs, telephone Chavez to arrange another meeting, and turn over the drugs.

The informant has testified that he received payments of from $20 to $300 from Chavez after making buys. “There was no set rate of pay that he receives for the work he does as an informant,” Chavez testified when he was asked to explain. “It is an arbitrary figure I would arrive at, depending upon the amount of time that was involved for a particular buy. . . . Sometimes he wouldn’t get anything”

Chavez testified that the informant “probably” received about $7,000 in addition to his wages as a $5-an-hour garage worker. That amount included a $5,000 bonus after the investigation was over.

Chavez said he weighed and photographed the stuff the informant gave him and mailed it to the laboratory for testing.

The informant testified that he was typically allowed to hang on to the contraband for from a few minutes to an hour after he said he made each of his buys.

It would take that long for him to telephone Chavez and for Chavez to show up and take delivery of the contraband, he said.

But sometimes controls were looser. Once, the informant said, Chavez could not keep a rendezvous. He “told me (by telephone) to secure (the contraband) in the trunk of my vehicle,” the informant said, where it remained overnight.