Motives, Fund Raising Scrutinized : Brawley Case Seems to Be Collapsing on 3 Advisers

They are lightning rods in a racial thunderstorm, the most controversial combatants in a bizarre, emotionally charged cause celebre that has gripped this city for the past seven months.

Almost from the first, Tawana Brawley’s three advisers have overshadowed the teen-ager who received national attention last November with her claims that she had been kidnaped and sexually assaulted by six white men, one of whom had a badge. The authorities, she and her family charged, were shielding her attackers.

Since then, the advisers--C. Vernon Mason and Alton H. Maddox Jr., both lawyers, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, a flamboyant Pentecostal preacher without a congregation--have gained such a hold over the Brawley family that they were able to prevent Glenda Brawley, the 16-year-old girl’s mother, from appearing in court the day she was cited for criminal contempt after refusing to testify before a special grand jury investigating her daughter’s allegations.

The lawyers’ behavior prompted an exasperated state Supreme Court Justice Angelo J. Ingrassia to complain: “If my toleration level were low, I would have exploded a long time ago.”

The advisers then directed Mrs. Brawley to seek sanctuary in a black church, where she remains. Subsequently, they taunted police to come into the religious refuge and arrest her so she could serve her 30-day jail sentence. The advisers, who have charged New York officials with racism almost daily, promised to take their cause to the streets outside next month’s Democratic convention in Atlanta.

Now, it appears that the case may be exploding around them. Mason, Maddox and Sharpton have come under scrutiny by state and federal investigators. A former Sharpton aide and an electronic surveillance specialist, who claims that the preacher hired him to spy on the two lawyers, have questioned Brawley’s story and her advisers’ motives. Serious questions also have been raised about the way funds have been collected to finance the girl’s case.

Sharpton, Mason and Maddox have branded all such allegations as lies.

Federal officials now are scrutinizing Sharpton’s income tax liability and inquiring into how the booming-voiced, barrel-chested former boy preacher from Brooklyn, with friends in the music and boxing businesses, earns a living. The minister has admitted not filing tax returns for a number of years. The New York State Organized Crime Task Force also is examining allegations that Sharpton engaged in a scheme to scalp tickets his National Youth Movement received from black entertainers.

Group’s Records Subpoenaed

New York Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams, who was appointed special prosecutor in the Brawley case, has subpoenaed the National Youth Movement’s bank records to determine whether any funds collected by the charity may have been siphoned off by Sharpton. The Times was unable to contact the National Youth Movement on Tuesday because its telephone had been disconnected. The Foundation Center Library, which keeps track of grant-making agencies, could find no record of the movement’s activities.

Abrams’ interest in Sharpton’s organization began last year when it was discovered that the group had not filed legally required reports with New York’s secretary of state. After threats of a subpoena, a Sharpton aide arrived at the attorney general’s office with a shopping bag full of records. Investigators soon determined that they were not adequate financial statements, a spokesman for Abrams said.

U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani is looking into the fund-raising practices of Brawley’s legal team. Perry J. McKinnon, a former security guard and Sharpton aide who has called Brawley’s story “a pack of lies,” has been interviewed by federal investigators. Samuel M. McClease, who says he was hired by Sharpton to record conversations the preacher had with Mason and Maddox, has been subpoenaed by Giuliani to appear before a grand jury.

Tale of Recording Devices

McClease asserted in an interview with WCBS-TV that he was employed by Sharpton in February to install recording devices at the minister’s home and in Mason’s home and office.

“To put it as plainly as possible, he (Sharpton) felt that the game is over with, that the ball was going to be dropped really soon and that he needed something to get out of this situation,” McClease said.

He said a two-hour segment of tape was particularly damaging to the Brawley cause.

During that taped session, Brawley’s advisers frankly assessed her case, McClease said. “This is bull,” he quoted one participant at the meeting as saying.

McClease said that on another tape Brawley’s advisers “discussed the four days of the alleged kidnaping not to be a kidnaping, but actually a four-day party, partying in the area with a police officer who was white.”

McClease told WCBS-TV that Sharpton had promised him $11,000 to secretly tape-record the minister’s meetings with Mason and Maddox. He said he had not been paid. He also said he had received a subpoena ordering him to appear before a federal grand jury with the tapes.

Advisers Allege Smear

In a news conference Tuesday, Brawley’s advisers challenged McClease to produce the tapes and said if recordings exist they have been “engineered.” They alleged that McClease’s statements were part of a smear campaign conducted by the Administration of New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.

Sharpton labeled McClease’s charges “an outright lie.”

“I know I don’t know this man,” the minister said. “His problem is he’s a liar. No tapes could exist unless they were engineered.”

