Barry’s Defense Charges Government Overreached : Narcotics: Lawyer calls FBI sting a ‘mustard gas’ attack that cannot be contained. Prosecution points to ‘overwhelming evidence’ against mayor.

A defense attorney acknowledged Wednesday that Washington Mayor Marion Barry had used cocaine but he likened the FBI sting operation in which Barry was ensnared to an attack of “mustard gas” that cannot be contained.

In a closing statement at Barry’s drug and perjury trial, defense lawyer R. Kenneth Mundy said that the federal government had overreached to get Barry, apparently believing that “the end justifies the means.”

Associate prosecutor Judith Retchin, meanwhile, recognizing the controversial nature of the sting, urged jurors in her closing argument to ignore their personal likes and dislikes and to convict Barry on the “overwhelming evidence” produced at his seven-week trial.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said that the jury would begin deliberating the case today after he gives them legal instructions and after attorneys on both sides present additional statements.

The arguments of Mundy and Retchin referred to the key piece of government evidence--a videotape made last January with a hidden FBI camera showing Barry smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room with a former girlfriend, Rasheeda Moore, who was cooperating with the government.

During the 83-minute tape, which was shown shortly after the trial began in June, Barry declined or showed no interest in the drug at several points before finally accepting it from Moore. FBI agents then burst into the room and arrested him.

“Some of you might question why there was an undercover operation like this,” Retchin told the jury. “Imagine you were at war,” she told them “. . . and heard allegations that the general was helping the other side.”

She said Barry, while using cocaine, opium and marijuana from 1984 through 1989, had posed as “a leader in the war on drugs.”

“Whether you thought it was a good idea or a bad idea,” she continued, “and whether you liked it or didn’t like it, you must put aside your emotions and judge the evidence that was put before you by that sting operation.”

But Mundy insisted that the government, to obtain evidence for mostly misdemeanor drug-possession charges in its 14-count indictment of Barry, “called in a battalion to inflict mustard gas, which cannot be contained.”

He said that “the danger of mustard gas . . . is that it cuts at the very fabric of our society. It might be Mr. Barry today, someone else tomorrow.”

Declaring that “everything that the government could amass against him has been put before you,” Mundy added: “We will not argue that Mr. Barry did not use cocaine, and he is not being tried for sexual improprieties.”

But to obtain their principal witnesses, the government “reached out and made a deal with the devil,” he said, stressing that such witnesses as Moore, a former model, and confessed drug dealers Charles Lewis and Lydia Pearson hope that their cooperation will result in lenient treatment by the Justice Department.

Three perjury charges against Barry involve his denial to a grand jury that he had used drugs with Lewis, an old friend and former city employee.

Retchin said that the 10 witnesses who testified about Barry’s alleged long-term drug use were all “close friends of the mayor.”

“It was Mr. Barry who chose those witnesses,” she said. “He gave us those witnesses.

“Some of you may not like Rasheeda Moore,” Retchin continued. “Well, you don’t have to like her. What we’re asking you to do is look at the testimony of Rasheeda Moore and see whether or not it’s true.”

Gesturing at Barry, who glared back at her from the defense table, Retchin told jurors that Moore’s testimony about Barry’s drug use was “widely corroborated” by others who gave their own firsthand accounts of using cocaine with him.