FBI Agents Targeted Black Leaders, Barry Lawyer Says

The FBI has a team of agents that targeted Julian Bond, Andrew Young and other black leaders for undercover sting operations, Marion Barry’s lawyer said Thursday at the mayor’s cocaine and perjury trial.

R. Kenneth Mundy said the team operated in Atlanta, Chicago and California, as well as during the Jan. 18 sting in which Barry was arrested after being videotaped smoking crack cocaine.

The FBI said in a statement that the charges were “unfounded” and “categorically denied.” Assistant U.S. Atty. Judith Retchin added: “I think the allegations are outrageous . . . inflammatory.”

After testimony ended for the day, Barry told reporters as he left the courtroom: “I got the impression that Stern is notorious for going around the country trying to sting black elected officials.”

Mundy’s contentions came as the defense neared the end of its case, questioning agent Ronald Stern, one of the participants in the Barry sting. The defense spent the day trying to prove that the FBI had entrapped Barry.

“Stern in effect moves around the country as the head of an . . . assault force of FBI agents,” Mundy said during a bench conference.

The jury could not hear the discussion, and U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson refused to allow Mundy to question Stern about the allegations. Mundy said he wanted to put his comments on the record in case there was an appeal in the case.

“Prior to coming here to organize and orchestrate the sting against Mr. Barry, Mr. Stern had been in Atlanta trying to set up a sting of Julian Bond, Andrew Young and two other black politicians and public figures in Atlanta,” Mundy said.

Alice Bond, then the wife of former Georgia state Sen. Bond, told Atlanta police in 1987 that her estranged husband and other prominent officials had used cocaine. She recanted her story after a telephone conversation with then-Mayor Young.

Bond denied using drugs and was never charged. Young, who faces an Aug. 7 runoff for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, was criticized for calling Mrs. Bond.

Mundy said the information came from two lawyers for government witnesses in the Barry case, a congressional office and a figure convicted in the Department of Housing and Urban Development scandal.

Mundy said the FBI approached a half-dozen women “in the life of Mr. Barry” and tried to get them to cooperate. “Money was offered to them,” but the women refused, Mundy said.