On Tuesday, McClease voluntarily appeared before U.S. Magistrate Kathleen Roberts on what prosecutors said was an arrest warrant. The magistrate subsequently released him into the custody of federal agents and sealed all documents in the case, including the warrant.

McClease’s allegations came a week after McKinnon--the former Sharpton aide--called Brawley’s story “a pack of lies.” He told WCBS-TV that teen-agers had alleged to him that Brawley had attended two parties during the period in which her abduction reportedly occurred. McKinnon said he relayed this information to Sharpton, who ignored it. McKinnon also said Brawley’s mother told him that she had seen evidence that while her daughter was reported missing she actually had been in a vacant apartment in which the family once lived.

‘Story Is the Political Agenda’

“The Tawana Brawley story may be there is no Tawana Brawley story,” McKinnon said. “The real story is the political agenda of Sharpton, Maddox and Mason.”

Abrams, the special prosecutor, has said that, when his own investigation of the Brawley case is complete, he may file a complaint against Maddox and Mason with the bar association’s ethics committee.

“There are two possible risks they run in connection with the advice they gave Mrs. Brawley,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor and ethics expert on the faculty of New York University Law School. “If they told her to ignore the subpoena without a good, safe basis for believing she had a legal justification for doing so, they are exposed to criminal and ethical sanctions both for obstruction of justice and interference with governmental administration statutes.”

Gillers said a second risk the lawyers could face is contained in their allegations that an assistant district attorney in Dutchess County took part in Brawley’s alleged abduction.

Possible Violation of Rules

“Lawyers are prohibited from knowingly making a false statement of fact,” he explained. Such a statement, Gillers said, could constitute reckless disregard for the truth, a violation of bar association rules.

Over the years, Maddox, Mason and Sharpton have not been strangers to controversy. They represented a principal accuser in the Howard Beach case, and, by persuading the key witness to withhold testimony until a local district attorney was removed, they pressured Cuomo to name Charles J. Hynes as a special prosecutor. Hynes obtained several convictions in the Dec. 20, 1986, incident, in which a group of white youths chased Michael Griffith, a 23-year-old black man, to his death on a busy highway.

Hynes, however, is critical of Brawley’s advisers.

“They have really overplayed their hand,” he said.

Both of Brawley’s lawyers grew up in the South--Maddox in Newnan, Ga., and Mason in Tucker, Ark. Maddox, a graduate of Boston University’s Law School, entered private practice in 1981, specializing in criminal cases. Mason, whose legal practice largely consists of handling drug cases, is a graduate of Columbia University’s Law School. He ran for Manhattan district attorney in 1985 but lost badly.

Maddox’s Marks Higher

Among lawyers and law enforcement officials, Maddox generally gets higher marks than Mason for his courtroom skills. “Maddox is a pretty damn good trial lawyer,” said an attorney who has opposed him on several occasions.

“They are quite bright,” said a black lawyer who has known both men for years. “They are underestimated by the black middle class and the black educated class because they make their money on criminal cases.”

Sharpton, who was graduated from high school in Brooklyn, likes to tell friends that he began preaching at the age of 4. He tells friends that his first political mentor was the late Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. In 1978, Sharpton tried to run for the New York state Senate. But a judge ruled him off the ballot because he did not live in the district. Six years earlier, he had formed the National Youth Movement to oppose drugs and promote job training, voter registration and other good works.

Sharpton, who always wears a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. peace medallion around his neck, has forged strong ties in the boxing and record businesses. Singer James Brown, whom he met in 1973, has been an investor in Sharpton’s concert promotions company. A year later, he met boxing promoter Don King, who visited Brawley with heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in January. Tyson gave the teen-ager his expensive gold watch.

‘Never Seems to Lack Cash’

“He doesn’t have a church. He never seems to lack cash,” said a lawyer who has known the preacher for decades. “Many of us have been trying to figure this out.”

Sharpton is a veteran street organizer and has staged demonstrations demanding more black representation on the board of New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. During a protest he led in December, thousands of subway riders were stalled in trains after demonstrators pulled the trains’ emergency cords.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Sharpton had been supplying federal agents with information about boxing promoter King, black leaders and reputed organized crime figures. But in a show of support, King invited Sharpton to the Tyson-Larry Holmes fight he promoted in Atlantic City. Nevertheless, the revelations caused considerable concern among some other black activists.

“I met him when he was 13,” recalled Andrew W. Cooper, who is publisher of the City Sun, a local Brooklyn newspaper, and has known Sharpton for decades. “I met him in Brooklyn and he was being touted as the boy preacher. . . . What happened was he got into this religion business and he was a bright, articulate spellbinding type and it took off from there.

“He comes from a poor family. He is a very bright guy and he plays the media like a piano.

“In private, he is a very funny guy. He is very charming. His mother is a working woman. One of the things he tells me is his mother says he should cut his hair.”