Ex-DEA Agent Extradited to L.A. From Luxembourg

One-time fugitive Darnell Garcia, the former U.S. narcotics agent who is a principal defendant in a major drug corruption scandal, has been quietly extradited to Los Angeles from Luxembourg, The Times learned Sunday.

Garcia, his hands and legs shackled and dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, was turned over to five U.S. marshals by Luxembourg police Friday, according to Mark Pirtle, one of the marshals who accompanied Garcia on the trip back to Los Angeles.

“It’s nice to see a familiar face,” Garcia, 43, of Rancho Palos Verdes, told Gilbert Garcia (no relation), one of the marshals he knew personally, as he was taken into American custody at Luxembourg’s airport, according to Pirtle’s account.

Garcia and two other former Drug Enforcement Administration agents--John Jackson, 40, of Claremont and Wayne Countryman, 47, of Walnut--plus Jackson’s wife, Barbara, 41, and Jackson’s former business partner, Sherman Lair, 39, of Alta Loma, were indicted in 1988 by a federal grand jury on 42 felony counts alleging participation in an international drug trafficking and money-laundering scheme.

Garcia was arrested and imprisoned in Luxembourg last July on a passport violation after a seven-month international manhunt that began shortly before he was to be arrested in Los Angeles. His extradition hearing was held in Luxembourg earlier this month.

Because the extradition treaty between Washington and Luxembourg does not include several of the counts under which Garcia was indicted in Los Angeles, such as tax evasion and currency violations, he will be tried on only six of the original felony allegations.

Included are charges that Garcia engaged in a narcotics conspiracy and that he stole heroin from the DEA vault in its Los Angeles office; he also is charged with distribution of heroin, money laundering and providing DEA intelligence to suspected drug traffickers.

Garcia was scheduled to be arraigned today before U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter.

Because Garcia does not yet have a criminal attorney, the case’s chief prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Atty. Joyce Karlin, said she expected the April 17 trial date for the five defendants to be continued so that Garcia’s new lawyer could have time to prepare a defense.

Karlin was expected to tell Hatter that Garcia is a flight risk and thus should be denied bail.

To support her argument, Karlin will submit documents detailing Garcia’s months as a fugitive--in Rio de Janeiro, Frankfurt, Madrid and Paris--before DEA agents tipped Luxembourg police that he was living in the tiny country. He was arrested last July 3 after arriving by train from Paris, where he had last been living.

The trial, Karlin said Sunday, would take “a couple of months” because the case is complex and “we have a lot of evidence.”

One of Garcia’s major tasks will be to explain how he accumulated about $3 million deposited in two Luxembourg banks. The funds have been frozen by Luxembourg government officials.

Although Garcia faces, in effect, a stripped-down indictment, the other four defendants still face all of the charges contained in the original complaint, Karlin said.

The other four defendants are all free on bail. Former DEA Agent Jackson was the last to be freed, posting a $1-million bond last December. He is currently under house arrest at his Claremont home where he must wear an electronic monitoring device at all times.

Garcia, Jackson and Countryman were veteran DEA agents and close friends.

Jackson was referred to by his colleagues as “Action Jackson,” a guy who liked flashy clothes and cars.

Garcia was viewed as a macho international karate expert--he has a black belt--and, according to an associate, was quiet and cool in an always dangerous profession; someone who could take care of himself.

He was, in the associate’s words, “a man who could throw his gun away and rip your head off.”

The Los Angeles case appears to be the most sensational of three DEA corruption cases around the country, involving seven agents who allegedly “crossed the line” from fighting illicit drug trafficking to participating in crime.

Its roots, according to the indictment, go back to 1983 when the five defendants conspired to steal heroin and cocaine from the DEA’s evidence vault in Los Angeles, and then laundered millions of dollars in drug profits through banks in Switzerland and Luxembourg.

Additionally, according to the indictment, Garcia provided intelligence information to a drug trafficker that a Los Angeles-area cocaine kingpin was about to be arrested by federal agents in Pasadena.

Garcia’s supporters claim he is the victim of a DEA vendetta.

Garcia, who is black and a native of Puerto Rico, and Jackson and Countryman, who are both black, joined the DEA in the 1970s at a time when black agents were alleging discrimination in promotion and posting practices.

Garcia claimed discrimination on the basis of national origin when the DEA fired him in December, 1985, for refusing a transfer to Detroit. He won reinstatement in June, 1987, following a favorable decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Then, just two months later, he was placed on administrative leave by the DEA as it stepped up its internal investigation into possible corruption among its agents. Some former DEA agents have since contended that the Garcia prosecution is racially motivated and that the agency is seeking revenge because Garcia beat the DEA in court.

After he spent about seven months in solitary confinement in a Luxembourg prison, Garcia’s extradition hearing was held Feb. 2. The final extradition order was issued last week.

According to Pirtle, the former drug agent appeared “quite a bit thinner” than when he was on DEA assignment in Los Angeles.

Carrying three plastic bags of belongings, including legal papers and books, Garcia was flown aboard a U.S. Air Force C-141 transport to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, and spent Friday night in a Baltimore city lockup. On Saturday morning, he was flown by commercial jet from Baltimore to Los Angeles. He was booked into the downtown federal Metropolitan Detention Center at 4 p.m.

“He was in real good spirits the whole trip,” Pirtle said of Garcia. “He never gave us any trouble. He was a good guy. He knew the game and he just went along with it.”