Blank Tapes Lead to Arrest in Brawley Case

A former Navy technician and self-styled surveillance expert who said that the Rev. Al Sharpton hired him to bug other members of Tawana Brawley’s legal team was arrested Saturday after audio tapes he had surrendered to prosecutors turned out to be blank.

A U.S. magistrate ordered the man, Samuel McClease, held without bail and scheduled a hearing Monday on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice after prosecutors argued that McClease had “played games with the government.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Federico Virella said during the court proceedings that McClease had not fully obeyed a grand jury’s subpoena and, so far, had not turned over other documents “relating to the production of the tape-recordings.”

McClease has claimed that Sharpton hired him in February to conduct electronic surveillance of Brawley’s lawyers, C. Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox Jr., because Sharpton, who also was advising Brawley, feared that her story was untrue.

Minister Denies Story

Sharpton has denied that he hired McClease, or ever met him. Brawley, a 16-year-old high school girl from Dutchess County, N. Y., maintains that she was kidnaped, raped and sodomized by six white men, one of whom displayed a badge. When she was found after being missing for four days last November, her hair had been cut and racial epithets were written on her body.

She and her family have refused to cooperate with a special state prosecutor investigating her complaint. Her mother, Glenda, has taken refuge in a church to avoid arrest on a criminal contempt charge for refusing to testify before the grand jury looking into her daughter’s allegations.

The arrest of McClease was the latest bizarre twist in a case in which the bizarre has become commonplace.

In an interview last week on WCBS-TV in New York, McClease, 26, said the tapes he made showed that Brawley’s lawyers had considerable doubt in private about her story. On one tape, he said, one of the advisers, whom he did not name, called Brawley’s story “bull.”

Lawyers Refute Quotation

McClease said Brawley’s advisers had said that the girl had not been kidnaped, but had been at a four-day party in the area. Sharpton, Mason and Maddox denied making any such statement.

McClease also said Sharpton had hired him to bug the minister’s own home and the office and home of Mason, but on Saturday, an FBI affidavit charged that two reels and eight cassettes of tape McClease allegedly recorded at Mason’s home and office were blank. The affidavit said the tapes apparently had never been used.

“The defendant is charged with two very serious offenses dealing with the integrity of the judicial system,” Virella said. He said McClease faces two counts of obstructing justice and one count of perjury before the grand jury. He could be fined up to $10,000 and go to prison for up to 10 years if convicted.

“The complaint alleges the tapes turned over in response to the grand jury subpoena were blank,” said Leonard Joy, McClease’s lawyer. “I do not know how the government plans to prove Mr. McClease erased them himself or knew they were blank.”

Brawley’s lawyers on Friday filed a complaint with the office of Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau, charging McClease with illegal wiretapping and breaking and entering.